Tag: Rome

The Romans were a polytheistic people, and they worshipped many gods. However, they were also tolerant of other religions, and they allowed the Jews to practice their own religion. This was important for the development of Christianity, as it allowed Jesus to spread his message without fear of perse...

Sulla, Vatican Museums, Vatican City Lucius Cornelius Sulla stemmed from a good, though not very wealthy Roman family. He came to prominence most of all in the Social War (91-89 BC). When in 88 BC Mithridates, King of Pontus, attacked the Roman province of Asia, where a alleged 80'000 Romans and Ita...

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...

Suetonius: De Vita Caesarum--TiberiusThe Lives of the Caesars--Tiberius. I. THE patrician branch of the CIaudian family (for there was, besides, a plebeian branch of no less influence and prestige) originated at Regilli, a town of the Sabines. From there it moved to Rome shortly after the founding o ...

The atrocities of the First Slave War were anything but forgotten when in 103 BC the slaves of Sicily dared to revolt again. That after the cruelty in the aftermath of the first conflict they dared to rise again, hints how bad their conditions must have been.They fought so stubbornly that it took Ro...

Caesar, Gaius Julius (100-44 BC), Roman general and statesman, who laid the foundations of the Roman imperial system. Caesar(died 44 B.C.E.) By Plutarch Written 75 A.C.E. After Sylla became master of Rome, he wished to make Caesar put away his wife Cornelia, daughter of Cinna, the late sole ruler of ...

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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...

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...

Antonius versus Octavian No heavy engagement took place before the two battles on the plain of Philippi in Macedonia, fought with an interval of three weeks in the late autumn of 42 BC. The first battle actually went to Marcus Brutus, although Cassius mistakenly believing the day lost, ordered his s...

In the same year as Scipio's election to the consulship (134 BC), his colleague, Fulvius Flacchus, was called to deal with a terrifying rebellion of the slave population in Sicily. A huge slave population had been built up all across Italy as a direct result of Rome's vast military successes of the ...

The twenty years following Sulla's death saw the rise of three men who, if Rome's founders were truly suckled by a she-wolf, surely had within them the stuff of wolves.The three were Marcus Licinius Crassus (d. 53 BC), one of Rome's richest men ever. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106-48 BC), known as Pom...