The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire (11 page)

Ancient Italy was a wild and rugged place, made up of many peoples with their own ethnic identities. Latium, the area from which Romans considered “their” people to come, was a relatively small portion of central Italy. From Rome, the civilized part of Italy was confined mostly to the west coast. Directly to the south, Greek colonies and settlements spread down through Italy and Sicily; directly to the north, the Etruscans controlled the territory up to the present-day Italian Riviera. These cultures also controlled the fertile valleys stretching up into the hinterland. From there, things got rough.

 
When in Rome
The cost of a “
pyrrhic victory
” is so great that it brings eventual defeat. In other words, you win the battle but (because of the cost of the battle) lose the war.

The Etruscans were the most developed of the early Italic peoples, and their domination of Rome during the period of the kings left a lasting mark upon the city. The Etruscans organized the early Roman army and political and religious institutions, and these basic frameworks held. They also left an indelible mark upon the foundations of Roman religion, myth, and family life.

The Etruscan necropolis (city of the dead) at Cerveteri.

There has been controversy about the origin of the Etruscans since ancient days. The Greek historian Herodotus (ca 450
B
.
C
.
E
.) claimed that the Etruscans were migrants from Lydia (Turkey). Herodotus came from a city in this area (Halicarnassus, modern Bodrum), and you would think he'd know. However, the historian Dionysus (ca 25
B
.
C
.
E
.), who came from the same city, claimed that the Etruscans were of native Italian origin.

The best guess is that sometime in the eighth century
B
.
C
.
E
., a group of immigrants from Asia Minor arrived on the shores of northwest Italy, but instead of maintaining a separate cultural identity, they combined with the native Villanovan peoples of the area and became the Etruscans.

Either way, by the sixth century
B
.
C
.
E
., there was a powerful group of Etruscan cities, modeled on the Greek city-state, in north central Italy. The Etruscans used the rich resources of Etruria to become powerful and rich. They were fine craftsmen, ingenious architects and builders, and wonderful workers in bronze and gold. Their art, left primarily in their lavish tomb paintings, is some of the finest of the ancient world.

 
Roamin' the Romans
Modern word “Tuscany” comes from a Latin name for the Etruscans, Tursci. You can find Etruscan remains all over this area of Italy, but be sure to visit the tombs at Tarquinia and Cerveteri. Famous Etruscan artifacts can be found at Tarquinia, the Villa Julia in Rome, and the Vatican Museum.

Each city was governed by an aristocracy and maintained its own autonomy and independence. Like the Greek city-states, their lack of ability to cooperate under a central authority enabled the Gauls, Greeks, and Samnites to check their expansion, and allowed Rome eventually to divide and conquer them by 350
B
.
C
.
E
.

For as vibrant and as important a culture as the Etruscans were, we possess little of their written language. Etruscan remained a spoken language into the time of the Roman Empire, and the Emperor Claudius was able to collect enough original material to write 20 books of Etruscan history. All this, including the original materials, is lost. All that remains of them are the pictures and creations of a vibrant, passionate, and artistic people, and the traditions the Romans adopted and passed on.

Northern Italy, in addition to the Etruscans, was composed of three Italic peoples who were intermixed with invading Gauls who had settled there. These were the Ligurians, who lived in northwest Italy. Their chief city was Genoa. In the central area lived the Raeti, and in the northeast, the Veneti.

Central Italy was a mixture of people. In the east coast lived the Piceni. These people were connected ethnically to the peoples across the Adriatic in Illyria. On the west coast were the Latins, of whom the Romans were only a part. There were many prosperous Latin towns, such as Ardea, Alba Longa, Tiber, Praeneste, and Lanuvium. All these places figure prominently in early Roman history and lore.

Living up and down the central spine of Italy were groups of rugged pastoral peoples with whom Rome came frequently into conflict throughout its early history. These were tribes like the Umbrians, Volsci, Aequi, Marsi, Samnites, and Sabines. The Sabines feature prominently in Rome's early mythological history, and Rome's early development and expansion are full of conflicts with the others.

Along with the Greek population of Magna Gracia, the Samnites, the Oscans, and the Iapygians inhabited southern Italy. The Oscans lived in the southwest; the Iapygians were the Italic peoples living around the heel of the “boot” of Italy. Over on the island of Sicily, besides the inhabitants of Greek and Phoenician background, there were native Sicels. These people had migrated, probably from Africa, long before the Greek colonists arrived. Sicels could be found in parts of southwest Italy as well.

The site of the city of Rome was central to this mixture of peoples and resources in many ways. In respect to Latium, it occupied a central place in a rich and prosperous area, a building site rich in materials such as wood and stone, and a strategic position for commerce and defense. The resources and manpower that Latium could muster proved to be a deep well from which Rome drew strength after it conquered and united the area.

In respect to Italy, Rome occupied a central location that was both strategically and economically advantageous. Rome grew at the first easy inland crossing of the Tiber river, which made it a crossroads for commerce and travel going both north to south and east to west. In addition, there was an important salt route along the Tiber valley. But despite this strategic location, Rome lacked the kind of harbor from which it could develop into a major seaport. While this was of some disadvantage, it made Rome difficult to invade by sea; and the Tiber, its valley, and the hills of Rome made the city difficult to attack by land. On the other hand, once Rome conquered the
areas around itself and built roads out from the city, Rome's location allowed Roman armies quick and ready mobility throughout Italy.

In respect to the Mediterranean basin, Rome occupied the center of Italy, which in turn dangled down into the center of the Mediterranean Sea. This gave it a central location from which to control both east and west.

Rome's strategic advantage thus worked outward in concentric circles. The city location itself was rich in natural resources and good for defense. It was, however, also central to commerce and communication for a resource- and population-rich region of a centrally located resource- and population-rich land, in the resource- and population-rich Mediterranean basin. Given such a natural advantage, if a people could somehow work their way out from this central spot, they might be able to impose control on it all. The Romans did just that.

• During the rise of Rome there were many ancient cultures in various stages of development around the Mediterranean.
  
• The Greeks and Phoenicians were the primary colonists of the Mediterranean.
  
• There were many peoples in ancient Italy. Etruscans controlled the northwest, Greek settlements controlled the south, and the Latins were between. Various other tribes occupied the central spine of Italy running north-south.
  
• The Etruscans had the most influence on early Roman development and culture.
  
• The city of Rome's strategic position within Italy, and Italy's strategic position within the Mediterranean, gave Rome a natural base from which to establish an empire over all the Mediterranean and the surrounding regions.
  

Chapter 5
 
Seven Hills and One Big Sewer: Rome Becomes a City

• Traditional and more accurate accounts of Rome's beginning
  
• The Roman kings
  
• Rome's revolution from the kings
  
• Early plebeian and patrician struggles
  
• The first stages of Roman government
  

So how did a group of villages along the marshy Tibur River grow, not only into a unified city, but also into a people with the wherewithal to conquer most of the known world? To ask it in simpler terms: How did Rome become “Rome” and the Romans become “the Romans”?

A good place to start is by asking the Romans themselves. As all people do, the Romans had a variety of traditional stories that both reminded them of where they came from and explained how they developed into a particular group of people. In American terms, they had their own versions of the story of Columbus, Thanksgiving, and George Washington and the cherry tree.

These kinds of stories are based partly in history and mostly in imagination. Nevertheless, they tell us a great deal about how the Romans saw themselves. When we put them together with archeological and other historical information, we get a fairly good idea of how Rome became a city and how the Romans became a people.