CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Introduction

II. Ancient Italy

III. The Origins of Rome

IV. The Economic and Social Structures of Early

Rome

V. The Evolution of Roman Government

VI. The Wars with Carthage

VII. The Establishment of Roman Hegemony

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CHAPTER 4

THE RISE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC

R

ome united the ancient Mediterranean and

joined it to western Europe. In the process,

the Romans created an amalgam of ideas and

institutions that would become the basis of

later European life. This achievement, while enormous,

was not especially original. The Romans excelled in the

practical arts of war, law, engineering, and administra-

tion. They possessed in Latin a language of great rich-

ness and flexibility that would become the mother of

many other tongues, but they borrowed virtually every-

thing else from the Greeks, the Etruscans, the Egyp-

tians, and other ancient cultures of the Near East. This

was not simple mimicry but creative assimilation, for

Roman culture had a coherence and integrity of its

own. The Romans borrowed selectively, taking only

what they found useful and transforming it according

to their own traditions and social norms.

In the years when Greek civilization was at its

height, Rome was still a modest settlement in central

Italy. Poor and surrounded by powerful enemies, it sur-

vived by developing a superb army and a political sys-

tem that, though authoritarian enough to be effective

in times of crisis, was based upon the active participa-

tion of its citizens and the rule of law. By the middle of

the third century B.C. Rome controlled the Italian

peninsula. By 133 B.C. it had defeated both Carthage

and Macedon and acquired an empire that stretched

from Spain to Greece.

The creation of this empire was, at least in the be-

ginning, a response to adversity rather than the product

of deliberate intent. Surrounded by more powerful ene-

mies, it developed a culture that stressed the military

values of courage, discipline, and endurance. The early

history of Rome is therefore one of harsh adaptations

followed by explosive growth—the tale of how a poor,

often beleaguered community developed political and

military institutions capable of ruling an empire.

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