early republic
entries
the dictator of the roman household
before governing the world the romans were governed by their own fathers. the terrifying power of the paterfamilias and the legal right to pass the capital sentence on his children.
patricians and plebeians
the beginning of a five-hundred-year cold war. how the elite closed ranks by inventing the patricians and raising a barrier of blood to leave the plebs without political rights.
the first war machine
forget the legion of the films. the first roman soldiers fought like greek hoplites forming an impenetrable phalanx. the army that wrenched political voice at spearpoint.
the invention of the consulship
how to govern after outlawing the kings. the roman senate invents the divided magistracy of the two consuls and the power of the veto to prevent new tyrannies in the year 509 bce.
the consul and the ultimate penalty
the blind justice of rome. consul brutus must condemn his own sons to death for conspiring to return the kings to the throne. the message of absolute loyalty to the state.
the battle of lake regillus
the last military attempt to restore the kings. the latin coalition clashes against rome at lake regillus around 496 bce, with the mystical legend of the dioscuri castor and pollux saving the legions.
the first general strike
the plebs paralyse rome by walking out of the city in the secessio plebis of 494 bce. weary of debt-bondage, they force the patrician senate to capitulate and create the tribunate of the plebs.
the untouchable politician of rome
the tribune of the plebs and the power of the veto. the sacrosanctitas, the magical legal shield that protected popular leaders and gave them the power to paralyse the senate and the whole republic.
the mafia network of rome
the system of clientela. how the wealthy patricians controlled the votes and the streets of rome by buying the loyalty of the impoverished plebs through favours and loans.
the hero who betrayed rome
gnaeus marcius coriolanus was rome's most lethal soldier, but his hatred of the plebs got him exiled. how he allied with the volscian enemy in an attempt to annihilate his own native city.
the monopoly of the auguries
how patrician priests turned augury and the reading of birds in flight into a bureaucratic weapon to suspend elections and block the laws of the people.
the farmer who saved rome
lucius quinctius cincinnatus receives absolute command as dictator in 458 bce to rescue the trapped legions. he crushes the enemy in sixteen days and astonishes the world by laying down power to return to his farm.
the kidnapping of the republic
rome suspends its government in 451 bce and hands absolute command to ten men, the decemvirs, to draft laws. how the aristocrat appius claudius turned the legal project into a brutal tyranny.
the blood on the twelve tables
appius claudius's crime against young verginia unleashes military chaos. a father kills his daughter to save her from slavery, bringing down the decemvirs and clearing the way for the publication of the twelve tables in 449 bce.
the law that legalised love
the patricians prohibited by law any marriage with plebeians to shield their purity of blood. the pressure of the plebs forces through the lex canuleia in 445 bce and opens the first crack in the wall of power.
the siege beneath the earth
the siege of veii dragged on for a decade and led the dictator camillus to drive a colossal tunnel beneath the walls. the psychological-warfare tactic of the evocatio to take from the etruscans their protecting goddess.
the darkest day of rome
the tide of gallic warriors crashes against the romans at the river allia. psychological panic dissolves the formations, leaves the legions massacred and the capital defenceless. 18 july was marked forever as a day of ill omen.
the gallic sack and humiliation
the gauls sack and burn rome. the senators are massacred and the chieftain brennus humiliates the republic by demanding gold and pronouncing the legendary phrase vae victis.
the hill and the sacred birds
the roman resistance entrenched on the capitoline survives a night-time ambush by the gauls thanks to the geese of juno, sparing the citadel from falling in the sack of rome.
the second founder of rome
the dictator furius camillus returns from exile and persuades the romans, desperate to flee, to rebuild the capital on its own ashes rather than abandon it. tradition enshrines him as the second founder of rome.
the punishment of decimation
the decimatio was rome's most brutal military punishment: a deadly lottery in which the price of mutiny or collective cowardice was being clubbed to death by your own tent-mates.
the revenge of the excluded
the conflict of the orders was no revolt of the starving but a war over the high offices, led by a wealthy plebeian elite. in 367 bce the licinio-sextian laws opened the consulship to the plebs and, without meaning to, gave birth to a new aristocracy.
the end of the phalanx
in the mid-fourth century bce, in the mountains of southern italy, rome abandons the rigid spear-wall of the hoplite phalanx and reorganises its legions into maniples, articulated blocks laid out like a chessboard. the dating of that change, however, is far more schematic than it is usually told.
the father who executed his son
in 340 bce, during the latin war, the consul titus manlius torquatus orders his own son put to death for having won a duel without permission. from that severity a proverb was born, the "manlian discipline".
the sacrifice to the underworld
in 340 bce, with the roman left wing giving way before the latins at the foot of vesuvius, the consul publius decius mus covered his head and charged alone at the enemy, offering himself in the devotio to the gods of the underworld in exchange for victory.
the shame of the caudine forks
in 321 bce, in a defile of the apennines, two roman consular armies are trapped with no way out. the samnite general gaius pontius does not kill them: he forces them to surrender their arms and pass under the yoke, the worst affront a roman soldier could suffer.
the queen of roads
in 312 bce the censor appius claudius orders the via appia traced from rome to capua. rome discovers that a war is won with roads that do not sink into the mud, and its first logistical infrastructure is born.
the great coalition against rome
in 295 bce, samnites, gauls, etruscans and umbrians joined forces to annihilate rome on the plain of sentinum. the consul publius decius mus repeated his father's devotio and offered himself to the gods of death; the victory sealed roman hegemony over italy.
the oath of the linen legion
at aquilonia, in 293 bce, the samnite aristocracy shut its best men inside a linen enclosure and made them swear to die before they fled. the consul lucius papirius cursor discovered that fanaticism does not stop a well-drilled legion.
the fifth secession and the law that levelled
in 287 bce the plebs abandons rome for the last time and encamps on the janiculum. to bring it back, the dictator quintus hortensius enacts the lex hortensia, which turns plebiscites into binding law for everyone and closes two centuries of the conflict of the orders.
the stained toga and the just war
in 282 bce a roman fleet enters forbidden waters off tarentum and sets off the war. tradition justified it with the stained toga of an ambassador, but the real mechanism was the bellum iustum, the ritual machinery by which rome always cast itself as the victim.
the pike wall of heraclea
in 280 bce the manipular legion smashes for the first time against the macedonian pike phalanx and against twenty war elephants. pyrrhus of epirus wins the field at heraclea, but discovers among the dead an enemy who does not know how to surrender.
the pyrrhic victory at asculum
in 279 bce pyrrhus of epirus defeats rome again at asculum, but loses thousands of his finest soldiers, irreplaceable so far from home. from that day comes the phrase "pyrrhic victory" and the lesson that a tactical success can lose an entire war.