The Roman Republic: Structure, Expansion, and Issues

with our next topic we are looking as you can see at the roman republic which was the form of government adopted by the roman state traditionally in 509 bc and it remained in fact the government for the roman state for almost five centuries when the roman state was reinvented under a series of emperors but in this particular video we are simply going to be focused on how the republic worked and we&#39;re also after we do that going to look at the success of the roman republic with territorial expansion and we will also see how that territorial expansion brought some new problems for the roman republic to deal with as well in the second video dealing with the roman republic we will then look at the the fact that the problems caused by expansion festered the point of civil war which ultimately ended with the rise of joy caesar and the end of the republic itself although not the end of roman civilization that&#39;s for sure so here you are looking at the building the main structure in which the roman senate typically met in these centuries this of course building was renovated and changed over time it was preserved as it turns out because although it&#39;s in it dates some features of parts of it date back to antiquity it was preserved because it was converted for a time into a church but in any case since the senate which met in the structure is the main focus of the republic i&#39;ve chosen that as our image opening image for this video so uh just to remind you where we left off with this though in our last video when we were looking at early realm you&#39;ll remember that the romans had believed they had replaced their king with a republican form of government in 509 bce republic is a latin term a latin word and what it means is the public matter in other words the idea was that while rome was ruled by kings government had been a private matter of the king of the monarchy but now that there were no kings government was to become a public matter something that a public interest in public participation and the republic then as such began in 509 bc with a new and interesting governmental form that would be stable for many many centuries ultimately encountered problems and in fact we&#39;ll be looking at some of those problems in this particular video before we talk about that i&#39;d like to describe one very famous and from the ancient world as well but an ancient and famous opinion as to why the roman republic was so successful for so many centuries and the argument i&#39;m about to present to you was made by a man named polybius who greatly admired the roman republic polybius believed that the reason why the roman republic was so stable was because it embodied the three different major types of political organization that had been described by the greek philosopher aristotle you may or may not remember that aristotle had looked at all the different constitutions so to speak of the greek city-states back in the 4th century bce and he had sort of categorized them into monarchies aristo aristocracies and democracies in other words some states are ruled by one person that of course would be the monarchy style or the monarchy type some states are ruled only by a few elite people the aristocracy and then there are some states in greece aristotle deduced that clearly are run in a democratic fashion by the people and aristotle though had furthermore argued we talked about this in a previous video but aristotle had argued that over time monarchy devolves into tyranny so it may be in other words at some point you have a monarch who really cares about what he is doing genuinely trying to rule say in his subject&#39;s interest but over time he&#39;ll get somebody who really just cares about themselves and they become selfish they become tyrannical they use their authority but in a somewhat similar way the same process can can happen in an oligarchic state where aristocrats who maybe uh joined together to rule the state at first because they felt that they had the wisdom necessary to guide the state correctly but over time they as well could become corrupt and take advantage of the rest of the state and then you&#39;ve got tyranny in that case as well but democracy too according to aristotle could devolve over time democracy does of course base policy and law on the majority of its citizens of the will the majority of the citizens but it can devolve into mob rule according to aristotle aristotle had actually concluded that democracy was the best of these three forms of government because at least if you have a democracy with a large middle class it can create a lot more stability but polybius then polybius argued that what made the roman republic stable was that it included all three forms of government that aristotle had described and because it included all three forms of government it meant that they were all in balance with each other and preventing the corruption of one element from ruining the state as a whole so this idea became pretty influential um it would be uh of course influential by the 18th century in more modern times on montesquieu and other enlightenment thinkers who of course ultimately considered the idea of government being checked and balanced and if you look at how the republic functioned there certainly does seem to be the three elements identified by polybius for example rome did in fact have several several popular assemblies meaning democratic assemblies that does make it seem as it had a real democratic element there were a few of these assemblies not just one of them but uh there was for example uh an assembly which just included the soldiers in the army but then there was another assembly that included just the general representatives of common people or the latin term for these commoners was the plebes what had happened in the history of the republic was the plebes the common people had become increasingly annoyed angry that they did not benefit from the same laws as did the aristocrats who had formed the republic in the first place the latin uh word for these aristocrats was patrician so there was sort of a this elite group of patricians who had created the republic in the first place but the plebes the regular commoners were feeling shut out and so it it&#39;s sort of a long story going to make very short here but over several centuries of history the plebes gradually became more and more assertive about wanting to see reform and change the republic so that would include them and eventually what it led to was the roman patricians agreeing to create a new democratic assembly to represent the plebes and so by the time we get to the second century for example which is where a lot of the story is we&#39;re going to be focused on in this video and in the next one but by the time you get to the second century uh one of the assemblies that really does seem to be important in roman republican politics is the assembly of the plebes and not only did common people in this way have their own assembly but there was also um an individual they elected a leader so to speak they elected who could serve as one of the executive officers governing the republic here by the way you&#39;re looking at a modern illustration of the plebes who are were angry because of the way which they were being taken advantage of by the patricians in fact i&#39;m going to skip over the details of the story entirely in the interest of time here but suffice it to say this is a scene of the plebes working together to demand their own fair share uh in the state in terms of the benefit that they should receive from roman laws actually um one thing you could say in praise of the roman republic at least the patricians in their own republic is they were over a long period of time able to make compromises with the plebes such that it did not lead to the kind of social revolution that it could have led to by the time we get to the last centuries of the republic in fact the plebes were eligible to serve in the same political offices as the matricians as the aristocrats um the the the plebes had uh some legal protections and in fact some of the plebes who would do well for themselves could even become part of the aristocracy in fact so that distinction between plebes and patricians doesn&#39;t really matter as much for most of what we&#39;re going to be looking at in this story but it is an interesting example of how the republic evolved in order to solve problems without internal civil insurrection any case it is true to get back to the main point here that the roman republic had democratic assemblies the assembly the plebes being the most important of them that&#39;s a democratic element of government but it was also true that the roman republic included what polybius referred to as an aristocratic excuse me as a monarchical is what i meant to say they also had the element of a monarchy meaning that there are executive officers who govern the roman republic you know people who have the right to make executive decisions such as people who make decisions about war and peace people who are in charge of the army um you know people who are in charge of taxes all sorts of things like this so these executive officials we would in modern america and parlance refer to them as being part of the executive branch you see but these magistrates as they were known had in in some ways monarchical like power but of course it was not unlimited power and one of the fascinating ways in which the roman republic attempted to to check the power of their magistrates so that their power would not be abused you see was that first of all roman magistrates were typically elected every year elections every year and and these magistrates were typically elected by the assemblies i mentioned a minute ago and secondly though every office in the roman republican government that you could be elected to be a leader in every office had two people so you&#39;re not going to have just one official in the roman republic you&#39;re going to have two so for example the highest executive office or magistracy in the roman republic was the consulship but there was never one console during the republic there were always two and the idea was that each of the consoles could veto the decision of the other console the consoles were basically commanders in chief it&#39;s kind of like the presidents of the roman republic but there were two of them it&#39;s sort of an interesting arrangement um and as i just mentioned each council could veto the decisions of the other they were not the executive leaders of the republic but they also had the right to command the army in times of war you see on the backside of a roman coin um this guy right here is brutus he was one of the first consuls in the roman republic and he&#39;s been surrounded in this case by his bodyguard so the this idea that there&#39;s always two people in executive offices like the consulship that that was called by the romans uh collegiality which is to say each uh console for example would have a colleague as well as the other officers in the roman state with lesser power would also have colleagues meaning another person with the same job who could beat though to their decisions so therefore it looks like rome does in fact have or did in fact have a democratic element with the assemblies looks like it did in fact have a somewhat of a monarchical element in the form of executive officers and then according to polybius as well the roman republic included this aristocratic element meaning you do have a group that is composed of some wealthy older aristocrats who have decision making power it seems in the republic that was of course the senate made up of senators i i mentioned in the last video that senators award that meant old man implying that the members of the senate are all wise and experienced people you can see a 19th century depiction of the senate but the senate as it turns out their official role in the roman republic was to give advice to both the assemblies and the magistrates so in other words the senators could advise the assemblies to vote for certain magistrates or to vote a certain way on laws or the senators might advise the magistrates including the consuls to make certain executive decisions so it&#39;s an advisory body was the senate they were really the the members of the senate formed what has been called the senatorial order in fact that&#39;s the subtitle i chose for the video the senatorial order refers to the aristocratic families from whose members the members of the people in the senate were chosen that was kind of a clumsy way of putting it every number of years or so the senate would in fact choose new individuals to join the senate to join the senatorial order in the senate and typically they would only choose met people who had aristocratic background and so the senatorial order really came to describe the wealth and the power of the families that made up the senate it&#39;s not like our modern senate where every certain number of years all the members have to stand for reelection once you&#39;re in you&#39;re in and as i&#39;ve just pointed out it was an advisory body so polybius therefore it could be said maybe was onto something when he said that rome as a republic included these three different political forms that had been described by aristotle except that when you look at the practical way in which the roman republic was governed it appears that the power of the assemblies and even the magistrates has often been exaggerated in that in actual practice in reality it was the senators who ruled the republic technically speaking the magistrates were elected by the assemblies and laws were also voted on by the assemblies and also technically speaking the executive officers of the roman republic including the consuls were free to make their own decisions however in actual practice it didn&#39;t seem to play out that way in other words when the senators gave advice to other members of the roman republic that advice was taken and followed now why would this be exactly well a lot of the reason for that simply has to do with the fact that the senatorial families were the richest most connected most powerful families in rome and for anyone in the assemblies or the magistracies to anger the senators by rejecting their advice would be you know to run a very serious risk politically financially or otherwise many of the senators actually made clients out of people in the assembly or even the magistrates meaning that many of the senators gave legal protection and political advice to other members of the roman republican state in return for supporting the views of the senate in terms of their decisions and the way they would vote so what this really just means is that the senators clearly had a great deal of clout and influence on the republic more than would be suspected if you just look at literally what the senate was supposed to be doing right literally it just looks like that constitutionally it&#39;s an advisory body which makes it sound as if the senate can just basically give advice say to the consul and the consul can either take the advice or not in practice it didn&#39;t work that way as i&#39;ve been telling you the advice was up until the later period of the republic when there was trouble before that point the advice of the senate was typically followed if you wanted to rise in the ranks by the way in the roman republic as a political leader you would need the support of the senate and i might also point out that when the senate did from time to time choose new members for the ranks they would typically only consider people who had served as magistrates and so one of the avenues that would be needed to become a senator would be to first serve say as a consul so if your ultimate goal is to gain the influence and the prestige of being a senator well that&#39;s not going to happen if as a consul you tell the senators to go jump in a lake when they give you advice to do one thing versus another you can see a depiction i showed this to in the last video but you see it here again depiction of a senator holding the bus of his ancestors you see the the ideal behind the senate just to talk about how the senators could justify the influence they had over the republic the ideal was that they possessed the greatest amount of pietas in the rowan republic like they in other words had not only themselves personally shown themselves to be dutiful to rome above all else but that their families had a history of showing pietas that&#39;s the point of having the bus of these ancestors it&#39;s to say hey remember these guys back when they were alive you may remember all the heroic deeds you see they did all the things they were able to accomplish for the roman republic and now i&#39;m the next in line i&#39;m going to do the same thing this sort of a a sort of clout that the senate has enjoyed not just from their own claims to pietas but they also put in a claim on the patos of their ancestors in terms of increasing their own influence over roman society so it&#39;s kind of hard to compete with that in fact if you wanted to aspire to be selected to join the senate it&#39;s it&#39;s kind of hard to be noticed i guess you would say in that way by the senate if you don&#39;t have a sort of family legacy of pietas and patriotism and it&#39;s going to be hard to have that if you&#39;re not part of the aristocratic order already although it does happen as we will see sometimes that you know regular people can sometimes be chosen to join the ranks of the senatorial order you see the a different image of the same view roughly though that i showed you the outside of the video and i just this is the curia the building where the senate normally met in the days of the republic this is in fact a late building for the republic it replaced earlier buildings on the same site this is how the interior it has been imagined would have looked back in the days of the late republic all things considered the curia um was a relatively modest building compared to the other structures around it actually in this image we&#39;re not really seeing much of it here but if it isn&#39;t clear if you don&#39;t know this this is uh one corner one area of the roman forum and the curia would have looked quite modest next to some of the other structures temples and law courts and so forth that were built in this area of ancient rome so it&#39;s a it&#39;s a relatively modest structure but a sort of modest structure that nicely uh reflected the the pa toss that the senators claimed they they uh possessed meaning the sort of deference to the importance of rome more than anything else right because if they&#39;re just instead stinking rich and they only seem to care about money well that would seem to be the opposite of pietas as i&#39;ve already pointed out for the most part when the senate would choose new members to join their order as say to join the senate they would choose someone who had already served say his consul or served to one of the other executive offices but those individuals typically were not chosen for those offices unless they were already a known person from one of the aristocratic families that were part of this larger senatorial order i keep referring to so um typically the same families get chosen not only by the assemblies to go into the magistracies but then after that it&#39;s people from those same families over and over again who chose chosen to join the senate itself senate usually included about 300 people by the way if you&#39;re wondering at all what the size would have been but having said that there were occasionally times where somebody who did not enjoy an aristocratic background somebody in other words whose family had not um had a history of being in the senate sometimes that kind of individual would break through politically and the most famous individual in this category would have to be cicero he cicero and others like him were called quote unquote new men in the republic meaning that they were people who did not have the aristocratic background and therefore the political status in rome before their own careers cicero managed though to achieve office and then join the senate in great part because of his uh really his brilliancy as a speaker and as a lawyer he became a very important member of the roman senate part of the senatorial order because of his being selected to join the senate and in fact i&#39;ll come back to cicero in a few minutes because he&#39;s important in a few other ways that i will get to so the senate is really not balanced per se into being a democracy of monarchy and aristocracy at the same time it really more than anything is an aristocracy or let&#39;s just say oligarchy really was an oligarchy dominated by the senate with some elements of democratic participation and some elements of executive independence but mainly it was a state dominated by the senate by the senatorial order to put it a little bit more broadly than that well this republican state uh enjoyed as i&#39;ve already appointed a few times quite a bit of success at least internally politically the republic was stable for many centuries but then the republic began to territorially grow in size and that certainly brought some benefits to the roman republic but it ended up creating other problems back roman expansion created such serious problems that it eventually led to civil war and the downfall of the republic itself although not the fall of rome but the downfall of the roman republic has a governmental form that story of the republic&#39;s actual downfall is what we&#39;re going to say for a later video but uh what i did want to do in this video is first say just a few things about roman expansion and then following that say a few things about how that expansion had led to these problems here you can see incidentally on this map the site of rome here just above my cursor and the green areas show the extent of roman expansion by 201 bc and then the orange areas of course show how much further rome expanded its territorial control by the year 100 this is a lot of expansion here in the mediterranean and that expansion had begun really back in the fourth century bce when the romans had not only continued to go to war with their italian neighbors but they began to actually conquer and subject more and more areas of italy to uh i would say their control i say i would say their control because one thing that the romans picked up on or practiced from a relatively early time was this idea that if you conquer people and then give them a stake in the empire it makes it much more likely that they remain loyal to the empire to you and it also makes it more likely that they play a productive role in helping to defend and strengthen that empire so this became a pretty interesting principle that rome used in order to gradually go to war with different people in italy and subject them to roman control but do it in a way but they did it in a way that created roman power in italy that was much more stable than anything that had been seen there before so this could mean this sort of giving people stake in the empire mean a number of things for example uh oftentimes when the romans would conquer a part of italy they would tell the conquered people that we&#39;re going to let you guys govern yourselves but we want to be from now on in control of your foreign policy and the romans would say we we demand that you give us a certain amount of soldiers to serve in our army every year and so in return for military service and submission to roman foreign policy you have these areas in italy that are other than that feeling that they&#39;re still effectively run independently and on top of that they now have the protection that the roman army can afford them in some areas of italy rome went farther than that and they even offered some of the people in the conquer region full roman citizenship but we&#39;ve looked at this already in mythical form right we saw how romans believed in their history that romulus himself had populated the city of rome by calling on people from nearby regions who needed a fresh start to show up and then of course you&#39;ll remember the ridiculous story of the rape of the sabbath women which acquired women for the city of rome according to roman myth but i pointed out that romans took those stories more seriously than perhaps we would today because it seemed to resonate with them because rome did in fact welcome other people to join in this state and so it made sense to them that rome as a city would have had the same beginning in any case as you can see here by the middle of the third century bce italy had become the master of much of italy as it just pointed out rome would offer citizenship sometimes sometimes what would happen is they would offer citizenship as as as a possibility so they would in other words grant a conquer group in italy local independence but then they would tell them that if you prove your loyalty to us over the years we&#39;re eventually going to want to give you citizenship too so that that extension of citizenship to more and more conquered people becomes a major theme of the roman state now i should point out here that the extension of citizenship like this is uneven because it&#39;s not typically extended to all people in a region it&#39;s typically going to be extended to male elites in a concord region eventually gradually it would be extended to um eventually all free men would be made eligible for roman citizenship but that takes centuries that&#39;s much later in the story than where we are right now and we should also remember that there are a large number of slaves in the roman state who of course would never be eligible for citizenship also when romans did extend citizenship it was often a pragmatic thing right we&#39;re giving this to you as a reward for loyalty or we&#39;re doing it as a enticement to loyalty but it was often not a general principle necessarily and i must also say that despite the implication here that the romans were remarkably generous with conquered people and i think to some extent they deserve some of the credit for that reputation at the same time romans certainly do not perfectly live up to that ideal consistently and sometimes they could be quite brutal to their enemies one situation that would especially lead the romans to be cruel is if they conquered a region and then that area rose up in rebellion then the romans could be really brutal still in general this technique uh as we saw in our last video it became a big part of understanding what pietas means in roman civilization again the idea that it&#39;s because we extend citizenship and because we accept the benefits of our civilization to conquer people that this idea of loyalty to rome before everything else is something that could bind everyone in the empire together not just roman people themselves well it was one thing for rome to expand its power across italy itself something even more dramatic occurred with roman expansion in the third century when rome started to get drawn into major conflicts with other powers around the mediterranean most famously here i&#39;m referring to the series of wars that rome fought with carthage in the third century extending into the second century bce carthage was a major mediterranean empire in its own right it was originally based on a colony from people from the eastern uh part of the mediterranean the semitic group of people called the phoenicians had found in carthage&#39;s economy centuries before and now as i&#39;ve explained over time it became a major empire the first punic war by the way the word punic derives from the latin word for phoenician so punig wars means wars with carthage but the first of these punic wars occurred when carthage and rome vied for control over this island of sicily rome won that war and controlled sicily rome eventually got involved in a second war with carthage carthage it turns out having lost sicily decided to make up for that by seizing control of new lands in spain which actually seemed to work for a while until the romans got their own ambition going in spain and were worried about growing carthaginian power regardless and so we got a second major war between carthage and rome called the second punic war that was the big war because in that second punic war very dramatically the leading carthaginian general recognized that in the first war with rome carthage had sort of been at a disadvantage because they didn&#39;t really have a land army that could go toe-to-toe with the romans the carthaginian is a bit more of a naval power in the first punic war but since that time after a defeat in the first war carthage had not only acquired more lands in spain it had built up significantly the size of its army and then it decided if it was going to win this second war it needed to invade italy itself right bring the fight directly to italy so famously this carthaginian general named hannibal marched this army from spain into you see here the alps region of europe across the alps in fact and down in italy it was totally shocking in the romans that a carthaginian army is suddenly appearing in the north right of italy and to make the story even more dramatic hannibal led his army with elephants so they had actually elephants war elephants with them so i mean talk about crazy story that was bound to fascinate right romans and many really generations ever since with the daring nature of the scheme so hannibal leads this big carthaginian army with elephants across the alps and into italy itself and he proceeded to deliver some stinging defeats to the roman army unfortunately for hannibal he didn&#39;t have sort of the siege equipment and really the supplies he needed to actually put the major cities of the roman state to siege in order to win control those places instead he basically just marched around italy um you know harassing armies and people in the countryside but never really able to take a major fortification that would help him win the war and actually eventually eventually hannibal was forced to return to northern africa anyway because the romans realized that if they basically took the fight to africa hannibal would have no choice but to go back there and animal did in fact return to africa and when he did the romans forced this major battle of zama in 202 bce and that was a battle that the romans won bringing an end to the second punic war so some of these details i know of war and expansion are perhaps in and of themselves super important but it&#39;s such a famous part of the story of rome that i can&#39;t help but mention some of these things um you can see here um a later depiction as well the battle of zama you can see the elephants and all that how exotic that would have been here you can see the green line traces the movement of hannibal&#39;s army across the alps and in italy this is the biggest victory hannibal had in italy at kanai but then as you can see he was forced to retreat back to africa meanwhile the romans invaded africa directly and at the battle of zama beat up hannibal&#39;s army and won the war as if that wasn&#39;t enough after this was over even though carthage was totally devastated by the second war it had lost rome provoked a third war because it was just freaked out that carthage might be a threat again in the future and after a relatively easy victory in the third punic war rome utterly destroyed carthage i mean raising the city to the ground putting salt in the earth i mean all of it killing the men enslaving the women and the children it&#39;s absolutely brutal like i mentioned before that rome was not always consistent with its ideal of providing a stake in the empire to conquer people and this is the one of the major examples of how rome departed from that ideal of course rome then went on to convert that area of carthage into a new province for the empire called africa here you see how in the 3rd century bce rome also was drawn into wars in the east particularly in greece and asia minor and here i&#39;ll be a lot briefer but i will point out that the main fault was macedonia which was one of these hellenistic kingdoms that of course had been uh in existence ever since the death of alexander the great or it continued to exist after the death of alexander the great and because the macedonians basically got involved in some areas of southern italy it took the romans off and they went over there and while they beat up a macedonia they eventually decided they might as well pacify the rest of greece and ultimately it took control of parts of asia minor this story i&#39;ll make a lot shorter simply by pointing out that by the time we get to the second century bce it&#39;s not just large parts of spain and the area around carthage that has been taken into the roman empire but yes you can see here at least by 146 on this map in the ensuing decades parts of asia minor as well would be annexed by the roman republic as well so in other words the republic is getting bigger and it does seem that in many ways this is what a state particularly ancient world would want what&#39;s not to like if you&#39;re a roman well it turns out there were two major problems that seemed to rise arise over time as a result of expansion and each of these issues would gradually become a more serious problem for the republic i&#39;m just going to outline those problems here and then we&#39;ll talk more about what they led to in a later video but one problem that occurred was that because it was typical in ancient times to enslave some of the people defeated on the battlefield it and also with some of the prisoners seized in battles it did mean that there was a large number of slaves brought into italy as part of these conquests and sometimes what happened is the victorious generals would just take control for themselves over these slaves and then sell them for their own personal profit when they got back to italy but the slaves many of them were bought up by the wealthiest of landowners in italy and these wealthy landowners included the senatorial order the mem the families who had individuals in the senate that i mentioned before and because they had access to all these slaves it allowed them to acquire more and more land right they didn&#39;t have to worry about working these large estates because they could just buy slaves to do that work for them and it made it harder and harder for average farmers to compete and eventually average farmers were bought out by these wealthy landowners which therefore led to the rise of a group of rural people who were impoverished who lost their land they can just see a mosaic from the roman empire depicting one of these wealthy estates with different slaves and other people working on the estate here but what happened in in the republic by the second century already bce was that you get all these poor people who have lost their land in the countryside because they&#39;ve been forced to sell out at cheap prices to these wealthy landowners and they&#39;re now totally impoverished and they come to city to the city of rome basically as economic refugees and they&#39;re homeless and they&#39;re angry and boy if there&#39;s one thing that&#39;s really scary for elites and and well all ages but particularly pre-modern times it&#39;s a bunch of very angry poor people gathered together in one place such as in a big city you&#39;ve got this huge influx of poor impoverished farmers coming into the city of rome with no future right they&#39;re potentially a revolutionary element it&#39;s dangerous it&#39;s destabilizing and not only was this an issue but additionally to this the backbone of the roman army in times of war were the sort of family farmer type because in time of war the farmers would be eligible and even responsible to serve in the legions but because so many farmers were becoming dispossessed given the development i just mentioned to you it created a situation where there were increasingly small numbers of farmers who were eligible or even available to serve in the legions any longer typically these farmers by the way were expected to bring their own weapons and so forth to the battle so there&#39;s not going to be much of that available amongst the poor who are now concentrated in the slums of the city of rome itself and wouldn&#39;t you know it the members of the senate are not in exactly willing to do something dramatic to solve this problem because they are among the wealthy landowners who are benefiting from buying up all this land so that&#39;s one problem that comes out of expansion is serious land issue develops and it really looks like the senate has a stake in not solving the problem a second issue i wanted to mention before we conclude this video was that when rome did conquer new lands and it created a new province in conquered land such as it did in sicily or in africa where carthage was located the senate decided to govern those places by sending one of their own to serve as a governor there and typically the governor would serve for a few years before they would be replaced by another senator in the same capacity but the senators usually really wanted to be named as governor in the provinces because there was very little oversight provided for these governors and it gave them this amazing opportunity to engage in corrupt behavior and enrich themselves at the province&#39;s expense and corrupt senators who took advantage of their governorships to do this knew that they would not be prosecuted by the senate for having been corrupt as governor because the other members of the senate were in on it too plus the expectation was that many in the senate who would have put corrupt governors on trial when their timeless service came to an end would simply be bribed so what happened is you start to see really outrageous examples of governors who behave corruptly in the conquered provinces and this alongside the land issue i just mentioned further serve to undermined to undermine the moral authority in the clout of the senate itself remember the senate claimed to to possess the most pietas in rome that they had proven they and their family history had shown that they possessed a greater devotion to the city of rome to the civilization of rome than than people outside of senatorial order had done but that that seems something like you could call in the question given the unwillingness of the senate to act about the land issue and now also considering the fact that they&#39;re sending out these senators to be governors who are just behaving completely terribly and then the senate is refusing to hold them responsible for their crimes when they return because they want to have more of the same for themselves too but there was this particularly bad example of senatorial corruption as governor when this guy named varys was appointed to be governor of sicily this island big island here in the south of italy it was so bad that the senator cicero resolved to prosecute fairies which the senate had the right to do theoretically he resolved to prosecute various forced crimes as governor in sicily even though clearly most of the other people in the senate were being bribed to look the other way you see it&#39;s interesting though cicero was quite aware of the decline in respect that the senate enjoyed by the first century bce right because of the problems i&#39;ve been elaborating to you on and he not only did he prepare speeches in which he went into great detail about how extremely bad varies have been as governor we have a copy of one of cicero&#39;s speeches on this you should read it for yourself it is truly remarkable if half of it is even true how terrible various had been to the people of sicily you know basically stealing anything of value uh literally forcing women and the daughters of families to have sex with them i mean is really really ridiculous but cicero argued that if the senate refused to prosecute various for being corrupt then he said think of the message that that sends to the roman republic it sends the message that despite tradition we in fact do not possess the most pietas of all citizens in the state in fact we don&#39;t possess any pietas at all is what it seems to say if we can&#39;t even prosecute a guy as corrupt as senators corrupt as very has clearly been so the idea here is if the senate refuses to deal with the impoverishment of average farmers in the land problem perhaps because its own membership benefits from the status quo and if in fact the senate is not willing to put corrupt peers like varies on trial when they act so badly as governors because they want more the same for themselves when the time comes in because they look forward to the bribes that various was clearly willing to pay to get off then why should people respect the traditional role of the senate anymore right the traditional role was to give advice to other officers and members of the state but why would they continue to carry to follow that advice if it was advice coming from clearly corrupt individuals so based on this cicero turned the trial of varies into something much bigger than just varies this is about saving the reputation of the senate so that our advice is still heated as being important well it turns out that cicero did such a good job that varies didn&#39;t even show back up and murami just went into exile directly because he knew that speech had been so persuasive that he was not going to get away with it but unfortunately for cicero and the senate um its credibility issue was already too badly damaged to fully save it so in the next video that we have related to the republic we&#39;re gonna look a little bit more closely at the uh increasing difficulty the senate had in maintaining its traditional role in the republic and what that would mean for the republic by the time we get to later in the first century bce

with our next topic we are looking as you can see at the roman republic which was the form of government adopted by the roman state traditionally in 509 bc and it remained in fact the government for the roman state for almost five centuries when the roman state was reinvented under a series of emperors but in this particular video we are simply going to be focused on how the republic worked and we&amp;#39;re also after we do that going to look at the success of the roman republic with territorial expansion and we will also see how that territorial expansion brought some new problems for the roman republic to deal with as well in the second video dealing with the roman republic we will then look at the the fact that the problems caused by expansion festered the point of civil war which ultimately ended with the rise of joy caesar and the end of the republic itself although not the end of roman civilization that&amp;#39;s for sure so here you are looking at the building the main structure in which the roman senate typically met in these centuries this of course building was renovated and changed over time it was preserved as it turns out because although it&amp;#39;s in it dates some features of parts of it date back to antiquity it was preserved because it was converted for a time into a church but in any case since the senate which met in the structure is the main focus of the republic i&amp;#39;ve chosen that as our image opening image for this video so uh just to remind you where we left off with this though in our last video when we were looking at early realm you&amp;#39;ll remember that the romans had believed they had replaced their king with a republican form of government in 509 bce republic is a latin term a latin word and what it means is the public matter in other words the idea was that while rome was ruled by kings government had been a private matter of the king of the monarchy but now that there were no kings government was to become a public matter something that a public interest in public participation and the republic then as such began in 509 bc with a new and interesting governmental form that would be stable for many many centuries ultimately encountered problems and in fact we&amp;#39;ll be looking at some of those problems in this particular video before we talk about that i&amp;#39;d like to describe one very famous and from the ancient world as well but an ancient and famous opinion as to why the roman republic was so successful for so many centuries and the argument i&amp;#39;m about to present to you was made by a man named polybius who greatly admired the roman republic polybius believed that the reason why the roman republic was so stable was because it embodied the three different major types of political organization that had been described by the greek philosopher aristotle you may or may not remember that aristotle had looked at all the different constitutions so to speak of the greek city-states back in the 4th century bce and he had sort of categorized them into monarchies aristo aristocracies and democracies in other words some states are ruled by one person that of course would be the monarchy style or the monarchy type some states are ruled only by a few elite people the aristocracy and then there are some states in greece aristotle deduced that clearly are run in a democratic fashion by the people and aristotle though had furthermore argued we talked about this in a previous video but aristotle had argued that over time monarchy devolves into tyranny so it may be in other words at some point you have a monarch who really cares about what he is doing genuinely trying to rule say in his subject&amp;#39;s interest but over time he&amp;#39;ll get somebody who really just cares about themselves and they become selfish they become tyrannical they use their authority but in a somewhat similar way the same process can can happen in an oligarchic state where aristocrats who maybe uh joined together to rule the state at first because they felt that they had the wisdom necessary to guide the state correctly but over time they as well could become corrupt and take advantage of the rest of the state and then you&amp;#39;ve got tyranny in that case as well but democracy too according to aristotle could devolve over time democracy does of course base policy and law on the majority of its citizens of the will the majority of the citizens but it can devolve into mob rule according to aristotle aristotle had actually concluded that democracy was the best of these three forms of government because at least if you have a democracy with a large middle class it can create a lot more stability but polybius then polybius argued that what made the roman republic stable was that it included all three forms of government that aristotle had described and because it included all three forms of government it meant that they were all in balance with each other and preventing the corruption of one element from ruining the state as a whole so this idea became pretty influential um it would be uh of course influential by the 18th century in more modern times on montesquieu and other enlightenment thinkers who of course ultimately considered the idea of government being checked and balanced and if you look at how the republic functioned there certainly does seem to be the three elements identified by polybius for example rome did in fact have several several popular assemblies meaning democratic assemblies that does make it seem as it had a real democratic element there were a few of these assemblies not just one of them but uh there was for example uh an assembly which just included the soldiers in the army but then there was another assembly that included just the general representatives of common people or the latin term for these commoners was the plebes what had happened in the history of the republic was the plebes the common people had become increasingly annoyed angry that they did not benefit from the same laws as did the aristocrats who had formed the republic in the first place the latin uh word for these aristocrats was patrician so there was sort of a this elite group of patricians who had created the republic in the first place but the plebes the regular commoners were feeling shut out and so it it&amp;#39;s sort of a long story going to make very short here but over several centuries of history the plebes gradually became more and more assertive about wanting to see reform and change the republic so that would include them and eventually what it led to was the roman patricians agreeing to create a new democratic assembly to represent the plebes and so by the time we get to the second century for example which is where a lot of the story is we&amp;#39;re going to be focused on in this video and in the next one but by the time you get to the second century uh one of the assemblies that really does seem to be important in roman republican politics is the assembly of the plebes and not only did common people in this way have their own assembly but there was also um an individual they elected a leader so to speak they elected who could serve as one of the executive officers governing the republic here by the way you&amp;#39;re looking at a modern illustration of the plebes who are were angry because of the way which they were being taken advantage of by the patricians in fact i&amp;#39;m going to skip over the details of the story entirely in the interest of time here but suffice it to say this is a scene of the plebes working together to demand their own fair share uh in the state in terms of the benefit that they should receive from roman laws actually um one thing you could say in praise of the roman republic at least the patricians in their own republic is they were over a long period of time able to make compromises with the plebes such that it did not lead to the kind of social revolution that it could have led to by the time we get to the last centuries of the republic in fact the plebes were eligible to serve in the same political offices as the matricians as the aristocrats um the the the plebes had uh some legal protections and in fact some of the plebes who would do well for themselves could even become part of the aristocracy in fact so that distinction between plebes and patricians doesn&amp;#39;t really matter as much for most of what we&amp;#39;re going to be looking at in this story but it is an interesting example of how the republic evolved in order to solve problems without internal civil insurrection any case it is true to get back to the main point here that the roman republic had democratic assemblies the assembly the plebes being the most important of them that&amp;#39;s a democratic element of government but it was also true that the roman republic included what polybius referred to as an aristocratic excuse me as a monarchical is what i meant to say they also had the element of a monarchy meaning that there are executive officers who govern the roman republic you know people who have the right to make executive decisions such as people who make decisions about war and peace people who are in charge of the army um you know people who are in charge of taxes all sorts of things like this so these executive officials we would in modern america and parlance refer to them as being part of the executive branch you see but these magistrates as they were known had in in some ways monarchical like power but of course it was not unlimited power and one of the fascinating ways in which the roman republic attempted to to check the power of their magistrates so that their power would not be abused you see was that first of all roman magistrates were typically elected every year elections every year and and these magistrates were typically elected by the assemblies i mentioned a minute ago and secondly though every office in the roman republican government that you could be elected to be a leader in every office had two people so you&amp;#39;re not going to have just one official in the roman republic you&amp;#39;re going to have two so for example the highest executive office or magistracy in the roman republic was the consulship but there was never one console during the republic there were always two and the idea was that each of the consoles could veto the decision of the other console the consoles were basically commanders in chief it&amp;#39;s kind of like the presidents of the roman republic but there were two of them it&amp;#39;s sort of an interesting arrangement um and as i just mentioned each council could veto the decisions of the other they were not the executive leaders of the republic but they also had the right to command the army in times of war you see on the backside of a roman coin um this guy right here is brutus he was one of the first consuls in the roman republic and he&amp;#39;s been surrounded in this case by his bodyguard so the this idea that there&amp;#39;s always two people in executive offices like the consulship that that was called by the romans uh collegiality which is to say each uh console for example would have a colleague as well as the other officers in the roman state with lesser power would also have colleagues meaning another person with the same job who could beat though to their decisions so therefore it looks like rome does in fact have or did in fact have a democratic element with the assemblies looks like it did in fact have a somewhat of a monarchical element in the form of executive officers and then according to polybius as well the roman republic included this aristocratic element meaning you do have a group that is composed of some wealthy older aristocrats who have decision making power it seems in the republic that was of course the senate made up of senators i i mentioned in the last video that senators award that meant old man implying that the members of the senate are all wise and experienced people you can see a 19th century depiction of the senate but the senate as it turns out their official role in the roman republic was to give advice to both the assemblies and the magistrates so in other words the senators could advise the assemblies to vote for certain magistrates or to vote a certain way on laws or the senators might advise the magistrates including the consuls to make certain executive decisions so it&amp;#39;s an advisory body was the senate they were really the the members of the senate formed what has been called the senatorial order in fact that&amp;#39;s the subtitle i chose for the video the senatorial order refers to the aristocratic families from whose members the members of the people in the senate were chosen that was kind of a clumsy way of putting it every number of years or so the senate would in fact choose new individuals to join the senate to join the senatorial order in the senate and typically they would only choose met people who had aristocratic background and so the senatorial order really came to describe the wealth and the power of the families that made up the senate it&amp;#39;s not like our modern senate where every certain number of years all the members have to stand for reelection once you&amp;#39;re in you&amp;#39;re in and as i&amp;#39;ve just pointed out it was an advisory body so polybius therefore it could be said maybe was onto something when he said that rome as a republic included these three different political forms that had been described by aristotle except that when you look at the practical way in which the roman republic was governed it appears that the power of the assemblies and even the magistrates has often been exaggerated in that in actual practice in reality it was the senators who ruled the republic technically speaking the magistrates were elected by the assemblies and laws were also voted on by the assemblies and also technically speaking the executive officers of the roman republic including the consuls were free to make their own decisions however in actual practice it didn&amp;#39;t seem to play out that way in other words when the senators gave advice to other members of the roman republic that advice was taken and followed now why would this be exactly well a lot of the reason for that simply has to do with the fact that the senatorial families were the richest most connected most powerful families in rome and for anyone in the assemblies or the magistracies to anger the senators by rejecting their advice would be you know to run a very serious risk politically financially or otherwise many of the senators actually made clients out of people in the assembly or even the magistrates meaning that many of the senators gave legal protection and political advice to other members of the roman republican state in return for supporting the views of the senate in terms of their decisions and the way they would vote so what this really just means is that the senators clearly had a great deal of clout and influence on the republic more than would be suspected if you just look at literally what the senate was supposed to be doing right literally it just looks like that constitutionally it&amp;#39;s an advisory body which makes it sound as if the senate can just basically give advice say to the consul and the consul can either take the advice or not in practice it didn&amp;#39;t work that way as i&amp;#39;ve been telling you the advice was up until the later period of the republic when there was trouble before that point the advice of the senate was typically followed if you wanted to rise in the ranks by the way in the roman republic as a political leader you would need the support of the senate and i might also point out that when the senate did from time to time choose new members for the ranks they would typically only consider people who had served as magistrates and so one of the avenues that would be needed to become a senator would be to first serve say as a consul so if your ultimate goal is to gain the influence and the prestige of being a senator well that&amp;#39;s not going to happen if as a consul you tell the senators to go jump in a lake when they give you advice to do one thing versus another you can see a depiction i showed this to in the last video but you see it here again depiction of a senator holding the bus of his ancestors you see the the ideal behind the senate just to talk about how the senators could justify the influence they had over the republic the ideal was that they possessed the greatest amount of pietas in the rowan republic like they in other words had not only themselves personally shown themselves to be dutiful to rome above all else but that their families had a history of showing pietas that&amp;#39;s the point of having the bus of these ancestors it&amp;#39;s to say hey remember these guys back when they were alive you may remember all the heroic deeds you see they did all the things they were able to accomplish for the roman republic and now i&amp;#39;m the next in line i&amp;#39;m going to do the same thing this sort of a a sort of clout that the senate has enjoyed not just from their own claims to pietas but they also put in a claim on the patos of their ancestors in terms of increasing their own influence over roman society so it&amp;#39;s kind of hard to compete with that in fact if you wanted to aspire to be selected to join the senate it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s kind of hard to be noticed i guess you would say in that way by the senate if you don&amp;#39;t have a sort of family legacy of pietas and patriotism and it&amp;#39;s going to be hard to have that if you&amp;#39;re not part of the aristocratic order already although it does happen as we will see sometimes that you know regular people can sometimes be chosen to join the ranks of the senatorial order you see the a different image of the same view roughly though that i showed you the outside of the video and i just this is the curia the building where the senate normally met in the days of the republic this is in fact a late building for the republic it replaced earlier buildings on the same site this is how the interior it has been imagined would have looked back in the days of the late republic all things considered the curia um was a relatively modest building compared to the other structures around it actually in this image we&amp;#39;re not really seeing much of it here but if it isn&amp;#39;t clear if you don&amp;#39;t know this this is uh one corner one area of the roman forum and the curia would have looked quite modest next to some of the other structures temples and law courts and so forth that were built in this area of ancient rome so it&amp;#39;s a it&amp;#39;s a relatively modest structure but a sort of modest structure that nicely uh reflected the the pa toss that the senators claimed they they uh possessed meaning the sort of deference to the importance of rome more than anything else right because if they&amp;#39;re just instead stinking rich and they only seem to care about money well that would seem to be the opposite of pietas as i&amp;#39;ve already pointed out for the most part when the senate would choose new members to join their order as say to join the senate they would choose someone who had already served say his consul or served to one of the other executive offices but those individuals typically were not chosen for those offices unless they were already a known person from one of the aristocratic families that were part of this larger senatorial order i keep referring to so um typically the same families get chosen not only by the assemblies to go into the magistracies but then after that it&amp;#39;s people from those same families over and over again who chose chosen to join the senate itself senate usually included about 300 people by the way if you&amp;#39;re wondering at all what the size would have been but having said that there were occasionally times where somebody who did not enjoy an aristocratic background somebody in other words whose family had not um had a history of being in the senate sometimes that kind of individual would break through politically and the most famous individual in this category would have to be cicero he cicero and others like him were called quote unquote new men in the republic meaning that they were people who did not have the aristocratic background and therefore the political status in rome before their own careers cicero managed though to achieve office and then join the senate in great part because of his uh really his brilliancy as a speaker and as a lawyer he became a very important member of the roman senate part of the senatorial order because of his being selected to join the senate and in fact i&amp;#39;ll come back to cicero in a few minutes because he&amp;#39;s important in a few other ways that i will get to so the senate is really not balanced per se into being a democracy of monarchy and aristocracy at the same time it really more than anything is an aristocracy or let&amp;#39;s just say oligarchy really was an oligarchy dominated by the senate with some elements of democratic participation and some elements of executive independence but mainly it was a state dominated by the senate by the senatorial order to put it a little bit more broadly than that well this republican state uh enjoyed as i&amp;#39;ve already appointed a few times quite a bit of success at least internally politically the republic was stable for many centuries but then the republic began to territorially grow in size and that certainly brought some benefits to the roman republic but it ended up creating other problems back roman expansion created such serious problems that it eventually led to civil war and the downfall of the republic itself although not the fall of rome but the downfall of the roman republic has a governmental form that story of the republic&amp;#39;s actual downfall is what we&amp;#39;re going to say for a later video but uh what i did want to do in this video is first say just a few things about roman expansion and then following that say a few things about how that expansion had led to these problems here you can see incidentally on this map the site of rome here just above my cursor and the green areas show the extent of roman expansion by 201 bc and then the orange areas of course show how much further rome expanded its territorial control by the year 100 this is a lot of expansion here in the mediterranean and that expansion had begun really back in the fourth century bce when the romans had not only continued to go to war with their italian neighbors but they began to actually conquer and subject more and more areas of italy to uh i would say their control i say i would say their control because one thing that the romans picked up on or practiced from a relatively early time was this idea that if you conquer people and then give them a stake in the empire it makes it much more likely that they remain loyal to the empire to you and it also makes it more likely that they play a productive role in helping to defend and strengthen that empire so this became a pretty interesting principle that rome used in order to gradually go to war with different people in italy and subject them to roman control but do it in a way but they did it in a way that created roman power in italy that was much more stable than anything that had been seen there before so this could mean this sort of giving people stake in the empire mean a number of things for example uh oftentimes when the romans would conquer a part of italy they would tell the conquered people that we&amp;#39;re going to let you guys govern yourselves but we want to be from now on in control of your foreign policy and the romans would say we we demand that you give us a certain amount of soldiers to serve in our army every year and so in return for military service and submission to roman foreign policy you have these areas in italy that are other than that feeling that they&amp;#39;re still effectively run independently and on top of that they now have the protection that the roman army can afford them in some areas of italy rome went farther than that and they even offered some of the people in the conquer region full roman citizenship but we&amp;#39;ve looked at this already in mythical form right we saw how romans believed in their history that romulus himself had populated the city of rome by calling on people from nearby regions who needed a fresh start to show up and then of course you&amp;#39;ll remember the ridiculous story of the rape of the sabbath women which acquired women for the city of rome according to roman myth but i pointed out that romans took those stories more seriously than perhaps we would today because it seemed to resonate with them because rome did in fact welcome other people to join in this state and so it made sense to them that rome as a city would have had the same beginning in any case as you can see here by the middle of the third century bce italy had become the master of much of italy as it just pointed out rome would offer citizenship sometimes sometimes what would happen is they would offer citizenship as as as a possibility so they would in other words grant a conquer group in italy local independence but then they would tell them that if you prove your loyalty to us over the years we&amp;#39;re eventually going to want to give you citizenship too so that that extension of citizenship to more and more conquered people becomes a major theme of the roman state now i should point out here that the extension of citizenship like this is uneven because it&amp;#39;s not typically extended to all people in a region it&amp;#39;s typically going to be extended to male elites in a concord region eventually gradually it would be extended to um eventually all free men would be made eligible for roman citizenship but that takes centuries that&amp;#39;s much later in the story than where we are right now and we should also remember that there are a large number of slaves in the roman state who of course would never be eligible for citizenship also when romans did extend citizenship it was often a pragmatic thing right we&amp;#39;re giving this to you as a reward for loyalty or we&amp;#39;re doing it as a enticement to loyalty but it was often not a general principle necessarily and i must also say that despite the implication here that the romans were remarkably generous with conquered people and i think to some extent they deserve some of the credit for that reputation at the same time romans certainly do not perfectly live up to that ideal consistently and sometimes they could be quite brutal to their enemies one situation that would especially lead the romans to be cruel is if they conquered a region and then that area rose up in rebellion then the romans could be really brutal still in general this technique uh as we saw in our last video it became a big part of understanding what pietas means in roman civilization again the idea that it&amp;#39;s because we extend citizenship and because we accept the benefits of our civilization to conquer people that this idea of loyalty to rome before everything else is something that could bind everyone in the empire together not just roman people themselves well it was one thing for rome to expand its power across italy itself something even more dramatic occurred with roman expansion in the third century when rome started to get drawn into major conflicts with other powers around the mediterranean most famously here i&amp;#39;m referring to the series of wars that rome fought with carthage in the third century extending into the second century bce carthage was a major mediterranean empire in its own right it was originally based on a colony from people from the eastern uh part of the mediterranean the semitic group of people called the phoenicians had found in carthage&amp;#39;s economy centuries before and now as i&amp;#39;ve explained over time it became a major empire the first punic war by the way the word punic derives from the latin word for phoenician so punig wars means wars with carthage but the first of these punic wars occurred when carthage and rome vied for control over this island of sicily rome won that war and controlled sicily rome eventually got involved in a second war with carthage carthage it turns out having lost sicily decided to make up for that by seizing control of new lands in spain which actually seemed to work for a while until the romans got their own ambition going in spain and were worried about growing carthaginian power regardless and so we got a second major war between carthage and rome called the second punic war that was the big war because in that second punic war very dramatically the leading carthaginian general recognized that in the first war with rome carthage had sort of been at a disadvantage because they didn&amp;#39;t really have a land army that could go toe-to-toe with the romans the carthaginian is a bit more of a naval power in the first punic war but since that time after a defeat in the first war carthage had not only acquired more lands in spain it had built up significantly the size of its army and then it decided if it was going to win this second war it needed to invade italy itself right bring the fight directly to italy so famously this carthaginian general named hannibal marched this army from spain into you see here the alps region of europe across the alps in fact and down in italy it was totally shocking in the romans that a carthaginian army is suddenly appearing in the north right of italy and to make the story even more dramatic hannibal led his army with elephants so they had actually elephants war elephants with them so i mean talk about crazy story that was bound to fascinate right romans and many really generations ever since with the daring nature of the scheme so hannibal leads this big carthaginian army with elephants across the alps and into italy itself and he proceeded to deliver some stinging defeats to the roman army unfortunately for hannibal he didn&amp;#39;t have sort of the siege equipment and really the supplies he needed to actually put the major cities of the roman state to siege in order to win control those places instead he basically just marched around italy um you know harassing armies and people in the countryside but never really able to take a major fortification that would help him win the war and actually eventually eventually hannibal was forced to return to northern africa anyway because the romans realized that if they basically took the fight to africa hannibal would have no choice but to go back there and animal did in fact return to africa and when he did the romans forced this major battle of zama in 202 bce and that was a battle that the romans won bringing an end to the second punic war so some of these details i know of war and expansion are perhaps in and of themselves super important but it&amp;#39;s such a famous part of the story of rome that i can&amp;#39;t help but mention some of these things um you can see here um a later depiction as well the battle of zama you can see the elephants and all that how exotic that would have been here you can see the green line traces the movement of hannibal&amp;#39;s army across the alps and in italy this is the biggest victory hannibal had in italy at kanai but then as you can see he was forced to retreat back to africa meanwhile the romans invaded africa directly and at the battle of zama beat up hannibal&amp;#39;s army and won the war as if that wasn&amp;#39;t enough after this was over even though carthage was totally devastated by the second war it had lost rome provoked a third war because it was just freaked out that carthage might be a threat again in the future and after a relatively easy victory in the third punic war rome utterly destroyed carthage i mean raising the city to the ground putting salt in the earth i mean all of it killing the men enslaving the women and the children it&amp;#39;s absolutely brutal like i mentioned before that rome was not always consistent with its ideal of providing a stake in the empire to conquer people and this is the one of the major examples of how rome departed from that ideal of course rome then went on to convert that area of carthage into a new province for the empire called africa here you see how in the 3rd century bce rome also was drawn into wars in the east particularly in greece and asia minor and here i&amp;#39;ll be a lot briefer but i will point out that the main fault was macedonia which was one of these hellenistic kingdoms that of course had been uh in existence ever since the death of alexander the great or it continued to exist after the death of alexander the great and because the macedonians basically got involved in some areas of southern italy it took the romans off and they went over there and while they beat up a macedonia they eventually decided they might as well pacify the rest of greece and ultimately it took control of parts of asia minor this story i&amp;#39;ll make a lot shorter simply by pointing out that by the time we get to the second century bce it&amp;#39;s not just large parts of spain and the area around carthage that has been taken into the roman empire but yes you can see here at least by 146 on this map in the ensuing decades parts of asia minor as well would be annexed by the roman republic as well so in other words the republic is getting bigger and it does seem that in many ways this is what a state particularly ancient world would want what&amp;#39;s not to like if you&amp;#39;re a roman well it turns out there were two major problems that seemed to rise arise over time as a result of expansion and each of these issues would gradually become a more serious problem for the republic i&amp;#39;m just going to outline those problems here and then we&amp;#39;ll talk more about what they led to in a later video but one problem that occurred was that because it was typical in ancient times to enslave some of the people defeated on the battlefield it and also with some of the prisoners seized in battles it did mean that there was a large number of slaves brought into italy as part of these conquests and sometimes what happened is the victorious generals would just take control for themselves over these slaves and then sell them for their own personal profit when they got back to italy but the slaves many of them were bought up by the wealthiest of landowners in italy and these wealthy landowners included the senatorial order the mem the families who had individuals in the senate that i mentioned before and because they had access to all these slaves it allowed them to acquire more and more land right they didn&amp;#39;t have to worry about working these large estates because they could just buy slaves to do that work for them and it made it harder and harder for average farmers to compete and eventually average farmers were bought out by these wealthy landowners which therefore led to the rise of a group of rural people who were impoverished who lost their land they can just see a mosaic from the roman empire depicting one of these wealthy estates with different slaves and other people working on the estate here but what happened in in the republic by the second century already bce was that you get all these poor people who have lost their land in the countryside because they&amp;#39;ve been forced to sell out at cheap prices to these wealthy landowners and they&amp;#39;re now totally impoverished and they come to city to the city of rome basically as economic refugees and they&amp;#39;re homeless and they&amp;#39;re angry and boy if there&amp;#39;s one thing that&amp;#39;s really scary for elites and and well all ages but particularly pre-modern times it&amp;#39;s a bunch of very angry poor people gathered together in one place such as in a big city you&amp;#39;ve got this huge influx of poor impoverished farmers coming into the city of rome with no future right they&amp;#39;re potentially a revolutionary element it&amp;#39;s dangerous it&amp;#39;s destabilizing and not only was this an issue but additionally to this the backbone of the roman army in times of war were the sort of family farmer type because in time of war the farmers would be eligible and even responsible to serve in the legions but because so many farmers were becoming dispossessed given the development i just mentioned to you it created a situation where there were increasingly small numbers of farmers who were eligible or even available to serve in the legions any longer typically these farmers by the way were expected to bring their own weapons and so forth to the battle so there&amp;#39;s not going to be much of that available amongst the poor who are now concentrated in the slums of the city of rome itself and wouldn&amp;#39;t you know it the members of the senate are not in exactly willing to do something dramatic to solve this problem because they are among the wealthy landowners who are benefiting from buying up all this land so that&amp;#39;s one problem that comes out of expansion is serious land issue develops and it really looks like the senate has a stake in not solving the problem a second issue i wanted to mention before we conclude this video was that when rome did conquer new lands and it created a new province in conquered land such as it did in sicily or in africa where carthage was located the senate decided to govern those places by sending one of their own to serve as a governor there and typically the governor would serve for a few years before they would be replaced by another senator in the same capacity but the senators usually really wanted to be named as governor in the provinces because there was very little oversight provided for these governors and it gave them this amazing opportunity to engage in corrupt behavior and enrich themselves at the province&amp;#39;s expense and corrupt senators who took advantage of their governorships to do this knew that they would not be prosecuted by the senate for having been corrupt as governor because the other members of the senate were in on it too plus the expectation was that many in the senate who would have put corrupt governors on trial when their timeless service came to an end would simply be bribed so what happened is you start to see really outrageous examples of governors who behave corruptly in the conquered provinces and this alongside the land issue i just mentioned further serve to undermined to undermine the moral authority in the clout of the senate itself remember the senate claimed to to possess the most pietas in rome that they had proven they and their family history had shown that they possessed a greater devotion to the city of rome to the civilization of rome than than people outside of senatorial order had done but that that seems something like you could call in the question given the unwillingness of the senate to act about the land issue and now also considering the fact that they&amp;#39;re sending out these senators to be governors who are just behaving completely terribly and then the senate is refusing to hold them responsible for their crimes when they return because they want to have more of the same for themselves too but there was this particularly bad example of senatorial corruption as governor when this guy named varys was appointed to be governor of sicily this island big island here in the south of italy it was so bad that the senator cicero resolved to prosecute fairies which the senate had the right to do theoretically he resolved to prosecute various forced crimes as governor in sicily even though clearly most of the other people in the senate were being bribed to look the other way you see it&amp;#39;s interesting though cicero was quite aware of the decline in respect that the senate enjoyed by the first century bce right because of the problems i&amp;#39;ve been elaborating to you on and he not only did he prepare speeches in which he went into great detail about how extremely bad varies have been as governor we have a copy of one of cicero&amp;#39;s speeches on this you should read it for yourself it is truly remarkable if half of it is even true how terrible various had been to the people of sicily you know basically stealing anything of value uh literally forcing women and the daughters of families to have sex with them i mean is really really ridiculous but cicero argued that if the senate refused to prosecute various for being corrupt then he said think of the message that that sends to the roman republic it sends the message that despite tradition we in fact do not possess the most pietas of all citizens in the state in fact we don&amp;#39;t possess any pietas at all is what it seems to say if we can&amp;#39;t even prosecute a guy as corrupt as senators corrupt as very has clearly been so the idea here is if the senate refuses to deal with the impoverishment of average farmers in the land problem perhaps because its own membership benefits from the status quo and if in fact the senate is not willing to put corrupt peers like varies on trial when they act so badly as governors because they want more the same for themselves when the time comes in because they look forward to the bribes that various was clearly willing to pay to get off then why should people respect the traditional role of the senate anymore right the traditional role was to give advice to other officers and members of the state but why would they continue to carry to follow that advice if it was advice coming from clearly corrupt individuals so based on this cicero turned the trial of varies into something much bigger than just varies this is about saving the reputation of the senate so that our advice is still heated as being important well it turns out that cicero did such a good job that varies didn&amp;#39;t even show back up and murami just went into exile directly because he knew that speech had been so persuasive that he was not going to get away with it but unfortunately for cicero and the senate um its credibility issue was already too badly damaged to fully save it so in the next video that we have related to the republic we&amp;#39;re gonna look a little bit more closely at the uh increasing difficulty the senate had in maintaining its traditional role in the republic and what that would mean for the republic by the time we get to later in the first century bce

Transcript for:The Roman Republic: Structure, Expansion, and Issues

Transcript for:
The Roman Republic: Structure, Expansion, and Issues