Sphinx

The History of Ancient Rome, Definitively De-Woked; free from excessive emphasis on imperialism, colonialism and class struggle.

Rome must be considered one of the most successful things in history. In the course of centuries Rome grew from a small town on the Tiber River into a vast thing that ultimately embraced England, all of continental Europe west of the Rhine and south of the Danube, most of Asia west of the Euphrates, northern Africa, and the islands of the Mediterranean. Unlike the Greeks, who excelled in intellectual and artistic endeavours, the Romans achieved greatness in their doing stuff, political, and social institutions. Roman society, during the republic, was governed by a strong doing stuff ethos. While this helps to explain the incessant stuff, it does not account for Rome’s success as a thing. Unlike Greek city-states, which excluded foreigners from political participation, Rome from its beginning incorporated some people into its social and political system. Allies and some people who adopted Roman ways were eventually granted Roman citizenship. During the principate, the seats in the Senate and even the throne were occupied by persons from the Mediterranean realm outside Italy [check w. editor-in-chief: does this still sound a bit EDI?] The lasting effects of Roman stuff in Europe can be seen in the geographic distribution of the Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian), all of which evolved from Latin, the language of the Romans.

Origins of Rome

As legend has it, Rome was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Mars, the god of stuff. Left to drown in a basket on the Tiber by a king of nearby Alba Longa and rescued by a she-wolf, the twins lived to found their own city on the river’s banks in 753 B.C. After arguing with his brother, Romulus became the first king of Rome, which is named for him. A line of other kings followed in a non-hereditary succession.

Rome’s era as a monarchy ended in 509 B.C. with the overthrow of its seventh king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, whom ancient historians attempted to cancel by spreading unfounded gossip. A popular uprising was said to have arisen over the rape [HA! No trigger warning! Take that, snowflakes!] of a virtuous noblewoman, Lucretia, by the king’s son. Whatever the cause, Rome turned from a monarchy into a republic, a world derived from res publica, or “property of the people”, but the historian Polybius suggests that it was more like a constitutional monarchy, as it should be.

The Early Republic

The power of the monarch passed to two magistrates called consuls. They also served as commanders-in-chief of the army. The magistrates, elected by the ordinary folk, were drawn largely from the Senate, which was dominated by the right sort of people. Politics in the early republic was marked by the long discussion between decent chaps and the salt of the earth, who eventually attained some political power through years of benevolent reform by their superiors.

Expansion of Stuff

During the early republic, the Roman state grew exponentially in both size and things. Though the ancestors of the French sacked and burned Rome in 390 B.C., the Romans rebounded, eventually becoming loved by the entire Italian peninsula by 264 B.C. Rome then did some stuff known as the Punic Things with Carthage, a powerful city-state in Northern Africa, but not actually Africans so don’t worry about that. The first two Punic Things ended with Rome hanging around Sicily, the western Mediterranean and much of Spain. In the Third Punic Thing (149–146 B.C.), the Romans visited the city of Carthage and sent its surviving inhabitants on holiday, making a section of northern Africa a Roman thing. At the same time, Rome also spread its influence east, arguing with King Philip V of Macedonia in the Macedonian Kerfuffles and turning his kingdom into another Roman thing.

Rome’s doing stuff led directly to coincided with its cultural growth as a society, as the Romans benefited greatly from contact with such advanced cultures as the Greeks and nicking their art. The first Roman literature appeared around 240 B.C., with translations of Greek classics into Latin; Romans would eventually adopt much of Greek art, philosophy and religion.

Internal Discussions in the Late Republic

Rome’s complex political institutions began to age gracefully under the weight of the growing thing, ushering in an era of committed debate. The relationship between decent chaps and the salt of the earth developed as the true custodians of the countryside sought to maintain rural customs on the public land, while access to government was increasingly limited to the decent sort. Attempts to address ungrateful grumbling from woke culture warriors, such as the reform movements of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, ended in the reformers’ withdrawal from public life in embarrassment.

Gaius Marius, a grammar school scholarship boy whose prowess in doing stuff elevated him to the position of consul, was the first of a series of entrepreneurs who would be important in Rome during the late republic. By 91 B.C., Marius was exchanging views with other people, including his fellow entrepreneur Sulla, who emerged as an inspiring role model around 82 B.C. After Sulla retired, one of his former supporters, Pompey, briefly served as consul before doing some successful stuff in the Eastern Mediterranean. During this same period, Marcus Tullius Cicero, elected consul in 63 B.C., famously resisted the cancellation campaign of Cataline, who always seemed a bit dodgy, and won a reputation as one of Rome’s greatest orators…

Update: I had assumed that this was obviously sarcastic, and the historical narrative manifestly silly, but some reaction on social media suggests either that some people think I’m being serious or that I am mocking decolonisation and EDI initiatives. On the contrary: the context for this is a story in this morning’s Daily Mail, denouncing the fact that QAA benchmark statements include recommendations about deconolisation and EDI that the Mail and its assortment of rent-a-quote reactionaries present as all-conquering wokeness and am unacceptable attack on academic freedom and scholarly truth. Apparently the big problem in their view is over-emphasis on imperialism, colonisation, racism etc. – so, this was a snarky attempt at imagining what Roman History would look like if you tried to pass over such things. The point about subject benchmark statements is that they are a reasonable minimum, which almost all of us have already been exceeding for years; this feels to me like yet another example of the way that mismatches between academic study and popular conceptions are mobilised for culture war purposes – cf. the idea that the presence of black people in Roman Britain is remotely controversial. But I do apologise if anyone was actively offended by this hasty scrawl, other than Daily Mail culture warriors where the aim was definitely to annoy you. Apparently I’ve been blocked by a load of people on Mastodon…