History 698: Rome From the Gracchi To Nero

Between 133 and 30 B.C.E., the Roman Republic underwent a series of ordeals that transformed the Roman state from an oligarchy thinly disguised as a republic into an autocracy thinly disguised as a republic.This course will follow that evolution from the reforms of the brothers Gracchus, through the dominance of generals—among them Marius, Sulla, Pompey and Julius Caesar—to the rise of the first Roman Emperor, Augustus Caesar, and through the reigns of the members of his family, the Julio-Claudians, who constitute the first dynasty of Roman emperors. The scope of the course runs from the tribuneship of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 B.C.E, to the death of the Emperor Nero in 69 C.E., a period of roughly two centuries.

This course will focus primarily on the institutions of Roman government and political culture, the concept of leadership, the evolution of Roman society and politics in the first century B.C.E., and the consequences, foreign and domestic, of an empire, which the Romans were neither inclined to acquire nor particularly prepared to rule. It is a story of individuals, families and factions and the milieu of Roman  politics and society within which they interacted. We will look first at the politics of the Late Republic, the consequences of those politics, and, last, at the cure for the political ills of that catastrophic century, and the autocracy within the delusion of the restoration of the Republic that historians call the Principate. While Augustus forged a cure for the worst sins of the Republic, many, among them the historians Tacitus and Suetonius, believed that the autocratic cure was worse than the oligarchical disease.

The last century of the Roman Republic is the most documented period in all of Classical Antiquity. Contemporary sources for the period include the letters and speeches of Cicero, Caesar’s Commentaries on the conquest of Gaul and the Civil Wars, Sallust’s history of the rise of Marius and the Catilinarian conspiracy, all eyewitness accounts of the “news of the day” from individuals who were intimately involved in the events about which they wrote. In this seminar we will use both primary sources, all of which are available on line, and the works of a relatively small selection of modern classical historians whose insights and interpretations of the events of the period under study are helpful in what might best be called “sorting out the mess.”

Dr. Benjamin Price

Roman History

Background Lectures

I have bundled some nine lectures that provide some background to the course, covering both some history and information on Roman social and political institutions. Click HERE to download them.