Making of the West Peoples and Cultures Value Edition 5th Edition By Hunt - Test Bank

·      The importance of tradition in Roman morality: Romans believed that the best values were those that were “tested by time,” whereas those that were new were risky. In particular, the Romans emphasized virtus (“manly virtue”), which included wisdom, moral purity, strength, loyalty, and courage. As the Roman poet Lucilius defined it, virtus meant putting the nation’s interests first, one’s parents’ interests second, and one’s own interests third. Virtus entailed defending good people and serving as an enemy to those who were bad. Fides (“faithfulness” or fidelity) meant keeping one’s obligations regardless of the cost. Women were expected to remain virgins before marriage and to remain monogamous afterward; men were expected to pay their debts and keep their word. Romans were also expected to show respect and devotion to the gods, maintain self-control, and limit displays of emotion. Respect also entailed displaying deference to one’s superiors. The Romans believed that society was naturally hierarchical and had to remain so in order to be just. Those born into the best families automatically deserved more respect than those born into lower families. Even so, Roman aristocrats’ high standing did not give them carte blanche to behave improperly; they were expected to serve the community faithfully, putting the community’s interests above their own.

·      Roman religion: The Roman deities were similar to those of the Greeks; the behavior of Roman citizens toward their gods was similar to the behavior of Greeks toward their own gods. There was a one-to-one correspondence between many Roman and Greek deities: Zeus was Jupiter, Hera was Juno, Minerva was Athena, etc. These gods served to protect. They helped defeat enemies in times of war, helped agriculture thrive, healed diseases, and promoted fertility. The Romans thus sought to behave in a way so as to ensure divine protection and avoid incurring the gods’ wrath. Illustrating this were the Vestal Virgins, who tended the shrine of Vesta, goddess of the hearth and protector of the family. The shrine housed Rome’s official eternal flame; it was the Vestal Virgins’ duty to keep the flame from going out, thereby ensuring Rome’s protection. As in Greece, Roman households maintained indoor shrines to the gods who were believed to protect health and morality. Like the Greeks, the Romans did not see the gods as guardians of morality. The gods offered protection, and it was the duty of religious officials to maintain peace with the gods by conducting sacrifices, festivals, and prayers.

·      Roman geography: Rome was ideally poised for expansion into the Mediterranean world. It occupied a strategic location in the center of the Italian peninsula and had rivers, seas, and ports at its doorstep.

·      Roman expansion during the first three centuries: In the first three centuries of its existence, Rome succeeded in conquering all of Italy south of the Po River. It did so by outright conquest, as with the Etruscan town of Veii, or through a combination of brutality and diplomacy. The Romans forged alliances with neighbors, requiring them to come to the aid of the Romans in times of need; they also promised neighbors a share of the spoils of conquest in future campaigns. Clearly, two factors drove Roman expansion: the desire for wealth and the fear of foreign attack. Though wars were costly, the Romans profited handsomely from their conquests, receiving large parcels of land, slaves, and precious metals. This wealth, in turn, proved enticing to neighboring peoples, who were lured by running water (thanks to the aqueducts) and free land for cattle grazing. But Roman expansion was also driven by fear. Invading Gauls had sacked Rome in 387 B.C.E., leaving its leaders ever fearful of foreign invasion.

·      The Punic Wars: Three wars with Carthage, Rome’s rival to the south, significantly altered the course, but not the nature, of Roman expansion. These wars were also driven by fears of invasion and a desire for wealth, but the first war was, in fact, the result of complicated alliances forged by both Rome and Carthage. As a result of expansion to the south, Rome began to butt heads with Carthage in Sicily, an island much closer to the Carthaginian mainland in North Africa than to Rome. The Romans won their first war with Carthage, prompting the victorious Romans to seize Sardinia and Corsica from the Carthaginians. Bent on revenge, the Carthaginians invaded the Roman mainland from the north, relying on the dashing exploits of their commander, Hannibal, and a herd of elephants that had crossed the Alps. Though the Carthaginians wreaked havoc in Italy, the Romans turned the tide of war through an invasion of North Africa itself. The third war was simply the result of the Roman decision to destroy Carthage altogether and enrich themselves at the expense of the remaining Carthaginian empire.

·      Expansion to the east: Following the defeat of the Carthaginians and the extension of Roman power to Spain and North Africa, the Romans turned east. The Romans invaded Macedonia because of its alliance with Hannibal. By 146 B.C.E., the Romans had converted Macedonia and the rest of Greece into a province. A Hellenistic king bequeathed his Asia Minor kingdom to Rome in 133 B.C.E.

·      The final stages of expansion: By the first century B.C.E., the Romans had extended their influence into Gaul and ruled all but the easternmost Mediterranean.

·      Encounters between Rome and Greece: Even before Rome’s conquest of Greece, Roman writers and artists found inspiration in the Greeks, some of whom lived in Greek colonies on the island of Sicily. Around 200 B.C.E., the first Roman historian wrote a history of Rome’s founding and the Carthaginian wars in Greek. A Greek ex-slave translated Homer’s Odyssey into Latin. Hellenistic comedies influenced Roman comedies.

·      Greek influence on Roman art and culture: The Roman conquest of Greece went hand in hand with a certain Hellenization of Roman culture, although this process did not go uncontested. On the one hand, the Romans almost slavishly imitated many aspects of Greek culture. Roman architecture, art, and sculpture were often identical to that of the Greeks, and the Romans embraced the realism found in Hellenistic art, which showed the infirmity of the human body and the ravages of age. Like Greek sculptors, Roman sculptors refused to hide the most unflattering features of their male subjects, although they tended to present women in a more idealized manner than did their Greek counterparts. But such unflattering portraiture may have served a uniquely Roman purpose—showing the marks of age revealed how much Roman subjects had toiled for the republic.

·      A discussion of Romans’ wariness toward Greek culture: Though Greek influence on Roman art and culture was undeniable, many Romans not only looked down on the Greek military as weak but also saw Greek culture as ultimately enervating, decadent, and feminizing. The statesman, historian, and author Cato (the Elder), the ideal embodiment of traditional Roman morality, warned that if the Romans adopted Greek values, they would lose their power. Cato’s own writings, critical as they were of the Greeks, helped establish Latin as a language of literature. Even where Roman writers were inspired by models of Greek literature, they continued, like Cato, to praise Roman traditions and morality. The orator and politician Cicero, who wrote on philosophy, ethics, and political science, likewise adapted Greek philosophy to Roman life. Cicero, in particular, helped create a humanitarian ideal (from the doctrine of humanitas) based on generous treatment of others and a morality based on natural law that transcended country or place of origin. The criticisms of men like Cato and the more generous observations of men like Cicero ensured that subsequent cultural achievements were often a fusion of Greek and Roman culture.

·      Historical background: Rome’s expansion forced the Roman state to conscript many of its adult male citizens. Farmers absent during wars that could extend for many years suddenly faced the unhappy choice of having their wives work in the fields, depending on unreliable slaves to manage their farms, or spending money to hire additional and often unreliable help. The Roman state was unwilling to give extra assistance to smaller landholders, many of whom were forced to sell their estates to wealthier landowners. The population of Rome’s landless poor thus swelled during this era of foreign wars. The rich, in contrast, often profited immensely from the spoils of war. Commanders used the plunder of war to enrich their estates. They used the slaves they seized to work their estates, thereby ensuring that poorer landowners could not easily compete. Graft enabled corrupt landowners to extort land from those who were politically less well placed.

·      The Gracchus brothers: Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, though they came from one of the most storied and privileged families in Rome, based their political careers on pressing the rich to make concessions to strengthen the state. They responded to the social problems of their time by proposing land reform. When Tiberius was elected tribune, he successfully urged the Plebeian Assembly to pass a land reform bill and to build new farms for landless Romans on land recently acquired by Rome. He deliberately chose to disregard the advice of the Senate. After he announced that he would seek another term as tribune (in defiance of tradition), his enemies assassinated him. The people responded by electing Tiberius’s brother Gaius as tribune. Like his brother, Gaius also strove to implement land reform, subsidize grain prices, embark on public works projects, and create colonies abroad with land for the landless. Most significantly, he sought to extend Roman citizenship to many Italians and to pass measures against senatorial corruption. The juries chosen to try senators were to be composed not of fellow senators but of equites. In response to senatorial opposition, Gaius assembled a group of armed supporters. The senators, in turn, advised the consuls to take all measures necessary to protect the republic, a de facto authorization of force. Gaius opted for suicide rather than surrender.

·      A discussion of Gaius Marius: The rule of the Gracchus brothers led to the rise of a new kind of leader in the late second and early first centuries B.C.E. These new leaders were usually upper-class individuals who lacked consuls among their ancestors and who relied on sheer ability and often on political violence to force their way to fame, fortune, and eventually the consulship. Gaius Marius won election as consul six times, having met tremendous success as a military commander in North Africa and against Germanic tribes. He was elected with the support of the common people, since Marius had opened the military ranks to proletarians, men with no property and no weapons of their own. These men tended to be more loyal to Marius than to the republic itself. Marius thus dealt with the growing social inequality in Rome by exploiting the patron-client relationship; he was the patron, and his soldiers were his loyal clients. From this point on, ambitious politicians assembled client armies that helped them realize not only military objectives but also political ones.

·      Roman moral values such as virtus (courage, strength, loyalty) and fides (faithfulness) shaped such institutions as the patron-client system, the family, education, and religion. The Roman belief in service to the community, public status, and shared decision making contributed to the development of the republic and its imperialist expansion. The Romans believed that values should drive politics and that they had a divine destiny to establish an empire built on the rule of law.

·      As the empire grew, it altered the balance of many of the traditional Roman values and posed major challenges to the republican form of government. By the third and second centuries B.C.E., near-constant war disrupted the traditional agrarian economy of Rome, undermining the status of free but poor Romans and creating a large, volatile urban population that played an increasing role in politics.

·      During the late republic, a series of powerful, ambitious men well-versed in traditional Roman practices and beliefs rose to prominence, introducing a system of factional politics that undermined the institutions of the republic and transformed such traditional values as virtus and fides. Individual strength and achievement became more important than service to the community or the state, and the support of client armies and the urban poor transformed earlier notions of shared decision making, weakening the influence of such republican institutions as the Senate and the ladder of offices.

•     Political and social divisions in the Roman republic were institutionalized in a way that they were not in classical Greece. Patricians were at the top of society, equestrians were in the middle, and plebeians were at the bottom, and a person’s political and legal rights depended upon his or her class. Putting the common good over one’s personal interests was held in high regard in both cultures, but the values of virtue—acting in good faith—and fidelity—fulfilling one’s obligations at all costs—were emphasized more strongly by the Romans than the Greeks.

•     Many people suffered hardship during the Punic Wars (264–146 B.C.E.) and the conquest of Macedonia and Greece. Farmers were kept away from home for long periods of time due to their obligatory military service, and many lost their farms and became destitute because they were unable to cultivate their land. With less production, food prices soared, forcing the poor into low-paying jobs and even prostitution. This caused economic and political tensions, especially in urban areas. While the poor got poorer, the rich got richer, buying up farms and enjoying the spoils of military conquests.

•     For Romans, this conflict should have been easily answered: the community was more important than the individual. Nonetheless, some Romans did not always put the common good over their own needs. The patricians under the Gracchus brothers certainly did not put the common good of the plebeians above their own material interests, and Roman generals during the civil wars fought for their own personal glory instead of the good of the state. But it is important to note that even those generals expressed their actions in terms of the Roman values of mos maiorum, virtus, and fides.

•     Rome controlled the entire Italian peninsula and the islands of the Mediterranean, Spain and Gaul, much of North Africa, Greece and Macedonia, a large portion of Asia Minor, and Syria.

•     Perhaps the most important events in Roman expansion were the three Punic Wars fought between 264 and 146 B.C.E. These wars added most of Spain, northern Italy, Illyria, Greece, Macedonia, and North Africa to the Roman Empire. The gift of the kingdom of Pergamum also added to Rome’s territory. The campaigns by Caesar (who conquered Gaul) and Pompey (who conquered Syria) extended Rome’s empire still further.

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