The history of the town of Rome is old and complex. This article treats mainly origins of the city, development of the Roman République, birth and decline of the Roman Empire.
Prehistory
The first traces of human establishment go back to the culture of the Homme of Néanderthal.One period of stagnation followed, which leads only to the age of iron to a new colonization of the area. This one does not seem to be the work of populations autochtones, but of migrations of Indo-European stock, the Latin .
The migration of the latino-falisque group was former to that of the ombro-sabellien group, to which the Samnite S belonged, them also of Indo-European origin. It seems in any event that the two migrations were caused by the successive arrival of the It S in their respective zones of origin.
Ancient history
Latino-falisque establishment
See also: Italy préromaine
The first establishments in the zone of the Latium by born populations Indo-European, the Latin , go back to the age of iron, a colonization started by the arrival in their areas of origin of populations It born.
In the beginning, Latin occupied only one small zone, known as “ latius vetus ” and in the surroundings many tribes lived, of which most influential was the Étrusques. The first campings were installed on the hill of the Palatin towards X E but extended quickly in the close zones. The initial choice was probably dictated by the possibility of crossing with ford of the the Tiber but, thereafter, it appeared invaluable because of its good situation on trade route of the time.
When the “historical” phase of the people installed in the peninsula started, whereas the Falisque S occupied the valley of the the Tiber between the Cimini mounts and Sabatini, Latin occupied only one small zone, called “ latius vetus ”, which went from Right Bank of the final part of the course of the Tiber, of the Monts Albains to the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Their territory was bordering on that under influence of varied other populations, most important being certainly the Étrusques whose zone of influence started immediately on septentrional bank of Tibre.
The Volsques, of origin Osque, occupied the southernmost part of Latium and the Lepini mounts; the Aurunces the Tyrrhenian coast with horse on the current limit enters Latium and the Campanie; in north, on the Appennins, the Sabins were; in the east the Aequiens. In the valley of Trero, the Hernicien S controlled trade route towards the Campania, and between Ardea and Anzio were insatallés the Rutules.
The first campings of future the Rome emerged on the Palatin (X E) then on the Esquilin and the Quirinal.
The selected site was certainly not most salubrious; the zone was covered with marsh and ponds, and even if it were cultivable thanks to the great availability out of water, it was probably selected for its position near the island tibérine.
The island which constituted the most practical ford to cross the river, had become the point of intersection of two important commercial axes: one, connecting the coast inside the Sabine, was used for the trade of the salt which represented in Antiquity a fundamental food for the human life and the other, connecting the Étrurie to the Campanie of the Greek cities, was used for the commercial exchanges between these two populations. To control the island meant to control the traffics which forwarded there and it is most probably from there that the importance comes from Rome at its beginnings.
Foundation of the city
See also: Foundation of Rome
Thus started the period of “square Rome”, thus named according to the square form of the Palatin, even if one cannot speak yet about true a ville.
The development of this establishment starts with the Etruscan domination.
It is admitted that Rome was born from the association of the tribes of the area (and the meeting of the villages which occupied the top of the hills) towards the VIII E; the tradition generally allowed - and also taken again by Varron (which in the Of lingua latina provided the foundations of the linguistic study of the Latin people) - wants that it was founded by Romulus and Remus the April 21st 753 av. J. - C.; of adverse opinion was Ennius which in its Annales locates the foundation in 875, while Fabius Quintus (which with the IIIe front century J. - C. took share with the Second Punic War), approaches the position of Varron locating it in 748.
To show that to determine the exact date of the birth of Rome forever be an easy task for the historiographers, it should be said that Lucius Cincius Alimentus (author of writings in form of Annales) and the Greek historian Timée de Tauroménion (which lived approximately three hundred years before Jesus-Christ) transfers in respectively 729 and in 814 the foundation of the future “Eternal City” (for Timée, therefore, she is almost contemporary of that of Carthage).
All that one can say on the historical level, it is that the city was the work of the Etruscans. The name itself ( Ruma ) is Etruscan, from that one can deduce the name from that which strengthened together the heights, giving a solid internal organization to the various tribes, probably some Romulius (which will become Romulus), in relation, perhaps, with a Roman people, the Romilii .
Romulus will be first king de Rome and six other monarchs will succeed to him, them also probably of Etruscan origin . To each sovereign, one generally allots a particular contribution in the birth and the creation of the Roman institutions and in the development socio-policy of the city: Romulus is regarded as the founder of the city, to which it gave his principal civil institutions and the Senate, Numa Pompilius created the principal religious institutions (among which the temple of Janus, the worship of the Vestale S, the load of Grand Pontiff - pontifex maximus - the subdivision of the year in twelve months with, precisely regulated, all religious festivals and celebrations), Tullus Hostilius, by beating Sabins and by conquering Alba Longa, amorça the territorial expansion in Latium, with Ancus Marcius one par excellence owes the foundation of the wearing of Rome, Ostie, Tarquin Old the set up the Jupiter temple and built the maximum Cloaca , Servius Tullius divided the town population into five classes of taxable quota and built the first strengthened enclosure (the walls serviennes which one can observe some vestiges inside the Forum Termini ); the last king was Tarquin Superb the which, because of its arrogant behavior and its contempt towards the citizens and the Roman institutions, will be driven out by the people in 509 av. J. - C..
The demounting of last king de Rome coincided with one period of strong decline of the Etruscans: those indeed, in their expansion towards the south, arrived in contact with the Greeks. Following a first conflict with the colonists, the decline started. Rome thus succeeds in being released from the Etruscan yoke, after having driven out Tarquin the Superb one.
In any case, the Etruscans left a durable influence on Rome. The Romans learned how from them to build temples, and owe them the introduction of the worship of a triad of gods (Junon, Minerve and Jupiter): Plain, Menrva and Tinia. It transformed Rome from a community of shepherds into a city. They were still used as intermediaries in the transmissions of elements borrowed from the Greek culture, in particular the Western version of the Greek alphabet.
See also: Roman Monarchy
Social organization
See also: Roman Company
The pivot of the social organization was made up by the family, which was not only founded on the blood ties, but also on a legal report/ratio of patria potestas . The chief was the Pater familias , to which made allegiance the wire, the wife, the girls, the small children, their wives, the slaves, the liberti and the clients.
The various families, according to the blood ties, constituted the people .
The Roman law allotted only to these people the legal personality. Very quickly, Rome became populated other people, whom were neither slaves, nor members of the gentes : they were not Patricien S and they were thus called plebeian . The Plébe iens were free men, but they could not found in their turn a people.
The authority of the Lord's Prayer familias on its family was unlimited, as well in civil law as in criminal law. The authority of the king was circumscribed with the military duties, the foreign politics and to arbitrate the conflicts between gentes .
The people of Rome in the beginning were divided into three tribes ( Ramnenses, Titientes, Luceres ), mainly in the objective of the military recruitment, organized in centuries.
The kings tried to weaken the capacity of the patriciat, with an aim of recognizing people of foreign origin, the genti minori .
Roman republic
- ; Alliances and emergence of Rome
The wars against various the Italian cities, those against the Gallic ones, the Punic Wars and that against Philippe of Macedonia, made it possible to consolidate the domination on Italy and to start the expansion in Spain and Macedonia. The outstanding date of this expansion in the Mediterranean is the year 146 av. J. - C., year during which, after a three year old seat and so much wars carried out during one century against Rome, Carthage fell definitively and completely shaven on the ground and was sprinkled salt by the Roman armies of Scipion Émilien; Corinth, symbol city of Greek resistance to the Roman expansion policy, was also conquered and destroyed; by these two great victories, Rome gave up its role of regional power in the Western Mediterranean to assume that of super power uncontested in the whole of the Mediterranean basin, which since then took the name of pond nostrum . The leading classes opened with the influence of the Greek culture and of the artistic craft industry and works of art were imported in great number of Greece and the Eastern provinces of Hellenic culture.
The problems induced by this expansion, as important as sudden, as the Republic had to face were enormous and several kinds: the Roman institutions were hitherto conceived to manage a small State; from now on the provinces (comparable with the colonies of the modern States, not to confuse with the Roman colonies themselves, which were establishments of Roman citizens with full title, cives optimo iure , out of the concerning territory of the Republic but direct administration of the Roman State) extended from the Ibérie, with the Africa, the Greece and the Asia.
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; Massive arrival of slave and economic and social upheaval
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; Rome and the hellenisation
The small land property put in state of crisis by the farms patricians (who exploited the work of the slaves), and the new cultural influences cause strong social strains inside the Roman company.
With the Ier front century J. - C. the Republic starts to fissure, the most influential characters, strongly affirming their personal capacity and being made the interpreters of the needs for the underprivileged masses or the need for maintaining the capacity with the hands of the most important people and richest, led to the civil war. The Republic will have to also face a revolt of the slaves carried out by Spartacus.
Other conquests will follow, the Gaulle and Great Britain by Jules César, and the Romans will go until in Syria and Arménie.
to see for more details over this period the articles:
- Roman Republic
- History of the Roman Republic
- Institutions of the Roman Republic
Rome under the empire
Medieval history
Rome under the control of the Barbarians and the Byzantines
The fall of the Roman Empire of Occident did not change much the things for Rome. Odoacre and thus the Ostrogoth S continued, like the other emperors, to control Italy of Ravenne. Meanwhile, the Senate, although private for a long time of its capacities, only continued to manage Rome, and the Pope came generally from a senatorial family. This situation will perdura until the Roman Empire of the East, under the reign of Justinien Ier, took the city in 536.
However confrontation between Ostrogoths and the Byzantines was exacerbated, involving a series of wars which devastated Rome and the territories environnants.
The Byzantine Empereur Justinien Ier (527 - 565) guarantees subsidies in Rome to maintain the public buildings, the aqueducts and the bridges. Those in the context of Italy impoverished by the recent wars, were not always sufficient. Justinien also sponsored public scientists, speakers, physicists and legislators in the hope that very quickly more young people would have sought a better education. After the wars, the Senate was restored on paper, but under the authority of a Préfet and other officers named by the authorities bizantines with Ravenne
In any event, the pope had become one of the principal religious figures of all the Byzantine, and actually more powerful empire in Rome than the remaining senators, or than the Byzantine officers. In practice, the local authority in Rome was in the hands of the pope, and during the following decades, much of the possessions of the senatorial aristocracy and the Byzantine administration were absorbed by the Church.
The reign of the grandson of Justinien, his successor, Justinien II (565 - 578) will see the invasions of the Lombards led by Alboïn (568), which seized the areas of Lombardy, Piedmont, Toscane, Spolète and Bénévent, reducing the imperial capacity to small primarily coastal territories, like those of Ravenne, Naples and Rome. The only city of the interior remained under Byzantine control was Perugia, chief town of the last strip of land which connected Rome to Ravenne. In 578 and 580, the Senate, in one of its last recorded acts, had to request the support of Tibère II Constantin de Byzance (578 - 582), against the close threats, the duke Faroaldo de Spoleto and the duke Zotto de Benevento.
Ier (582 - 602) gave a new course to the conflict while being combined with Childebert II of Austrasie (579 - 595). The armies of the frank king invaded the territories of the lombards in 584, 585, 588 and 590. Meanwhile Rome suffered much from a disastrous flood of the the Tiber in 589, followed plague in 590. To note the legend of the appearance, whereas the pope Gregoire Ier (590 - 604) hardly elected passed in procession close to the tomb of Hadrian, of an angel planing on constructions and decladding his blazing sword as signs that the plague was going to cease. At least the city was saved conquest of the Barbarians.
Agilulf, the new king lombard (591 - 616) succeeds in establishing peace with Childebert, reorganized its territories and took again the hostilities to Naples and Rome starting from 592. With the emperor worried by the wars on the Eastern borders and the incapacity of the successive Exarque S to protect Rome from the invasions, Gregoire took a personal initiative to begin the negotiations of a peace treaty. Concluded with the autumn 598 this last obtained only then the recognition of Maurice Ier, but it lasted until the end of its reign.
The position of the Patriarche of Rome was reinforced under the reign of the usurper Phocas (602 - 610). Phocas recognized its primacy on the Patriarche of Constantinople and proclaimed the pope Boniface III (607) like the “chief of all the Churches”.
During the 7th century, an surge of officers and Byzantine clerks come from other areas of the empire reinforced the influence of the Greek language in the higher realms of the Church. This strong Byzantine cultural influence always did not bring however the harmony between Rome and Constantinople. In the controversy on the Monothéisme the popes were subjected to strong pressures (sometimes constrained by the force) as soon as they did not align on the theological positions changeantes of Constantinople. In 653, the pope Martin Ier was off-set in Constantinople and, after a judgment, was exiled in the Crimea where he died.
In 663, Rome accepted the visit of Constance II, first imperial visit since two centuries. It was for the city the worst disaster since the time of the wars against Goths, because the emperor undertaken to strip Rome of all the metal which it had, including in the buildings and the statues, under the pretext of make of them weapons against the Sarrasins. During the half-century which followed, besides some tensions, Rome and Papacy preferred to continue to follow the Byzantine government, partly because the alternative was the government lombard, and partly because the provisioning of the Romans came essentially from fields of Papacy located in other areas of the Empire, in particular in Sicily.
In 727, the pope Gregoire II refused to accept the decree of the emperor Leon III which established the iconoclastie. Leon tried, without success, to impose the iconoclastie on Rome by the force of the weapons, it confiscated the fields of the pope in Sicily and transferred the grounds previously ecclesiastical from the empire to the Patriarche of Constantinople. In practice, Rome was expelled of the Byzantine Empire.
That completely left Rome to the hands of the local forces for its protection against the invasions of Lombards, from now on encouraged even by the Byzantines. New protections were necessary, and finally, in 753, the pope Etienne II pushed Pépin the Brief, king of the Francs to attack Lombards with the blessing of Papacy.
At the 9th century, the pope Leon IV ordered the construction of a wall all around a zone since the opposite part in the Tiber of the Seven hills of Rome, which accepted the name of leonine Ville.
The capacity growing of the pope inevitably led it to face the Byzantine Empire, irritated political role always more openly and freely assumed by the Church, the conflict culminated in the controversy on the iconoclastie, refused by the pope Gregoire II. The Byzantine emperor Leon III, ends up excluding Rome from the Empire, so that Rome could then count only on its alliance with the Francs, to which the city did not fall to the hands from the many enemies who surrounded it.
It is at that time that the Papal States were indeed made up, whose Rome was the capital, which quickly became the world center of the Christianity of Latin rite. The capacity of the Pope did not enable him yet to control nor to defend the State, but it was quickly to increase and the republican experiments lost importance, until their complete disappearance. Moreover, at the time of the Rebirth, Rome became also a very important cultural hearth, which disputed with Florence and Venice the artistic innovations most significant.
When Pépin III demolished the Lombards in 756, Rome became the capital of the Papal States, a territorial entity at least nominally controlled by Papacy. In practice, the government of the city was disputed by many factions of the Roman nobility, the pope, the Saint Germanic Roman Empire and, occasionally, republican insurrections. After the removal of the Republic of 1434, Papacy subjected the government of Rome to the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. At that time, Rome became the world center of the Christianisme and played a political role which did of them one of the city most important of the old continent. In arts, if Florence were the hearth of the Humanisme and the Renaissance, Rome was the center of the Baroque, whose architecture influenced much its central districts.
At the 16th century, part of the center of the city is delimited by the Portico di Ottavia , for the creation of the famous Roman Ghetto, where the Juifs of the city were constrained food.
Another Roman Republic emerges in 1849, in the current of the Révolutions of 1848. Two of the most influential figures of the Italian unification, Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi fought for the transitory republic, of which the first was named to triumvir with Carlo Armellini and Aurelio Saffi.
In particular the pope opposed the process of unification of Italy which was going to lead to the reunification of all the peninsula under the control of the Savoy. The return of the pope Black and white IX in Rome, with the assistance of the French troops, excludes Rome from the process of unification which resulted by the Second war of Italian independence and in the Expédition of the Thousand, following which all the Italian peninsula, except Rome and Venice, was reunified under the reign of the Savoy.
In 1870, began the war free-Prussian, and the French emperor Napoleon III was not any more able to protect the Papal States. The Italian army entered Rome (Prise of Rome) by the Black and white Porte the September 20th, after three hours of cannonade. Rome and Latium was annexed to the kingdom of Italy.
At the origin, the Italian government had offered to Pie IX to preserve the leonine City, but the Pope refused the offer because to subscribe to it would have meant to accept the sovereignty of Italy on its field. Pie IX declared itself captive in the Vatican, even if actually it were not prevented from entering nor to leave. The capital of the kingdom was officially transferred from Florence in Rome only in 1871.
The city that Savoy chose as capital of Italy was well far, in 1871, to have qualities of a European capital. Picturesque history, ruins and at will - but no trace of middle-class liberal, a nobility bigotte and ignorant, a crowd of priests and sisters who lived revenues of the ecclesiastical goods, people being unaware of and pauper (that one even with which Belli had set up the monument of its Sonnets) - less than 250.000 inhabitants, illiterates with 70%, Malaria and of the brigants to the accesses hardly crossed the Porte San Paolo , no industry with the modern direction of the term.
In thirty years, until in 1900, the population doubled, as well as the built city. One cannot deny that the new kingdom of Italy invested in Rome (not without speculating, and in that the classes town owners are not in remainder). But all in all, being a capital is a productive activity in oneself - and Rome used modern civilization and took again its growth.
Rome of today reflects the stratifications of the times of its long story, but it is also a large and modern metropolis. The vast historical center contains many vestiges of ancient Rome, some vestiges very few of the medieval time, many artistic treasures of the Renaissance, many churches and palate Baroque S, with much of examples of the Art nouveau, the Néoclassicisme, the Modernisme, the Rationalisme and other artistic styles of the XIXe and 20th century, the city can be regarded as a kind of 3000 years alive encyclopedia of Western art.
The historical center is identified with the limits of the antiques imperial walls. Certain zones were restructured following the reunification (1880-1910 Rome Umbertina), and some additions and adptations were carried out during the fascistic period, with the creation of the Via dei Fori Imperiali and Via della Conciliazione vis-a-vis the Vatican (for the construction of which most of the adjacent Borgo was destroyed; and the foundation of new districts (among which Eur (built for the World Fair of 1942), San Basilio , Garbatella , Cineville , Trullo , Quarticciolo , and, on the coast, the reorganization of Ostie) and the annexation of the villages bordering ( Labaro , Osteria del Curato , Fourthly Miglio , Capannelle , Pisana , Torrevecchia , Ottavia , Casalotti ). That involved an extension towards south-east, along the ways Tiburtine, Prenestine, Casiline, Appia Nouvelle. The city exceeded the course of the Aniene on a side and estétendue towards the sea of the other, in the North-West it included Monte Mario. These extensions were necessary to face the great population growth due to the centralization of the Italian State.
During the Second world war, Rome suffered from heavy bombardments (in particular with San Lorenzo ) and from battles ( Porta San Paolo , Storta ) and was declared “open Ville”. However Rome avoided a total destruction as with Berlin or Warsaw. The city fell to the hands from the Alliés on June 4th 1944. It was the first capital of a power of the Axis to fall.
After the war, Rome continued to extend because of increasing administration and from Italian industry, with the creation of new districts and suburbs. The current population is officially of approximately 2,8 million inhabitants, but the business days it is estimated that it exceeds 3,5 million. It is a notable growth compared with the past, indeed the number of inhabitants was of 138.000 in 1825, of 244.000 in 1871, 692.000 in 1921 and 1.600.000 in 1961. All around the city, created for itself a network of peripheral districts in continual expansion, which generated a series of problems social and economic.
Rome accommodated the Olympic Games of summer of 1960, using many ancient sites like the Villa Borghèse and the Thermes of Caracalla to accommodate them. For these Olympic Games of new structures were created, as the great Olympic stadium (which was still renovated thereafter and agarndi to accommodate the qualifications and the final of the Football world cup of 1990 of FIFA), the Olympic village (created to lodge the athletes and transformed after the plays into a residential district).
Many monuments of Rome was restructured by the Italian State and the the Vatican at the time of the Jubilé of 2000.
As a capital of the Italy, Rome accommodates the principal institutions of the nation, like the presidency of the Republic, the government and the ministries, the Parliament, principal the legal courses, and the diplomatic delegations of all the nations at the Italian State and of the Vatican (curiously, Rome accommodates in the Italian part of its territory, the Italian embassy at the Vatican, single case of an embassy installed inside the borders of its own country.). Many international institutions have their seat in Rome, institutions cultural, scientific or humane such as for example FAO.
Today, Rome is one of the most important tourist destinations of the world, thanks to its immense archaeological inheritance and with its artistic treasures, but also for its single traditions and the beauty of its sights and its villas. Among the most interesting curiosities, there are many museums (Musées Capitolins, Musée of the Vatican, Galerie Borghèse, and much of others), churches, constructions historical, the monuments and the ruins of the Roman Forum and Catacombes.
Among the hundreds of churches, Rome lodges the five principal basilicas of the Catholic church: Know-Pierre of the Vatican , Saint-Paul-out-the-walls , Major Sainte-Marie , Saint-Laurent-out-the-walls and Midsummer's Day of Lateran , seat of the Diocese of Rome and spiritual center of the Catholic church. The bishop of Rome is the Pape, assisted of a vicar (normally a cardinal ) for his pastoral activities. Rome is probably the single city in the world which contains a State (the the Vatican within its communal limits.
Rome of the popes and the Rebirth
The historians speak about a kind of exchange between the pontifical mediums and the Francs, the first conceding with the seconds, Pépin the Brief initially and Charlemagne then, the imperial charisma, which was to attach them to the Roman Empire “of Occident” for the defense of Christendom, and receiving in return the recognition of alleged “a donation of Constantin” in favor it temporal power of the Church on the town of Rome and the territories neighbouring.
Modern history
Rome during the unification of Italy
At the end of the XVIIIe and at the 19th century, the revolutionary movements which characterized this time did not exclude Rome. The government of the popes was stopped by the short existence of the Roman République (1798)) instituted by envoys of the Directoire. The political organization was inspired by the model of the French revolution.
The contemporary city
See too
Internal bonds
External bonds
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