La batalla de arausio
Mass slavery also caused three Servile Wars the last of them was led by Spartacus, a skillful gladiator who ravaged Italy and left Rome powerless until his defeat in 71 BC. In order to address this issue, several social reformers, known as the Populares, tried to pass agrarian laws, but the Gracchi brothers, Saturninus, and Clodius Pulcher were all murdered by their opponents, the Optimates, keepers of the traditional aristocratic order. Later, the vast conquests of the Republic disrupted its society, as the immense influx of slaves they brought enriched the aristocracy, but ruined the peasantry and urban workers. At first, the Conflict of the Orders opposed the patricians, the closed oligarchic elite, to the far more numerous plebs, who finally achieved political equality in several steps during the 4th century BC.
LA BATALLA DE ARAUSIO SERIES
It then embarked on a long series of difficult conquests, after having notably defeated Philip V and Perseus of Macedon, Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire, the Lusitanian Viriathus, the Numidian Jugurtha, the Pontic king Mithridates VI, the Gaul Vercingetorix, and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.Īt home, the Republic similarly experienced a long streak of social and political crises, which ended in several violent civil wars. With Carthage defeated, Rome became the dominant power of the ancient Mediterranean world. The Punic general Hannibal famously invaded Italy by crossing the Alps and inflicted on Rome two devastating defeats at Lake Trasimene and Cannae, but the Republic once again recovered and won the war thanks to Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC.
The Republic's greatest strategic rival was Carthage, against which it waged three wars. After the Gallic Sack, Rome conquered the whole Italian peninsula in a century, which turned the Republic into a major power in the Mediterranean. The Republic nonetheless demonstrated extreme resilience and always managed to overcome its losses, however catastrophic. Its first enemies were its Latin and Etruscan neighbours as well as the Gauls, who even sacked the city in 387 BC. Unlike the Pax Romana of the Roman Empire, the Republic was in a state of quasi-perpetual war throughout its existence. Roman institutions underwent considerable changes throughout the Republic to adapt to the difficulties it faced, such as the creation of promagistracies to rule its conquered provinces, or the composition of the senate. Even though a small number of powerful families (called gentes) monopolised the main magistracies, the Roman Republic is generally considered one of the earliest examples of representative democracy.
The top magistrates were the two consuls, who had an extensive range of executive, legislative, judicial, military, and religious powers. Its political organization developed, at around the same time as direct democracy in Ancient Greece, with collective and annual magistracies, overseen by a senate. Roman society under the Republic was primarily a cultural mix of Latin and Etruscan societies, as well as of Sabine, Oscan, and Greek cultural elements, which is especially visible in the Roman Pantheon. Beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establishment of the Roman Empire, Rome's control rapidly expanded during this period-from the city's immediate surroundings to hegemony over the entire Mediterranean world. The Roman Republic ( Latin: Rēs pūblica Rōmāna ) was a state of the classical Roman civilization, run through public representation of the Roman people.