The Roman Republic

This is Unit Six of Western Civilization One, part two of two: the last century of the Roman Republic, from the vanishing free farmer to Actium, and the four procedures the exam tests on Rome. Part one ended with client networks deciding what the assemblies pretended to. Carry one idea through this part. The conquests that made Rome destroyed the Republic, and the anchor gives the fall a chain of four links. Land: loot flowed to the elite, who bought out the small farmers who filled the legions. Murder: when Tiberius Gracchus tried to give land back, senators clubbed him to death, and a Republic that settled disputes by votes began settling them by killing. Loyalty: Marius dropped the property requirement, and landless soldiers swore to a general who promised them farms. Choice: Sulla marched on Rome and retired; Caesar crossed the Rubicon and did not. The anchor's insistence is that none of the links forced the next. By the end you will be able to describe the society under the conquests. To tell the Gracchi, Marius and Sulla. To trace the First Triumvirate to Actium. To sequence, map, classify and read a source. And to state the chain and why it was not inevitable.

Three entries on society under the conquests: the equestrians and the free farmer bought out, slavery as the engine and Spartacus, and women under the father of the household.

The farmer who filled the legions, bought out.

WC1 0515 Equestrians, Provincials, and the Vanishing Free Farmer

Senators were banned from commerce in the late third century, so equestrians became the business class. Provincial elites could earn citizenship, while most subjects stayed at a governor's mercy. The rich bought out small farmers, which the anchor calls an existential threat to Rome's armies, because the citizen-soldier farmer was the Republic's foundation. Land and army were one problem, and the Gracchi try it next.

A third of Italy, and six thousand crosses.

WC1 0516 Slavery as Rome's Engine, and Spartacus, 73 to 71

The anchor puts slaves at a third or more of Italy, giving two figures. Loot supplied them, plantations and mines used them, and abuse had no consequence. Spartacus led about seventy thousand from seventy-three to seventy-one, and Crassus crucified six thousand; where the anchor also says seventy for the defeat, it was seventy-one. The anchor's claim that slavery stifled innovation is its own, attributed.

More standing than Athens, under a father's power.

WC1 0517 Roman Women Under the Pater Familias

Rome was patriarchal under the father of the household, yet women kept their dowries, could divorce, controlled inheritances, and as widows acted autonomously. They influenced politics from within families, girls' education was valued, and texts by women survive, while traditionalists decried the loosening and the devoted wife remained the ideal. Compare Athens, not modern law: Roman women had more standing than Athenian.

Two entries on murder and the sworn army: the Gracchi clubbed to death for land reform, and the soldiers who swore to Marius and marched with Sulla.

The first murders for politics.

WC1 0518 The Gracchi: Land Reform Ends in Murder, 133 and 121

The Republic's stability rested on settling elite disputes by votes, never blood. Tiberius Gracchus, tribune, pushed land redistribution through the Assembly, and senators clubbed him to death in one thirty-three; Gaius, pressing citizenship for Italians, died in one twenty-one. These were the first murders for politics, power passing from rhetoric to arms. The commission worked until one eighteen; the precedent was the damage.

Soldiers who swore to a general.

WC1 0519 Marius's Army and Sulla's Dictatorship

Marius abolished the property requirement; soldiers swore to the general and expected land from him. Sulla, stripped of the command against Mithridates, marched on Rome, won the civil war of eighty-three, and ruled as dictator from eighty-one with proscriptions. The witness dates Italian citizenship to ninety where the anchor says eighty-four. Where the anchor once calls Sulla's enemy the Parthians, it was Mithridates.

Four entries from Caesar to Octavian: the private pact of sixty, Gaul and the Rubicon, dictator for life and the Ides of March, and the Second Triumvirate ending at Actium.

A private pact among three men.

WC1 0520 Pompey, Crassus, Caesar: The First Triumvirate, 60 BCE

Pompey and Crassus, Sulla's men, crushed Spartacus and became consuls. Pompey cleared the pirates and took the East, returning about sixty-two, the conventional date, to be refused land for his men. In sixty, a witness date, he, Crassus and Caesar made a private pact: Pompey's land, Caesar's Gaul, Crassus's Parthia. The anchor's sixty-seven for Pompey's return is recorded, not used.

Gaul, and a river crossed under arms.

WC1 0521 Gaul, the Rubicon, and Pharsalus

Caesar conquered Gaul, fifty-eight to fifty, Plutarch's million killed or enslaved, with Latin-derived languages as the measure of the conquest, and raided Britain twice. Ordered to disband, he crossed the Rubicon in forty-nine. Pompey fled to Greece, lost in forty-eight at Pharsalus, a witness name, and was murdered in Egypt. Where the anchor says Caesar's Britain lasted centuries, its next chapter credits Claudius.

Sincere assassins who restored nothing.

WC1 0522 Dictator for Life, the Ides of March, and Octavian

Caesar became dictator for life with a packed Senate, veteran colonies, a new calendar and a planned Persian war, with Cleopatra the Seventh and Caesarion in the background. Senators who, the anchor says, sincerely meant to save the Republic killed him in March forty-four. His heir was his grand-nephew Octavian. The assassins' sincerity is attributed, and their act restored nothing.

Thirty-three years old, and alone.

WC1 0523 The Second Triumvirate, Cleopatra, and Actium, 31 BCE

In forty-three Antony, Octavian and Lepidus proscribed their enemies and divided the world, Octavian west, Antony east with Cleopatra. Octavian declared war on Cleopatra in thirty-two, won in thirty-one at Actium, a witness name, and the pair died in thirty, leaving Octavian, thirty-three years old, alone. Nothing here was inevitable, the anchor insists. Octavian built a new system deliberately.

Four procedures: the Republic sequenced on three anchors, its map read by four rings, an office classified by how many hold it and for how long, and the Twelve Tables read as a source.

Three anchors, two eras.

WC1 0524 Sequencing the Republic, 509 to 31 BCE

The Republic spans nearly five centuries, so fix three anchors and two eras: five oh nine, the Republic's birth; one forty-six, Carthage and Corinth destroyed; thirty-one, Actium. Before one forty-six is conquest, after it is crisis. The Twelve Tables in four fifty-one are conquest, early. Cannae in two sixteen is the Punic middle. Pydna in one sixty-eight is shortly before one forty-six. Tiberius Gracchus in one thirty-three is crisis, first; Sulla's dictatorship in eighty-one after the Gracchi; the Rubicon in forty-nine after Sulla; Caesar's death in forty-four before Actium. The trap is the Conflict of the Orders, which ends about three sixty with plebiscites law in two eighty-seven, before the Punic Wars. Any answer putting plebeian gains after Hannibal is wrong, and the First Triumvirate in sixty precedes the Rubicon by eleven years.

Four rings, and the date follows.

WC1 0525 Reading a Map of Republican Expansion and the Punic Wars

The Republican map shades Roman territory at a date, and four rings read it: Italy by two sixty-three, the western islands and Spain after the Punic Wars, Greece and Macedon after one forty-six, and the East after Pompey by sixty-three. A map shading only the peninsula south of the Po is before two sixty-four, since Sicily is missing. Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica without Spain is between two forty-one and two oh two. Greece and Macedon shaded is after one forty-six. Anatolia and Syria to the Euphrates is after Pompey. A marked site in southern Italy where a smaller army enveloped a larger one in two sixteen is Cannae; a site near Carthage where that general finally lost is Zama. Egypt stays unshaded until thirty, and Gaul appears only after Caesar, so a map with Gaul and without Egypt is dated between fifty and thirty, the civil wars.

How many hold it, and for how long.

WC1 0526 Classifying a Republican Office or Body

Given a power, ask how many hold it and for how long. Consul: two, one year, imperium. Dictator: one, a crisis, full imperium, expected to resign. Senate: hundreds, for life, finance and by one thirty-three the proposing and vetoing of law. Tribune: two then ten, one year, a veto for plebeians. Centuriate Assembly: all citizens in five wealth classes, electing consuls and declaring war. Plebeian Assembly: plebeians, whose plebiscites bound everyone after two eighty-seven. A man with twelve lictors commanding an army for a year is a consul. A man whose no blocks any magistrate and whose person is sacred is a tribune. A body deciding whether a war is funded is the Senate. A body voting by classes is the Centuriate Assembly. A man with twenty-four lictors during Hannibal's invasion who lays down power is the dictator, Fabius Maximus. Sulla and Caesar broke the dictator's pattern, so classify by designed limits and expect to be asked which limit was broken.

Who is protected, who is punished, and why written.

WC1 0527 Reading the Twelve Tables as Law Made Public

For a provision from the Twelve Tables, use Hammurabi's method, who is protected, who is punished, what the difference reveals, and add a fourth question: why plebeians wanted it written. The primary text is on Fordham's Ancient History Sourcebook. A debtor who cannot pay may be chained and sold beyond the Tiber: the insolvent debtor is punished by bondage, revealing debt as the plebeian grievance. A father holds life and death over his children: the household is the state's unit. Marriage between patrician and plebeian is forbidden: the patrician order's exclusivity is protected, the orders as legal castes, a rule the Conflict of the Orders soon overturned. Plebeians wanted the law written because unwritten law was whatever patrician magistrates said it was. Posting it made the rules knowable, not equal. The Tables are neither a constitution nor a bill of rights, and equality is the distractor.

One capstone entry: the four links by which the Republic fell, and the anchor's insistence that none of them forced the next.

Four links, and none forced the next.

WC1 0528 Why the Republic Fell: Soldiers, Land, Loyalty, and the First Political Murders

The exam's Republican questions cluster on the last century, and the anchor gives the fall one chain with four links, then insists it was not inevitable. The first link is conquest itself. From three thirty-eight Rome grew by absorbing, and by one forty it held the Mediterranean, but the loot flowed to the elite, who bought out the small farmers who had filled the legions, an existential threat to Rome's armies in the anchor's words, worsened by slavery as plantations replaced farms. The second link is the attempt to fix it and what it cost. Tiberius Gracchus tried to cap landholding and give land back, and senators clubbed him to death in one thirty-three; his brother died in one twenty-one. A Republic that had settled elite disputes by votes now settled them by killing. The third link is the army's loyalty. Marius dropped the property requirement, and landless men swore to a general who promised them farms. Sulla marched on Rome when the Senate took his command, won a civil war, and ruled as dictator before retiring, proving a general could keep power if he chose. The fourth link is the choice. Pompey, Crassus and Caesar made a private pact in sixty; Caesar took Gaul and an army that was his; ordered home without it, he crossed the Rubicon in forty-nine. Pharsalus, the Ides of March, the Second Triumvirate and Actium in thirty-one followed, and Octavian held everything. Four links: land, murder, loyalty, choice, with four dates, one thirty-three, one oh seven for Marius's reform, forty-nine, thirty-one. The anchor's warning is that none forced the next. Sulla retired. The assassins meant to restore the Republic. Octavian could have too. The exam does not ask whether the Republic could have been saved, and the course does not. It asks facts inside the chain, what the Gracchi proposed, what Marius changed, what Sulla did, what the First Triumvirate was, why Caesar crossed the Rubicon, what Actium decided. The anchor's figures, the million in Gaul, the three hundred thousand in Sulla's war, the seventy thousand with Spartacus, and its judgments on Caesar's loyalty and the assassins' sincerity, are attributed, not repeated as fact.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe equestrians as the business class, the free farmer bought out, slavery as a third of Italy with Spartacus crucified by the thousand, and Roman women with more standing than Athenian under a father's power. You can tell the Gracchi clubbed to death in one thirty-three and one twenty-one, Marius's landless soldiers sworn to their general, and Sulla's march, civil war and dictatorship. You can trace the pact of sixty, Gaul, the Rubicon in forty-nine, Pharsalus, the Ides of March, and Actium in thirty-one, and say that the anchor calls none of it inevitable. You can sequence the Republic on five oh nine, one forty-six and thirty-one, read its map by four rings, classify an office by number and term, and read the Tables as knowable law, not equal. And you can state the chain, land, murder, loyalty, choice, which is this unit's one idea. Unit seven opens on what Octavian built with everything he held, the Principate, and the emperors who followed him.