Rome - A Short History of a Great City
Dominic Tidey - EuRA

Rome is certainly one of the world’s great cities, but in terms of world history it has to be the most important settlement on the planet.  Tracing the history of Rome is akin to tracing the history of Western civilisation, from gods and myths, to the republic, to the foundations of Christianity to fascism and the second world war.   

The Founding of Rome 

If the myths are accurate it is a minor miracle that Rome was founded at all.  Romulus and Remus, the mythical fathers of Rome, had an inauspicious start.  Born to a vestal virgin – a contradiction in itself, they were also condemned to death by their great uncle Amulius who feared they would one day challenge his illegitimate claim to the throne of Alba Longa.  Their mother Rhea was the daughter of the rightful king of Alba Longa and Amulius hoped that making her a vestel virgin would prevent a new rightful heir.  However, the god Mars was smitten with Rhea and so her vows of chastity were broken and the twins were born.   

The servant charged with the murder of the babies, took pity on them and instead left them on the banks of the Tiber, for fate to take its course.  The river took the babies to the Palatine woods where Mars intervened to have them found and suckled by a she-wolf.  They were subsequently found by a shepherd, Faustulus and his wife who raised them as their own.   

The twins definitely showed the same tempestuous nature as their war-god father and Remus was eventually arrested for attacking a rival shepherding gang.  This prompted Amulius to tell Romulus the story of his birth, and to ask him to save his brother.  He did so, killed his uncle Amulius and restored his grandfather to the throne.  In order to celebrate this turn of events, the twins undertook to found a city on the site where they were saved by the servant. 

Historians unsurprisingly cast doubt on the myth of Romulus and Remus and attribute the founding of Rome as the amalgamation of Etruscan, Latin and Sabine villages and towns on three of Rome’s hills; the Palatine, Esquiline and Quirinal, and the date of this founding to 753 BC.  The new city state thrived and grew under a succession of kings who established city walls, and the basics of a political and military system.  The Roman Republic was born in 509 BC with the overthrow of the Etruscan house of Tarquin.   

The Republic 

The worlds first recorded republic separated Rome’s populus into two; those in the Senate, and the people, Senatus Populusque Romanus or SPQR, literally translated as the Senate and People of Rome.  The people were organised through a system of three assemblies, the Centuriate, the Tribal and the Council of the People.  These assemblies elected the judiciary and passed laws, the first example of law by the people for the people.  The Senate elected and advised the two annual consuls, the political and military leaders of Rome.  During this time Rome’s significant military muscle was being flexed to bring all of the neighbouring regions under the same system, and to large extent, this was complete by 400 BC.  However the Gauls held Rome to siege in 390 BC which only ended when the Senate bribed the Gallic leaders to return home. 

South of Rome two formidable powers were watching the expansion with interest; the Greeks and the Carthaginians.  The Greeks were ousted from their colonies in southern Italy by 272 BC, but the Carthaginians were stronger and held Sicily in an iron grip.  But by 218 BC the whole of the Italian peninsula was under Roman control along with Sicily and Sardinia.  However the Carthaginians did not take their expulsion from Sicily lying down and in 218 BC Hannibal marched across North Africa, through Spain and Gaul before rampaging through the north of Italy.  However, Hannibal failed to capture Rome, and in an audacious military move, Rome’s forces captured Carthage  and razed it to the ground.  Rome now controlled the Mediterranean. 

The Empire 

Two hundred years of political strife were to follow, with powerful factions within the power structure vying for supremacy.  In 87 BC, Gaius Marius seized control of Rome, soon becoming embroiled in a vicious civil war with Cornelius Sulla who, five years later was appointed dictator for a decade.  This ushered in a period of rivalry, with allegiances in the military becoming critical for successful control of Rome.  Julius Caesar, whose power base within the armies was strong, led a further civil uprising on the death of Sulla against his contemporary and rival, Pompei.  In 44BC, he was appointed dictator for life, his rule savagely cut short by the numerous enemies he made when he was assainated on the steps of the theatre, less than a year later.  Marcus Antonius, Caesar’s lieutenant assumed control of Rome, but was challenged by Caesar’s heir, nephew Octavian, eventually leading to the Republic being divided between the two in 40BC.  Marcus Antonius provoked the anger of Octavian when he ceded control of Egypt to his lover, Cleopatra, and was killed by Octavians forces at the battle of Actium in 31 BC. 

Octavian, mindful of the fate of his uncle, Caesar, surrendered his Imperial power back to the senate in 27BC, who ironically returned most of his power to him.  This move ushered a period of relative stability to the mighty empire, and during this time, a golden age, Rome was restored to its glory.  But where Octavian reformed, his successors plundered.  Caligula and Tiberius were known for the insane and cruel reigns, and it wasn’t until Caligula’s assignation that some semblance of order returned, briefly however.  Under Nero, widescale persecution of the Christians began, as well as the devastating fire through which he was reputed to be playing his fiddle.  Vespasian, a hard line military ruler took control, constructing the Colossuem and proving that absolute dictatorship was the only way forward following decades of civil strife.  One hundred years of prosperity and expansion followed, but by the 3rd century economic decline heralded another era of civil war and anarchy in the territories.  Successive rebellions across the empire, decimated Rome’s power and thus began the decline of the Roman Empire.  Christianity began to take a foothold across the Empire and the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, took control, moving to Constantinople, and forever removing power from Rome.  Sacked by the Goths, in 410, Rome was a city devoid of power.  In 476, the Western Empire collapsed and Rome fell into obscurity. 

The Medieval Period 

By the 6th century, Rome was in ruins.  With its great aqueducts destroyed by the barbarian attacks and no fresh water reaching the city, disease was endemic and the population fled.  But nature abhors a vacuum and the papacy filled the void left in the city.  Pope Gregory, won hearts and minds by feeding the starving of Rome and repairing the aqueducts.  Thus began the next stage of Rome’s dominance of Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, which was to last for a thousand years.  Though power was consolidated in Rome, civil unrest and rebellion was rife across Europe and though the Holy Roman Empire sought spiritual control of Europe, it did not succeed in gaining territorial control. 

After centuries of strife under successive Pope’s unable to consolidate the power of Europe’s great families and trading principalities, the Papacy moved from Rome to Avignon in 1309.  It would be another seventy years before the situation in Rome was considered safe enough from conflict to allow the Papacy to return, though when Pope Gregory XI did return, he found the city again in ruins and moved into the fortified Vatican, rather than the less secure traditional papal Palazzo Laterano.  On his death in 1378, a schism tore the Papacy in two, the Vatican Pope Urban VI in Rome with a second, antipope Clement VII in Avignon.   

The Rennaisance 

With the Papacy reunited under Nicholas V, a man of great culture and intellect, a new and enlightened era began for Rome, with some of the worlds greatest artists prospering.  The Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire grew rich, and the city was reinvented as the centre of the world once more, with an explosion in artistic, cultural and architectural endeavour flourishing under the patronage of the new great wealthy families of Europe. 

The city itself expanded, and although great monuments were erected, including the Dome of St Peters, and the Piazza del Campidoglio, it was still a difficult time as the city was continually under siege from opposing national powers, notable the Spanish.  By the mid 16th century, the enlightenment was giving way to a new, authoritarian order, and the Catholic church embarked on a savage campaign to destroy Protestantism, the reformation to Christianity put forward by Martin Luther.  Torture and fear spread across Europe as the Inquisitorial courts were established to persecute freethinkers.  Galileo was forced by the church to refute the assertion of Copernicus that the earth moved around the sun.  Thus much of the new thought generated as a result of the Renaissance was brutally quashed, though as much as the religious elite struggled to suppress freedom of thought, the more creative Rome’s artists and architects became.  

Napoleon to Unification 

In 1798 Napoleon marched on Rome forcing the Pope to flee, and reinstating the Roman Republic.  It would be another sixteen years before power was finally taken back by the Papacy when Pius Vii was finally restored to the Vatican.  In 1848, the power of the Papacy was finally ousted from within when Mazzini and Garibaldi, the founding fathers of modern Italy took power and Rome was again declared a republic.  In 1861, the Kingdom of Italy was declared and Victor Emmanual II was proclaimed king, ushering in a period of transformation and expansion for the city, with new roads and monuments including the Vittoriano monument and the Via Nazionale and Via Cavour were constructed to link the centre of town to the new railway.   

Fascism 

Italy lost 600,000 men during the first world war, and while the citizens of Italy struggled in economic meltdown, the war created a super rich elite.  This sudden massive division between the very rich and the destitute laid the foundations for the rise of Mussolini.  In 1919 he founded the Fascist Party and in 1922 marched on Rome, forcing the king into letting him form a new government.  By 1925, Mussolini had taken total control of Italy.  Keen to consolidate his power he signed the Lateran treaty to appease the church, making Italy a Catholic state and recognising the sovereignty of the Vatican.  Rome was again made a building site as Mussolini embarked on huge projects to show the world the might of his rule.  In a crucial allegiance, Mussolini and the Nazis formed ideological and military agreements, which led to him announcing Italy’s entry into World War Two to cheering crowds from the Palazzo Venetia.  Rome and Italy suffered terribly during the early years of the war, firstly as a result of the Fascist regime and ultimately at the hands of the Nazis who took control from Mussolini in 1943. 

Terrible reprisals were carried out against anti fascists during this time.  Following the war, in 1946 a referendum abolished the monarchy and a republican government was formed, and the way was paved for Italy’s post-war peace and prosperity.