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Ancient Rome
A small city on the Tiber became a republic, conquered the whole Mediterranean and turned into an empire that at its height stretched from Britain to Mesopotamia. Rome's Latin language, its law, roads, buildings and finally its Christian faith outlived the Western Empire, which came to an end in 476 CE.
From kings to the republic
THEME ONE
According to tradition Rome was ruled by seven kings until 509 BCE, when the Romans drove out the last of them and founded a republic. Two consuls were elected every year, the Senate of former officials advised them, and assemblies of citizens voted on laws. The long struggle of the plebeians against the patrician nobility produced the Twelve Tables, Rome's first written laws, around 450 BCE.
Conquest of the Mediterranean
THEME TWO
By about 270 BCE Rome controlled most of Italy. Three Punic Wars against Carthage followed. In the second, Hannibal crossed the Alps with his army and elephants in 218 BCE and destroyed Roman armies at Cannae, yet Rome refused to give in and won. In 146 BCE the Romans razed Carthage and Corinth in the same year. Their legions, drawn from citizen farmers, made Rome master of the sea it called "our sea".
Caesar, Augustus and the empire
THEME THREE
Conquest brought wealth and civil wars. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE, made himself dictator and was murdered in the Senate in 44 BCE. His heir Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BCE and in 27 BCE took the name Augustus: the first emperor. About two centuries of relative peace followed, the Pax Romana, and under Trajan in 117 CE the empire reached its greatest size.
Roads, law and the end in the West
THEME FOUR
Some 80 000 km of paved roads, aqueducts and concrete domes such as the Pantheon held the empire together, and Roman law still underlies the legal systems of much of Europe. After the crises of the 3rd century Constantine legalised Christianity in 313 and founded Constantinople in 330. In 395 the empire was finally divided. The West, short of money and soldiers, lost province after province to Germanic peoples, and Rome itself was sacked in 410.
Periods
The kingdom
753 – 509 BCE
Traditional dates. Rome grows from villages on the hills into a city under Latin and Etruscan kings.
The republic
509 – 27 BCE
Rule by elected magistrates and the Senate, the conquest of Italy and the Mediterranean, and a century of civil wars that ends in one-man rule.
The empire
27 BCE – 476 CE
The Principate of Augustus and his successors, the crisis of the 3rd century, the Christian empire and the division into East and West.
Key dates
- 753 BCELegendary founding of Rome by Romulus.
- 509 BCEThe last king is expelled and the republic begins.
- 218 BCEHannibal crosses the Alps and invades Italy.
- 44 BCEJulius Caesar is murdered on the Ides of March.
- 27 BCEOctavian receives the name Augustus and becomes the first emperor.
- 476 CEOdoacer deposes the last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus.
Questions and answers
Why did the Western Roman Empire fall?
There is no single cause. Historians point to civil wars and rapid changes of emperor, the pressure of Germanic peoples and the Huns, the loss of rich provinces such as Africa to the Vandals in 439, and an economy strained by the cost of defence. The richer East survived the same pressures.
Did the Roman Empire end in 476?
Only in the West. The Eastern Roman Empire, which historians call Byzantine, ruled from Constantinople for almost another thousand years, until the Ottoman Turks took the city in 1453. Its people called themselves Romans to the end.