pp. 119, 128-133 (Roman Civilization)
Rome is situated about halfway down the western coast of the Italian Peninsula, located along Mediterranean Sea.
Rome was the successor to the Greek and Persian civilizations in the Mediterranean basin and the Near East.
Although Rome is considered the successor to Hellenistic Greece, they actually overlapped in time, and Rome itself is in many ways a Hellenistic entity.
Growth of Rome:
-from an insignificant Italian town dominated by a traditional upper class;
-to an unusual combination of aristocracy and merit, subscribing to pseudodemocratic principles: the Roman res publica, or republic.
c. 750–509 BCE Etruscans rule Rome
c. 509–31 BCE Roman Republic
300s–200s BCE Conquest of Italy
264–202 BCE The First and Second Punic Wars
50s–30s BCE The two triumvirates
27 BCE–14 CE Reign of Augustus
31 BCE–180 CE Pax Romana
14 CE–69 CE Julio-Claudian emperors
69 CE–96 CE Flavian emperors
161 CE–180 CE Marcus Aurelius
Roman Culture
The Romans borrowed heavily and willingly from the Greek heritage in philosophy, the sciences, and the arts, but that does not mean that they did not develop native culture.
Their own genius lay more in the fields of law and administration.
Law
Roman achievement was the development of a system of law with the flexibility to meet the
needs of subject peoples.
This law system and a government that combined effective central controls with wide local autonomy are
the most valued Roman gifts to later civilized society.
The Romans had various codes of law. One originally applied only to citizens, and another
applied only to aliens and travelers on Roman territory.
During the early empire, the law code ius gentium (“law of peoples”), that governed relations between citizens and non-Romans was accepted as basic. The rights of citizens and noncitizens, of natives and aliens, were protected by the Roman authorities. This concept paved the way for “international law,” and it gradually took Roman justice far beyond the usual concepts of “us against you” that other ancient peoples normally employed with foreigners.
Later, in the third and fourth centuries, the Romans evolved natural law, the idea that all humans—by virtue of their humanity—possess certain rights and duties that all courts must recognize.
As the Romans adopted Christianity, this natural law came to be viewed as the product of a God-ordained order that had been put into the world with the creation of Adam.
The Arts
Roman art forms varied sharply in development and imagination.
During the republic’s last century, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Terence, Polybius, Cato, and Lucretius were major contributors.
The best days of Roman literature were still ahead, in the early imperial epoch, when a brilliant constellation around the emperors Augustus and Tiberius created a memorable body of poetry and prose. Virgil’s Aeneid became the official version of the founding of Rome by refugees from the burning Troy; Ovid, Horace, and Catullus established Latin poetry equal to yet different from its Greek models.
In the hands of prose masters such as the historian Tacitus, the satirist Juvenal, and the storytellers
Pliny, Petronius, and Suetonius
The Latin language became an extraordinary instrument capable of extreme directness and concision.
In the pictorial and plastic (three-dimensional) arts, the early Roman sculptors and architects worked from
both Etruscan and Greek models without much elaboration of their own.
With few exceptions, the “Greek” statues in the world’s fine arts museums are Roman copies
of originals that have long since disappeared.
By the end of the Republican era native style was emerging. One of its greatest strengths was portrait sculpture, especially the busts that were produced in large numbers. These are amazingly realistic and seem modern in a way that other ancient art generally does not.
The architectural style favored in the republic was strongly reminiscent of the Greek temple, but it also
incorporated Hellenistic arches and circles—as in the frequent cupola roofs and semicircular altars—to a
much greater degree.
Roman skill in masonry work and affinity for the grand style combined to give magnificent expression to public works and buildings throughout the empire.
The Forum and the Coliseum still stand in modern Rome, witnesses to the exceptional quality of Roman stonework.
Patterns of Belief
The greatest of all the emperors after Augustus was Marcus Aurelius (ruled
161–180 CE), the last of the Five Good Emperors who ruled in the second century CE. He left a small book of aphorisms called Meditations. Marcus settled on a pessimistic Stoicism as the most fitting cloak for a good man in a bad world—especially for a man who had to exercise power.
Like Marcus Aurelius, Roman Stoics often opposed Christianity because they rejected external prescriptions for morality. Instead, they insisted that each person is responsible for searching and following his own conscience.
Seneca, another Stoic and the most persuasive of the Roman moralists, had a somewhat different way of looking at things. He introduced a new note of human compassion, a belief that all shared in the divine spark and should be valued as fellow creatures.
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The religious convictions of the Romans centered on duty to the state and the family hearth.
It was a religion of state, rather than of individuals, and it was common for Romans to worship other gods besides those of the official cult.
In the imperial period, many emperors were deified, and most of the mystery religions of the Hellenistic world were eventually taken up by Rome.
Chief among the many Roman gods was Jupiter, a father figure modeled on the Greek Zeus. Also important were Apollo, Neptune (Poseidon), Venus (Aphrodite [af-roh-DIE-tee]), Minerva (Athena), and Mars (Ares).
The existence of an afterlife was an open question, but if it did exist, one could know nothing about it or secure admission to it through the gods.
They thought that the only way to ensure against the disappointments of earthly life was to renounce the pursuit of wealth and power and live a life of modest seclusion. But few Romans who had a choice did
that!
As a governing class, they were very much attuned to the delights of wealth and power and very much willing tomake great efforts to get them.