Rome and the Western Mediterranean · Part 6 · The fall of the Republic · C1
The Crisis of the Republic
Part 6 of Rome and the Western Mediterranean: the empire made a few Romans enormously rich and many poor, and the Republic began to tear itself apart. Reformers were murdered, generals marched on Rome, Italians fought for citizenship, and slaves led by Spartacus rose against their masters. Reporting verbs and their patterns (promised to, warned that, accused him of, urged them to, denied doing), with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, the century in which Rome’s Republic began to die.
Senators with clubs, generals with armies, and an empire too large for a city’s laws. The slaves tried to escape it.
And a Roman general came to Jerusalem in those years, too.
By 133 BCE, many Roman farmers had lost their land to great estates worked by slaves. Two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, tried to give public land to the poor. Both were killed by their opponents, with hundreds of their supporters.
The general Marius recruited poor men into the army; they depended on their general for land when they retired, and became loyal to him rather than to the state. Rome’s Italian allies, who fought in its wars without being citizens, rebelled in the Social War (91–88 BCE) and won citizenship. Then the general Sulla did something no Roman had done: he marched his army on Rome itself.
From 73 to 71 BCE, a Thracian gladiator called Spartacus led a great revolt of slaves across Italy. In 63 BCE, the general Pompey made Syria a Roman province and captured Jerusalem. The Republic’s old rules could no longer hold its generals.
Or try our free games and lessons.