What was imperial Rome and what values

Empire: Urban Life and Imperial Majesty in Rome, China, and India

THINKING AHEAD

What was imperial Rome and what values did it retain from its Etruscan and republican roots?

What is Confucianism and how did it contribute to the rise of the Chinese empire?

How did religious values shape the Indian empire?

Thamugadi, modern Timgad, Algeria, is one of the few totally excavated towns in the Roman Empire, and its ruins tell us as much or more about Roman civilization as any other Roman city, including Rome itself. It was founded in about 100 ce as a colony for retired soldiers of the Roman legions who had served the Empire as it constantly expanded its borders in Africa. Whereas Rome had grown haphazardly over hundreds of years and many rulers, Thamugadi [tham-uh-GAY-dee] was an entirely new city and a model, if not of Rome itself, then of the Roman sense of order. It was based on the rigid grid of a Roman military camp and was divided into four quarters defined by east–west and north–south arteries, broad avenues lined with columns (Fig. 3.1), with a forum, or public square, at their crossing. The town had 111 insulae blocks, and all the amenities of Roman life were available: 14 public baths, a library, a theater, and several markets, including one that sold only clothes (Fig. 3.2).

Thamugadi is the product of the conscious Roman decision to “Romanize” the world, a symbol of empire itself. By the middle of the third century bce, it had begun to seek control of the entire Mediterranean basin and its attendant wealth. The Roman military campaigns led to the building of these cities, with their amphitheaters, temples, arches, roads, fortresses, aqueducts, bridges, and monuments of every description. From Scotland in the north to the oases of the Sahara Desert in the south, from the Iberian peninsula in the west to Asia Minor as far as the Tigris River in the east, local aristocrats took up Roman customs (Map 3.1). Roman law governed each region. Rome remained the center of culture all others at the periphery imitated.

Fig. 3.1 Colonnaded street in Thamugadi, North Africa. View toward the Arch of Trajan. Late second century ce.

Thamugadi was established in about 100 ce as a colony for retired soldiers of the Roman Third Legion. It represents the deep imprint Rome left upon its entire empire.

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public baths temple library theater

Fig. 3.2 City plan of Thamugadi. ca. 200 ce

The layout of Thamugadi is a symbol of Roman reason and planning—efficient and highly organized.

Rome admired Greece for its cultural achievements, from its philosophy to its sculpture, and, as we have seen, its own art developed from Greek-Hellenic models. But Rome admired its own achievements as well, and its art differed from that of its Hellenic predecessors in certain key respects. Instead of depicting mythological events and heroes, Roman artists depicted current events and real people, from generals and their military exploits to portraits of their leaders and recently deceased citizens. They celebrated the achievements of a state that was their chief patron so that all the world might stand in awe of the state’s accomplishments.

This chapter traces the rise of Roman civilization from its Greek and Etruscan origins in the sixth century bce to about 313 ce, when the empire was Christianized. At roughly the same time, in China and in the river valleys of the Asian subcontinent of India, other empires arose as well. In both China and India, national literatures arose, as did religious and philosopical practices that continue to this day and are influential worldwide; but in the ancient world, East and West had not yet met. The peoples of the Mediterranean world and those living in the Yellow and Indus River valleys were isolated from one another. As trade routes stretched across the Asian continent, these cultures would eventually cross paths. Gradually, Indian thought, especially Buddhism, would find its way into China, and Chinese goods would find their way to the West. Even more gradually, intellectual developments in ancient China and India, from Daoism to the teachings of Confucius [kun-FYOO-shus] and Buddha, would come to influence cultural practice in the Western world. But throughout the period studied in this chapter, up until roughly 200 ce, the cultures of China and India developed independently of those in the West.

100 km 100 miles SCANDINAVIA SCOTLAND BRITAIN GERMANY G A U L FRANCE DACIA L E T R U C I A D A L M A T I A ITALY G SPAIN GIBRALTAR A L G E R I A A IBERIAN PENINSULA U O T R P LATIUM CAMPANIA MACEDONIA GREECE TURKEY ANATOLIA SYRIA PALESTINE LIBYA EGYPT ASIA MINOR 400 km 400 miles

Map 3.1 The Roman Empire at its greatest extent, ca. 180 ce

By 180 ce the Roman Empire extended from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine in the east, and from Scotland in the north to the Sahara Desert in North Africa.

ROME

The origins of Roman culture are twofold. On the one hand, there were the Greeks, who as early as the eighth century bce colonized the southern coastal regions of the Italian peninsula and Sicily and whose Hellenic culture the Romans adopted for their own. On the other hand, there were the Etruscans. Scholars continue to debate whether the Etruscans were indigenous to Italy or whether they migrated from the Near East. In the ninth and eighth centuries bce, the Etruscans became known to the outside world for their mineral resources, and by the seventh and sixth centuries they were major exporters of fine painted pottery, a black ceramic ware known as bucchero, bronze-work, jewelry, oil, and wine. By the fifth century bce, they were known throughout the Mediterranean for their skill as sculptors in both bronze and terra cotta.

The Etruscan homeland, Etruria, occupied the part of the Italian peninsula that is roughly the same as modern-day Tuscany. It was bordered by the Arno River to the north (which runs through Florence) and the Tiber River to the south (which runs through Rome). Rome itself developed geographically between two cultures—the Greek colonies to the south of the Tiber and the Etruscan settlements to the north. Its situation, in fact, is geographically improbable. Rome was built on a hilly site (on seven hills, to be precise) on the east bank of the Tiber. Its low-lying areas were swampy and subject to flooding, while the higher elevations of the hillsides did not easily lend themselves to building. The river Tiber itself provides a sensible explanation for the city’s original siting, since it gave the city a trade route to the north and access to the sea at its port of Ostia to the south. And so does Tiber Island, next to the Temple of Portunus, which was one of the river’s primary crossings from the earliest times. Thus, Rome was physically and literally the crossing place of Etruscan and Greek cultures.

The city also had competing foundation myths. The first is embodied in Virgil’s Aeneid, in the story of its founding by the Trojan warrior Aeneas, who at the end of the Trojan War sailed off to found a new homeland for his people (see Continuity & Change, Chapter 2). The other was Etruscan. Legend had it that twin infants named Romulus and Remus were left to die on the banks of the Tiber but were rescued by a she-wolf who suckled them (Fig. 3.3). Raised by a shepherd, the twins decided to build a city on the Palatine Hill above the spot where they had been saved (accounting, in the manner of foundation myths, for the unlikely location of the city). Soon, the two boys feuded over who would rule the new city. In his History of Rome, the Roman historian Livy (59 bce–17 ce) briefly describes the ensuing conflict:

• Then followed an angry altercation; heated passions led to bloodshed; in the tumult Remus was killed. The more common report is that Remus contemptuously jumped over the newly raised walls and was forthwith killed by the enraged Romulus, who exclaimed, “Shall it be hence-forth with every one who leaps over my walls.” Romulus thus became sole ruler, and the city was called after him, its founder.

The date, legend has it, was 753 bce.

Republican Rome

By the time of Virgil, the Greek and Etruscan myths had merged. Thus, according to legend, Aeneas’s son founded the city of Alba Longa, just to the south of Rome, which was ruled by a succession of kings until Romulus brought it under Roman control.

Fig. 3.3 She-Wolf. ca. 500–480 bce

Bronze, with glass-paste eyes, height 33”. Museo Capitolino, Rome. The two suckling figures representing Romulus and Remus are Renaissance additions. This Etruscan bronze, which became a symbol of Rome, combines a ferocious realism with the stylized portrayal of, for instance, the wolf’s geometrically regular mane.

Romulus, it was generally accepted, inaugurated the traditional Roman distinction between patricians, the landowning aristocrats who served as priests, magistrates, lawyers, and judges, and plebeians, the poorer class who were craftspeople, merchants, and laborers. When, in 510 bce, the Romans expelled the last of the Etruscan kings and decided to rule themselves without a monarch, the patrician/plebeian distinction became very similar to the situation in fifth-century bce Athens. There, a small aristocracy who owned the good land and large estates, shared citizenship with a much larger working class.

In Rome, as in the Greek model, every free male was a citizen, but in the Etruscan manner, not every citizen enjoyed equal privileges. The Senate, the political assembly in charge of creating law, was exclusively patrician. In reaction, the plebeians formed their own legislative assembly, the Consilium Plebis (Council of Plebeians), to protect themselves from the patricians, but the patricians were immune from any laws the plebeians passed, known as plebiscites. Finally, in 287 bce, the plebiscites became binding law on all citizens, and something resembling equality of citizenship was assured.

The expulsion of the Etruscan kings and the dedication of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill in 509 bce mark the beginning of actual historical records documenting the development of Rome. They also mark the beginning of the Roman Republic, a state whose political organization rested on the principle that the citizens were the ultimate source of legitimacy and sovereignty. Many people believe that the Etruscan bronze head of a man (Fig. 3.4) is a portrait of Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder and first consul of the Roman Republic. However, it dates from approximately 100–200 years after Brutus’s life, and it more likely represents a noble “type,” an imaginary portrait of a Roman founding father, or pater, the root of the word patrician. This role is conveyed through the figure’s strong character and strength of purpose.

In republican Rome, every plebian chose a patrician as his patron—and, indeed, most patricians were themselves clients of some other patrician of higher status—whose duty it was to represent the plebian in any matter of law and provide an assortment of assistance in matters, primarily economic. This paternalistic relationship—which we call patronage—reflected the family’s central role in Roman culture. The pater protected not only his wife and family but also his clients, who submitted to his patronage. In return for the pater’s protection, family and client equally owed the pater their total obedience—which the Romans referred to as pietas, “dutifulness.” So embedded was this attitude that when toward the end of the first century bce the Republic declared itself an empire, the emperor was called pater patriae, “father of the fatherland.”

Roman Rule

By the middle of the third century bce, the Republic had embarked on a series of military exploits known as the Punic Wars that recall Alexander’s imperial adventuring of the century before. Whenever Rome conquered a region, it established permanent colonies of veteran soldiers who received allotments of land, virtually guaranteeing them a certain level of wealth and status. These soldiers were citizens. If the conquered people proved loyal to Rome, they could gain full Roman citizenship. Furthermore, when not involved in combat, the local Roman soldiery transformed themselves into engineers—building roads, bridges, and civic projects of all types, significantly improving the region in the manner of Thamugadi in Algeria (see Figs. 3.1 and 3.2). In this way, the Republic diminished the adversarial status of its colonies and gained their loyalty.

Fig. 3.4 Head of a Man (possibly a portrait of Lucius Junius Brutus). ca. 300 bce.

Bronze, height 27½″. Museo Capitolino, Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome. The eyes, which look slightly past the viewer, and the intensely furrowed brow, give the figure an almost visionary force and suggest the influence of Lysippus (compare Fig. 2.36).

The prosperity brought about by Roman expansion soon created a new kind of citizen in Rome. They called themselves equites (“equestrians”) to connect them to the cavalry, the elite part of the military, since only the wealthy could afford the necessary horses. The equites were wealthy businessmen, but not often landowners and therefore not patricians. The patricians considered the commercial exploits of the equites crass and their wealth ill-gotten. Soon the two groups were in open conflict, the equites joining ranks with the plebeians.

The Senate was the patrician stronghold, and it feared any loss of power and authority. When the general Pompey the Great (106–48 bce), returned from a victorious campaign against rebels in Asia Minor in 62 bce, the Senate refused to ratify the treaties he had made in the region and refused to grant the land allotments he had given his soldiers. Outraged, Pompey joined forces with two other successful military leaders. One had put down the slave revolt of Spartacus in 71 bce. The other was Gaius Julius Caesar (100–44 bce), a military leader from a prestigious patrician family that claimed descent from Aeneas and Venus. The union of the three leaders became known as the First Triumvirate.

A Divided Empire

Wielding the threat of civil war, the First Triumvirate soon dominated the Republic’s political life, but theirs was a fragile relationship. Caesar accepted a five-year appointment as governor of Gaul, present-day France. By 49 bce, he had brought all of Gaul under his control. He summed up this conquest in his Commentaries in the famous phrase “Veni, vidi, vici”—“I came, I saw, I conquered”—a statement that captures, perhaps better than any other, the militaristic nature of the Roman state as a whole. He was preparing to return home when Pompey joined forces with the Senate. They reminded Caesar of a long-standing tradition that required a returning commander to leave his army behind, in this case on the Gallic side of the Rubicon River, but Caesar refused. Pompey fled to Greece, where Caesar defeated him a year later. Again Pompey fled, this time to Egypt, where he was murdered. The third member of the Triumvirate had been captured and executed several years earlier.

Now unimpeded, Caesar assumed dictatorial control over Rome. Caesar treated the Senate with disdain, and most of its membership counted themselves as his enemies. On March 15, 44 bce, the Ides of March, he was stabbed 23 times by a group of 60 senators at the foot of a sculpture honoring Pompey on the floor of the Senate. This scene was memorialized in English by Shakespeare’s great play Julius Caesar and Caesar’s famous line, as he sees his ally Marcus Junius Brutus (85–42 bce) among the assassins, “Et tu, Brute?”—“You also, Brutus?” Brutus and the others believed they had freed Rome of a tyrant, but the people were outraged, the Senate disgraced, and Caesar martyred.

Cicero and the Politics of Rhetoric

In times of such political upheaval, it is not surprising that one of the most powerful figures of the day would be someone who specialized in the art of political persuasion. In pre-Augustan Rome, that person was the rhetorician (writer and public speaker, or orator) Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 bce). First and foremost, Cicero recognized the power of the Latin language to communicate with the people. Although originally used almost exclusively as the language of commerce, Latin, by the first century ce, was understood to be potentially a more powerful tool of persuasion than Greek, still the literary language of the upper classes. The clarity and eloquence of Cicero’s style can be quickly discerned, even in translation, as an excerpt (Reading 3.1) from his essay On Duty demonstrates.

READING 3.1 Cicero, On Duty, 44 bce

That moral goodness which we look for in a lofty, high-minded spirit is secured, of course, by moral, not physical strength. And yet the body must be trained and so disciplined that it can obey the dictates of judgment and reason in attending to business and in enduring toil. But that moral goodness which is our theme depends wholly upon the thought and attention given to it by the mind. And, in this way, the men who in a civil capacity direct the affairs of the nation render no less important service than they who conduct its wars: by their statesmanship oftentimes wars are either averted or terminated; sometimes also they are declared. . . . And so diplomacy in the friendly settlement of controversies is more desirable than courage in settling them on the battlefield; but we must be careful not to take that course merely for the sake of avoiding war rather than for the sake of public expediency. War, however, should be undertaken in such a way as to make it evident that it has no other object than to secure peace.

The dangers attending great affairs of state fall sometimes on those who undertake them, sometimes upon the state. In carrying out such enterprises, some run the risk of losing their lives, others their reputation and the good-will of their fellow-citizens. It is our duty, then, to be more ready to endanger our own than the public welfare and to hazard honor and glory more readily than other advantages. . . .

Philosophically, Cicero’s argument extends back to Plato and Aristotle, but rhetorically—that is, in the structure of its argument—it is purely Roman. It is purposefully deliberative in tone—that is, its chief concern is to give sage advice rather than to engage in a Socratic dialogue to elicit that advice.

Portrait Busts, Pietas, and Politics

This historical context helps us understand a major Roman art form of the second and first centuries bce, the portrait bust. These are generally portraits of patricians (and upper-middle-class citizens wishing to emulate them) rather than equites. Roman portrait busts share with their Greek ancestors an affinity for naturalistic representation, but they are even more realistic, revealing their subjects’ every wrinkle and wart (Fig. 3.5). This form of realism is known as verism (from the Latin veritas, “truth”). Indeed, the high level of naturalism may have resulted from their original form, wax ancestral masks, usually made at the peak of the subject’s power, called imagines, which were then transferred to stone.

Compared to the Greek Hellenistic portrait bust—recall Lysippus’s portrait of Alexander (see Fig. 2.36), copies of which proliferated throughout the Mediterranean in the third century bce—the Roman portrait differs particularly in the age of the sitter. Both the Greek and Roman busts are essentially propagandistic in intent, designed to extol the virtues of the sitter, but where Alexander is portrayed as a young man at the height of his powers, the usual Roman portrait bust depicts its subject at or near the end of life. The Greek portrait bust, in other words, signifies youthful possibility and ambition, while the Roman version claims for its subject the wisdom and experience of age. These images celebrate pietas, the deep-seated Roman virtue of dutiful respect toward the gods, fatherland, and parents. To respect one’s parents was tantamount, for the Romans, to respecting one’s moral obligations to the gods. The respect one owed one’s parents was, in effect, a religious obligation.

Fig. 3.5 A Roman Man. ca. 80 bce

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