THE REPUBLIC (509-31 B.C.)

Following his expulsion from Rome, Tarquinius Superbus enlisted the help of the Etruscan king, Lars Posenna. When Porsenna’s army approached Rome, Horatius Cocles, with two companions, volunteered to defend the bridge over the Tiber whilst those behind him demolished it. He sent his companions back just before its collapse, afterwards swimming back to safety himself.

In about 508 B.C., whilst Rome was under siege by Lars Porsenna’s army, a young man named Gaius Mucius volunteered to assassinate the king but mistakenly killed his secretary. When he discovered the mistake he thrust his right hand into the fire and held it there to demonstrate that he did not fear punishment. He and his descendants afterwards bore the surname Scaevola (`left-handed’)

In about 500 B.C., as part of a peace treaty with the Etruscans that followed the expulsion of Tarquin, Cloelia was one of twenty children of leading citizens handed over to the enemy as hostages. She led he fellow captives in escaping from the Etruscan camp and swimming across the Tiber to freedom.

Cincinnatus was a Roman leader who was supposedly summoned from his ploughing to become dictator (i.e. chief executive for six months) in an military emergency in the 5th century B.C. The American city of Cincinnati is named after him.

In 390 B.C. the city was taken by the Gauls, a Celtic people who at that time occupied much of western Europe, including northern Italy. The enemy failed, however, to capture the Capitol because sacred geese gave the alarm as they were scaling the hill. The Romans had to pay an indemnity to get the Gauls to leave but they recovered and by the end of the century were in control of the whole of Italy.

In the early 3rd century B. C In the early 3rd century B.C., some of the Greeks who had settled in southern Italy turned to King Pyrrhus of Epirus (a kingdom in western Greece) for help. Phyrrhus beat the Romans several times but his `Pyrrhic victories’ killed so many of his army that he had to withdraw.

At this time, the western Mediterranean, including the coast of Spain, was dominated by Carthage, a city in north Africa (in modern Tunisia), founded by colonists from the Phoenician (Lebanese) city of Tyre, whose Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew and Arabic, was known to the Romans as `Punic’ (lingua Punica)

According to the legend elaborated in Vergil’s epic poem, the Aeneid, theTrojan prince Aeneas, whose descendants were to found Rome, was received in Carthage by its founding queen, Dido. The pair were briefly lovers but Aeneas then sailed off to fulfill his destiny in Italy and Dido committed suicide in despair.

The First and Second Punic Wars (264 to 241 and 218-202 B. C The First and Second Punic Wars (264 to 241 and 218-202 B.C.), which began with a dispute between Rome and Carthage over spheres of influence in Sicily, left Rome the dominant power in the western Mediterranean. There is a good summary of the conflict available at http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/notes/punicwars.html

The First Punic War forced Rome to develop a full-scale naval capability for the first time. Under the terms of the peace treaty, Rome received full control of Sicily but she subsequently insisted on taking Corsica and Sardinia also

Embittered by her defeat, the Carthaginians sought to extend their Spanish empire in compensation. Hamilcar, the general who led the Carthage’s forces in Spain,, is said to have made his young son, Hannibal, swear undying enmity towards Rome.

Hannibal succeeded to his father’s position in Spain and Rome declared war on Carthage again in 218 B.C., when she refused an ultimatum to halt an offensive against Saguntum, a Spanish city Rome had accepted as an ally. Hannibal then led his forces overland to attack Rome’s power in Italy itself.

Despite an unprecedented march over the Alps, the mountains separating Italy from the rest of Europe, and several crushing defeats inflicted on Roman armies, Hannibal was unable either to put Rome itself under siege or to win over her north Italian allies. He was finally recalled to Africa when a Roman force under Publius Cornelius Scipio (later granted the additional name `Africanus’) threatened Carthage. Scipio won the war for Rome by defeating Hannibal in one of the most decisive battles of European history at Zama in 202 B.C..

Although Carthage was no longer a real threat, some Romans felt there was still a danger it might revive and so, using as a pretext a dispute between Carthage and Rome’s north African allies, the city was finally destroyed in 146 B.C. and its inhabitants killed or enslaved.

During the war with Hannibal, Macedon, one of the Greek-ruled kingdoms into which Alexander the Great’s empire had been divided, had intervened on the Carthaginian side. Rome sought revenge and then became progressively more involved in disputes in the Eastern Mediterranean, which she dominated by the middle of the 1st century B.C.

In 133 B.C. Tiberius Gracchus, who had tried to bring in reforms to help landless citizens, was murdered by his political opponents. This ushered in a period of increasing conflict between `Populares’ (`the People’s party’) and `Optimates’ (defenders of the intersests of the aristocracy)

In 90 B.C. many of Rome’s Italian allies, angered by her refusal to grant them full citizenship, revolted and tried to set up an independent state. They issued a coin showing the Italian bull trampling the Roman wolf. The war ended with a Roman victory in 88 but they then granted the allies the citizenship rights they had originally demanded.

In 88 B.C., the Roman general Sulla led his army into Rome itself to reverse the decision to transfer command in a war against King Mithridates in Asia Minor to a rival leader, Marius. Soldiers increasingly saw themselves as followers of their commander, who they expected to provide them with land after their retirement, rather than as servants of the state. Sulla was the victor in the civil war that followed his return from the East in 83.

Sertorius, a former ally of Marius, established himself as an independent ruler in Spain and sought an alliance with King Mithridates in the eastern Mediterranean but he was assassinated in 72 B.C. and control by the government in Rome re-established.

In 73-71 B.C. Rome struggled to put down a slave rebellion led by Spartacus. After the final defeat of the rebels by Crassus, thousands were crucified along the sides of the Via Appia. The picture is from the 1960 film starring Kirk Douglas

In 67 B.C., Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey), a general who had been one of Sulla’s followers, was given sweeping powers to rid the Mediterranean of pirates. The following year he defeated King Mithridates of Pontus in Asia Minor, who had fought three wars against the Romans over the previous twenty years.

In 63 B.C. a conspiracy to take over the government was formed by an indebted aristocrat, Cataline, who fled the city after his denunciation in the senate by the consul, Cicero. Cicero had some of Cataline’s collaborators executed without trial and Cataline himself was defeated in battle.