history..., help please..!!?

Question

1. Was geography an advantage or disadvantage to Roman developmant? Justify your answer.

2. Was the rise of Rome the inevitable result of the kind of people it had? Why or why not?!

Answer 1

1. Geography played both an advantage and disadvantage for the Roman Empire. Advantages are that rivers and mountains or deserts became natural borders. The Alps Mountains allowed Rome cover to control the Italian Pennisulia until it was strong enough for further conquests. Later when Rome controlled most of Europe geography played a hand in its downfall. Communication due to size was slow. Territory was devided by regions and to properly govern much power was given to local govenors. After time they began to resent rule from Rome and caused it continuing weakness.

2. Rome's rise was due to the advancements it had compared to the rest of the known world. It's army was rigidly trained and several parts acted as one. The government and people placed the nation or city as highest priority. There was also a feel of Roman dominance that Rome had a right and destiny to rule the world. With the end of Greece power, and only tribal rule in Europe, many welcomed Rome to partake in it's advacments. History is filled with several circumstances involoving people, time and place being just right for conditions. Rome's rise is the result of it's people but by far not the only.

Answer 2

www.history.com and look at the map. Romans learned from the Conquests of Alexander the Great even though Greece was strong it fell as well. Their geographical closeness with All of Europe and Asia to be able to cross the mediterranean to Egypt as well as Ethiopia etc. They had a great location for all areas around the country made Rome a metropolis, look at the Alps which bordered mostly with the Gauls and the Goths or Barbarians. Fruit grew readily for food not only in Italy but in Sicily and Sardinia, etc. So they could feed the people at one time. But with the population and the development of Rome after the conquests of most of the Caesar's it was inevitable for its fall to come. Too much bacteria for they did not repair their water supplies from the sewers, as Julius had asked before he was assassinated. Nor did they farm properly anymore and waste was rampid amongst the rich, and the poor starved. Cruelty was dispicable. The people became so frustrated murder was a way of life and the government just had trials and took prisoners guilty or not and killed them, as they did Jesus. Justice was based on nepitisim, money and land. Religion came and the disputes were rampid and fear stricken riots began and then the burning which in the event the people did not realize that burning was the only thing that destroyed the plague. The disadvantage to any strength is not to know your own limitations.

Answer 3

All your answers will be somewhat based on opinion. Regardless...

1.) Yes, Rome was fairly centrally located in the "known" world of the Romans. Also, having easy access to the Mediterranean was pretty key at that time (trading, navy, etc.)

2.) I think it's inevitable that there will be a dominant "empire" type country. Was it inevitable that Rome became that for the time that they were or that they would eventually become it on a long enough timeline? Or that if a group of people that were composed of people similar to those that started and maintained Rome were put together, they would do the same thing? No. I don't think so. It depends greatly on who of the group gains leadership power and what kind of resources they have. The kind of people is only one factor. It's not inevitable.

Answer 4

Geography was an initial disadvantage to Rome. they had broken unlevel terrain to work with at first. However, their solution - the roman roads enabled them to take and hold what was at that time a vast empire.

There is no evidence that Rome was issued anything other than standard people. There rise was a result of the system they developed and of the work of their people.

Answer 5

2. They had higher IQs than the other tribes and applied it to practical things. They had enough sense to limit certain vices: snobbery didn't prevent them from adopting slaves, who became fully entitled nobles. Second, the common soldier got a share in the profits of conquest.

Answer 6

I believe the History Channel is doing a series on the Roman empire. You might be able to find stuff on their internet site, which I think is through the Discovery Channel. It's worth checking out. <*)))><

Answer 7

answer to question 1: yes the alps to the north protected them from land attacks and if you came by sea you could not take them by surprise because it would be too easy to see you and you move too slowly

Answer 8

1. I don't think geography really mattered. They built roads which are still in existence, so that their armies could travel faster and conquer other countries.
2. Don't know.

Answer 9

sounds like someone wants help with her homework. 1. yes 2. your prof sucks

Answer 10

1. it was an advantage.
2.The Rise of Rome, to 201 BCE
Legendary Origins and End of Etruscan Rule
Fire awed the early Romans, as it did the Greeks and others. The Romans believed in a goddess of fire called Vesta, and they had a sacred temple of fire tended by four females - the Vestal Virgins - who were selected while they were children and were expected to serve thirty years. During their service they were expected to remain virgins, for the Romans believed that to please the gods, women who were unmarried and not trying to bear children should remain chaste.

A Vestal Virgin was part of the greatest legend among the Romans - the legend about Rome's origins. The legend begins with a Vestal Virgin giving birth to twin boys and claiming that the boys had been fathered miraculously by the god Mars - a god of fertility and later also of war. The Vestal Virgin was the sister of a king. The king believed his sister was lying and that she had violated a sacred law. To put things right with the gods the king had his sister imprisoned, and he had her twins put afloat in a basket on the Tiber River. The two boys, called Romulus and Remus, were expected to drown, but the river receded and the basket carrying the boys came to rest on the river's bank, where a shepherd found them.

Around the time of Jesus Christ, when this legend was still popular among Romans, a Roman historian named Livy tried looking back centuries to determine whether the legend was true. The earliest version that Livy found described the wife of the shepherd who rescued Romulus and Remus. It described her as a she-wolf (a *****) because of her alleged loose morals. Legends evolve, and by Livy's time the legend held that the boys had been rescued by a real female wolf - a notion that was put into the famous Roman sculpture a wolf nursing the two boys.

According to the legend that Livy studied, Romulus and Remus grew into manhood, and they killed their uncle, the king, in revenge for his having imprisoned their mother and for his having unjustly usurped power from their grandfather. The boys restored their grandfather to the throne, and they founded Rome where they had emerged from the river.

Then Romulus and Remus quarreled - as had Cain and Abel. Romulus killed Remus, and he became Rome's first king. To populate his city, Romulus gathered people from other countries. And, to give his subjects wives, he abducted young unmarried women from a nearby tribe called the Sabines - an incident to be known as "The Abduction of the Sabine Women." The fathers of the women were outraged, and the Sabines retaliated by attacking the Romans. The abducted Sabine women, now apparently contented wives, intervened in the fighting and brought peace between their husbands and their fathers. The legend ends with Romulus, after a long reign, vanishing into a thunderstorm. He became a god. Then he reappeared, descending from the sky, declaring to those listening that it is the will of heaven that Rome be the capital of the world, that Romans cherish the art of war and that others realize that they cannot resist the strength of Roman arms.

Rome's Worldly Beginnings
Among the various peoples who migrated southward across the Alps to the warmer climate and rich lands of Italy were Indo-Europeans whose language had evolved into Latin - a language closely related to Celtic. These Latin-speaking people settled along fifty miles or so of coastal plains and inland to the mountain range that runs down the Italian peninsula, and they settled among the hills that are now a part of Rome. These were hills whose gentler slopes would support wheat, whose steeper slopes would support olive trees, fruit trees and vineyards. Here, animals could be pastured. And in the marshy land along the coast and farther inland, the Romans drained the stagnant pools of water that they found, making the area more habitable by eliminating malarial mosquitoes.

The legend of Romulus and Remus dated the founding Rome at 753 BCE, but from modern archaeology (the spelling archeology not used in this site) comes evidence that around the year 1000 Rome was already a collection of villages. These villages were fifteen miles inland from the sea, along the banks of the then navigable Tiber River. A search of historical records indicates that the Romans were organized around tribal clans. Like other Latins in Italy they tilled small plots of land, pastured cows, pigs and goats and tended flocks of sheep. Like other tribal peoples they had a council of elders, and their chiefs were chosen by clan elders and by the acclamation of their entire people.

Rome under the Etruscans
The Etruscans lived north of the Tiber River, some in cities with paved streets and drainage. They used advanced techniques in mining and agriculture. They borrowed from and traded with cities in Italy that the Greeks had founded. And they traded with central Europe and with others along the coast of North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean, importing a variety of goods in exchange for the iron and bronze items they made, such as helmets and pails. The Etruscans played music, danced, did acrobatics, and held foot and chariot races. And they were fierce warriors. Various Etruscan kings conquered parts of Italy and held it as empire. And sometime around 600 BCE, Etruscan chieftains led an army southward and conquered Rome and areas beyond.

By the time that Etruscans had conquered Rome, the Romans had already been divided between common folk called plebeians and aristocrats called patricians - modern scholars estimating the patricians to be from ten to five percent of Rome's population. Whether the patricians were descendants of a people who had conquered the Romans before the Etruscans or were Romans who had become an elite is unknown. Most patricians were from the families of successful farmers, but a few were not very wealthy. Like other aristocracies, the patricians based their superiority on their family name, even if the family's success in farming and wealth had declined.

As happened in China and elsewhere, the aristocrats of Rome cooperated with their conquerors while maintaining their higher status and privileges over the plebeians. Some patrician families adopted Etruscan names. And patricians held onto priestly positions - which were denied to plebeians.

Rome under the Etruscans resembled a Greek city. Like Greek cities, it had a senate: an advisory council of elders who were mainly patricians. Rome's most important temple and meeting place was a building like a Greek acropolis, called the capitol. The capitol had a Greek-like public assembly called the comitia - where plebeians were a minority and outvoted.

Rome stood at crossroads of major trade routes and was a major center of trade. It had an urban center, approximately one mile wide and four miles long, with paved streets, impressive buildings, and sewers. Under the Etruscans, Roman crafts grew. From the Etruscans the Romans borrowed vase styles and the use of bronze. From the Etruscans they borrowed religious practices, including reading the future by examining the livers of sacrificed animals. From the Etruscans the Romans acquired a twelve-month calendar, and they acquired the use of a personal first name that through Rome was to become the first name and surname commonly used among Europeans. The Romans learned from the Etruscans what Etruscans had learned from the Greeks: the growing of grapes and olives. The Roman alphabet was perhaps an Etruscan adaptation of the Greek alphabet. And from the Etruscans, Rome's aristocracy acquired a familiarity with military organization that included a unit called a legion, which warred in phalanx positions like Greek hoplites.

Rome Becomes a Republic
In 509 BCE, a group of Roman nobles, who were fed up with their Etruscan king, Tarquin, drove him from Rome and into early retirement. Leading patrician families among the Romans took power and ruled as members of the Senate. Without a king, Rome had become a republic. The Senate, or council of elders, had long been accustomed to watching developments and advising the king at his request, and now the Senate was ready to serve as the supreme organ of government. What the Senate created would develop into a model in some regards for those founding the United States of America.

It was common among the nobility of Greek cities in southern Italy to choose one among them as an executive - a president. And in place of a king, the Senate chose not one but two as executive administrators in order to avoid the unreliability of a single administrator. Each executive was a patrician, and each was called a consul. Each was to serve one-year - as among the Greeks - and each was given the power to veto a move by the other.

The selection of the consuls had to be ratified by an assembly of clan leaders (the Comitia Curiata). And, as leaders of the Senate, the consuls decided who would be promoted within the Senate. The consuls could declare an emergency and acquire absolute power for six months. But the consuls' powers were limited in that they could not declare war. War was thought too important to be left to two men. Declaring war would be a prerogative of the Senate. But the consuls would be commanders-in-chief of the military, including the power to have soldiers executed for lack of discipline. And during war, if it was time for elections and both consuls were away on military missions, the Senate could appoint a dictator to preside over the elections.

When there was no war the consuls were occupied with city administration, public finances, and civil and criminal justice. By now, apparently, the crime of murder was no longer dealt with by one's clan but by the state. The consuls could sentence citizens to death, but citizens had the right to appeal such sentences before a special assembly of plebeians.

Compromise, Law and Strength
In freeing themselves from Etruscan rule, the Romans lost trade with the Etruscans and with Greek colonies in southern Italy. What little there had been in imports ended. Rome's plebeian merchants and craftsmen suffered, and Rome experienced economic depression and grain shortages.

While under Etruscan rule, Rome had been the greatest power among the Latins, and in those times Rome had been resented by the other Latins. Then these Latin neighbors freed themselves from Etruscan rule as had the Romans, and the Latins joined together in a league against Rome. Against Rome they made war over disputed lands, and they made war to free themselves from Rome's hegemony. Troubled by this, Rome abandoned its claim of hegemony in Latium. Rome saw advantage in peace and cooperation, and in 493 Rome joined an alliance with its Latin neighbors as an equal. The alliance treaty held that business contracts between people from different states within the alliance were to be bound by law. And the treaty held that in wars against outsiders, alliance members were to share in commanding armies and in the spoils of war.

The alliance strengthened Rome in the wars that began soon followed. The Etruscans began an attempt to impose again their rule on the Romans and other Latins. And there were periodic wars across decades against mountain people to the south and central Italy who were increasing in population and attempting to expand. Rome's patricians liked warring, and they tended to be belligerent toward neighboring powers with whom they had no alliance. The patricians were horsemen, and cavalry was their basic fighting unit. Wars gave them prestige and helped them to maintain their claim of leadership over the other Romans. But a development in the art of war was denying the patricians their exclusive right to prestige. The Greeks, Etruscans and now the Romans were using heavily armed infantrymen - men who were commoners. The increased importance of the common man in combat had encouraged democracy in Athens, and now it was increasing the self-confidence of the small-farmer, plebeian soldiers of Rome.

Compromise between Patricians and Plebeians
Economic distress continued among the Romans and exacerbated conflict between patricians and plebeians. Involved in this conflict was the rise of debt slavery among the plebeians. When a debtor was seized for non-payment of his debts, other plebeians, mainly peasant soldiers, might attempt to rescue him by force.

Unrest among the plebeians resulted in the plebeian members of one of Rome's returning armies threatening to found their own city. Rome's farmer-soldiers and farmer veterans demanded a bigger share in the distribution of lands, and they demanded the abolition of veterans' debts. They advocated the creation of an assembly that spoke for their interests and the interests of all of Rome's plebeians. They wanted the plebeians to elect men to preside over this assembly and to keep watch on the Senate and to have the power to veto Senate proposals. And they wanted plebeians to be able to elect a plebeian to one of the Senate's two consul positions.

A strike by plebeians was followed by patricians acknowledging that it was no longer as it had been in the days when aristocrats alone were the warriors. They were willing to compromise. Although the Senate did not give the plebeians exactly what they wanted, it did create military tribunes. The tribunes were to be elected by small farmers and by the patricians, and the tribunes could be either plebeians or patricians. The farmer-soldiers were encouraged by this increase in their participation in government. It gave them more of a sense that in war they were fighting for their own interests, and this enhanced their morale and strengthened Rome as a military power.

More Reforms
Having won concessions from the patricians, the plebeians wanted more, and they went on strike again, this time demanding freedom from arbitrary punishment and other abuses. The strike stopped work on farms and in shops, and to appease the plebeians the Senate gave tribunes the power to veto any laws passed by the Senate, and the tribunes were to be free from attacks of any kind by the Senate or anyone else. Although officially limited to vetoing laws, the tribunes soon began to initiate legislation, which would become law if it acquired Senate confirmation. And there was a rush of new legislation and laws. Among them, in 471, was a law that created an assembly of plebeians (Comitia Plebus) authorized to meet on special occasions to express their opinions to their tribunes. The tribunes were to preside over the assemblies of plebeians, and they were to share authority with the consuls on the field of battle.

By 450, there were incidents of plebeian tribunes serving as military commanders in place of a consul - which might have been the result of the Senate wanting to use men of extraordinary military talent. Also by 450, the number of tribunes had been increased to ten, and another assembly was created: a military assembly (Comitia Centuriata), consisting of both plebeians and patricians. This assembly was presided over by the consuls. It met to consider the names of patricians who would be candidates for the positions of consul, to elect the consuls, to enact legislation, to listen to appeals of those convicted of capital crimes, and to decide whether Rome should go to war.

To relieve the consuls of the duty of taking the census, the office of censor was created. There were to be two censors. The census was needed for the collection of taxes and in organizing military duties. The censors learned of the extent of a man's property so that men who could afford it would be obliged to equip themselves with the better and more complete armor of the hoplite warrior. Or, if the census determined that someone could afford the required horse and equipment, he was liable for service as a cavalryman. And plebeian cavalrymen were recognized by the Senate as a new class, called the Equites.

To the executive branch of government (the consuls) and the legislative branch (the Senate and assemblies) a third branch of government was created: the judiciary. This had been urged by the plebeians, who wanted laws to apply to them and patricians equally. An officer of the law, called the Praetor, was put in charge of the judiciary. He was to be elected annually by the military assembly, and it was hoped that he would exercise judgments independent from politics. But jury duty was to remain exclusively for aristocrats. Only aristocrats had sufficient leisure time for such service, and it was believed that as jurors they would strive to maintain their reputations as men of honor by judging on the evidence presented them.

Putting Law into Writing, and Mixed Marriages
Up to this time Roman laws had been unwritten and connected with religious lore, and the patricians were interpreters of the law, the patricians believing that only they had knowledge of the mysteries of religious lore that was sufficient for proper interpretation. To avoid arbitrary decisions concerning the law, plebeians demanded that laws be put into writing, and this resulted in the creation of what became known as the Twelve Tables, laws written on twelve bronze tablets. Unlike the laws of Moses, these laws were to be open to legislative change. They were laws that adjusted to life, to develop through precedence and experience - a heritage for modern times beyond that derived from Judaism.

One of the earliest adjustments to these laws came with opposition to a law prohibiting marriage between plebeians and patricians. In 442, a tribune introduced legislation against this prohibition. Patricians had been concerned about the purity of their blood, and speaking before the Senate against this legislation a fundamentalist consul described it as a rebellion against the laws of heaven. He accused the tribune of scheming to obscure or confuse family rank, leaving nothing "pure and uncontaminated." The tribune replied with that which has often been the bane of pretended superiorities: history. He reminded the Senate's patricians of the humble origins of their ancestors, and he claimed that their nobility was not a right of birth or blood but a co-optation. How much this convinced the senators is difficult to determine. But in one respect the law against marriage between plebeians and patricians was impractical: plebeian families headed by vigorous entrepreneurs had accumulated much wealth. Patricians from poorer families had an interest in marrying into these more wealthy families, and the law against prohibiting marriage between plebeians and patricians was repealed.

The Harshness of Roman Law
A civilized society needed liability laws - liability law having been created by Hammurabi in Babylon a thousand years before Rome's written law and more than a thousand years before Ezra promulgated Judaic law. Roman law concerning liability was harsh, conforming with the belief among Romans in virtue and personal commitment. Punishments for breaking the laws expressed in the Twelve Tables were as follows: anyone convicted of slander was to be clubbed to death; a thief was to be flogged, unless he was a slave, in which case he was to be executed by being thrown off Tarpeian rock on Rome's Capitoline hill; someone convicted of defrauding a client was also to be executed; perjury was also a capital crime; death was the punishment also for a judge who accepted a bribe; or anybody who connived with the enemy or delivered a Roman citizen to an enemy. The sentence of death, however, may have been rarely carried out. At this time in their history, in place of executing someone, the Romans might demolish his house and allow him to go into permanent exile. But Vestal Virgins convicted of being unchaste were usually buried alive.

Roman law recognized the supreme authority of the father within his family. A father could sell his son or daughter into slavery. He could have a rebellious son put to death or, as the Romans put it, sacrificed to the gods. A daughter was her father's property, sold in marriage to whomever he pleased. He could also tell his son whom to marry and when to divorce. Roman law also reflected a Roman harshness toward physical weakness: the dreadfully deformed were quickly put to death shortly after birth, and parents could kill their infant if at least five neighbors consented.

Roman Religion
Like others, Romans saw themselves as a people blessed by their gods and their gods as extending their benevolence only to them. And like others, they had numerous gods - gods representing every force of nature that they perceived. The supreme god of the Romans was Jupiter, a god of sunshine and rain and most importantly Rome's protector. They had a fertility god called Mars, who stirred the plants back to life in spring. And the connection between Mars and land suited another of his occupations: wars were often about possession of land, and Mars was also a god of war.

The Romans had a god called Janus - from which the word January derives. Janus was a god of doorways, including the gates at the walls of Rome. Rome's goddess of fire, Vesta, ranked high among the Roman gods, but the largest temple in Rome was for the goddess Venus, the daughter of Jupiter. She was a goddess of vegetation, a bringer of good fortune and victory and the protector of feminine chastity.

Like others, the Romans had acquired much in religion through cultural diffusion, and like others they remained largely unmindful of such origins. It seems that the Romans acquired the gods Jupiter, Juno and Minerva from the Etruscans, and perhaps through the Etruscans the Romans acquired Greek gods. The Roman gods Mercury, Ceres and Diana resembled Greek gods, and the Roman god Hercules was a Greek god. With increased contact between Romans and Greeks, the Romans would identify their gods more with Greek gods. And not having much in mythology surrounding their gods, the Romans would adopt Greek mythology to support their gods.

Religion for the Romans was not about their love for gods or of gods who loved them, nor was it about withdrawing from the present and waiting for a happy life in the hereafter. Religion for the Romans was about the here and now and the terrors that the gods could devise. For the Romans, devotion to the gods and pleasing the gods was a duty, an act of patriotism, an act of service and protection for the community. And to serve the gods, the Roman government saw itself as the source of moral as well as legal standards. State priests attempted to appease the gods by carefully performed rituals and offerings. The welfare of the community was seen as affected by such virtues as discipline, soldierly courage, chastity among the women, and frugality, all of which were believed to please the gods. The Romans were afraid of displeasing the gods through some word or deed. And, to protect the community from the anger of the gods, soldiers took religious oaths against thievery. Olive growers took an oath against their conspiring with others to raise prices. Olive pickers took an oath against their stealing olives. And those who handled public money took oaths against stealing. It appeared that religion would keep Rome on the path of virtue.

At the head of Rome's religion was the Pontifex Maximus, who, when Rome had become a republic, replaced the Etruscan king in this role. Under the Pontifex Maximus was a college of priests, who were called pontiffs. They were officers of the government in charge of handling Rome's relations with the supernatural. It was their duty to keep the city on good terms with the gods by preserving religious traditions and by making sure that every important act of state was sanctioned by the gods, including relations with foreign communities. Priests were assigned to individual gods, and laws derived from myths governed their actions: the priest of Jupiter was forbidden to walk under an arbor of vines, touch a dead man, eat bread fermented with yeast or to go outside without his cap.

That the state's priests were exclusively patrician had its origins in earlier times - when the aristocracy believed that its interests alone were served by the gods. But common Romans were not about to leave all religion to the state. They saw their relations with their gods as personal. The common Roman saw gods guiding them through all kinds of matters from births to deaths. Each Roman household had its divine protector. And to this god they prayed - much as modern Christians pray while leaving ritual to their priests.

Defeat by the Gauls
By the end of the 400s, Rome had grown to about thirty by twenty miles. It had become a respected power through much of Italy, and occasionally it was looked to for help. Around this time, several tribes of Celts - whom the Romans called Gauls - ventured southward from their homeland to the Po River Valley in northern Italy. It was an area the Gauls had been familiar with from their trade with the Etruscans who lived there. The Gauls took territory from the Etruscans, and to the surprise of others who thought of the Gauls as restless barbarians, some of the Gauls settled into cereal farming. But several bands of Gauls came farther south and threatened the Etruscan city of Clusium, about a hundred miles north of Rome. Clusium requested help from Rome, and Rome sent three commissioners to Clusium. One commissioner asked the Gauls why they thought they could take lands that belonged to others. The Gauls replied with what might have been a prevalent attitude among those the Romans called barbarians: that the people of Clusium had more land than they needed and that "all things belong to the brave."

The Roman commissioners joined in a skirmish to defend Clusium against the Gauls, and one of the commissioners killed a Gallic chieftain. When the three commissioners returned to Rome the angered Gauls had the arrogance to send representatives to Rome and ask that the three commissioners be turned over to them. Rome refused, and that year - 390 BCE - the Gauls headed for Rome to seek revenge.

Eleven miles north of Rome, the Gauls and Roman defenders clashed. The Gauls outnumbered the defenders two to one, and the Gauls shattered Rome's spear carrying phalanx formations. Rome appeared doomed. Many of Rome's defenders fled across the Tiber River to the nearby city of Veii. Some soldiers fled to the countryside. Others rushed through Rome's gates to its citadel, as non-combatants were fleeing the city through these same gates. These gates remained open, and the Gauls poured into the city, where they slaughtered old men, women and children and looted and burned. They attempted an uphill attack on the citadel, but they failed to dislodge the soldiers there.

For seven months the Gauls remained and fought around Rome. Then they gave up and returned north, leaving Rome in ruins. Many Romans wanted to abandon their city and move to the nearby city of Veii. But belief that gods dwelled in places had its impact: a patrician named Camillus made a speech describing such a move as abandoning their temples and their gods. "All things turn out well when we obeyed the gods," he is reported to have said, "and ill when we spurned them." The Romans decided to stay, and they hurriedly rebuilt their city and made its walls more formidable. They began to adopt new military weaponry, dropping the spear in favor of a two-foot long sword, adopting helmets, breastplates and a shield with iron edges. They reorganized their army, putting in the front rank of their battle line not the wealthy soldiers as before but the youngest and strongest. And they defended themselves against attacks by Etruscans and other peoples (the Volscians and Aequians) who sought to take advantage of what they thought was a Rome weakened by the Gauls.

More Political Change
After the invasion of the Gauls, common plebeians fought for relief from economic distress, and the wealthier of the plebeians sought eligibility to run for the position of consul. From 367 through the following eighty years, the Senate approved reform measures, including laws that allowed plebeians to become consuls, praetors, or quaestors - the latter money managers connected to various aspects of government or military campaigns. Bills were passed that, for the sake of greater equality, limited the size of lands that were distributed by the state. Bills were passed that reformed debt payment. And in 326 a law was passed that protected the personal freedom of plebeians by outlawing the age-old practice of debtors being made serfs to their creditors.

It became custom that one consul was to be a plebeian and the other to be a patrician. Another change came with the censor acquiring the power not only to take the census but to fill vacancies that had arisen in the Senate and to remove from the Senate any member he deemed undesirable, and the censor was given charge over state construction of buildings and roads.

Domination of Italy
While Philip II of Macedonia was expanding his empire, war in Italy erupted again on the plains of Campania, near Neapolis (Naples). People on the plains were invaded by Samnite warrior-herdsmen from nearby hills who wished to use the grasslands of the plains for their animals - lands that the plains people had fenced. Those on the plains sought help from Rome. Roman envoys went to leaders among the hill people for discussions and were rudely treated. War between Rome and the Samnite hill people followed - the First Samnite War. The war lasted two years, ending in 345 with Rome triumphant and the Samnites willing to make peace.

The display of military weakness by the Samnites encouraged Rome's Latin allies to make forays against them. The Samnites asked Rome to control its allies, and Rome called upon the Latins to leave the Samnites alone. Some Latins resented Rome's interference, and some were convinced that Rome intended to dominate all of Latium. Member states within Rome's Latin League demanded equality within the league, and they demanded a sharing in governing Rome itself. What began as Rome's move for peace and stability ended in 340 with Rome going to war against its Latin neighbors and some non-Latin cities. Rome won these wars. It disbanded the Latin League, and it took land from those it defeated and distributed it among its plebeians.

Rather than destroy and disperse those it defeated - as was common in ancient times - Rome treated them with leniency and forgiveness. This leniency, rather than weakening Rome, strengthened it by winning respect and gratitude from its former adversaries. Rome now dominated all the Latins, and it controlled an area from just north of Rome southward almost to Neapolis. This was a heavily populated area for ancient times, and the area was the base from which Rome would spread its power and influence over the whole of Italy.

Rome was consolidating power in Italy as Philip had in Greece, and as was the kingdom of Ch'in in China. Rome used its power and prestige to regulate relations among various Italian cities. It made alliances. It created colonies, giving land in these colonies to common Romans and other Latins, and to the Latins in these colonies it gave full Roman citizenship. The grant of land was accepted with the obligation of military service, the colony serving as Rome's keeper of peace in its area. As in Macedonia, a nation was being created. Rome was growing in population. And it was growing in manpower by extending citizenship to cities it trusted - to cities with people who wished to identify with Rome's greatness and were willing to go to war as Romans.

A Second Samnite War
In 327, war broke out again between Samnite hill people and those on Campania's plain. The Samnites established a garrison in Neapolis - a city inhabited by Greeks. Again people of the plain sought Rome's assistance, and again Rome went to war against the Samnites. A Roman and allied force became entrapped at Caudine Forks, and it surrendered. The war stalled for five years. And, as Rome waited for the war to resume, it strengthened its military by increasing recruitment.

In 320 and 319, the Romans returned for revenge against the Samnites and defeated them in what the Roman historian Livy described as one of the greatest events in Roman history. Peace was established between Rome and some Samnite towns. But the war dragged on with other Samnites to 311, when the Samnites were joined by Etruscan cities that had decided to join a showdown against Roman power. The war became a contest for the dominance of much of Italy. Between 311 and 304, the Romans and their allies won a series of victories against both the Etruscans and the Samnites. The Samnites announced that they were ready for peace. For assurance, the Romans demanded inspections, and peace was established between the Romans and Samnites that remained until 298.

A Third Samnite and Pyrrhic Wars
At the turn of the century, the Samnites decided that they had had enough of peace. They wanted to try again to thwart Roman domination of Italy. They organized a coalition that included Etruscans and Gauls, and war began again on the plains near Neapolis. When the Romans saw the Etruscans and Gauls in northern Italy joining the Samnites they were alarmed. The Romans had benefited from a lack of coordination among its enemies, but now Rome faced them all at once.

Some relief came with a victory over the Samnites in the south, but the crucial battle for Italy took place in 295 at Sentinum, a town in Italy's northeast, where more troops were engaged than any previous battle in Italy. At first the Romans gave way before an attack by Gauls in chariots. Then the Romans rallied and crushed the Samnites and Gauls, the Romans benefiting from their self-discipline, the quality of their military legions, and their military leadership.

After Rome's great victory at Sentinum, the war slowly wound down, coming to an end in 282. Rome emerged dominating all of the Italian peninsula except for the Greek cities in Italy's extreme south and the Po valley - the Po valley still being a land occupied by Gauls.

As the war was winding down, the Greek city of Tarentum, on Italy's southern coast, became disturbed by a colony that Rome had established just eighty miles to its north. Tarentum had its own sphere of influence in the south. It had a democratic constitution, the largest naval fleet in Italy, an army of 15,000, and wealth enough to buy a good number of mercenaries. It had ignored an opportunity to join the Etruscans, Gauls and Samnites in their war against Rome, but belatedly it decided to fight Rome. And Tarentum gained the backing of a Macedonian adventurer of high repute named Pyrrhus, who agreed to command the combined troops of Tarentum and other Greek cities in Italy, combined with troops of his own.

Pyrrhus was a former kinsman of Alexander the Great. He had briefly ruled Epirus in 295. In 280, the year Tarentum requested his help, he saw war against Rome as an opportunity to extend Macedonian authority over Italy as Alexander had planned, and he saw an opportunity to win for himself some of the glory that Alexander had won.

Like many other Hellenistic people, Pyrrhus underestimated Rome. In 280, he landed 25,000 troops in Italy, including some 3,000 horsemen, 2,000 archers, and the first elephants brought to Italy. He engaged the Romans in battle at Herclea, using the elephants to drive through Roman lines, creating panic among the Roman soldiers. Pyrrhus won this and more battles against the Romans, but he found Rome's armies more ferocious than those he had faced in the East, and his victories against the Romans came with enormous casualties, giving rise to the expression "Pyrrhic victory."

Pyrrhus tried to win over to his side some of Rome's allies, but without success. Rome's manpower was too much for Pyrrhus, and, by the year 275, Pyrrhus felt defeated. He returned to Greece, where he would be killed in another war, in 272, the same year that Tarentum surrendered to Rome.

Rome treated the defeated Tarentum leniently, allowing Tarentum the same local self-rule it allowed other cities. Tarentum in turn recognized Rome's hegemony in Italy and became another of Rome's allies, while a Roman garrison remained in Tarentum to insure its loyalty. Rome was now undisputed master of the bottom three quarters of the Italian peninsula.

Two Wars against Carthage
The greatest power near Italy was Carthage, 240 kilometers (150 miles) southwest from Sicily, on the coast of North Africa. Carthage was founded around 815 BCE by Phoenicians from the city of Tyre. It was a commercial city surrounded by rich farmland, a city with a constitution and ruled by an oligarchy of men of wealth. Carthage dominated the coast of North Africa as far east as Egypt. It dominated the southern coast of Spain and the western half of Sicily. And it dominated the islands of Corsica and Sardinia.

While Rome was expanding on the Italian mainland, it made an agreement with Carthage, acknowledging that Carthage was the dominant power in Sicily. Carthage, in turn, promised Rome that it would stay off the Italian mainland. Rome respected Carthage and abided by its treaty until it ended its war for the domination of Italy. Then an incident arose in Sicily at the small city of Messana just across the channel from the toe of the Italian peninsula.

The incident began with Messana feeling threatened by the Sicilian city of Syracuse. One faction in Messana requested help from Carthage. Another faction, apparently distrusting or disliking Carthage, requested help from Rome. Respecting its treaty with Carthage, Rome's Senate chose not to send help to Messana. But one of Rome's two consuls was eager for action that would give him distinction. He spoke of reluctance to send help to Messana as weakness. With his speech making he aroused the people of Rome, who had been filled with pride over Rome's success in dominating Italy. The Senate gave in to the aroused emotions of the public, and it sent a force to Messana. The world was turning - as it would in the twentieth century - on the ambitions of a rabble-rouser and the passions and vanity of common people.

At Messana the force from Rome came face to face with a force from Carthage. Carthage saw Rome's move as a threat to its interests in Sicily, but it attempted conciliation. Carthage asked that Rome withdraw its troops, but proud Romans called on their city to stand up to Carthage. Some claimed that Carthage's control over the strait between Italy and Sicily was a danger to Rome's security. And, as with the Athenians at the outbreak of the Great Peloponnesian war, there was little reluctance and caution about going to war, including among the civilian farmer-soldiers who would fight the war. With this swagger and willingness to war, a new era was beginning that would lead to a great Roman Empire.

The First Punic War
Rome took a number of its Italian allies into the war on its side. And shortly into the war, Rome chose goals beyond securing the strait between Italy and Sicily. The contest against Carthage became a war for plunder. Then it became a war for driving Carthage out of Sicily, then a war for all of Sicily. And Rome's enlarged goals would extend the war twenty-three years, to 241 BCE.

Across these years, many of those who fought for Carthage were Greek mercenaries, and the unreliability of these men led Carthage to wage war with minimum risks and half measures. Rome was more aggressive. During the war it built its first great navy, which won spectacular victories, first in 260 and then in 241. With Rome as master of the Mediterranean, Carthage decided that the price it had to pay for ending the war was better than the cost of continuing it. Carthage agreed to pay Rome a huge sum of money and to give to Rome the islands of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia.

Despite the heavy losses in treasure and life that they had suffered, Romans considered the war against Carthage a great victory. Many were pleased by the additional prestige their city had gained. And for many Romans victory confirmed that their city had been called on by the gods for a special destiny.

Rapacity and Rome's Search for Security
The First Punic War helped open the eyes of many Romans to the profits of empire. Also, the war created among the Romans a greater concern for national security, and Rome saw added security in its winning control over Corsica and Sardinia. Failing to see divine purpose in the coming of Roman soldiers, people in Corsica and Sardinia resisted their arrival. Some of the islanders retreated inland, but Roman soldiers with trained dogs hunted them down and carted great numbers of them to Italy for sale as slaves.

Romans were concerned too about security of their northern border. They had heard a prophecy that the Gauls would come south again and overrun their city. City authorities allayed the fears of the public by reviving an old religious ritual. In the city's Forum they publicly buried alive a Gallic man and woman. And Rome sent forces north to secure a barrier against the Gauls, and these forces extended Roman authority across Cisalpine Gaul Gaul as far as the Alps.

Next, Rome addressed its concern for security eastward. Italian traders had been calling on Rome to do something about pirates along the coast of Illyricum, on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea. Rome launched a drive against these pirates, and as a part of this campaign they established friendly relations with numerous small, coastal powers. One of these powers, the island of Pharos, was attempting to expand against its neighbors. Rome made itself the protector of Pharos' neighbors and conquered Pharos - the beginning of Roman intervention eastward across the Adriatic.

Origins and First Two Years of the Second Punic War
Carthage expanded its enterprises in Spain in compensation for its losses of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, and Carthage's success in trade and mining operations in Spain prompted Rome to establish an embassy there. A prosperous Greek colony on the Mediterranean coast in Spain, Saguntum, quarreled with neighboring towns. Lacking friendship with Carthage and desperate for an ally, Saguntum sought help from Rome. Seeing Rome as becoming involved in the dispute, the leader of Carthage, Hannibal, welcomed the opportunity to launch a war of revenge against Rome. More than twenty years had passed since the end of the first war between Rome and Carthage, and Hannibal felt that Carthage could now challenge Rome.

While Rome was negotiating with Carthage, Hannibal sent an army against Saguntum, with orders to spare no male of military age. Saguntum fell, leaving Rome's Senate and the public enraged and regretting that they had not responded in time to help Saguntum. The Romans saw Carthage's attack on Saguntum as a challenge to their prestige, and they matched Hannibal's willingness for war.

The war against Hannibal would be a new kind of war for Rome. Previously, Romans fought only summer campaigns. Against Hannibal, the number of Romans fighting would increase ten fold and they would fight through the entire year.

Hannibal sent armies to Sicily and Italy by sea. He and a force with cavalry and elephants moved north from Saguntum, across the coast of France, through the Alps and down into the Po valley in northern Italy. For some two and a half years in Italy, Hannibal produced victory after victory, as he and his troops lived off the lands they conquered. But rather than try to win allies among the Italians, he burned and destroyed as he went, and not one Italian city joined him against Rome.

Saturnalia
Hannibal tried to keep himself informed about the Roman leaders sent against him, and occasionally he found weaknesses in these Romans. He took advantage of the untalented consul, Flaminius, who wanted to prove himself to his fellow Romans. Flaminius allowed Hannibal to choose where the battle between them would be fought, and he marched his army into a trap at Lake Trasimenus, where all but the few who were captured were cut down. In the wake of this disaster, Rome introduced a festival to lift the morale of its citizens, a festival for the god of agriculture, Saturn. It began on December 17th. During the festival the courts and schools closed and military operations were suspended so that soldiers could celebrate. It was a time of goodwill and jollity that included visiting people, banquets and the exchanging of gifts. It would become an annual event, called Saturnalia, an official Roman holiday that was the precursor of Christmas.

Defeat at Cannae and Appeals to the Gods
Ever mindful of the importance of morality, some Romans found the reason for their defeats in the anger of the gods over misconduct by the Vestal Virgins. Rome discovered that two of its Vestal Virgins had had sexual relations with a male temple official. Roman authorities had one of the accused Vestal Virgins buried alive, and the other killed herself. Authorities had the accused male official beaten to death. Then Rome sent a representative to the famous oracle in Delphi, in Greece, to inquire what prayers and supplications might atone for the failure among the Vestal Virgins.

Apparently the gods remained dissatisfied. Next came Hannibal's greatest and most brilliant success - at Cannae. Here, in 216 BCE, Rome lost five out of every six soldiers it sent to battle. It seemed that Rome was on the verge of defeat, and now some Italian cities, wishing to be on the winning side, opened their gates to Hannibal. In Sicily, Syracuse went over to the side of Carthage. Macedonia's king, Philip V, offered Carthage an alliance.

It was Rome's darkest hour. To counter the gloom, Roman authorities ordered all wailing women indoors and forbade the word peace to be spoken. In another attempt to appease the gods, Rome resorted again to the ancient custom of human sacrifice. Again they buried alive a Gallic man and woman, and a Greek man and woman. In 211, with Hannibal thirty miles from Rome, Roman women appealed to the gods by sweeping the floors of their temples with their hair. It appeared that the gods responded. Hannibal did not attack Rome. Rather than confront the two armies that Rome had placed before him, Hannibal decided to burn the nearby countryside and withdraw to fight elsewhere.

An Appeal to Mother Nature
Six more years of war passed by, and Rome's priesthood added to its concern about the role of the gods by giving attention to the Sibylline Books, a work of legend believed to have been written by a woman called Sibyl. It was believed that Apollo had given Sibyl the power of prophesy and that she had prophesied that Rome's enemy would be expelled. Rome's priesthood chose to interpret this as Rome expelling Hannibal if Rome acquired the help of the Great Mother of Gods, Cybele. Cybele was a goddess from Asia Minor who had been adopted by the Greeks and worshiped widely as Mother Nature. Rome's Senate invited the Great Mother goddess to Rome in the form of a stone reputed to have fallen from the heavens - the Black Stone of Pessinus. In 205 BCE, with great solemnity and pomp, the stone was transported from Pessinus (a town in central Asia Minor) to Rome, and it was installed in a temple on Rome's Palatine hill.

The Last Five Years of War
The religions of the Romans and the Carthaginians had done little if anything to abate the ferocity of the war. Chivalry and restraint had vanished from both sides. Hannibal continued to destroy Italian lands and to destroy villages that his forces could not hold. To starve Hannibal's forces the Romans scorched the earth in front of Hannibal's advancing army, and they moved people from the countryside to towns. The Romans plundered those towns they believed had befriended Hannibal and beheaded those men they believed had fought on the side of Carthage.

Rome avoided a direct clash with Hannibal in Italy, and it moved its soldiers to Sicily. There, the Roman general Marcellus beheaded two thousand of his troops whom he claimed had been deserters. Other soldiers under his command pillaged Syracuse and destroyed and plundered treasures that had accumulated there for centuries. A soldier in Syracuse came upon the philosopher Archimedes and ran a sword through him.

The contest between Carthage and Rome had become a war of attrition, with Rome gaining the upper hand. Rome benefited from fighting closer to home and having access to more manpower, and it benefited from the egocentricity and short-sightedness of Carthage's oligarchs. For a while at least, the oligarch's concern over the security of their positions of power made them fear success by Hannibal. They were reluctant to send him reinforcements. Instead, Hannibal recruited Gauls into his army, which offended the Italians, who remembered that Rome had been a bulwark against the Gauls. Carthage finally sent reinforcements to Hannibal from Spain, but the Romans intercepted them at the Metaurus River in northeastern Italy.

Rome managed to reconquer Sicily. And Rome's navy defeated Carthage's forces in Spain and North Africa, and it cut Hannibal from his supplies. Rome moved the war to North Africa, near Carthage, and Hannibal left Italy to defend home territory. Carthage sued for peace. A council of twenty Roman priests - which governed treaties with foreigners - went to Carthage to present Rome's demands. The priests called on Jupiter to witness that the demands were just. Carthage agreed to reduce its territory to an area that approximates what is now Tunisia, to withdraw from participation in the affairs of Spain, to pay Rome a huge indemnity, and to surrender to Rome all but twenty of its warships. Hannibal's attempt at revenge had failed. In the year 201, after sixteen years of fighting, the war ended, and Hannibal fled, finding refuge with the Seleucid king in Syria, Antiochus III.

The Results of Victory
Rome's second war against Carthage reduced the number of people in the Italian countryside. Men had gone off to war. People had died and people had moved to the cities to escape war. Some people had left the countryside to work in the arms industry, and some went looking for subsistence. In Rome, the migrants enjoyed the festivals and other public entertainment that were created to maintain public morale during the dark days of the war. Newcomers developed a preference for the city over the life of drudgery they had known working on farms. And after the war ended, many veterans from farming families preferred settling in cities, especially Rome, rather than return to the countryside. Cities in Italy became overcrowded, and Rome became the most populous city in Europe and West Asia.

As a result of the war, much farmland in Italy could be bought cheaply. Those with wealth began buying this farmland, some landowners expanding their holdings and some businessmen from the cities looking for a secure investment and a source of social respectability. With the accelerated trend toward larger farms came a greater use of slaves. More lands in the countryside were transformed into pasture, vineyard, and olive orchards - more suited to Italian soil and climate than was the growing of grain. The richest lands were converted to vineyards and the poorer tracts to olive groves, while ranching was the most profitable for capitalist landowners. Holdings that were a mix of ranching and farming grew to more than three hundred acres, found mostly in southern and central Italy, the area most heavily devastated by the Second Punic War.

Many small farmers found themselves unable to compete with the larger farms and their more numerous slaves. Moreover, a greater importation of grain from Sicily and North Africa brought a drop in grain prices, and many small farmers gave up, sold their farms to the wealthy and joined the migration to the cities. The wars that began with the minor incident at Messana had brought unintended consequences - as wars often do. Many of Rome's small farmers, who had been the backbone of the Roman Republic, had become city-dwellers living off welfare - free bread and circuses.

The Move to Empire
Rome emerged from its second war against Carthage with Spain added to the areas outside Italy that it deemed its possession, and it began what would become a long struggle to conquer Spain's various peoples. Meanwhile, in Greece popular movements had been raising the old demand that land be redistributed and debts be canceled. Men of wealth in Greece sent representatives to Rome's Senate where they appealed for help, and, in the name of peace and stability, Rome embarked upon a role that would lead to it acquiring the world's greatest empire.