The End of the Roman Republic

      The Roman Republic, a bold experiment begun in 509 BCE, eventually collapsed. At the outset, when the Etruscan monarchy was overthrown, true democracy had seemed possible. This possibility seemed to be strengthened by the fact that Rome's dealings with its neighbours had been generally fair, if often harsh. Strong divisions between the landowning and commercial elites, and the army reforms of Marius led to factional strife with the people supporting particular army chiefs, like Sulla, Pompey, or Caesar. In the Rome of the first few centuries BCE, if you were poor and without personal means of livelihood, you either starved or were reduced to slavery, or worse.
      Under the Empire, things would get only slightly better for most Romans, who were tired of bloody civil wars. Augustus, the first emperor, consolidated his stranglehold on political and military power and claimed that he had restored the Republic. In reality, he was just the first in a long line of emperors that lasted until at least 476 CE. These emperors were in fact monarchs who relied on military power, moral authority, or perceived divine will to make their control of the known world legitimate. Whether or not Augustus and his successors were good emperors, their rule was absolute.

History Continues to Unfold

      Until fairly recently, much of the story of the Etruscan monarchy and the early Roman Republic supplied by the ancient historian Livy was more or less accepted as fact, or at least as a useful model given that there was no other. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that Livy's account is a less than reliable discussion of early Rome. There are no written records of any sort from earlier than the third century BC, and even the date of the founding of Rome - 753 BCE - is a product of the first-century BCE. Archaeology is the most important key to understanding the remote past, and it is now clear that Roman society is much older and more complex than Livy led us to believe. A current trend in scholarship is to concentrate less on wars and alliances and more on social history, on how the ancient Roman people lived.

Writing: ECHOES from the past published by McGraw-Hill Ryderson Ltd.