Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the greatest ancient empire of Europe. At the height of its power in 117 AD, it ruled over considerable parts of Europe, as well as much of North Africa and the Middle East. In 286 AD, it was effectively split into a western empire, ruled from Rome and an eastern Byzantine Empire, ruled from Constantinople, which continued to exist until Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The Roman Empire left a huge and lasting impact on the civilisations of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and Roman cultural influences continue to be evident in these civilisations and beyond.

Understand
"Haec est Italia diis sacra. "This is Italy, [land﻿] sacred to the Gods.""

- Pliny the Elder

As with many ancient civilizations, Rome began as a city-state, founded, according to tradition, in 753 BC as an elective kingdom. Tradition has it that there were seven kings of Rome with Romulus, the founder, being the first and Tarquinius Superbus falling to a republican uprising led by Brutus, but modern scholars doubt many of those stories and even the Romans themselves acknowledged that the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BCE destroyed many sources on their early history.

The Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was established in or around 509 BC. Besides wars with other powers (notably Carthage), the Republican era was characterized by conflicts between the old aristocracy (patricians) and the common people (plebians). Some plebians rose to wealth and political prominence, from which they challenged the old system.

Rome rose as a great power in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, as they defeated and annexed Etruria, Carthage and Ancient Greece. The military became more powerful, and the republic became increasingly corrupt. Julius Caesar was a military leader who conquered Gaul (today's France) and other territories, won a civil war against the Senate, and introduced the Julian Calendar — which forms the base of the calendar used today in the Western world. Caesar started transforming the Republic into a dictatorship, but was betrayed and assassinated in 44 BC. While Caesar's assassins claimed to be acting on behalf of the restoration of the Republic, a power struggle broke out over the inheritance of Caesar. His nephew Octavian outmaneuvered or killed all rival claimants, and assumed near absolute power and the honorary name "Augustus".

The Roman Empire


Power was transferred to Augustus, the Emperor (Latin: Imperator) in 27 BC, founding the Roman Empire, after almost a century of civil wars. Augustus' conquest of Egypt (where his rival Marc Antony had courted Queen Cleopatra) helped expand Roman control into the Middle East, coming to encircle the Mediterranean Sea.

While Judaea was a small and rather insignificant province, Christianity was founded there. The modern image of the Romans has to a large extent been shaped by the New Testament's description of the 1st-century Roman Empire, including in Biblical art and stories, not to mention its records of the extent of Roman influence and political power in the Near East. Rome reached its greatest territorial extent in the early 2nd century CE under Emperor Trajan, who was succeeded by a number of capable emperors including Hadrian, famous for Hadrian's Wall near the border with Scotland, and the Antonines. Following this period known as the Pax Romana, the Crisis of the Third Century caused the Empire to temporarily lose its northwestern European and eastern Mediterranean possessions to usurpers. Almost two hundred years of corruption, civil war, and assassinations followed during the 3rd and 4th centuries, severely weakening the Empire.

In 395 AD, Theodosius I divided the Imperial administration by bequeathing the imperial office jointly to his sons: Arcadius in the East, to rule from Constantinople, and Honorius in the West, based in Rome. This was not the first such division, but Theodosius would prove to be the last man to control both halves of the Empire at the same time. Shortly thereafter, Rome would be sacked for the first time in eight centuries, by the Visigoths in 410. This was followed by a period of accelerated decline and two more sacks, one by the Vandals in 455 and another by the Magister Militum himself, Ricimer, in 472. The Western Empire deteriorated due to various factors, the immediate ones being the conquests of Germanic tribes and the collapse of the Roman Army; and depending on whom you ask, it fell either in 476 AD, when the Germanic king Odoacer deposed the titular Western Emperor Romulus Augustulus residing in Ravenna or circa 536 following the death of Theodoric and the commencement of the Gothic Wars against Constantinople, which resulted in the abandonment of Rome.

But the Eastern Empire endured and recovered, conquering large parts of the western Mediterranean under Emperor Justinian with his able general Belisarius, though his dynasty was also the last whose primary language was Latin, not Greek. Starting in the 7th century, the Eastern — or Byzantine — Empire engaged in a long struggle against the expansion of Islam and sometimes even fought against other Europeans (particularly Roman Catholics, as Rome and Constantinople had developed different churches). The remnants of the empire, based in modern-day Greece and western Turkey, soldiered on and called itself "Roman" until 29 May 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks after a 53-day siege and the last emperor was killed in action, last seen fighting the attackers after he had removed all rank insignia to die as a Roman.

Religion and folklore
Many faiths and cults rose and fell within the vast Roman Empire. With the Roman conquest of Greece, the Romans adopted much of Greek culture, including a pantheon of Gods, and the legends of the Trojan War. With the Emperors came an imperial cult. Christianity spread across the Roman Empire, and became the official religion by the 4th century AD.

Roman heritage and revival
Rome created a foundation for modern Europe, including Christianity, codified law (several Latin expressions, such as nulla poena sine lege - "no penalty without law" - and habeas corpus - "you shall have [possession of your own] body" - are still used on a daily basis by judges and lawyers worldwide), republican government, urban planning, monumental architecture, and the Latin alphabet. Roman heritage was revived during epochs such as the Italian Renaissance. Many of the younger members of the European elite during the 17th-19th centuries went on a Grand Tour in which ancient Roman sites were among the main attractions.

Many later political entities have claimed to be the successor of the Roman Empire. The Byzantine Empire was the part of the Roman Empire that survived throughout the Middle Ages, and the Ottomans, who conquered the Byzantine Empire and captured its capital Constantinople in 1453, saw themselves as their successors. In fact some Ottoman rulers took to calling themselves Kaiser-i-Rum, which roughly translates as "Emperor of Rome". As the Byzantine Empire fell, the Russian Empire claimed to be the "third Rome", and the Russian imperial dynasty even married into the last Byzantine dynasty to further press the claim. Both the Russian title that is rendered in English as 'Czar' or 'Tsar' and the German title 'Kaiser' are derived from the Latin 'Caesar'. World War I ended all European and Mediterranean polities to implicitly or explicitly claim to be (a continuation of) the Roman Empire.

In AD 800, the Pope, who did not recognize the empress of the Eastern Roman Empire, crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as "Holy Roman Emperor". The Holy Roman Empire held various levels of authority over Central Europe, until the Thirty Years War in the 17th century demoted the title to mostly sentimental value.

In 1804, Napoleon had himself crowned Emperor of France to claim power over Europe, and Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, also King of Austria, crowned himself Emperor of Austria a few months later. As Napoleon seized much of the Holy Roman Empire's territory the following years, Francis II dissolved the Empire in 1806 to prevent Napoleon from becoming Holy Roman Emperor; in 1814, Napoleon was defeated by an alliance including Austria. Napoleon III founded the Second French Empire in 1852, though as the newly unified Germany deposed him in 1870, they claimed Imperial status. The German, Austrian, Russian and Ottoman Empires all collapsed at the end of World War I, putting an end to the continuous claims to succeed the Roman Emperors. Later attempts by Fascist Italy under Mussolini to "revive" Roman glory, or by Bokassa to crown himself emperor of Central Africa, in a presumption of Bonapartist as well as Roman continuation, were highly unsuccessful and viewed with ridicule and skepticism abroad. That being said, the Latin language and the Roman ideals and styles are still used in contexts as diverse as science, European attempts at unification or Government architecture.

Some remnants of the classical Roman era are still visible even 2,000 years after they were first constructed, with some still in use for the same or similar purposes they were built for. After the "fall" of the Roman Empire, most of its former territory entered a decline in technology, economy and literacy and, as such, many of its technological and engineering feats seemed superhuman and were indeed referred to by names such as "devil's wall" (for parts of the Limes in today's Germany). Some, including some stones from the Colosseum in Rome, were taken in the Middle Ages to build other structures, but there is still much that remains. To some extent, the Holy See preserves the ancient Roman heritage, and indeed one of the Pope's traditional titles, 'Pontifex Maximus', is the same title the High Priest of Rome (and later the emperor) held in pre-Christian times.

Graeco-Roman literature is also a source for the history of other cultures with few domestic written records, such as the Celts, the Old Norse, and the early Franks. As these were usually adversaries of the Romans, and the writers rarely had first-hand experience, the records are unreliable. In some cases, what might seem to be ethnographic or historiographic works about non-Roman cultures are actually veiled social commentary on the Romans themselves.

The influence of Latin
Latin, the language of the Roman Empire, has had a large influence on European languages. The Romance languages (chiefly French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and Romanian) are direct descendants of Latin, and Latin has had some influence on all the other modern European languages. Most European languages use the Latin alphabet, though others use the Cyrillic alphabet, both derived from the Greek alphabet, and some (like Armenian) have their own.

Latin was the sole liturgical language in Roman Catholic churches until the second half of the 20th century and is still sometimes used. It is still the official language of the Holy See, and Catholic priests still use it to communicate with colleagues from other countries. Due in part to huge losses of ancient texts around the time the Western Roman Empire collapsed, the overwhelming majority of all works ever written in Latin were actually written after it was the official language of any Roman Empire, but the quality of the Latin written in the first century BC and AD with authors like Cicero or Caesar, as well as Horace or Juvenal, is still regarded as the standard to emulate, and later works - often written by non-native speakers - are less famous and less often studied in schools. Latin and Greek were among the first languages to have grammar discussed and analyzed in detail, and many grammatical terms and concepts still derive from Latin terms. Some linguists of the 20th and 21st century have bemoaned this Latin-influenced approach to grammar, as it arguably imposes Latin categories on the modern languages analyzed. Due to both Greek and Latin texts discussing pronunciation and phonetic misspellings found in graffiti, modern linguists have a very good idea of classical Latin pronunciation — better, perhaps, than for any other "dead" language spoken so long ago.

Latin was a lingua franca for scientists and philosophers across Europe throughout the Middle Ages and for much of the post-Renaissance period; Newton (English), Descartes (French), Leibniz (German), Galileo (Italian), Copernicus (Polish) and Spinoza (Portuguese Jew living in Amsterdam) all published their work in Latin. Carl Linnaeus founded the practice of latinized scientific names for biological species. In modern English and many other languages much of the terminology in law, medicine and other sciences is derived from Latin. Often there are two ways to say something; where many people would use words from Anglo-Saxon like "He broke his leg", a doctor might use Latin-derived terms as in "He fractured his tibia".

Many European high schools, and some elsewhere, had Latin as a required part of the curriculum until well into the 20th century, and some still teach it. Today many universities still offer degrees in Classics (Latin and Ancient Greek), and some require students of Philosophy or Theology to study these languages. Latin developed "local pronunciations" in school and quotidian usage as it was mostly a written language of people who acquired it in adulthood or schooling. Those pronunciations diverge — sometimes widely — from the reconstructed classical pronunciation now known to scholars and taught in some schools alongside and instead of the traditional "national" pronunciation. English Latin pronunciation, used in the Anglican church, is particularly idiosyncratic and both Ancient Romans and other fluent Latin speakers not familiar with its peculiarities might have problems understanding it. The most widely-used Latin pronunciation today is known as Ecclesiastical Latin, based on Italian pronunciation, that is the official pronunciation used by the Roman Catholic church.

Roman town planning and architecture
While cities had existed in the Mediterranean world for millennia when the Romans got going in earnest and there had even been some "planned cities" built by the Greeks or rulers like Ancient Egypt's Akhenaten, the Romans introduced their vision of citybuilding to their vast empire. Roman arms would conquer, but Roman culture, architecture, commerce and lifestyle would "civilize" the new citizens of the Empire and - to quote a modern term - would "win hearts and minds". While Rome itself is in many ways an aberration from Roman city planning ideals, in large part because many buildings and streets already existed by the time Romans came up with their concept of how a "proper city" should look like, most Roman founded towns are characterized by a rectangular grid-shaped street layout that the Romans applied even to their army field camps. Two roads intersecting at a right angle, called "Cardo" and "Decumanus" would serve as the basis for the street grid and at their ends would be city gates. Where those two streets intersected, the civic heart of the cit and a forum would be located. A few Roman cities or cities substantially rebuilt by Romans have to this day kept one or both of those "Roman main streets".

Get around
There is a great online resource, named Omnes Viae ("all roads"), compiled from the official Tabula Peutingeriana, that reckons distance (in Roman miles and Gallic leagues) and travel days (on foot) between any given Roman towns. It's worth a try.


 * Via Appia, an early Roman road
 * Jesus Trail, the Biblical journeys of Jesus

Destinations
As the Roman Empire originated in Italy and held onto this territory for the longest time, most remnants are found there and across the Mediterranean basin. For some centuries, Romans referred to the Med as mare nostrum (our sea), such was their near-total dominance in the region. However, Roman remnants can also be found in outlying provinces, and in fact some of the most impressive are Roman border installations built to keep out the "Barbarians" of today's Germany and Scotland. Gaul (France), and to a lesser extent Britannia (most of modern day England and Wales), were also important provinces and as such still have a lot of Roman era remnants, including streets and aqueducts. Some Roman streets remained in use and in prime condition until the advent of the automobile that necessitated wider roads and hence many Roman roads were paved over.

France




England and Wales




Greece




Israel
The Roman period of Israel and the Palestinian Territories is well-known in Christian communities through the New Testament — the stories of Christ and his disciples. See Holy Land for Biblical destinations.



Do
Several museums as well as a number of privately organized groups offer reenactment, including Roman food or Roman dress. The historical accuracy of these things varies widely but is usually better than for "medieval" themed events. If you have a lot of time on your hand and/or are a scholar in that field you might even find yourself doing "experimental archeology" and cross the Alps in full Roman era military equipment to shine a light on Roman military life.
 * Hike The German Limes Road in Germany, or along Hadrian's Wall in England.
 * A more ambitious proposition would be to hike or bike along the whole of the Via Claudia Augusta, from Augsburg through Innsbruck and the Alps all the way to Trento and Verona, maybe even Venice, which is not the historically correct itinerary, but is a great travelling option.
 * The original pavement and milestones of the Via Egnatia, which together with Via Pontica, connected the two imperial capitals, Rome and Constantinople, remain intact in parts along its route.

Eat
The Roman tribal staple food was the puls, a thick pottage made of unground wheat, water, salt and fat, plus whatever vegetables and meats were at hand to be chopped up and added to the pot. Greek migrants on the 2nd century BC set up shop in Rome as bakers, introducing the concept of grinding the wheat into flour and baking it into bread. This practice slowly gained popularity, and by Imperial times, was prevalent. However, puls was a traditional and practical military ration, as well as ceremonially important for several Roman religious rites, and never disappeared.

Romans would eat their ientaculum (breakfast) at dawn and have prandium (more like a big snack) in the late morning. Both could be as simple as some bread dipped in wine or olive oil, plus olives, nuts and raisins - richer and foodier people also had meats, eggs, cheese, honey and a wider choice of fresh and dried fruit. The day finished with cena ("supper", the main daily meal), in the early evening. Rich folk would finish their daily business mid-afternoon, then hit the baths and go home to have cena lying on couches (lectus triclinaris, plural lecti triclinarii) for hours, in the triclinium, the familiar Roman dining room made famous by paintings and movies. The meal started with drinking preliminaries (comissatio) followed by salads and light hors d'oeuvre (gustatio), then the main courses (mensa prima) and fruits and dessert for last (mensa secunda). Romans had an idiom referring to a full-course meal, ab ovo usque mala, "from the egg to the apples", which came to mean "the whole story". The dining habits of the upper classes, and the decadence of Roman national values thus implied, are described and commented on by almost every Roman historian and social chronicler, from Cato the Elder (a hardcore xenophobic Republican traditionalist) to Tacitus (who was fond of comparing the Romans unfavorably to the Germanic tribes he writes about), and make for amusing reading.

Most members of the Roman elite were landowners, i.e. proud farmers, eager to consume and show off their own produce, to import and develop exotic crops and fruit trees, to store and preserve for winter; most of them had, as children, learned their letters and Latin from Cato the Elder's handbook of farming techniques De Agri Cultura. Pliny the Elder, in his books, discusses more than 30 varieties of olive, 40 kinds of pear, African and eastern figs, and a wide variety of greens and vegetables. It was considered more "civilized" to eat produce than hunted meat and mushrooms. Butcher's meat was an uncommon luxury; seafood, held in high esteem, and poultry were more common. Roman foodies would delight in eating roasted exotic birds (such as flamingos and peacocks). Aquaculture was sophisticated; there were large-scale industries devoted to oyster farming. The Romans also engaged in snail farming and oak grub farming. From the Eastern merchants they would buy black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, turmeric and other "oriental spices" that were in high demand; some of them were worth their weight in silver.

A list of whatever food items were available to the Romans of any given period, according to geographic location, is easy to compile using online resources, and is a great conversation topic with local merchants and food connoisseurs, while in the field.

There is a famous cookbook in Latin called De Re Coquinaria ("About cookable things"), said by modern scholars to date probably from the 4th or 5th century AD, and attributed to the name Apicius, a famous rich gourmet contemporary to emperor Augustus. Whoever really wrote the book seems to have been particularly fond of sauces, as roughly 100 of the 400 recipes in his book are for sauces. The menus of places such as the restaurant inside the Caesar's Palace casino of Las Vegas are rather likely inspired by this book, if not outright based on it. Modern writers on Roman cookery often make a point of avoiding the Apicius recipes altogether, concentrating instead on content from Cato, Columella, Pliny and other classic sources.

Products similar to pasta were known in Rome under such names as lagana and itrion. In fact, Apicius describes a dish very similar to the traditional lasagne (he calls it lasana or lasanum, Latin for "container", "pot") in his book. There is no support for the legend that Marco Polo brought pasta to Italy from the Chinese Empire in the 13th century.

Some products which are today ubiquitous in Mediterranean cuisines were unknown by Romans. Most of them are crops from the Americas, such as tomato, maize, potato, avocado, squashes, pumpkins and chilli peppers.

See Italian cuisine for contemporary food in Italy.

Drink
In Vino Veritas. "In wine, [there's] truth." – ancient popular Roman saying

To say that the central theme here is wine seems somewhat obvious. Romans were avid wine drinkers and traders, and are known to have influenced, if not started, every major wine-producing European enterprise, from Portugal to the Crimea. The northern limes mostly coincides with the northern limit for viticulture - at least as it was understood then. This was no mere coincidence, as Romans liked to have all comforts of their culture even in the provinces as far as climate and distance would allow.

Most provinces were capable of producing wine, but regional varietals were desirable. In addition to regular consumption with meals, wine was a part of everyday religious observances. Before a meal, a libation was offered to the household gods. Romans made regular visits to burial sites, to care for the dead; they poured a libation at the tombs. In some of them, this was facilitated by a feeding tube built into the grave.

As in much of the ancient world, sweet white wine was the most highly regarded style. Wines were often very alcoholic, with Pliny noting that a cup of Falernian (the most celebrated and sung-about Roman wine variety, now extinct) would catch fire from a candle flame drawn too close. Research does not indicate that Roman wine was stored for several years or even decades like contemporary wine is, but wine amphorae from all provinces have been found in Rome's trash heaps, as the amphorae were too cheap to produce to make it worthwhile to transport them back empty.

Like in Greek culture, wine was drunk mixed with water, and sometimes flavored with herbs and spices. Drinking wine purum or merum (unmixed) was a mark of the "barbarian". Modern wine enthusiasts enjoy the wisdom of this ancient custom, and advise modern wine drinkers to consume one glass of water after each one of wine, which helps maintain mental focus.

Beer (cervisia) was known and widely consumed by Gauls and Germans, but considered vulgar, and a barbarous habit, among the Romans.

Go next
While many Roman remains are outside of cities, some cities that were founded or significantly influenced by the Romans still have Roman remains side by side with a medieval or early modern old town, so after you are done with the Roman era you can often walk into another part of town and see buildings from totally different periods.