Roman Republic: Difference between revisions

Roman society at the time was primarily a cultural mix of Latin and Etruscan societies, as well as of Sabine, Oscan, and Greek cultural elements, which is especially visible in the Ancient Roman religion and its Pantheon. Its political organization developed at around the same time as direct democracy in Ancient Greece, with collective and annual magistracies, overseen by a senate. The top magistrates were the two consuls, who had an extensive range of executive, legislative, judicial, military, and religious powers. There were annual elections, but the republican system was an elective oligarchy, not a democracy; a small number of powerful families largely monopolised the magistracies. Roman institutions underwent considerable changes throughout the Republic to adapt to the difficulties it faced, such as the creation of promagistracies to rule its conquered provinces, or the composition of the senate.

Unlike the Pax Romana of the Roman Empire, throughout the republican era Rome was in a state of quasi-perpetual war. Its first enemies were its Latin and Etruscan neighbours, as well as the Gauls, who sacked Rome in 387 BC. Rome demonstrated extreme resilience, always overcoming its losses, however catastrophic. After the Gallic sack, Rome conquered the whole Italian peninsula in a century and thus became a major power in the Mediterranean. Its greatest strategic rival was Carthage, against which it waged three wars. The Punic general Hannibal famously invaded Italy by crossing the Alps and inflicted on Rome three devastating defeats at Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae. Rome recovered and defeated Carthage at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC, becoming the dominant power of the ancient Mediterranean world. 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.

At home, the Conflict of the Orders opposed the patricians, the closed oligarchic elite, to the far more numerous plebs; this was resolved peacefully, with the plebs achieving political equality by the 4th century BC. The late Republic, from 133 BC onward, saw substantial domestic strife starting from the Gracchi brothers and their deaths at the hands of political opponents. Domestic political struggle in the late Republic has often been anachronistically seen as a conflict between optimates and populares, referring to conservative and reformist politicians, respectively. The Social War between Rome and its Italian allies over citizenship and Roman hegemony in Italy greatly expanded the scope of civil violence. Mass slavery also contributed to three Servile Wars; the last of them was led by Spartacus, who was defeated in 71 BC.

Tensions at home coupled with ambitions abroad led to further civil wars between powerful generals. The first involved Marius and Sulla, who each took the city—in 87 and 82 BC respectively—and purged his political opponents. After a generation, the Republic fell into civil war again in 49 BC between Julius Caesar and Pompey. Despite his victory and appointment as dictator for life, Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Caesar’s heir Octavian and lieutenant Mark Antony defeated Caesar’s assassins Brutus and Cassius in 42 BC, but they eventually split. Antony’s final 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.

History[edit]