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ATHENS AND ROME: ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ Athens – 51-338 B.C.

The Mediterranean Sea stands at the meeting point of three continents: In 510 B.C. Athens was not the capital of a united ‘Greece’ as it is today. Africa, Asia, and Europe. Since our species arrived at its shores over Greeks were scattered around the Mediterranean in settlements amongst 50,000 years ago, and floated primitive rafts onto its waters, this mighty foreign peoples in modern Turkey, Sicily, Italy, Africa, the Balkans, the sea has carried ideas, people, and goods from continent to continent; and Black Sea, France, Spain, Crete, Cyprus, and other Aegean islands – as well it has fostered the development – and collapse – of great civilisations. as modern Greece itself. And although they saw themselves (more or less) as one people, speaking one language, the hundreds of Greek communities Its name, reflecting this crucial position, means ‘Sea at the Middle of the around these shores were totally independent states (‘countries’). Athens Earth’ in Latin – the language of the city of Rome. The Romans, in fact, was just one of these ‘city states’ – so called because each was centred on a didn’t call it the ‘Mediterranean’, but ‘mare nostrum’: ‘our Sea’. Both our single city, with land and smaller settlements around it. name for the Mediterranean, and the Romans’, say something about our attitudes. Yet while people around the world might quibble that the Each Greek city state had its own traditions, its own heroes, its own local Mediterranean is the ‘centre of the earth’, there is no doubting its crucial versions of the multiple Greek gods – and its own means of government. role in world history; and two cities, Athens and Rome, in particular. Many states were ruled by individual kings or by collections of wealthy nobles. Sparta, the most powerful Greek city state, was dominated by rich In 2017 A.D. in Rome, the Pope still faces questions about his Church’s aristocratic families; a strange system in which two kings ruled at once; involvement in abuse scandals worldwide. Athens, now the capital of a and a completely militarised warrior class of citizens. Athens, until 510, united Greece, still struggles as one of the economically weakest members was ruled by dictators or ‘tyrants’, most lately Hippias. In 510, however, of the Eurozone. But two and a half millennia ago, in 511-507BC, events the Athenians, with help from Sparta, overthrew Hippias. The Spartans were transpiring in each of the two cities that would see them achieve a and their allies within Athens now wanted control, while others wanted to position of unrivalled importance in world history. This is why both cities form a ‘democracy’ - demokratia, a Greek word meaning ‘rule of the are still so intensively studied today. people’. In 508/7, the latter group won out, brushing the Spartans aside.

The sea ‘at the centre of the The Spartans hoped that their intervention in 510 would win gratitude earth’: a reconstruction of a and compliance from a newly ‘free’ Athens – a hope many a ‘liberating’ Roman world map, with east at power has held in vain throughout history (as in some of the USA’s 20th the top. The three known st continents, Europe (left), Asia and 21 century experiences). In fact, they helped to create their greatest (top) and Africa (right), wrap rival, and a thorn in their side for the next hundred years and more. It was themselves around a central the new democracy of Athens, established in 508/7 B.C., that would rise to point: the Mediterranean. The spiky peninsulas of Italy and a position of dominance in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean; make Greece project into the sea from strides in art, thought and culture that still have a profound influence the left. today; and engage in direct and indirect jostling with Sparta, until they tore each other apart in the later fifth century BC. 3 4

THE PERSIAN WARS BEGIN – 492-480 BC – your Unit Two (Year 12!)

But democratic Athens’ first great enemy was not Sparta, but Persia. The Persians were a tribal people from Iran who in the sixth century BC had expanded their power into the largest empire the world had ever seen. By

TROY 510 BC, the Persian King of Kings ruled the whole of the Middle East, from G R E E C E Afghanistan to Egypt. He had also brought Asia Minor (modern Turkey) under his control, including many Greek city states on the western coast. 3. Xerxes’ invasion 480BC It must be remembered that at the time, this was most of the world as THERMOPYLAE 1. Ionian Revolt, 499-4BC known to either Greeks or Persians. Persia was a true superpower.

P e r s I a n Attacking superpowers, or helping others to do so, can be a dangerous ATHENS E m p I r e move. The Taliban discovered this in 2001, and Athens did two and a half millennia ago. In the 490s BC, some Greek cities in Turkey rebelled against SPARTA the control of the Persians and appealed for help from Greeks abroad (the 2. Darius’ invasion, 490BC Ionian Revolt, 499-4BC: see map, 1). Sparta refused; Athens agreed. Athens and the rebel cities marched to the local Persian capital, Sardis (see map), and burned it. Imagine New York in September 2001; and the response. The rage of the world’s only superpower was terrifying.

BATTLE SITES The rebellion was crushed, the Greek cities punished, and the Athenians TOWNs / City states retreated back to their own city across the sea. But they were far from Above: Greece in 510. Below: the Persian Empire. Greece is found in the far left hand corner of this vast area. safe. In 490, the Persian King Darius (Daryash in the original Persian), still raging at this tiny city’s barefaced cheek, launched an invasion, pouring P e r s I a n E m p I r e ships and men across the Aegean towards Greece (see map, 2). The 510 B.C. generals he sent to lead the invasion (he himself remained in Persia) landed their great force at Marathon, near Athens; but the Athenians, on their home soil, were able to defeat the invaders. (The slightly distorted legend of a lone runner dashing the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens gave the modern race its name and distance.) Against all the odds, Athens survived. But the Persians had unfinished business with what was for them an arrogant little foreign city over the sea.

In 480, Darius’ son and successor Xerxes (Hsharyasha) launched his own invasion of Greece (see map, 3). This one was much more successful, and

5 6 his armies – ‘millions’ of troops, Greek historians tell us! – poured down the Greek peninsula, enlisting allies and destroying cities as they went. The southern Greek city-states, including Athens, allied together to fight the Persian menace. 300 Spartans, the greatest fighters of the Greek world, held the Persian multitude at the narrow pass of Thermopylae. For days on end they fought and died, one by one, before they were finally betrayed, encircled and destroyed. Their story does not need the CGI of the film ‘300’ to render it an astonishing tale of bravery and self-sacrifice. An inscription they left in the narrow pass read:

‘O go and tell the Spartans, passer-by, that here, obedient to their will, we lie.’

There was no-one left to carry that message in person.

The Spartan blockade, broken though it was, may have saved Greece, by The pass at Thermopylae. The sea is just out of shot on the right; the sea and the cliffs allowed the Spartans giving their arch-rivals the Athenians time to decide on their own strategy. to maintain their defence, until the Persians were shown a secret mountaintop route to outflank them. In Athens, in the assembly of the people, where decisions were debated and voted on, there was panic. The god Apollo had spoken through his VICTORY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES – 480-431 BC oracle (holy prophet) at Delphi, telling the Athenians to Although the decision to abandon the city must have seemed horrific put their trust in wooden walls… when the destruction began, it proved the key to victory in the war against the Persians. The massive Persian fleet which had accompanied the …and for the deeply religious Athenians, this phrase formed the heart of invading army now entered the narrow waters around Athens, confident their debate. How were these words to be interpreted? Should they build of victory. But emerging from around the island of Salamis the Athenians wooden walls to defend themselves? Why of wood, not stone? Where and their allies, desperate and cornered, won the victory (nike) of their should they build them? Or could the oracle mean siege towers? lives. The Persians lost their fleet, and thousands of soldiers.

At last, a noble named Themistokles persuaded his fellow citizens that the Xerxes, watching from his splendid throne on the Athenian mainland, ‘wooden walls’ mentioned by the god were the wooden hulls of ships, and sobbed in rage and disbelief. For him, the sight of his glorious, world- it was voted to abandon the city to the Persians’ rage. The entire city fled conquering troops and ships, foundering and drowning, must have been to the fleet and shortly after, the Persian horde descended on Athens. It impossible to accept; as the 1975 images of Americans, fleeing in panic was payback time for the looting of Sardis. Houses and temples were from the rooftops of the US embassy in South Vietnam, were to the USA. burned, sacred groves trashed, treasures looted. The people of Athens This was the shock, horror and humiliation of a superpower defeated, by could only watch in horror from their ships as the black smoke spread. what should have been an insignificant band of outnumbered foreigners. 7 8

In 479, Athens, Sparta and their allies finally defeated the Persians on land Literature: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were composed in the 8th, 7th or 6th at Plataea, just outside Thebes, and Xerxes retreated in humiliation. centuries BC, and had a vast influence but in Athens. Their epic stories of war, love and adventure have been as influential in world literature as any In the wake of the Persian defeat, Athens rode high on a wave of triumph other work. They should be read by anyone hoping to get to grips with and prestige. Athenian sea power had proved the key to victory and now Greek culture – and later literature. Even Hollywood made an attempt: formed the basis of a profitable empire. As Sparta retreated into isolation, Troy is a starting point (though very different from the original!). We will afraid to entangle itself further with foreign adventures, Athens gathered study Homer’s Odyssey as our Unit 1 (starting in September). a league of Greek islands and states under its own leadership and began to harass the Persians in Asia Minor. In the following decades this league Drama: Drama, theatron, tragedos, komoidia, orchestra, skene, choros won some victories against the Persians, but its real significance was to (‘drama’, ‘theatre’, ‘tragedy’, ‘comedy’, ‘orchestra’, ‘scene’, ‘chorus’) – all allow Athens to spread and secure her power. Within a few decades, the are Greek words, and this is no accident. Greek plays, growing out of ‘League’ had become an Athenian empire. religious rituals and performed during festivals, were the first plays in the world. They were the ancestors of all subsequent Western theatre, from The wealth from this Empire; the cosmopolitan culture of the imperial Roman drama, to Shakespeare, to Brecht. The bloody pattern of Greek city; the opportunities for leisure and study that the rich were given; and tragedy informs later tragedies from Hamlet to Reservoir Dogs. the enquiring culture of the Greeks; all led to developments in the city of Athens, in the rest of the fifth century, that were to have a worldwide These plays are key sources for Greek attitudes to, for example, history impact. A few of these developments will be explored below. and society. Aeschylus’ The Persians (which we study in unit 2) dramatises the horror of the defeated eastern empire, and is a fascinating text for anyone studying the Persian Wars. The plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides give fantastic portrayals of heroes, villains, murderers, prophets, gods, cheats, victims... including the great play Medea, about a wronged and vengeful woman, which we study in unit 2.

Philosophy: Greek philosophers were striving to understand the world before the fifth century but it was in Athens that the foundation of western philosophy (philosophia, ‘the love of wisdom’), and truly logical enquiry, began – with Socrates, his pupil Plato, and later Plato’s own pupil, Aristotle (who in turn taught Alexander the Great).

Art and architecture: Greek naturalistic sculpture, art and architecture had a great influence on Rome, and on the artistic movements of the Renaissance and later Europe. The sculptures of the Parthenon in Athens enthralled English nobility in the 19th century, when Lord Elgin hauled Staff and soldiers evacuate the US embassy in Saigon, capital of South Vietnam, April 30th, 1975. them back to the British Museum in London. They are still there today. 9 10

Politics: ‘Politics’ is yet another Greek word, ta politika – ‘things to do with the affairs of the polis (the city-state)’. The Athenian political model of demokratia, democracy, has had a profound influence.

History: The Persian Wars brought about the first work of real ‘history’ – a true attempt to get to the bottom of what really happened in the past, discarding myth and folktale. This was Herodotus’ Historia, Greek for ‘Enquiries’. His successor Thucydides wrote about the next great war to consume Athens, the Peloponnesian War against Sparta, and was critical of Herodotus; he moved even closer towards history in the modern sense.

THE END FOR ATHENS In the end it was Sparta, with Persian money, that brought about Athens’ ROME – 510 B.C.-14 A.D. demise. In the long and bitter Peloponnesian War that lasted on and off from 431-404, the two old rivals struggled, and eventually Athens, after Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves, than that Caesar were victories, defeats, riots, coups and chaos, fell to the Spartans. Few dead, to live all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was lamented the city’s fall. Its glories had been built on military power and fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him: but, as he was slavery, as well as heroic victories and a marvellous flowering of culture. ambitious, I slew him.

However, just as in 510, Spartan interference in Athens was to be short- So speaks Brutus in William Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’. On 15th March, lived. The pattern of a powerful Greek polis (city-state) winning enmity 44 B.C., Brutus and others murdered the most powerful man in Rome, the through arrogance and brutality repeated itself, and the Greeks turned title character of Shakespeare’s play and Brutus’ own close friend. These against Sparta just as they had resented Athens. Sparta struggled to lines speak of Brutus’ love and admiration for Caesar, but also give his maintain its dominance until in 371 it was beaten by the city-state of motive: ‘as he was ambitious, I slew him’. The murderers feared Caesar’s Thebes. Then the pattern repeated yet again: in 362 yet another league of growing personal power in a state that was ceaselessly hostile to the idea Greek city-states (including both Athens and Sparta) halted the ambitions of tyranny, kingship, and personal rule. Romans wanted ‘to live all free of Thebes – yet another state that had grown too sizeable for its sandals. men’; would murdering one man keep all of them free?

But the era of the city-states, and their squabbling, was coming to an end. In fact, within a couple of decades, in the wake of the brutal civil wars that Greece’s northern neighbour, Macedonia, had developed a powerful followed Caesar’s murder, the Republic was dead and a true monarchy in kingdom. In 338 King Philip of Macedon defeated the Greek cities and took all but name had been established. Rome had grown and flourished as a control of the whole of Greece. His son, Alexander, earned the title ‘Great’ Republic – indeed it had an empire long before it had an Emperor – but it when he repeated Xerxes’ great invasion in reverse, and toppled the continued to expand under imperial rule. The development of this most Persian Empire. But that is another history, and another Hollywood film. influential Empire is explored below, beginning in 511 B.C. 11 12

THE BIRTH OF THE REPUBLIC – 511 B.C. THE FIRST PUNIC WAR – 264-241 B.C.

Shall Rome stand under one man’s awe? What, Rome? The early growth of Rome’s Empire was spurred, as with that of Athens, My ancestors did from the streets of Rome by clashes with an ‘eastern’ empire. Rome’s great enemy was the city of The Tarquin drive, when he was call'd a king. Carthage in modern Tunisia, a colony of the Phoenician people from modern Israel and Palestine (so geographically southern, but culturally Shakespeare’s Brutus again, here steeling himself to carry through the ‘eastern’). The Carthaginians were great traders and seafarers, having murder. This Brutus - Marcus Brutus - had a significant ancestry. It was even traded as far as Britain; and they had built a powerful empire in the his ancestor Lucius Junius Brutus who, in 511 B.C., had led a revolt against western Mediterranean, in North Africa, Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia. It was the hated last King of Rome (Tarquinius - ‘the Tarquin’). It was this revolt this sphere of influence that the Roman Republic threatened to disrupt. that founded the Republic, and Rome’s hatred of tyranny: never again would their free city ‘stand under one man’s awe’. These world-changing These two powers dominated the western Mediterranean but had very events were underway in Italy while in Greece, Spartan troops helped different strengths: Carthage had one of the world’s most powerful navies Athens rid itself of its own dictator (see above, p.2). but no standing army, while Rome had a strong army but no navy to speak of. In 264, a local dispute on the island of Sicily blew up into all-out war So by historical coincidence the two greatest cities of classical antiquity between the two great powers. After twenty years of war, the Romans had overthrew their respective tyrannies in the same few years, hundreds of developed a powerful navy, based on Carthaginian designs; and learned miles apart, and only hazily aware of each other at the time. But very how to use it, following Carthaginian tactics. They beat the Carthaginians different political systems grew from the two revolts. Whereas in Athens a at their own game and took sole control of Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia. truly ‘direct’ democracy grew up – almost ‘mob rule’ – in Rome the power of the people was limited. They could participate in politics only indirectly, through elected officials and ‘tribunes’. These put their case before the city’s true rulers: the Senate (a kind of ‘Parliament’), exclusively reserved for those who were not only rich, but also aristocratic.

As the state expanded, power was constantly reformed and shifted, but never approached the level of democratic involvement that was found in Athens. Just as in Athens, women, slaves, and foreigners were excluded from politics; though Roman women generally had more economic freedom and social opportunities than female Athenians. As the Empire expanded, citizen privileges were only slowly extended to other Italian peoples. Finally some conquered peoples were granted similar voting rights; but ironically, this widening of political representation only occurred under the dictator Julius Caesar, and the all-powerful Emperors. Above: Carthage as it might have looked; figurines of the Phoenician and Carthaginian chief god Baal (about whom much hostile propaganda can be found in the Bible); a shrine to his divine wife Tanit. 13 14

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR – 218-201 B.C.

In the wake of their defeat, the Carthaginians built up their empire in Iberia (modern Spain), but never forgot the insult of Rome’s victory. In 218 B.C., the great Carthaginian general Hannibal set out to take revenge from the city of ‘New Carthage’ (modern Cartagena). Hannibal’s plan was to take the battle to Rome on its own territory, through a massive land invasion launched into the very heart of Italy itself. To do so he had to march across the Pyrenees, through southern Gaul, and over the frozen, storm-battered Alps (see left). No-one could be expected to be able to take tens of thousands of soldiers through such hostile terrain. Hannibal did.

Above left: ‘Hannibal Crossing the Alps’ by British artist J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851); the tempestuous image suggests something of the hardships Hannibal’s army faced. His army contained Carthaginians, Iberians, and Africans, but he also

Above right: this silver Carthaginian coin from the time of the Second Punic War depicts one of Hannibal’s persuaded or paid Gallic and Italian tribes to join what he portrayed as a famous war elephants. The figure on the reverse is a Phoenician god, Melqart, but could also be a portrait of ‘liberating’ expedition. His army also consisted of African war elephants: Hannibal or a member of his family. The laurel wreath and club point to Carthage’s cosmopolitan influences, for this eastern God looks very much like the Greek hero Herakles. The style is also very like Greek and Roman coins. trumpeting and snorting, enormous and armoured, the ancient equivalent

Below: the Second Punic War, showing the rival Empires, Hannibal’s route and significant battles. of tanks, these vast creatures terrified the Romans and European tribes, who had never seen them. A Roman army sailed to Massilia (Marseilles) to G A U L THE SECOND PUNIC WAR intercept Hannibal, but missed him. In the Alps, he smashed two Roman

TICINUS 218-201 B..C.. armies at Ticinus and Trebia. He trapped, ambushed and utterly defeated

TREBIA the main Roman army by the shores of Lake Trasimene in 217 B.C.; and in 216 B.C. massacred around 50-70,000 Romans at the battle of Cannae. .. MASSILIA Trasimene The war was now in a delicate balance. Hannibal’s triumphs in Italy had C O R S I C A CANNAE terrified Rome, but until the massive military and propaganda victory at ROME M a C E D O N I A I B E R I A Cannae, he could not be confident of enough Italian support to attack S A R D I N I A SAgundum G R E E C E Rome itself. Meanwhile, Roman armies had been sent to Spain, where they were achieving great success; war continued at sea and in Sicily; and the

NEW CARTHAGE kingdom of Macedonia joined Carthage, after Cannae. After a long wait, CARTHAGE S I C I L Y Hannibal did march on Rome, but by then Rome had reinforced the city, ZAMA and begun to recover its fortunes in Italy. In the scale of historical A F R I C A T H E hesitations, Hannibal’s in Italy was perhaps as significant as Hitler’s on the M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A brink of invading Britain in 1940. Without taking Rome, Hannibal could not win; and now Rome was ready to take the battle to Carthage itself. 15 16

GROWTH OF A REPUBLICAN EMPIRE – 201-146 B.C. THE LATE REPUBLIC – 146 B.C.-44 B.C.

After years of rebuilding their strength, the Romans were finally able to After Carthage’s final defeat in the Third Punic War in 146 B.C., 55 years despatch an army to Africa under Scipio, later known as ‘Africanus’ for his after the battle of Zama, the following 100 years in Rome was a history of exploits. He won a string of victories, and in 203 B.C., Hannibal himself political and economic change, and imperial expansion. In the early first was finally recalled to his homeland. With an inexperienced army he did century B.C. the power of individual generals became more and more not wish to lead, he faced defeat for the first and last time at the battle of important. A series of charismatic generals made politics more a personal Zama. The Romans had learned how to deal with his elephants, and again pursuit than a Republican or representative one, taking more and more beat the Carthaginians at their own game: Roman cavalry finally proved power for themselves. This was partly because of ambition, but partly also themselves a match for Hannibal’s; Roman tactics, learned from observing because of the weakness and inflexibility of some parts of the old system. Hannibal’s genius, finally won out. Carthage was beaten. Apart from a brief revolt in the mid-second century, after which it was burned and In 61 B.C., three generals, Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar, made an symbolically ploughed with salt, Carthage’s rivalry with Rome was over. agreement known as the first ‘Triumvirate’ which split power between them. By 49 B.C., Crassus was dead (died 53BC), and some in Rome had Just as Athens grew from near-destruction to imperial power in the face of helped turn Pompey against Caesar. Caesar, who had been put in charge of an eastern rival, so had Rome; for after the horrors of the war with the province of Gaul (France), was faced with the prospect of being Hannibal, Carthage’s empire fell into Rome’s hands. It is usual to draw a excluded from power. In 49 B.C. he took the almost unprecedented step of distinction between the Roman Republic and the later Roman Empire, for marching against Rome itself with an army, crossing into Italy against the the word ‘Empire’ suggests the existence of an ‘Emperor’; but the Roman express orders of the Senate. We study the Triumvirate, their Republic itself possessed an international empire, in a more general sense, ambitions, their politics, and their opponents in Unit 3 (Year 13). from the point when it first clashed with Carthage. Caesar’s gamble paid off, and Pompey fled. Although Caesar’s march had This empire drove political change in Rome in several ways: firstly, the not been expressly against Rome itself, but against his personal enemies, riches and trading opportunities of the Empire helped to develop a many saw it as a sign that personal and military power had become more significant class of wealthy individuals, equites, who were not aristocratic important in Rome than aristocratic authority, or popular support. and could not sit on the Senate, but nevertheless demanded a greater and Subsequent events proved this quite true. Caesar became dictator, a term greater share of power. Secondly, the flood of slaves and ex-soldiers from for an individual appointed to protect the State. He transferred much the colonies led to unemployment and a shortage of land, problems which power to himself and his allies, and reorganised the state in ways that were to bedevil the Roman state for decades (and give those seeking deeply offended some traditionalists: for example, he extended the power excellent causes to use for their own ends). Finally, military membership of the Senate from 600 to 900, opening it to ‘new money’ opportunities to win fame and glory, build a strong power-base among equites as well as to aristocrats. It is little surprise that those who one’s own troops, and finally, bring those troops home and reward them assassinated him were themselves aristocratic senators. That fateful day with land in Italy, made individual generals a much more powerful and in 44 B.C. ushered in a new civil war, and ultimately, gave rise to a far significant force than many in Republican Rome would like. more powerful ruler even than Caesar: the first Emperor, Augustus. 17 18

CIVIL WAR AND THE BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE – 44 B.C.-14 A.D.

After Caesar’s death, his allies moved against his murderers. Mark Anthony’s famous ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ speech in Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ is a masterpiece of persuasive rhetoric, designed to sway the Roman mob against Brutus and his friends. The real Marcus Antonius, a close friend of Caesar’s, allied himself with Caesar’s adopted son Gaius Augustus’ propaganda: Octavianus, and his old colleague Marcus Lepidus, to form the Second statues of Augustus as Triumvirate. With popular support they chased the murderers from Rome, general, senator, religious leader and god; coin with and subsequently defeated them in battle. Brutus committed suicide. inscription reading ‘Caesar Augustus, son of The second Triumvirate took on all the powers that Caesar himself had the god (Julius Caesar) and father of the nation’; held. Rome had not become any more free, but nor was she even at peace; and Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, an this Triumvirate, like the first, did not last. First Lepidus was sidelined, epic poem in the style of then Anthony and Octavian turned against one another. Octavian, ruling Homer, written to glorify

Rome – and Augustus. the West of the Empire, had great support in Rome itself; Anthony, ruling the East, earned suspicion through his relationship with Cleopatra, Queen THE EMPIRE AND ITS LEGACY of Egypt (Caesar’s former lover), and his adoption of eastern ways. At last Augustus’ successors in his own family, and subsequent dynasties, the tension between the two grew into open warfare, and at the battle of continued to rule Rome and her Empire with varying degrees of success Actium in 31 B.C Anthony’s eastern Roman navy and Egyptian allies were and justice. Some Emperors were models of wisdom and restraint; others smashed by Octavian’s armies. Octavian was still only 32. were inbred, mad, perverted and sadistic, like Nero, Caligula or Back in Rome, Octavian used a combination of ruthlessness, his vast Commodus (depicted, with only some exaggeration, in Gladiator). Rome’s wealth, superb propaganda and widespread support to consolidate his impact in its provinces ranged from slaughter and oppression to peace, position. He took on all the powers Caesar and the Triumvirate had held, public order and infrastructure; her culture from beautiful, eternal works and more. In 27 B.C. he was given the title Augustus, ‘honoured one’, and of genius, to the mass slaughter of Christians and criminals for Princeps, ‘first citizen’, by the Senate. Even as he was granted far-reaching entertainment. Rome imposed its will on millions through force of arms; powers for life, he was still able to present himself as the restorer of the yet left enduring notions of liberty and justice. Rome worshipped Greek Republic. Indeed he cleverly left some responsibilities with the Senate, but gods and often persecuted Christians; yet one of its greatest legacies is the through his own awarded powers and great wealth he was still able to spread of Christianity throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. Rome exert effectively monarchical authority. He was also awarded the title and Rome’s legacy were, and are, full of contradictions. Imperator – ‘commander’ – now translated ‘Emperor’. His rule was long, The bounds of the Empire continued to expand to cover most of Western and generally peaceful and just. When he died in 14 A.D., Rome had truly and Southern Europe, Western Asia and North Africa, and it is for this become an Imperial power. The Roman Republic had come to an end. reason that Rome’s influence on world history has been so great. The 19 20 eastern half of the Empire became a Christian state, Byzantium, that still SOME FURTHER READING / WATCHING (* = set texts, ** = other saw itself as Roman and endured until the 1400s. The western Empire particularly important texts) was looked back on with nostalgia by emerging western kingdoms which became the ancestors of modern European states. Rome has remained the Classical seat of the most powerful man in any Christian Church, the Pope, from the ** Homer, The Iliad days of St Peter until now. When Russian and German monarchs called * Homer, The Odyssey themselves ‘Czar’ and ‘Kaiser’, they were in fact calling themselves Caesar. * Virgil, The Aeneid Rome left works of art and philosophy like the works of Cicero, Caesar, Horace, Juvenal, and above all, Virgil, which formed the foundation of * Aeschylus, The Persians western education for more than a millennium. Yet unlike Greece, its Sophocles, Antigone greatest contribution was through empire rather than culture. Its influence, even on Britain, the furthest corner of the Empire, is hard to * Euripides, *Medea; other texts of interest, Trojan Women, Bacchae overstate. In our legal traditions, our education system, the dominance of * The letters of Cicero Christianity, Rome’s legacy can be traced; and even in our language itself. Modern CONCLUSION Kelly, C., The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction

These two cities in the Mediterranean have had more impact on the Beard, M., and Henderson, J., Classics: A Very Short Introduction course of western history and culture than almost any other place or people, and through the West, their impact can now be felt around the Goscinny, R., and Uderzo, A., the Asterix series world. The slightly arbitrary date of 510 nevertheless marks a starting William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra point in both their histories; a shift to new models of government and politics that had something, if not everything, to do with their success. Films Troy, dir. Wolfgang Petersen (2004) The narrative offered above is a quite sketchy outline of these two great cities, their empires, countries, and legacy, but it provides a framework for Alexander, dir. Oliver Stone (2004) understanding their histories. Hopefully it also offers a starting point for Gladiator, dir. Ridley Scott (2000) grasping why it is that out of all the world’s rich and varied past we in Britain, in the 21st century, should still study and care about these two Spartacus, dir. Stanley Kubrick (1960) particular places. Whether it is through a study of Homer’s Odyssey (Unit Cleopatra, dir. Joseph Mankiewicz (1963) 1A); of Virgil’s Aeneid, written to honour the author’s master, Augustus (Unit 1B); of the Persian invasions of Greece in the 480s (Unit 2); or of The Life of Brian, dir. Terry Jones (1979) Rome’s turbulent politics in the Late Republic (Unit 3) – studying these 300, dir. Zack Snyder (2006) (…and many more!) two cities and peoples helps us understand ourselves.