Life in New York

History of Rome

My next trip will take me to Rome from the 21 July to the 24 July included.
Before giving you a recap of this trip, let me broaden your knowledge with the history of Rome.

The founding of Rome is enveloped in myth: the story goes that the first city center sprang up in 753 B.C. on the Palatine hill, built by Romulus after he had killed his twin brother Remus. (http://www.roman-empire.net/founding/found-index.html )
Romulus was the first of the seven kings of Rome, who started off the basic characteristics of this city that would go on to make Rome powerful throughout the ancient world: public works, institutional reforms, aqueducts.
With the arrival of the Republic, Rome increased its expansion policy and after the Punic Wars, Carthage, Corsica and Sardinia were all annexed to the Republic.
The end of the Republic determined the beginning of Silla’s dictatorship (82 B.C.) The dictator Caius Julius Caesar oversaw a period of heavy expansion overseas.
He was assassinated in 44 B.C.The Emperor Octavius Augustus brought Rome to its “golden era”: a lengthy period of peace and stability, which was celebrated with monumental work of arts. (http://www.roman-empire.net/emperors/emp-index.html )
Many emperors came after him, each of whom was famous for some work, conquest or edict. Under Traianus, the empire enjoyed its period of maximum expansion and reached as far as ruling land that stretched from the Danube to the Nile.

While people like to talk about the "decline" or the "fall" of Rome, no such thing really happened. Although Rome underwent several shocks in the fourth and fifth centuries, some of them violent with a transfer of the imperiate to non-Romans, Rome really did remain in existence. It's impossible to say when the history of Rome ends and when the medieval ("medieval" means "in the middle") period begins.
But the empire really does end, for all practical purposes, with the restructuring of the empire by Diocletian. Diocletian (284-305) came to the throne after a century of disorganization, internal dissent, economic collapse, and foreign invasions.
As a tough and practical soldier he had one ambition: to retire from the imperiate alive. And he managed to do it (an exceptional feat).
To stem the descent into chaos, he decided that the Empire was too large to be adminstered by a central authority, so he divided it in half. The western half would be ruled by a colleague, Maximian, and the seat of government would be Rome; the eastern half would be ruled by Diocletian, and the seat of government was in Nicomedia.
In 305, Diocletian retired to a farm to raise cabbages; he forced Maxmian also to retire. Within a year, the son of one of the original caesars gained the throne: Constantine (306-337).
Like Diocletian, he ruled only half of the Roman Empire, the western half. But in 324, he abandoned the system and ruled over a single, united empire. However, he shifted the seat of government east to his own city in Turkey, Constantinople.
After eight hundred years without a monarch, Rome had finally returned back to monarchy. Constantine, however, is one of the most noted rulers in Rome for he was the first emperor to convert to Christianity. When Constantine died, he divided the Empire between his three sons who, as you might expect, began fighting one another over complete control of the Empire.
From 451 to 453, Rome was overrun by the Hunnish leader, Attila, and finally, in 455, the Vandals, another Germanic tribe, conquered Rome.
Finally, in 476, Odoacer deposed the Roman emperor and made himself emperor.
Power had passed from the Romans to the barbarians war-chiefs; the Middle Ages had begun. Rome now passed to two heirs: Europe in the west and, to the east, the Byzantines, who carried on the government structure, the social structure, the art and the thought of classical Rome and Greece.
With the passing of the years, the city became increasingly Christian, while the empire fell into a fatal period of difficulty.
The Pope became more and more powerful, building the grounds for the birth of the Holy Roman Empire (800 A.D.), which gave rise to the coronation of Charlemagne by the Pope.
The Church’s power continued to increase and Rome became the representation of this power on earth. Between 1300 and 1600, many churches were built, beautifully painted with frescoes by Renaissance artists such as Raffaello and Michelangelo. Crowds of pilgrims flocked to the Eternal City from all over the world to admire its baroque squares, its fountains and its monumental basilicas.
After the patriotic unrest that started in 1848 and which was headed by Garibaldi, a plebiscite approved the annexing of Rome to the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, which set up its official center in the city soon after.
Starting from 1920, Rome was shaken by the terrible rise to power of Fascism that culminated in the pact made between the Italian Government and Nazi Germany.After Italy was liberated by the Allies during the Second World War, a referendum held on June 2nd 1946 sanctioned the end of the monarchy and the beginning of the Republic.

Now that you are somewhat familiar with the history of this city, I will let you wait until my next posting to have a summary of what has happened along with some pictures.

posted by Rudi @ 2:06 PM