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# Roman Republic

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The Roman Republic (Latin Respublica; from res, "affairs," and publica, "public") lasted as a representative government from 509 BCE until the civil wars connected with the end of Julius Caesar's life (died 44 BCE).

The city of Rome is located on the [Tiber River]? very near the west coast of Italy. It was at the northernmost border of the territory in which the Latin language was spoken and at the southern edge of Etrurian, the territory in which the Etruscan language was spoken.

Rome was, according to tradition, founded in 753 BCE by Romulus? and Remus?, twin sons of the mortal woman Rhea Silvia and the god Mars. They were also descendents of Aeneas? and the Trojan refugees whose story Virgil later told in his epic? poem the Aeneid?. Romulus killed Remus, and became the first king of Rome. Most of the following 6 kings had Etruscan? names, suggesting that members of the mature Etruscan civilization to the north of Rome dominated Rome. The expulsion of the king and the founding of the Republic in 509 BCE is sometimes presented as the breaking away of a Latin-speaking population from the control of an Etruscan ruling family.

Livy's? version of the establishment of the Republic the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (superbus, "the proud") had a thoroughly unpleasant son, Sextus Tarquinius, who raped a Roman noblewoman named Lucretia?. Lucretia compelled her family to take action by gathering the men, telling them what happened, and killing herself. They then were compelled to avenge her, and led an uprising that drove the Tarquins out of Rome to take refuge in Etruria.

Lucretia's husband Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus and Lucius Junius Brutus? were elected as the first two consuls, the chief officers of the new Republic. The Brutus who assasinated Julius Caesar was a descendent of the first Brutus.

The people of Rome were divided into patricians? and plebeians?. These words have taken on such different connoations of wealth and ordinariness in modern English that they must be examined in their Roman context. The two classes were ancestral and inherited. One's class was fixed by birth. One could move from one to another by adoption, like the political operator Clodius in the late Republic, who managed to have himself adopted into a plebeian branch of his own family for political purposes, but it was rare.

The classes had little to do with wealth. Patricians had in the early Republic monopolized all political offices and probably most of the wealth, but there are always signs of wealthy plebeians in the historical record. By the 2nd century BCE the classes had meaning predominantly in religious functions - many priesthoods were restricted to patricians.

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see Roman Empire

- political offices of the Republic

  Consul
  Praetor?
  Aedile?
  Quaestor?
  Tribune?
  Censor?
  [Pontifex Maximus]?
  Cursus honorum

- figures of the Republic

  Early Republic
    Lucretia?
    [Lucius Junius Brutus]?
    Cincinnatus?
    [Appius Claudius the Censor]?

  [Punic Wars]?
    Hannibal? - see Carthage?
    [Scipio Africanus]?
    [Scipio Aemilianus]?
    [Cato the Censor]?

  Late Republic
    [Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus]?
    [Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]?
    Julius Caesar
    [C. Marius]?
    [L. Cornelius Sulla]?
    [Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus]?
    [Marcus Licinius Crassus]?
    Marcus Tullius Cicero

- Latin Literature of the Republic

  Catullus
  Cicero
  Plautus?
  Terence?
  Ennius?
  [Fabius Pictor]?
  Naevius?

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Last edited August 10, 2001 1:07 pm (diff)
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