Tag: Rome

Caesar went on, after the the conference of Luca to reduce the whole of Gaul to submission in the course of three campaigns - justified by initial aggression from the barbarians. The two following years were occupied with expeditions and campaigns of an experimental kind. In 55 BC a fresh invasion ...

In 54 BC Pompey's young wife had died and with her death had disappeared the personal link between him and his father-in-law Caesar. Crassus had started for the east to take up governorship of Syria. Meanwhile Pompey did little. He simply watched with growing jealousy the successive triumphs of Caes...

After her defeat of Pyrrhus Rome was recognized as a major power in the Mediterranean, nothing makes this clearer than the opening of a permanent embassy of amity by the Macedonian king of Egypt in Rome in 273 BC. In 272 BC, the year of Pyrrhus'' death, the powerful Greek city of Tarentum in the so...

...

In Greece meanwhile the by now miserably disorganized Achaean League had extended its jurisdiction over the Peloponnes, though Sparta refused submit to such ambitions and appealed to Rome. The senate dispatched commissioners to the council of the Achaean League assembled at Corinth to. To prevent fu...

By popular acclaim, fresh from his brilliant triumph over the pirates, Pompey was given supreme and unlimited authority over the whole east. His powers were to be in his hands until he himself should be satisfied with the completeness of the settlement he might effect. No Roman, other than Sulla, h...

ConsulDictatorPontifex MaximusCensorPraetorAedileQuaestorThe Roman republic was led by two Consuls who were joint heads of the Roman state and commanders-in-chief of the army. They were elected only for one year and thereafter could not be re-elected again for 10 years, in order to prevent any form ...

...

Tiberius and his brother Gaius Gracchus were to be two men who should become famous, if not infamous, for their struggle for the lower classes of Rome.They themselves though originated from Rome's very elite. Their father was a consul and military commander and their mother was from the distinguishe...

In 88 BC the activities of king Mithridates of Pontus called for urgent action. The king had invaded the province of Asia and massacred 80'000 Roman and Italian citizens. Sulla, as elected consul and as the man who had won the Social War, expected the command, but Marius wanted it, too. The senate a...

The patricians found it at least necessary to make occasional concessions - often indeed such that their expected effect could be practically evaded. As early as 445 BC they were obliged to legalize marriage between patrician and plebeian. But they fought to the last against admitting plebeians to ...

Two years had not elapsed after the battle of Zama when war was for the second time declared between Rome and Macedon. The peace of 205 BC had never been more than a hostile truce. Philip V's strategy of consolidating and extending his despotic rule over the free cities cities in Greece the Aegean a...