Government
As the empire developed, the emperor stood at the top of the administrative system. He served as military commander in chief, high priest, court of appeal, and source of law. All this power was intensely personal: Soldiers swore their oath to the emperor, not to a constitution or a flag. Personal ties of patronage, friendship, and marriage had always bound together Roman society, but during the empire the emperor became the universal patron. Military loyalty, bureaucracy, and imperial succession were all viewed in personal terms. This concentration of power produced a court in which government officials and the imperial family competed with poets, astrologers, doctors, slaves, and actors for the emperor's attention and favor. The emperor's own slaves and freedmen dominated the clerical and financial posts and formed the core of imperial administration just as they did in the household administration of any Roman aristocrat. Deep ties of loyalty bound Roman freedmen and slaves to their patrons so that they faithfully served even the most monstrous emperors.
Political Offices
The emperors took over the Senate's political and legislative power, but they needed the help of senators who had experience in diplomacy, government, and military command. Since the emperor designated candidates for all government positions, senators had no other access to high office except through loyal service. A shrewd emperor could turn senatorial pride and loyalty to the advantage of the empire. By simply allowing senators to wear a broad purple stripe on their togas, for example, the emperor marked them as rulers of the Mediterranean and added to their prestige.
Only when emperors treated senators with contempt did the senators feel justified in conspiring against the emperor under the banner of freedom. Some ambitious senators dreamed of reaching supreme power and even of replacing the emperor. An occasional opportunity presented itself - Nero's death brought four senators to the imperial throne in the single year of AD 69. However, most senators remained loyal to the emperor because the constant danger of displeasing suspicious emperors outweighed the remote chance of success. As the old noble families died out, the emperors found new blood among the local elite of Italy and the provinces. In the 2nd century AD more than half the senators were of provincial origin.
The emperor Augustus had first given the equestrian order increased responsibilities, and they continued to play an important role in the governance of the empire. Only a few of the equites actually worked for the emperor, some served as officers of Rome's auxiliary forces, and others as civil administrators. Most members of this order remained in their home cities - there were 500 in the Spanish seaport of Cádiz alone - and formed the basis of a loyal elite that characterized the early empire.
As the government expanded, the "equestrian career" began to resemble a modern civil service with ranks, promotions, and a salary scale. While retired centurions occasionally advanced into the equestrian order and equestrians into the Senate, social mobility remained limited. The emperors tried to keep the equestrians loyal by permitting them signs of privilege similar to senators. Tens of thousands of equestrians across the empire marked their status by wearing togas with a narrow purple stripe and sitting in the front row at public games.
Senators and equestrians whom the emperor appointed as governors, generals, and prefects held substantial power in the provinces, although provincial administration was initially restricted to issues of taxation and law and order. The system grew increasingly complex, but it always remained rather small for such an expansive empire. Twelfth-century China had an elite government official for every 15,000 subjects, as compared to Rome, which had one for every 400,000 people in the empire. Such figures are crude, but they show that Roman administration was less intrusive than its counterparts in China and many other modern states. The empire, with its limited administrative system, could not have functioned without local officials in the provinces or subject kings appointed by Rome, like Herod the Great in Judea.
Roman Law
Historians often focus on political leaders, but it is local grievances about high taxes, crime, or the price of bread that most often provoke people to revolt against a government. The Romans relied on civil laws to address a variety of these issues. Roman law in the republic was often based on custom. During the Roman Empire, however, the emperor became the final source of law. People in the provinces were well aware that the emperor sat atop the chain of command as recorded in the New Testament to the Bible. In regard to taxation, for example, a passage in Luke 2:1 notes: "And it came to pass in those days, that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that the whole world should be enrolled to be taxed." However, popular anger over issues such as taxation was still directed toward the political officeholders who administered the laws.
Roman law was one of the most original products of the Roman mind. From the Law of the Twelve Tables, the first Roman code of law developed during the early republic, the Roman legal system was characterized by a formalism that lasted for more than 1,000 years. The basis for Roman law was the idea that the exact form, not the intention, of words or of actions produced legal consequences. To ignore intention may not seem fair from a modern perspective, but the Romans recognized that there are witnesses to actions and words, but not to intentions.
Roman civil law allowed great flexibility in adopting new ideas or extending legal principles in the complex environment of the empire. Without replacing older laws, the Romans developed alternative procedures that allowed greater fairness. For example, a Roman was entitled by law to make a will as he wished, but, if he did not leave his children at least 25 percent of his property, the magistrate would grant them an action to have the will declared invalid as an "irresponsible testament." Instead of simply changing the law to avoid confusion, the Romans preferred to humanize a rigid system by flexible adaptation.
Early Roman law derived from custom and statutes, but the emperor asserted his authority as the ultimate source of law. His edicts, judgments, administrative instructions, and responses to petitions were all collected with the comments of legal scholars. As one 3rd-century jurist said, "What pleases the emperor has the force of law." As the law and scholarly commentaries on it expanded, the need grew to codify and to regularize conflicting opinions. It was not until much later in the 6th century AD that the emperor Justinian I, who ruled over the Byzantine Empire in the east, began to publish a comprehensive code of laws, collectively known as the Corpus Juris Civilis, but more familiarly as the Justinian Code.
Literature
During the reign of Augustus many commentators proclaimed the arrival of a new Golden Age as Romans returned to traditional values. These values included religion, family, and an appreciation of the Italian countryside and its agrarian roots. Writers and artists from all parts of Italy came to Rome, where generous patronage helped to encourage extraordinary achievements. The Augustan peace and the prosperity that accompanied it brought about the revival of patriotic literature that hailed the triumphs of Rome, its people, and its new leader.
Livy, who was born in the city of Padua in 59 BC, wrote a history of Rome that spanned the period from mythic times to his own day. An artist more than a scholar, Livy was a marvelous storyteller. His stirring accounts of Rome's early struggle for freedom inspired painters, poets, and political leaders through the centuries, even though only a quarter of his enormous work has survived.
Augustus gave the southern Italian poet Horace sufficient property to allow him the leisure to write. Horace's most famous poetic works, the Odes (23 BC), often drew on Greek verse in praising love, wine, and the simple life of the countryside. He turned common ideas into great lyric poetry by expressing them with exquisite form and verbal elegance. Horace believed that the Roman people and his own work were eternal. "I will not entirely die," he aptly wrote, "since my poetry will be a monument more lasting than bronze."
Virgil, the greatest of all Roman poets, modeled his masterpiece, the Aeneid (30-19 BC), on the ancient Greek epics the Iliad and the Odyssey, written by Homer. Virgil's work also portrayed the battles that the hero of Roman mythology, Aeneas, fought at Troy and his search for an Italian homeland. Aeneas sacrificed love and human compassion in the name of duty and conquest, and the poet portrayed the power of destiny and the poignancy of loss. Virgil had not completed the poem when he died in 19 BC, and Augustus personally overruled the poet's dying request that the manuscript be burned. Christians during the Middle Ages regarded the Aeneid as the greatest work of pagan antiquity.
Not every Augustan poet developed such grand or serious themes. Sextus Propertius was an ardent poet of love and sexual passion who politely avoided war and politics. Love was above all a game for the more refined and disdainful Roman poet Ovid. His work Ars Amatoria (Art of Love) was a handbook of sex and seduction for both men and women. Ovid's masterpiece, the Metamorphoses, was a poem in which he turns his sophisticated wit to a series of tales from Greek mythology. Late in the reign of Augustus, Ovid was involved in some mysterious scandal, perhaps involving a poem about the emperor's daughter Julia, and was banished to a small Roman outpost on the Black Sea. The emperor never forgave Ovid, who died in exile.
The writers of the 1st century AD believed that Roman literature had declined since the Golden Age under Augustus. These authors became part of an era often referred to as the Silver Age, although some of them outshone their predecessors. The philosopher Seneca wrote highly acclaimed essays and moral letters. He also served as the tutor of Nero, but later, when the unpopular emperor suspected that Seneca was involved in a conspiracy against him, Seneca was forced to commit suicide.
Another writer at Nero's court, Petronius Arbiter, left a fragmentary novel, Satyricon, which portrayed the excesses of life in Rome of the 1st century AD. Petronius presented a portrait of conspicuous consumption in his description of the vulgar banquet of the wealthy freedman Trimalchio. Petronius was also ordered to commit suicide, but he remained clever to the end by giving a festive farewell party for his friends to displease Nero.
Three other great Latin writers wrote at the beginning of the 2nd century. The satirist Juvenal was a social critic who used his wit to expose vulgarity. He directed his humorous barbs at women, homosexuals, foreigners, aristocrats, and, in one of his most famous poems, pilloried the vanity of all human wishes.
Suetonius also used humor in his writings, although he was primarily a biographer. His work called the Lives of the Twelve Caesars (121?) is the most colorful historical source that has survived from the ancient world. Suetonius served as imperial librarian under Hadrian, a position that gave him unrivaled access to the official archives. He often incorporated personal or vulgar details in his writings, including, for example, the story that Caligula was so touchy about his premature baldness that no one was allowed to look down on him from above. Suetonius was often crude as well as funny, but he provided an intimate portrayal of the age found in no other source.
The most notable characteristics of Rome's Silver Age - rhetorical skill, biting wit, and a bleak vision‹are found in the writings of the historian Cornelius Tacitus. Many consider his Annales (Annals, 115?-117?) the greatest history written in Latin. This work covered the Julian emperors from Tiberius to Nero and exposed how the rulers and the ruled collaborated in their mutual corruption. His clear-eyed appraisal of the dark side of human nature made Tacitus one of the great political pessimists in the Western tradition. The Annales is not a work of dry political analysis, but is filled with dramatic encounters, irreverent or black humor, and compelling psychological portraits of tyrants like Tiberius.
Disintegration of the Empire
When Commodus became emperor in AD 180, the age of the good emperors came to an end, and soon the Roman Empire experienced far worse leadership. A century of turmoil began that caused a collapse of political institutions, a weakening of the army, and economic disaster. Even under such perverse emperors as Caligula, Nero, and Commodus, the government of the empire had continued its normal functions of collecting taxes, protecting the frontiers, and distributing food. Insane emperors persecuted the senatorial elite, but they had limited effect on the population outside Rome. However, after the murder of Commodus in AD 192, a civil war between rival claimants to the imperial throne penetrated every corner of the empire and changed all aspects of Roman life.
Severan Dynasty
Between AD 193 and 235 a series of rulers known as the Severan dynasty ruled Rome, but for much of that time civil war continued in many areas. Lucius Septimius Severus, who became emperor in 193, was the first African provincial to reach the throne. He was an equestrian from Lepcis Magna, a city in what is now Libya, who commanded the Roman army along the Danube River when civil war gave him the opportunity to seize the throne.
After Septimius secured Rome and defeated his rivals, he spent much of his reign campaigning on the frontiers. Septimius knew that he had to control the army and the ambitious praetorians and senators who often led rebellions. Septimius disbanded the praetorian guard and replaced them with his own troops. He had a personal hatred of the Senate and took many offices away from senators. He transferred legionary commands to the less ambitious and more trustworthy equestrians.
Septimius tried to keep soldiers loyal by raising their annual pay and by relaxing military discipline. He permitted legionaries who were on active duty to marry, farm their own land, and live in cities rather than in camp. He trusted the army so much that he gave soldiers numerous administrative tasks such as tax collection, which lessened military readiness. More openly than ever before, Septimius made it clear that his regime relied on the army alone.
By pampering the troops, he intended to secure the future of his dynasty, but instead he weakened imperial defenses while inflaming the greed and ambitions of the soldiers. Even the emperor's plans for a dynasty did not meet his hopes. His five successors, including both his sons, were all murdered. The Severan dynasty stayed in power for several decades by indulging the troops, but the enormous cost became clear during the next half-century.
Military Anarchy
The Severan Age was a time of turmoil, but Rome remained a large empire with an impressive system of law, food production, commerce, and frontier defense. Its fatal weakness lay in its lack of a constitution. After Septimius Severus, all power derived from the army, which claimed to represent the Roman people. Earlier civil wars had shown that legions would support their own commanders in the hope of rewards.
For 50 years generals caused incredible destruction in their quest for power, but their efforts were largely in vain. Between 235 and 284, the troops acclaimed about 20 "emperors" and another 30 "pretenders," although the two groups only differed in that the emperors briefly managed to control the city of Rome. Only one of these emperors died of natural causes, so the imperial throne was a dangerous prize.
Civil war and the collapse of central authority affected every aspect of Roman life. While roving armies commandeered supplies from farms and cities, imperial tax collectors made increasingly harsh demands for funds to support the armies and the bureaucracy. Farmers who were barely surviving could no longer pay these taxes, so many fled their land to work for large landholders or turned to robbery.
Newly arrived Germanic peoples from beyond the Rhine and Danube rivers, whom the Romans regarded as barbarians, settled on some of this abandoned property, while some of it remained barren wasteland. Many of these small farms were incorporated into large villas, which in many ways foreshadowed medieval manors. Landlords who owned these large villas were often senators, and they had the wealth to raise defensive forces against bandits, soldiers, or barbarians. However, because farmers were growing less food, widespread food shortages occurred for the first time in centuries.
Anarchy made trade dangerous, but the decay of roads, bridges, and harbors made any kind of commercial relationship nearly impossible. People in towns and villas created their own pottery and clothing. The army could not obtain enough manufactured goods, and weapons produced locally were of inferior quality. The decline of commerce was also disastrous for cities, whose economic problems had begun in the 2nd century AD when too much wealth was invested in public monuments for the sake of prestige. Urban economies were further weakened when cities could no longer trade their products for food.
The poverty that resulted from the decline in trade discouraged the local elite from holding offices because they had become too costly. Local services - games, schools, religious festivals, and much else - deteriorated in the absence of benefactors. As central authority declined, the enormity of local economic problems became clear.
The soldier-emperors who followed the Severan rulers continued to treat the military generously, but as tax collections fell and silver mines were exhausted, imperial funds disappeared. The treasury melted down available coins and issued new money that had less real value. By 270 the silver content of the coinage was only 1 percent. This devaluation of the currency soon had a terrible effect on Rome. As money became worthless, much of the empire was reduced to a barter economy. The state collected food, animals, and other supplies instead of tax money.
During this period of crisis, emperors no longer automatically came from Italy or the Romanized western provinces, but from Africa, Mauritania, Syria, the Balkans, and even Arabia. These emperors made little use of the Senate, although the senators retained their prestige and their enormous land holdings. Political and military power shifted to equestrians, so that for the first time in Roman history, political authority did not depend on wealth and status.
The changes that swept the empire affected every level of Roman society, but had the greatest effect on the lower classes. The rich freedmen of the early empire disappeared because they had few commercial opportunities to accumulate wealth. They were also eliminated from the civil service because of the rapid turnover of emperors. Slavery declined as a result of its cost. Romans found that it was cheaper to hire wage labor as needed than to support a slave through the entire year. Social mobility was impossible, except for soldiers. The burdens of taxation and poverty crushed both the rural and urban masses. Widespread bitterness and growing hatred of authority led to popular revolts in Rome, rural massacres in Africa, and local separatist movements that attempted to break away from the empire entirely.
Diocletian
During the 3rd century, renegade armies, rebellions, and foreign invasions brought Rome's social and economic system to the point of collapse. Some contemporary observers quite reasonably concluded that the empire was doomed to collapse under its own weight. Yet the extraordinary recovery of the 4th century showed that brilliant political leadership could rescue even a seemingly hopeless situation.
This extraordinary leadership came from the emperor Diocletian, a native of Dalmatia on the Adriatic coast (part of modern Croatia), who ruled from 284 to 306. Diocletian instituted reforms that restored stable government and prosperity to the empire racked by 50 years of civil unrest. He understood that the chaos of the 3rd century had stemmed from the inability of one person to inspire the loyalty of armies across the empire and to coordinate imperial defense.
Diocletian took the dramatic step of naming a coemperor, who held the title of Augustus, and also added two junior emperors (each called Caesar) to ensure a peaceful succession. This rule of four, called a tetrarchy, divided the administration of the empire, and it soon caused the empire to separate into eastern and western segments.
All four members of the new tetrarchy were tough soldiers from the Balkans in eastern Europe. Their first task was to secure Rome's frontiers. They established four headquarters at strategic points across the empire: Nicomedia in northeastern Asia Minor; Mediolanum (present-day Milan) in Italy; Augusta Trevirorum (present-day Trier) on the Mosel River in what is now Germany; and Sirmium located on the Danube. For two decades the tetrarchy was a remarkable military success. Diocletian was a better administrator than general, but his colleagues defeated the Persians and the Goths, who were ancient Germanic peoples, and they also suppressed revolts in Britain and North Africa.
The military anarchy of past regimes had caused economic collapse as rival emperors produced worthless coinage to pay their troops. Diocletian instituted broad economic reforms in an attempt to restore value to the currency and to control runaway inflation. He also established a new system of taxation to finance the imperial budget. Since inflation threatened people on fixed salaries, including most members of the army and the bureaucracy, Diocletian issued a decree that attempted to set maximum prices across the empire for everything from onions to haircuts to Chinese silk. It became known as his famous Edict on Prices.
Diocletian was the first Roman leader who tried to adjust imperial income to annual expenditures. He was not frugal in his support of the army or the civil service, which he quadrupled in size, but Diocletian did try to balance the budget by collecting enough taxes to cover state costs. He created a uniform system to evaluate the economic resources of the empire. Diocletian was not successful in all his individual economic policies, but through years of unremitting effort he restored the economic health of the empire that had suffered from half a century of reckless expenditure.
Ancient Rome was situated on seven hills and its monumental
public buildings - the Colosseum, the Forum of Trajan, and the
Pantheon - made the city the "capital of the world" under the
emperors. But in addition to the arenas, temples, and forums,
Rome also had theaters, basilicas, gymnasiums, baths,
taverns, and brothels. The first emperor,
The rich preferred to live
on the hills above the teeming crowds and animals of central
Rome. Rome housed over 1 million inhabitants, so most of its
buildings were not villas and splendid monuments. The poor
lived packed into apartment houses near the center of the city
since there was no public transport. The public spaces in
Rome resounded with such a din of hooves and clatter of iron
chariot wheels that Julius Caesar proposed a ban on chariot
traffic at night.
One Roman writer said that the imperial government kept the
Romans contented by "bread and circuses." Other societies
have relied on the same strategy, but never to the same
degree. The Roman emperors provided free food to hundreds
of thousands and sponsored an endless series of games. For
two centuries the government managed to avoid food
shortages or the discontent that would endanger the rule of
the emperors.
The government gave high priority to acquiring, shipping,
storing, and distributing food for Rome and other major urban
areas. The Romans had a formidable logistical task to supply
Rome's 1 million inhabitants. The emperors organized
convoys from Egypt, North Africa, and Sicily to carry food to
urban areas. They generously distributed wheat, which was
the staple food of the time. When the emperors improved
facilities at Rome's seaport, Ostia, for example, they wanted
to ensure a steady supply of wheat to the capital. Italian
farms provided fruit and vegetables, but meat and fish were
luxuries in an urban society. The Romans built huge
waterways called aqueducts to bring water to the cities and
imported large jugs of wine and oil from Spain, Gaul, and
Africa to fulfill the necessities of the Roman table.
The emperors used different forms of entertainment to pacify
the urban masses, including chariot races, theatrical and
musical performances, wild-beast hunts, mock sea battles,
public executions, and gladiatorial combat. In the Colosseum,
Rome's huge amphitheater, 50,000 Romans could watch the
games. Criminals and captives were sent to gladiatorial
training schools so that they learned to entertain the crowds.
If gladiators successfully performed in combat, they might
earn the support of the crowd and an imperial "thumbs-up,"
meaning a reprieve and freedom. The crowd could also
determine whether the fate of the battle's loser was death.
The games were important occasions during which the Roman
people could see the emperor, and he could show his respect
for them by following their desire to spare a gladiator.
The emperor Titus opened the Historians estimate that about 10 percent of the empire's
population lived in the thousand cities that stretched from
Britain to Syria: Colchester and London in Britain, Lyon and
Arles in Gaul, Timgad and Lepcis Magna in North Africa, to the
great eastern cities of Antioch in ancient Syria and Alexandria
in Egypt. Most of these cities were rather small, with fewer
than 10,000 residents, and only a handful had more than
100,000 inhabitants. Most of the larger urban populations
were in the East, but new cities developed in the western
provinces as an outgrowth of military settlement and trade. All
of these urban centers had a forum and temples, and most
also had the same kind of public buildings found in Rome, but
on a smaller scale.
Rome administered a vast empire with a small civil service, so
the burden of effective government rested on the local elite.
Some conquered Greek cities retained their traditional form of
government, but many in the western portion of the empire
established a municipal council called a curia, named after
the Roman Senate. The city council and annually elected
officials administered the food supply, public services,
religious festivities, town finance, and local building projects.
The Romans thus created in these outlying cities a provincial
aristocracy modeled on Rome's social system. The imperial
government expected local authorities to maintain order by
the same social and cultural methods used by Rome. Because
of these methods, Roman municipal governments rarely had
to dispatch legions to quiet social unrest or rebellion.
Local elites often used their own resources to subsidize public
buildings, games, and even the distribution of grain to the
poor. They were willing to carry the burden of municipal
expenses because they had a strong sense of civic
responsibility and a desire to show off their economic success.
However, when the empire later declined economically, city
officials increasingly avoided their public duties, undermining
the entire system of local government. Without the local elite
to maintain order and collect taxes, the empire became
ungovernable.
In the latter part of the 1st century AD, a recession hit Italy
particularly hard. For instance, a case of Italian-style pottery
made in Gaul and found unopened at Pompeii shows that Italy
was competing with the provinces. An influx of gold from
Dacia (present-day Romania) during the reign of the emperor
Trajan temporarily reversed the decline of the Italian
economy, but prosperity could not last forever. Frontier
troubles increased the cost of the army, and the bureaucracy
continued its inevitable growth. The empire was no longer
expanding, and rising costs far outstripped the limited
economic growth possible in a preindustrial economy. By AD
160 economic decline began to imperil the Roman peace that
the emperors had worked so hard to maintain.
Rural Life
The cities of the empire had large populations and impressive
public buildings, but 90 percent of the emperor's subjects
worked in the countryside and lived in flimsy agricultural huts.
Land was the only secure investment, so the wealthy owned
estates and idealized the peaceful life of the countryside. Yet
these same people actually lived in the cities and had a much
less romantic view of real peasants. During the empire all
written accounts of the countryside, whether sympathetic or
hostile, came from the sophisticated urban elite who
performed no manual labor.
Since landlords usually resided in cities, estate overseers
made life in the countryside very harsh. Agricultural slaves
were treated far worse than their urban counterparts who
worked in aristocratic households. The conditions in Egypt
were particularly bad. Rome inherited the dictatorial system of
the Egyptian monarchs, the pharaohs, who ordered the
production of huge wheat crops at terrible human cost.
Ancient sources indicate that as many as 42 people occupied
one small farm hut in Egypt, while six families owned a single
olive tree. Local villagers lived in crushing poverty and had
none of the diversions of the city like games, religious
festivals, or free distribution of food. Not surprisingly, many
peasants drifted to the cities, and the countryside became
depopulated. Emperors initially encouraged small farmers to
remain on the land by providing loans, but later used the
brutal practices of Egypt to bind the peasants to the soil,
foreshadowing a similar practice of forced labor during
medieval times.
Transportation and Technology
From earliest times the Romans displayed remarkable skill at
building and engineering. They constructed bridges across the
river Tiber, aqueducts to supply Rome with water, and sewers
to drain the Forumand keep the city healthy. As they
expanded their power across Italy, the Romans linked the
capital with other communities they had conquered by a
network of roads so well designed that many still lie beneath
the motorways of modernItaly.
After the neglect of the provinces during the civil wars,
Augustus was determined to improve the infrastructure to
promote economic growth. During the first two centuries AD,
war was relatively infrequent, and Augustus and his
successors kept their troops busy with military construction. A
great network of roads, bridges, and canals opened the
interior of Gaul to Roman commerce and cultural influence.
Rome's military engineers were skilled surveyors who
designed numerous vast projects in the provinces that the
troops helped to build: fortified camps, frontier walls, roads,
canals, bridges, arches, baths, and temples. These projects
and other legionary expenditures helped the provincial
economies by providing work for local merchants,
craftspeople, farmers, and the usual range of camp followers.
Aqueducts
The Romans built hundreds of miles of
Buildings
The emperor Augustus boasted that he found Rome a city of
brick and left it a city of marble. The Romans had earlier
imported marble from Greece, but newly discovered quarries
in northern Italy gave the emperor an abundance of gleaming
white stone. His sculptors and architects observed Greek
models and then borrowed elements to develop their own
Roman-style buildings. As the empire grew, it required
extensive new public construction.
When the old Roman
Forum could no longer cope with the commercial and political
demands of the growing city, for example, Augustus
constructed the adjoining Forum of Augustus and decorated it
with sculpture and inscriptions honoring great Romans of the
past. Architects used Greek columns, but adapted them to
enhance a distinctly Roman architectural setting.
In the 1st century AD the Romans made greater use of
concrete. Roman architects molded arches, vaults, and even
domes from concrete, faced with bricks for added strength
and decorated with an exterior layer of marble or stucco.
After Nero's death, his successor, Vespasian, constructed a
great amphitheater on the ruins of Nero's official residence as
a palace for the masses. The building, called the Colosseum,
took its name from the 120-foot colossus, or statue, of Nero
as a sun god. Concrete enabled the architects of the great
amphitheater to build tunnels that allowed easy access for
spectators. This feature is still included in the design of
modern football stadiums.
The use of concrete also allowed the Romans to enclose
larger spaces for their baths and other rectangular structures
called basilicas. Emperors from Augustus to Constantine built
new forums or added basilicas to existing forums to provide
space for the public and private business of a growing empire.
During his reign, Trajan (AD 98-117) constructed vast
markets for distributing food. The vaulted hall in the Forum of
Trajan continues today as a site for special exhibitions. The
Romans built to last. The greatest tribute to Roman
engineering is that so many buildings, roads, bridges, and
aqueducts remain in use after 2,000 years.
The Romans also built some strikingly beautiful structures that
have influenced architecture throughout the centuries. Hadrian
probably designed the temple that he erected between AD 118
and 128. This magnificent building was called the Pantheon
because it was dedicated to "all the gods." It is considered by
many to be the greatest of all Roman temples. Its
consecration as a church in the early 7th century allowed it to
survive intact, though the external marble facing is now gone.
The bare brick exterior gives no sense of the interior space
capped by a large dome, which later became an important
feature in Byzantine, Islamic, and Renaissance architecture.
The center of the dome is pierced with a 27-foot-wide opening
called an oculus that floods the building's interior with natural
light.
Roman public buildings were usually decorated with elaborate
relief sculpture that often introduced divine elements into
specific historical scenes. In the Altar of Augustan Peace, now
reconstructed beside the Tiber River, scenes of Roman gods
and mythic characters such as Mars, Venus, and Aeneas
accompany a procession of the entire imperial family. Greek
workers carved these sculptures, but the themes of myth,
family, fertility, and religious devotion are purely Roman.
The most elaborate Roman historical relief is the 700-foot
frieze that winds around the ten-story
The armies are shown fighting
battles, building camps, and besieging cities, while the
emperor encourages his troops. Several divine figures also
appear in this otherwise realistic depiction: The river Danube,
portrayed as a person, stares at the ships, and Victory brings
a storm to save the Romans from defeat. Trajan's Column still
stands in Rome, topped by a statue of Saint Peter where the
original image of Trajan once stood.
Constantine the Great
On his voluntary retirement in 305, Diocletian left two Augusti
(assisted by two Caesars) to rule the empire, which was
essentially divided into eastern and western portions. But the
next year the death of the western Augustus, Constantius I,
upset these careful plans. Constantius's son, Constantine,
quickly moved to claim his father's throne, and his military
success gradually caused Diocletian's system to collapse.
In 312 Constantine invaded Italy, where he triumphed in the
battle of the Milvian Bridge. In a dream Constantine saw a
cross with the words, "In this sign you will be the victor." The
vision inspired the emperor to emblazon Christian insignia on
the shields of his soldiers, and his victory at the Milvian Bridge
convinced him the Christians' militant god possessed great
power. Constantine's military success also led him to proclaim
the Edict of Milan, which established toleration of all religions,
including Christianity.
Constantine was now master of the western part of the
empire, but it was only after another decade of civil war that
he defeated the eastern emperor and reunited the entire
empire under his sole rule. In 330, for religious and strategic
reasons, Constantine dedicated a new capital, called
Constantinople (modern Istanbul), on the site of the ancient
Greek city of Byzantium. Constantinople's location on the
shores of the Bosporus strait placed it at the intersection of
Europe and Asia. The new Christian city, which became the
"New Rome," sat on the route that linked the Mediterranean to
the territory of Rome's greatest enemy, Persia (now Iran).
By his death in 337 Constantine had established Christianity
as the favored religion of the Roman state. Other emperors
had greater political, economic, or military impact, but when
Constantine recognized that small religious sect, he eventually
transformed the course of world history.
Both Diocletian and Constantine greatly increased state
control over the lives of Roman citizens. Both believed that
the disorder of the 3rd century demanded a larger army,
central economic planning, and an expanded bureaucracy to
collect the taxes and monitor an increasing number of
regulations. They tried to maintain order in the empire
through the detailed management of Roman society. Local
officials could not control trade and economic planning, so the
government divided the provinces into smaller units and sent
separate military and civil administrators to enforce new
regulations.
Authoritarian rule permeated every aspect of Roman life as
the government bound farmers to their land and craftspeople
to their trade. The government required the sons of bakers or
shipbuilders to follow their fathers' careers. The emperors
even established a secret police, and the old unregulated
economic system yielded to a planned economy. The
emperors often appealed to the public good when they
suppressed individual rights, requisitioned goods, or increased
taxes. In the words of one writer of the period, the empire
became a prison.
The imperial bureaucracy of the 4th century was not large by
modern standards, but the expense of maintaining
approximately 40,000 officials in an empire of over 60 million
became an enormous drain on the economy. The bureaucracy
relished their own inflated titles while they paralyzed the
empire with antiquated and time-consuming procedures that
resulted in masses of paperwork. People were promoted
based on seniority rather than competence, and the enormous
complexity of the system led to rampant corruption.
Government officials expected bribes for the smallest
transaction. Some emperors tried to outlaw the practice, while
others more savagely decreed mutilation for corrupt officials.
Theodosius I (379-395) was the last ruler of the united Roman
Empire. At his death in 395, he left the eastern portion of the
empire to his 18-year-old son, Arcadius, and the western
portion to his 10-year-old son, Honorius. Despite the nominal
unity of this territory, the legacy of Theodosius was, in fact,
the final division of the empire. A succession of child
emperors weakened the throne, and no emperor ever again
successfully controlled both east and west.
Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire remained
strong, while the Western Roman Empire began a steady
decline in the face of economic disintegration, weak
emperors, and invading Germanic tribes. The breakdown of
communications, commerce, and public order exposed the
people of Gaul, Spain, and other provinces to famine and
robbery. While the central government provided few services
and little protection, it demanded more taxes and goods.
Panic and alienation drove both peasants and city dwellers
from their homes. They sought protection from powerful
landlords, who controlled their own self-sufficient villas. In
these heavily fortified villas, the lower classes hoped for relief
from the twin predators of late antiquity: barbarians and tax
collectors.
The Eastern Empire was stable and prospered. The eastern
emperors were able to defend the Dardanelles, a strategic
strait in northwestern Turkey (known in antiquity as the
Hellespont) and to push migrating barbarian peoples to the
Western Empire. The emperors of the west were often
pampered and isolated, and they allowed generals and
ministers to rule in their name. Declining manpower also led
western emperors to recruit Germanic people for the army or
even to engage entire tribes to fight on Rome's behalf. In 410
the Goths sacked Rome. It was the first time Rome had
suffered such an invasion since the Gauls had sacked the city
in 390 BC - eight centuries earlier.
In AD 476 Germanic troops in Italy mutinied and elected a
Gothic commander, Odoacer, as king. Odoacer, who was the
first Germanic ruler of the empire, deposed the young
emperor, Romulus Augustulus, gave him a generous pension,
and sent his imperial regalia to Constantinople. But if the
Western Empire had "fallen," the commentators of the time
barely took notice. It was not until four decades later that a
Byzantine historian wrote that the imperial order initially
established by Augustus had come to an end in 476. The date
marked the demise of a political structure - the Western
Roman Empire - but coinage, taxes, and administrators all
remained in place. The exile of Romulus barely affected
ordinary people.
Several factors explain why the Roman state collapsed in the
west and survived in Constantinople for another 1,000 years.
The most obvious is geography, since the Western Empire had
to defend a long border along the Rhine and Danube rivers.
The east was far more populous - Egypt had 8 million
inhabitants while Gaul had 2.5 million - and thus could provide
men and supplies for a larger army. The east also had a
longer tradition of urbanization, and wealthy cities in the
Eastern Empire provided continuing support while cities in the
Western Empire were newer and weaker. When these cities
came under pressure, much of the population fled to the
countryside.
The east also had a stronger economic base. The rich lands of
Egypt provided wealth, and much of the east's other territory
was in the hands of productive peasant proprietors. The
Eastern Empire also received a financial boost from the
tradition of manufacture in eastern cities and the control of
the lucrative trade with Arabia, China, and India. Ancient
agricultural economies produced very little surplus, and Rome
itself had long depended on the profit of conquest, which
included tribute, taxes from the wealthy east, and shipments
of grain from North Africa and Egypt. When the east was lost
and barbarians took Africa, the desperate Western Empire
raised taxes and imposed restrictive regulations. As Germanic
tribes seized more taxable land and revenues fell, the west
could barely support its own unproductive soldiers, civil
servants, and clergy. It certainly did not have sufficient
revenue for the bribes and subsidies needed to pacify the
Germanic invaders.
There is no simple explanation for the collapse of the Western
Roman Empire, but several interconnected elements provide
some answers. The demands of the military and the growing
bureaucracy forced the government to seek more income.
When the elite avoided taxes, the burden fell on the
peasantry, who had barely enough to feed themselves and no
surplus to pay taxes. When farmers fled the land, incomes
declined still further and manpower shortages forced the
military to hire German mercenaries. This cycle led to a weak,
impoverished central government that quietly collapsed in
476.
Many modern historians stress the continuity between late
antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Political structures
changed and cities declined, but for the 90 percent of the
population who worked on the land, life continued much as
always. Roman law, the Latin language, and the Christian
religion provided an enormous amount of continuity, yet there
were also broad changes. Greco-Roman civilization retreated
to the Mediterranean, while inland areas lost the veneer of
Roman culture. Buildings collapsed, local populations revived
indigenous Celtic art forms, and even Latin was slowly
transformed into different languages like Provençal, French,
Spanish, and Catalan. The transition proceeded gradually until
local creativity shaped the Roman inheritance into the
distinctive cultures of medieval Europe.
The rediscovery of Greco-Roman civilization in 15th-century
Italy sparked the new era or state of mind called the
Renaissance. Sculptors returned to Greco-Roman models of
realism, architects copied Greek columns and Roman domes,
and literary figures like English playwright William
Shakespeare adapted Roman comedies. Philosophers
examined the Roman legal codes, and political theorists
returned to Roman discussions of freedom and tyranny. Even
the Latin of Cicero was revived as a more elevated language
than medieval Church Latin or everyday speech. And the
fascination with Roman culture continued as revolutionaries in
America and France studied Roman texts and 19th-century
portraitists adopted Roman styles. The collapse of the Roman
political structure in 476 did not mean that the civilization of
Rome was lost.
References:
CRYSTALINKS MAILING LIST, NEWSLETTER, UPDATES
Encyclopedia Encarta
History of Ancient Rome
Cowell, Frank Richard. Life in Ancient Rome. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1961.
Gabucci, Ada. Rome (Dictionaries of Civilizations; 2). Berkekely: University of California Press, 2007.
Wyke, Maria. Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema, and History. New York; London: Routledge, 1997
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