Chapter Summary

Civilization began later in the western Mediterranean than in the flood plains of the East. A Bronze Age culture did not develop until 1500 B.C.E. Rich in metallic ores, the western Mediterranean developed as a source of ores and metallurgy. Around 1000 B.C., the Villanovan civilization, an iron-using culture, replaced the earlier Bronze Age cultures in northern Italy. At about the same time, other peoples speaking a different tongue, Italic, migrated into Italy.

Around 800 B.C., the Phoenicians established a series of trading bases tying together the Phoenician home cities of Tyre, Byblos, and Sidon on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean with commercial centers located in northern Africa, Italy, Spain, and the Mediterranean islands. The greatest of the Phoenician commercial centers in the western Mediterranean was Carthage in northern Africa. Carthage became independent of the Phoenician homeland when the mother cities fell to the New Babylonian Empire in the sixth century B.C.E. Carthage built a commercial empire in the western Mediterranean. Fertile agricultural hinterlands supported the growth of the city, and armies recruited from various ethnic groups throughout the western Mediterranean protected the far-flung ports of trade. The constitution of Carthage was mixed. A popular assembly annually elected heads of state, but the candidates were limited to the commercial aristocracy. The heads of state were advised by an equally aristocratic senate. Military commanders were also elected. The government was, thus, not democratic and there was little popular involvement. Carthaginian religion was derived from the Phoenicians. The chief god was Baal. Carthaginians may have been forced to sacrifice their first-born male children to Baal.

Greek colonization of the western Mediterranean began in the eighth century B.C.E. Greek colonies were concentrated in the island of Sicily and on the southern mainland of Italy, called Greater Greece. Syracuse was one of the greatest colonial ventures. Initially Greek colonization posed no threat to Carthaginian territories; but as the Greek migration continued, the two cultures came into conflict. In the fifth century B.C., the rulers of Syracuse were successful in defeating Carthaginian assaults. The success of the Greek colonists in defending their settlements permitted a half-century of cultural advance. In 410 B.C.E. the wars between Carthage and the Sicilian colonies resumed with inconclusive results.

The first Italian civilization was that of the Etruscans. The script of the Etruscans was derived from the Greek alphabet, although the languages are entirely different. In the mid-sixth century B.C., twelve tribal groups sharing a similar language and culture united to form a confederation to oppose the continued advance of Greek colonization. Eventually the Etruscan confederation came to include many settlements in the Italian peninsula. Cities, each ruled by a king, were the political units of the confederacy. By the fifth century B.C., the kingship evolved into oligarchic governments dominated by aristocratic assemblies. The assemblies elected magistrates responsible for the administration of the cities. This was the basis for the later Roman republican form of government.

Etruscan society was typified by two status groups: a land-owning aristocracy and slave laborers. Women held relatively high status in Etruscan society and were active in public life. The Etruscans, like the Greek colonies and the Carthaginians, sought to establish a commercial hegemony. At the end of the sixth century B.C., the Etruscan cities, including Rome, entered into an alliance with the Carthaginians directed against their common Greek enemies. Etruscans failures in the war against the Greek colonies marked the beginning of Etruscan decline.

Early Romans saw themselves as simple farmers and citizen-soldiers. They constructed myths of ideal political role models: Cincinnatus, Horatius Cocles, and Lucretia. They also constructed origin myths to explain the beginnings of Roman society. The stories of Romulus and Remus, the Homeric tradition of Aeneas, and the mythic histories of Etruscan kings established the foundations of Roman destiny.

Latium, the homeland of the Latins, lay between Etruria to the north and Greater Greece to the south. By the end of the seventh century B.C., a cluster of villages on the hills near the Tiber River formed a league for military defense and shared religious cults. This group of villages became Rome. At the foundation of early Roman society were households dominated by a paterfamilias with power of life and death over household members. Related households were grouped into clans or gentes. Those households unrelated to gentes were referred to as plebeian, while the members of clans were called patricians. Heads of the patrician families composed an aristocratic council, the Senate. In addition to the Senate, an assembly of all male citizens selected kings. Kingship was largely a ritual position.

In the middle of the seventh century B. C., the Etruscans overwhelmed the Romans and added them to the Etruscan confederacy. Etruscan kings and magistrates, more powerful than their Roman counterparts, were introduced into the Roman political structure. Rome became an important part of the Etruscan trade network and expanded as its economic significance grew. The Etruscans also reorganized Roman social structure. As in Greece, the democratization of the military through the introduction of hoplite infantry created a social system based on land-holding. The Etruscan King Servius Tullius divided Roman society into five groups according to landed wealth and their ability to serve militarily. Each group was divided into centuries. Members of the centuries composed a new political assembly, the centuriate assembly, which took over the task of electing the magistrates. The wealthy landowning aristocracy dominated the centuriate assembly. Gradually the patricians assumed a monopoly over public office. The Etruscans significantly altered the politics, society, and economy of Rome; but they were unable to maintain their dominance. Around 509 B.C., the Romans expelled the Etruscan kings and established a new government.

The expulsion of the Etruscan kings is part of the Roman myth of origin. The establishment of oligarchy was typical of all Italian political structures. The early republic was a patrician monopoly of power. At the top of the government were two consuls elected in the centuriate assembly for one-year terms. Over time, other magistrates were developed to aid the consuls in the administration of the government. Praetors, quaestors, and censors formed a college of magistrates. The ladder of political office was called the cursus honorum. The Senate was transformed into a body of former magistrates who advised the consuls. The centuriate assembly proposed laws and elected magistrates to annual office. Patrician families also controlled the major public priesthoods. Excluded from the government, the plebeian families withdrew from the Roman republic and military service in the first half of the fifth century. The plebeians formed their own representative and legislative assembly, the Council of the Plebs. The plebeian magistrates, charged with protecting the interests of the plebs, were called tribunes. By the middle of the fifth century B.C., there were parallel patrician and plebeian political structures. An assault from a nearby town caused the patricians to seek a compromise with the plebeians. In 450 B.C.E. a written law code, the Twelve Tables, guaranteed the rights of all freemen, patrician and plebeian. The Council of the Plebs was absorbed into the Roman republic along with the office of tribune. Plebeians were eventually admitted to all of the magistracies and the priesthoods. With the settlement of the Struggle of Orders, the Roman republic was free to embark on a program of military conquest in Italy. Between 396 B.C.E. and 265 B.C., Roman legions successfully defeated all of their Italian neighbors, including the Etruscans and the colonies of Greece. Some conquered territory was turned over to Roman colonists. Conquered populations were either admitted to Roman citizenship or offered the status of allies. These policies bound the formerly alien populations to the fortunes of Rome and drew them into the Roman political and cultural system.

As a member of the Etruscan confederacy, Rome was initially an ally of the Carthaginians. Even with the development of the Roman republic, the Romans posed no threat to Carthage because of their lack of a navy. The conquest of the Greek colonies on the Italian mainland, however, attracted Roman interest in Sicily. With the attempted conquest of Sicily, Rome came into conflict with traditional Carthaginian imperial interests. Rome and Carthage fought three Punic Wars, all of them Roman victories. The First Punic War (265-241 B.C.) resulted in the Roman conquest of Sicily and in the development of a Roman war fleet. The Second Punic War (218-202 B.C.) broke out over disputed colonization of Spain, claimed by both Rome and Carthage. The great Carthaginian general, Hannibal, successfully crossed the Italian Alps and invaded Italy. Despite a series of brilliant military victories over a period of fourteen years, Hannibal could not break the Roman system of Italian alliances. Under the command of the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio, Rome struck first at Spain and then at Carthage itself. The Roman assault on northern Africa forced Hannibal’s withdrawal from Italy. He was finally defeated at Zama in 202 B.C.E. Carthage was forced to cede its entire empire to Rome as a result of the defeat. In the Third Punic War (149-146 B.C.), the Romans guaranteed that Carthage could never again threaten Roman intentions in the western Mediterranean. The city of Carthage was destroyed. At about the same time as the end of the Punic Wars, the Romans had extended their political interests into the eastern half of the Mediterranean. In a series of wars, the Romans were able to intervene in the internecine squabbles of the Hellenistic successor states of Alexander’s empire. The Romans defeated the Antigonids of Macedonia and the Seleucids of Asia Minor. By 146 B.C., the Romans controlled Greece and the coast of Asia Minor. The Roman republican empire covered the entire coast of the western Mediterranean, Greece, and Asia Minor.

The conquest of empire destroyed the social foundations of the Roman republic. The independent farmer began to disappear under the new economic conditions.

The backbone of the Roman military and the source of its citizens was the class of small, independent landowners. The Roman military, like that of classical Greece, was predominantly infantry. The Romans, however, replaced the phalanx with the more maneuverable legion. In addition to a more maneuverable formation, the Romans also supplemented their military with feats of engineering: bridge building, siege machines, and catapults. The creation of the republican empire destroyed the farmers on which the Roman army depended. Service at increasingly great distances from Rome made family farms unworkable. Gradually the Roman aristocracy began to assert a monopoly over real property. The small farmers sank into poverty.

A male patriarch, the paterfamilias, governed the Roman household including family members, servants, and slaves. The authority of the household head was absolute, even over married male children. He could sell family members into slavery and decide if a new born lived or was exposed to die. Families who lacked heirs adopted sons, especially promising young men as their political heirs. The Roman house was the center of everyday life. Its structure was simple with several rooms built around an open courtyard called an atrium.

The creation of the republican empire caused changes in the Roman household. Women appear to have achieved greater independence. The gulf between poor and rich households increased. Multi-family dwellings became more common for the landless poor who began to flock to the cities.

The Romans worshipped a large number of deities. Each household venerated its lares and penates, protective gods of the home and field. The responsibility for public worship was assigned to colleges of priests. The priesthoods held no special status and were normally composed of Roman citizens. The extension of the Roman republican empire caused new deities to enter the public realm of worship. Unlike traditional Roman religions, some of the imported cults—the Greek cult of Dionysus, for example—utilized secret rites and identified ritual priesthoods. The Roman Senate occasionally suppressed these foreign religions.

Prior to the third century B.C., the Romans lacked an indigenous literature. In the absence of native authors, Greek historians wrote the first annals of Rome. Greek models inspired the first Roman attempts at drama. Terence (186-159 B.C.E) and Plautus (c. 254-184 B.C.E.) wrote Roman comedies on the Greek model.