Ancient Rome

Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern language, religion, society, technology, law, politics, government, warfare, art, literature, architecture, and engineering.

Carthage resisted well at the first strike but could not withstand the attack of Scipio Aemilianus, who entirely destroyed the city, enslaved all the citizens and gained control of that region, which became the province of Africa.

Senators became rich at the provinces' expense; soldiers, who were mostly small-scale farmers, were away from home longer and could not maintain their land; and the increased reliance on foreign slaves and the growth of latifundia reduced the availability of paid work.

The situation came to a head in the late 2nd century BC under the Gracchi brothers, a pair of tribunes who attempted to pass land reform legislation that would redistribute the major patrician landholdings among the plebeians.

Gaius Marius soon became a leader of the Republic, holding the first of his seven consulships (an unprecedented number) in 107 BC by arguing that his former patron Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus was not able to defeat and capture the Numidian king Jugurtha.

It took him a long time to reach the north west coast, and in 60 AD he finally crossed the Menai Strait to the sacred island of Mona (Anglesey), the last stronghold of the druids.

[86] Following Hadrian's death in 138 AD, his successor Antoninus Pius built temples, theatres, and mausoleums, promoted the arts and sciences, and bestowed honours and financial rewards upon the teachers of rhetoric and philosophy.

[95] In 212, he issued the Edict of Caracalla, giving full Roman citizenship to all free men living in the Empire, with the exception of the dediticii, people who had become subject to Rome through surrender in war, and freed slaves.

His brief reign ended in 218, when the youngster Bassianus, high priest of the temple of the Sun at Emesa, and supposedly illegitimate son of Caracalla, was declared Emperor by the disaffected soldiers of Macrinus.

[99] A disastrous scenario emerged after the death of Alexander Severus: the Roman state was plagued by civil wars, external invasions, political chaos, pandemics and economic depression.

[101] In 260 AD, the provinces of Syria Palaestina, Asia Minor and Egypt separated from the rest of the Roman state to form the Palmyrene Empire, ruled by Queen Zenobia and centered on Palmyra.

[111] Constantine's administrative and monetary reforms, that reunited the Empire under one emperor, and rebuilt the city of Byzantium, as Constantinopolis Nova Roma, changed the high period of the ancient world.

The Vandals conquered North Africa, the Visigoths claimed the southern part of Gaul, Gallaecia was taken by the Suebi, Britannia was abandoned by the central government, and the Empire suffered further from the invasions of Attila, chief of the Huns.

[119] Various reasons for Rome's fall have been proposed, including loss of Republicanism, moral decay, military tyranny, class war, slavery, economic stagnation, environmental change, disease, the decline of the Roman race, as well as the inevitable ebb and flow that all civilisations experience.

[120] In the east, partially due to the weakening effect of the Plague of Justinian as well as a series of mutually destructive wars against the Persian Sassanian Empire, the Byzantines were threatened by the rise of Islam.

[141][142][143] By the 3rd century BC, the Romans abandoned the hoplite formation in favour of a more flexible system in which smaller groups of 120 (or sometimes 60) men called maniples could manoeuvre more independently on the battlefield.

During the later Republic, members of the Roman Senatorial elite, as part of the normal sequence of elected public offices known as the cursus honorum, would have served first as quaestor (often posted as deputies to field commanders), then as praetor.

Decreased resources, increasing political chaos and civil war eventually left the Western Empire vulnerable to attack and takeover by neighbouring barbarian peoples.

The quinquereme was the main warship on both sides of the Punic Wars and remained the mainstay of Roman naval forces until replaced by the time of Caesar Augustus by lighter and more manoeuvrable vessels.

[154] Information suggests that by the time of the late Empire (350 AD), the Roman navy comprised several fleets including warships and merchant vessels for transportation and supply.

Agricultural free trade changed the Italian landscape, and by the 1st century BC, vast grape and olive estates had supplanted the yeoman farmers, who were unable to match the imported grain price.

Fathers usually began seeking husbands for their daughters when these reached an age between twelve and fourteen, but most commoner-class women stayed single until their twenties, and in general seem to have been far more independent than wives of the elite.

Throughout the late Republican and Imperial eras, a declining birthrate among the elite, and a corresponding increase among commoners was cause of concern for many gentes; Augustus tried to address this through state intervention, offering rewards to any woman who gave birth to three or more children, and penalising the childless.

It had theatres, gymnasiums, marketplaces, functional sewers, bath complexes complete with libraries and shops, and fountains with fresh drinking water supplied by hundreds of miles of aqueducts.

These people, provided with a free supply of grain, and entertained by gladiatorial games, were enrolled as clients of patrons among the upper class patricians, whose assistance they sought and whose interests they upheld.

[182][181][183] Romans instead prized virtues such as courage and conviction (virtus), a sense of duty to one's people, moderation and avoiding excess (moderatio), forgiveness and understanding (clementia), fairness (severitas), and loyalty (pietas).

Pliny the Elder discussed more than 30 varieties of olive, 40 kinds of pear, figs (native and imported from Africa and the eastern provinces), and a wide variety of vegetables, including carrots (of different colours, but not orange[205]) as well as celery, garlic, some flower bulbs, cabbage and other brassicas (such as kale and broccoli), lettuce, endive, onion, leek, asparagus, radishes, turnips, parsnips, beets, green peas, chard, cardoons, olives, and cucumber.

[214][187] Public games and spectacles were sponsored by leading Romans who wished to advertise their generosity and court popular approval; in Rome or its provinces, this usually meant the emperor or his governors.

Many Roman houses had flush toilets and indoor plumbing, and a complex sewer system, the Cloaca Maxima, was used to drain the local marshes and carry waste into the Tiber.

[224] The customs, religion, law, technology, architecture, political system, military, literature, languages, alphabet, government and many factors and aspects of western civilisation are all inherited from Roman advancements.

Etruscan painting of dancer and musicians from the Tomb of the Leopards in Tarquinia
Territorial changes over the course of the Punic Wars :
Roman possessions and close allies
Carthaginian Empire and close allies
The Roman siege of the Celtiberian stronghold of Numantia in Spain in 133 BC [ 28 ]
Landing of the Romans in Kent , 55 BC: Caesar with 100 ships and two legions made an opposed landing, probably near Deal . After pressing a little way inland against fierce opposition and losing ships in a storm, he retired back across the English Channel to Gaul from what was a reconnaissance in force, only to return the following year for a more serious invasion .
The Augustus of Prima Porta , 1st century AD, depicting Augustus , the first Roman emperor
Extent of the Roman Empire under Augustus. The yellow legend represents the extent of the Republic in 31 BC, the shades of green represent gradually conquered territories under the reign of Augustus, and pink areas on the map represent client states ; areas under Roman control shown here were subject to change even during Augustus' reign, especially in Germania .
Bust of Vespasian , founder of the Flavian dynasty
The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan in AD 117
Map showing the location of Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall in Scotland and Northern England
The Pantheon, Rome , built during the reign of Hadrian , which still contains the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world
The Severan Tondo , c. 199, Severus, Julia Domna, Caracalla and Geta, whose face is erased
Bust of Caracalla from the Capitoline Museums , Rome
The Roman Empire suffered internal schisms, forming the Palmyrene Empire and the Gallic Empire
A Roman follis depicting the profile of Diocletian
The Aula Palatina of Trier , Germany (then part of the Roman province of Gallia Belgica ), a Christian basilica built during the reign of Constantine I (r. 306–337 AD)
The Roman Forum , the political, economic, cultural, and religious center of the city during the Republic and later Empire
The Orator , c. 100 BC, from the National Archaeological Museum of Florence , Italy, an Etrusco-Roman bronze statue depicting Aule Metele (Latin: Aulus Metellus), an Etruscan man wearing a Roman toga while engaged in rhetoric ; the statue features an inscription in the Etruscan language
Roman portraiture fresco of a young man with a papyrus scroll , from Herculaneum , 1st century AD
Representation of a sitting of the Roman Senate : Cicero attacks Catilina , from a 19th-century fresco by Cesare Maccari , in Palazzo Madama , home to Italy's Senate
Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus , c. 122 BC; the altar shows two Roman infantrymen equipped with long scuta and a cavalryman with his horse. All are shown wearing chain mail armour.
Roman tower ( reconstruction ) at Limes – Taunus / Germany
A Roman naval bireme depicted in a relief from the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia in Praeneste ( Palastrina ), [ 152 ] which was built c. 120 BC ; [ 153 ] exhibited in the Pius-Clementine Museum ( Museo Pio-Clementino ) in the Vatican Museums .
Workers at a cloth-processing shop, in a painting from the fullonica of Veranius Hypsaeus in Pompeii
View of Trajan's Market , built by Apollodorus of Damascus
A gold glass portrait of a family from Roman Egypt . The Greek inscription on the medallion may indicate either the name of the artist or the pater familias who is absent in the portrait. [ 159 ]
A funerary relief with members of the gens Vibia , late 1st century BC, Vatican Museums
The seven hills of Rome
Punishment of Ixion : in the center is Mercury holding the caduceus and on the right Juno sits on her throne. Behind her Iris stands and gestures. On the left is Vulcan (blond figure) standing behind the wheel, manning it, with Ixion already tied to it. Nephele sits at Mercury's feet; a Roman fresco from the eastern wall of the triclinium in the House of the Vettii , Pompeii , Fourth Style (60–79 AD).
Frescoes from the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii , Italy, Roman artwork dated to the mid-1st century BC
Woman playing a kithara , from the Villa Boscoreale , Italy, circa 40–30 BC
A boy with a platter of fruits and what may be a bucket of crabs, in a kitchen with fish and squid , on the June panel from a 3rd-century mosaic depicting the months, in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg , Russia [ 203 ]
Detail of a Paleochristian Roman mosaic from the basilica of Santa Pudenziana in Rome, c. 410 AD, depicting Saint Pudentiana
Gladiator combat was strictly a spectator sport. This mosaic shows combatants and referee, from the villa at Nennig , Germany, c. 2nd –3rd century AD.
The " bikini girls" mosaic , showing women playing sports, from the Villa Romana del Casale , Italy, Roman province of Sicilia , 4th century AD
Pont du Gard in France is a Roman aqueduct built in c. 19 BC. It is a World Heritage Site .
The Appian Way ( Via Appia ), a road connecting the city of Rome to the southern parts of Italy, remains usable even today