History - Italy - page 1765

The Roman Republic
Under the Republic, imperium, or regal power, was placed in the hands of two consuls who
acted as political and military leaders and were elected for non-renewable one-year terms
by an assembly of the people. The Senate, whose members were appointed for life, advised
the consuls.
Although from the beginning monuments were emblazoned with the initials SPQR
(Senatus Populusque Romanus, or the Senate and People of Rome), the 'people' initially
had precious little say in affairs. (The initials are still used and many Romans would argue
that little has changed.) Known as plebeians (literally 'the many'), the disenfranchised ma-
jority slowly wrested concessions from the patrician class in the more than two centuries
that followed the founding of the Republic. Some plebeians were even appointed as consuls
and indeed by about 280 BC most of the distinctions between patricians and plebeians had
disappeared. That said, the apparently democratic system was largely oligarchic, with a
fairly narrow political class (whether patrician or plebeian) vying for positions of power in
government and the Senate.
The Romans were a rough-and-ready lot. Rome did not bother to mint coins until 269
BC, even though the neighbouring (and later conquered or allied) Etruscans and Greeks
had long had their own currencies. The Etruscans and Greeks also brought writing to the at-
tention of Romans, who found it useful for documents and technical affairs but hardly
glowed in the literature department. Eventually the Greek pantheon of gods formed the
bedrock of Roman worship. Society was patriarchal and its prime building block the house-
hold (familia) . The head of the family (pater familias) had direct control over his wife,
children and extended family. He was responsible for his children's education. Devotion to
household gods was as strong as to the increasingly Greek-influenced pantheon of state
gods, led at first by the triad of Jupiter (the sky god and chief protector of the state), Juno
(the female equivalent of Jupiter and patron goddess of women) and Minerva (patron god-
dess of craftsmen). Mars, the god of war, had been replaced by Juno in the triad.
Slowly at first, then with gathering pace, Roman armies conquered the Italian peninsula.
Defeated city-states were not taken over directly; rather they were obliged to become allies.
They retained their government and lands but had to provide troops on demand to serve in
the Roman army. This relatively light-handed touch was a key to success. Increasingly, the
protection offered by Roman hegemony induced many cities to become allies voluntarily.
Wars with rivals like Carthage and in the East led Rome to take control of Sardinia, Sicily,
Corsica, mainland Greece, Spain, most of North Africa and part of Asia Minor by 133 BC.