The Roman Republic
Rome as a kingdom lasted until about 507 BC, when the people rose up against the tyrannical King Tarquinius and established a Republic , appointing the first two consuls and instituting a more democratic form of government. The city prospered under the Republic, growing greatly in size and subduing the various tribes of the surrounding areas - the Etruscans to the north, the Sabines to the east, the Samnites to the south. The Etruscans were subdued in 474 BC, the Samnites a little later, and despite a heavy defeat by the Gauls in 390 BC, by the following century the city had begun to extend its influence beyond the boundaries of what is now mainland Italy, pushing south into Sicily and across the ocean to Africa and Carthage. By the time it had fought and won the third Punic War against its principal rival, Carthage , in 146 BC, it had become the dominant power in the Mediterranean, subsequently taking control of present-day Greece and the Middle East, and expanding north also, into what is now France, Germany and Britain.
Domestically, the Romans built roads - notably the Via Appia, which dates back to 312 BC - and developed their civic structure, with new laws and far-sighted political reforms, one of which cannily brought all of the Republic’s vanquished enemies into the fold as Roman citizens. However, the history of the Republic was also one of internal strife , marked by factional fighting among the patrician ruling classes, as everyone tried to grab a slice of the riches that were pouring into the city from its plundering expeditions abroad - and the ordinary people, or plebeians, enjoying little more justice than they had under the Roman monarchs. This all came to a head in 44 BC, when Julius Caesar , having proclaimed himself dictator, was murdered in the Theatre of Pompey on 15 March, by conspirators concerned at the growing concentration of power into one man’s hands.
After his murder, Julius Caesar’s deputy, Mark Antony , briefly took control, joining forces with Lepidus and Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian, in a triumvirate that marshalled armies that fought and won against those controlled by Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius, in a famous battle at Philippi, in modern-day Greece, in 42 BC. Their alliance was further cemented by Antony’s marriage to Octavians’s sister, Octavia, in 40 AD, but in spite of this a brief period of turmoil followed, in which Antony, unable to put his political ambitions before his emotional alliance with the queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, was defeated by Octavian at the battle of Actium in 31 BC - escaping to Alexandria, where he committed suicide, with his lover, the queen.
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