Rome

1. Rome

2. Rome • Like the Persian Empire, Rome took shape on the margins of the “civilized” world. • Rome began as a small and poor city-state on the western side of Italy in the eighth century BCE, so weak, according to legend, that Romans were reduced to kidnapping neighboring women in order to reproduce.

3. Rome • Rome’s central location contributed to its success in unifying Italy and then all the lands ringing the Mediterranean. • Italy was a crossroads in the Mediterranean and Rome was a crossroads within Italy. • Rome is located at the midpoint of the Italian peninsula, about 15 miles from the western coast, where a north-south road intersected an east-west river route.

4. Rome • The Tiber River on the one side and a ring of seven hills on the other gave Rome natural protection.

5. Rome • Even though 75% of Italy is hilly, there is still ample arable land in the coastal plains and river valleys to sustain a larger population than Greece.

6. Rome • Agriculture was the essential economic activity in the early Roman state, and land was the basis of wealth. • Social status, political privilege, and fundamental values were related to landownership. • The vast majority of early Romans were self-sufficient independent farmers who owned small plots of land.

7. Rome • A small number of families acquired large pieces of land. The heads of these wealthy families formed the Senate (from the Latin for “old men”). • The Senate played the dominant role in the politics of the Roman state. • According to tradition, there were seven kings between 753-507BCE; the first was Romulus; the last was the tyrannical Tarquinius Superbus.

8. Rome • In 507BCE, members of the Senate, led by Brutus “the Liberator,” deposed Tarquinius Superbus (he was sent into exile) and instituted a res publica, a “public possession,” or a republic.

9. Rome • The Roman Republic, which lasted from 507-31BCE, was not a direct democracy. • Even though all male citizens were eligible to attend various assemblies, the votes of the wealthy land-owning aristocrats (known as patricians) counted for more than the votes of the poorer citizens (known as plebeians). • The word patrician comes from the Latin “patres” meaning “fathers.”

10. Rome • The plebeians were the vast majority of the population—workers, merchants, and peasants. • Although both groups had the right to vote, only patricians had the right to become leaders in Rome. • So, all power was in the hands of the patricians.

11. Rome • Boys born into a patrician family would receive an extensive education, usually from a private tutor. • This education would focus on the subjects a sophisticated noble would be expected to know, as well as some required for his future career. • Poetry and literature, history and geography, some mythology and important languages – like Greek – would all be taught.

12. Rome • The Romans also considered lessons in public speaking and the law to be essential parts of a good education. • Most young patrician men would go on to careers in politics and government, for which these two subjects were crucial.

13. Rome • The patrician class enjoyed many privileges: its members were excused from the military duties expected of other citizens, and only patricians could become emperor. • But being a patrician carried its own dangers: patricians could find themselves becoming wrapped up in palace intrigue. • If they ended up on the losing side, they could easily lose their home, their lands and even their lives.

14. Rome • Apart from the plots and politics, however, members of both royal and patrician families faced little work or real responsibility and were blessed with a relatively charmed life – certainly compared to the other inhabitants of Rome at the time.

15. Rome • Executive power was in the hands of two consuls, who were advised by the patrician Senate. • A patrician in the 1st century BCE with busts of his ancestors.

16. Rome • Technically, the Senate was an advisory council, first to the kings, then to the annually changing Republican consuls. • But the Senate increasingly made policy and governed. They served for life, nominated their sons for public offices, and became a self perpetuating entity. • The inequalities in Roman society led to periodic unrest and conflict (known as the “Conflict of the Orders”) between 509-287BCE.

17. Rome • On a number of occasions, the plebeians refused to work or fight, and even physically withdrew from the city in order to pressure the elite to make political concessions. • One result was the first publication of Roman laws, on twelve stone tablets (450 BCE), which gave the plebeians some legal protections from the abuses of judicial officials.

18. Rome • Another reform was the creation of a new office—the tribune—who represented plebeians in the public assemblies. • The tribunes had the power to veto or block legislation that was unfavorable to the lower classes. • Romans took great pride in this political system, believing it gave them more freedom than most of their more autocratic neighbors.

19. Rome • The basic unit of Roman society was the family, made up of several generations of family members plus domestic slaves. • The oldest living male, the paterfamilias (where the term patron comes from) exercised absolute authority over other family members. • If the matron, the woman of the house, was of a dignified social status, the power of the father was somewhat restrained.

20. Rome • Nearly everything we know about Roman women pertains to those in the upper classes. • In early Rome, a woman never ceased to be a child in the eyes of the law. She started out under the absolute authority of the paterfamilias. • When she married, she came under the jurisdiction of the paterfamilias of her husband’s family.

21. Rome • Unable to own property or represent herself in legal proceedings, she had to depend on a male guardian to advocate for her interests.

22. Rome • Despite the limitations put on them, Roman women seem to have been less constrained than their counterparts in the Greek world. • Husband and wife mosaic from Pompeii.

23. Rome • Slavery was a defining element of Roman society. • Every ancient society practiced slavery, but none to the scale of the Romans.

24. Rome • By the time of Christ, the Italian heartland of the Roman Empire had 2-3 million slaves, or about 33-40% of the total population (in China is was maybe 1% of the population). • Not until the modern slave societies of the plantation complex was slavery practiced again on such a large scale.

25. Rome • Even people of modest means frequently had 2-3 slaves. • Owning slaves confirmed peoples’ positions as free, demonstrated their social status, and expressed their ability to exercise power. • The vast majority of Roman slaves were prisoners of the many wars that came with the creation of the empire.

26. Rome • After the Third Punic War (146 BCE) and the destruction of Carthage, the Romans enslaved en masse over 55,000 people. • Pirates also kidnapped thousands of people, selling them to Roman slave traders. • Roman merchants were able to purchase slaves from the long-distance trading networks extending to the Black Sea, eastern Africa, and northwestern Europe.

27. Rome

28. Rome • The children of slave mothers were also regarded as slaves and these “home-born” slaves had more prestige because they were thought to be less trouble (since they had never known freedom).

29. Rome • Abandoned children could legally become the slave of anyone who rescued them. • Roman slavery had nothing to do with race or ethnicity, so the slave markets had an enormous diversity of people. • Like slave owners everywhere, the Romans thought their slaves were “barbarians;” lazy, unreliable, immoral, etc. and came to think of certain peoples as slaves by nature (Asiatic Greeks, Syrians, and Jews).

30. Rome • Slaves were considered property; they had no rights and were subject to their owners' whims.

31. Rome • However, they had legal standing as witnesses in courtroom proceedings, and they could eventually gain freedom and citizenship. • Masters often freed loyal slaves in gratitude for their faithful service, but slaves could also save money to purchase their freedom.

32. Rome There was no serious criticism of slavery, even when Christianity became more important. Christian teaching held that slaves should be “submissive to their masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh.”

33. St. Paul used the metaphor of slavery to describe the relationship of believers to God, saying they were “slaves of Christ.” Rome

34. Rome • Even Saint Augustine described slavery as God’s punishment for sin. • He regarded it as another necessary evil resulting from humanity's fall from divine grace.

35. Rome • So slavery was deeply embedded in the religious thinking and social outlook of the Romans. • Slavery was especially entrenched in the Roman economy. • No occupation was off-limits to slaves exceptmilitary service, and there was no distinction between jobs that used slaves or free people…frequently they labored side by side.

36. Rome • In rural areas, slaves were most of the labor force that worked estates (whose products were exported like the later plantations of the Americas). Often they worked chained together.

37. Rome • In the cities, slaves often worked in their owners’ households, but also as skilled artisans, teachers, doctors, entertainers, and actors. (A slave trained in medicine was worth 50 agricultural slaves). • Especially prized were educated Greek slaves, who became the tutors for the children of Rome’s elite class.

38. Rome • Others maintained the temples and shrines and kept Rome’s water system running. • Some (many were criminals) were forced into the empire’s many mines and stone quarries where they labored under brutal conditions. • A pound of Chinese silk was worth 12 slaves.

39. Rome • Some slaves, in the service of the Emperor, were trained in special schools to become gladiators.

40. Rome • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI1ylg4GKv8 • Are you not entertained?

41. Rome • Saturnalia was a traditional celebration like Christmas in which slaves and masters switched places. In this celebration, the master became the slave and performed all the tasks of the slave, and the slaves did the opposite.

42. Rome • Roman slaves, like slaves everywhere responded to enslavement in many ways. • Most simply did what they had to survive but there were cases of prisoners of war committing mass suicide rather than become slaves. • Slaves sometimes resorted to “weapons of the weak,” pretending illness, working poorly, putting curses on their masters.

43. Rome • Sometimes slaves escaped into the large crowds or to remote rural areas, prompting a growing business of catching runaways. • Occasional murders of slave owners made masters conscious of the dangers they faced and prompted the Roman saying “Every slave we own is an enemy we harbor.”

44. Rome • Several times in Roman history there were slave led rebellions, the most famous happening in 73 BCE. It was led by the slave gladiator Spartacus.

45. Rome • Spartacus initially led seventy slave-gladiators to freedom…their success attracted a growing number of slaves. • At the height of the rebellion, it is estimated there were 120,000 slaves in revolt. • They set Italy ablaze for two years, sometimes crucifying captured slave owners or making them fight to the death gladiator style.

46. Rome • Eventually the movement collapsed when the slaves encountered the superior Roman legions. • Some 6,000 rebel slaves were nailed to crosses along the Apian Way from Rome to Capua, where the revolt had begun.

47. Rome • Nothing on the scale of the Spartacus rebellion occurred again in the Western world until the Haitian Revolution of the 1790’s. • But Haitian rebels wanted to create a new society, free of slavery altogether. • None of Rome’s slave rebellions, including Spartacus’, had any such plan or goal. They simply wanted to escape from slavery. • As a result, aside from the perpetual fear of slave owners, the slave system in Rome was unaffected.

48. Rome • Slave owners were supposed to provide their slaves with the necessities of life (food, shelter, protection, etc). • This often meant slaves had a more secure life than impoverished free people who had to fend for themselves, BUT the price of that security was absolute subjection to the will of the master.

49. Rome • Beatings, sexual abuse, and sale to another owner were constant possibilities. • Having no legal rights, slaves couldn’t legally marry, and if they accumulated money or possessions, it legally belonged to their masters, who could seize it at any time.

50. Rome • If a slave murdered his/her master, Roman law demanded the lives of all the victim’s slaves. • When one Roman official was killed by a slave in 61CE, all 400 of his slaves were condemned to death. • In Rome, like Greece, slavery was widespread. But in Rome, unlike Greece, freedom was accompanied with citizenship.