Rome began as a small town on the Tiber River and grew into a massive empire through military expansion and conquest over centuries. It transitioned from a monarchy to a republic ruled by elected officials and senators. Internal political struggles and the rise of influential figures like Julius Caesar led to the end of the republic and establishment of the Roman Empire under Augustus in 27 BC. The empire reached its peak but then declined due to economic troubles, corruption, and invasions, with the western half falling in 476 AD.

1. Rome: Republic
to Empire

2. -Beginning in the eighth century B.C., Ancient
Rome grew from a small town on central Italy’s
Tiber River into an empire that at its peak
encompassed most of continental Europe,
Britain, much of western Asia, northern Africa
and the Mediterranean islands.
-After 450 years as a republic, Rome became
an empire in the wake of Julius Caesar’s rise
and fall in the first century B.C.
-The long and triumphant reign of its first
emperor, Augustus, began a golden age of peace
and prosperity; by contrast, the empire’s decline
and fall by the fifth century A.D. was one of the
most dramatic implosions in the history of
human civilization.

3. Early Monarchy
-Originally a small town on the banks of the Tiber River, Rome grew in size and
strength, early on, through trade. The location of the city provided merchants with an
easily navigable waterway on which to traffic their goods.
- Greek culture and civilization, which came to Rome via Greek colonies to the
south, provided the early Romans with a model on which to build their own culture.
From the Greeks they borrowed literacy and religion as well as the fundamentals of
architecture.
-Rome’s era as a monarchy ended in 509 B.C. with the overthrow of its seventh
king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, whom ancient historians portrayed as cruel and
tyrannical, compared to his benevolent predecessors.
- A popular uprising was said to have arisen over the rape of a virtuous noblewoman,
Lucretia, by the king’s son.

5. The Early Republic
-The power of the monarch passed to two
annually elected magistrates called consuls; they
also served as commanders in chief of the army.
- The magistrates, though elected by the people,
were drawn largely from the Senate, which was
dominated by the patricians, or the descendants of
the original senators from the time of Romulus.
- Politics in the early republic was marked by the
long struggle between patricians and plebeians
(the common people), who eventually attained
some political power through years of
concessions from patricians, including their own
political bodies, the tribunes, which could initiate
or veto legislation.

6. - In 450 B.C., the first Roman law
code was inscribed on 12 bronze
tablets–known as the Twelve Tables–and
publicly displayed in the Roman Forum.
- These laws included issues of legal
procedure, civil rights and property
rights and provided the basis for all
future Roman civil law.
- By around 300 B.C., real political
power in Rome was centered in the
Senate, which at the time included only
members of patrician and wealthy
plebeian families.

7. Military Expansion
- During the early republic, the Roman state grew exponentially in both
size and power.
- Though the Gauls sacked and burned Rome in 390 B.C., the Romans
rebounded under the leadership of the military hero Camillus, eventually
gaining control of the entire Italian peninsula by 264 B.C.
- Rome then fought a series of wars known as the Punic Wars with
Carthage, a powerful city-state in northern Africa.
- Rome and Carthage were rivals in trade in the Western Mediterranean
and, with Carthage defeated, Rome held almost absolute dominance over
the region (there were still incursions by pirates which prevented complete
Roman control of the sea).

9. Punic Wars
- The First Punic War broke out in 264
B.C. when Rome interfered in a dispute
on the Carthaginian-controlled island of
Sicily; the war ended with Rome in
control of both Sicily and Corsica and
marked the empire’s emergence as a naval
as well as a land power.
- In the Third Punic War (149–146
B.C.), the Romans captured and destroyed
the city of Carthage and sold its surviving
inhabitants into slavery, making a section
of northern Africa a Roman province.

10. - As the Republic of Rome grew in power and prestige,
the city of Rome began to suffer from the effects of
corruption, greed and the over-reliance on foreign slave
labor.
- In the 2nd century BCE, the Gracchi brothers,
Tiberius and Gaius, two Roman tribunes, lead a
movement for land reform and political reform in
general.
-Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were a pair of tribunes of
the plebs from the 2nd Century BC, who sought to
introduce land reform and other populist legislation in
ancient Rome.
- They were both members of the Populares, a group
of politicians who appealed to the average citizens and
that opposed the conservative Optimates in the Roman
Senate. They have been deemed the founding fathers of
both socialism and populism.

11. The Republic
- Even so, Rome found itself divided across class lines. The ruling class called
themselves Optimates (the best men) while the lower classes, or those who
sympathized with them, were known as the Populares (the people).
-These opposing ideologies would famously clash in the form of three men
who would, unwittingly, bring about the end of the Roman Republic.
- Marcus Licinius Crassus and his political rival, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus
(Pompey the Great) joined with another, younger, politician, Gaius Julius
Caesar, to form what modern historians call the First Triumvirate of Rome.
- After earning military glory in Spain, Caesar returned to Rome to vie for the
consulship in 59 B.C. From his alliance with Pompey and Crassus, Caesar
received the governorship of three wealthy provinces in Gaul beginning in 58
B.C.; he then set about conquering the rest of the region for Rome.

12. - In 49 B.C., Caesar and one of his legions crossed the Rubicon, a river
on the border between Italy from Cisalpine Gaul. Caesar’s invasion of
Italy ignited a civil war from which he emerged as dictator of Rome for
life in 45 B.C.
“Even as he hesitated this incident occurred. A man of strikingly noble
mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand, and played upon a
pipe. To hear him not merely some shepherds, but soldiers too came
flocking from their posts, and amongst them some trumpeters. He
snatched a trumpet from one of them and ran to the river with it; then
sounding the "Advance!" with a piercing blast he crossed to the other
side. At this Caesar cried out, 'Let us go where the omens of the Gods
and the crimes of our enemies summon us! THE DIE IS NOW
CAST!'”

13. - He was assassinated by a group of Roman
Senators in 44 BCE, however, precisely
because of these achievements. The
conspirators, Brutus and Cassius among
them, seemed to fear that Caesar was
becoming too powerful and that he might
eventually abolish the Senate.
- Following his death, his right-hand man,
and cousin, Marcus Antonius (Mark
Antony) joined forces with Caesar's nephew
and heir, Gaius Octavius Thurinus
(Octavian) and Caesar's friend, Marcus
Aemilius Lepidus, to defeat the forces of
Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Phillippi in
42 BCE.

14. Rise of an Empire
- With Octavian leading the western provinces, Antony the
east, and Lepidus Africa, tensions developed by 36 B.C. and
the triumvirate soon dissolved.
-In 31 B.C., Octavian triumped over the forces of Antony
and Queen Cleopatra of Egypt (also rumored to be the
onetime lover of Julius Caesar) in the Battle of Actium.
-- By 29 B.C., Octavian was the sole leader of Rome and all
its provinces. To avoid meeting Caesar’s fate, he made sure
to make his position as absolute ruler acceptable to the public
by apparently restoring the political institutions of the
Roman republic while in reality retaining all real power for
himself.
- In 27 B.C., Octavian assumed the title of Augustus,
becoming the first emperor of Rome.

15. - Augustus’ dynasty included the unpopular Tiberius (14-37 A.D.), the
bloodthirsty and unstable Caligula (37-41) and Claudius (41-54), who was
best remembered for his army’s conquest of Britain.
- The line ended with Nero (54-68), whose excesses drained the Roman
treasury and led to his downfall and eventual suicide.
- These first five rulers of the empire are referred to as the Julio-Claudian
Dynasty for the two family names they descended from (either by birth or
through adoption), Julius and Claudius.
1. Augustus
2. Tiberius
3. Caligula,
4. Claudius,
5. and Nero.

16. Fall of an Empire
- Four emperors took the throne in the tumultuous year after Nero’s death;
the fourth, Vespasian (69-79), and his successors, Titus and Domitian, were
known as the Flavians; they attempted to temper the excesses of the Roman
court, restore Senate authority and promote public welfare.
- The reign of Nerva (96-98), who was selected by the Senate to succeed
Domitian, began another golden age in Roman history, during which four
emperors–Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius–took the
throne peacefully, succeeding one another by adoption, as opposed to hereditary
succession.
- During the third century Rome suffered from a cycle of near-constant conflict.
A total of 22 emperors took the throne, many of them meeting violent ends at
the hands of the same soldiers who had propelled them to power.

17. - The reign of Diocletian (284-305)
temporarily restored peace and prosperity in
Rome, but at a high cost to the unity of the
empire.
- The stability of this system suffered greatly
after Diocletian and Maximian retired from
office. Constantine (the son of Constantius)
emerged from the ensuing power struggles as
sole emperor of a reunified Rome in 324.
- He moved the Roman capital to the Greek
city of Byzantium, which he renamed
Constantinople. At the Council of Nicaea in
325, Constantine made Christianity (once an
obscure Jewish sect) Rome’s official religion.

18. - Rome eventually collapsed under the weight
of its own bloated empire, losing its provinces
one by one: Britain around 410; Spain and
northern Africa by 430.
- Attila and his brutal Huns invaded Gaul and
Italy around 450, further shaking the
foundations of the empire.
- In September 476, a Germanic prince
named Odovacar won control of the Roman
army in Italy. After deposing the last western
emperor, Romulus Augustus, Odovacar’s troops
proclaimed him king of Italy, bringing an
ignoble end to the long, tumultuous history of
ancient Rome.