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The CODEX for all Project ARKHAIA operation - Operation LAPIS, Operation CAESAR, Operation MENIS

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Build on What You Know You have already learned that Rome overthrew its kings and formed a republic. This change to self-rule would not only affect Rome's government. It would also affect Roman society.
Early Strengths of Roman Society
ESSENTIAL QUESTION How was Roman society structured?

As Rome developed into a complex civilization, two classes arose. Inequalities between them would lead to conflict. This conflict, however, would eventually define Roman citizenship and the rights of citizens under Roman law.

Patricians and Plebeians
The upper-class patricians(puh*TRIHSH*uhnz) were wealthy landowners who held all of the highest positions in government. The plebeians(plih*BEE*uhnz) were mostly common farmers. Like all male Roman citizens, they could vote, but they couldn't hold important government positions.

Resentment over the patricians' power caused tension. Finally, the patricians passed a written constitution, called the Twelve Tables, around 450 B.C. The Twelve Tables established basic rights and duties for Roman citizens.

ESSENTIAL QUESTION How was the republican government organized?

The leaders of the Roman Republic established a tripartite (try*PAHR*tyt) government. This type of government has three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. The executive branch enforces a country's laws. The legislative branch makes the laws. And the judicial branch interprets the laws in court.

Legislative and Judicial
The legislative branch of Roman government included the Senate and the assemblies. The Senate was a powerful body of 300 members that advised Roman leaders. Most senators were patricians. The assemblies were mainly made up of plebeians. Their representatives protected the rights of plebeians.

The judicial branch consisted of eight judges who served for one year. They oversaw the courts and governed the provinces.

Executive
Two consuls led Rome's executive branch. They commanded the army and directed the government for one year. Each consul had the power to veto, or overrule, the other.

In times of crisis, the consuls could choose a dictator-a leader with absolute power-to rule in their place for a limited time. Around 460 B.C., a man named Cincinnatus(SIHN*suh*NAT*uhs) was made dictator to defend Rome from attack. According to legend, he defeated the enemy and returned power to the consuls in sixteen days.

Legacy of Roman Law
The U.S. government adopted several features of the Roman Republic. You can compare the two systems in the chart above. Like the Roman government, the United States has a tripartite system. The U.S. system of checks and balances makes sure that one branch of the government doesn't have too much power. This system is like the veto, which limited the power of Roman consuls. In addition, like Rome, the United States has a written constitution on which its government is based.

Citizenship is also an important part of a republican government. In the Roman Republic, only free adult males were citizens and could vote. Only these citizens enjoyed the protection of Roman law. They also were expected to perform civic duties. That means that they were expected to serve their nation. Cincinnatus showed civic duty by defeating the enemy and stepping down from power. American citizens show civic duty by voting, taking part in jury duty, and paying taxes.

ESSENTIAL QUESTION How did Rome expand?

For hundreds of years after the founding of the republic, Rome expanded its territories. By the 300s B.C., the Romans dominated central Italy. Eventually, they conquered the Etruscans to the north and the Greek city-states to the southeast. By 275 B.C., all of the Italian Peninsula was under Roman control.

In general, Rome did not impose harsh rule on conquered peoples. The republic offered Roman citizenship to most of the conquered peoples and allowed them to govern themselves. In return, they had to pay taxes and provide soldiers for the Roman army.

Rome needed these soldiers to fight in the The Punic Wars
Punic Wars, which began in 264 B.C. The Punic Wars were a series of three long wars against Carthage, a rich trading city in North Africa.

Rome won each of the Punic Wars but almost lost the second. Hannibal, a general from Carthage, crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants and nearly captured Rome. The Roman general Scipio (SIHP*ee*OH) defeated him in 202 B.C. In 146 B.C., Rome finally captured and destroyed Carthage. By the end of the wars, Roman territory extended from Spain to Greece. (See the map below.)

The specialized vocabulary term Punic Wars refers to the series of wars between Rome and Carthage. Carthage was once a colony of Phoenicia, a group of sea-trading city-states on the Mediterranean. Punic comes from the Latin word Phoenician.

Effects of Expansion
The Roman conquerors brought back great wealth and many slaves. They bought large estates and farmed them with slave labor. But because many small farmers couldn't compete, they lost their farms. As a result, unemployment and poverty increased. The gap between rich and poor grew wider. This, in turn, produced more anger and tension between the classes.

Lesson Summary

Early Rome was divided into two classes-patricians and plebeians.

The Roman Republic was a tripartite system that provided a model for the U.S. government.

Roman expansion brought new lands and great wealth for Rome.

Why It Matters Now . . .
Some of the most basic values and institutions of the United States, such as civic duty and a separate judicial branch, began in the Roman Republic.

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Twelve Tables/U.S. Bill of Rights: The framers of the American Constitution consciously copied Roman Republican law, taking as their model the rapt description of Rome's "complex constitution" in Volume VI of the Polybius's History of the Rise of Rome. The "complex constitution" that Polybius described was the Roman system of "checks and balances" among the executive (Consuls), the legislature (Senate), and the judiciary(commitiae).
But something was missing. Fresh in the minds of the new "American" citizens were violations of individual rights during the colonial and revolutionary periods. Several states made their ratification of the 1787 Philadelphia constitution contingent on the addition of a "Bill of Rights." The First Congress of the United States, therefore, on September 25, 1789, proposed twelve amendments (see a Post Script below.). Why twelve?

Once again, the founding fathers had dipped into the Roman Republican past, and here they were paying particular homage to Rome's "Twelve Tables", which codified the rights of Roman citizens before their government. The word "codified" is important: the Twelve Tables were not new legislation, and no new rights were made up and "given" to the people. Rather, rights that had "always" existed were sorted out into categories, and each category was written on one table. The tables were intended to be available always for consultation.

The American Bill of Rights is easily available for consultation, ever more so as we have passed through the age of mass distribution and the current electronic age. It wasn't so easy in ancient times. Really ancient "codes," like Hammurabi's in 18th century BC Mesopotamia, were simply chiseled into rocks set up in the town square. The Twelve Tables were probably originally inscribed on wooden tablets ("codified" originally meant something like "carved onto tree trunks") and were on public display somewhere in the western end of the Roman Forum, where civil government buildings were eventually built. One of these buildings, the Tabularium at the base of the Capitoline Hill facing the Forum, was built to house the Tables, and other public legal documents were soon added. The RomeTabularium grew to become a huge central depository, and by the end of the 2nd century AD it was a multi-story "national archive", towering with arches and statues, that stood across the entire western end of the forum. "Branch offices" of theTabularium were erected throughout the empire for display of copies of the tables and copies of local public documents.

According to tradition, the Twelve Tables had originally been formulated from existing oral law in 451-450 BC by the Decemviri Consulari Imperio Legibus Scribundis (a complex sounding title that simply meant "ten consular guys with the power to write down laws"). The code was drawn up to appease the plebians, who claimed that their liberties were not fully protected by the unwritten law as it had been interpreted by patrician judges. Ten tablets of laws were inscribed in 451 BC and two more tablets (supplementary laws, which, among other things, prohibited marriage between plebians and patricians and validated existing laws that hadn't been included in the first ten tables) were added the next year. The Twelve Tables contained several categories of law and also included specific penalties for some infractions and underwent frequent changes during almost 1000 years of use.

The Tabularium building survived the centuries in the Roman Forum mostly because the building, or at least parts of it, has been in continuous use. What you see now from the Forum is the mainTabularium structure with medieval towers on each end and Michalangelo's renaissance Palazzo Senatorio as a crowning superstructure. TheTabularium part of the pile was reopened for public visitation when the Capitoline Museums were reopened in 2000. The same entry ticket gets you into the Museums and theTabularium, and the AudioGuide that you can rent at the Museum door (various languages, including English, available) includes theTabularium. So you should rush over and see the Twelve Tables! Unfortunately not.

The Tables, which by that time had been re-inscribed on bronze plaques, were destroyed in the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC. The partial contents of a number of the Tables are known, however, through references in later Latin literature. Fragments of the actual texts were preserved as quotations, but in some cases the variations in different quotations are very confusing. There is general agreement among scholars about the basics, and all of what they know is copiously documented on the Internet.

A short readable analysis of the Twelve Tables is available at
http://www.ualberta.ca/~csmackay/CLASS_365/12.Tables.html

Extant text fragments are at http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Lex_XII_Tabularum.html (English), andhttp://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/LegesXII/leg_text.html (Latin)

P.S.: 1. The connection between Polybius (partially through Montesquieu) and the US Constitution is at http://www.mmdtkw.org/VPolybius.html

2. Only the last ten of the twelve amendments proposed by the 1789 First Congress got quick ratification and became the Bill of Rights. Proposal number one, concerning timing of pay raises for members of congress was finally ratified 200 years later and became the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. Proposal number two, which would have specified the number of people in a congressional district, was never ratified. Thus the US has "proportional representation" in the House of Representatives: as population increases the number of folks in a congressional district rises rather than the number of congressional districts and congressmen.

3. A temple dedicated to Veiove (who is sometimes or partially identified with Jove/Jupiter) was on the eastern face of the Capitoline hill before the Tabularium was built. Not wanting to anger the god, the Romans simply built over and around the temple, which remained accessible inside the newer building. One side of the temple can now be viewed through a glass wall, but the catwalk over the entrance has been closed to the public since a tourist leaned too far over the edge and tipped over the side.

4. Hammurabi's code is not the first written code of laws as some of us were taught years ago. More recent finds have been dated to the 21st century BC. Hammurabi's remains the most complete and best documented ancient Middle-Eastern code available so it's still studied by incipient lawyers. Anything you might want to know about ancient law is at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/asbook-law.html. More specifically Roman stuff is athttp://iuscivile.com/.

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Twelve Tables/U.S. Bill of Rights: The framers of the American Constitution consciously copied Roman Republican law, taking as their model the rapt description of Rome's "complex constitution" in Volume VI of the Polybius's History of the Rise of Rome.

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Mihi nomen est Magistra Madison. I am an aspiring Latin educator who loves sharing her passion for Latin and Ancient Rome! For this unit I decided to center my unit around the Forum Romanum (Roman Forum) since this was the hub of city life in the Ancient Roman Empire. This theme allowed me to explore a wide variety of topics and delve deep into the culture of Ancient Rome while revitalizing the Latin language.