The Roman Empire & the Pax Romana

1. Augustus and the Founding of the Empire (27 BC–AD 14)

After defeating Antony and Cleopatra at Actium (31 BC), the young Octavian was the sole master of the Roman world. In 27 BC, in a carefully staged return of power to the Senate and people, he was granted the title Augustus ("the revered or majestic one") and, in practice, unbounded authority: he kept command of the greatest provinces and armies, and held the tribunician power that made his person sacrosanct and gave him control of legislation. He summed up his achievement in the words preserved in his Res Gestae (the "deeds" inscribed on his mausoleum): he "found Rome a city of clay and left it a city of marble." Augustus ended nearly a century of civil war, reformed the army into a standing professional force (creating the Praetorian Guard and the permanent legions), extended and secured the frontiers (west to Spain, north to the Danube and Rhine; his general Varus lost three legions at the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9 to the German leader Arminius), reorganised the provinces, and launched a vast programme of building, religious revival and moral legislation. His reign, and his settlement of the state — the Principate — established the pattern of Roman imperial government for centuries. When he died in AD 14 at the age of 75, the empire was secure and his family, the Julio-Claudians, were firmly in control (World History Encyclopedia, "Augustus," worldhistory.org/Augustus/).

2. The Julio-Claudian Dynasty (AD 14–68)

Augustus was succeeded by members of the Julio-Claudian house, who combined his genius with his family’s fatal instability:

• Tiberius (AD 14–37), Augustus’ stepson and a competent but gloomy administrator, who withdrew to Capri and ended his reign amid suspicion and treason trials.
• Caligula (AD 37–41), the popular young emperor whose supposed madness and cruelty made him a byword for tyranny; assassinated by the Praetorians.
• Claudius (AD 41–54), the stuttering, scholarly uncle of Caligula, chosen emperor by the guards almost by accident, who proved a capable reformer and administrator: he completed the conquest of Britain (AD 43) and extended Roman citizenship.
• Nero (AD 54–68), the last of the line, at first promising, then infamous for the Great Fire of Rome (AD 64), his persecution of Christians, and his artistic self-indulgence; reputedly fiddling while Rome burned. He was driven to suicide in AD 68, plunging Rome into civil war (World History Encyclopedia, "Nero," worldhistory.org/nero/).

It was during Nero’s reign that the great fire of Rome (AD 64) destroyed much of the city, and Nero (blamed, and in turn blaming the Christians) rebuilt it grandly; that the Apostles Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome; and that the Jewish revolt, which would end in the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem (AD 70), began.

3. The Year of the Four Emperors and the Flavian Dynasty (AD 68–96)

Nero’s death unleashed a brief but devastating civil war, the Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69), in which Galba, Otho and Vitellius rose and fell in quick succession before Vespasian, commander in the east, won the throne and founded the Flavian dynasty. Vespasian (AD 69–79) restored order, reformed the finances, and began the Colosseum (the Flavian Amphitheatre). His son Titus (AD 79–81) oversaw the completion of the Colosseum and the eruption of Vesuvius (AD 79), which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. Titus’ brother Domitian (AD 81–96) ruled efficiently but tyrannically, and his assassination ended the dynasty (World History Encyclopedia, "Vespasian," worldhistory.org/vespasian/).

4. The Five Good Emperors & the "Golden Age" (AD 96–180)

With the murder of Domitian, the Senate chose Nerva (AD 96–98), an elderly senator, and thereafter a remarkable series of capable, adoptive emperors — the "Five Good Emperors" — ruled the empire at its greatest extent and prosperity:

• Trajan (AD 98–117), the Spanish-born soldier-emperor considered the best of the emperors for justice and military skill; he conquered Dacia (modern Romania) and made conquests in the east (including Mesopotamia) that carried the empire to its greatest territorial extent (c. AD 117), built the Column of Trajan in his Forum, and established the alimenta (a system of welfare for children).
• Hadrian (AD 117–138), Trajan’s cousin and successor, who consolidated rather than expanded the empire, travelled throughout it, built Hadrian’s Wall across northern Britain to mark the frontier, and rebuilt the Pantheon in Rome with its magnificent dome.
• Antoninus Pius (AD 138–161), the peaceable administrator under whom the empire prospered and the Antonine Wall was built in Scotland.
• Marcus Aurelius (AD 161–180), the philosopher-emperor, Stoic author of the Meditations, who spent his reign defending the empire against Parthia and the Germanic tribes along the Danube, and whose death (AD 180) is usually taken as the end of the Pax Romana. His son Commodus, who succeeded him, such a disastrous ruler that it is often said the empire — which had prospered under adoption — fell into ruin once an own son inherited the throne (World History Encyclopedia, "Marcus Aurelius," worldhistory.org/Marcus_Aurelius/).

Under these emperors the empire enjoyed its golden age: a Pax Romana of two centuries’ relative peace, unbroken frontiers, flourishing cities and trade, and a blossoming of literature, law, engineering and art — the age of the historians Tacitus and Suetonius, the biographer Plutarch, the poet Juvenal and the satirist Lucian, and of the great technical achievements of Roman roads, aqueducts, bridges and monumental architecture that still astonish us today (World History Encyclopedia, "Roman Empire," worldhistory.org/Roman_Empire/).

5. The Structure of the Early Empire

The Principate was a monarchy in republican dress. The emperor (princeps, "first citizen") held, cumulatively: proconsular imperium over the frontier provinces and their armies; tribunician power (renewed annually) that made his person inviolable and gave him a veto and the right to propose laws; the office of pontifex maximus (chief priest, head of the state religion); and, in time, the censorship over morals and citizenship. The Senate, retaining great prestige and the administration of the peaceful provinces, was reduced to a subordinate role; the Praetorian Guard protected (and sometimes murdered) the emperor. The empire was administered by an increasingly professional civil service, and its roughly 50–60 million inhabitants enjoyed a shared framework of Roman law, Latin (in the west) and Greek (in the east) culture, and the protection of the legions. The Roman army — professional legions of citizen-soldiers and auxiliaries of provincials — numbered perhaps 300,000, garrisoned the frontiers, built roads, and provided a path of advancement for provincials, who in time rose to rule the empire itself (World History Encyclopedia, "Roman Army," worldhistory.org/Roman_Army/).

6. Roman Culture in the High Empire

The early empire was the great age of Roman civilisation. In literature the reigns of Augustus produced the "Golden Age" of Latin poetry — Virgil (Aeneid), Horace, Ovid, Propertius and Tibullus — while the historians Livy, Tacitus and Suetonius chronicled Rome’s past and its emperors. In law, the great jurists built on the Twelve Tables and the Praetor’s Edict the mature Roman legal science that would culminate in the Corpus Juris of Justinian. In engineering and architecture, the Romans perfected the arch, the vault and concrete, building the aqueducts, the great baths (Caracalla, Diocletian), the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Appian Way, the network of roads that bound the empire, and the magnificent Trajan’s Column. In philosophy, Stoicism flourished (Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius). And throughout the empire the cities — Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, and thousands more — carried Roman urban life, law and culture from Britain to the Euphrates (World History Encyclopedia, "Roman Empire," worldhistory.org/Roman_Empire/).

6b. The Provinces and the Citizens of the Empire

The Roman Empire was administered through provinces — by the early empire some 30–40, increased to around 50 by later times — governed by senatorial governors (proconsuls, propraetors) in the peaceful provinces and by imperial legates and procurators in the frontier provinces where legions were stationed. The empire embraced an extraordinary diversity: the Latin-speaking west (Italy, Gaul, Spain, Britain, the Danubian lands), the Greek-speaking east (Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt), and the semitic and Egyptian populations of the Levant and North Africa. It was held together by Roman law, the road and sea network, the army, a single currency, and increasingly by Roman citizenship — which, after the Constitutio Antoniniana of AD 212, was extended to virtually all free inhabitants. The provincials themselves rose through the ranks: slaves and freedmen could become wealthy and influential; provincial aristocrats entered the Senate and the equestrian order; and in the 2nd century the emperors themselves began to come from the provinces (Trajan and Hadrian from Spain, Antoninus Pius from Gaul, Septimius Severus from Africa). The "Romanization" of the provinces — the spread of Latin, Roman law, cities, baths, amphitheatres and Roman citizenship — was one of the most successful feats of administration in history, and it is why the languages, laws and civilisation of Rome still underlie the nations of modern Europe (World History Encyclopedia, "Roman Empire," worldhistory.org/Roman_Empire/).

6c. Roman Religion, the Imperial Cult and the Rise of Christianity

Beneath the Roman peace, religion took new forms. The traditional Roman gods were joined by the cults of the east — Isis, Cybele, Mithras (popular with soldiers) — and by philosophy-religions (Stoicism, the mysteries). And the emperors, following the Hellenistic rulers, came to be honoured in an imperial cult: temples and priests of Rome and Augustus arose in the provinces, and loyalty to the emperor found expression in worship of him and of Roma, the personified city. This cult, a bond of unity over the far-flung provinces, was generally harmless — except when it set the followers of an exclusive new faith at odds with the state. That faith was Christianity, which from the small Judean movement of the 1st century grew, through the letters of Paul and the journeys of the apostles, into a church spread across the Greek-speaking east and the Latin west. Because Christians refused to sacrifice to the gods and to the emperor, they were from time to time persecuted — Nero blamed and executed them after the Great Fire of AD 64, and later emperors (Decius, Valerian, Diocletian) mounted systematic persecutions. Yet the church, united by its bishops and its faith, grew steadily; by the 3rd century it was a formidable institution within the empire, and in the 4th century Constantine’s adoption of Christianity (see Vol. 6) would make it, in time, the religion of the empire — transforming both the church and the future of Europe (World History Encyclopedia, "Early Christianity," worldhistory.org/Christianity/).

6d. Economy, Cities and the Standard of Life in the Pax Romana

The Pax Romana brought an era of economic prosperity and urban growth unequalled before modern times. Trade flowed along the roads and sea lanes: grain from Egypt and Africa to Rome; wine and olive oil from Italy, Spain and Gaul; slaves from the east; luxury goods (silk, spices, ivory, gems) from the east along the trade routes and the newly opened sea route to India; and manufactures from the great industrial cities. The cities — Rome (by the 1st century BC already the largest city in the ancient world, approaching a million inhabitants), Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus, Carthage, and hundreds of provincial towns — were centres of administration, trade and culture, adorned with forums, temples, basilicas, baths, theatres, amphitheatres and aqueducts, and governed by their local aristocracies with Roman sanction. Ordinary life, however, remained hard for most: the majority of the empire’s tens of millions were peasants and rural labourers, and the wealth was concentrated in the hands of a small elite and the enormous slave population. Rome itself fed its urban poor through the free grain dole (the annona) and diverted them with the games — the gladiatorial shows and chariot-races of the Circus and Colosseum (the famous panem et circenses, "bread and circuses," of the satirist Juvenal). This combination — of prosperity, city-life, and a widening gulf between rich and poor — characterised the high empire and contained the strains that would surface in the crisis of the 3rd century (World History Encyclopedia, "Roman Economy," worldhistory.org/Roman_Economy/).

7. Selected Sources & Further Reading

I found Rome a city of clay but left it a city of marble.— Augustus (recorded in Suetonius, Life of Augustus)