Comment: What do you remember about the Roman Empire from 6th Grade?
Rome began near the center of what is now Italy. From about 700 to 500 B.C., the peninsula of Rome was home to three groups: The Greeks, the Etruscrans, and the Latins. The City of Rome itself was located on the Tiber River.
The Italian Peninusla is a little warmer than the state of Missouri. Not much snow falls around the city of Rome, but the winter months are typically cool and rainy which helps the local farmland. The Appnnines mountains protected the town from harsh weather and maybe more importantly foreign invasion. Just like any river, the Tiber river enabled the Romans to engage in trade.
For about 200 years Rome was a kingdom. Most of the kings were related to the Etruscan, it were these people that proably had the biggest impact on the early Roman civilization. Like most kings in Ancient time, these Roman leaders rules with a harsh hand. The Last king to rule was Tarquin the Proud. He improved the sewer system of Rome and gets credited for creating the Circus Maximus (see picture below)
However, those who rule by a harsh hand often die by the harsh hand, Tarquin was assassinated around 570 B.C.
Roman Govt.
The Romans established a form of government called a republic. In a republic, the power rests with citizens who then vote to select their leaders (sound familiar?) All free-born males had the right to vote, but women had few rights and slaves for the most part didn't have rights at all. Here is Rome's first shot at a system of Laws called the Twelve Tables of Rome:
| Twelve Tables of Rome (Around 450 B.C.): Table 1 |
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Table I.
________________________________________________________________1. If anyone summons a man before the magistrate, he must go. If the man summoned does not go, let the one summoning him call the bystanders to witness and then take him by force. 2. If he shirks or runs away, let the summoner lay hands on him. 6-9. When the litigants settle their case by compromise, let the magistrate announce it. If they do not compromise, let them state each his own side of the case, in the comitium of the forum before noon. Afterwards let them talk it out together, while both are present. After noon, in case either party has failed to appear, let the magistrate pronounce judgment in favor of the one who is present. If both are present the trial may last until sunset but no later. 2. He whose witness has failed to appear may summon him by loud calls before his house every third day. 1. One who has confessed a debt, or against whom judgment has been pronounced, shall have thirty days to pay it in. After that forcible seizure of his person is allowed. The creditor shall bring him before the magistrate. Unless he pays the amount of the judgment or some one in the presence of the magistrate interferes in his behalf as protector the creditor so shall take him home and fasten him in stocks or fetters. He shall fasten him with not less than fifteen pounds of weight or, if he choose, with more. If the prisoner choose, he may furnish his own food. If he does not, the creditor must give him a pound of meal daily; if he choose he may give him more. 3. Against a foreigner the right in property shall be valid forever. 1. A dreadfully deformed child shall be quickly killed. 2. If a father sell his son three times, the son shall be free from his father. 5. A child born after ten months since the father's death will not be admitted into a legal inheritance. 1. Females should remain in guardianship even when they have attained their majority. 1. When one makes a bond and a conveyance of property, as he has made formal declaration so let it be binding. 1. Let them keep the road in order. If they have not paved it, a man may drive his team where he likes. 9. Should a tree on a neighbor's farm be bent crooked by the wind and lean over your farm, you may take legal action for removal of that tree. 10. A man might gather up fruit that was falling down onto another man's farm. 2. If one has maimed a limb and does not compromise with the injured person, let there be retaliation. If one has broken a bone of a freeman with his hand or with a cudgel, let him pay a penalty of three hundred coins. If he has broken the bone of a slave, let him have one hundred and fifty coins. If one is guilty of insult, the penalty shall be twenty-five coins. 3. If one is slain while committing theft by night, he is rightly slain. 4. If a patron shall have devised any deceit against his client, let him be accursed. 10. Any person who destroys by burning any building or heap of corn deposited alongside a house shall be bound, scourged, and put to death by burning at the stake provided that he has committed the said misdeed with malice aforethought; but if he shall have committed it by accident, that is, by negligence, it is ordained that he repair the damage or, if he be too poor to be competent for such punishment, he shall receive a lighter punishment. 23. A person who had been found guilty of giving false witness shall be hurled down from the Tarpeian Rock. 26. No person shall hold meetings by night in the city. 4. The penalty shall be capital for a judge or arbiter legally appointed who has been found guilty of receiving a bribe for giving a decision. 5. Treason: he who shall have roused up a public enemy or handed over a citizen to a public enemy must suffer capital punishment. 6. Putting to death of any man, whosoever he might be unconvicted is forbidden. 1. None is to bury or burn a corpse in the city. 3. The women shall not tear their faces nor wail on account of the funeral. 1. Marriages should not take place between plebeians and patricians. These days a few of punishments that are mentioned in the 12 tables, like being thrown to your death from the Tarpeian rock, would be considered cruel and unusual by the U.S. Constitution, but the laws were a valid attempt at organizing and managing a ever-growing empire. The Twelve Tables is also an excellent example of both civil and criminal law. Along with laws, the Roman republic wanted to limit the power that one could hold. At the head of the government were consuls. However, their power was limited. The could rule only for about a year, and the Roman senate acted as a check to the consuls power. From this ancient idea the United States came up with a similar procedure of checks and balances to make sure one branch of government does not have more power than the other. 
The Roman Army didn't really begin as a powerful large army, at the beginning the Roman legions looked alot like the part-time Greek army, with farmers returning to their fields after a quick summer campaign of battles. As the Roman Empire expanded these soldiers were transformed into full time warriors. The life of a Roman soldier disciplined. Roman soldiers were trained to march twenty miles a day, under a burden of eighty pounds. Roman Soldiers had the skills and abilities to swim rivers, to climb mountains, to penetrate forests, and to encounter every kind of danger. The soldiers of the Roman army provided the labor to build walls, forts and roads. In fact Roman Soldiers built over 25,0000 miles of roads, the majority of which were in Western Europe. Roman soldiers built numerous forts - the purpose of these constructions were to act as fortified bases. These forts were built as defenses and as power bases. Wooden stockades were erected and surrounded by ditches wherever Roman soldiers camped and whenever Roman Forts were built. Manpower, organisation and pre-fabricated forts (kind of like pieces of mobile homes that you see on the highway) enabled the Romans to build Roman Forts quickly and efficiently. His pay was only one denarius daily. Marriage for Roman Soldiers was discouraged.
Roman soldiers fighting in the Punic War...Lego style |
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