The Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire for Dummies

 

   Please don't be offended by the title of my post. When it comes to the Roman Empire, I consider myself both an idiot and a dummy. But I had a request from a reader to explain Rome in a Friday post. It's a big job and I wasn't able to finish it until today. 

   In a nutshell, Rome was founded on April 21, 753 B.C. by the twins Romulus and Remus who had been abandoned as infants, but had been saved by a she-wolf. The reason Rome isn't called Remus is because Romulus killed his brother in a dispute over which hill to build the city on.

   Romulus became Rome's first king, followed by a couple of centuries of more kings. Then the aristocrats took over. The Romans put all their efforts into conquering their neighbors and by the second century  B.C. Rome controlled the whole Mediterranean plus the Balkans. Their biggest rivals had been the Greeks and the Carthaginians. It was touch and go for Rome for a while when Hannibal brought his army of elephants right into Italy. It got so bad that Rome had to enlist slaves and criminals into its army.

   By the time things settled down, the aristocrats had split into two groups: the conservatives and the really conservative conservatives. The rich began buying out the small farmers and running their big estates with slaves. The displaced farmers moved into the city. The professional army was established which went out and did what armies did in those days: provide the aristocrats with more land and more slaves.

   There were a few slave rebellions during which some aristocrats were murdered and many slaves were crucified. The main trouble with the standing army was that its soldiers became more loyal to its generals than to the aristocrats. There were power struggles which led to a three-man triumvirate. More power struggles led to Julius Caesar naming himself dictator for life. This did not go down well and he was soon assassinated and replaced with another triumvirate.

   By 27 B.C., one member of the new triumvirate, Caesar  Augustus, made his way to the top and was crowned emperor, and all pretense of Rome being a republic was dead. Rome continued to do well. By the second century A.D. the empire stretched from Iraq to Spain and from Egypt to Britain. By the third century, the generals were fighting each other and appointing themselves emperor. The resulting instability led to an economic slowdown and inflation. The Persians in the east and the Germans to the north began picking away at the borders, but were beat off for the time being.

   Rome was becoming ungovernable. The emperor moved his court to present day Turkey and appointed junior emperors to rule other regions. After more civil wars, Constantine became emperor and reformed the empire and moved his capital to Constantinople. In 395 the empire was officially divided into eastern and western halves. The city of Rome was successfully invaded for the first time in 800 years in 410 A.D. by the Visigoths.  People were moving out of the city by then.

   Rome was again sacked in 455, by the Vandals this time, and on August 22, 476, the last emperor, Romulus Augustus, was deposed, and so my story is done. Next up, the Middle Ages.

Mama nostra