Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire is a book detailing the history of Rome published in 2006 and written by Simon Baker. Ancient Rome is a great book for those interested in Rome: even though it presents a large amount of information, it does so with very little boredom, seeing that Baker humanizes the characters and utilizes narratives to illustrate their complexity and the overall situation.
Mary Beard, a Roman historian, begins the book in the foreword by stating that Rome, for all its glory and achievements, was a city founded on murder: in 853 BC twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, noted as “the head of a small band of exiles and malcontents,” tried to decide on the location of their future city (9). They quarreled on where to build Rome, and Romulus began building a wall. Remus, in an attempt to spite Romulus, jumped over it, only for Romulus to impale him with a sword: he died quickly after. Since Romulus lacked influence, he tried to attract people to join his city by offering asylum: anyone can join and live in Rome, including criminals, exiles, refugees, and even slaves who have escaped from their masters. While that largely dealt with the issue of males, there were still the women to think about. In what became known as the Rape of the Sabine Women, Romulus pretended to have a religious festival and invited other people from nearby towns to come. Large numbers of women showed up. While they were initially impressed by Rome, Romulus then gave a secret signal to his followers, who seized the women and forced them to become their wives (note: “rape” meant “kidnapping” back then, although it also could be read as forced sexual intercourse). Beard acknowledges that this event may not be true, as the first documentation of the event took place centuries after it supposedly happened. However, it is somewhat supported by evidence, making historians take this event seriously. Beard states that Rome had quite a few civil wars: the citizens interpreted this as appropriate, seeing how Romulus killed his own brother to mark the founding of the city. Beard then gives the purpose and organization of his book: “This book concentrates on six pivotal moments in the history of Rome, from the second century BC to the fifth century AD - a time of dramatic, somewhat revolutionary, change. During this period, Rome came to be the dominating power around the Mediterranean and much further afield (traces of the presence of Roman traders have been found as far east as India). It turned from a more or less democratic republic into an autocratic empire. And - most dramatic of all perhaps - Rome was finally transformed from a pagan to a Christian city” (10-11). Beard states that Rome has fluctuated greatly many times, and acknowledges that even though much of Rome’s functions is hidden from us (ex. lives of the poorest citizens and sewage disposal), we can still methodically guess at their respective details. Furthermore, she says that there are many primary sources left, one of the most famed being Julius Caesar’s On the Civil War, which detailed how he virtually ended democracy and made himself the sole ruler of Rome (albeit briefly). It should be noted that Caesar referred to himself in the third-person throughout the text, giving it a feel that is both unique and entertaining.
Beard gives a brief overview of the text, informing the audience that they’ll be looking at the foundation of Rome, the rise of Caesar and Augustus, the deranged life of Nero, the rebellion of Judaea, the life of Hadrian and Constantine, and the fall of Rome. She states that there is a BBC television series for the book, made possible by primary sources from Roman figures themselves. She acknowledges the importance and sheer magnitude of the influence of Rome, as most empires that came after Rome were compared to it when it came to measuring their success and dominance in their respective territories. Rome’s influence has also extended to popular culture, literature, and philosophy (after all, Plato, Aristotle, Democritus, and Pythagoras still dominate the field of philosophy, as it is frequently stated that all of philosophy was a reaction to Greek/Roman philosophers like Plato). When it comes to literature, Beard elaborates that “William Shakespeare’s Julius of Caesar, itself loosely based on a translation of Plutarch’s Life of Caesar, is only one of many reflections on the rights and wrongs of the case. The audience’s interest is divided between the title role of Caesar, killed less than halfway through the play, and the fate of his assassins, which dominates the second part. Do we feel that we are on Caesar’s side - a legitimate ruler illegally put to death? Or is the killer Brutus our hero for being prepared to murder even a friend in defence of popular liberty? How far do patriotism and political principles demand that we sometimes flout the law and ride roughshod over personal ties of friendship and loyalty? … the answers proposed for these particular historical and literary conundrums were especially loaded around the period of the French Revolution. Voltaire, for example, presented a dramatic version of the events, which clearly had one eye on the execution of the French royal family when it unequivocally backed the assassins’ deeds as honourable” (16). Another way Rome is prevalent in popular culture is the saying which states that Nero burned down Rome while playing a fiddle. Aside from that, Nero is remembered today as a despotic, demented tyrant who engaged in luxuries and depravities (including matricide - he murdered his own mother). Nero’s persecution of the Christians somewhat backfired, as the belief system came back stronger than ever. As Beard describes, “Film and fiction have indulged in touching but entirely implausible fantasies of Christian heroism in the face of Neronian tyranny - often enlivening the picture with the subplot of a pretty young Christian girl converting her young pagan boyfriend, and taking him with her to a noble but gory death (usually involving lions). Many of these stories are versions of a best-selling novel, Quo Vadis, by the Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz, which was published in the nineteenth century and quickly translated into almost every European language” (19).
Beard proceeds to acknowledge that our view and understanding of history constantly change: as we learn more of Rome, views which may be accepted as plausible today may be viewed as absurd tomorrow. In her own elegant words, “all reconstructions are inevitably provisional. And the implication of these changing attitudes to Roman culture (and they are bound to go on changing) is that our own modern version of Rome, however historically grounded it is, is likely to appear in a hundred years’ time as quaintly old-fashioned as nineteenth-century reconstructions now look to us” (please note that in the nineteenth-century Victorian era the customs of the Romans were viewed as being quite similar to modern Europeans, which, of course, was erroneous) (22-3). Beard documents that we care so much about the Romans because of the various structures they have built (ex. the Colosseum, Nero’s Golden House, surviving roads of the Appian Way), as well as the works of art which they produced (literature like the Metamorphoses, The Iliad, The Odyssey and aesthetic forms of beauty including mosaics). Beard acknowledges that Rome has lessons for all of humanity today, seeing how “we share with the Romans many fundamental political dilemmas, and can usefully watch them wrestling with solutions. They, after all, were among the very first to wonder how to adapt models of citizenship and political rights and responsibilities to vast communities that transcended the boundaries of a small, ‘face-to-face’ town. By the first century BC the population of the city of Rome alone, excluding Italy and the more remote territories of the empire, was in the order of a million” (23). Another key staple of Rome were the later emperors, as well as the relationship slaves had with society as a whole (a huge portion of Roman society was composed solely of slaves). Mary Beard ends the foreword by discussing that many powerful and recent historical figures were greatly influenced by the Romans, including those belonging to America and Britain: “The founding fathers of the United States saw a model in the republican politics of Rome before the advent of one-man rule. Hence American ‘senators’ and the ‘Capitol’ (after the Roman Capitoline Hill) as seat of government. In Britain the Labour movement saw resonances of its own conflicts with a land-owning and industrial aristocracy in the struggle of the Roman people against aristocratic conservatism … To understand our world we need to understand how it is rooted in Rome. In many ways we are still living with the legacy of Romulus’s murder of Remus” (24).
Baker begins the book by discussing that many Romans believed in a fictionalized account as to the founding of their city upon encountering the Greeks: they believed their founding father was Aeneas, a hero of the Trojan war who survived the sacking of Troy while carrying his father away from certain doom. Rome, geographically, was “located 24 kilometres (15 miles) inland near a river, the Tiber. Made up of seven compact hills, it seems today like a small, unprepossessing place for the capital of an empire that would rule over the known world”: that is, it wasn’t located right next to the ocean, not to mention that the area was prone to overflowing from the Tiber River and had marshes which made initial settlements difficult to construct (28-9). Baker provides a list of the “Seven Hills of Rome'' (which is also the name of the chapter) in the following section: “on the Palatine Hill, the future residence of Roman emperors, a series of stone and wooden shepherds’ huts formed and the first settlement at the very start of the Iron Age in 1000 BC, and from that time on it would be continuously inhabited. By the seventh century BC that community on the Palatine joined together with others on the Quirinal, Aventine and Caelian hills. Soon the Esquiline and Viminal hills also were deforested, levelled and terraced to make homes for other settlers. The Capitoline Hill, which was nearest to the river, became the settlement’s acropolis and the home for the temple of the shepherds’ principal deity, Jupiter. The area at the foot of these hills, once the place where the shepherds grazed their flocks, was drained and filled, and the meeting-place of the Roman Forum soon formed the city’s epicentre” (29). The Seven Hills of Rome offered protection for the city, and although the Tiber could indeed overflow, it also allowed for agriculture. The language the Romans spoke was one that belonged to the Latins. As for their alphabet, they got theirs from the Etruscans (who were accordingly influenced by the Greeks). According to Roman mythology, Romulus and Remus were the sons of Mars (god of war). The father of their mother, believing they would threaten his rule, ordered for them to be killed. When they were left to die in the wilderness, a lupa (female wolf) found them. Fortunately for them, instead of killing them, it raised them as their own. After years of living with the wolf, Romulus and Remus were discovered by shepherds who adopted them, seeing that they were unable to bear children themselves. After the reign of Romulus, some Etruscan kings headed Rome. While their reign eventually ended, they introduced the concept of imperium, which noted their executive authority: “This was their right to give orders to ordinary people and to expect those orders to be obeyed. Imperium allowed them to punish and even to execute people for disobedience. Crucially, it also included the power to conscript citizens into an army and lead them to war on people outside the boundary of Rome who challenged that authority. The holder of imperium carried a symbol of his power, and this too was of Etruscan origin. The fasces was a bundle of elm or birch rods 1.5 metres (5 feet) in length; they were tied together with red leather thongs, and in among the rods was an axe. The authoritarianism symbolized by the rods survives today in our word ‘fascism’.” (31). The imperium, noted by Baker, would lead to massive bloodshed throughout the entire Mediterranean as leaders of Rome tried to exercise their power (including Augustus, the first Roman Emperor).
Rome as a republic was founded in 509 BC, although the process of it becoming so involved struggle. That is, the tyrant Tarquinius (nicknamed “the Proud” for his arrogance) had virtually total authority, and he allowed his son, Sextus, to go wild (he enjoyed sexually assaulting women and boasting of his notorious deeds in public). Sextus eventually raped a noblewoman named Lucretia: he threatened he would kill her and a slave in her company and proceed to frame them copulating if she wouldn’t give in to his sexual demands. Unwilling to lose her honor, she allowed herself to be assaulted. She then committed suicide, and when the other nobles witnessed her demise, they decided that the Tarquins had to go. One of them, Lucius Junius Brutus (the ancestor of Brutus the Younger), was a powerful leader of the force that threw the Tarquins out of Rome (furthermore, the group was mainly composed of aristocrats). After the Tarquins were expelled from Rome, people decided to appoint consuls (basically the leaders of the republic) to head the government. However, to limit their power, two were appointed at a single time: each of them would prevent the other from acting like a despot, and they would remain rulers for only a year. Despite the Roman belief in a republic, they still allowed for dictators in certain scenarios: if there is a massive emergency, then a person can be appointed as the dictator (giving them virtually unlimited power) until the crisis passes. Other positions in the Roman government include the praetors (these officials hear private legal cases), quaestors (managed financial transactions, acted as a treasurer), aediles (officials who supervise trade), censors (these officials do a census of Roman citizens once every five years), senators (largely made up of rich people: people in the senate were those individuals who served in a government position prior), and soldiers (who largely had to pay for their own equipment). There was also class struggle: the patricians were the rich who were very conservative (seeing that they wanted to keep their wealth) while the plebeians made up the vast majority of the population and ranged from the somewhat wealthy to the destitute. When the plebeians asked for reform, they succeeded in getting some concessions (one of these concessions involved a new assembly). This new assembly included the tribunes, and the tribunes directly represented the plebeians. The tribunes had a huge amount of power: they could use their veto power to temporarily shut down all the functions of the government to protest the actions of patricians. That is, “A consul was at once a military commander, a prime minister, a chancellor and a bishop, while a tribune combined the roles of a Member of Parliament or a US senator with defense lawyer, policeman and trade union representative” (38).
Another victory which the plebeians won was strengthening their voice in the Assembly of the Centuries (prior to reform they had almost no voice in that group, seeing that most of the population, the poor plebeians, had only one vote while the rich had more than half of the 193 available). The Roman republic eventually got its name: “SPQR” (or “Senatus Populusque Romanus” - “the Senate and the Roman people”). From 500-275 BC, Roman armies devoured most of Italy. After they first took control of Latium, they eventually won the rest of the Italian peninsula. One of the main reasons as to why they were so incredibly successful was that Rome frequently incorporated the defeated subjects of the respective towns and villages into itself, thereby bolstering its force. Rome, before its military campaigns, frequently agitated for war by trying to find any excuse to justify a future one. This ceremony of finding an excuse also involved a Roman priest swearing as to the “justness” of the hostilities before throwing a spear into the territory of the enemy. When the Romans fought the Greek army of King Pyrrhus, “They forced a prisoner seized from Pyrrhus’s army to buy a small plot of land in Rome and the priests threw their symbolic spear into that” (43). As for Pyrrhus, he invaded Italy in 280 BC. during “the campaigning season” (that is, in March - March was named after Mars, the Roman god of war): “In two brutal and bloody battles he successfully defeated the Romans. The Greek king, though, having seen so many of his soldiers slaughtered in achieving this success, was said to have remarked, ‘With another victory like this, we will be finished!’ … By 275 BC, however, the Romans had turned their fortunes around. They defeated Pyrrhus at Beneventum near Naples, expelled his invading army, and were now free to consolidate their grasp over the rest of southern Italy'' (43). Baker then writes of the Punic Wars, the series of wars that took place between Rome and Carthage. Carthage was located near the top of Africa, and was an economic powerhouse due to its overseas ports and gold mines. However, Rome wanted control over its resources, and fought three Punic Wars with Carthage. Carthage was beaten every time, and after each loss was punished severely. After losing the first, they were forced to pay 3,200 talents of silver (80 tons) over a decade. This only fueled the animosity of the Carthaginians towards the Romans. In the second Punic War, they had a military mastermind, Hannibal, become the general. Hannibal would later strike fear into every Roman heart. Baker elucidates that “In 221 BC he had assumed command of the Carthaginian forces in Spain. When he was nine, went one famous story, his father had dipped his hand in the blood of a sacrifice and sworn him to an eternal hatred of Rome … The Romans expected the Second Punic War to be fought in Spain … This conflict, which lasted from 218 to 201 BC and was the greatest of the wars between the two rival empires, is legendary for Hannibal’s extraordinary decision: to invade Italy and march on Rome” (53). That is, he crossed the Alps with his thirty-seven elephants and a large number of soldiers (12,000 cavalry, 90,000 infantry). However, crossing the Alps involved a large number of casualties: “After four weeks crossing the whole Alpine range, Hannibal walked into Italy in the company of (at the lowest estimate) 20000 infantry, 6000 cavalry and a minority of the elephants. The infantry might have been double that size. He rested them all for two weeks before proceeding to match the great feat of reaching Italy with another: destroying every Roman force he met there” (54).
Hannibal eventually dealt to the Romans the most devastating military defeat they would ever experience: the Battle of Cannae. In this battle, the Romans were surrounded by Hannibal, who proceeded to slaughter 45,500 Roman infantry and 2,700 cavalry in a single afternoon (impressively, the combined number of the Roman army was more than double the size of Hannibal’s army, yet Hannibal still managed to crush them brutally). This battle also saw the deaths of at least eighty senators, and it was so devastating to Rome that most believed it was no match for Hannibal’s forces. However, some people continued to fight for Rome’s sake, including Publius Cornelius Scipio, who was only nineteen at the time: he is remembered as a savior of Rome. He was able to get Hannibal out of Rome by utilizing the remaining manpower of Rome’s allies. He also sent a force to invade North Africa (including Carthage), causing Hannibal to go back to Carthage in an attempt to defend it. As expected, Scipio was extremely popular, causing some to fear that he was going to become a dictator. He eventually faced off with Hannibal in the Battle of Zama, and soundly defeated him, seeing that 20,000 Carthaginians lost their lives while only 1,500 Romans perished. Carthage was punished even more: it lost all its overseas possessions, seeing that “It was forced to surrender its elephants, to pay 10,000 talents (250,000 kilograms or 245 tons) of silver in indemnity and, crucially, to agree, in a way similar to a nuclear non-proliferation treaty today, never to re-arm or declare any war without permission from Rome” (57). The Third Punic War saw the Romans struggling greatly due to their own corruption. Regardless, officials like Cato the Elder urged for Rome to put all its energy into destroying Carthage, seeing that they felt like it would remain a threat forever (Cato the Elder was infamous for ending each of his speeches with the declaration that “Delenda est Carthago,” or “Carthage must be destroyed”): “Led by Cato the Elder, this side glossed their case with bright rhetorical brush strokes. The Carthaginians were untrustworthy, degenerate and effeminate child-sacrificers. The suggestion was that they were, in effect, subhuman and should be treated as such” (61). Rome decided to purposefully instigate a war: some officials claimed that Carthage had too many materials that could be used to create ships. Rome also bribed Numidia to show aggression towards Carthage, which caused Carthage to retaliate, giving them an excuse to finally wipe it out once and for all. While three embassies were sent to Rome in an attempt to negotiate a surrender, it became apparent (through the inhuman demands and lies of the Romans) that Rome only wanted to destroy Carthage: an official, Censorinus, hypocritically told the Carthaginian ambassadors that the sea was meant for trade, not war, and that they should stop going into the sea if they want peace. “Dumbstruck, the ambassadors broke down in tears of frenzy and mourning. It was impossible to meet this condition without, in effect, destroying the city for ever. It now dawned on them that the Romans had never sincerely intended to come to terms. They had simply sought to gain an advantage in a war that was now - and had always been - unstoppable” (63).
The Romans eventually raided Carthage, and butchered all the inhabitants, systematically murdering them: the Carthage Massacre lasted for six days. Baker writes that “Once inside the city, killing squads advanced house by house, narrow street by narrow street. They cut and stabbed their way from the Forum of Carthage along three streets … Throwing planks over the narrow alleyways, they continued to wage the war from rooftop to rooftop, leaving a trail of mutilated corpses in their wake or tossing them to the streets below. Then, amid the cries, shrieks and animal-like groans, Aemilianus raised the intensity of the brutal assault and ordered the streets to be set on fire. The booming noise stepped up the confusion. Houses came crashing down and the elderly, the wounded, women and children were forced out of their hiding places” (68). There were so many corpses on the streets that people needed to clean them up, and the remaining corpses were mangled further by passing horses and the like. Eventually, 50,000 Carthaginians surrendered to the Romans. The Romans then ordered for Carthage to be burnt into oblivion, and utterly destroyed it. Of the million inhabitants, 50,000 survived and were made slaves. It is rumored that the Romans, after destroying Carthage, covered the city with a layer of salt to curse the city into being abandoned for the rest of time. Aemilianus the Roman general was solemn after the defeat: Carthage had been a thriving city for centuries. If it could fall, then Rome would fall one day too. Indeed, Rome was extremely unequal when it came to standards of living, and ridiculously so: while the rich lived in extremely large houses and palaces, the vast majority of the population lived in crammed, filthy areas (apartments) that were very susceptible to fires (which easily burned out of control due to the proximity of various houses, which were accordingly constructed of flammable material) and disease (sewage was dumped into the streets). The situation became even worse when the rich, who could easily afford most of what they wanted, purchased almost all the land from the plebeians. This caused the situation to become disastrous: a few people owned almost all the land, leaving the rest of the people to suffer. This resulted in many farmers in the countryside going into Rome to find employment: Rome, despite being a large city, didn't have enough jobs for many of the immigrants, leading to unemployment and poverty. This attitude of arrogance, selfishness, and inequity is further seen with the quaestor Mancinus and the Numantines. The Numantines captured Mancinus’s army of 20,000 people by using strategy. Mancinus tried to bargain for their lives, promising the Numantines that the Roman senate would make a fair treaty. The Numantines accepted his bargain. When Mancinus went back to the Senate after saving 20,000 Roman soldiers, he was met with jeers and derision: the senators viewed the Numantines as inferior, and saw the surrender as a complete disgrace. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (a major Roman reformer who would later be callously murdered by the rich for trying to defend the poor by giving them economic opportunity) defended Mancinus’s noble decision to save 20,000 people. However, “the Senate was not remotely swayed from its belief in Roman invincibility. Since the destruction of Carthage, Rome was now the only superpower, the master of the Mediterranean. It could do what it wanted to whomever it chose. If the price of defeating the rebellious Numantines was the glorious death of 20,000 soldiers … so be it!” (83).
Although Mancinus and Tiberius continued to plead for the lives of the 20,000 soldiers, the Senate arrogantly tore up the treaty (thus demonstrating the fatal flaw of hubris), making people realize that the Republic no longer honored “fides,” or “good faith” agreements. Tiberius’s career seemed ruined due to his defending the treaty. Fortunately for him, it was saved when he was greeted by the families and friends of the soldiers whose lives he had saved: “As Tiberius left the Senate House in disgrace, he received a very different reception from the Roman people. The wives, mothers, fathers, children and grandparents of the 20,000 Roman citizens whose lives he had saved in Spain now thronged the Forum, cheered his name to the skies and feted him like a hero. Almost inadvertently, he had won the love and respect of the plebs. Perhaps in this moment the seed of an idea was planted. Tiberius’s path to winning prestige, his chance to channel his intelligence, idealism and political skills, and his opportunity to honour the achievements of his father now lay not with the Senate but with ‘the case of the common people’. The ambition of an aristocrat had found another outlet” (86). Tiberius, staying true to how the plebeians perceived him, launched some of the largest reforms in Roman history: he focused on land reform. He was elected to be a tribune, which gave him the power of the veto, making people pay attention to what he had to say. When it came to land reform, he simply wanted to follow the laws of the past which were still supposedly perfectly legal: that is, Roman law stated that the maximum amount of land a person could own is 125 hectares (300 acres). As stated before, the few people who owned large amounts of land went far beyond this limit, and didn't want Tiberius to threaten their exorbitant and unabashed avariciousness (this kind of greed is one of the most consistent factors that continuously holds humanity back as a species when it comes to maturity and cooperation). Of course, this law was mostly ignored by those who held land, seeing that they had extremely powerful influences on the senate, the consuls, and most aristocrats. In a telling speech, Tiberius criticized the aristocrats for being greedy, seeing that while they lived in extreme decadence, most Romans faithfully served Rome while receiving little recompense. His reforms, though large, were still reasonable: they would “re-enfranchise the plebs, make them eligible once more for military recruitment and inject new energy into Rome’s army. And the small price that the wealthy landowners had to pay for this? The surrender not of their privately owned land, but simply of the state-owned public land above the limit of 125 hectares (300 acres) that they had acquired over the last few centuries. Yet the core of the landowning aristocrats would not hear of it, and protested loudly” (90-1). Acting like the assholes they were at their core, they decided to heinously murder Tiberius for trying to benefit the majority of Romans (sounds familiar?). They hired a thug named Nasica to amass his followers and to butcher Tiberius: unfortunately, they succeeded in this terrible deed. To be more specific, when Tiberius learned that Nasica was coming to take his life, he put his hand on his head as a signal to his followers to protect him. Nasica, seeing this, said that he was calling for a crown, and alleged that he was going to “save the Republic” by murdering him in cold blood (quite ironic, for Rome wasn’t a republic anymore by that point in time - it was an oligarchy ran by cold-blooded aristocrats who knew nothing of the sufferings and tribulations of the common people). Baker tellingly describes, “Tiberius … tripped over some bodies. He fell down and was promptly clubbed to death. No fewer than three hundred people were killed in this way: not honourably with swords, but ignobly and brutally with clubs, sticks and stones. In the aftermath, Tiberius’s younger brother Gaius requested that his dead brother’s body be returned to him. But the aristocratic senators refused Tiberius the dignity of a proper burial and threw his bludgeoned corpse into the Tiber that same night, along with those of his supporters and friends” (98). Gaius, despite being warned by his mother to not become a politician, still got involved in the field and also became a social reformer (although he was notorious for a bad temper, he still wanted to aid the common people by introducing the concept of social security in the form of food for those who couldn’t afford it). Expectedly, he was also brutally murdered by the aristocrats (or more appropriately named, “parasites”) due to their unwillingness to compromise at all.
Baker describes that “Tiberius and his land bill sought only to restore things to the way they had been centuries earlier before Rome had won the riches of its empire abroad … Six years later, in 123 BC, this proud younger brother Gaius picked up the baton, was also elected tribune and introduced an even more ambitious and comprehensive program of reform. He too was branded an enemy of the republic by the conservatives in the Senate and murdered. As with his brother, they despised what he stood for. To the mass of the Roman people, however, Tiberius and Gaius were heroes” (99). The murders of Tiberius and Gaius created a massive divide between the conservative parasites and the populists. It went so far as war: from 90-89 BC Rome fought against itself as Italians whose territories have been conquered by Rome (who were also inspired by Tiberius and Gracchus) asked for Roman citizenship. Sulla was a brutal general who defeated the foreign king Mithridates in 83 BC. After going back to Rome, he decided to exterminate the populists by having them murdered: their names would be written on a paper known as the “proscription.” If your name was on the list (which was also displayed in public), you could be murdered, and the person murdering you would not only go unpunished, but receive a part of your property. Sulla also tried to prevent populists from gaining power, seen in how he stripped tribunes of much of their power (they can’t run for other offices). After murdering many and being an exceedingly selfish ruler, Sulla retired to private life, where he later died. He went so far as to mock those he had slaughtered by referring to himself as “Felix,” or “the happy one.” Baker later writes of Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar: both were extremely powerful and popular generals. While Pompey succeeded in destroying pirates, Caesar focused on land warfare: he invaded the land of the Gauls. Caesar’s conquests were successful, and because he treated his soldiers well, they were primarily loyal to him, not Rome. Pompey the Great was an ally of Caesar, as both wanted and craved power. However, their alliance was broken after Pompey’s wife (the daughter of Caesar, whom Pompey loved dearly) died in childbirth and when the parasites (who viewed themselves, described by Baker, as elected by the people - whatever that means) gave him the sole consulship to deal with a riot by the populists (after a populist representative was stabbed to death on the street by their death squads). Later on, Caesar beat the Gallic leader Vercingetorix. Overall, it should be known that “Completely outnumbered, Caesar had relied on daring, tactical genius, the efficiency of his unprecedented siege operations, and the bravery of his men to pull off one of the greatest victories in all Roman history [the battle of Alesia, which saw an enormous number of enemy dead and wounded]. Although there were pockets of resistance to mop up, Gaul was now Roman - another province of a vast empire. In due course it would provide Rome with an annual tribute of 40 million sesterces” (130-1).
While Caesar was out in Gaul, the parasites were afraid he would create reforms. Cato the Elder (known for his “virtue”) played on Pompey’s insecurities to make him an enemy of Caesar. When Caesar began coming back to Rome, he was informed that he should leave his army outside of Rome (across the river Rubicon), seeing that armies are never allowed into Rome. Despite the warning, Caesar decided to try his luck in a civil war, as he knew that if he was to cross the Rubicon without his army, he could be imprisoned and executed by the parasites due to their fear of reform (and because he also committed the equivalent of war crimes during his conquests in Gaul). Baker writes that the Rubicon hasn’t been geographically located yet: the only references we have to its name are in the texts of Roman historians. However, all accounts agree that Caesar uttered “The die is cast,” or “alea iacta est.” When Caesar neared Rome, he made the concept of “clemency” one of his main policies. That is, when soldiers belonging to Pompey’s side were captured, they were allowed their lives and their fates: they could either leave for somewhere else or become a part of Caesar’s army. Most of them decided in favor of the latter option. Interestingly, “In Rome, Caesar’s enemies were thrown into a fit of panic. They had hoped that the respectable classes in towns throughout Italy would rise up as one in defence of the republic against the invader. But as Caesar waged his blitzkrieg without significant opposition, they quickly realized that they had hopelessly misread the majority view” (140). As Caesar neared Rome, the parasites behaved as they usually did: they seized all their possessions and ran away as quickly as possible. Baker describes that Caesar demonstrated that the rich didn't care about the poor: “The city’s poor were left behind, many in tears, morose and resigned to being taken captive. It left the impression that perhaps Caesar was indeed right: the rich did not care for the Roman people, but just for themselves” (142). Pompey was one of the people who escaped, despite having an army larger than Caesar’s. When Caesar entered Rome, his soldiers behaved remarkably well: “He called a meeting of the Senate in a temple, and a handful of disgruntled senators showed up. But when he asked them to join him in taking over the government they hesitated, still unable to commit to one side. After three days of discussion and excuses, Caesar, despising the weakness of these little men, gave up his patient show of legality and acted according to his own dignity” (145). That is, Caesar took the gold reserves of Rome for his own. Pompey later made battle with Caesar, though he was defeated by Caesar’s sense of strategy: Caesar correctly guessed that the aristocrats, true to Roman tradition, would be in the front lines to demonstrate their valor. Therefore, he ordered his soldiers to stab upwards at their faces at the Battle of Pharsalus, threatening to disfigure them. He also put the ugliest and most battle-hardened soldiers at the front to scare the aristocrats. As expected, his strategy worked: “It was a moment of military genius … Rome’s aristocratic youth, the scions of senators, might well have the eagerness for battle, but they had neither the experience nor the stomach for it. The decisive action threw them into a panic. They turned and fled to the hills” (150). This consequently exposed the flank of Pompey’s army, and Caesar used one of his lines of soldiers to butcher and quickly defeat Pompey’s soldiers. Baker describes that “The next day 24,000 of Pompey’s army surrendered to Caesar, throwing themselves on the ground, weeping and begging for their lives to be spared. Of the estimated 15,000 dead, 6,000 were Roman citizens. To the enemy Romans who survived, Caesar showed clemency once again in a first step to heal the sick republic. He also pardoned the noblemen who had fought against him” (151). As for Pompey, he fled to Egypt, and was murdered by the boy king there (he didn't want to make Caesar think he was helping his enemy). Caesar, seeing his death, cried (crocodile tears?) and ordered for the person who killed Pompey to be put to death.
When Caesar went back to Rome, he was immensely popular and powerful, loved by the mass of Roman citizens. In Baker’s own words, “On his return to Rome in 46 BC, Caesar celebrated four lavish triumphs; his veterans were given a lifetime’s salary, and there was a gift of money for every Roman citizen. Between 49 and 44 BC Julius Caesar was voted four consulships and four dictatorships. With the power that these offices granted him, he honoured his pledges to reform the republic and restore the liberty of the people. Legislation, ranging from the suspension of rent for a year to the settlement of veterans and the urban poor in Italy and in colonies abroad, was enacted, but it was by no means the revolutionary, radical overhaul that the conservatives feared” (152). Caesar made Rome more of a meritocracy by making social mobility possible. Caesar eventually made himself a permanent dictator, and the senators (contrary to popular belief, they most likely murdered Caesar not out of love for the Republic, but in an attempt to stop future reforms) ganged up on him and stabbed him to death violently: “They approached him and soon they were hemming him in. Then, one of the men broke cover, flashed the blade of his dagger and plunged it into the dictator. The others piled in, frenetically pulling at their togas to release the weapons hidden in their folds. They stabbed their political enemy twenty-three times. Brutus, who was a close family friend of Caesar but who had fought on the side of Pompey at Pharsalus, delivered one of the blows. Afterwards he left the Senate House in the company of some of the conspirators. Their bloody knives still in their hands, they marched to the Capitoline Hill and called out to the people. ‘Liberty,’ they cried, had been ‘restored.’” (153). If the senators truly wanted to bring the Republic back, they were mistaken: Caesar’s assassination would change little, as the reign of the Roman emperors had come, beginning with Augustus (actual name is “Octavian”). Augustus was Caesar’s right-hand man, and he launched a few days of massive festivals to show the Roman citizen that he was capable of great things. Although Augustus held much power, he became enemies with Antony (the famed lover of Cleopatra). However, he still defeated Antony in the Battle of Actium, a naval battle. Before then, however, they still worked together: “By 42 BC Octavian and Mark Anthony finally defeated the assassins of Caesar at the battle of Philippi. Brutus’s severed head was sent to Rome and thrown at the foot of Caesar’s statue” (159). The Battle of Actium had symbolic significance as well: those on the side of Octavian portrayed it as being a conflict (in a very polarized way, of course) of traditional, upright Roman values and new foreign, foolish ones (Octavian was shown as a military hero while Antony was portrayed as being an emasculated king who only thought of a foreign princess who manipulated him as her plaything). When Octavian defeated Antony, he was the most powerful and richest man in Rome. He gave much of his money to his loyal soldiers, and gave smaller portions to the Roman people. Octavian learned from Caesar’s mistake: he couldn’t explicitly declare himself the emperor. However, the answer was quite simple: he could still be the emperor, so long as he didn't use the word to portray himself. For consecutive years he was elected as the “consul,” and made Rome into an autocracy once more. Baker writes, “The old, idealized republic, if it had ever existed, was dead and gone for ever. Dead too was the rivalry among the senatorial elite, and the glory in the eyes of the Roman people, which many believed defined it” (168-9). Augustus reformed (nationalized) the Roman army: soldiers were paid an official salary by the government. However, this took a large toll on Rome’s economy, as half of Rome’s annual wealth was being spent on defense. In the end, it was decided that 28 units were the maximum amount that Rome could afford. The Battle of Teutoburg Forest (which occurred in 9 AD) saw the general Quintilius Varus losing much of his army to the Germans as he passed through Teutoburg Forest. When Augustus learned of this failure, he demanded Varus to give him back his legions.
The direct result of the Battle of Teutoburg is that the conquest of Germany never happened, seeing that the costs were predicted to be extremely high if the goal was ever seriously pursued. Augustus championed his image all around Rome, and renamed the month of “Sextilis'' with “August” (after himself, of course). He also passed laws that were harshly criticized, including those invading the sexual lives of Roman citizens: “In 18 BC Augustus passed a series of moral and social legislation that was both harsh and conservative. This focused on putting into law penalties and incentives to promote marriage, childbirth, sexual fidelity and moral improvement in young men. The new public laws on adultery, previously a private matter, were the most notorious. A criminal court was established to deal with sexual offences, and in certain circumstances punishment could be as severe as loss of property and exile. Women rather than men were the worst off … While it was still permitted for men to have adulterous sex so long as it was with a slave or a citizen with a bad reputation, such as a prostitute, respectable citizen women could not have sex with anyone outside marriage. The law even sanctioned the right of a father to kill his daughter and her lover if they were caught in his house having non-marital sex, and also empowered a husband to kill his wife’s lover if that man was a known philanderer” (178). In the “Games of the Ages'' (new ceremonies), previous gods were replaced with those which were associated with natalist values (ex. those like Diana, which were associated now with bearing children). When the famed poet Ovid gave tips to young people on how to find love, Augustus banished him to Tomis (Constanta) near the Black Sea, where he later died. Augustus’s ruthlessness when it came to preserving his own pristine public image is seen in how he basically caused the death of his daughter: when his daughter was rumored (only rumored; this bears repeating) of being sexually promiscuous, “He went to the Senate, denounced his own daughter, damned her memory by having all sculptures of her destroyed, then sent her into exile on Pandeteria, an island off the western coast of Italy near Campania. Although she was granted permission to move to a nicer part of Italy, she spent the rest of her life in exile. Eventually, her income withheld, she died of malnutrition” (181). Augustus died in 14 AD, and was made a deity after his demise. Baker then discusses Nero, a descendant of Augustus. After Augustus’s death, some crazy emperors (ex. Caligula) had behaved so terribly that their own guards would murder them (Caligula himself was murdered by his guards due to his dangerous and unpredictable tantrums). Nero became the emperor due to the murderousness of his mother: she killed his adoptive father (then the emperor), Claudius, by poisoning him. When Caesar became the emperor, he was quite depraved (he sentenced his tutor and friend Seneca to death by having him commit suicide in his bathroom). Nero also didn't like his formal wife, Octavia, at all: he wanted to marry his mistress, Poppaea Sabina. His mother, who was hard to please, refused his requests to remarry. Nero then murdered his mother: he invited her to a ceremony. When Agrippina went on a boat to relax, an object above her was planned to crash onto and kill her. However, she survived (her couch was so tall it cushioned the blow). Nero’s soldiers then asked who was the emperor’s mother. Fortunately for Agrippina, one of her servants declared herself the emperor’s mother. She was stabbed to death by the soldiers, and Agrippina jumped into the ocean and made it back home. Nero then sent soldiers to her house to murder her: Agrippina didn't resist at all.
When it came to Poppaea, she was the equivalent of a gold digger, seeing how she loved large expenditures of money. To deal with his former wife Octavia, Nero banished her to Campania under military watch. Still paranoid, he had her murdered in cold blood: first, he had the murderer of his mother, Anicetus, say that he had committed adultery with Octavia (Nero offered him enough money for retirement) to provide himself with an excuse. Baker narrated that as Nero explained why he wanted Octavia to be killed, she, “exiled on an island thousands of kilometres from Rome, was restrained by Roman soldiers and her veins were cut open. She who had witnessed her father and brother murdered before her eyes, now faced her own death. But it was too slow in coming. When the Praetorian Guards ran out of patience, they suffocated her in a steam room. Her head was cut off and taken to Rome just so that Poppaea could see it” (210). The infamous fire which would consume a large portion of Rome “began in a small shop on 19 July AD 64 in the area of the Circus Maximus … As it gathered momentum, it rampaged through the narrow streets, tenement blocks, porticoes and alleyways in the heart of Rome between the Palatine and Capitoline hills. The fire continued for six days and then, just when it was believed to have died out, it reignited and continued for three more days. By the time it had finished, only four of Rome’s fourteen districts would still be intact; three were completely destroyed, and the others largely devastated but for the charred shells of a few buildings. Many people died and thousands of homes were destroyed, from the tenements of low-born plebs to the grand town houses of landed senators'' (211-2). When Nero heard of this news, contrary to public perception, he ordered for immediate aid. That is, he allowed citizens to live in the Field of Mars, which included parts of his own palace. He also ordered the Praetorian Guard to construct temporary living spaces for those who were rendered homeless. Nero, to ensure such a conflagration would never happen again, “proposed building regulations that included restricting the height of houses and tenements, and specifying permissible types of timber construction. By law streets were to be a certain width and carefully laid out according to plan. New buildings would have to feature an internal courtyard to ensure that there were breathing spaces between them. They would be in sharp contrast to the rickety tenements that had so recently and tragically collapsed … The emperor ensured that he paid for these personally. In the event of another fire, Romans must all costs be protected from falling debris” (212-3). These measures just proved to be introductory, for Nero decided that not only can he rebuild Rome, but he can attempt to make it better than it ever was before. When he created Rome in his head, it quickly became apparent that he was quite disconnected from reality: he mainly focused on palaces, not houses for those who had been rendered homeless. The most infamous case of Nero’s architecture included the Golden House, which was so large and opulent that people were forced out of what remained of their homes before construction even began. Nero became more unpopular, and in an attempt to deliver himself, accused the much-hated Christians of starting the fire. He viciously persecuted them, as they were often forced to dress in animal skins before being attacked by dogs, were crucified, and were burned alive to serve as torches during Nero’s parties. Furthermore, Nero created a sculpture 36 metres (120 feet) tall which was made of bronze that portrayed him, elegantly illustrating his reckless extravagance. To pay for his creations, Nero ransacked the temples of the gods, horrifying many.
Nero eventually discovered some aristocrats were plotting against him (one of their slaves ratted them out) and he had them captured, tortured, and executed (including his tutor Seneca). Nero then said that he wanted to act in public, and when he did, he was unsurprisingly given 1st place by the judges. Even those who didn't like what was happening were virtually forced to clap, for Nero had his secret police, the Augustiani, in many of his performances: “These young and ambitious men were called the Augustiani, and they were a special, 5000-strong division of knights appointed by Nero and formed from aspiring artists. As the emperor’s official fan club, they cuffed, cajoled and harassed the bored and the horrified among the audience. They also acted like secret police, for they spied on the crowd and noted down the names of those who did not attend or those who did not look as though they were enjoying themselves” (226). Not liking Nero’s performances was virtually treason in his eyes, and his ridiculous behavior continued when he murdered Poppaea and her unborn child by kicking her to death in a fury. As if that wasn’t enough, he asked for her body to be laid to rest near that of Augustus. When he went on an extremely expensive and long vacation full of performances, he learned that there was a rebellion against him: a Roman governor, Gaius Julius Vindex, raised an army of 100,000 Gauls who disliked his avariciousness and intense stupidity. Nero, although initially denying the news, eventually realized that he was in deep trouble: even the Senate and Praetorians later abandoned him. On the morning of 9 June, he woke up in his palace to find himself alone. He later committed suicide (while repeating “What an artist dies within me”) by slitting his throat as the rebels approached. He was thirty-one years of age when he died.
Baker later discusses the war Rome had with the Jews in the province of Judaea from 66-70 AD. The Jews revolted because they didn't like the taxation and Roman policies towards their religious principles (Roman citizens were supposed to offer sacrifices to the Emperor). They revolted during the reign of Nero, as many Roman officials discriminated against them and gave them no due consideration when it came to their religion. For instance, Gessius Florus was a despicable official: he “was the archetypal greedy Roman governor. He delighted in impoverishing the Jews, boasted about his crimes, and lost no opportunity of turning a profit through extortion and robbery. Indeed, he saw it as a sport … Florus … ordered his soldiers to take seventeen talents (435 kilograms or nearly 1000 pounds) of silver from the Temple treasury. From this one action all the tensions between the Romans and Jews erupted. Stealing from the very place where King David had founded the Holy City, where King Solomon had built the first Temple, and where the Jews returning from captivity in Babylon had built the second Temple was the greatest violation of their race and history … But Florus couldn’t have cared less” (252). Expectedly, Jerusalem entered into a tumult, and those who attempted to mediate were given little attention: many of the high priests favored the Romans over their people. Florus decided to put down the rebellion by force by sending in the cavalry: 3,000 were murdered and others were crucified. In other instances the Jews were butchered, but the Jews continued to resist. In one instance, they managed to surround a Roman legion and destroyed it (that is, 6,000 people): “It was the greatest defeat of regular Roman forces by the people of an established province in all Roman history” (255). The Jews continued the rebellion and won further victories, causing Nero to have his general Vespasian and Titus (Vespasian’s eldest son) brutally crush the resistance by using terror. Baker describes, “Invading Galilee from the west, Vespasian first took Gabara, where John of Gischala had taken charge of the rebellion … it was taken at the first assault. Marching into it, Vespasian executed his plan. He showed no clemency, put to the sword everyone except small children, and then burnt down the town itself and all the surrounding villages” (263).
They then invaded the town of Jotapata (though it was difficult for them), and some of the rebels committed suicide. Their leader, Josephus, was one of the people who were supposed to kill himself, but as a mathematician, he was able to survive: he devised a game that relied on mathematics to decide the order of who would commit suicide, and when most of his comrades were dead, he persuaded the survivor to not kill him. When he was taken prisoner, he got a private audience with Vespasian and Titus, and predicted that they would become the next emperors of Rome. Although they thought it was ridiculous (Nero was still in power), it turns out that one of his previous predictions had come true (he apparently said that Judata, another city, would collapse on the 47th day, which it did), which led them to not only spare his life but to provide him with a variety of luxuries. Later on, Titus continued his campaign against the Judaean Rebellion: “At Tarichaeae, in the kingdom of the Roman client-king Agrippa, 6000 Jews were massacred as Titus made a dramatic amphibious assault on the unfortified part of the city from a lake. After it was taken, Vespasian discriminated between civilian and insurgent, in order to avoid outraging the local population … However, he broke his promise on the advice of his staff, who feared further insurgency. ‘Expediency must be preferred to conventional morality,’ was their message. The Jews he had set free were later rounded up in a theatre and 1200 of the old and infirm were slaughtered. The 6000 strongest were sent to Greece to work as slaves on Nero’s planned canal in the Isthmus of Corinth … Similarly, at Gamala the Romans repaid Jewish resistance by putting 4000 Jews to the sword; the remaining 5000 insurgents had already jumped to their deaths in a deep ravine” (270). When Nero committed suicide, Vespasian named himself the emperor (in a show of stunning luck: Nero’s successors were murdered or committed suicide due to their armies rebelling). Vespasian’s rise to power came with the deaths of thousands (most of the deaths were directly caused by the Roman army), which made him desperate to validate himself with an external achievement (ex. victory in Judaea). He continued to focus on taking the city, and his army (also led by Titus, who was present at the scene) eventually succeeded in invading Jerusalem by tearing the wall down with brute force (they dug a tunnel through the weakest wall). When the Roman army entered the city, they looted indiscriminately, taking everything of value. They also killed large numbers of people to express their exasperation at how long it took to take the city: “After the best part of four long, gruelling years of campaign, the Roman soldiers vented their wild hatred on the enemy. Piling through all the entrances, they no longer distinguished between Jewish soldier and civilian. All were indiscriminately slaughtered. The steps of the Temple were awash with blood … The din of butchery, however, was about to get a lot worse” (283-4). That is, thousands more Jewish people were burned to death in the temple (a soldier threw a firebrand) and were murdered. The Roman soldiers stole many of the most valuable artifacts, and they had so much loot (even on an individual level) that not only did they make a huge amount of money, but the value of gold in Syria was halved as result of the influx. Baker writes of the Roman army’s terrible behavior: “The old and sick were killed, and thousands of insurgents were executed, taking the total of those killed in the siege to 1,100,000, according to Josephus. The rest, numbering 97,000, were sold into slavery. The young were sent to hard labour in Egypt, or to become fodder for the gladiators and beasts of Roman arenas throughout the empire” (286-7).
Vespasian and Titus, upon going back to Rome, were proclaimed the definite rulers of the Roman Empire, seeing that the Julio-Claudian dynasty had ended (with the death of Nero). At the end of the crushing of the Judaean Rebellion, the Jews were largely defenseless against the Romans, which satisfied the authorities: they no longer had to worry about them as a military foe. However, Vespasian still called for military action against them. One of the most notorious cases is at the city of Masada: “a Jewish group known as the Sicarii, led by Eleazar ben Yair, took refuge in the fortress perched upon a spectacular outcrop of rock. They held out for years until the Romans built a massive siege ramp that gave access up the steep slope to the top of the rock. But by the time the soldiers reached the fortress, they discovered that all 966 rebels had committed mass suicide rather than becoming slaves to Rome. Only a woman and her five children survived to report what had happened” (289). Baker discusses the “Pax Romana,” or “the Roman peace.” While there was indeed a large amount of peace, there was still much brutality, as seen in the Dacian wars (which, Baker states, were nothing less than genocide against the people the Romans warred against). Despite the many slain by the Romans, the Roman economy benefited from all the booty, which allowed for the Circus Maximus to be expanded to include 150,000 people. The emperor Trajan later conquered Armenia. When he died (in his early seventies) he had no children, but he did, however, have an heir: Hadrian. Hadrian was an intelligent ruler, seeing his motivation to do well and his willingness to ask questions. However, he still did have problems: when Apollodorus, the leading architect of his day, criticized the format of a temple to Venus (the goddess of love), Hadrian had him mercilessly executed. Nevertheless, Hadrian constructed the Pantheon, a temple dedicated to all the gods of Rome. Hadrian’s sexual behavior in his personal life suggested that he was a bisexual (though at that time grown men having intimate relations with young boys was seen as normal): while he was married to a woman named Sabina, he had a homosexual relationship with Antinous, a young, handsome man. Hadrian, as stated before, was motivated: this is excellently seen in the wall which he constructed, which ran for 118 kilometres (70 miles) across Rome. It took a decade to build the wall (appropriately named “Hadrian’s Wall”). Baker describes that when it came to Hadrian’s wall, “The stone section was 3 metres (10 feet) thick and 4.2 metres (14 feet) high; the turf section matched the stone part for height, but was 6 metres (20 feet) thick. About twenty paces to the north of the wall, and running parallel with it, was a V-shaped ditch 8 metres (26 feet) wide and 3 metres (10 feet) deep. On top of the wall itself was a walkway defended by a crenellated parapet. A Roman soldier walking it would have come across a towered, fortified gateway every Roman mile (approximately 1.5 kilometres), and in between, at every third of that mile (0.5 kilometres) an observation turret. Servicing the wall, as well as forming part of it, were sixteen forts” (299). When it comes to the purpose of the wall, it can be read as a defensive structure (against foreign peoples) as well as one indicative of arrogance (the wall was repeatedly stated as the divide between the Romans and the so-called “barbarians”). Hadrian was a very effective ruler, as he focused greatly on order and bureaucracy to ensure efficiency. He also focused on competency when it came to government positions, and tried to ensure that only deserving people would get jobs by requiring that applicants would have letters of recommendation from their friends and other significant acquaintances (these letters would provide a list of said person’s character). Some have complained that being a government official under Hadrian was highly boring, seeing that everything (especially the writing) was extremely methodical. When it came to his own life, Hadrian spent more than half of his twenty-one-year reign abroad, as he wanted to manage his empire first-hand.
Much of Hadrian’s rule involved the sacrifice of large numbers of animals (he was a hunter), and economic injustice and bribery became more and more apparent as the compounding effect continued to work its magic: “Under Hadrian a disturbing two-tier justice system now began to develop, which distinguished between two kinds of people. The legal punishments of, for example, flogging, torture, beheading, crucifixion and deportations were reserved only for the propertyless ‘humble’ citizens; more ‘respectable’ army veterans, town councillors, knights and senators were, by contrast, protected from the sharp edge of Roman law. This divide would become only more acute with time” (309). Hadrian’s lover Antinous drowned when they went to Egypt (he perished in a boating accident), and Hadrian founded a city there, Antinoopolis, to commemorate his memory. He also deified Antinous, and lived out the rest of his life in a large villa complex. After his death, Antoninus Pius (one of the “Five Good Emperors” due to his reign including almost no war) became the emperor. Later on, Marcus Aurelius became the emperor. While he did his duties well (he was a practicing Stoic), his son Commodus (who lacked discipline and engaged in depraved behavior) basically ended the Pax Romana: “In 193, the dynasty founded by Rome’s first African emperor, Septimius Severus, ensured that Hadrian’s golden age was revived once again. But it was not enough to halt an inevitable slide into decline. By the middle of the third century AD Rome was catapulted into a new period of total crisis and near collapse” (311). Baker writes of Rome’s discrimination towards Christians: people like Pliny the Younger were amazed at how obstinate and foolish they were, for even when they offered them life in exchange for a compromise (they would give sacrifices to the Emperor), they refused. Some of them were executed, and Rome faced massive trouble from 235-85 CE. In that time period there were at least twenty emperors who were either murdered or died on the battlefield. Diocletian, an emperor, in 299 CE heard from some pagan priests that the Christians were working against the Roman government, and he instigated persecutions. The Romans loathed the Christians because they viewed it as contrary to their culture: “they considered the worship of its one god dangerously exclusive. It was a rejection of everything it meant to be Roman. By refusing to pray to Roman gods, Christians rejected the Roman race and the Roman order of things. But Christianity posed an ever greater threat than this. After decades of crisis, the ‘peace of the gods’, the unwritten contract by which the Roman gods presided benevolently over the empire in return for worship, was more than a highly guarded prize. On it depended the stability of the entire empire. It was essential to rebuilding security. Loyalty to a Christian God only put that security in jeopardy. Times of greatest crisis entrailed the greatest clampdowns” (320-1). Although the persecutions were intense, they failed in their ultimate objective, for Christianity had many followers. Diocletian later abdicated to proceed to his comfortable retirement. The emperor Constantine was the first Roman emperor to sponsor Christianity: he did so to inspire his soldiers by having it serve as motivation, seeing that he claimed to see a flaming cross above the Milvian Bridge. This allowed him victory over his enemy Maxentius and his army: when Maxentius’s army fled across the bridge, it couldn’t support their weight and collapsed. Constantine attributed his victory to Christianity, and passed the Edict of Milan, which stated that Christians would no longer be persecuted: “Crucially, it did not favour Christians above pagans, but stressed only their equal rights of worship, granting both full legal recognition to ‘follow whatever form of worship they please.’” (343).
Later on, when the pro-Christian leader Licinius took power, he started a purge, murdering those associated with the ruler Daia (a persecutor of the Christians who later committed suicide by ingesting poison) as well as the families of Diocletian, Severus, and Galerius (all persecutors of the Christians). The Christians, hearing this, rejoiced (despite the Bible’s strict maxim that murder was to be avoided): “some Christian writers of the time heartily approved of the murder of persecutors” (344). Later on, Constantine gave Christians rights that the common citizens were barred from: ridiculously and quite foolishly, he said that being a Christian was virtually just as important as having an important job (ex. being a doctor): “A letter from 313 shows his first action: Christians, it said, were exempt from civic public duties such as serving as jurors, overseeing the collection of taxes, or organizing building projects, festivals and games. Previously such exemptions had been given to those whose profession benefited the state in other ways, such as doctors and teachers. Now Constantine declared that Christians were just as deserving. Being able to devote more time to worship of the Christian God, said Constantine, would make ‘an immense contribution to the welfare of the community’. Christianity, the imperial message made plain, was essential to the good of the empire. In addition, he granted payments to the clergy, and also made Christians of privileged and propertied rank exempt from paying taxes” (345). Constantine also spent massive amounts of money building churches (instead of improving people’s lives in the here and now), much to the pleasure of the Christian elite (who behaved contrary to what their scriptures mandated: didn't Jesus call for his followers to abandon their worldly possessions and to help the poor?). During this time period, Rome was divided into two parts (the East and the West), and people generally viewed Constantine as being the ruler of Rome, not Licinius. Constantine around this time also used repressions to crush rival paganistic religions (so much for “tolerance”) and Licinius, becoming envious and paranoid, tried to show that his side of Rome was still paganistic: “In 323 Licinius compelled everyone in his administration to sacrifice or else lose their job. He put the same test of conformity to his army. On the advice of zealous pagan officials, the requirement was forced on civilians” (356). Licinius and Constantine eventually fought each other fiercely, and on 18 September 324 the most important battle which would decide the true ruler of Rome occurred. Baker writes, “The two emperors drew up their massive armies on a plain midway between Chrysopolis (now a suburb of Istanbul) and the town of Chalcedon. Constantine’s army was distinguished once again by its magnificent Christian standard” (359). Licinius’s army made the first move, though they were terrified of the potential supernatural power of the Christian cross. In the end, the army of Licinius was utterly decimated: “In the face of forceful assault, the fighting spirit had simply left Licinius’s men. The battle of Chrysopolis had turned into a massacre on an enormous scale. Over 100,000 of Licinius’s army were said to have been killed … Licinius slipped away from the battlefield on horseback in the company of some cavalry” (360). Soon after, Constantine’s sister (Licinius’s wife) begged Constantine to spare his life, and he agreed. The end of this conflict made him the decisive ruler of Rome. As for Licinius, Constantine later went back on his word: “Within a year of Licinius’s surrender and abdication, a detachment of imperial soldiers found him with his family in Greece. When Licinius saw the guards approach perhaps he knew instantly that Constantine had gone back on his word, that the emperor could never allow potential rivals and their heirs to live, could never forgive. The soldiers took him and his son aside and garrotted them” (362).
Constantine, after his victory, encouraged Roman citizens to become Christians, as he said that they overthrew religious persecutors (though the Christians would lay waste to each other by the millions in conflicts like the Thirty Years War: in another instance, more Christians slaughtered each other in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre than all those who had been killed by Rome in total). Constantine then said that the Christian god was morally supreme (though he slaughtered far more people than Satan ever did, and is a sadistic megalomaniac: for instance, if he really loved humanity in the first place, why would he literally throw them out of paradise for disobeying him once out of curiosity? Also, his killing everyone via a flood instead of using his supposedly great powers to fix people at their core shows how uncaring, unstable, and dangerous he is: if he exists, we are all in trouble - why would a supposedly all-loving god torture someone forever in the fires of Hell? It completely defeats the purpose of “mercy.”) and he made Christianity the official religion of Rome. Christianity’s prevalence grew even further, and later Constantinople was built (named after Constantine, of course). When Constantine died on 22 May 337, his reign had been the longest since Augustus. His three sons began warring against each other the moment after his death, destroying much of the progress he had made, as they fractured Rome. Rome fell in 476 AD when the Goths invaded and sacked Rome. Beforehand, when they requested asylum, the Romans denied them a definitive answer. When the Romans attacked them, the Gauls responded in turn, entering Rome after defeating the emperor’s guard at the battle of Hadrianople (the Romans suffered perhaps 13,000 deaths). Baker writes that when the Gauls sacked Rome, the Romans realized that the Roman empire wasn’t invincible after all, with many panicking in the process. Baker describes himself that the Roman envoys begged the leader of the Gauls, Alaric, to let Rome keep its belongings. He responded (somewhat humorously) by saying that he was already being generous by letting them keep their lives. “Within days, a spectacular, unprecedented procession of wagons left the city of Rome. They carried 2250 kilograms (2 tons) of gold, 135,000 kilograms (13 tons) of silver, 4000 silk tunics, 3000 scarlet-dyed fleeces and 1350 kilograms (3000 pounds) of pepper … Even precious statues from the ancient temples were melted down” (396). Alaric destroyed Rome’s military: in a single incidence he destroyed a powerful group of 6,000 Roman soldiers by spotting and descending upon them with unimaginable speed and force. After more barbarian tribes (including Attila the Hun) caused more damage to Rome, it finally collapsed in 476 AD, seeing that it could no longer maintain itself against external pressure. Odovacar, a Roman general who became a Germanic king, became the ruler of Italy: by that point, the superpower that was Rome was all but gone. And thus comes the end of Rome’s story from a strictly historical standpoint: everything must come to an end (even the universe itself from a certain standpoint, though it will take an unimaginable amount of time), and that includes Rome.
Personal thoughts:
Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire by Simon Baker is a truly fantastic book which provides an overview (that still has detail) of the Roman empire. It clearly demonstrates that Rome was an organization like any other, and that those who made it up (the emperors, consuls, officials, civilians, soldiers, and slaves) were human beings like all of us. As you know, there are many lessons to be derived from Rome, one of the foremost being the importance of every citizen to the well-being of the government: if discontent is common, then military failure can be explained. After all, why would people fight hard for a government who they feel doesn’t deserve their service? Also, why would they fight for a government which pays them poorly and treats them like dung? I also believe Rome has a moral lesson, predominantly humility, cooperation, and realism: no organization or person is immune from failure and terrible mistakes, not even an empire as powerful as Rome. I highly recommend Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire to anyone interested in Roman history, historical figures, changes and continuities over time, and the role of government.
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