Roman Empire Textbook Notes

Assassination of another Caesar: page 101

• There still was a stubborn core of senators who were disturbed by his successors.
• In 44 BC, Caesar scored a vote from the Senate making him dictator for life.
• He showed no sign of giving up his high position.
• Caesar had become a Greek-style tyrant.
• On the Ides of March, Caesar appeared in the Senate house, unarmed and unguarded, according to his custom, and a crowd of senators struck him down with their daggers.
• This sparked a Civil War.
• Octavian Caesar and Mark Antony joined forces against Caesar's assassins; forming another triumvirate together with a lesser warlord, Marcus Lepidus; eliminated opponents in a new reign of terror in Rome; and defeated Cassius and Brutus in a battle in Greece.
• They declared to restore the Republic, but they also had the Senate proclaim Julius Caesar a "Divine Being"
• Caesar became the founding hero, whose memory would inspire all supreme ruler of Rome.
• Octavian based in Rome, Lepidus in North Africa, and Antony in Alexandria.
• Their cooperation turned into rivalry, when the balance of power began swinging toward Octavian. Antony's passionate love affair with Cleopatra made him unpopular in Rome.
• Octavian pushed Lepidus out of power and successfully began expanding Rome's frontiers northward toward Danube.
• In 31 BC, the rulers of the two halves of Rome's empire went into a war. Octavian's forces defeated those of Antony in a decisive naval battle near Actium off the western coast of Greece.
• Within a year, both Cleopatra and Antony committed suicide. Octavian was now the supreme warlord-third to rule Rome, and the one who finally managed to turn military dictatorship into legitimate and permanent monarchy.

Page 103- The Roman Peace:

• Augustus's new system kept many features of the Roman republic, allowed subject peoples a good deal of self-rule, and brought Rome's destabilizing expansion to a halt.
• Roman achievements in these fields eventually equaled or surpassed those of the Greeks and became just as much an inspiration and model for future Western development.
• Latin was the new native language of Egypt and conquered barbarian lands.
• The era of the Roman Peace was one of the massive social, religious, and cultural changes that would form a new pattern of Western Civilization.

  The Rule of the Emperors- page 104

• After Octavian's triumph at Actium, the Senate conferred on him as a new title, Augustus.
• Augustus intended to stay in power, reconstruct the failed government of the Roman city-state, and keep its empire together.
• In 27 BC, it was the end of the Republic and the beginning of the rule of the Roman emperors.
• He again, proclaimed the goal of restoring the republic, but was actually set on making himself the supreme ruler.
• From time to time, he turned served turns in leading magistracies such as consuls, censor, and supreme pontiff, through the only one that he continuously held, and used as the legal basis of his power, was that of tribune of the people.
• Augustus was confirmed as commander in chief of the armed forces.
• On his way to supreme power, he had proscribed and put to death many of his opponents in the Senate and replaced them with his friends and allies. He could afford consult the senate frequently and give it genuine government power.
• Peoples assemblies, lost the power to elect representatives and make laws. They had lost confidence in the traditional system and trusted Augustus to rule in their interests as they had trusted Caesar before him.
• Augustus still summoned the assemblies from time to time, but later emperors did not bother to.
• Augustus was careful not to bring back the mixed government that had once been the source of its stability and vitality.
• After Augustus won supreme power, Greek cities in Anatolia, began building shrines and sacrificing to Rome and Augustus- worshiping Rome itself as a divine, and Augustus as a god-sent human being who embodied Rome's beneficent rule.
• `It soon became custom for emperors to be worshipped as divine beings.
• Augustus was called Father of the Fatherland.
• He was the first of seven emperors to have his wife honored.
• The rule of one man was easier to accept if they could think of him as worthy of divine worship as well as human honor, and as a traditional paterfamilias married to a traditional matron. Augustus's claim to divinity and his fatherly moralizing strengthened his own rule, as well as the whole new system of monarchy that he founded.
• He began a series of large scale reforms. He brought the system of government appointments under his personal control.
• Augustus showed respect for local institutions and encouraged provincial leaders to fulfill their responsibilities.
• Corrupt and oppressive government was still common enough, but seemingly not so systematic and outrageous as under the Republic. 
• By the end of his rule, all his soldiers were volunteers, serving for fixed terms of 25 years in permanent units.
• In this way, Augustus and his successors broke with the Roman tradition of citizen-soldiers to create the world's first professional standing army.
• He kept part of his army- the legion sized praetorian Guard- in Rome to back up his power at the empire's core and the other forces to the frontiers of the empire to continue Rome' s tradition of seemingly endless conquest.
• Augustus turned against any further expansion, a change that had momentous long-term consequences for Rome's empire.
• Augustus was convinced that if Rome's new peace and stability were to last, the changes he had made in its new government system must continue. He must settle in advance on someone to replace him.
• Augustus finally settled on Tiberius, Livia's son from her first marriage. He adopted Tiberius as his own son so as to give, him necessary hereditary standing, he got the Senate to grant Tiberius the same power as the commander in chief that he held himself.
• Augustus died in 14 AD.
• Nero was overthrown after a tyrannical reign, but by that time, Rome had become used to a one-man rule that no one seems to have thought of restoring the republic.
• After civil war among rival army commanders in 69 AD, the winner was Vespasian who founded another dynasty, the Flavians.
• Near the end of the first century, the Flavian dynasty came to an end following the assassination of another tyrannical emperor, Vespasian's son, Domitian.
• The Senate appointed as princeps one of its own members, the aged leading Nerva. Since Nerva had no sons, to avoid another civil war, he adopted a leading general, Trajan, who took over peacefully upon Nerva's death in 98 AD.
• Rulers for much of the second century happened to have no sons by blood who survived them, as they too, adopted sons whom they also designated as their successors.
• This custom of "adoption and designation" produced a long series of outstanding emperors.
• At the end of the second century, the line of emperors by adoption and designation came to an end when Commodus, Marcus Aurelius's son by blood, outlived him, ruled irresponsibly, and was eventually murdered. Civil war brought a new dynasty to power- this one founded by a capable and ruthless general of North African origin, Septimius Severus.
• Augustus's governing structure endured until the troubled times of the late third century. The system always righted itself.