Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome developed from a small prehistoric settlement on the Tiber River in Latium in central Italy into an empire that encompassed all of the Mediterranean world. The history of Rome can be divided into three major epochs: the kingship from the legendary foundation of Rome to 509 BC; the republic from 509 BC to 31 BC; and the empire, which survived until Rome finally fell to the German chieftain Odoacer in AD 476. The genius of the Romans lay in the military, in government administration, and in the law, and they valued crafty diplomacy as much as military discipline. The Romans conquered Greece, adopting Greek culture and transmitting it to the medieval world. Unlike the Greeks, they did not develop a philosophical theory of state and society. Instead, they were the practitioners of power and law, and Roman civil law, which reached its peak under the emperors, excelled in precision of formulation and logic of thought. However, it was a law of inequality and social prejudice which also became part of the Roman heritage. Roman political institutions remained relatively stable during the imperial centuries and then disintegrated rapidly as the empire collapsed. An examination of the history of that era should reveal both why the Roman Empire remained stable and also why that stability ceased.

In the third century the Roman world plunged into a prolonged and nearly fatal crisis, for reasons that were numerous. There were sharp divisions between the opulent not

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as a victim of its own success so that the provinces it had created would turn on it and devour it. Kitto (1964) offers several reasons for this change, showing as well what made the region stable before these changes took place. He notes that the army of the Republic had originally been recruited from Rome. After that, Italy was the source, followed by the Western provinces, Spain and Gaul. The frontiers receded and local levies supplied more and better soldiers. The auxiliaries thus became more important, and by the third century A.D. the army was drawn from the very tribes which it had once been the business of that army to hold in check, meaning Germans, Moors, tribes from the Danube and from Illyria and Dalmatia: These men were scarcely Romanized; their local sympathies were strong. Stationed often for long periods in one province they looked at the Empire from the standpoint of their own country or province, if indeed they did not tend to identify the Empire with their own neighborhood. They had less to give to the people in whose country they might be stationed; they tended to be an alien element aloof from the inhabitants; sometimes they were mere soldiers of fortune entering Rome's service (Kitto, 1964, 165).

Category: History - A