Department of Greek and Roman Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
October 2000
From its inauspicious beginnings as a small cluster of huts in the tenth century B.C., Rome developed into a city-state, first ruled by kings, then, from 509 B.C. onward, by a new form of government—the Republic. During the early Republic, power rested in the hands of the patricians, a privileged class of Roman citizens whose status was a birthright. The patricians had exclusive control over all religious offices and issued final assent (patrum auctoritas) to decisions made by the Roman popular assemblies. However, debts and an unfair distribution of public land prompted the poorer Roman citizens, known as the plebians, to withdraw from the city-state and form their own assembly, elect their own officers, and set up their own cults. Their principal demands were debt relief and a more equitable distribution of newly conquered territory in allotments to Roman citizens. Eventually, in 287 B.C., with the so-called Conflict of the Orders, wealthier, land-rich plebians achieved political equality with the patricians. The main political result was the birth of a noble ruling class consisting of both patricians and plebians, a unique power-sharing partnership that continued into the late first century B.C.
During the last three centuries of the Republic, Rome became a metropolis and the capital city of a vast expanse of territory acquired piecemeal through conquest and diplomacy. Administered territories (provinciae) outside Italy included: Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, Africa, Macedon, Achaea, Asia, Cilicia, Gaul, Cyrene, Bithynia, Crete, Pontus, Syria, and Cyprus. The strains of governing an ever-expanding empire involving a major military commitment, and the widening gulf between those citizens who profited from Rome’s new wealth and those who were impoverished, generated social breakdown, political turmoil, and the eventual collapse of the Republic. Rome experienced a long and bloody series of civil wars, political crises, and civil disturbances that culminated with the dictatorship of Julius Caesar and his assassination on March 15, 44 B.C. After Caesar’s death, the task of reforming the Roman state and restoring peace and stability fell to his grandnephew, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, only eighteen years old, who purged all opposition to his complete control of the Roman empire and was granted the honorific title of Augustus in 27 B.C.
Citation
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “The Roman Republic.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/romr/hd_romr.htm (October 2000)
Further Reading
Gruen, Erich S. Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992.
Kleiner, Diana E. E. Roman Sculpture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Matyszak, Philip. Chronicle of the Roman Republic: The Rulers of Ancient Rome from Romulus to Augustus. London: Thames & Hudson, 2003.
Milleker, Elizabeth J., ed. The Year One: Art of the Ancient World East and West. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. See on MetPublications
Additional Essays by Department of Greek and Roman Art
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Classical Cyprus (ca. 480–ca. 310 B.C.).” (July 2007)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “The Antonine Dynasty (138–193).” (October 2000)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Ancient Greek Dress.” (October 2003)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece.” (October 2003)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Geometric Art in Ancient Greece.” (October 2004)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “The Flavian Dynasty (69–96 A.D.).” (October 2000)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “The Julio-Claudian Dynasty (27 B.C.–68 A.D.).” (October 2000)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Augustan Rule (27 B.C.–14 A.D.).” (October 2000)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “The Severan Dynasty (193–235 A.D.).” (October 2000)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Roman Egypt.” (October 2000)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Roman Copies of Greek Statues.” (October 2002)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Athenian Vase Painting: Black- and Red-Figure Techniques.” (October 2002)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Boscoreale: Frescoes from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor.” (October 2004)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Early Cycladic Art and Culture.” (October 2004)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Geometric and Archaic Cyprus.” (October 2004)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Hellenistic and Roman Cyprus.” (October 2004)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Scenes of Everyday Life in Ancient Greece.” (October 2002)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Greek Art in the Archaic Period.” (October 2003)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “The Symposium in Ancient Greece.” (October 2002)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Roman Painting.” (October 2004)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Tanagra Figurines.” (October 2004)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “The Augustan Villa at Boscotrecase.” (October 2004)
- Department of Greek and Roman Art. “The Cesnola Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.” (October 2004)
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