The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire (25 page)

Romans worshipped a number of gods, or versions of gods, that came from the Etruscans, Italians, Celts, and others who made up the peoples of Italy and Rome. There were, however, gods that the Romans chiefly came to view as their own.

The first was Jupiter,
Optimus Maximus
(The Best and the Greatest), whose great temple was first built by the Etruscan kings on the Capitoline hill. It was to this temple that Roman generals proceeded on the Sacred Way in a triumph to present their spoils and to give thanks for victory. Next was the god of war, Mars, originally a woodland deity who protected farm and field. Vesta, Janus, and Venus were also venerated as deities with whom Rome and the Romans had a special relationship.

Roman religious practice consisted of sacrifices, rituals, and prayer formulas that had to be performed in exactly the right way. One inadvertent mistake spoiled the effect; prayers were ruined and everything had to be started over. By the end of the Republic, most Romans had little personal religious attachment to state religion but remained supportive of their state religious practice and identification.

 
Veto!
Roman priesthoods and their
collegia
were much more secular than sacred in nature. Julius Caesar, for example, was elected as
Pontifex Maximus
but was hardly a figure of religious sincerity, publicly or privately!

The Romans had boards (
collegia
) of priests (
pontifices
), augurs (
augures
), and other religious officials (such as the vestals) to oversee, perform, and organize Rome's religious rites. Some of these (such as the
pontifex maximus
) were elected, but most were appointed.

The priests originated in the time of the kings to oversee the state cults and to determine the calendar for sacred and secular days. Augurs were responsible for figuring out what the gods wanted. They did this by interpreting omens from sacrifices and from
auspices,
the observance of birds. The Romans were a tremendously superstitious people, and a bad omen could ruin one's day, career, or military campaign. No public event could take place without favorable omens. Sometimes, factions manipulated the omens for political effect. Caesar's optimate colleague of 59
B
.
C
.
E
., Bibulus, attempted to thwart Caesar's efforts to pass legislation by setting all dates on which the assembly could meet as holidays.

The chief priests in the Roman state were the . . .

1. Pontifex maximus
   .
   The high priest of Rome, the head of Roman state religion, and the head of the college of pontiffs. He appointed and oversaw the vestal virgins. Julius Caesar, all emperors, and finally the popes had this position and title.
   
2. Rex sacrorum.
   The king of sacred matters. The early Romans established this position after they booted out the kings.
   Rex sacrorum
   was for those really important religious rituals in which one
   needed
   a king but didn't have one because they weren't around anymore.
   
3. Flamen dialis
   . The priest of Jupiter. Flamens were priests devoted to individual gods. The
   flamen dialis
   was the greatest of these and a figure surrounded by a host of taboos. He could not, for instance, eat beans, touch a goat, ride a horse, or have his hair cut by a slave! These restrictions, however, were very unusual.
   

The Latins, the Romans among them, adapted the Greek and Etruscan fighting unit of the phalanx to their own needs in the sixth and fifth centuries
B
.
C
.
E
. Men originally were divided (according to the
comitia centuriata
) by what armor they could afford. During the fourth century, after the Gauls sacked Rome and the Latins revolted, Rome reorganized its military formation to be more flexible. It organized into forces that reflected both age and experience while taking ability to afford arms into account. The Roman army continued to adapt organization, tactics, equipment, and strategy as it met new challenges and new foes. It learned a great deal from the Sabines and Hannibal (see Chapter 6, “On Golden Pond: Rome Conquers Italy and the Mediterranean”), and by the time it came into conflict with Greece in the Macedonian Wars of the second century
B
.
C
.
E
., Roman military tactics far outstripped those of its Greek ancestors.

In very general terms, the early Roman fighting unit of the Republic was the maniple, originally a band of 60 men. Maniples of various grades and with various functions were organized into the largest military unit, the legion. At the front was a maniple of
hastati,
younger soldiers well-armed with a sword, rectangular shield, and two throwing javelins. About 20
leves
(light-armed men with spears) assisted the
hastati.
Behind them was a maniple of
principes,
veteran fighters, who, with more
leves,
reinforced the
hastati
as the backbone of the force. After the
principes
came several maniples of
triarii
and other more inexperienced groups of fighters. These were called in if the enemy broke the
principes.

Originally the legion was made up of about 15 maniples of
hastati
and
principes
each and about 45 of the rest. This brought the strength of the early legions to around 5,000 men not counting cavalry (after about the third century, Romans depended upon allies for their cavalry units). The numbers of men assigned to a maniple gradually increased through the second century
B
.
C
.
E
., and under Marius, the maniple gave way to a new organizational unit of about 600 men, called a cohort (
cohors
), made up of three maniples.

Army service was a part of every Roman citizen's life. In what capacity you served depended on your property class, your experience, and your connections. The Punic Wars with Hannibal took a dreadful toll on soldiers both Roman and Italian. Campaigns increased in number and duration. After 200
B
.
C
.
E
., men might be gone for several years at a stretch; many lost homes and land in the meantime. When they did, they dropped off the service rolls because they no longer owned property. Rome settled some of them on conquered territory, but many migrated to the cities, for Rome was becoming a much more urbanized culture.

Romans had to depend more and more upon allies to make up their legions. Marius took the growing numbers of dispossessed and began the era of paid professional soldiers. These soldiers, however, still looked forward to pieces of land upon discharge on which they could settle, farm, and remain Romans of Roman ideal. By the time of Sulla (138–78
B
.
C
.
E
.), however, it became clear that professional soldiers had little taste for hard farm life; they had grown accustomed to the life of mercenaries. It was hard enough for real farmers to compete in the age of slave farms and
latifundia
(corporate farms, which are discussed in Chapter 10, “The Romans at Large”). Soldiers fell into debt, lost their land, and began the dangerous cycle once more.

• Birth and wealth determined Roman class structures.
  
• Roman legal history began with the Twelve Tables.
  
• Roman law was under the complete discretion of judges, but precedent and tradition guided decisions.
  
• Roman state religion was overseen by a variety of
  collegia,
  or religious boards. The high priest of Rome was called the
  pontifex maximus.
  
• The Romans adapted the Greek phalanx into a more tactical structure; participation in the army depended upon property qualification, status, and experience.
  

Chapter 10
 
The Romans at Large

• Roman citizenship beyond Rome
  
• Roman administration of
  provinciae
  and client states
  
• Roman economics and work
  

The Romans, who were after all a people made up of several ethnic groups and extended clans, soon began to incorporate others into their political and civic structure. This was a part of the Romans' genius for rule and government—finding flexible and practical ways to meet new challenges by working from old structures. In this chapter, we'll explore how relationships with Latins, Italians, Colonists, and subject peoples developed and functioned in the Late Republic. We'll also take a look at how Roman economics and trade worked and affected what different people did.

Originally, being a Roman citizen meant that you were a citizen of the city-state of Rome itself. Both parents had to be Roman, or if one parent was not, the foreign parent had to come from a city-state with which there was an agreement of
conubium
(reciprocal marriage rights). In special cases, individuals and their whole
familia
might be granted citizen status by an act of the people. Tradition has it that several of Rome's important patrician families became “Roman” in this way.

Roman citizens had both rights (
iura
) and responsibilities (
munera
). A citizen had voting rights (
suffragium
) in the assemblies to which he could belong and was eligible for offices (
honores
) depending on his ability to be elected or appointed. He was also afforded the protections of Roman traditions, could form contracts, have a recognized marriage, and pursue legal redress through Roman courts. His primary
munera
meant compulsory military service for the state but came to include the paying of taxes and other social and public obligations expected of citizens to the larger community.

You'll notice that I've used “he” above—and it's true that only men could exercise most of these rights. Although Roman women could not vote, run for political office, or be in the military, they were covered by the protections of citizenship and responsible for whatever other civic roles their status and property classification dictated. Independent women governed their own affairs, paid taxes, and concluded contracts. Cicero's wife, Terentia, for example, was much more successful handling her own estates than her husband was at handling his. (They were divorced when she refused to keep subsidizing him.) In the later Republic, upper-class woman achieved prominence and became active in ways that were unimaginable to other cultures. The notorious Sempronia helped to foil the conspiracy of Catiline for Cicero, Hortensia gave a successful public oration against pending legislation, and Octavia raised money, troops, and political support for her husband Antony. Other evidence, both literary and epigraphic, shows that women of that period held status not much bettered until last century.

As Rome conquered the surrounding Latin city-states it extended facets of its citizenship to them through treaties between 380 and 250
B
.
C
.
E
. Latin cities became either
municipia sine suffragio
or
cum suffragio;
the former were without voting rights but had social privileges, and the latter had full rights. This extension of rights to the Latins became known as the
ius Latium
(Latin rights) and was eventually bestowed on selected colonies and municipalities. Both statuses required the subject states to provide soldiers as their
munera.
Full citizenship, which meant being able to vote and run for office, was naturally accompanied by less local autonomy.

In addition, Rome established colonies within Italy with Latin rights. The earliest of these settlements, too small to be their own state and close to Rome, maintained full citizenship. Later, other small military colonies were also given the same privileges. The colonies, along with the Latins and the allies, came to full citizenship after the Social War (90–88
B
.
C
.
E
.). For more on the extension of citizenship, see Chapter 7, “Let's Conquer . . . Ourselves! The Roman Revolution and the End of the Republic.”

There were, of course, many other people besides colonists and Latins. The Etruscans, Sabines, and Greeks remained autonomous and self-governing peoples, but were placed under Roman protection (or subjugation) by treaty (
foedus
). These
socii,
or allies, were generally restrained from making foreign policy decisions apart from
Rome. They had commercial and social rights with Rome (as spelled out by their individual treaties), but generally were inferior to those people with Latin rights. Nevertheless, they were still required to provide troops for Rome when requested.

As Rome came to dominate the Italian peninsula, the allies bore an increasing amount of the burden of sustaining Rome's conquests. Under Roman abuses, the allies began to agitate for either autonomy or Latin rights. This brought trouble during the time of the Gracchae (see Chapter 7) and erupted into the Social War, which ended with Rome's extension of rights to all Italy by 89
B
.
C
.
E
. With this extension, there was a shift in the concept of citizenship; Rome was now more than a city—it was becoming a
patria
with a capital and numerous municipal centers to which one might belong and be a “Roman.” Rome's model of civic organization and urbanization spread throughout Italy and helped to Romanize the entire peninsula.

Roman citizens enjoyed considerable privileges and protections abroad. Rome considered an attack upon citizens as an attack upon the
dignitas
of the state. Abuses of power abroad against Roman citizens, especially by foreign powers but even by Roman magistrates, was a serious offense. Citizens were entitled to Roman protections of law even if it meant returning them to Rome. This is why the declaration “
civis Romanus sum
” (I am a Roman citizen) kept St. Paul from being executed in Jerusalem and brought him to Rome. It was a cry that many Roman citizens had been able to rely on in the past.

 
Lend Me Your Ears
Cicero describes the far-reaching protections of Roman citizenship in the prosecution of the former governor of Sicily, Gaius Verres, in 70
B
.
C
.
E
.:

“Verres, if you were captured by the Persians or in remotest India and brought to execution, what else would you cry out
except
that you were a Roman citizen? And if the noble and universally recognized name of your city would have protected you, an unknown among an unknown people, among barbarians, among people stuck in the most extreme and godforsaken corners of humanity—shouldn't that man,
whoever
he was, the one you were racing to crucify, even if he were unknown to you, when he began to say that he was a Roman citizen in your—the praetor's—presence, have been able to find, if not an escape from execution then certainly a stay, merely by his mention of Rome and claim to citizenship?”

 
When in Rome
The
Gracchi
refers to the brothers Tiberius (died 133) and Gaius (died 121) Gracchus, the tribunes who promoted land and voting reform in opposition to the senate. You can read more about them in Chapter 7.

Romans extended the rights of citizenship abroad in a couple of ways. Rome made some states allies (
socii
) through treaties with cities and kings, and citizens of allied states had whatever rights their treaty specified. In general, however, their status deteriorated as Rome became a world power and could pretty much do as it wanted no matter what any treaty said. Still, it mattered to be recognized as a member of a state having a formal relationship with Rome.

Secondly, beginning with period of the
Gracchi
, Rome began to settle displaced or disenfranchised citizens, veterans, and allies in colonies beyond Italy to help Romanize conquered lands. Colonists maintained their rights as citizens, and eventually, the native peoples who lived around the colonies integrated into them and became citizens as well. This process began to weave together the provinces with Rome in the same way that extending rights into Italy had.

As Rome conquered other lands, Roman officials went out as representatives, governors, and administrators. Generally, there were also already well established communities of Roman traders and businessmen integrated into the local economy who had political ties to Rome. Those without citizenship—the foreign nationals—needed friends who had it for access to power and protection. These foreign nationals established patron/client relationships with Romans—who became the representatives of foreign peoples and powers in Rome. Roman generals such as Pompey counted kings and entire peoples among their clients.