After the death of Alexander, Macedonian leaders could have chosen to share in the wealth, prosperity and stability of the unified empire, but instead they chose to struggle for personal fame and fortune. The empire that Alexander largely acquired from the Persians was divided into four separate kingdoms; with the Antigonids ruling Macedon and central Greece, the Attalids taking control of Anatolia, the Ptolemies establishing a new pharaohship in Egypt, and the lands from Syria eastward belonged to the Seleucids; setting the stage for future wars. But even through the periodic territorial conflict, the common Greek language and culture helped the creative processes to flourish. Like the city of Alexandria, Pergamum in Anatolia (Asia Minor) was another center of great intellectual achievement.
But, as Greece was setting new standards in academia and the arts, arguing about the purpose of life, and setting forth on world conquest, the city overlooking the Tiber in Italy was growing. In 340 BC some communities of Latium rose up against Rome out of resentment over its increasing power and aggressive actions. But when Rome prevailed in that conflict, it forced the members of the Latium alliance to pledge their military assistance to Rome. Through similar small wars of control and expansion, Rome managed to consolidate all but the very north of Italy by 264 BC.
Across the Mediterranean, the North African city of Carthage had prospered and grown into a regional power since being colonized by Phoenicians from Tyre in 800 BC. In 264 BC internal fighting on the island of Sicily brought Rome and Carthage into conflict. That war, the First Punic War, dragged on until 241 BC and ended with Roman victory and the addition of Sicily to its growing empire. Three years later Rome also seized the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, to the great dismay of Carthage. Following the First Punic War, Carthage and Rome agreed to maintain separate spheres of influence in Spain; but after the Spanish city of Saguntum allied with Rome and revolted against Carthage, the invasion of Saguntum by Carthage prompted Rome to again declare war on Carthage. And in the Second Punic War, that lasted from 218 to 201 BC, the Carthaginian general Hannibal famously marched an army, including elephants, through Spain and Gaul, and over the Alps into Italy where he repeatedly routed the Romans.
Things were looking bad for Rome while Hannibal was having his way in the Italian countryside. But, lacking the equipment and/or strategy to overcome the city defenses of Rome itself, Hannibal didn’t lay siege to the city. At the brink of destruction, Rome ordered its army in Spain to advance on Carthage. That move proved to be a turning point in the war, because when the Roman army under Publius Cornelius Scipio, or Scipio Africanus as he would later be called, fought its way to Africa and threatened Carthage, Hannibal and his army were recalled. Once back in Africa, Hannibal’s fortunes were reversed and he was defeated by Scipio: costing Carthage the Second Punic War, and their interest in Spain, which was added to the empire as another Roman province.
In 200 BC Rome joined with the Greek Achaean and Aetolian leagues against Carthage’s former ally Macedon. Soon after the fall of Macedon however, the victorious Greeks came to realize that they had invited more trouble than help when getting involved with Rome. The combined might of Alexander’s empire would have provided formidable protection from invasion, but Greece by itself was vulnerable. In an effort to counter the growing Roman threat, the Aetolian League then allied itself with the Seleucids of Antiochus III.
Meanwhile, Rome had its own partnerships. And not wanting to sit by and wait for Hellenistic alliances to strengthen, Rome started the Syrian war in 192 BC. And that war went Rome’s way as well, with Antiochus being forced to hand over his territory in Asia Minor to Rome’s ally Pergamum. But even then the Greeks and Macedonians couldn’t overcome their differences. Again they fought with one another, and again Rome stepped in and defeated Macedon. This time, however, Rome looted the Macedonian treasury and split the country into four republics. But the Macedonians and Greeks were a persistent bunch and within twenty years some of the Greeks aided the Macedonians in revolt. To that, Rome responded by crushing the resistance, destroying the Greek city of Corinth and annexing Macedon as a province.
By then Rome’s military was getting well practiced, and Rome defeated Carthage for the final time; leveling Carthage the same year as Corinth, 146 BC. The carnage was so bad that Scipio Aemilianus, the Roman commander in Carthage, was said to have wept at the brutal destruction of the once glorious city. With that final conflict, the territories of Carthage were added to the Roman Empire.
All of that military activity gained control of the Mediterranean for Rome while Rome was a republic. Since the last king was expelled in 509 BC Rome had been governed by groups of politicians. At first governance was the privilege of only the wealthiest and most powerful Romans, called the patricians. For more that two hundred years the less affluent Romans, called the plebeians, lobbied and negotiated for political equality. And slowly, concession by concession, they gained more equitable balance. Fed up with abuse at the hands of the patricians, the plebeians leveraged their numerical advantage by withdrawing from the state in 494 BC. What could easily have resulted in civil war, instead resulted in a patrician compromise whereby they allowed plebeians some protection from arrests by patrician magistrates. By 471 BC the plebeians were also granted their own council to pass laws binding on plebeians but not patricians. And twenty years later came general publication of the laws, allowing the common people to become familiar with the laws to which they were subject.
Political class distinctions among male citizens continued to erode, and in 445 BC plebeians were finally allowed to marry patricians. One major factor in the minimization of class disparity was the commonalities that already existed among plebeians and patricians. Class title was inherited, wealth alone didn’t make a patrician, they were descended from Rome’s early senators. So, even some of the rich were plebeian; giving them, as a class, considerable bargaining power. Plebeians were allowed appointment as consul, the heads of government, in 367 BC, and in 342 BC it became mandatory that at least one consul be from the plebeian class.
The other major institution of control, state religion, resisted even longer. It wasn’t until 300 BC that plebeians were allowed to hold high priest positions. And finally, laws passed by the plebeian council became binding on all Romans in 287 BC. But rather than remove political class distinctions altogether, Rome continued to discriminate by maintaining a complex, inefficient system of assemblies to direct the functions of government. And sadly, because Rome was to be considered the last great classic western empire, it’s influence on future governments can still be seen today in such forms at the British House of Lords and House of Commons (a ridiculously bloated system of about 1,400 legislators), and the American Senate and House of Representatives (also a bloated, inefficient legislative body).
But as Rome’s empire grew, so did the vile tactics and disdain among politicians. The politicians fought among themselves and put more and more space between their selfish desires and the good of not only foreigners and slaves, but also fellow citizens. The deplorable politics led to revolt from 90 to 88 BC. And it was only after that revolt, more than 400 years after the establishment of a republican form of government, that free Italians ultimately received citizenship. However, fairness and equality still wasn’t to be expected in a slave-holding society that treated women and non-citizens like second-class people. With increased citizenship or not, selfish desire, personal differences and secret alliances continued to tear at the unity of the republic. And as politicians and military leaders vied for power, the republic was plunged into a series of civil wars.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla emerged from the first civil war as dictator of Rome. But Sulla stood by his word and, after making reforms and killing off some of his competition, restored the republic. Still, the politicians and military leaders were too greedy and power hungry to cooperate for common good. Often, the military had ultimate political power, and was led by consuls who were commissioned by the senate. The consuls were generally wealthy, powerful men, often senators, who stood to receive immense fame and fortune at the head of an army. Military victory brought consuls fame, and many kinds of plunder brought them riches, including amassing personal fortunes by selling prisoners of war as slaves.
Three men that leveraged their tremendous military influence to gain consul appointments were Marcus Licinius Crassus; Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, better known as Pompey; and Julius Caesar. But that coalition of consuls, that came to be known as the First Triumvirate, was growing powerful beyond control, and envious of one another at the same time. After Crassus died in combat in 53 BC, Pompey’s political maneuvering in Rome caused Caesar to bring his army down from Gaul into Italy, setting up a battle with the forces of Pompey. Caesar’s army defeated Pompey at Pharsalus in 48 BC, and Caesar assumed control as dictator in 47 BC. And three years later that honor was bestowed for life. Few knew his reign would be so short however, in that same year he was assassinated by members of the senate.
Caesar’s murder led to the Second Triumvirate, formed by Caesar’s grandnephew Octavian, Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus. Out-maneuvering Lepidus, Octavian and Antony divided the empire between them with Octavian in the west and Antony in the east. Additional power grabbing resulted in their respective armies and navies meeting at Actium in Greece in 31 BC. In that battle Octavian’s forces won a decisive victory and Antony fled with the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII back to Egypt. But they were pursued by Octavian’s men, and committed suicide the following year.
With Mark Antony disposed of, Octavian stood, at thirty two years old, as undisputed head of the empire that spanned the Mediterranean. One of the lands under Octavian’s control was the less desirable territory of Palestine. Away from the coast, Palestine was still a hard land of marginal fertility between wealthier, more powerful territories. Many times Palestine changed hands among rulers of Egypt, Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia. Many of the residents went with the flow and adapted, sometimes grudgingly, to changes of rule. But the Hebrews, or Jews, of Judah were too stubborn and bound to custom to know what was best for them. They were in a trap of their own design that prevented them from conforming.
Hebrews were hardened by a history of difficulty and meager existence; caught in a self propagating pattern of trials and punishments. From the time their ancestors wandered the thin grasslands of the Arabian Peninsula, generation after generation of their kind was tested. The hardship, resentment and envy they felt was projected into their religion. Through time, their religious tradition grew monotheistic, and became more guarded, jealous and demanding. In their struggles they sought a powerful god that would smite their enemies and deliver them into paradise, and that god helped them to conquer their immediate neighbors of Canaan. Their favored local god defeated other traditions and assumed control of their universe.
But the difficulties allowed by their god to afflict his chosen people were seen as indications of his displeasure with them. According to hard-line prophets his displeasure often stemmed from their breach of contract through transgression of his primary commandments. Like a jealous husband, he bade them to recognize no god other than himself. And he required praise in the form of sacred ritual and animal sacrifice, the blood of which symbolized the bond between man and god. Men had long courted the favor of their imaginary gods, but somehow the Hebrews managed to reduce themselves to a lower level.
Faced with dire consequences like death eternal, or everlasting fire, the Jews left themselves no choice. They would rather perish by the sword of man than suffer forever. They had invented a near-perfect threat. What would a man not do to avoid spending the never-ending age, the time without measure, the infinite period, all of eternity; in unbearable torment? So those ignorant little men did die by the sword when their god was threatened. In fitting irony, when the very entity they invented to deliver them from hardship was under attack, it was the Jewish people that suffered and died protecting what they claimed to be the all-powerful god.
And by insisting that all gods other than their god were abominations, claiming they were the chosen people of the only god and refusing to assimilate, the Hebrews only assured conflict and oppression. Suffering the difficulties of their own false doctrine, they grew to rely on that fantasy more and more, desperately hoping for a king delivered by their god that would deliver on his promises of dominance and prosperity. Jewish tradition demanded a great leader descended from Kings David and Solomon that would defeat their enemies and unite the entire world under Jewish authority, with worldwide control centered in a new Jewish temple in Jerusalem. In response to the fanciful prophecies, Jewish culture was gripped by feverish anticipation of the leader that would raise them above the world of servitude and strife that shaped their existence.
Within every generation a multitude of people would come and go proclaiming to be the Jewish messiah. But the rise of each and every messiah claimant invariably ended in death. And so it did for Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus neither embodied the messianic ideals of the Jewish prophets nor did he sufficiently rebuke those expectations to lay any legitimate claim to the title of messiah that his followers bequeathed on him. And the story of a messianic Jesus would have ended with his inglorious execution among thieves had it not been for one unfounded claim.
After his death, a small circle of devout followers announced that Jesus had secretly risen from the dead. However, although he was declared false and condemned to die by his fellow Jews, Jesus did embody an evolution of Jewish religion that would appeal to many future generations by putting a kinder face on Jewish belief. In contrast to popular opinion, he rejected violence and vengeance in favor of peace and compassion. Yet, he remained in the definite minority. For their part, the majority of Jews cast their lot with the bitter and confrontational teachings that had been set in writing. And in another historic irony resulting from painting themselves into a corner with their own mythology, many future Christians would view Jews as having the blood of Jesus on their hands.
Rome, meanwhile, as the dominant empire, put blood on a lot of people’s hands. Under the burden of heavy taxation and interference in their religious affairs, the Jews occasionally revolted against their Roman overlords. One such revolt, the War of 66-70 CE, also known as the Great Revolt, initially seemed to go well for the Jews, as was often the case when local populations confronted the local Roman military forces, but fortunes reversed when additional legions were called in from other parts of the Empire. For the Jews, the war only accomplished the destruction of Jerusalem and the center of Jewish religious and political life, the temple.
After that war, it took 70 years for the memory to sufficiently pass and messianic fever to stir up enough confidence for another full-scale revolt, led by Simon ben Kosiba, also called bar Kokhba, meaning son of star. Bar Kokhba was probably Judaism’s most famous messiah other than Jesus, and in his day he was much more popular than Jesus, as he was commonly seen as the glorious messiah ordained by God to establish the worldwide empire of Israel. He too had miracles ascribed to him, but unlike Jesus, bar Kokhba was also a military and government leader, as the Jews expected. This time, when the Roman reinforcements came, of which there were many, bar Kokhba took to the hills. The Jews didn’t just wait behind city walls or gather together for large battles that their god couldn’t win, they scattered and fought a guerilla-style war.
For four years the Hebrews fought desperately, and the Romans followed them all over the countryside, slaughtering those in their path and burning cities and villages to the ground. By the time the carnage was over, all of Judea lay in ruins and hundreds of thousands of Jews were dead. Many of those that remained were sold into slavery or taken to the arenas to fight for their lives as gladiators. Afterwards, the province Iudaea was renamed Palestine and Jerusalem was called Aelia Capitolina by the Romans. The defeat was so complete that the remaining Jews were forbidden to teach Mosaic Law, practice their religion, or even enter the renamed town of Aelia Capitolina. The mass exodus of Jews that fled or were forced out of Judea as a consequence of the war was one of the great Diaspora of the Jewish people from their “promised land” that they had stolen from the Canaanites centuries earlier.
From an entertainment perspective, gladiatorial contests involving Jewish prisoners of war were some of the largest in history, involving thousands of combatants. The largest games are said to be those ordered in Dacia by the Emperor Trajan, the same Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus that conquered Dacia and Mesopotamia and expanded the Roman empire to its greatest extent in 116. At its height the Empire extended from Britain in the northwest to Mesopotamia in the east and to Egypt in the south. Every country bordering the Mediterranean was part of the Roman Empire, and many kingdoms just beyond the Empire’s borders were clients of, or allied with, Rome.
The earliest Roman gladiator contests may have been funerary games in which slaves were forced to battle to commemorate the loss of an important person. As Rome’s power grew so did the gladiator tournaments and other festivals upon which the Romans lavished the spoils of conquest. The games included animal fights, man-versus-animal fights, staged hunts, man on man combat and group combat. Even women and dwarfs were caused to fight in the games, with such contests having special appeal for their rarity. Although contests could involve thousands of fighters, more commonly gladiators numbered in the tens.
The gruesome spectacle of gladiator fighting was part of Roman life for hundreds and hundreds of years, and its popularity rose and declined with the favor of emperors. The training and supply of gladiators became big business, and perhaps due in part to the expense of acquiring new gladiators, the games often didn’t result in death. The practice even attracted more than slaves, prisoners of war and criminals. Some gladiators were paid to fight, and others fought for freedom from debt, slavery and even political freedom, and there were a great many females among them. By fighting in the games, some won citizenship for their children, and prominent gladiators even received a considerable degree of fame.
In some instances gladiator slaves were fed and treated better than other slaves when not fighting. But no matter the perfumed aire of nobility or bravery, the stench of slavery could never be masked, and along with the wealth derived from the labor of slaves came the inherent resentment and danger of revolt by those enslaved. Every society that profited from slavery was also ultimately made poor by the iniquity. Besides the nearly constant revolt of conquered provinces and client kingdoms, the Roman Empire experienced three major slave revolts, beginning with slaves led by Eunus and Cleon in Sicily from 135 to 132 BC. And again the Sicilian slaves revolted in 104 and 103 BC, this time under the leadership of Athenion and Tryphon. And from 73 to 71 BC a slave and gladiator named Spartacus gained lasting fame by leading a slave revolt in Italy alongside Oenomaus and Crixus.
It was a gladiatorial school near Capua from which Spartacus and other gladiators escaped before fighting off a local militia and eventually making camp at Mount Vesuvius near Naples. There the renegade slaves were joined by other slaves and together took food and provisions from the nearby countryside. Rome was so dependent on slaves that defecting slaves eventually swelled the band of Spartacus to more than 100,000 people. But many of those trying to escape slavery were women, children and the elderly, compounding the renegade slaves’ disadvantage of being neither trained nor equipped as an army.
In spite of their tremendous handicaps however, they fought with great valor, determination and effective strategy. Spartacus defeated legion after legion, but the army of misfits never made it out of present day Italy. Historical reports give conflicting accounts of the intentions of the rebel army. Some state that they wanted to flee to Gaul or Hispania, others say that Spartacus and his followers wished to liberate all the slaves of the Empire. Whatever the circumstances, they failed to cross the Alps and escape Italy when it appears they could have done so.
As the politicians of Rome grew more troubled, they ordered a greater force to bear on Spartacus, assigning eight legions with auxiliaries to Crassus. Initial engagements between the forces of Spartacus and Crassus had mixed results, but the weight of the Roman army soon had Spartacus retreating. Crassus pursued Spartacus to the south of Italy where the worn out slave army was finally crushed when they ran out of room to retreat.
Knowing the brutality of the Romans toward slaves that had no protections before revolting, most of the slaves died on the battlefield; while those that were captured should have fought to the death, because Crassus crucified the survivors and left their bodies hanging along the road from Capua to Rome to serve as a grisly reminder of the penalty for seeking justice. Even some that escaped met a grisly end. For, Pompey was also leading an army toward Spartacus when the rebels were butchered. He came across 5,000 slaves that escaped the battle with Crassus, killed the lot of them, and claimed credit for ending the war. With their armies camped outside Rome, and riding a wave of support for putting down the rebellion, Crassus and Pompey were assigned consulships with Julius Caesar, as earlier mentioned.
Because history is written by the victors, little is known whether any free men fought alongside the slaves, just trying to do what they knew was right. Any free men conspiring with the slaves would have only sacrificed their lives and property, along with putting their families in jeopardy. And that’s the danger of war. Regardless of how little people have, and how just their cause, they risk everything in armed conflict, and the decision to take a stand against an evil like slavery, or even a greater atrocity, demonstrates a rare tremendous courage.
Unfortunately, conditions for slaves in the Empire didn’t improve immediately after the terribly costly uprising. Slave owners could still treat slaves in any manner they chose, up to, and including, killing them with no consequence. Romans were acutely aware how dangerous it was to surround themselves with oppressed people. Yet they were indignant to the point of outrage that a man would take umbrage over deprivation of basic liberties. Historian Tacitus related that it was the custom to execute all the slaves of the house in which the master was murdered by a slave. And the horror of that custom was readily apparent when Lucius Pedanius Secundus, a government official, was killed by one of his slaves. A crowd appealed to the senate to spare the other slaves of his household. But the senate refused to aid the slaves and all four hundred were executed in retaliation for the death of their owner. Regardless of how one chooses to view the accomplishments of any culture, one man and four hundred slaves says a lot about a society.
Over time the values of Rome did evolve marginally in that concern and slaves received some basic protections. Interestingly those protections weren’t initiated by the politicians of the republic era; they were instituted under emperor rule. Running contrary to many views of the value of democracy or republicanism, the gains made by slaves under an emperor demonstrate that it’s possible for one man to rule more justly than the masses, though the dangers of tyranny are compounded in monarchical systems.
With the conquest of additional slave-supplying territory, the holdings of the empire continued to increase, reaching a pinnacle of three and a half million square miles in the second century. In 212 the emperor Caracalla granted citizenship to every free person of the empire, and Roman culture was spread throughout the vast realm; but there were limits. For example, while Roman was the language of the west, Greek continued to be the principal language of the east, with many local languages mixed in.
The Roman Empire built a strong infrastructure, like the Greeks and Persians before them. Their extensive building activities included roads, aqueducts, public buildings and large private estates, temples to the pantheon of twelve gods, coliseums, bathhouses and even apartment buildings. Building projects however, like most of the wealth, was concentrated in the Italian peninsula and provincial capitals where the tax revenue was funneled. Like slave labor, taxes levied on the provinces were vital to the growth and maintenance of the empire. And also like slavery, the iniquity of provincial taxes fostered resentment. While generals and politicians fought for control, people in far away lands were forced to pay tribute at the point of the sword. And even as they had to watch their land get plundered and their people impoverished, they were further insulted by being forced to honor deified emperors. And there’s yet another example of the guy standing on everyone else’s backs being honored as a living god.
Despite constant calls for reform, there’s little that’s new in politics today. In America, politicians promise the moon and then give away the farm to buy votes when they get in office, just as politicians were doing in Rome and other cultures thousands of years ago. While distant provinces were being squeezed for profit, in Rome and the other wealthy cities, the populace was being placated by the politicians to retain their power. Emperors and governors spent lavishly on festivals and bloody games. The poor of Rome even received free meals. Families of outlying territories were losing their land and being broken apart; sold to slavery or forced to work land for a share of the profit, and rich people were amusing themselves with gladiator contests. But, eventually the plundered treasures were squandered, and the welfare of the rich and lazy burdened the workers beyond sustainability. With parallels to many nations through history, the excess and luxury that was Rome finally stretched the resources of the empire too far.
The third century CE has been called the century of crisis. Internal strife and power struggles brought the once mighty nation to its knees. As the Roman provinces came of age, those leaders and aristocrats began to have their own ambitions of empire. The military monarchy established by African born Lucius Septimius Severus in 193 was followed by about fifty years of civil war. Had there been any powerful states left to challenge Rome’s supremacy, the empire may have been conquered and absorbed. And even though there were no nearby kingdoms of comparable size and strength, the empire came to be assaulted on almost all fronts. German tribes struck back at the beleaguered empire in the north, but it was in the east that Valerian became the only Roman Emperor to be captured by a foreign power when he was defeated at the battle of Edessa by Shapur I, leader of the Sassanid Persians, in 260. Following Valerian’s death, Postumus, the Governor of Germania Superior and Inferior rebelled and established the Gallic Empire in Gaul and Hispania, modern France and Spain.
Going back to when Rome was just a small village overlooking the Tiber, Germanic people are believed to have migrated south from Scandinavia into the center of Europe. The Germanic tribes pushed south and west almost a thousand years later, some say as a result of pressure from the Huns of the eastern plains, and came in more direct contact with the Romans. When the Roman Empire declined under the pressure of internal problems waves of Germanic invaders swept beyond the Rhine River into Gaul. Goths from