Geography and Environment

The mighty Roman Empire began as a group of villages on seven hills to the east of the Tiber River on the Italian Peninsula. People had been living in that region for tens of thousands of years. The Italian Peninsula had a mild climate and plenty of fertile land, which made it good for farming. Large rivers made transportation easier. Italy is a peninsula, meaning it’s surrounded on three sides by seas. The Italian Peninsula is surrounded by the Adriatic Sea, the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the Ionian Sea—which are part of the larger Mediterranean Sea. Rome’s access to the sea helped the Romans trade with distant places.

Political structure

The villages on the seven hills grew and eventually combined into a city. From 750 BCE to 500 BCE, most of the peninsula, including Rome, was dominated by the Etruscan people. But in 509 BCE, the Romans defeated the Etruscans. That defeat marked the beginning of the Roman Republic, which lasted until 27 BCE.

A republic is a kind of government in which people elect representatives to rule for them, much like the government of the United States today. The Roman Republic was ruled by the Senate—a council of aristocratic Roman men. The Senate elected two leaders, called consuls, who served one-year terms. A consul was the highest elected office, and these men commanded Rome’s armies.

The Roman Republic quickly expanded its territory. By 264 BCE, Rome had conquered most of the Italian Peninsula. From 264 to 146 BCE, Roman armies fought three wars against Rome’s biggest rival, Carthage, on the North African coast. These were called the Punic Wars. Rome won the Punic Wars and soon conquered most of the land on the north side of the Mediterranean Sea. 

The Roman Republic became a victim of its own success. The Senate appointed consuls to lead all these wars and conquests. The consuls became powerful because they controlled armies. By 45 BCE, a consul named Julius Caesar grew so powerful from his wars in Gaul (the area now called France) that he defied the Senate and started a civil war by invading the city of Rome. He won the civil war and made himself a dictator. The Senate wasn’t happy about this, but they didn’t have an army of their own. They did, however, plot and carry out Caesar’s assassination. A group of senators stabbed Caesar 23 times. The dramatic assassination started another civil war, which ended in the victory of Caesar’s adopted heir, Octavian.

When Octavian made himself emperor, he took the title “Caesar Augustus.” Caesar was originally Julius Caesar’s family name, but after Octavian, it came to mean emperor. Caesar Augustus claimed to be the son of a god. He reformed the government and started a golden age of peace and stability known as the Pax Romana or Roman Peace, which lasted from 27 BCE to 180 CE. Over time, each Roman emperor seized more and more power for themselves.

The Roman Empire under Caesar Augustus ruled 45 million people and controlled 2 million square miles of territory. To rule so many people and so much land, Rome needed strong infrastructure and technology. Eventually, hundreds of miles of roads connected the empire, while aqueducts brought water to Roman cities from miles away.  

Culture

Rome grew from just one city to an enormous empire. Each conquest changed Roman culture. If conquered people paid taxes and honored the emperor, they were allowed to keep their religions and cultures, many of which were eventually adopted by Rome. Romans modified Greek gods and religious practices. Roman soldiers traveled around the empire and came home with new beliefs. For example, a religion called the Cult of Mithras—inspired by Persian Zoroastrianism—spread across the empire. Other foreign gods, such as Isis from Egypt and Baal from Mesopotamia, became part of the Roman religion.

In the first century CE, a new religion, Christianity, appeared in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. For hundreds of years, Romans persecuted Christians because they refused to honor the emperor. Unlike the Roman religion, Christianity was a missionary religion, which meant Christians wanted to convert people to their religion. Their efforts worked. By 313 CE, the Roman Emperor Constantine made the Christian religion legal, and by 380 CE, Christianity was the empire’s official religion.

The legacy of Rome continues to influence our world today. Roman art and architecture—which took inspiration from earlier Greek designs—inspired many of the world’s most famous buildings. Roman literature, philosophy, government, law codes, religion, and language have all left their mark on our world. Most of the planets in our Solar System are named after Roman gods, and the language of the Romans, Latin, is still used for scientific classification and legal codes around the world.

Society

Rome’s wars of expansion shaped its social hierarchies. Military service allowed men to gain power and wealth, while Rome’s wars brought many enslaved people to Rome. By 1 CE, one-third of the people living on the Italian Peninsula were enslaved. These people were forced to work as servants or on plantations owned by wealthy Romans. Enslaved people could be freed, or they could purchase their own freedom. Freed people gained limited rights, and their children were granted full Roman citizenship.

Citizenship was a status granted to free people that gave them certain rights. Of the 45 million people ruled by Rome, only 4 million were citizens. As Rome grew, citizenship changed, and many conquered people were granted a lower level of citizenship.

There were two major classes of Roman citizen: patrician and plebeian. The patricians were wealthy aristocratic families. You had to be born into this class. The patricians controlled Roman society and the Senate. However, most people were plebeians—the common citizens of Rome. By the time Julius Caesar became dictator, plebeians had started to gain more rights.

In addition to citizenship and social class, another distinction in Roman society was between men and women. In a Roman family, the oldest male, called the paterfamilias, or “father of the family,” controlled his family. Women did not have full legal rights. They were technically citizens, but they couldn’t vote, hold political office, or represent themselves in court. The government tried to control how women behaved. As emperor, Augustus passed laws that gave advantages to women who married and had children and punished those who did not. Still, many women in the empire worked within these laws to gain power for themselves. Women could divorce their husbands, and some ran the estates of their dead husbands. Plebeian women often worked outside the home, and patrician women were often influential advisers to their sons and husbands.

The fall of Rome

If you search “When did Rome collapse?” you’ll probably see one date: 476 CE. The story goes that Germanic tribes from the north slowly weakened the empire, and in 476, one of their leaders forced the last Roman emperor to resign. But that’s not the whole story.

After 180 CE, things got tough for Rome. As it expanded, it relied on non-Romans for soldiers. Germanic tribes in the north and the Persians in the east invaded. Internal conflicts and disease weakened the government. In 284 CE, Emperor Diocletian divided the empire in half: east and west. In 324 CE, Emperor Constantine founded a new capital city called Constantinople—today called Istanbul. By 476, the western and eastern halves were two separate empires.

If you had told a citizen of the Western Roman Empire in 476 that Rome had collapsed, they would have been surprised. The Senate continued to pass laws. Roman armies marched on old Roman roads carrying Roman coins. In the east, the Roman Empire grew even stronger. The Eastern Roman Empire ruled for another thousand years after 476 CE. Historians call it the Byzantine Empire, but the people living there thought of themselves as Romans.

Even after the last Byzantine empire fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 CE, rulers continued claiming the title of Caesar. For example, one of the many titles of Ottoman sultans was Kayseri Rûm—“Caesar of Rome.” After the fall of Constantinople, Russian rulers took the title Czar. In 800 CE, a new empire rose in Europe—the Holy Roman Empire. European rulers claimed the title of Holy Roman emperor for a thousand years. In the nineteenth century, Germans named their emperor Kaiser. Today, Roman ideas—like the senate, census, and citizenship—continue to provide models for governments around the world.