How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity (9 page)

The Roman Interlude

I
n many ways Rome was the Athenian Empire writ large. Like Athens, Rome began its rise to power as a city-state, one of the many scattered up and down the Italian peninsula, most of which were Greek—Rome’s culture was so influenced by its Greek neighbors that it often is referred to as Greco-Roman. Also like Athens, Rome was almost constantly at war. As did Athenians, Romans enjoyed a long era of relative freedom, having been governed as a republic, although both Rome and Athens abounded in slaves. Like the Athenian Empire, Roman rule suppressed cultural and technological progress. Eventually both Athens and Rome were Christianized. And even though the Roman Empire endured far longer than did that of Athens, in the end Rome, too, was unable to fend off enemies from the north.

Readers may wonder why I refer to the Roman Interlude rather than the Roman Era. I do so because I regard the Roman Empire as at best a pause in the rise of the West, and more plausibly as a setback.

Building an Empire

What was to become the famous city on seven hills began in the eighth century BC as a village on one hill above the Tiber River, about fourteen miles from the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, there is no contemporary history of Rome prior to about 200 BC, when centuries of oral traditions
were first committed to writing. According to these accounts, a series of seven kings ruled Rome prior to the founding of a republican form of government in about 500 BC. Republican Rome was militantly expansionist, and Roman forces slowly exerted their rule over Italy. First, they forced the submission of the other Latin-speaking city-states, subduing the last two in 393 BC. Next, after the Gauls sacked Rome in 387 BC, the Romans responded by taking the Gaulic areas of northern Italy and then turned south, gradually annexing all the Greek city-states in Italy—Tarentum was the last to fall in 272 BC. At this point Roman expansionism moved beyond Italy, which brought it into conflict with Carthage and resulted in the three Punic Wars (264–146 BC).

The city of Carthage was located on the coast of North Africa (near modern Tunis) and possessed an extensive maritime empire. Conflict began when the Romans expanded into Sicily, then ruled by Carthage. After losing several naval battles, the Carthaginians ceded Sicily and signed a peace treaty with Rome. Shortly thereafter, Carthage invaded Spain and took control of lucrative silver mines. Although Spain was not then part of Rome’s empire, continuing conflict led Rome to declare war on Carthage. In response, in 218 BC the Carthaginian commander in Spain, Hannibal Barca (247–182 BC), led an army of veteran troops accompanied by thirty-six elephants over the Alps in the dead of winter and into Italy. Remembered as one of the greatest generals in history, Hannibal won every battle against the Romans in Italy—the most famous being at Cannae in 216 BC, when his brilliant maneuvering of a smaller force allowed him to annihilate a Roman army, killing at least fifty thousand.
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But Hannibal lacked siege engines and could not conquer well-fortified cities such as Rome. In addition, Carthage made few effective efforts to resupply him, so Hannibal’s army had to live off the land. Eventually, after roving undefeated up and down Italy for sixteen years, Hannibal was forced to rush home to defend Carthage from a Roman naval assault. Back in Africa, without most of his well-trained veterans (most of whom had by then become middle-aged), Hannibal was defeated in the Battle of Zama in 202 BC.

Finally, in 149 BC the Romans decided to eliminate all competition from a once-again-flourishing Carthage and sent an army to lay siege to the city. After three years, the Romans breached the walls and utterly destroyed Carthage. Its buildings were leveled and all its residents were killed or sold into slavery.

Once Carthage was smashed, Greece quickly succumbed to Roman rule, while Roman conquerors drove north into Gaul; overran Spain; seized much of Persia, Palestine, and Egypt; and, after several setbacks, acquired Britain. Now another large and repressive empire stood in the way of progress.

Unlike the empires of the East, all of which were ruled by tyrants, for centuries Rome was governed as a republic, although this did not offer nearly so much individual freedom as did the Greek democracies. Legislative power was exercised by the Senate, a small body formed in 509 BC and made up of very wealthy men born into the patrician class and owning land worth at least 100,000 dinarii (professional Roman soldiers were paid one dinari a day). New senators were elected by those already members of the Senate, and executive power was vested in two consuls who were selected by the Senate, each for a one-year term. Eventually, in 367 BC, men not qualified for the Senate forced the creation of the Plebeian Council, which also had the power to pass laws. Soon Plebeians were being elected to the Senate as well.

Meanwhile, the Roman elite grew fabulously wealthy as a result of military victories that brought home huge amounts of booty and enormous numbers of slaves. Plutarch (AD 46–120) estimated that Julius Caesar’s campaign in Gaul yielded at least a million slaves.
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The constant flood of cheap slaves destroyed the population of independent farmers, their land being bought up (and sometimes usurped) to form huge
latifundia
—agricultural estates based on slave laborers (Latin:
latus
= spacious;
fundus
= farm or estate). The displaced farmers poured into Rome and other Italian cities, forming a dependent population that created political instability and that needed to be pacified with free “bread and circuses.” In fact, in every Roman city large numbers “qualified for free daily donations of bread, olive oil, and wine,” as Peter Heather pointed out in his history of the Roman Empire.
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Seats in the arenas were free, although the better ones cost money. The destruction of the independent farmers also deprived Rome of its most important source of citizen-soldiers: farmers’ sons.

Finally, after nearly a century of pretending that the Senate still ruled, Rome ceased to be a republic. The Roman “mob” helped bring an end to the republic, as did the new long-service, professional army: both groups were always ready to back a tyrant who promised them immediate rewards. The assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC set off a power
struggle that ended in 31 BC with the ascension of Octavian as Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Ruled by emperors, Rome lasted for another five centuries.

Greco-Roman Culture

It is no accident that the first history of Rome was written in Greek—by the Roman senator Fabius Pictor in about 200 BC. The Roman upper classes more often spoke Greek than they did Latin, which revealed that Romans acknowledged the superiority of Grecian culture. There arose an obsession with things Greek following the Roman defeat of the Macedonians in 167 BC, after which Rome was flooded with Greek musicians, chefs, hairdressers, artists, philosophers, and even skilled prostitutes.
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Wealthy Romans sent their sons to be educated in Greece.
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Even from very early times, Roman culture had been greatly shaped by its neighboring Greek city-states. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the Romanization of the entire Greek pantheon.

Gods

The religious life of the earliest Romans is unknown because they soon adopted all the gods of Mount Olympus as their own; only the names were changed. (See table 3–1.)

A major difference was that in Greek city-states the temples were supported by taxes and staffed by full-time, professional priests, while the Roman temples were supported by voluntary donations and staffed by unpaid, part-time priests. The lifestyle of Greek priests did not depend on attracting enthusiastic worshipers, whereas competition among the Roman temples for support helps explain why the Romans were far more religious than the Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, and other pagans of their era.
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Nothing of any significance was done in Rome without the performance of the proper rituals. The Senate did not meet, armies did not march, and decisions, both major and minor, were postponed if the signs and portents were not favorable. Such importance was placed on divination that, for example, if lightning was observed during the meeting of some public body, “the assembly would be dismissed, and even after the vote had been taken the college of augurs might declare it void,” in the words of the historian J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz.
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Table 3–1: Greco-Roman Gods

In contrast with other pagan societies, where only the elite had full access to the temples, the temples were not closed to ordinary Romans, nor were the idols hidden from public view. Everyone was welcome and their patronage was solicited. Consequently, even many poor people and slaves contributed funds to the construction of temples—as is attested by temple inscriptions listing donors.
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But if the Romans were more involved in religion, the fact remains that it was Greek religion that they pursued, at least until the arrival of Judaism, Christianity, and various Eastern faiths.

Arts and Letters

Not only were Roman arts and letters consciously modeled on Greek examples; Romans regarded their own products as quite inferior to those
of Greece. Rich Romans preferred to purchase Greek sculptures, thousands of which were plundered by Roman commanders to display in their triumphal processions back in Rome following victories over the Greeks. Roman copies of Greek sculptures also were produced by the thousands. In many instances, molds were made from Greek originals and then bronze copies were cast. Often, too, marble copies were carved using careful measurements of the original—many famous “Greek” sculptures currently in museums are actually Roman copies. Oddly, Roman copyists usually could not match the Greeks’ ability to create statues able to stand unsupported—Roman copies almost invariably used a post, typically disguised as a bush or tree, to support them.
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It long was stressed that Greek sculptors also benefited from an ample local supply of beautiful white marble, but then it was discovered that both Greeks and Romans painted all their sculptures (the paint long ago wore off). Until the unearthing of Pompeii, buried in AD 79 by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, little was known about either Greek or Roman painting; most paintings were murals and are long lost. But murals surviving in Pompeii reveal that it was common for Romans to hire painters to decorate their walls with lifelike paintings—some of them of couples engaged in a variety of sexual acts.
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Like art, so too Roman literature was fundamentally Greek. In fact, it was written in Greek until a Greek introduced Latin translations of Greek works. Livius Andronicus (284–204 BC), who launched the Roman stage with an adapted Greek comedy in 240 BC, was a Greek brought to Rome as a slave. Having gained his freedom, he produced a series of plays and is said to have been the first Roman to write in Latin. Perhaps Andronicus’s major achievement was a Latin translation of the
Odyssey
. Long after Andronicus’s death, Roman theater continued to be dominated by Greek plays. Titus Plautus (254–184 BC) is credited with more than forty popular plays, all adapted from Greek originals. The well-known Terence (195–159 BC) came to Rome as a slave and is still famous for his comedies, all of which were translated from Greek originals and set in Greece. Similarly, the celebrated Lucius Accius (170–ca. 86 BC) is credited with more than fifty plays, most (if not all) of them translated from the Greek, some of them concerned with the Trojan War.
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As for philosophy, the Romans were content to pursue Stoicism (see chapter 1) and Neoplatonism, both of them primarily Grecian.
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