THE BEGINING OF ROME

It seems amazing but it happened. A village of mud huts on one of seven hills grew up into a large city which
then conquered a huge empire. The Roman Empire, at its height, stretched for hundreds of miles and contained
millions of people. But how did Rome begin in the first place?

HOW ROME BECAME A REPUBLIC

In the 8th century BC Rome was a small city-state made up of the town of Rome and the surrounding
countryside. It was part of the country that we now can call Italy. During that time there were many other city-
states and groups of people living in Italy. Among them were the Etruscans, the Samnites, the Umbrians, the
Sabines and colonist from Greece. The Romans were part of a group of people called the Latins. At first, Rome
was governed by a series of kings. These kings made decisions on their own without first asking the people what
they thought.

THE ETRUSCANS AND AFTER

Between 620 and 510BC Rome come under the control of three Etruscans kings. The Etruscans were more
civilized than the Romans. They were excellent farmers, artists and traders. The allowed foreign people to come
and live in Rome bringing with them a variety of skills. Temple, stone houses and sewage system were built. The
Romans came to follow some of the Etruscan gods such as Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.

By 510BC the Romans were tired of Etruscan kings running their affairs. They rose up in revolt and drove the last
Etruscan King, Tarquin the Proud, out of the city. The Romans now set up a type of government where there
were no kings and the people had a say in the ways things were run. This new type of government was called a
republic. The diagram show how it works:

As time went on, a number of changes were made. The Patricians had much more power than the plebeians,
although they were far fewer in number. For example plebs could not be member of the Senate or magistrates.
In 494BC the plebs went on strike and said they would set up their own rival city if the government was not
change. The Patricians needed the plebs to work for them, so they had little choice but to listen to their
demands. From now on the plebs were allowed to elect two tribunes to represent them in the Senate. If the
tribunes did not like a new law, they were allowed to veto or forbid it.

Gradually, the plebs got more power. In 450BC they forced the Senate to publish the main laws of Rome on
twelve bronze tablets. The tablets were displayed in the Forum. By 367BC plebs were allowed to become
members of the Senate, and the first plebeian consul was elected. By 350BC plebs were allowed to marry
patrician class. Despite this, the Patricians remained rich and privileged. They had slaves and plenty of time to
devote to politics. The plebs had to earn a living. There was still jealousy and mistrust between the two classes.

ROME CONQUERS ITALY

By 269 BC the city of Rome controlled almost the whole Italy, with a population of 3 million people. How did a
small city-state come to do this? Was it all planned? How did the Romans control such a large number of people
who had been their enemies before?

ROME AGAINST CARTHAGE – THE EMPIRE GROWS

By 629 BC Rome had grown into a very powerful city. The sea traders of Carthage in North Africa were worried
about the growth of Rome´s power. The Carthaginians had a large navy and a superb city. They controlled much
of the western Mediterranean Sea. The Romans also felt threatened by the Carthaginians, especially when they
captured Messina in Sicily in 264BC.

WAR WITH CARTHAGE: THE PUNIC WARS

Between 264 and 241 BC Rome and Carthage fought a war. For the first time the Romans built a navy so they
could fight the Carthaginians at sea. The Romans won the war and drove the Carthaginians from the island of
Sicily. Sicily became a Roman province (a place ruled by another country or people)
In 218 BC the Carthaginians started a second war and tried to get their revenge. They captured a large part of
southern Spain. Hannibal, a Carthaginian general, marched a huge army through Spain, across the Alps and into
Italy. He beat the Romans at the Battle of Lake Trasimene (217BC) and the Battle of Canae (216BC). Hannibal
and his army were a long way from home, and their supplies were short. They reached the gates of Rome but
did not have enough men or siege machines to capture it. Other cities in Italy sided with the Romans and
Hannibal was forced back to Carthage.

In 202BC, the Romans, under General Scipio attacked Carthage and beat Hannibal´s army at the Battle of Zama.
Hannibal escaped to the east but later poisoned himself to avoid capture. Rome said that Carthage had to give
up its colonies. Spain became a Roman province. Five hundred Carthaginian warships were set on fire.

In 150BC a third war broke out. The Romans put the city of Carthage under siege for three years. Finally, the
Romans captured the City, burned it down and killed the Carthaginian people or made them slaves. In 146BC a
new Roman city was built in its place. North Africa was now a Roman province. The Roman Empire was taking
shape. Soon most of the countries around the edge of the Mediterranean were under Roman control.
 RISE AND FALL OF EMPIRES

ALL THINGS ARE SUBJECT TO DECAY AND CHANGE. (THE GENERAL HISTORY OF POYBIUS)

Kings ruled Rome in its early days, from about 800 – 500BC, and Rome included a mix of Latins, Sabine and
Etruscan people. The king´s power called the imperium, spanned religious, military and military affairs. The king
was advised by a council of elders called fathers (patres in Latin) or the Senate primarily an advisory body, but in
practice, it was quite powerful. Senator were often the head of the most important families in Rome. The rest of
the people, the bulk of Roman society who were free, were called plebeians. Most were ordinary people,
although some were wealthy. Patricians monopolize the senate and priesthoods and did not intermarry with
plebeians. Around 500BC, the city of Roma detached itself from the surrounding kingdom, while military
pressure made it necessary to expand the body of loyal infantrymen, so native Romans decided to incorporate
the immigrants into their community. Like the early Greeks, Roman moved towards citizenship based on military
service, and within a few generations, Rome went from a monarchy to a Republic.

The turning point of Roman dominance came with the Punic Wars of 264-146BC. The conquest of Italy left Rome
as one of two great powers in the central Mediterranean. Rome was a land power, however, while Rome´s rival
Carthage was an incredible sea power. The long and bloody war exhausted both sides. Rome emerged from the
Punic Wars as the greatest power in the Mediterranean. It acquired new provinces in Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica,
Spain and North Africa, but governed its new provinces badly. Whether stealing bushels of wheat or bars of
silver, greedy and corrupt governors milked the wealth of subject territories. Even without the corruption, the
Roman Republic lacked the administrative structure to effectively govern such a far-flung empire. Most public
functions, including basics such as tax collection, were auctioned off to the highest-bidding private companies.
By 395CE, internal and external divisions split the empire into the Eastern Roman Empire, with a capital in
Constantinople, and the Western Roman Empire, with a capital in Rome.

Less is known about the early history of the Huns who kept no written record of their own. Descriptions of their
physical appearance, language, government, and culture all come from writers in the Roman Empire and
Christians in Europe. As these writers considered the Huns to be either harbingers of the Antichrist or at best,
marauding bands of invaders their perspective on the Hunnic peoples was clouded. The Goths, for example
described them in animalistic terms while the Greeks saw them as barbarians. A migratory people from Central
Asia, the Huns were less of a distinct ethnic group or empire than a loose confederation of warrior groups from
Central Asia (probably Mongols, Xiongnu, or others) who spoke a variety of languages inherited from conquered
peoples. Their military tactics relied on horses, and they organized their armies along clan lines. Little is known
about their religion other than probably worshipped a variety of gods and that shamans entered into trance
states in order to communicate with deities.

They began to move west in the 300CE, eventually attacking the eastern borders of the Eastern Roman Empire.
More concerned with the Germanic tribes to their north and west in Europe, the Eastern Romans largely
ignored the threat to the east, leaving the frontier lands there largely undefended. When Attila and his brother
Bleda took control of the Huns they negotiated a peace treaty with the Eastern Roman Empire in 435CE, and in
exchange for annual tribute from Constantinople, the Huns and Romans together fought the Gauls to protect
the western frontier of the Roman Empire. The Eastern Romans soon broke the treaty, leading Attila and the
Huns to renew attacks upon the Eastern Roman Emipire. The Huns maintained peace with the Western Empire
until Honoria (sister of the Western Emperor) asked Attila to save her from an arranged marriage. Attila claimed
her as a bride and spent the next 2 years making war until he died in 453CE.

Far to the east, the Han Dynasty in China eventually grew from the culmination of the Qin attempts to unify the
Warring States in 221BC. When that empire collapsed in 207BC, after a short period of civil war, the rebel leader
Liu Bang became the Emperor in 202BC. The Han Dynasty lasted until 202CE. The word “Han” comes from a river
in an area controlled by Liu Bang early in his career, and today most Chinese people are ethnic Han. Women in
the Han dynasty has more rights, generally than earlier Chinese women and women in other cultures at the
time. They could own property and initiate court cases and had some explicit rights under the law. The Han legal
system followed Confucian principles. Torturous mutilation as punishment, common under the Qin, was
abolished. Ancestor worship was common, as were animal sacrifices. Whether Confucian, Taoist or Buddhist,
most Chinese believed in two-part souls: one passed into the afterlife and one that remained in the grave with
the deceased body.

During the Han period, the Chinese developed more sophisticated metallurgy, including steel alloys. The
development of seed drills in agriculture, the odometer for measuring distance, and waterwheels (for powering
threshers, hammers and other mechanical devices) all came during the Han period. The Han also invented the
idea of negative numbers in mathematics. The Han dynasty period is considered a golden age of Chinese and
world history.

EXPERPTS FROM THE ROMAN HISTORY OF AMMIANUS MARCELINUS (C380)

1. The people called Huns, slightly mentioned in the ancient records, live beyond the Sea of Azov, on the
border of the Frozen Ocean, and are a race savage beyond all parallel.
2. At the very moment of their birth the cheeks of their infant children are deeply marked by an iron, in
order that the usual vigor of their hair, instead of growing at the proper season, maybe withered by the
wrinkled scars; and accordingly they grow up without beards, and consequently without any beauty, like
eunuchs, though they all have closely-knit and strong limbs, and plump necks; they are of great size, and
low legged, so that you might fancy them two-legged beasts, or the stout figures which are hewn out in
a rude manner with an axe on the posts at the end of bridges.
3. They are certainly in the shape of men, however uncouth, but are so hardy that they neither require fire
nor well-flavored food, but live in the roots of such herbs as they get in the fields, or on the half-raw
flesh of any animal, which they merely warm rapidly by placing it between their own thighs and the
backs of their horses.
4. They never shelter themselves under roofed houses, but avoid them as people ordinarily avoid
sepulchers as things not fitted for common use. Nor is there even to be found among them a cabin
thatched with reed; but they wander about, roaming over the mountains and the woods and accustom
themselves to bear frost and hunger and thirst from their very cradles. And even when abroad they
never enter a house unless under the compulsion of some extreme necessity: nor, indeed, do they think
people under roofs as safe as others
5. They wear linen clothes, or else garments made of the skins of field-mice: nor do they wear a different
dress out of doors from that which they wear at home; but after a tunic is once put round their necks,
however it becomes worn, it is never taken off or changed till, from long decay, it becomes actually so
ragged as to fall to pieces.
6. They cover their heads with round caps, and their shaggy legs with the skins of kids; their shoes are not
made on any lasts, but are so unshapely as to hinder them from walking with a free gait. And for this
reason they are not well suited to infantry battles, but are nearly always on horseback, their horses
being ill-shaped, but hardy: and sometimes they even sit upon them like women if they want to do
anything more conveniently. There is not a person in the whole nation who cannot remain on his horse
day and night. On their horses they buy and sell, they take their meat and drink and there they recline
on the narrow neck of their steed and yield to sleep so deep as to indulge in every variety of dream
7. And when any deliberation is to take place on any weighty matter, they all hold their common council
on the horseback. They are not under the authority of a king, but are contented with the irregular
government of their nobles, and under their lead they force their way through all obstacles.
8. Sometimes when provoked, they fight; and when they go into battle, they form in a solid body, under
utter all kinds of terrific yells. They are very quick in their operations, of exceeding speed, and fond of
surprising their enemies. With a view to this the suddenly disperse, then reunite, and again, after having
inflicted vast loss upon enemy, scatter themselves over the whole plain in irregular formations: always
avoiding a fort or an entrenchment.
9. And in one respect you may pronounce them the most formidable of all warriors, for when at a distance
they use missiles of various kind tripped with sharpened bones instead of the usual points or javelins,
and these bones are admirably fastened into the shaft of the javelin or arrow; but when they are at
close quarters they fight with the swords, without any regard for their own safety; and often while their
antagonists are warding off their blows they entangle them with twisted cords, so that, their hands
being fettered, they lose all power of either riding or walking
10. None of them plough, or even touch a plough-handle: for they have no settled abode, but are homeless
and lawless, perpetually wandering with their wagons, which they make their homes; in fact they seem
to be people always in flight. Their wives live in these wagons, and there weave their miserable
garments; and here too they sleep with their husbands, and bring up their children till they reach the
age of puberty; nor, if asked, can any one of them tell you where he was born, as he was conceived in
one place, born in another at a great distance, and brought up in another still more remote.
11. In truces they are treacherous and inconstant, being liable to change their mind at every breeze of every
hope which presents itself, giving themselves up wholly to impulse and inclination of the moment; and,
like brute beasts, they are utterly ignorant of the distinction between right and wrong. They express
themselves with a great ambiguity and obscurity; have no respect for any religion or superstition
whatever; are immoderately covetous of gold; and are so fickle and irascible. That they very often on
the same day that they quarrel with their companions without any provocation, again become
reconciled to them without any mediator

PRISCUS AT THE COURT OF ATTILA (C 448)

Attila´s residence, which was situated here, was said to be more splendid than his houses in other places. It
was made of polished boards, and surrounded with wooden enclosures, designed not so much for
protection as for appearance sake. Not far from the enclosure was a large bath. The stones for his bath had
been brought from Pannonia, for the barbarians in the district had no stones or trees, but used imported
materials.

The next day I entered the enclosures of Attila´s palace, bearing gifts to his wife, whose name was Kreka.
Within the enclosure were numerous buildings, some of carved boards beautifully fitted together others of
straight fastened on round wooden blocks which rose to a moderate height from the ground. Attila´s wife
lived here, and, having been admitted by the barbarians at the door, I found her reclining on a soft couch.
The floor of the room was covered with woolen mats for walking on. A number of servants stood round her,
and maids sitting on the floor in front of the embroidered with colours linen cloths intended to be placed
over the Scythian dress for ornament. Having approached, saluted, and presented the gifts, I went out, and
walked to another house.
I saw a number of people advancing, and a great commotion and noise, Attila´s egress being expected. And
he came forth from the house with a dignified gait, looking around on this side and on that. He was
accompanied by Onegesius, and stood in front of the house; and many persons who had lawsuits with one
another came up and received his judgment.

Were we invited to a banquet with Attila at three o´clock. When the hour arrived we went to the palace.
Along with the embassy from the Western Romans, and stood on the threshold of the hall in the presence
of Attila. The cup-bearers gave us a cup, according to the national custom, that we might pray before we sat
down. Having tasted the cup, we proceeded to take our seats; all the chairs were ranged along the walls of
the room on either side.

Attila sat in the middle on a couch; a second couch was set behind him, and from it steps led up to his bed,
which was covered with linen sheets and wrought coverlets for ornament, such as Greeks and Romans use
to deck bridal beds. The places on the right of Attila were held chief in honour, those on the left, where we
sat, were only second.

Tables, large enough for three or four, or even more, to sit at, were placed next to the table of Attila, so that
each could take of the food on the dished without leaving his seat. The attendant of Attila first entered a
dish of meat, and behind him came the other attendants with bread and viands, which the laid on the
tables. A luxurious meal, served on silver plate, had been ready for us and the barbarian guests, but Attila
ate nothing but meat on a wooden trencher. In everything else, too, he showed himself temperate –his cup
was of wood, while the guests were given goblets of gold and silver. His dress, too, was quite simple,
affecting only to be clean. The sword he carried at his side, the ratchets of his Scythian shoes the bridle of
his horse were not adorned like those of the other Scythians, with gold or gems or anything costly.

When the viands of the first course had been consumed, we all stood up, and did not resume our seats until
each one, in the order before observed, drank to the health of Attila in the goblet of wine presented to him.
We then sat down, and a second dish was placed on each table with eatables of another kind. After this
course the same ceremony was observed as after the first. When evening fell torches were lit, and two
barbarians coming forward in front of Attila sang songs they had composed, celebrating his victories and
deeds of valor in wars.

THE END OF THE REPUBLIC

Despite the victory over Carthage, The Roman Republic faced serious problems. The rich families had large
farms and slaves to work for them. Many rich people used their money to buy their way into the best jobs in
the government. Some became governors of the new provinces and earned even more.

The poor people of Rome, however, faced unemployment and hunger. In 133BC two of their three tribunes,
Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus, tried to get the Senate to grant more land to the poor farmers. The
Senate stirred up riots against the tribunes which ended in their murders.

In 91BC a number of Italian cities demanded that they should have Roman citizenship and a greater share of
the taxes which Rome got from the Empire. A three-year war followed which resulted in the cities getting
their way. There was a mood of distrust and jealously in Rome. In 87BC there was a civil war between two
generals. Marius and Sulla. There was great bloodshed, and many innocent people were murdered. Then in
73BC Spartacus led the slaves in a revolt against their masters. It took three fierce battles to defeat the
slaves.
CAESAR´S RISE AND FALL

Caesar was born into a rich family in about 100BC. He was clever and good at sport. He served in the army
and then got interested in politics. He was ambitious. In 65BC Caesar was put in charge of public
entertainment in Rome. He borrowed huge sums of money to pay for games and festivals. He became
popular with the poor people. In 60BC he became consul and in 58BC he went to serve in Gaul as governor.
He was a brilliant general but was often cruel to his enemies. In 44BC he was murdered outside the Senate
House in Rome.

Strong leadership was needed to bring back order. In 60BC Julius Caesar Crassus and Pompey formed the
Triumvirate (a ruling group of three) to get control of the Senate. Caesar set out to win the support of the
poor. He said that the Senate was to blame for all Rome´s problems. In 58BC Caesar was made governor of
Gaul and placed in charge of the Roman armies there. He soon captured large amount of territory in Gaul to
add to the Empire.

Pompey watched with alarm. He did not like Caesar´s growing popularity and power. In 49BC the Senate
(under orders from Pompey) told Caesar to disband his army. Instead, Caesar crossed the river Rubicon, the
border between Gaul and Italy, and marched his army on Rome. This was an act of great defiance because a
governor has no legal right to take an army out of a province. Caesar beat Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus
in 48BC. Pompey escaped to Egypt, where he was murdered. Between the years 48 and 45BC Caesar
conquered much more territory around the Mediterranean Sea for the Roman Empire. He returned in great
triumph to Rome.

Caesar was a wise ruler as well as a great ruler. He made methods of tax collection fairer. He tried to help
unemployed Romans by setting up new colonies in the provinces where they could by land cheaply. Work
was also provided by new schemes to rebuild the centre of Rome and build new roads. Caesar more than
halved the number of citizens receiving free bread.

Caesar increased the number of men in the Senate. He told them to vote for new laws which would improve
the lives of the poor. He was then made dictator for life of Rome and the Empire. Many of the rich men in
the Senate did not like this – they thought that Caesar was going to make himself king. On 15 March 44BC
Caesar was murdered by a group of rich senators led by Brutus and Cassius. He was stabbed 23 times.

THE FIRST EMPEROR

The fight for power went on. The Empire became divided between Mark Antony an Octavian. Mark Antony
fell under the spell of Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt. She wanted to conquer her own empire. Octavian beat
Mark Antony and Cleopatra in a sea battle at Actium in 31BC. This left Octavian in charge of the whole of the
Roman Empire. In 27 BC he took the name of Augustus (respected one) Caesar and was declared emperor.
The Republic was at and end.

The murder of Caesar, painted in the 19th Century