Roman Empire

A

3

Women

Men wrote nearly all the books during the Roman Empire, so they provide most of the views of women. Most of these ancient sources focus on empresses, princesses, and other aristocratic women and do not shed much light on the condition of ordinary Roman women. Only a few letters and poems actually written by Roman women survive.

Roman aristocratic women influenced politics, but they could not serve as magistrates, senators, or military commanders. During the empire, the wives of emperors began to wield more power than women had ever held before. Livia, the wife of Augustus, advised her husband for 51 years of marriage before living her last 15 years under the rule of her son, Tiberius. She was deeply devoted to her husband and family and only appeared in public to display the virtues of a Roman matron, which included chastity, modesty, frugality, loyalty, and dignity. Behind the scenes, Livia and Augustus were extremely close, and she played a part in his important decisions, although some sources unfairly portray her as the evil, manipulative power behind the throne. Roman society accepted senatorial advisors, but invariably regarded women close to power as grasping and devious.

Only archaeology provides much material about the lives of lower-class Roman women. Stone carvings and funeral inscriptions show that women worked as nurses, waitresses, midwives, weavers, and food sellers. Women performed other jobs such as jewelry making, leather working, and ceramics alongside their husbands in family businesses, but this type of work was rarely recorded. The brief texts and crude images of working women do not provide much detail about their lives, although there is a similar lack of information about lower-class men.

Romans traditionally depicted the ideal woman as a virtuous daughter, brave wife, or devoted mother. Some women were cast into heroic roles in reaction to political persecution; they hid their families, or even followed banished husbands or children into exile. Like men, upper-class women also won praise through public generosity; they built public monuments and temples, subsidized games, and became patrons of their home cities. As a sign of their rank, aristocratic women were given seats with the senators at public games, where they could display fine clothing and jewelry.

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Women had long played an important role in Roman religion. Vestal virgins, who were priestesses of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, kept the sacred fire burning at Vesta’s temple in the Roman Forum. They lived in an elaborate house near the temple and occupied a place of honor at public ceremonies. Some festivals and rites were reserved for women, but these ceremonies were usually private.

It is more difficult to assess how women were involved in cultural and intellectual life. Upper-class girls went to elementary school and often learned to read and write. Generally they were not permitted to pursue higher study with men of learning, although Stoic philosophers were sympathetic to women’s education. Even without higher education, Nero’s mother, known as Agrippina the Younger, wrote a biography of her mother. The empress Julia Domna, wife of emperor Lucius Septimius Severus (193-211), was a patron of learning and served as the primary advisor of her son, Caracalla (211-217), throughout much of his reign as emperor.

Roman society had long valued boys above girls. Poor families sometimes abandoned infant daughters in the countryside to avoid paying dowries, the gifts traditionally given by a girl’s parents to her husband’s family. The practice of allowing baby girls to die, called female infanticide, continued down to the Christian era and had an impact on the size of the female population. Childbearing was dangerous. Tombstones show that the life expectancy of women was 34 years as contrasted with 46 years for men because women often died in childbirth.

Some male writers attacked imperial women’s education, political power, and sexuality. Roman women did have one kind of real power—the wealth that came from their right to own and inherit property. Despite this wealth and prestige, no Roman woman actually ruled the empire in her own name, although some other countries did have women rulers: Egyptian queen Cleopatra, Queen Boudicca of the Britons, and Zenobia, who reigned over Palmyra in Syria. In Rome, men held political power and women could only exercise indirect power.

B

Government

As the empire developed, the emperor stood at the top of the administrative system. He served as military commander in chief, high priest, court of appeal, and source of law. All this power was intensely personal: Soldiers swore their oath to the emperor, not to a constitution or a flag. Personal ties of patronage, friendship, and marriage had always bound together Roman society, but during the empire the emperor became the universal patron. Military loyalty, bureaucracy, and imperial succession were all viewed in personal terms. This concentration of power produced a court in which government officials and the imperial family competed with poets, astrologers, doctors, slaves, and actors for the emperor’s attention and favor. The emperor’s own slaves and freedmen dominated the clerical and financial posts and formed the core of imperial administration just as they did in the household administration of any Roman aristocrat. Deep ties of loyalty bound Roman freedmen and slaves to their patrons so that they faithfully served even the most monstrous emperors.

B

1

Political Offices

The emperors took over the Senate’s political and legislative power, but they needed the help of senators who had experience in diplomacy, government, and military command. Since the emperor designated candidates for all government positions, senators had no other access to high office except through loyal service. A shrewd emperor could turn senatorial pride and loyalty to the advantage of the empire. By simply allowing senators to wear a broad purple stripe on their togas, for example, the emperor marked them as rulers of the Mediterranean and added to their prestige.

Only when emperors treated senators with contempt did the senators feel justified in conspiring against the emperor under the banner of freedom. Some ambitious senators dreamed of reaching supreme power and even of replacing the emperor. An occasional opportunity presented itself—Nero’s death brought four senators to the imperial throne in the single year of ad 69. However, most senators remained loyal to the emperor because the constant danger of displeasing suspicious emperors outweighed the remote chance of success. As the old noble families died out, the emperors found new blood among the local elite of Italy and the provinces. In the 2nd century ad more than half the senators were of provincial origin.

The emperor Augustus had first given the equestrian order increased responsibilities, and they continued to play an important role in the governance of the empire. Only a few of the equites actually worked for the emperor, some served as officers of Rome’s auxiliary forces, and others as civil administrators. Most members of this order remained in their home cities—there were 500 in the Spanish seaport of Cádiz alone—and formed the basis of a loyal elite that characterized the early empire. As the government expanded, the “equestrian career” began to resemble a modern civil service with ranks, promotions, and a salary scale. While retired centurions occasionally advanced into the equestrian order and equestrians into the Senate, social mobility remained limited. The emperors tried to keep the equestrians loyal by permitting them signs of privilege similar to senators. Tens of thousands of equestrians across the empire marked their status by wearing togas with a narrow purple stripe and sitting in the front row at public games.

Senators and equestrians whom the emperor appointed as governors, generals, and prefects held substantial power in the provinces, although provincial administration was initially restricted to issues of taxation and law and order. The system grew increasingly complex, but it always remained rather small for such an expansive empire. Twelfth-century China had an elite government official for every 15,000 subjects, as compared to Rome, which had one for every 400,000 people in the empire. Such figures are crude, but they show that Roman administration was less intrusive than its counterparts in China and many other modern states. The empire, with its limited administrative system, could not have functioned without local officials in the provinces or subject kings appointed by Rome, like Herod the Great in Judea.

B

2

Roman Law

Historians often focus on political leaders, but it is local grievances about high taxes, crime, or the price of bread that most often provoke people to revolt against a government. The Romans relied on civil laws to address a variety of these issues. Roman law in the republic was often based on custom. During the Roman Empire, however, the emperor became the final source of law. People in the provinces were well aware that the emperor sat atop the chain of command as recorded in the New Testament to the Bible. In regard to taxation, for example, a passage in Luke 2:1 notes: “And it came to pass in those days, that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that the whole world should be enrolled to be taxed.” However, popular anger over issues such as taxation was still directed toward the political officeholders who administered the laws.

Roman law was one of the most original products of the Roman mind. From the Law of the Twelve Tables, the first Roman code of law developed during the early republic, the Roman legal system was characterized by a formalism that lasted for more than 1,000 years. The basis for Roman law was the idea that the exact form, not the intention, of words or of actions produced legal consequences. To ignore intention may not seem fair from a modern perspective, but the Romans recognized that there are witnesses to actions and words, but not to intentions.

Roman civil law allowed great flexibility in adopting new ideas or extending legal principles in the complex environment of the empire. Without replacing older laws, the Romans developed alternative procedures that allowed greater fairness. For example, a Roman was entitled by law to make a will as he wished, but, if he did not leave his children at least 25 percent of his property, the magistrate would grant them an action to have the will declared invalid as an 'irresponsible testament.' Instead of simply changing the law to avoid confusion, the Romans preferred to humanize a rigid system by flexible adaptation.

Early Roman law derived from custom and statutes, but the emperor asserted his authority as the ultimate source of law. His edicts, judgments, administrative instructions, and responses to petitions were all collected with the comments of legal scholars. As one 3rd-century jurist said, 'What pleases the emperor has the force of law.' As the law and scholarly commentaries on it expanded, the need grew to codify and to regularize conflicting opinions. It was not until much later in the 6th century ad that the emperor Justinian I, who ruled over the Byzantine Empire in the east, began to publish a comprehensive code of laws, collectively known as the Corpus Juris Civilis, but more familiarly as the Justinian Code.

C

Urban Life

Ancient Rome was situated on seven hills and its monumental public buildings—the Colosseum, the Forum of Trajan, and the Pantheon—made the city the “capital of the world” under the emperors. But in addition to the arenas, temples, and forums, Rome also had theaters, basilicas, gymnasiums, baths, taverns, and brothels. The first emperor, Augustus, had a modest house, but his successors progressively expanded it into an enormous imperial residence on the Palatine Hill from which all “palaces” take their name. The rich preferred to live on the hills above the teeming crowds and animals of central Rome. Rome housed over 1 million inhabitants, so most of its buildings were not villas and splendid monuments. The poor lived packed into apartment houses near the center of the city since there was no public transport. The public spaces in Rome resounded with such a din of hooves and clatter of iron chariot wheels that Julius Caesar proposed a ban on chariot traffic at night.

One Roman writer said that the imperial government kept the Romans contented by “bread and circuses.” Other societies have relied on the same strategy, but never to the same degree. The Roman emperors provided free food to hundreds of thousands and sponsored an endless series of games. For two centuries the government managed to avoid food shortages or the discontent that would endanger the rule of the emperors.

The government gave high priority to acquiring, shipping, storing, and distributing food for Rome and other major urban areas. The Romans had a formidable logistical task to supply Rome’s 1 million inhabitants. The emperors organized convoys from Egypt, North Africa, and Sicily to carry food to urban areas. They generously distributed wheat, which was the staple food of the time. When the emperors improved facilities at Rome’s seaport, Ostia, for example, they wanted to ensure a steady supply of wheat to the capital. Italian farms provided fruit and vegetables, but meat and fish were luxuries in an urban society. The Romans built huge waterways called aqueducts to bring water to the cities and imported large jugs of wine and oil from Spain, Gaul, and Africa to fulfill the necessities of the Roman table.

The emperors used different forms of entertainment to pacify the urban masses, including chariot races, theatrical and musical performances, wild-beast hunts, mock sea battles, public executions, and gladiatorial combat. In the Colosseum, Rome’s huge amphitheater, 50,000 Romans could watch the games. Criminals and captives were sent to gladiatorial training schools so that they learned to entertain the crowds. If gladiators successfully performed in combat, they might earn the support of the crowd and an imperial “thumbs-up,” meaning a reprieve and freedom. The crowd could also determine whether the fate of the battle’s loser was death. The games were important occasions during which the Roman people could see the emperor, and he could show his respect for them by following their desire to spare a gladiator.

The emperor Titus opened the Colosseum in ad 80 with 100 days of games in which 9,000 animals died. The crowds came to the games to see fighting and blood as well as the color and pageantry of public celebrations. The most popular events were the chariot races held in the Circus Maximus, an arena that held up to 300,000 spectators. Competing teams with brightly decorated horses attracted fierce loyalty, and up to a dozen four-horse chariots crowded together through the dangerous turns, lap after lap. Successful charioteers became so wealthy that even emperors envied their riches.

Historians estimate that about 10 percent of the empire’s population lived in the thousand cities that stretched from Britain to Syria: Colchester and London in Britain, Lyon and Arles in Gaul, Timgad and Lepcis Magna in North Africa, to the great eastern cities of Antioch in ancient Syria and Alexandria in Egypt. Most of these cities were rather small, with fewer than 10,000 residents, and only a handful had more than 100,000 inhabitants. Most of the larger urban populations were in the East, but new cities developed in the western provinces as an outgrowth of military settlement and trade. All of these urban centers had a forum and temples, and most also had the same kind of public buildings found in Rome, but on a smaller scale.

Rome administered a vast empire with a small civil service, so the burden of effective government rested on the local elite. Some conquered Greek cities retained their traditional form of government, but many in the western portion of the empire established a municipal council called a curia, named after the Roman Senate. The city council and annually elected officials administered the food supply, public services, religious festivities, town finance, and local building projects. The Romans thus created in these outlying cities a provincial aristocracy modeled on Rome’s social system. The imperial government expected local authorities to maintain order by the same social and cultural methods used by Rome. Because of these methods, Roman municipal governments rarely had to dispatch legions to quiet social unrest or rebellion.

Local elites often used their own resources to subsidize public buildings, games, and even the distribution of grain to the poor. They were willing to carry the burden of municipal expenses because they had a strong sense of civic responsibility and a desire to show off their economic success. However, when the empire later declined economically, city officials increasingly avoided their public duties, undermining the entire system of local government. Without the local elite to maintain order and collect taxes, the empire became ungovernable.

In the latter part of the 1st century ad, a recession hit Italy particularly hard. For instance, a case of Italian-style pottery made in Gaul and found unopened at Pompeii shows that Italy was competing with the provinces. An influx of gold from Dacia (present-day Romania) during the reign of the emperor Trajan temporarily reversed the decline of the Italian economy, but prosperity could not last forever. Frontier troubles increased the cost of the army, and the bureaucracy continued its inevitable growth. The empire was no longer expanding, and rising costs far outstripped the limited economic growth possible in a preindustrial economy. By ad 160 economic decline began to imperil the Roman peace that the emperors had worked so hard to maintain.

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