Rise of the Roman Empire

Thomas L. Dynneson

Rise of the Roman Empire

The Will to Endure

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Dynneson, Thomas L., author.

Title: Rise of the Roman Empire: the will to endure / Thomas L. Dynneson.

Description: [Second, etc. edition.] | New York: Peter Lang, 2020.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019002526 | ISBN 978-1-4331-6285-5 (hardback: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4331-6286-2 (ebook pdf)

ISBN 978-1-4331-6287-9 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4331-6288-6 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Rome—History—Kings, 753–510 B.C. | Rome—

History—Republic, 510–265 B.C.

Classification: LCC DG231.D945 | DDC 937/.02—dc23

Table of Contents

The cover is a painting by Guido Reni in 1614 that was commissioned as a Baroque ceiling fresco. It is a work depicting the goddess, Aurora, and her entourage escorting the chariot of Apollo bringing the light of dawn to the world. The fresco is located in the Casino, or garden room, that is situated opposite to the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi in the city of Rome. The goddess Aurora is associated with the Roman commander, Camillus, and the goddess has her origins in Indo-European mythology, as well as Roman mythology.

This text is structured to conclude with a “Discussion” as a summary of each chapter, and within this section is a subsection dedicated to Roman civism as it pertained to the topics covered within each chapter. It also is the author’s assumption that these studies explore personal identity as determined by one’s culture, and culture is a product of the demands of social conditions, including political conditions. Culture influences “the life of the mind” and is an important means of shaping the individual’s sense of reality. In the case of Rome, the individual came to the realization that: “I am a Roman, and being a Roman, I am expected to act and to respond to the world in a Roman way. I know what it is expected of me and my relationships with others, which demands that I express my Romaness.”

Civism, or the emergence of the Roman mindset, was the result of the core values that were fundamental to Roman culture, whether tribal Latin culture or a modified emerging urban (or cosmopolitan) culture. The most striking and traditional form of Roman core values was represented in what the Romans termed mos maiorum, or “the wisdom of the elders”. Mos maiorum provided Roman culture and identity with elements of expectations and understandings that gave a sense of stability to Roman society, regardless of its various phases of change and modifications (including changes from a basic agrarian society to a more complex urban society). Although the forces of mos maiorum tended to stabilize Roman culture, they also allowed change, especially as it pertained to assimilation and enculturation. In addition, it related to the adaptation of cultural ways that were being emitted and diffused by Greek culture vis-à-vis the Etruscans. Mainly, these changes arrived from other cultures involved in “the international sea-going trade” that came to influence southern and central Italy.

Bound up with mos maiorum, was the notion that elite families (families with notable ancestral lines) and the belief that elite aristocracy should control the government. Connected with mos maiorum emerged the notion of an aristocracy based on wealth and military leadership. The leaders of the Roman aristocracy were first and foremost political and military leaders of wealth and landed property. This leadership eventually formed into the upper strata of Roman agricultural society, and they became known as the “fathers” (or patricians). All others outside of these lines came to be called plebeians, or simply “common people”, or people without an “ancestral pedigree”. (Some writers have claimed that the origins of the plebeians were non-Latin tribal peoples that migrated to early Rome, such as the Sabines).

The patricians formed into clans with extended ethnic ties and relationships based on blood kinship, and they also came to dominate the priestly orders. In other words, to an important extent, patricians were both civil and religious leaders, and as such, they controlled the processes of politics and religion. In addition, they maintained their status by marriage according to rights and appropriate bloodlines.

Essentially, there have been two important problems that have plagued scholars in their attempt to understand and interpret the important influences that gave shape and form to Roman culture. In the first instance, early sources (many of which relied on the surviving accounts by Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus) have little actual factual support prior to the fourth and third centuries BCE. These accounts depended on unreliable sources that were comprised of a strange mixture of myth, oral history, and corrupted records. The timeframe prior to 390 BCE consists of many fabrications and inventions, or hearsay and legendary tales.

In the second instance, ancient and modern scholars could not investigate all aspects of Roman culture, specifically because some elements of ancient Roman “hidden culture” were so elusive, and therefore, impossible to investigate. All cultures tend to operate according to some level of a “hidden culture” making the operations of the culture almost impossible to decipher completely. Scholars do not possess the insights needed to unlock many aspects of the secret relationships, which operate somewhat like an “invisible hand”.

The idea that Rome may have been established and may have operated politically and militarily, according to such secret influences, tends to complicate one’s ability to gain a complete understanding of ancient Roman history. These “hidden” associations may have operated within the very core of the government (i.e. the Senate) in times of war and peace throughout the ages. Similar “hidden” relationships can be detected in the secret world tribal orders, knightly orders, priestly orders, masonic orders, and even criminal crime syndicate organizations: such “hidden” elements of culture are simply beyond the bounds of scientific investigation.

The priests, and therefore the aristocracy and their children, were an esteemed order as a result of confarreatio marriage (see R. E. Mitchell, 1990, p. 86), or a marriage form by which priests (aristocrats) were married and their children legitimized. This type of marriage also made a way to the priestly orders for aristocratic descendant males, and opened Senate ranking, which advanced the path to political leadership.

These influences helped to create emerging Roman institutions, especially military innovations that were necessary to confront the warring nature of migrating tribal intrusions into the domain of Roman city-state territories. In addition, the forces of assimilation and acculturation were important cultural factors that influenced Roman moral thinking, especially as they were reflected in Roman religion that gave rise to priestly orders and the building of temples and shrines that became characteristic of Roman urban development.

Traditionally and historically it is known that Roman political and social development was transformed according to a pattern, or cycle, that began as a tribal pattern in which mos maiorum depended on a respect for tribal custom and tradition. These cultural values then transitioned in the face of urban development, into a variety of more sophisticated monarchical forms. The monarchical forms of Roman mos maiorum borrowed heavily from “foreign” influences that were derived from Mediterranean sources. They included “the international sea-going trading system” as reflected in the rise and power of a central political authority that was chieftain-based. These diffused cultural influences transitioned into an Etruscan form of rule that in turn included many cultural elements derived from Greek sources. Finally, the monarchical system gave way to a more diverse political form that displaced the monarchy and gave rise to a more advanced urban political form that took the appearance of a power-grab by an emboldened Roman aristocracy.

The Republican forms, based on a tribal and monarchical foundation, developed a more dispersed system of shared authority that eventually matriculated into a complex military system that contained elements of monarchy and democracy (or a mixed constitutional system), while maintaining a controlling aristocratic oligarchy. The power and authority of this oligarchy were grounded in religious traditions that also became expressed in an emerging legal system of written laws.

Despite this cycle of cultural advancement, the development of a more sophisticated cosmopolitan society, Roman culture (as it related to civism) remained rooted in its Latin tribal past. This Latin past included a means of incorporating surrounding cultures. This included a process of granting a shared form of citizenship that was based on obligations and rights. Contained within this unusual form of Latin citizenship there resided a form of cultural adaptations, which led to a core mentality that tended to value the practical over the intellectual forms of thinking. These forms of practicality also were expressed in a stubborn form of Roman tenacity, or the tendency to resist all forms of outside influence. This resistance included both military and social cultural forms of resistance to traditional Roman cultural norms and practices. Early Roman Latin culture was, in other words, a culture that advanced a healthy suspicion of innovation, but at the same time, Roman practicality allowed for the adaptations of many foreign cultural traits despite its natural tendency to resist them.

The Romans, in general, valued their language and their evolving religious customs, but at the same time, were willing to recognize more efficient ways of improving these existing practices. This allowed the Romans to bend foreign elements of technology, especially military technology, to find a place within Roman traditional forms. It not only adapted technology, but also cultural elements, by modifying them to be acceptable to Roman traditional forms.

When asked why the Romans rose to greater heights of military power, some scholars have credited the geographic location of the Seven-Hills as one of the most unusual geographic regions to give rise to such a powerful city-state. This region was vast in comparison to the geography of many other ancient cities that were located on protective high bluff plateaus. The original population was a mixture of people who lived in hut villages and relied on a pastoral vocation related to herding sheep, goats, and cattle. The Tiber River that ran by the Seven-Hills was well inland from the coast, and navigation beyond the Seven-Hills was difficult. To the north were the more advanced Etruscans who controlled much of the Tiber and were much more advanced in the creation of smaller stone-walled cities.