Roman Culture

Roman Culture•All roads lead to Rome.•Be in Rome, do as Romans do.•January--- [Janus--- god of comings and goings, with two faces, on looking ahead and one looking behind] janitor•February---februa [expiatory offerings]•March ---[Mars] Martial•April [aperire---open, flower] aperture (opening)•May --- Maia [an Italic goddess of the earth]•June---Juno [Goddess of all aspects of the life of women] time for marriage•July---Julius Caesar, Julie•August--- augustus (revered)•September---septem (seven) septangle•October---octo (eight) octopus•November---novem (nine) novennial•December---decem (ten) decemdentate•The Roman calendar was fundamentally a religious document. Some months were named after gods, including January for Janus, who presided over beginnings, and March for Mars, the war god.Other months were merely numbered. The Roman calendar originally began with March, so the seventh month, September, took its name from the Latin word septem for seven. The name of the eighth month, or October, derived from octo for eight, and others followed suit.•The Hebrews were distinguished by their prophets, and the Greeks by their philosophers; Rome’sgenius found expression in law and government.Geography of Italy•The land and environment of Italy provided the Romans with a secure home from which to expand.Italy is a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the sea and protected to the north by the Alps mountain range. The climate is generally temperate, although summers are hot in the south. Rome was part of a region near the Tiber River in central Italy that was called Latium (now part of Lazio).Its Latin-speaking inhabitants originally joined the waves of Indo-European peoples who crossed the Adriatic Sea from the Balkan Peninsula and settled in central Italy about 1000 bc.•To the north, the Etruscans had established a vigorous civilization in the region called Etruria.These people probably originated in Asia Minor and spoke an entirely different language than neighboring Indo-European peoples. In southern Italy and on the large island of Sicily, colonists fleeing from famine and political conflict in Greece founded new cities between 800 and 500 bc.The city of Naples derives its name from the Greek words Nea Polis (New City).•Fasces•The Etruscans used a bundle of rods surrounding an ax to represent royal authority. The Romans adopted these symbols of power, called fasces in Latin, and used them on ceremonial occasions.The ax stood for the power of life and death, while the rods represented the power of punishment.•Volcanoes like Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius dot the western coast of Italy and its offshore islands, leaving sections of Latium, Campania near Naples, and Sicily fertile from the residue of volcanic ash. The mountains were once rich in timber and had meadows where sheep and goats grazed in the warmest months before they were driven to the plains for the winter. There was salt along the Tiber River and large deposits of iron were located in Etruria. North-south land routes allowed for overland trade, and so commerce as well as agriculture, pasturage, and metalwork drove the economy.She-Wolf (Romulus and Remus)•The story of Rome’s founding survives only in primitive myths and meager archaeological remains.An island in the Tiber River afforded the easiest crossing point, and archaeology shows that some Latins established a settlement on the nearby Palatine Hill; perhaps they hoped to rob, or collect tolls, from traders crossing the river on their way from Etruria to southern Italy.•Roman myth created a more glorious tale of the city’s beginnings. These legends trace Rome’s origins to Romulus, a son of the god Mars and also a descendent of the Trojan prince Aeneas, who brought his people to Italy after the city of Troy burned. Romulus and his twin brother Remus were grandsons of King Numitor of the ancient city of Alba Longa in Latium. Numitor was deposed by his brother, who also tried to kill the twins by having them thrown into the Tiber. Instead, the infants washed ashore and were suckled by a she-wolf who became—and remains today—the symbol of Rome. When the brothers grew up, they restored Numitor to his throne and then foundeda new city on the Palatine Hill above the river.•The Romans believed that Romulus and Remus founded Rome in 753 bc, and that Romulus erected a wall around the site of the new city. When Remus tried to assert his leadership byscornfully leaping over the inadequate wall, Romulus killed him and became the city’s first king, giving it his name. He then invited his neighbors east of the Tiber River, the Sabines, to a festival and kidnapped the Sabine women—called the “rape of the Sabine women”—to provide the wives necessary for the Roman population to grow. Other legends about Romulus include his mysterious disappearance in a storm cloud, an event that led the Romans to proclaim him a god.Roman History•Roman history is basically the story of Roman’s conquest of the plain of Latium, then Italy, and finally the entire Mediterranean world (notably 53 B.C. Britannia). After the Romans conquered their Mediterranean empire, Italy’s central location made their task of governing that empireconsiderably less difficult.•Historians divide Roman history into two broad periods. The first period, that of the Republic, began in 509 B.C. with the overthrow of Etruscan monarchy. The second, that of the Empire, started in 27 B.C., when Octavian (Augustus) became in effect the first Roman emperor, ending almost five hundred years of republican self-government. By conquering the Mediterranean world and extending its law and, in some instances, citizenship to different nationalities, the Roman Republic transcended the parochialism typical of the city-state. The Republic initiated the trendtoward political and legal universalism, which reached fruition in the second phrase of Roman history, the Empire.•The empire began to decline in the 3rd century, increasingly troubled by the inroads northern tribes such as the Goths.•In the 4th century the emperor Constantine moved the capital from Rome to Byzantium, renamed it Constantinople (modern Istanbul). After 395, the empire was permanently divided into East (the Byzantine Empire) and West. In 476 the last emperor of the West was deposed by the Goths and this marked the end of the West Roman Empire.•The East Roman Empire collapsed when Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453.Roman Law•Roman Law, in general usage, legal system developed by the Romans from the time of their first codification of law, known as the Law of the Twelve Tables, in 450 bc to the death of Justinian I, ruler of the Byzantine Empire, in ad 565. Specifically, the term designates the codification of law known as the Corpus Juris Civilis, also called the Justinian Code, made under the auspices of Justinian, that forms the basis of the civil law of many continental European countries.THE EARLY LAW•Prior to the Twelve Tables, the law of Rome was religious in character, and its interpretation rested with priests, who were members of the patrician class. Complaints and agitation by the plebs, the common people, led to the reduction to writing of the existing legal customs and the addition of new principles unknown in the customary law. The Law of the Twelve Tables thus drafted was submitted to and accepted by the popular assembly. This code set forth simple rules suitable for an agricultural community; it established equal law for patricians and plebs and was prized by the Romans as the source of all public and private law. The legal system established under this code, and the body of rules that developed around it, applied exclusively to Roman citizens and was known as the jus civile.EFFECTS OF ROMAN RULE•Roman Empire, AD 117•In terms of the vastness of territory, the Roman Empire reached its zenith under the rule of Trajan during the 2nd century AD. In response to this expansion and conquest, Roman leaders developeda dual system of law to govern citizens and conquered subjects. Eventually all subjects becameRoman citizens and the city law (jus civile) of Rome became the law of the entire empire. •Conquest over the Mediterranean basin compelled the Romans to work out a new system of law.Each conquered territory had its own system, and a body of law was required that would beapplicable to both citizens and subjects. Between about 367 bc and ad137 the new law wasdeveloped from the edicts of the praetor (A local member of the judiciary having limitedjurisdiction, especially in criminal cases), or magistrate, who defined and interpreted the law in individual cases. The praetor of the foreigners administered justice in Rome in all controversies except those in which both parties were citizens; the praetor, or provincial magistrate, patterned his edicts in matters of commercial interest after the edict of the foreign praetor in Rome. During the last century of the republic the rules of the new system were generally made applicable tocontroversies between Roman citizens. This new legal system was known as the jus gentium.•The extension of citizenship during the years from 100 bc to ad 212 to all free inhabitants of the Roman Empire made the distinction between the jus gentium and the jus civile obsolete, and the city law or jus civile of Rome became the law of the empire. Provincial diversities were effaced by legislation by the senate and emperor and by juristic interpretation. The most significantdevelopment in the Roman legal system of this period was the right given by the first Roman emperor Augustus and his successors to eminent jurists to deliver responsa, or opinions, on thelegal cases on trial in the courts. Among the most famous of these Roman jurists were Gaius(flourished 2nd century ad), Papinian, Julius Paulus (flourished 3rd century ad ), and Ulpian, the last three of whom successively held the position praefectus praetoria, or minister of justice of the Roman Empire.FIRST LEGAL CODE•Court of Justinian I•This Byzantine mosaic shows the court of Emperor Justinian I. In the 6th century, Justinian organized the first comprehensive compilation, or written code, of Roman law. The compilation, which became known as the Justinian Code, influenced the development of the civil law system in many countries.•The Institutiones of Justinian set forth the elements of Roman law and was based on the Institutiones of Gaius. It was intended primarily for law students, but was published with statutory force. The Digesta or Pandecta, composed of excerpts from the juristic literature of four centuries (from about 30 bc to ad 300), was a collection of decisions of the courts, with commentaries on various laws. The Novellae was a collection of the laws issued by Justinian and his successors. The revised Codex Constitutionum was a compilation of all imperial legislation up to ad534.•The systematic study of Roman law spread from Italy throughout Europe from the 12th century onward. With the revival of European commerce and the inadequacy of medieval law to meet the requirements of the changing economic and social conditions, Roman law became incorporated in the legal systems of the many continental European countries.Latin Literature•The literature of Rome was itself modeled on Greek literature and served in turn as the basic model, especially in the Renaissance during the 14th and 15th centuries, for the development of later European literatures. Perhaps because of their close formal dependence on Greek models, many Roman writers were concerned with emphasizing the specifically Roman quality of theirexperience.•Perhaps most important, almost all Roman writers had to come to terms with Ro me’s civilizing mission in the world. The greatest accomplishments of Roman literature are found in epic and lyric poetry, rhetoric, history, comic drama , and satire—the last genre being the only literary form the Romans invented.EARLY PERIOD•Latin literature began with Lucius Livius Andronicus, who came to Rome as a Greek-speaking slave in the late 3rd century BC. He translated Homer’s epic the Odyssey into Latin verse and wrote the first dramas in Latin as well as translations of Greek plays.THE GOLDEN AGE: POETRY•Horace•Horace, a prominent poet of ancient Rome, lived during the Golden Age of Latin literature in the 1st century bc. Best known for his Odes, a collection of short poems famous for their irony and refinement, Horace also published satires, letters, and epodes.•The forerunner of the greatest age of Roman poetry was Lucretius, whose didactic poem De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) argues in eloquent hexameter verse that the gods do notintervene in human affairs.•Acknowledged the greatest of all Latin poets, in his own as well as in later times, was Virgil. Earlyin his career he wrote the Eclogues A pastoral poem, usually in the form of a dialogue between shepherds, ten elegant and moving pastoral poems that became lasting models of their kind. These were followed by his graceful poem on farm life, the Georgics.Virgil’s masterpiece, however, was the Aeneid, an epic poem telling how the Trojan hero Aeneas came to Italy to found the settlement out of which Rome arose. In this complex work, in which the heroic world of Homer is recast as the backdrop for the founding of Rome, the sufferings of Aeneas mute the patriotic grandeur of the theme. Each succeeding age has found in the Aeneid a message applicable to its own concerns.THE GOLDEN AGE: PROSE•Catiline•Roman politician Cataline, seated lower right, listens to the accusations of Cicero, standing left.Shortly after Cataline lost an election to Cicero in 63 bc, Cicero publicly exposed Cataline’s plot to seize power in an armed rebellion.•Corresponding to the Golden Age of Roman poetry was an age of equal achievement in prose. The leading figure was Cicero, a statesman and orator whose resonant and sonorous rhetoric became the model for later European oratory. The best known of C icero’s speeches are the vehement orations against the political conspirator Catiline, but many others are equally effective in the consummate care with which the rhythms and cadences of the Latin language are orchestrated to achieve spectacular rhetorical effects. Cicero excelled as well in prose works of a more relaxed style, including treatises on rhetoric and philosophical works such as the famous pieces onfriendship and on old age. Much of his extensive and revealing correspondence also exists. •These studies are an impetus to youth, and a delight to age; they are adornment to good fortune, refuge and relief in trouble; they enrich private and do not hamper public life; they are with us by night, they are with us on ling journeys, they are with us in the depths of the country. •(Bacon: Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.)•Why should I suppose that you would have regretted missing the athletic games when I know that you scorn gladiators? In these performances even Pompey acknowledges that he wasted his money and his pains. The final event consisted of hunting scenes---two of them continuing for five days. Magnificent, to be sure; but what pleasure can a gentleman take in seeing a puny man torn to pieces by a monstrous beast or a beautiful animal pierced by a spear? The last was the day of the elephant-baiting which brought the crowd much wonder but little pleasure. Nay, rather the beasts aroused a sense of pity as if there were some community of feeling between them and man---so that the crowd rose up and cursed Pompey.•Equally well known as a prose writer was Cicero’s contemporary Gaius Julius Caesar. His clear and forceful commentaries on the Gallic and civil wars of the 50s and 40s (De Bello Gallico and De Bello Civili) have also become models of their kind, known to generations of beginning Latin students.•Like the great commander he was, he used language with economy and ferocity, so that words fell almost with the stroke of an iron chisel on stone:•I came, I saw, I conquered. (Veni, vidi, vici. )•The die is cast.•The outstanding Roman historian was Livy, who wrote a lengthy history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita Libri (From the Founding of the City), only about a fourth of which survives. It still serves as a basic source for the period.。