Roman Republic

It then embarked on a long series of difficult conquests, defeating Philip V and Perseus of Macedon, Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire, the Lusitanian Viriathus, the Numidian Jugurtha, the Pontic king Mithridates VI, Vercingetorix of the Arverni tribe of Gaul, and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.

Antony's defeat alongside his ally and lover Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and the Senate's grant of extraordinary powers to Octavian as Augustus in 27 BC—which effectively made him the first Roman emperor—marked the end of the Republic.

[5][6][7] The tradition asserted that the monarchy was abolished in a revolution led by the semi-mythical Lucius Junius Brutus and the king's powers were then transferred to two separate consuls elected to office for a term of one year; each was capable of checking his colleague by veto.

[a] For the poorest, one of the few effective political tools was their withdrawal of labour and services, in a "secessio plebis"; the first such secession occurred in 494 BC, in protest at the abusive treatment of plebeian debtors by the wealthy during a famine.

The resolution of the crisis came from the dictator Camillus, who made a compromise with the tribunes: he agreed to their bills, and they in return consented to the creation of the offices of praetor and curule aediles, both reserved to patricians.

[33][34][f] In 312 BC, following this law, the patrician censor Appius Claudius Caecus appointed many more senators to fill the new limit of 300, including descendants of freedmen, which was deemed scandalous.

The dictator Quintus Hortensius passed the lex Hortensia, which reenacted the law of 339 BC, making plebiscites binding on all citizens, while also removing the requirement for prior Senate approval.

[51][52] His successor, Manius Valerius Maximus, landed with an army of 40,000 men and conquered eastern Sicily, which prompted Hiero to shift his allegiance and forge a long-lasting alliance with Rome.

[54] The consul for 260 BC, Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Asina, lost the first naval skirmish of the war against Hannibal Gisco at Lipara, but his colleague Gaius Duilius won a great victory at Mylae.

Publius Claudius Pulcher, the consul of 249, recklessly tried to take the latter from the sea, but suffered a terrible defeat; his colleague Lucius Junius Pullus likewise lost his fleet off Lilybaeum.

[79] Although he remained invincible on the battlefield, defeating all the Roman armies on his way, he could not prevent Claudius Marcellus from taking Syracuse in 212 after a long siege, nor the fall of his bases of Capua and Tarentum in 211 and 209.

One enduring thesis is that Rome's expansion destabilised its social organisation between conflicting interests; the Senate's policymaking, blinded by its own short-term self-interest, alienated large portions of society, who then joined powerful generals who sought to overthrow the system.

[108] A core cause of the Republic's eventual demise was the loss of elite's cohesion from c. 133 BC: the ancient sources called this moral decay from wealth and the hubris of Rome's domination of the Mediterranean.

[109] Modern sources have proposed multiple reasons why the elite lost cohesion, including wealth inequality and a growing willingness by aristocrats to transgress political norms, especially in the aftermath of the Social War.

[119] Amid wide-ranging and popular reforms to create grain subsidies, change jury pools, establish and require the Senate to assign provinces before elections, Gaius proposed a law that would grant citizenship rights to Rome's Italian allies.

Sulla responded by suborning his army, marching on Rome (the city was undefended but politically outraged), and declaring Marius and 11 of his allies outlaws before departing east to war with Mithridates.

In the Battle of the Colline Gate, just outside Rome,[146] Sulla's army defeated the Marian defenders and then proceeded to "run riot... killing for profit, pleasure, or personal vengeance anyone they pleased".

[148] After establishing political control, Sulla had himself made dictator and passed a series of constitutional reforms intended to strengthen the position of the magistrates and the senate in the state and replace custom with new rigid statute laws enforced by new permanent courts.

[153] After rumours of a pact between Sertorius's ostensible republic-in-exile,[154] Mithridates, and various Mediterranean pirate groups, the Sullan regime feared encirclement and stepped up efforts against the threats: they reinforced Pompey in Spain and fortified Bithynia.

When two local tribes began to migrate on a route that would take them near (not into) the Roman province of Transalpine Gaul, Caesar had the barely sufficient excuse he needed for his Gallic Wars, fought between 58 and 49.

[250][251][252] Large, well-managed agricultural estates helped provide for clients and dependents, support an urban family home, and fund the owner's public and military career, in the form of cash for bribes and security for loans.

Perishable commodities such as flowers (for perfumes, and festival garlands), fresh grapes, vegetables and orchard fruits, and small livestock such as pigs and chickens, could be farmed close to municipal and urban markets.

[264][265] Though meat and hides were valuable by products of stock-raising, cattle were primarily reared to pull carts and ploughs, and sheep were bred for their wool, the mainstay of the Roman clothing industry.

The well-being of each Roman household was thought to depend on daily cult to its Lares and Penates (guardian deities, or spirits), ancestors, and the divine generative essence embodied within its pater familias.

[270] Roman religious authorities were unconcerned with personal beliefs or privately funded cults unless they offended natural or divine laws or undermined the mos maiorum (roughly, "the way of the ancestors"); the relationship between gods and mortals should be sober, contractual, and of mutual benefit.

The Lex Ogulnia (300) gave patricians and plebeians more-or-less equal representation in the augural and pontifical colleges;[39] other important priesthoods, such as the Quindecimviri ("The Fifteen"), and the epulones[n] were opened to any member of the senatorial class.

Towards the end of the second Punic War, Rome rewarded priestesses of Demeter from Graeca Magna with Roman citizenship for training respectable, leading matrons as sacerdotes of "Greek rites" to Ceres.

Examples of devotio, as performed by the Decii Mures, in which soldiers offered and gave their lives to the Di inferi (gods of the underworld) in exchange for Roman victory were celebrated as the highest good.

Triumphal generals wore an all-purple, gold-embroidered toga picta, associated with the image of Jupiter and Rome's former kings – but only for a single day; Republican mores simultaneously fostered competitive display and attempted its containment, to preserve at least a notional equality between peers and reduce the potential threats of class envy.

Towards the end of the Republic, the ultra-traditionalist Cato the Younger publicly protested the self-indulgence of his peers, and the loss of Republican "manly virtues", by wearing a "skimpy" dark woolen toga, without tunic or footwear.

The " Capitoline Brutus ", a bust possibly depicting Lucius Junius Brutus , who led the revolt against Rome's last king and was a founder of the Republic.
Animated overview of the Roman territorial history from the Roman Republic until the fall of its last remnant the Byzantine Empire in 1453 at the end of the post-classical era .
Roman expansion in Italy from 500 to 218 BC through the Latin War (light red), Samnite Wars (pink/orange), Pyrrhic War (beige), and First and Second Punic wars (yellow and green). Cisalpine Gaul (238–146 BC) and Alpine valleys (16–7 BC) were later added. The Roman Republic in 500 BC is marked with dark red.
The Latin League before Rome's expansion
Bust of Pyrrhus, found in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum , now in the Naples Archaeological Museum .
The Roman Republic before the First Punic War
Coin of Hiero II of Syracuse
Diagram of a corvus
Temple of Janus as seen in the present church of San Nicola in Carcere , in the Forum Holitorium of Rome, Italy, dedicated by Gaius Duilius after his naval victory at the Battle of Mylae in 260 BC [ 57 ]
Denarius of Gaius Caecilius Metellus Caprarius , 125 BC. The reverse depicts the triumph of his great-grandfather Lucius , with the elephants he had captured at Panormos . The elephant had thence become the emblem of the powerful Caecilii Metelli. [ 60 ]
Principal offensives of the war: Rome (red), Hannibal (green), Hasdrubal (purple)
A Carthaginian quarter shekel , perhaps minted in Spain. The obverse may depict Hannibal with the traits of a young Melqart . The reverse features a war elephant , which were included in Hannibal's army during the Second Punic War . [ 75 ]
Macedonia, Greece and Asia at the outbreak of the Second Macedonian War, 200 BC
Scene of the Battle of Corinth (146 BC) : last day before the Roman legions looted and burned the Greek city of Corinth . The last day on Corinth , Tony Robert-Fleury , 1870.
The Temple of Hercules Victor , Rome, built in the mid 2nd century BC, most likely by Lucius Mummius Achaicus , victor of the Achaean War [ 94 ]
Bust, traditionally identified as Gaius Marius , elected consul seven times
Denarius of Faustus Cornelius Sulla , 56 BC. It shows Diana on the obverse, while the reverse depicts Sulla being offered an olive branch by his ally Bocchus I . Jugurtha is shown captive on the right. [ 124 ]
Map of the Gallic Wars
The Tusculum portrait , a Roman sculpture of Julius Caesar
The Curia Julia , the senate house started by Julius Caesar in 44 BC and completed by Octavian in 29 BC, replacing the Curia Cornelia as the meeting place of the Senate .
The Roman Forum , the commercial, cultural, religious, and political centre of the city and the Republic which housed the various offices and meeting places of the government
Detail from the Ahenobarbus relief showing (centre-right) two Roman foot-soldiers c. 122 BC. Note the Montefortino-style helmets with horsehair plume, chain mail cuirasses with shoulder reinforcement, oval shields with calfskin covers, gladius and pilum .
A Roman naval bireme depicted in a relief from the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste , [ 225 ] c. 120 BC; [ 226 ] now in the Museo Pio-Clementino in the Vatican Museums
A Roman soldier depicted in a fresco in Pompeii , c. 80—20 BC
The " Togatus Barberini ", depicting a Roman senator holding the imagines ( effigies ) of deceased ancestors in his hands; marble, late 1st century BC; head (not belonging): mid 1st century BC
An inscribed funerary relief of Aurelius Hermia and his wife Aurelia Philematio, former slaves who married after their manumission, 80 BC, from a tomb along the Via Nomentana in Rome
Ruins of the Aqua Anio Vetus , a Roman aqueduct built in 272 BC
The Temple of Portunus , god of grain storage, keys, livestock and ports. [ 266 ] Rome, built between 120 and 80 BC
The tomb of the Flavii , a necropolis outside the Nucerian gate (Porta Nocera) of Pompeii , Italy, constructed 50–30 BC
Denarius of Lucius Caesius, 112–111 BC. On the obverse is Apollo , as written on the monogram behind his head, who also wears the attributes of Vejovis , an obscure deity. The obverse depicts a group of statues representing the Lares Praestites , which was described by Ovid. [ 276 ] [ 277 ]
Inside the "Temple of Mercury" at Baiae , a swimming pool for a Roman bath , built during the late Roman Republic, [ 283 ] and containing one of the largest domes in the world before the building of the Pantheon
Denarius of Caesar, minted just before his murder, in 44 BC. It was the first Roman coin bearing the portrait of a living person. [ 286 ]
The ruins of the Servian Wall , built during the 4th century BC, one of the earliest ancient Roman defensive walls
The Orator , c. 100 BC , an Etrusco-Roman statue of a Republican senator , wearing toga praetexta and senatorial shoes ; compared to the voluminous, costly, impractical togas of the Imperial era, the Republican-era type is frugal and "skimpy" ( exigua ). [ 291 ]
Banquet scene, fresco , Herculaneum , Italy, c. 50 BC
Marble bust of Marcus Tullius Cicero , Musei Capitolini, Rome
The Amphitheatre of Pompeii , built around 70 BC and buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 79 AD, once hosted spectacles with gladiators .