Tag: Rome

Lucius Domitius Aurelianus was born of poor parents on 9 September AD 214 in Lower Moesia.His father was a tenant farmer of a wealthy senator Aurelius, after whom the family were named. Aurelian rose through the ranks of the army, serving with distinction on the Danube frontier.By AD 268, when Aureo...

Lectures The Geography of ItalyThe EtruscansThe Roman RepublicRoman Expansion and the Punic WarsThe Civil WarThe Rise of Julius CasearInstructional Goal: Students will know the cause and effects of the Roman Civil War. I. The rapid growth of the Roman colonial holding created many internal problems....

Since the passing of the Licinian Law in 367 BC, the old contest between the orders had dwindled into nothing more than a patrician faction either to evade the law or to recover some fraction of exclusive privilege by indirect methods. In effect the old charmed circle had become extended so as to in...

Romans borrowed their gods and goddesses from the Greeks and gave them new names. Below is a chart of the Greek and Roman names of the God or Goddess and a description of what they were believed to control. Greek NameRoman NameResponsibilitiesAphroditeVenusgoddess of beauty and loveAresMarsgod of wa...

Plutarch's Lives: Tiberius Gracchus Having completed the first two narratives, we now may proceedto take a view of misfortunes, not less remarkable, in theRoman couple, and with the lives of Agis and Cleomenes,compare these of Tiberius and Caius. They were the sons ofTiberius Gracchus, who, though h...

Crassus grew up as the son of a consul and distinguished general.His career to fame and phenomenal wealth began as he started purchasing the houses of Sulla's victims. Had Sulla confiscated all their belongings he sold them off cheap. And Crassus bought and made sensational profits when selling them...

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...

Sulla Lucius Cornelius Sulla was yet another nail in he coffin of the Republic, perhaps much in the same mould as Marius. Having already been the first man to use Roman troops against Rome itself. And much like Marius he, too, should make his mark in history with reforms as well as a reign of terror...

When in 64 BC Pompey descended from Cappadocia into northern Syria he needed little more than assume sovereignty on behalf of Rome. Ever since the collapse of the kingdom of the Seleucids sixty years previously, Syria had been ruled by chaos. Roman order was hence welcomed. The acquisition of Syria ...

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 ...

Five years after the conclusion of the treaty with Carthage, Rome was at war with the Samnites. For centuries the Sabellian highlanders of the Apennines had struggled to force their way into the plains between the hills and the Mediterranean. But Tuscans and Latins had held them in check, and for th...

...