page_title: History of Italy
section_title: Roman Republic
hierarchical_section_title: History of Italy / Roman period / Roman Republic
caption_attribution_description: English: Secret Cabinet in the Museo Archeologico (Naples)
context_page_description: The history of Italy covers the Ancient Period, the Middle Ages and the modern era. In antiquity, Italy was the homeland of the Romans and the metropole of the Roman Empire. Rome was founded as a Kingdom in 753 BC and became a Republic in 509 BC, when the monarchy was overthrown in favor of a government of the Senate and the People. The Roman Republic then unified Italy at the expense of the Etruscans, Celts, and Greeks of the peninsula. Rome led the federation of the Italic peoples of which it had come from to the domination of Western Europe, Northern Africa, and the Near East.
  The Republic saw its fall after the assassination of Dictator Julius Caesar. The Roman Empire later dominated Western Europe and the Mediterranean for many centuries, making immeasurable contributions to humanity. Some of these led to the development of Western philosophy, science and art, that remained central during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. After the fall of Rome in AD 476, Italy remained fragmented in numerous city-states and regional polities until the Italian unification led to the establishment of an Italian nation-state.
context_section_description: According to tradition and later writers such as Livy, the Roman Republic was established around 509 BCE, when the last of the seven kings of Rome, Tarquin the Proud, was deposed by Lucius Junius Brutus, and a system based on annually elected magistrates and various representative assemblies was established. A constitution set a series of checks and balances, and a separation of powers. The most important magistrates were the two consuls, who together exercised executive authority as imperium, or military command. The consuls had to work with the senate, which was initially an advisory council of the ranking nobility, or patricians, but grew in size and power.
  In the 4th century BCE the Republic came under attack by the Gauls, who initially prevailed and sacked Rome. The Romans then took up arms and drove the Gauls back, led by Camillus. The Romans gradually subdued the other peoples on the Italian peninsula, including the Etruscans. The last threat to Roman hegemony in Italy came when Tarentum, a major Greek colony, enlisted the aid of Pyrrhus of Epirus in 281 BCE, but this effort failed as well.
  In the 3rd century BCE Rome had to face a new and formidable opponent: the powerful Phoenician city-state of Carthage. In the three Punic Wars, Carthage was eventually destroyed and Rome gained control over Hispania, Sicily and North Africa. After defeating the Macedonian and Seleucid Empires in the 2nd century BCE, the Romans became the dominant people of the Mediterranean Sea. The conquest of the Hellenistic kingdoms provoked a fusion between Roman and Greek cultures and the Roman elite, once rural, became a luxurious and cosmopolitan one. By this time Rome was a consolidated empire – in the military view – and had no major enemies.
  The one open sore was Spain (Hispania). Roman armies occupied Spain in the early 2nd century BCE but encountered stiff resistance from that time down to the age of Augustus. The Celtiberian stronghold of Numantia became the centre of Spanish resistance to Rome in the 140s and 130s BCE. Numantia fell and was completely razed to the ground in 133 BCE. In 105 BCE, the Celtiberians still retained enough of their native vigour and ferocity to drive the Cimbri and Teutones from northern Spain, though these had crushed Roman arms in southern Gaul, inflicting 80,000 casualties on the Roman army which opposed them. The conquest of Hispania was completed in 19 BC—but at heavy cost and severe losses.
  Towards the end of the 2nd century BCE, a huge migration of Germanic tribes took place, led by the Cimbri and the Teutones. These tribes overwhelmed the peoples with whom they came into contact and posed a real threat to Italy itself. At the Battle of Aquae Sextiae and the Battle of Vercellae the Germans were virtually annihilated, which ended the threat. In these two battles the Teutones and Ambrones are said to have lost 290,000 men (200,000 killed and 90,000 captured); and the Cimbri 220,000 men (160,000 killed, and 60,000 captured).
  In the mid-1st century BCE, the Republic faced a period of political crisis and social unrest. Into this turbulent scenario emerged the figure of Julius Caesar. Caesar reconciled the two more powerful men in Rome: Marcus Licinius Crassus, his sponsor, and Crassus' rival, Pompey. The First Triumvirate ("three men"), had satisfied the interests of these three men: Crassus, the richest man in Rome, became richer; Pompey exerted more influence in the Senate; and Caesar held consulship and military command in Gaul.
  In 53 BCE, the Triumvirate disintegrated at Crassus' death. Crassus had acted as mediator between Caesar and Pompey, and, without him, the two generals began to fight for power. After being victorious in the Gallic Wars and earning respect and praise from the legions, Caesar was a clear menace to Pompey, that tried to legally remove Caesar's legions. To avoid this, Caesar crossed the Rubicon River and invaded Rome in 49 BCE, rapidly defeating Pompey. With his sole preeminence over Rome, Caesar gradually accumulated many offices, eventually being granted a dictatorship for p
caption: The Pompeii Lakshmi, an ivory statuette from the Indian subcontinent found in the ruins of Pompeii. The Indo-Roman trade relations, beginning around the 1st century BCE, testifies to extensive Roman trade in far away regions.
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