Summary

SPQR = Senatus Populus Que Romanus - The Senate and the People of Rome

Chapter One: Cicero’s Finest Hour

SPQR: 63BCE

  • The history that this chapter starts in is 63BCE which is about 600 years after the city of Rome was founded (“Roman Kingdom”)
  • The first century BC is the earliest time period that we have contemporary accounts for - p. 22
    • It was also at this time that Roman writers themselves started studying earlier centuries of their history
  • 63BC is a significant year. The Romans faced an enemy within, a terrorist plot trying to overthrow the establishment. By a man named Catiline.
  • Cicero and Catiline were both hoping to get elected as Consul, the highest position in the Roman Republic. Cicero won while Catiline lost
  • Only men held political office in Ancient Rome - p. 32

Chapter Two: In The Beginning

  • The origin of Rome is the story of Romulus and his twin brother Remus. Their mother was a virgin priestess who claimed to have been raped by the god Mars and was thus pregnant with twins - p. 58
  • The king, her uncle, ordered her to throw her twins in the river (he viewed them as a threat to his kingship). And then a ‘lupa’ came and saved the twins. Lupa means wolf, but in informal terms it can also mean prostitute.
    • reminds me of Moses’ story
  • When the twins grew older, they wanted to establish their own state/kingdom but disagreed over which hill to start it on. Eventually Romulus killed his brother - p. 59
  • Romulus and Remus, the divine twins, is not a new myth/concept, like Cain and Abel - p. 64
  • Slavery in the Roman empire was quite progressive. They were given lots of freedom and manumission was common - p. 68
  • Rome was founded around 750BC - p. 71
  • Romulus was likely a fake person, a myth. The name of the city Rome is likely older so it’s likely that Romulus was a construction out of “Roma” - p. 71
  • Death of Romulus:
    • one story goes that he got lost in a storm then was turned into a God
    • the other story goes he was hacked to death by his senators

Chapter Three: The Kings of Rome

  • We know that the early rulers of Rome after and including Romulus were kings
  • many of the kings were of low-birth: son of a slave, from another town, a Greek, etc, i.e. not true ‘Romans’. But this goes to show that a ‘Roman’ can come from anywhere and have any background - p. 100
  • Religion in Rome was very different than traditional religion.
    • they did not believe in the Gods, rather they KNEW the Gods existed
    • there was no holy book or belief system
    • it was not concerned with morality or personal salvation, rather it focused on performance of rituals in order to keep a good relationship between Rome and the gods, in order to ensure Roman success and prosperity - p. 103
  • the Vestal Virgins were one of the few groups of female priests. They lived on the jobs. Remained chaste - p. 103
    • sounds like nuns
  • After the regal period of Roman history (time of kings), kings had a bad rep. No one liked kings, not the aristocrats nor the common people - p. 125
  • After the kings, Rome turned into a republic: 2 consuls shared equal power. They were elected by the public in a 1 year term - p. 127

Chapter Four: Rome’s Great Leap Forward

  • this chapter talks about how Rome went from a kingdom to a republic
  • the transition likely occurred over a period of decades if not centuries and involved some level of violence
  • the period of transition from regal to republic was a poor time for the Romans - p. 141
  • in 494BC, the plebeians (common people) started a ‘walk-out’ protest in order to gain more rights and have a say in politics. It worked - p. 147

Chapter Five: A Wider World

  • up to 25% of the Roman men served in the army each year which is why they had such a huge and successful army

Chapter Six: New Politics

  • Rome was the only place in the ancient Mediterranean where the state took responsibility for the regular food supplies of its citizens - p. 229 - 230

Chapter Seven: From Empire to Emperors

  • the empire created the emperors, not the other way around - p. 257
  • in 149BC, Rome established a criminal court with the aim to give foreigners compensation against extortion by their Roman rulers - p. 260
  • the assassination of Julius Caesar led to a civil war that ultimately lead to the establishment of a one-man rule of the empire - p. 296

Chapter Eight: The Home Front

  • the Romans invented the concept of dual citizenship, something that many modern nations uphold as well - p. 297
  • Roman marriage was simple and private and the state played no part in it, unlike in the modern world - p. 303
    • just a wedding. Wealthier romans may have had multiple weddings
  • the purpose of a roman marriage was to produce legitimate children
  • the role of woman was to be loyal to their husband, produce kids, take care of the home - p. 304
  • women in ancient Rome had more independence than women elsewhere at that time like in Greece - p. 307
    • they were never meant to be socially invisible. They regularly dined with the men publicly
  • women could own slaves, sell property, inherit, make a will, etc, but she had to have an appointed guardian to approve her decisions
    • this was reformed in the 1st century BC by Augustus who allowed women who had at least 3 children to be free of this guardian requirement - p. 309
  • it was normal for girls to marry as young as 10 - p. 311
  • slaves were part of the Roman family - p. 330
  • slavery was not a racial institution, slaves could come from anywhere
  • slaves were commonly freed - p. 330

this concludes the chapters on the Roman Republic, now we move onto the Roman Empire

Chapter Nine: The Transformations of Augustus

  • Augustus was the great-nephew of Caesar. Caesar had no legitimate children so he named Augustus his successor
  • Augustus served 50 years, the longest serving ruler in Roman history - p. 340
  • Augustus was the most successful ruler of Rome on the military front
  • Augustus paid his soldiers and employees well. He put on yearly entertainment shows for his people. These shows were very vast and complex - p. 365
  • One of the biggest reforms of Augustus was military. Previously the military was a semi-militia structure where soldiers were loyal to their commanders because their commanders provided for their retirement. Augustus started providing retirement/pensions for soldiers which removed the need for soldiers to be loyal to commanders - p. 371

Chapter Ten: Fourteen Emperors

  • emperor Gaius was assassinated by his bodyguards, most likely a personal vendetta. He was succeeded by his uncle Claudius. After Gaius’s death, the senators were discussing a possible revival of the republic, but when the bodyguards (The Praetorians) chose Claudius as emperor, those talks quickly dwindled
  • Claudius bribed the Praetorians for their loyalty, but later executed the ones responsible for Gaius’s assassination
    • you must punish disloyalty, no matter who it was disloyal to
  • the 14 emperors:
    • Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, Commodus - p. 388
    • emperors in bold was the period of “the good emperors”
  • succession of the emperor often times happened by way of adoption because child death was very common
    • young adults or teenagers were the ones often to be adopted
  • after Julius Caesar, turning dead emperors into Gods became common

Chapter Eleven: The Haves and Have-Nots

  • earning a wage from labor was viewed in a negative light. The desired state of humanity was ‘having control over one’s time’ - p. 441
    • it was preferred to earn money via your estate
  • children started to work as soon as they physically were able to - p. 448
    • only applies to peasant children. Wealthy children didn’t work, instead they received an education - p. 449
  • most people worked until they died, if they could. Retirement wasn’t a thing unless you were in the army - p. 448
  • people’s jobs were their identity. Often they put their job title on their tombstones - p. 450
  • local trade associations were a big thing. Basically the equivalent of what we have today in some fields (“Ontario college of psychologists”, etc) - p. 453
  • the elite in society were often anxious about what the rest of society got up to outside of work.
    • peasants, outside of work, often visited taverns and bars
  • many emperors tried to impose restriction on bars - p. 455-456
  • there was no police service - p. 463
  • the question is: if there was so much economic disparity between classes, why wasn’t there much conflict?
    • answer: there was probably more conflict than what was recorded, but it was probably more ‘guerilla warfare’ rather than outright revolt - p. 468
  • funny paragraph about shitting page 471
  • there was no movements to change the societal structure, people viewed poverty as a negative thing so they tried to get richer, they didn’t try to change the system. Similarly, slaves tried to gain freedom, not abolish slavery - p. 472

Chapter Twelve - Rome Outside Rome

  • Pliny the younger, born 61AD, was governor of a province. He regularly sent letters to the emperor Trajan
  • the most famous of their letters was about Christians - p. 476
    • this was the earliest surviving discussion on Christianity outside of Christian and Jewish sources - p. 477
  • the Roman empire hardly made any attempts to impose their cultural norms on others or to eradicate local traditions - p. 489
    • exceptions exist like Christians, etc
  • rebellions rarely occurred in the Roman Empire - p. 511
  • it’s impossible to say when Christianity broke off from Judaism (it started as a Jewish sect) - p. 517
  • Why was Rome so harsh against Christianity? Because there was an irreconcilable clash between them. Roman religion was polytheistic and Rome was open to other ‘pagan’ religions, sometimes even adding foreign gods to their own pantheon. Christianity was the complete opposite - p. 519
    • so why weren’t they harsh to Judaism? Jews embraced Roman culture. The Jewish god had a homeland, Judaea, as did all the rest of the gods in the pantheon. But the Christian god did not.
    • Christianity preached ideas that were anti-Roman, like poverty is good
  • The success of Christianity is due to the Roman Empire - how large it was, communication between provinces, cultural mix, etc, this made the message of Christianity spread quite easily - p. 520
  • It’s ironic that the only religion the Roman Empire ever attempted to eradicate was the one whose success was caused by the Roman Empire and which grew up entirely in the empire

Main Idea of the Book

This book aims to provide a comprehensive overview of Ancient Rome