hi there students to focus on ancient rome uh who becomes sort of uh the most dominant superpower uh in all of the ancient period uh culturally politically militarily definitely most especially economically um rome is sort of the the superpower of ancient times um it's more or less impossible to overstate the importance and influence of roman society for the subsequent history of the world and as we will see in the second half of our class we will be forever dealing with rome and its legacy and sort of what rome means and so that's why it's appropriate that we are giving rome four full lectures um conveniently for us roman history can be more or less divided into two periods so there's the period of the roman republic which is the first 500 years or so of roman history and then there's the period of the roman empire which is the second 500 years or so of roman history typically when we think of rome in the us we typically think of the empire period it's the empire when christianity is invented it's the empire when the colosseum is built but the republic is just as important so here in lecture 13 we're going to focus on sort of the early history of the roman republic which is the period of roman expansion and territory and power um sorry about sorry there for the background noise um i'm back um so yeah we'll focus on the sort of the republic the creation of the republic the um expansion the territorial expansion of rome uh in this lecture and then in lecture 14 we'll talk about sort of the crisis that brings the republic down because basically what's going to happen is the republic is going to crash and burn in a very long civil war and then the end of the civil war what will emerge is the empire so that will that civil war and the emergence of the empire that's what we'll discuss in lecture 14. all right with that out of the way let's dive right in um let's talk first just about ancient italy or sort of pre-roman italy you know uh sort of uh bronze age italy if you will so in the neolithic and bronze ages there were several small warring societies throughout italy we don't know very much about most of these right we've talked already in class about the issues with uh the history of the paleolithic and neolithic eras and the bronze age right there's no writing in italy at this time so all we have are archaeological remains and so our knowledge of these peoples is pretty scant and random right we know that they farmed wheat we know that they had small city-states we know that they were constantly fighting one another um and you know in a lot of ways the neolithic and bronze age italy looks a lot like neolithic and bronze age anywhere else right and we've talked through the neolithic bronze ages pretty thoroughly so hopefully you have a pretty good understanding of what that might have looked like um in the iron age italy came to be dominated by people who at the time were called the villanova people and the villanova people would later evolve into a much more advanced society that we call the etruscans we'll talk about the etruscans here in a couple slides but the villanova people um again they were iron age and they're differentiated by their specific style of pottery right this is why archaeologists typically refer to societies as by their pottery um something we'll talk about more after midterm now we'll talk about the americas um and so the villanova people are called the villanova people until they develop writing once they develop writing we begin to call them the etruscans but they're the same people around 700 bce right as the greek dark ages are ending greek settlers began to arrive to italy particularly the southern part of italy um and uh and especially sicily the uh island off the southern coast of italy and we've talked about these greek settlers right the greeks are great explorers great colonizers and these colonies then were set up to provide additional food to the greek city-states because the greek city-states couldn't feed themselves without more land collectively the greeks referred to this collection of colonies as magna gracia um and magna gracias it's very culturally important to the history of italy in particular to the history of rome magna gracia of course has hellenic culture their language is greek and this hellenic culture and greek language come to be very prominent influences in subsequent italian societies again like the etruscans and the romans now let's get to the founding of rome there are two stories for the founding of rome one is very detailed and completely legendary mythological in other words it's more or less made up the other one is much more factually based but we don't have many details uh and it's probably close to accurate i'm going to give you both versions starting of course with the legend right because the legend is more fun so according to legend the city of rome was founded in 753 bce along the tiber river by a man named romulus romulus supposedly was the son of a god the god mars who be the roman god of war romulus had a tron brother called remus and romulus and remus were kicked out of their village as children because the king felt threatened by them because their father was a god you can imagine if you're uh you know an iron age king you wouldn't want the sons of a god in your in your city right because uh their claim to the throne is probably better than yours because you're merely the son of a king not the son of a god so romulus and remus were kicked out of the city as babies uh they were left in a cave right um by their mother who was supposed to kill them but she didn't have the heart to so she left them in the cave a she-wolf would find them and raise them so supposedly the sons of the god mars romulus remus were raised by the she-wolf in a cave once they reached adulthood they went back to their city took it over um decided uh to give the city back to the king right um and left uh to find to found their own city and they came to a spot on the tiber river where there were seven beautiful hills uh and the two brothers argued about which hill would be the best hill on which to found the city the argument eventually became violent romulus would kill his brother remus and found the city on the hill of his choice in that city as you can tell from the name romulus right it's named after him that city would come to be called rome rome of course very famously in the ancient world was considered the city of seven hills um per the same legend rome also would have seven subsequent kings um beginning with romulus beginning with romulus as the first of the seven legendary kings the seventh and final of these kings was a guy named lucius tarquinius superbus um which i'm surely mispronouncing because uh i don't speak latin uh i him not the pope um also romulus supposedly founded um sort of a second political body called the senate uh the senate had very little authority over the king but it did give the various nobles uh who lived in the city of rome a political role in society right so the nobility would you know the male nobles would become senators uh and supposedly advise the king but again the king didn't have to listen to the senate um this legendary period and i want to stress this is legendary there is very little historical record or you know evidence to back up any of this this is just the story that rome tells about itself but this legendary period of kings is called the regal period of roman history still in the same legendary account um the last king the seventh king lucius tarkinis superbus had a son his this man the son's name was sextus tarkinius uh and sexist tarquinius was kind of a buffoon um his father had gone off to fight a war and left sextus in charge while you know his father was away um while this was happening sexist starkinius raped a woman a noble woman named lucretia lucretia was the daughter of a senator and also the wife of a senator right she's a very important woman with very influential family connections she revealed that she was raped by sexist tarquinius and then she committed suicide this then sparked a revolution among the nobles in the senate the senate then overthrew the king and made rome um ruled by the senate right rome becomes a democracy ruled by the people right just the nobles though you know not not most people are it's not a full democracy but they don't have a king the king is gone and the senate governs rome this happened in the year 509 bce and this created the roman republic and the roman republic would last for almost exactly 500 years now this is all legendary history again probably didn't happen surely some of the details are at least partially true and it is absolutely true that the roman republic was created in the year 509 bce right so what we do know is there was a city called rome and in 509 bce it switched to a republican form of government where the senate ran the city-state right a thing of rome here as a city-state now let's look at the historical record and see where our legend pairs up with the actual historical account to do this we need to focus on the etruscans uh the etruscans have their own sort of uh political state right their own country right and within italy and that country is called a trio so let's look at achuria and the atricians so the etruscans would become the dominant society uh in the italian peninsula in the iron age right particularly the northern part of the italian peninsula because remember the southern part is greek colonies right magna gracia so we're really talking about sort of the northern part of the italian peninsula and the etruscans dominate this from 900 to 500 bce you may notice this is the same time period as the regal period of roman history basically uh rome is an etruscan city they probably didn't found the city right the the city was probably founded uh by romans and here it's a really difficult distinction to make because we're basically talking about different ethnicities people who speak different languages the etruscans don't speak latin as their native language they speak attrition right uh and the romans speak latin as their native language so the city of rome was probably founded by latin-speaking non-etruscans who lived in italy but shortly after the city was created it would have been conquered or taken over by the atreshkins so really this legendary regal period of roman history was the period where the city was you know dominated by political outsiders right it was a time the city was conquered by etruscans so in other words etruscans not latins or romans who are the early leaders both of the city of rome and again of italy and when i say italy again i'm talking mostly the northern half of italy so in other words then when the romans create the republic in 509 bce this is sort of like a declaration of independence from etruscan rule or this is the latins asserting their dominance over their own city right the the city of rome they kicked the etruscans out and said this is our city um and so that's really the more historically accurate way to think about the creation of rome and particularly the founding of the republic as you might guess this then leads to the romans and the etruscans being quite uh formidable enemies to one another uh they would fight each other off and on for the next couple of centuries and also would be fighting other italian city-states other european tribes and so on and we'll talk about that on the next slide but they also fought each other and uh the romans would finally fully defeat achuria in 265 or 264 bce depending on which roman historian you believe so this plays into um another sort of fundamental truth of the early republican period of rome namely that rome started as a very minor power right so if you look at the map here the very darkest red this is the territory that rome controlled when the republic was founded basically just the tiber river basin right sort of the roman heartland um it took another 150 years just to expand to this you know less dark red right and then over the next 150 years they would expand to control the entire italian peninsula it was a an incredible period of roman expansion where they're fighting against other italian city-states both um trash can speak in greek speaking and latin speaking city-states so in other words then the republic is almost always at war with someone right in the italian peninsula uh for the first couple hundred years uh by 276 bce or so they control all of italy not counting sicily we'll talk about sicily in a minute um so by 276 they control all of this right all of the the italian peninsula the last war they won was called the pyrrhic war um against hellenic greek mercenaries from greece it's called the pyrrhic war because the greek general leading the mercenary forces was a guy named pirus so he basically sails over from sparta he lands down here and begins fighting the romans uh piers actually won every battle but lost the war because uh the romans would you know so basically pierce would win the battle meaning he got to control the ground after the battle was won but his losses in the battle were very large right he's losing a lot of troops and he basically ran out of troops and then had to surrender this is where we get the idea in english we still have this word called a pyrrhic victory right it's a victory that's so damaging for the victor it would probably have been better had they lost right sparta in the peloponnesian war against athens that's a pyrrhic victory right sparta defeated the athenians but they basically destroyed themselves to do so i like to liken this to a sports analogy right most of you you know you probably are you know know a little bit about soccer maybe right lionel messi is the best soccer player in the world he plays for barcelona let's say barcelona is playing real madrid this weekend they're not but let's just pretend they are uh you know it's a big match let's say barcelona wins the match but messi breaks his leg while playing it's a pyrrhic victory for barcelona right because they won but they damaged themselves so extensively and winning that they probably wish they hadn't played at all that's basically what happened in the pyrrhic worgen pierce wins every battle but loses the war because all of his victories were as they now call them purik victories uh and after this pyrrhic war again the romans control the entirety of the italian peninsula there will be new foes who emerge from rome after they control the peninsula because again the republic is almost always at war with someone so if it's not their fellow italians right they have to fight other people so one of these other enemies who will emerge for the romans are a group called the gauls uh and the gauls are tribes who live in what we today call france um and uh there were several tribes of gauls and they would invade italy off and on for centuries uh beginning in 390 bce and in fact uh the gauls even defeated the romans and took the city of rome in 387 they sacked the city meaning they sort of uh were able to capture the city and they carried away the wealth of the city um we'll talk about this more in the next lecture lecture 14 a decisive war between the gauls and the romans wouldn't happen until about 50 bce when this guy called julius caesar uh will eventually defeat the gauls so just to set that up for the next lecture it's probably wise now to sort of look at the way roman society worked in terms of politics and government and so on because so far you know they're just this dominant society in italy but italy is pretty minor in the world stage so roman still is pretty minor but the groundwork is being laid for roman domination which will come later the roman republic is one of the first societies in the history of the world that had a political legal constitution that was used as the basis for political rule um with this constitution uh what the romans did was they sort of created uh again so it's a republic and so the dominant political body in society is the senate but they still felt like they needed head of state right but they didn't want a king so what they decided to do was they would elect two consoles every year and so for one year there would be two consoles uh and then those two consoles would leave office after a year and then new consoles would come in and the people who served as consoles were were senators right so basically they're like the head of the senate and uh there's always two of them because they thought if there was just one he might become like a dictator or like a king and try to seize all power which is something we'll see in lecture 14. um and you could be counseled multiple times but you couldn't be consoled consecutive years right so you'll see people who are consoled once and then maybe five years later their console again and maybe 11 years later their console again but no one was consoled for two years in a row so again the power of the console is checked mostly by the roman senate and by this other kind of political body called citizen assemblies citizens citizen assemblies are extremely confusing uh to understand uh they had very specific uh political uses they were only important occasionally uh and it's sort of a level of detail we don't need to get into if this is a class on rome uh maybe we would talk more about it over time the power of the senate would increase and the power of the consoles would decrease but the balance of authority between the two between the senate and the consuls was never settled uh and ultimately this will cause disaster it's part of the causes for the civil war that will bring down the roman republic that we'll talk about in the next lecture right and even though they have a constitution they haven't worked out this balance of power this is not unusual right if you look at the united states you know constitutional government system we have the same problem right uh where sometimes it seems like the supreme court or the senate or the house of representatives is more powerful than the president and sometimes it seems like the president's more powerful right and so it can be a delicate balance to achieve and the romans in the republican period never really figured it out on a fundamental level there are three primary divisions in roman society each of these would ultimately cause crisis and help fuel the civil war that will bring the republic down right the three divisions are a class division the upper class the nobility the people who get to be senators they're called patricians everyone else are plebeian right so the patrician plebeian split was a major class division that caused lots of problems in the republican era the second fundamental division was a citizenship division right some people were citizens and some people were not this will become a problem most especially in the latter part of the republican era as rome conquers more and more because basically most people in italy get to be citizens but when rome starts conquering in say africa or greece or egypt or mesopotamia those people do not get to be citizens and that sort of divide between citizen and non-citizen will become a major crisis point for the republic and the third fundamental division in republican society is one over status right are you a freeman or are you a slave and so these three divisions again will sow the seeds for crisis and this crisis will ultimately bring down the roman republic in the first century bce right class citizenship and status another fundamental way that roman society worked was through the creation of provinces as rome expanded from rome you know out into the italian peninsula and then eventually you know beyond the italian peninsula into places like modern day france modern day spain north africa mesopotamia and so on as rome expands they create new provinces within provinces they would create these things called estates where they would basically give land to citizens and then these citizens would run the estates that would provide the food and the sort of economic backbone for the roman republic and it would also give citizens something to do this worked really well not only did it create wealth by creating these new estates it also relieved social pressure and sort of overcrowding uh in the city of rome itself because you're basically taking people who live in the city of rome um and instead of needing to get food into the city and find jobs for those people so those people could work jobs to make money to buy food instead you just send them out to a province right in greece or north africa or france or something right and give them a farm and so they grow their own food so you no longer have to find them a job and you no longer have to feed them and so it relieves a great deal of social pressure but again ultimately will sow the seeds for catastrophe because over time a few really rich individuals began to hoard land instead of making provinces so basically the senate would put you know this guy over here in charge right you know senator a is in charge of making a province in those territories we just conquered and senator a doesn't make a province instead he just takes the land himself and so they begin to lose the social pressure reliefs valve sort of function of the provinces over time um another way that roman society worked was the romans would uh in warfare they would capture slaves right if you surrender to the romans in war right they would take some of your soldiers and some of the people who lived in your city or whatever and make them slaves and they did sort of the worst jobs in rome right the sort of the most back-breaking agricultural labor you know most of the mining work right they were the people who you know cleaned like the human sewage out of the streets and whatnot right slaves did the really bad jobs um as rome becomes more powerful and begins expanding they also become more successful at war which means they capture more and more slaves and so ultimately by the end of the republican period there are just too many slaves in roman society um this creates a whole array of social problems uh for instance they begin to uh the slaves begin to take jobs away from poor citizens right so poor citizens become unemployed uh which means they can't afford food right unemployed hungry people tend to cause social problems and the slave population itself gets to be so enormous that it became difficult to control the slaves so in other words the way roman society worked in the republican period is quite extensive right and from a modern viewpoint it's very impressive right to us that these ancient peoples were able to have such a sophisticated political culture but at the same time they're also creating a a whole constellation of social issues that ultimately are going to sow disaster right and we'll allude to that disaster in this lecture but we'll talk about that in great detail in the next lecture lecture 14. again the fundamental divisions between class citizenship and status right which are exacerbated by provinces and the capturing of slaves and war are going to really bring down the republic uh the first real disaster that the republic had to deal with in terms of internal politics is called the conflict of the orders the conflict of the orders again if we want to be really detailed about it is extremely complex but we don't need to look at it in that level of detail and essentially this uh was him this conflict of the orders was about that first division the class division right the inequality between the rich nobility the patricians and everyone else or the poor citizen masses the plebs or the plebeians and the conflict of the orders you know it didn't happen for it wasn't like this was happening every day right but it took 220 years or so to resolve it right it lasted from 509 to 287 bce and again it wasn't like the conflict of the order has affected everyday life right um so don't think of this as like a 200 year civil war it wasn't that right but it was like a political divide where we really had to figure out romans had to figure out um how society would work and basically the plebs wanted political equality and so they struggled against the traditional holders of political power those were the patricians right so the plebs then sort of become the progressive force of political change right and the patricians or the sort of staunch conservative traditional you know uh political party right they almost become political parties over time and the way the conflict of orders would play out is when the plebs were really fed up and really angry they would secede from rome and stop participating in society if you had a time machine and can go back and watch a plebeian secession from rome it would probably be very amusing because basically what happened uh when the plebs would secede they would announce it right they would go to the to the senate and again the senate is all patricians right and the consuls are all patrician and they would go to the senate and the consuls and say we secede from rome you greedy bastards right we're sick of your stuff um and the the plebs would literally then go to their houses and their shops and their places of business and they would lock the doors they would close their businesses they'd pack up their belongings and they would literally walk out of the city of rome they'd go through the gates of rome uh to a hillside right next to the city of rome uh and pitch tents and live on that city uh and not participate in society right they wouldn't open up their businesses they wouldn't uh do anything right they basically went on strike and they just camped there and eventually the patricians uh would decide that they needed the plebes right and so the the patricians would you know like send the delegation of senators and they would walk over to the hill and they would apologize hey plebs look we're really sorry we're we promise we'll change things will be better will you please come back and you know reopen your shops and stuff and rejoin roman society and the plebs would say yeah we've got a big victory right in the plebs basically have a big drunken party and then he would walk back into the city and go back to work right so these secessions again they would have been quite hilarious to watch i think and they worked because on a fundamental basis the patricians needed the plebs right the plebs did a lot of sort of lower class jobs you know they were like the wheel rights and the ship rights and the blacksmiths and they ran most of the shops and they were you know the bakers and you know most of the wine makers right they did a lot of the stuff that uh the the patricians needed you know there were people who ran like the quarries and you know the brick factories and all that sort of stuff and the plebs also were the majority of the military right so and again the republic is always at war so they always needed soldiers um and so the patricians would give in to the plebs uh repeatedly so this is how the conflict of the orders would play out uh by 287 bce the plebs had sort of definitively won meaning that the patricians had given the plebs political equality any pleb who could show that he had enough wealth would be allowed to become a senator now notice i said any pleb who could show that he had enough wealth right that's why i put one here in scare quotes they didn't actually win right um it's sort of uh it wasn't really a victory right a few plebeian families who had become so rich that they were basically like patricians or the only ones who had who got any benefits right so again think of the think of the patricians as the landowners right and the plebs is like the merchant class in the working class right and so some plebs basically you know had gained enough wealth that they had as much wealth as the patricians and so they were allowed to be senators but all the other plebs were still sort of uh looked down upon right so in other words that class divide was not really resolved even though there's official formal political equality most plebes then still have severe grievances that aren't addressed by the political system uh but by 287 bce rome was enmeshed in a major international military and political crisis and so the plebeians decided to cooperate for the good of rome they put the clash struggle on hold to basically go save rome from this major international political and military crisis what is this major military and political crisis it's the first punic war as we've discussed by 276 bce rome was master of italy but italy isn't really important in terms of global geopolitics right so in terms of the global stage rome is still a minor power right even in the midst of the even in the context of the mediterranean world right italy is minor um you know there are major powers elsewhere right like look at the greeks right and the macedonians for instance uh or you know the seleucids who control egypt and what's left of the of alexander's great conquest you know uh in mesopotamia right next to them rome is still sort of minor but rome is quite ambitious and they have a good military so they get ideas and in 264 bce they decided to challenge the dominant power of the western mediterranean they're still not up to snuff in terms of the eastern mediterranean right the eastern mediterranean has the greeks and the seleucids uh but the western mediterranean the romans decided they can pick on or go to war with the dominant power in the western mediterranean this dominant power is the phoenician city-state of carthage we've talked about the phoenicians a couple of times right they're master sailors who originate in iron age lebanon um in cities called tier and sedone we talked about here in sedona last week right here was the city that uh held out against alexander the great and he got so mad he burned the city down and you know murdered all the people and sold the rest into slavery um those were phoenician but the phoenicians were the best sailors in ancient europe and so they sealed all over the mediterranean they set up city-states across the mediterranean one of these city-states was called carthage um but carthage had expanded and basically become an empire of its own carthage the city-state was based in modern-day tunisia right north africa but they controlled most of north africa and a bit of modern-day spain what we call the iberian peninsula and they also controlled the islands of the mediterranean including sicily but also um corsica and you know the the the other islands of the mediterranean so it's carthage then that rome decides to challenge and they start this war basically by trying to take over sicily so remember rome controls the italian peninsula sicily is right there off the italian peninsula but it's dominated by carthage and rome decides they want sicily sicily is a really great place to take in the ancient period because you can grow a ton of food in sicily right cicely even today is sort of one of the major agricultural regions of europe right they produce way more food than the rest of europe right per acre right sicily still feeds europe so in the ancient period food was wealth right because food could give you population right these are things we've talked about so the romans want sicily carthage doesn't wouldn't give up cecily this leads to the first punic war um in terms of ground forces rome was more powerful than carthage so rome pretty quickly captured sicily but the problem for rome is carthage as because they're phoenician and the phoenicians again they're great sailors carthage was a major naval power right they probably had the best navy in the mediterranean they definitely have a better navy than rome rome doesn't even really have a navy um in order to fight the first punic war rome builds a navy this navy then tries to sail to north africa to invade carthage but a storm destroyed it so the romans built another navy right so i want to emphasize this one of the keys to roman military success is their incredible audacity right and also their uh productive capabilities and their engineering abilities right they needed a navy so they built one well that one got destroyed so they built another right and we're talking thousands and thousands of ships right with thousands of sailors and thousands of warriors on the ships uh and so rome just builds one right it gets a short they build another one as we'll talk about here a minute that one gets destroyed they build another one right uh the romans become master builders right one of the things this will talk about in subsequent lectures not this one right they become renowned for their feats of engineering and again just their obdurate sort of stubborn belief in themselves that they just produce more and more right oh we need ships well let's build ships right later they'll need forts they build forts later they'll need something you know they just build whatever they need right they had just an intense amount of wealth and again just a can do spirit that not really it was really unparalleled um [Music] their second navy would engage the carthaginian navy at the battle of cape ecnomas off the coast of sicily in 256 bce this is probably the largest naval battle in the history of the world um when we say largest naval battle um it's sort of difficult what does what does it mean to be a large naval battle right because we'll talk about this a couple other times there'll be other naval battles we'll talk about in later lectures that could also be considered the largest naval battle ever um because do you count the number of ships do you count the number of sailors do you count the number of you know weapons do you count the number of fighting men right what makes the largest naval battle cape ignomas has the largest number of men ever engaged in one naval battle 300 000 men uh about equal on each side the romans win this battle and this makes carthage open to them again rome twice lost their fleet to storms uh one of these uh storms killed one hundred thousand men but again the romans don't care they lose a hundred thousand men no big deal we got more right and these make another army make another navy eventually they would defeat carthage this war was brutal it lasted 20 plus years by 241 bce both sides were basically bankrupt both sides had greatly diminished their manpower rome while 17 of their entire adult male citizenry right 17 of their entire adult male citizenry right in world war ii the united states lost less than one percent okay um for perspective right so rome lost 17 of their adult male citizens carthage was probably even worse off we don't have the exact number of population in carthage uh and it's carthage who surrendered right carthage sued for peace uh in the peace deal rome took sicily and major war reparations 3 200 talents of gold from carthage uh and that carthage had to pay rome basically for this war so in other words rome wins the first punic war but it was a brutal war um and you know it was very um costly for the romans so here are a map of the various punic wars there will be three punic wars i should note so again you can see what carthage controls it's all this pink here again the northern african coast everything else is desert anyway they also control a bit of modern day spain which at times called iberia and again the mediterranean islands sicily corsica sardinia and the balearic islands um here's where the battle of cape ecnomas happened for instance here's where carthage is based again in modern day tunisia which is approximately here um we're about on the next slide we'll talk about the second punic war this is sort of the most famous of the wars um it's led by um a corsican a carthaginian general excuse me um called hannibal and he will march to rome he'll march through the alps he had an army that included elephant cavalry and he literally marched elephants through the ice and glaciers of the alps to attack um rome and he'll fight three battles the first the battle of tribia the second the battle of lake trazamine and the most famous the battle of keane or canai and uh one each year so he basically marched in the summers and camp in the winters notice importantly when hannibal marches when he gets to italy italy has a mountain range that runs right down the middle of it called the apennines here rome is on the western side of the apennines and the romans force um hannibal to the eastern side so he's not able to directly attack rome this will become important for the second punic war so i don't know why that slide is messed up i'll fix that before i post it on blackboard so the second punic war will begin in 218 so basically the first punic war leaves rome as the dominant power in the western mediterranean not only are they much more powerful than carthage now because carthage is bankrupt and has no army um but uh they also have a massive navy right and again in order to win the first peanut war they had to build a navy and they're probably the world's leading naval power at this time uh carthage wants revenge right so uh they invade iberia and 219 bce and again carthaginian forces are led by the great general hannibal they march through the alps to italy right because again they can't challenge the roman navy rome has a better navy so they can't invade over the sea they have to invade over the land um as i've already mentioned hannibal wins three early battles each of these victories was a stroke of military genius hannibal is one of the great sort of military strategists of all time in winning these battles hannibal would also recruit other tribes to help him most importantly the gauls right the gauls saw hannibal defeating the romans the gauls also hate the romans and they decide that hannibal is maybe powerful enough that they will actually be able to defeat rome so the gauls joined up with hannibal enlarging his army in order to defeat the romans um again the battle of the trebia the battle of lake chasming in the battle of kane as i've already discussed by far the most important of these battles is the battle of k-nay this is one of the most horrifying battles in all of world history um and kane was so destructive that basically it looked like rome was defeated it looked like carthage had won the war after the battle of k-nay that's how bad the battle was it caused many italian cities to defect right to join the side so remember the way the roman empire the roman republic worked right is rome was a city-state and they conquered these other italian city-states and basically made them part of the republic um and uh but they were still you know their own city state right so when carthage looks like they defeated rome these city-states basically betray rome and join carthage right we're no longer subjects of the roman republic we're not subject of the carthaginian empire right they defected right so rome shrinks in size because their territory uh sort of evaporates and goes to carthage again it's not looking good again let's talk a little bit here about the battle of k-nay so again hannibal is a military genius his military maneuver here uh was something no one had ever tried before right um it's called a double envelopment movement so basically what hannibal does is he erases forces in front of the roman forces and they begin fighting um and hannibal's forces be pretend to lose right so he has his forces marched into the roman forces and they basically smashed into each other right they very much fight like greek hoplites right so they got big shields and they smash into one another and the carthaginian forces are giving ground to the roman forces so the roman forces are pushing the carthaginian forces back and again the carthaginians are pretending to lose right the carthaginians are deliberately giving ground and then they pretend to retreat right so the carthaginian forces retreat the roman forces get excited because they've already lost two battles right they've already lost these two battles through the carthaginians so they really want to prove that they're better fighters than than hannibal and so they press their advantage and they begin chasing after the carthaginian forces carthage wasn't actually defeated uh at this point hannibal has his retreating forces stop the retreat and hold their ground and then he basically rushes in from both wings right the left wing and the right wing of the battle we're at the flanks uh and surrounds the roman forces right this is what a double development movement means right it means he completely encircled the roman forces uh he seals them off and the romans are not allowed to retreat and he also refuses to take their surrender and completely massacres the entire roman army seventy thousand romans were killed or captured uh the accounts in roman histories of the battle are absolutely horrifying because the roman soldiers know that they're gonna die right they know hannibal is going to kill them uh and they're basically just waiting for their turn to die as the carthaginian forces again they're just like you know picture the carthagines they got axes and swords and they're just killing the soldiers the roman soldiers and working their way in right they're basically the roman soldiers are encircled and they're just you know shrinking the size of the circle a lot of the roman soldiers couldn't face the thought of being butchered by the carthaginians and uh that's told the roman historians tell us that they uh dug holes in the sand and stuck their head in the sand and suffocated themselves to death because they couldn't face uh the brutality of the battle more than 75 000 people would die on the day of the battle it makes it one of the the bloodiest days in the history of the world right there aren't many you know battles even in the modern period where 75 000 people would be killed so again this was a brutal war and a brutal battle and after k day rome is defeated right by all rights they should surrender right but as i've already told you the romans are sort of famous for their stubbornness and their audacity right and their sort of never say die attitude they refuse to surrender okay hannibal you have all of eastern italy want to try to come take western italy how would you try to govern eastern italy we dare you right you're a general let's see you right you think you can control eastern italy control it we'll get another army we'll come back for you right they don't surrender hannibal's hold here is quite tenuous and basically the romans make it a war of attrition they use their naval superiority to deny any reinforcements or resupply to hannibal they begin burning all of the agricultural fields of southern italy so that hannibal can't reap the harvest he can and feed his troops uh and they basically just want to grind the the carthaginians down they basically say we have more people than you and uh sure every one of your soldiers might kill three of our soldiers but eventually we'll still kill all of your soldiers right they're basically going to do to him what they've done to piers earlier right in the pyrex war and the romans then recapture italy city by city they'll also march they also sail over and conquer all of carthaginian iberia after taking iberia the romans then invade carthaginian north africa and 204 hannibal is still stranded in italy he's been there for 14 years right uh just losing small battle after small battle trying to preserve his troops trying to feed his troops trying to keep his hold on southern and eastern italy when the romans invade carthage jenny in north africa hannibal really wants to leave italy and the romans led him so hannibal leaves italy returns home to carthage where he will use his army to try to defend his city of carthage against the roman advance uh he does this he meets the romans at the battle of zama the romans are led by this great general name scipio and scipio even though hannibal has more troops defeats hannibal right it's the only time the romans will defeat hannibal in the field of battle right in a big battle um and uh carthage then is left open to them undefended the romans go in they take carthage uh and they impose an extremely harsh piece on carthage right so they win the second punic war and they essentially take over carthage right carthage isn't allowed to have any trade carthage isn't allowed to have a military carthage isn't allowed to have any colonies um carthage has to send a certain amount of their money to rome every year carthage has send a certain amount of their population to rome as slaves every year it's a very harsh piece it's where we get the idea of punitive right punitive meaning punishment right that comes from the idea of punic for the punic war the second punic war by this time then rome is sort of unchallenged in the western mediterranean simultaneously with all of this rome had been slowly pushing east from italy towards macedonia and greece right conquering down through the balkans right in what we have called illyria and thrace right the romans have been conquering the illyrians and the thracians pushing trying to push away into macedonia and greece um the macedonians decided uh during the punic war that rome was in a bad way and that they could take back macedonian territory that the romans had taken right the romans had won a couple of very small wars against macedonians and taken some macedonian territory the king of macedonia at the time a guy named philip v decided because the romans were so distracted by hannibal and the carthaginians that he could take his territory back right so he begins you know picking a fight with the romans this is never a good idea um when the romans have defeated hannibal and won the second punic war they haven't forgotten philip the fifth and how annoying he was so they carried out a full sail full-scale invasion of macedonia for the first time in the year 200. this is then the second macedonian war which was flat from 200 to 197 bce that's a major roman victory phil uh philip the fifth was punished mightily for basically bothering rome uh macedonia is basically destroyed by the war simultaneously with this uh egypt which for a brief period uh had been independent independent egypt was collapsing and this destabilized right the destruction of macedonia plus the collapse of egypt greatly destabilized the entire eastern mediterranean um philip the fifth uh had a large hand in this he'd actually made a deal to take egypt he's gonna split it with the seleucids the seleucids at this time were led by a guy named antiochus iii we've talked about the seleucids a few times right they're one of the remnants of alexander's great conquest and they control most of mesopotamia in fact by 200 bce the solutions control basically what had been the akinid persian empire right basically the same territory that cyrus the great and darius the great had controlled the seleucids control that by 200 bce um and philip the fifth had made a deal that they would go you know after philip the fifth got rid of these pesky romans you know the seleucids and and the macedonians would fight together in egypt and split it between them macedonia gets taken out here by the romans and the seleucids go and take egypt for themselves so the seleucids and the romans begin dividing up the territory then of the eastern mediterranean so by 195 bce or so the seleucids control mesopotamia and egypt and the romans control macedonia and greece this then is setting us up for the next great confrontation in the mediterranean world right the romans and the seleucids are going to want to fight one another the next great roman confrontation right the roman seleucid war of 192 to 188 bce uh these bullet points here just reiterating things i've already said really right the the key to this rivalry between the romans and the seleucids is who gets to control greece and who have the most control over the greek city-states particularly athens and sparta uh the seleucids really to show how much they hate the romans they actually hire on hannibal to be their military advisor right hannibal's defeated the romans several times surely he can help the seleucids um and again part of this was just to anger the romans right they go and get you know you know this guy who had killed so many roman soldiers the seleucids will invade greece and 192 bce to liberate it from the romans and this will kick off the war the romans fight the solutions first at thermopylae right that famous battlefield right in 191 bce uh the romans win the romans also fight the seleucid navy twice in 190 and win both of those and then they wipe out the seleucid army more or less in the battle of magnesia and 189 sorry for the hiccup one bce and the seleucids then are more or less defeated and the romans take all of their territory right most of their territory anyway and then over the next couple centuries rome will consolidate its rule throughout eastern europe but by 189 188 bce rome is dominant in the entire mediterranean again there's still some macedonians and greek rebels around they don't have full control over anatolia they don't have full control over mesopotamia or egypt and so they'll fight a few small battles you know over the next 50 or 60 years to take over more and more territory uh they also decide to finally completely wipe out carthage uh mostly just to be mean uh carthage wasn't bothering the romans but they decide they want all of north africa and they hate carthage so they go and they completely destroy the city of carthage um it said that there wasn't a single wall that had two bricks still attached right they completely rebelized the city uh killed or carried off into slavery every single person who lived in carthage and they even salted the earth uh the ground on which carthage sat so that the soil could not be used for agricultural uses in the future right they completely then obliterate and wipe out the city of carthage in the third punic war and by this point the romans are the most powerful you know political and military entity in the history of the mediterranean world and again they control the entire mediterranean something that no other power had ever done not even alexander the great amidst all of this success abroad there are emerging crisis crises back at home right those three fundamental divisions that sort of defined republican roman society right between class between citizenship and between status those crises those divisions excuse me begin to sow various crises back on the home front uh recall that rome had always used expansion both to acquire more slaves and to ease social tension right by creating new provinces but ultimately too much expansion and that's what we're getting here right in 276 bce rome is just italy by 176 bce only 100 years later rome is italy plus iberia plus north africa plus egypt plus macedonia plus greece plus anatolia plus most mesopotamia right roma has just you know exploded in size and too much expansion rather than easing social tension instead had the opposite effect and triggered massive unrest this is mostly because the richest landholders who were always patricians not plebeians right began hoarding property um they were able to afford more and more property because the romans you know would use their own citizens right as soldiers to go fight and so soldiers would leave their farms and go fight and this had never been a problem before because soldiers were only fighting in italy right and so the campaigns would only last a few months the soldiers would leave home go fight for a couple months come home you know come back home and farm uh these new roman wars against you know say the seleucids right the soldiers have to march from italy all the way across europe into say anatolia or mesopotamia or egypt right and then they would fight for years and then try to go back home to their farms well while these soldiers are all fighting wars uh their their farms go bankrupt right they they lose all their money they lose their farms and rich landowners were gobbling up more and more farmland across the italian peninsula farmland that was owned by soldiers right the people who should be getting favors then are the people who are being treated the worst right basically the romans are treating their military veterans very poorly uh and the people benefiting from this again are these rich landowners who don't fight wars but you know make up the senate and the consuls uh this is exacerbated by a massive influx of slaves because again every battle the romans would take slaves and they're fighting a lot of battles so they're getting a lot of slaves these slaves begin putting working-class romans out of business right which makes it possible for the rich to hoard yet even more wealth right so the rich are getting richer in the countryside and the rich are getting richer in the cities um eventually this leads to something like a social revolution in in the city of rome in the republic uh led by these two plebeian brothers who got to be senators right there were some there were these really rich plebeians who were able to sort of join the patrician class and serve in the senate they were both elected consul all right they're an older brother and a younger brother their last names were gracus so they're called the grakai we'll talk more about them in the next lecture but they lead something of a social revolution where they want to put limits on land ownership right they want to fight back against these really greedy patrician land holders who are gobbling up all of the wealth of rome and they want to pass land instead to the urban poor who are being put out of work by the influx of slaves and also to the military veterans who have gone bankrupt because of their military campaigns right so in other words the grac i want to fix the socioeconomic inequality that's causing crisis at home uh they are put down right they passed a series of laws when they were councils right the older brother was consul and 133 he passed a whole bunch of laws while he was consoled but again he only got to be consoled for one year as soon as he was no longer consul again in 132 he's assassinated his younger brother then would become consul in 121 he passed all the same laws that his older brother had but again when he stopped being consol in 121 he too was assassinated right so their nascent social revolution was never able to take hold and all it really did was reveal just how power hungry and greedy the patrician class was becoming so this only further angers the plebeians and remember the plebeians are the masses right they're the majority of the citizens of rome and remember that citizens have it better than non-citizens so if the majority of citizens are angry what about the people who aren't citizens remember citizenship is another fundamental division in republican society and non-citizens outnumber citizens so again most citizens are upset all the non-citizens who are more numerous than the citizens are also upset because they have no political power they have no economic resources either right the the patricians are also gobbling up their wealth right but remember there's also a third division in republican society right the division between free men and slaves right so the slaves have it even worse than the non-citizens who have it worse than the plebeians so the plebeians are angry the non-citizens are even angrier the slaves are even angrier steel and the slaves outnumber the freemen right so in other words the vast majority of people who live in the roman empire are upset really the only people who aren't upset are the patricians and again they are by far the minority and roman society right so you can see here the roots of the social and economic crisis that is about to rock the republic and bring it down in a century of civil war um just as one for instance here right we got what are called the three servile wars the first will begin in 135 bce these are slave revolts those angry slaves rise up against their masters uh the republic will win all three servile wars in other words the slaves will lose all three but these wars get bigger and bigger and more and more destructive and ultimately that social unrest will become civil war the first real sort of uh shots fired moment right when unrest becomes civil war is what's called the social war and this is the non-citizens right non-roman italians so people who live in italy who aren't roman citizens so these would be like the old etruscans the old greeks who lived in magna gracia right they've been living in rome for centuries right but they're still not citizens and they want citizenship rights remember it's good to be a citizen and so they rise up and revolt and they create what's called the social war it takes four years but rome right will crush the revolt so the rebels lose but the romans realize that the rebels have a point right so they begin to give citizenship rights to non-roman italians right they greatly expand the number of citizens but all of these citizens will become plebeians so it doesn't solve that crisis right it just makes the patrician plebeian crisis worse but at least we've solved somewhat the citizen non-citizen crisis right the third servile war right the third great slave revolt is massive and extraordinarily destructive it's led by spartacus right the very famous slave you know revolutionary of rome uh he has movies made about him in last three years from 73 to 71 bce uh and the spartacist rebels will ultimately take over all of sicily or the third server war begins in sicily and spartacus will dominate sicily and have more than 150 000 slaves on his side eventually multiple roman legions go in and crush the revolt they kill every single one of the slaves there's a famous road in rome called the apanine way that leads from um sicily to rome through the apennine mountains every single mile along the apanine way they crucified one of the spartacist rebels right so they crushed the revolt but it was very destructive and again it shows that the republican society is coming apart at the seams um all of this unrest the so the social war and the three servile wars created a new political crisis for the republic basically to put down these revolts various generals become celebrities right so the generals who put down the slave revolts the generals who defeat the non-roman italians in the social war become celebrities who saved rome right and they would all get this grand parade in rome called a feat right they get fed that's spelled f-e-t-e right um like a major parade through the streets of rome and they would be celebrated and everyone would throw laurels there'd be a huge drunken party with orgies and animal sacrifice and gladiatorial battles and all kinds of crazy roman party stuff um you know you guys have seen you know animal house right picture toga parties but an actual ancient rome with actual togas um but in the process these generals become celebrities right they get a great deal of popularity and support from the citizens because the citizens are being told hey this general just saved rome well what did he save rome from right political crisis well why is there a political crisis because the senate seems weak right so with all of this unrest generals become very popular and get a great deal of support and the senate looks weak remember the senate is the heart and soul of the political workings of the republic so if the senate seems weak why even have a republic right that kind of logic will ultimately lead to the republicans down to the republic's downfall um the generals then begin to compete with one another for more and more fame and power right these generals and a lot of them their names have been preserved guys like sola marius pompey julius caesar right these are the generals who begin to compete with one another and these generals then fight wars against one another right and this is very dangerous for the republic because it's roman soldiers fighting roman soldiers often in the city of rome itself right that's what solas civil wars are they're a series of wars where sultan was fighting other generals to get more and more fame and power and solo would win all these wars by the way uh and the the most prominent rivalry was a rivalry between him and another general called marius and again this leads to a period where it becomes normalized for roman troops to fight other roman troops in italy right they're not fighting enemies they're not fighting rebels they're fighting each other um and this then will be the final sort of uh cause of this massive social economic and political disaster that's been brewing for the entirety of the republican period and that will ultimately bring down the republic marius for the record is the uncle to julius caesar right it's julius caesar who will start the final civil war to bring down the republican republic will cease to exist because of julius caesar right but it's not really caesar's fault right it's all these other social political and economic problems that we've been alluding to here so in lecture 14 we will get into great detail on this century right basically from the beginning of the social war until the fall of the republic around you know 27 bce or so we'll talk only about those years the rise of julius caesar uh the end of the republic in the beginning of the empire and then next week we'll look at the history of the roman empire and this is sort of the glory days of rome this will be rome's golden age the the early years of the roman empire when it is one of the most powerful political social and economic entities that has ever existed in the history of the world right had a power on par with modern states like the british empire all right all of that is to come hopefully that sounds exciting to you it's definitely exciting to me and hopefully my enthusiasm is coming through and i will see you for lecture 14.