Notes

Page 101

Assassination and Another Caesar

• Romans at home and abroad applauded Caesar's deeds. 
• A stubborn core of Senators were disturbed by his success.
• Caesar had become a Greek style tyrant
• On March 15, 44 B.C., Caesar appeared in the senate house unarmed and the house of senators struck him down with their daggers.
• His death produced yet another crop of warlords and yet more bouts of civil war.
• Mark Antony and Octavian were rival loyalists of Caesar and they each attracted some of Caesar's legions which they used to fight a brutal war against each other in Italy.
• The joined forces against Caesar's assassins and formed another triumvirate together with a lesser warlord, Marcus Lepidus.
• They declared that they would intend to restore the republic but they also had the Senate proclaim Caesar a "Divine Being"
• The partners then divided the Roman world, with Octavian based in Rome, Lepidus in North Africa, and Mark Antony in Alexandria.
• The balance of power began swinging toward Octavian
• Antony was in love with Queen Cleopatra, one of the last descendants of the Greek rulers of Egypt, and this made his unpopular in Rome.
• In 31 BC, the rulers of the two halves in Rome went to war
• Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra and then they committed suicide
• Octavian became the supreme warlord.

Page 103

• The Roman version of Greco- Roman civilization prevailed in the Western territories, and the Greek version was dominant in the East.
• Roman literature, art, philosophy, law, architecture and engineering were often inspired by Greek models, but Roman achievements in these fields eventually equaled the Greeks
• In the West, the Native languages of conquered European barbarian peoples began to be replaced by Latin
• In the east, Egyptian hieroglyphic writing fell out of use
• The language of new Latin speakers began a lengthy evolution into the Latin languages of today.

LO1 Pages 104-107

• Augustus refused to take a long term dictatorship and referred to himself as princeps- a traditional name for prominent leaders who were considered indispensable to the republic
• He was confirmed as commander in chief of the armed forces in 27 B.C.
•  The peoples assemblies lost what remained of their power to elect magistrates and make laws
• Augustus followed the dictator's even more arrogant-seeming example of accepting religious worship himself
•  After Augustus won supreme power, Greek cities in Antolia began building shrines and sacrificing to "Rome and Augustus" 
• Augustus also acquired the tile of Father of the Fatherland and took seriously the father duty of supervising the behavior of his "household"- especially of the upper classes in Rome
• Still, the Romans already believed that there was something divine about every paterfamilias and every matron; add they regarded community life as a kind of large-scale family life and most other peoples of the empire had similar beliefs 
• Ensuring peace and stability involved not only changing the way the Roman city-state worked, but also reorganizing the whole of Rome's empire
• First, he brought the system of government appointments under his personal control
• Second, Augustus showed respect for local institutions and encouraged provincial leaders to fulfill their responsibilities 
• Third, Augustus reorganized the army to ensure the loyalty of the rank-and-file soldiers
• Then Augustus gradually brought about his single most drastic reform 
• Augustus and his successors broke with the Roman tradition of citizen-soldiers to crate the world's first professional standing army 
• Even after Augustus's troop cuts, his army was still far larger than the forces that Romes had usually maintained in the past 
• Having no sons of his own, Augustus finally settled of Tiberius 
• At first, the emperors who succeeded Tiberius during the first century A.D. emerged usually after vicious family infighting 
• Near the end of the first century, the Flavian dynasty, too, came to an end following the assassination of another tyrannical emperor 
• Subsequent rulers for much of the second century happened to have no sons by blood who survived them, so they, too, adopted sons whom they also proclaimed as their successor 
• Toward the end of the second century, the line of emperors by adoption and designation came to an end when Commodus, Marcus Aurelius's son by blood, outlived him, ruled irresponsibly, and was eventually murdered  
• Augustus's governing structure endured until the troubled times of the late third century 
• Roman Peace: a term used to refer to the relative stability and prosperity that Roman rule brought to the Mediterranean world and much of western Europe during the first and second centuries A.D.