Assassination and Another Caesar

Assassination and another Caesar

• Romans at home and aboard applauded Caesar's deeds, but of senators who were disturbed by his successors 
• Caesar had become a Greek-style tyrant 
• And there was a traditional and honorable way of getting rid of tyrants 
• Caesar appeared in the Senate house, unarmed and unguarded, according to his custom, and crowd of senators struck him down with their daggers
• Caesar's murder did not restore the Republic; instead, his death produced yet another crop of warlords and yet more bouts of civil war
• Mark Antony and Octavian were rival loyalists of Caesar, and each managed to attract some of Caesar's legions, which they used to fight a brutal war against each other in Italy
• The partners then divided the Roman world, with Octavian based in Rome, Lepidus in North Africa, and Mark Antony in Alexandria 
• Finally, in 31 B.C., the rulers of the two halves of Rome's empire went to war 

Chapter 7: The Roman Peace

• 30 B.C.- 235 A.D. 
• "The era of the Roman Peace was one of massive social, religious, and cultural changes that would form a new pattern of western civilization."
• Augustus's new system of government 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. The result was two hundred years of stability that modern scholars call the Roman Peace 
• Within the empire, the Roman version of Greco-Roman civilization prevailed in the Western territories, and the Greek version was dominant in the East 
• In many ways, the dominant international civilization undermined the traditions of other peoples of the empire
• Hadrian's Wall: constructed at the order of the emperor Hadrian between A.D. 122 and 128

LO 1- The Rule of the Emperors

• Soon after Octavian's triumph at Actium, the Senate conferred on him a new title 
• At the time, Augustus did his best to make it seem as if no such historic change was under way
• Unlike Sulla and Caesar, Augustus refused the offer of a long-term dictatorship 
• Princeps: "first citizen," a traditional Roman name for prominent leaders who were considered indispensable to the Republic that came to be used by Augustus and other early emperors 
• By arrangement with the Senate in 27 B.C., Augustus was confirmed as commander in chief 
• The people's assemblies, on the other hand, lost what remained of their power to elect magistrates and make laws
• In spite of avoiding Caesar's ope exercise of supreme power, Augustus followed the dictator's even more arrogant-seeming example of accepting religious worship of himself 
• After Augustus won supreme power, Greek cities in Antolia began building shrines and sacrificing to "Rome and Augustus" 
• Augustus also acquired the tile of Father of the Fatherland and took seriously the father duty of supervising the behavior of his "household"- especially of the upper classes in Rome
• Of course, there was a good deal of make-believe in all this
• Still, the Romans already believed that there was something divine about every paterfamilias and every matron; add they regarded community life as a kind of large-scale family life and most other peoples of the empire had similar beliefs 
• Ensuring peace and stability involved not only changing the way the Roman city-state worked, but also reorganizing the whole of Rome's empire
• First, he brought the system of government appointments under his personal control
• Second, Augustus showed respect for local institutions and encouraged provincial leaders to fulfill their responsibilities 
• Third, Augustus reorganized the army to ensure the loyalty of the rank-and-file soldiers
• Then Augustus gradually brought about his single most drastic reform 
• In this way, Augustus and his successors broke with the Roman tradition of citizen-soldiers to crate the world's first professional standing army 
• Even after Augustus's troop cuts, his army was still far larger than the forces that Romes had usually maintained in the past 
• "Augustus and his successors broke with the Roman tradition of citizen-solider to create the world's first professional army."
• Augustus was convinced that if Rome's new peace and stability were to last, the changes he had made in its government system must continue after his death 
• Having no sons of his own, Augustus finally settled of Tiberius 
• At first, the emperors who succeeded Tiberius during the first century A.D. emerged usually after vicious family infighting 
• Near the end of the first century, the Flavian dynasty, too, came to an end following the assassination of another tyrannical emperor 
• Subsequent rulers for much of the second century happened to have no sons by blood who survived them, so they, too, adopted sons whom they also proclaimed as their successor 
• caesar: the imperial title given to the designated successor of a reigning emperor 
• augustus: the imperial title given to a reigning emperor
• Toward the end of the second century, however, 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  
• In this way, Augustus's governing structure endured until the troubled times of the late third century 
• Roman Peace: a term used to refer to the relative stability and prosperity that Roman rule brought to the Mediterranean world and much of western Europe during the first and second centuries A.D.