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>> Okay. Welcome back to this week's lecture
which is on Roman history.
And as usual, what I have here is a timeline
of some things we'll go through this week,
at least a partial timeline.
I want to start talking about a group
of people called the Etruscans
who had a massive impact on the Romans.
Then, we'll move into a period
of time called the Roman Republic
where the Romans get rid of their kings.
And I do want to talk a little bit about some military history
that happened in the 200s and 100s in the Roman Empire,
and these were the wars with Carthage
and they're called the Punic Wars, they had a massive impact
on the history of later Rome.
And then what I want to do is talk about the end
of the Republic and the rise
of the first Empire who was Augustus.
After that, we will definitely keep moving forward
but I'll have a different lecture for that.
Before we get started, I just wanted to take a quick look
at this map of the Roman Empire,
and this map is showing the furthest extent
of the Roman Empire.
So off to your upper left you've got England being controlled --
or Britain being controlled by the Romans;
to the south you've got North Africa;
to the east you've got Egypt, part of Mesopotamia;
and then to the north, you've got the natural borders
of the Rhine and the Danube.
So a fairly large empire during this period.
Okay. Before we get into Roman history,
I just want to spend a little bit
of time talking about the Etruscans.
So the Etruscans were northern Italians living
in Italy before the time of the Romans,
at least before they got organized.
And this is happening around 900 BC.
They had city-states, so that's something we've talked
about endlessly in this class.
And this proved to be their downfall
because it was very rare that they actually got together
and formed, what I just put here on this scene, a confederacy
or a group of city-states.
So they remained fairly independent.
Now, their economy, like most of the economies
in the ancient world, was based on agriculture.
And what they ended up doing is spreading
out from their city-state
and conquering the neighboring countryside,
and what they did is they put those country people to work
for them; so a lot of the Etruscans would just sit
in their city-state, they would control the outlying areas,
and those country people living outside
of the city would be doing all the work.
And so the economies based on agriculture.
And, of course, to do that, you need a very strong military.
In the beginning, it was certainly strong.
Now, later as the Romans rise up, as I mentioned,
they weren't able to control the Romans as much
as they would like to.
As I mentioned, the Etruscans have a fairly large impact
on the Romans.
But the Etruscans, too, were also impacted by the Greeks.
So if you remember, we talked about sort of the evolution
of language where you've got the Phoenicians writing
and they meet up with the Greeks when the Greeks are sending
out their colonies, and the Greeks borrow the
Phoenician alphabet.
Well, the Etruscans also borrowed the Greek alphabet,
and the reason for that is that the Greeks had a number
of city-states in the southern part of Italy,
so the Etruscans were directly trading with the Greeks
in the south, and then they borrowed their alphabet.
Now, this will be borrowed by the Romans
which is why today we're sort of writing in a Phoenician script.
We have some pretty amazing sculpture and painting
from the Etruscan period, and some of this I will try
and give a website so you can look at some
of this material during our class period.
And, of course, you've got another thing
that the Etruscans borrowed which was religion
from the Greeks, and then what happens is
that the Romans borrow this religion from the Etruscans.
And this explains why if you compare the Greek religion
with the Roman religion, a lot of the gods
and goddesses are essentially the same
but with a different name.
So, again, the Etruscans had a fairly large impact
on the Roman people.
Now, let's move into Roman history.
And I have to warn you that a lot of what we know
about early Rome up to about the beginning of the 300s,
we don't know a lot in terms of absolute dates.
So what I'll be telling you is sometimes a mix of myth,
sometimes a mix of what Roman historians actually said
about their own history.
So the traditional founding of Rome was about 753 BC,
and you've probably heard the story of Romulus and Remus.
This is the image that you're looking at, this scene.
These two little boys we're abandoned
and the she-wolf found them and suckled them,
and then they end up founding Rome.
And, again, we don't know;
that's probably not a true story,
but that's where you get the name of Rome from Romulus.
Because the stories that these two brothers were building the
city walls and Remus made fun of Romulus
because he didn't think the walls were high enough,
and Romulus ends up killing his brother,
and so you get the name of Rome from Romulus.
But we know that these early Romans had kings,
so they definitely had a monarchy.
And we're fairly certain they had some type of advisors.
And these will later be called the Senate.
Not quite sure about assembly this early, but I put it up here
on the scene because it's a possibility.
So you definitely have a monarch or a king and a group of people,
who are usually the wealthy people, giving advice.
Now, these kings ruled with something called "imperium."
And this will last -- or this will pick up again
when you get the first emperor.
What this means is absolute power.
And, you know, like I just said,
the king of Rome has these counselors or these senators
who he does take advice, but what the imperium means here is
that he makes the ultimate decision.
Now, starting in the 600s, you still have the Etruscans living
to the north of Rome and you have the Romans living south
of the Tiber.
These two royal families ended up getting married.
So you've got ultimately an Etruscan king ruling
over the Romans who they didn't like it.
So you've got an Etruscan king over the Romans,
and an important date in Roman history is the year 509 BC,
and this is when the Roman people rose up --
at least according to tradition, rows up and kicked
out the Etruscan kings.
And what I want to talk about next is the story
about why they rose up.
And the reason why the Romans threw off the Etruscan kings is
a story called the "*** of Lucretia."
And, again, we don't know if this is actually true.
It's something that the Roman historians tells about later.
But Lucretia was married to a senator named Lucius,
and the last Etruscan king was a man named Tarquinius Superbus,
or Tarquinius the Proud, he was the last king,
and he had a son named Sextus.
Now, Sextus and Lucius were supposedly friends,
and they get together with a man named Brutus one day,
and they try and decide who has the better wife.
So what they decided to do was to sort of spy on their wives.
And so Sextus, Lucius.
And Brutus go off and they start spying
on Lucius' wife name Lucretia.
And Sextus falls in *** with Lucretia, and he goes to her
that same night, and he tells her
that he wants to have sex with her.
And, of course, she's married so she refuses, and he says that,
well, you will have sex with me,
otherwise what he would do is kill a slave, put the slave
in her bed, and then kill her, and put her in the bed
with the slave which would have been awful
for her family's reputation.
And then what he ended up doing is raping her.
So the next day, Lucretia calls together her father;
her husband, Lucius; and Brutus; and a judge as a witness,
and she tells her husband what happened,
that she was *** by Sextus.
And that what she does, she pulls out a knife
from her robe and kills himself.
And if you want to turn off the video at this point,
you can read this section written by Livy,
who was a Roman historian, who tells this story.
What happens after this is that Brutus is hearing the story,
and he vows to get rid of the king,
and he vows that Romans will never have kings under --
or controlling the Roman people again.
Now, I want to mention Brutus here, and I want you to remember
that name because we'll talk about another Brutus who shows
up in the first century.
And according to tradition, this is exactly what Brutus does.
He drives off Tarquinius Superbus and Sextus,
and then this starts the Roman Republic, which probably started
in the year of 509 BC.
And so instead of having kings, what the Romans decided to do is
to rule themselves through two people called "consuls."
And another word for them, they're also patricians,
so they're father figures for the Roman Empire.
And, again, what you have is still a Senate, so the senators
and the consuls were very wealthy people,
and as you can see here on the scene,
these consuls were elected every single year.
So, I mean, you do have strings of years
where you've got the same consul, but it's fairly rare,
and the Romans tried to control this so that one person
or two people wouldn't get all of the power.
And I know there's a lot in this scene, and, again,
I just want to give you this warning that a lot
of this is according to tradition,
so we don't know the exact dates of some of these things.
Once you get down to about the 350s,
then the dates become more secure.
But, you know, so far we've talked about the kings,
we've talked about the consuls, we've talked about the senators,
but there are the mass of Romans,
and these were called the "plebs"
or the "pleebs" [phonetic] or the "commoners."
They also wanted a say in their own government,
so what they did is they went off on their own and they ended
up writing their own laws, or at least, putting their laws
down in sort of oral form.
This was, according to tradition, around 495,
so soon after they got rid of their kings.
And then in 450, the plebs forced the consuls
and the senators to actually write down the law.
And this is something called the Law of the Twelve Tables,
and it's the earliest law code we have from this Roman period.
And, of course, it's better for poor people who can't read
to have the law written down so that it can't change;
because if law is oral, someone could be telling you what they
think is law and it may be incorrect.
So anyway, they wrote down the Law of the Twelve Tables,
and then someone could read this to people
who couldn't read and write themselves.
Then, around 367, you've got a law passed
that said plebs could become consuls,
and you can see the rest of this.
Plebs could become priests.
And then what's interesting is that this Plebeian Assembly,
or all the plebs got together,
their laws in the beginning were only on them.
So the plebeians would make laws
and it would only be counted with the plebeians.
But in 287, the laws that were made
by the plebeians were now covering the consuls
and the senators.
And we won't get into all the details about the rest
of the Roman government,
but this just gives you a pretty good introduction
about how the Romans actually formed their government.
And the amazing thing about this is that usually
when you've got the very rich making laws
and then the very poor trying to fight to get a say
in their government, you've got all these in-fightings
and civil wars, and this didn't really happen in Roman history.
So this is all done through negotiation between the rich
and the poor, and, you know, in one respect,
it ended up being a really good form of government.
Now, I want to move down into the 200s.
And this is a map showing North Africa.
The Romans are slowly extending their power
down to the southern part of Italy, and they come apart
across a group of people called the Carthaginians.
And this -- Carthage was originally a Phoenician colony
which became a great city and then became an empire.
So what I want to talk about next are these Punic Wars,
these three wars between Rome and Carthage.
Okay. The Punic wars.
So I gave you a list here of the dates,
so let me just briefly talk about each one of these.
So the first one was primarily over the island of Sicily,
which is at the very southern tip of Italy, and, of course,
it's very close to Africa as well.
And you've got some Carthaginian city-states there,
and you've got some Greek city-states.
And the Greeks asked the Romans for some help.
So the Romans decided that they would try and free some
of the Greek city-states from Carthaginian control.
So they built a navy, sailed over to Carthage -- sorry --
sailed over to Sicily, and then had some battles.
Now, the end of the first Punic War wasn't exactly a stalemate,
but there wasn't a lot of land that was exchanged.
But the big part to remember is
that the Romans defeated the Carthaginian navy in this war.
And so you've got the Carthaginians,
this large empire, they controlled North Africa,
they controlled part of Spain,
and they controlled the Mediterranean; and this sort
of little upstart group of Romans built, essentially,
their first navy, and then defeated this giant navy
of the Carthaginians.
So this, in one respect,
starts the Roman control of the Mediterranean.
Then they make a peace treaty.
And then move forward 50 years or so,
you've got the second Punic War.
And this started with a great Carthaginian general named
Hannibal, and what he did was he moved up through Spain
and then went overland and attacked the Romans.
So Hannibal was going
down through Roman controlled territory,
and the Romans were having a hard time fighting against him.
They kept moving back as he going southwards into Italy.
And -- but Hannibal had troubles sieging cities.
And what the Romans decided to do is to attack his supply lines
in Spain; so they sent a few Scipios,
well one in particular is Scipio Africanus.
So they send Scipio, who's a Roman general, to Spain,
and he ended up taking Spain, and, of course, Hannibal panics
because his supply lines are cut off.
And what Scipio ends up doing then is going to Carthage.
So he gets in the navy, he sails to Carthage
and brings the war to the Carthaginians.
What happens then is that the Carthaginians sue for peace.
So Scipio takes the name of Scipio Africanus.
So he invaded Carthage, invaded Africa,
and one this particular battle, and then the Romans
and the Carthaginians sign a peace treaty.
And, of course, this didn't last.
Fifty years later, you've got the third Punic War.
And in this particular war, two things to remember.
One is that you've got two groups
of people fighting against the Romans.
One is the Carthaginians, the other group is the Greeks.
So the Romans go to war first with the Carthaginians,
and essentially, what they do is they take the war again
to Carthage, they fight with the Carthaginians,
and they defeat them.
And this time, it's a total defeat, there's no suing
for peace in this particular war, and Carthage is flattened.
And this is fairly rare in ancient history
where you've got one enemy total demolishing another,
but this is what happens in this particular war.
And then, the Romans turn on the Greeks.
So by about 150 BC, the Romans have essentially controlled a
good part of Greece, and this extends the Roman control.
So these Punic Wars are really important
because they allow the Romans to take over Italy,
they take over Sicily, they take Spain, they take North Africa,
and then towards the end of the third Punic War,
the Romans are pushing into Greece,
and then they will just continue.
They will push into Mesopotamia.
And the Punic Wars are important
because this is what creates their empire.
Okay. Now, let's move forward to the first century BC.
So we just talked about the Punic Wars
and how the Romans actually created their empire.
Now, according to Roman historians,
this wasn't such a good thing, because what happens is,
you've got all this massive wealth flowing into Rome
and it creates lots of greed and the decline
in morality and things like that.
Moving into the first century,
you've got some very famous people,
which you've probably heard of: Julius Caesar,
I think most people have heard of.
You may not have heard of Crassus or Pompey;
these are both Roman generals.
Ultimately, what happens is, you try --
you have these who are individual and want to rule Rome
as opposed to having two consuls.
And Julius Caesar was a general,
Crassus a general, Pompey a general.
And Crassus goes off to fight
into Mesopotamia and ends up dying.
Now, then you've got Julius Caesar and Crasus trying
to fight it out for control.
And in the end, Julius Caesar wins this particular battle.
Now, the senate declares him dictator.
And "dicto" or "dico" in Latin means "I speak" or "to speak."
So a dictator literally means one who speaks.
It's not -- it doesn't have the flavor of good or bad.
You can have bad dictators during this period,
you can have good dictators,
but the Romans would occasionally elect a dictator
to take control of especially a military situation
where it's easier to have one person making the decision
rather than two.
So Julius Caesar becomes the dictator.
Now, he starts to take total control of lots of things.
And a lot of senators were afraid of him, but they started
to talk about getting rid of him.
And one man who did this was a man named Brutus.
So remember we talked about the *** and Lucretia
and that Brutus declaring no more kings in Roman period.
Well, this Brutus was related to the one from the 500s.
And he felt that it was his family's duty to continue
that tradition of getting rid of kings.
So a bunch of senators plot to get rid of Julius Caesar,
and he is assassinated on March 15, 44.
You might have heard this phrase "beware the ides of March."
The ides of March is March 15, and we say that because
of Julius Caesar was assassinated on this day.
Before he was assassinated, he appointed his grandnephew
as the person to take over his control
if something happens to him.
And that person was named Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus,
or Octavianus for short.
Now, Mark Anthony was a general of Julius Caesar, and he didn't
like the fact that of Octavianus sort of steps in,
never having any military history, and wants to take over.
So ultimately what happens is, Mark Anthony and Octavianus go
to civil war, or have a civil war.
In the end -- I making -- you know, making this very short --
in the end, Octavianus wins.
Now, Mark Anthony had been to Egypt.
And this is probably where he's most famous,
where you've got Mark Anthony
and the Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra.
So Mark Anthony flees to Egypt with Cleopatra,
they have one more battle with Octavianus, and they lose,
and Mark Anthony is killed and Cleopatra commits suicide,
and this is when the Romans take Egypt.
So, again, they're still expanding their empire.
Now, Octavianus, the senate gives the title of "Princeps"
to him and he becomes the first emperor.
And it's interesting because, you know, I just told you
that the Romans did not want to have kings,
but they accepted Octavianus as a ruler because what he did is,
he said, I am going to give my political power back
to the people.
So he becomes something called a princeps, which means "first,"
it's like principal of a school.
So princeps.
And he gives back his power, but he still remains in power,
and he's really the force that moves the end
of the first century into the first century A.D.
when he dies in 14.
Okay. So now you have Octavianus as Augustus,
the very first Emperor.
As I just said, he rules until 14 AD.
Now, before we go on,
I just want to give you a little breakdown
of Roman social structure, and it's fairly close
to what we've looked at before.
You've got the Emperor at the top; you've got --
below the Emperor, you have the senators or the patricians who,
again, are extremely wealthy class;
below them you've got a group of people called the equestrians.
Now, originally these equestrians, as you can guess
from the word, were the calvary,
or they were people who owned horses.
Now, they later, this sort of morphs into a social category
where you could be an equestrian but not ride horses.
So you've got the Emperor, the senators.
Below them you've got the plebeians.
So that was the mass of Roman citizens.
Below the plebeians, you have a class of people called freedmen,
and you can probably guess by the name
that these were freed slaves.
So slavery was very big in Roman society,
but slaves could get their freedom in two ways.
One is that owner could free you,
and then you become a freedman; or you could buy your freedom.
So a lot of slaves were paid a small amount of money
and over time, you could build up and save money
and buy then your freedom.
So if that was acceptable to your owner, you were then free,
and you'd be a freedman.
Now, you're not a Roman citizen,
so you wouldn't have the voting rights and things like that,
but if you have children, if you're a freedman
and have children, those children are free,
and so they are Roman citizens.
And then below the freedmen are the slaves;
so a very large slave class in Roman society.
They did a lot of the physical work.
They did a lot of taking care
of what was happening in the Roman Empire.
And what I want to do in the next section is to talk
about the third century crisis.
So we're going to jump ahead to the 200s.