Rome Notes

1. First real monolithic empire
2. Still affects us today - politics, literature, art, engineering, religion, culture
3. Trojan War - Aneas is a Trojan warrior that manages to escape
• He ends up in Carthage
• He falls in love with Dido, but the gods force him to leave
• Dido commits suicide.
4. Most of southern Italy was inhabited by Greeks
5. Trojans go to Italy, and get in a war with the people who already live there
• Trojans win.
• Aneas - Ascanius
• Iulus becomes king and sets up the capital at Alba Longa, known as Lapitum
• This becomes the center of Trojan civilization in Italy.
6. Two twin brothers (Romulus and Remus) were abandoned and raised in the forest by a she wolf.
• There is a lot of animosity between them - they declare war on each other and Romulus wins, Remus is dead.
• Romulus founds a city, Roma
7. Rome
8. Built on a series of seven hills
9. Founded in 753 B.C.
10. It was initially just a village.
11. Society was formed around two social classes
• Patricians - had money and power
• Plebeians - poorer class
• Struggle of the Orders - the political struggle between patricians and plebeians at the beginning of the fourth century.
• Roman Senate - council of elders - come up with a solution
• They compromise and give the Plebes one representative in the senate. He was the only one with the power to veto.
12. Roman Expansion
• First city in the world to have 1 million inhabitants.
• First conquer northern areas, where they set up a governor and the people have to pay Roman taxes and follow Roman laws.
• Kings in Greece want to go take over the Romans
• Pyrrhus of Epirus decided to take on the Romans, and he invades Rome
• He wins almost every battle but loses so many men that he cannot keep going
• Pyrrhic victory - a victory with devastating cost to the victor so that they cannot go on and win the next.
• Rome is rising in power in the Mediterranean. This leads to their first major conflict.
• It is between Rome and Carthage.
13. Punic Wars - three of them - define roman dominance in the Mediterranean.
• 264 B.C. - 146 B.C.
• First war - Rome gets more power than it had but nothing is resolved.
• Second war
• Hannibal - general of Carthage who came across the Pyrenees with war elephants
• Greatest threat to Rome
• Marched from New Carthage
• Romans were destroyed by the war elephants, because they could not retreat and they were trampled.
• 60,000 Romans were killed at the Battle of Canine. His purpose was to destroy Rome.
• He gets within 50 miles of Rome, but he doesn't have the supplies or invasion force left, so he cannot infiltrate them.
• He is forced back to Carthage, where he is defeated by Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama.
• Cato the Elder - "Carthage must be destroyed"
• Battle of Zama - Scipio vs Hannibal
• Scipio scared elephants away and then came up from behind to win the battle.
• Third War
• Carthage is defeated and Rome becomes the most powerful.
• Scipio's son went to Carthage and destroyed them.
14. Important Events…
• Aneas/Trojans defeat Latium
• Alba Longa
• Romulus and Remus - founding of Rome in 753 BC
• Expulsion of the Etruscan Kings / Establishment of the Roman Republic - 6th century
• Etruria takes over control of Rome, Etruscan kings lead Rome
• Taquin the Proud
• Tarquin the Sixth - raped the wife, Lucretia of a Roman Patrician
• Lucius Junius Brutus founds the Roman Republic
• Roman Republic is founded in 509 B.C
• Struggle of the Orders / Tribune of the Plebes
• Roman Expansion / Pyrrhus
• First Punic War - war over trade routes from western Mediterranean to Anatolia
15. Herodotus - known as the father of history.
16. Thucydides - wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War.
• More accurate historian
17. Livy - a Roman historian who writes the history of Rome all the way up to the age of the Emperor Augustus.