Rome: Empire of the Eagles, 753 BC - AD 476

400 Pages·2008·7.85 MB·English

by  Neil Faulkner

Rome: Empire of the Eagles
Rome: Empire of the Eagles
Neil Faulkner
First published 2008 by Pearson Education Limited
Published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2008, Taylor & Francis.
The right of Neil Faulkner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our
understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any
information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they
should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional
responsibility.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for
any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from
any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.
ISBN 13: 978-0-582-78495-6 (hbk)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset in 9.5/14pt Mellor by 35
Contents
List of maps and plates
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Note on ancient monetary values
Maps
Prologue
1 The making of an imperial city-state, c. 750–367 BC
2 The rise of a superpower, 343–146 BC
3 The Roman revolution, 133–30 BC
4 The Pax Romana, 30 BC–AD 161
5 The decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire
Timeline
References
Bibliographical notes
Index and glossary
Plates
List of maps and plates
Maps
1 Ancient Latium and its neighbours, 7th–5th centries BC
2 Early Rome, 7th–5th centries BC
3 Central Italy during the Samnite Wars, 343–290 BX
4 Italy at the time of the wars against Tarentum and Pyrrhus, 282–275 BC
5 The Western Mediterranean at the time of the Punic Wars, 264–202 BC
6 The Eastern Mediterranean at the time of the Macedonian Wars, 215–146 BC
7 The Roman Empire in the Late Republic, 133–30 BC
8 The provinces of the Roman Empire in the mid 1st century AD
9 The Roman Empire from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, 30 BC–AD 180
10 Roman Britain
11 Imperial Rome
12 The Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, 3rd–5th centuries AD
13 A new world order: the Mediterranean region in the late 5th century AD
Plates
[In central plate section]
1 The Low Ham mosaic in Somerset depiciting a thousand-year-old myth that has the
Roman race founded by the Trojan hero Aeneas, a story immortalised for Roman
(and Romanised) audiences by the great Latin poet Virgil.
2 The ‘Capitoline Wolf’, an archaic bronze that reminded contemporary viewers that
the Romans were spawn of Mars and sucklings of the She-Wolf.
3 A hut-urn, used to inter the cremated remains of Rome’s 8th century BC dead.
4 An Italic hoplite of the Early Republican period.
5 Temple of Hera at Paestum.
6 The quinquereme, essentially a muscle-powered ram; the battleship of the 3rd century
BC.
7 Gaius Marius abandoned carts and made his soldiers carry their equipment on their
backs: part of the growing professionalisation of the army under the Late Republic.
8 Coin of the Social War rebels.
9 Pompey the Great. The Late Republic was dominated by a succession of great
warlords whose power eclipsed that of their senatorial colleagues and presaged that
of the emperors.
10 Luxuria (the extravagant and conspicuous consumption of wealth) became more
socially acceptable among the elite under the Late Republic.
11 The Roman Forum.
12 Cicero. Though a ‘new man’, he became the leading representative of senatorial
reaction in the middle of the 1st century BC.
13 Julius Caesar, the greatest politician and general of the Late Republic, and the man
who finally destroyed the power of the senatorial aristocracy and inaugurated the
regime of the ‘new men’.
14 The siege of Alesia, 52 BC; an apocalyptic climax to Caesar’s eight-year conquest of
Gaul.
15 Octavian-Augustus. A murderous civil-war faction leader is transformed into a
heroic monarch in all but name by the spin doctors, in-house poets and court artists of
the new Augustan regime.
16 Augustus’s image-makers portrayed him both as a paternalistic ‘father of his
country’ and as a statesman-like commander-in-chief who guaranteed national
security and internal order.
17 The Res Gestae – Augustus’s political testimony – inscribed in stone and placed on
public view at various places across the empire.
18 The Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace) in Rome, rich in political symbolism, showing
Rome’s senatorial aristocracy.
19 The Ara Pacis again; showing the imperial family, women and children included.
20 Behind a mask of constitutional rectitude was the fist of military power. The
Praetorian Guard was stationed in Rome, and, as events in AD 41 proved, it, and not
the Senate, was the final arbiter of power.
21 The enemy within. Onto the floor of this room fell the debris – benches, tables,
writing implements – of the first-floor scriptorium where the Dead Sea Scrolls were
inscribed: a call to revolutionary holy war against the Roman Empire.
22 A Roman base in the Judean Desert outside the Jewish fortress of Masada, where the
last of the revolutionaries of AD 66–73 defied the might of Rome.
23 The Colosseum is Rome’s Auschwitz: built for the mass murder of slaves as a form
of public entertainment.
24 Hadrian’s Wall.
25 Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens.
26 The Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome has the form of a traditional victory
monument – but this had been a war to eject Germanic invaders after the frontier
defences on the upper Danube had collapsed.
27 On the Arch of Septimus Severus at Leptis Magna in Libya, the new emperor
appears with his two sons in a conventional scene.
28 A victory monument with a difference. The Sassanid emperor receives the
submission of the captive Roman emperor Valerian on a rock carving at Naqsh-i-
Rustarn.
29 The end of the pax Romana. Portchester Castle, a Roman fort on the ‘Saxon Shore’.
30 Roman towns were also walled by the Late Empire – even as urban life within
declined – turning them into the strong points of a developing system of defence-in-
depth.
31 The Notitia Dignitatum of c. AD, with its titles, lists and badges of office, bears
testimony to a bloated centralised state expanding at the expense of civil society.
32 Theodosius the Great, the last emperor of a united empire.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Tim Cornell, Richard Gosling, Steve Roskams and Philip de Souza
for the time taken to read and critique this book in draft. Significant corrections are the
result. Needless to say, none of these readers is in any way responsible for what follows.
I am also grateful to the many, often very vocal, adult education students whom it was
my great pleasure to teach and debate with at Richmond Adult and Community College
and The City Literary Institute.
Publisher’s acknowledgements
We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:
Bridgeman Art Library/Somerset County Museum, Taunton Castle, UK, for plate 1;
Corbis/Araldo de Luca for plate 2; akg-images Ltd/Andrew Baguzzi for plate 3; the
Bridgeman Art Library Ltd/Louvre, Paris, France for plate 4; Corbis/Marco Cristofori
for plate 5; akg-images Ltd/Peter Connolly for plate 6; DK Images/Karl Shone for plate
7; the Trustees of the British Museum for plate 8; Alamy Images/Visual Arts Library
(London) for plate 9; David Bellingham for plate 10; Punchstock/Brand X for plate 11;
Corbis/Sandro Vannini for plate 12; akg-images Ltd for plate 13; akg-images Ltd/Peter
Connolly for plate 14; Corbis/Roger Wood for plate 15; akg-images Ltd/Nimatallah for
plate 16; DK Images/Mike Dunning for plates 17 and 23; Ancient Art & Architecture/C
M Dixon for plates 18 and 19; DK Images/De Agostini Editore Picture Library for plate
20; Alamy Images/Robert Estall Photo Agency for plate 24; Alamy Images/Steve Allen
Travel Photography for plate 25; Corbis/Araldo de Luca for plate 26; Marcus Prinis &
Jona Lendering for plate 27; Alamy Images/Robert Harding for plate 28; TopFoto for
plate 29 and akg-images Ltd/Pirozzi for plate 32.
In some instances we have been unable to trace the owners of copyright material, and
we would appreciate any information that would enable us to do so.