Tag: Rome

A great task faced Marcus Aurelius when he became the Roman emperor in AD 161, as successor to his uncle, Emperor Antonius Pius. Generations of luxury had made the patricians, or nobles, weak and selfish. The middle class was disappearing, and the working class was being reduced to a state of slaver...

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 ...

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...

So powerful were the positions of the two leaders, that they felt secure enough to challenge Sulla's constitution. Both by the terms of Sulla's laws were barred from standing for the consulship. Pompey was too young and Crassus was required to let a year pass between his position as praetor before h...

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...

As in any large society with growing sophistication and complexity there arises the need for ever more governmental offices to oversee and regulate aspects of life.In the Roman Republic the following offices were created in order to deal with the expanding demands on government. Consul (Head of Sta...

Lectures The Geography of ItalyThe EtruscansThe Roman RepublicRoman Expansion and the Punic WarsThe Civil WarThe Rise of Julius CasearInstructional Goal: Students will know the primary features of the Italian peninsula and understand how they influenced the rise of the Roman civilizaiton. I. The top...

A notable situation occurred when, at the festival of the Lupercalia in February 44 BC, Mark Antony offered Caesar the crown as king of Rome. He rejected the offer dramatically, but with obvious reluctance. The idea of a king still remained intolerable to the Romans. Many senators though suspected ...

Though whilst Rome was busied with its Macedon and Syrian adventures in the east, it neither rested in the west. Within a decade after her victory in the Second Punic War, Rome had at last gained dominance over the quarrelsome Gauls in valley of the river Po and their equally hostile neighbours, the...

Two men had risen to prominence as supporters of Sulla. One was Publius Licinius Crassus (117-53 BC), who had played a major part in the victory of the Colline Gate for Sulla. The other, Gnaeus Pompeius (106-48 BC), known to the modern historians as Pompey, was a youthful commander of remarkable mil...

Publius Aelius Hadrianus, called Hadrian, was Roman emperor from AD 117 until 138. He regarded his 20-year reign as a golden age of peace and prosperity, comparable to that of his great predecessor Augustus more than 100 years earlier (see Augustus). Monuments to Hadrian's reign are the Tivoli villa...

Tiberius GracchusGaius Gracchus The brief emergence and demise of each of the brothers Gracchus (Tiberius in 133 BC, Gaius in 120 BC) onto the scene of Roman politics should send shock waves through the entire structure of the Roman state of such magnitude that their effects would be felt for genera...