lecture 2 Rome Flashcards
When was rome founded?
750 BCE
roman citizenship
-citizenship was a privileged legal status
rights to vote, stand for election, own property, conduct business, marry and lead households, migrate, use legal system
-citizenship for women is limited (no voting)
-multiple degrees of citizenship
-torture was part of the legal process
Takeover of Veii (Etruscan city)
the Romans went and completely destroyed it, took the population and moved them to Rome, and integrated them (unusual case)
Pre-Rome cultures of Italian peninsula
-incorporation
-federation of city-states more than an empire
-taxation by rome
Benefits: power structures and cultures left intact
Rights afforded to full or partial Roman citizens in colonies
the ability to relocate to Rome
to marry and inherit from Romans,
to trade with Romans under the protection of Roman law
also afforded to freed slaves
Awarded in a colorblind but not egalitarian way
Aspects of Rome at its height
-c.100 AD
-massive diverse multicultural polity
-relaxed system of rule for practical reasons
-legal and cultural mechanisms for elite inclusion
-stretches from Britain to the Levant
How was Rome an empire of cities?
-definitively urban culture
-political and cultural life takes place in cities
-the benefits of being roman can be taken advantage of in cities
-cities integrate and accommodate
The Roman City
-center of local political power
-shared spatial form and amenities (forum, civic buildings, temples, theatre, baths)
-networked with infrastructure by the empire
types of migration in Rome
-slaves,
-soldiers,
-empire elite,
-economic migrants
Complaints about migrants in Rome
-Sallust: Rome is ‘a cesspool into which the disgraced and the criminal flowed’
-Lucan: complaints about plebs frumentaria (those who received grain handouts)
