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History 104A, October 7: Friends, Romans, Countrymen: The Late Republic.

Well, welcome to Friday. The semester keeps going along. We are

somewhere in Rome. We finished the first pubic war.

A No.

THE PROFESSOR: Well, I'm trying to wake people up. It's Friday.

A We're lazy.

THE PROFESSOR: We finished the first Punic war. And we talked

about Hannibal's elephants sliding down the Alps on their backsides.

And basically within a year of him bringing them in, they were all

dead. So while we love the thought of those nice tank elephants, they

really didn't do a lot. Hannibal controlled the cities outside of

Rome but with very very meager supply lines. And finally, the Romans

came up with a strategy that instead of trying to defeat Hannibal,

they sent a fleet across to Carthage to attack Carthage itself, which

caused the withdrawal or call back of Hannibal, the troops from Italy.

By 204, with the end of the second Carthagean war, Rome now controlled

the Mediterranean sea basically. Carthage had been pretty much

relegated to a city not an empire anymore.

The next Punic war as really not much of a war. This guy, Kato,

which anybody who knows their comic books was the joker for the green

Latin, different Kato. Kato, get me the car. Kato kept demanding

that Carthage was going to rise up, that there was a danger, that they

were going to attack; and therefore, we had to have a typical Roman

preemptive strike. And he did convince the Senate. And under the

leadership of a Roman general named Scipio S-C-I-P-I-O who got the

subtitle Scipio Africanus, off went the Romans to Carthage, what was

left of it, and not only destroyed the city and the walls, it

massacred a good portion of the population. The rest of it, it sent

into the countryside. And to be sure that Carthage never arose again,

the Romans salted the land around Carthage making it absolutely

worthless. They destroyed the city and plowed under and salted

everything in the area. That's what you call total warfare. There

was no more chance of weapons of mass destruction.

At this point, by 146, Rome now decided to move into the middle

southeast which was under the control of Anticous -- don't ask me now

to spell that -- A-N-T-I-C-O-U-S and the Syrians or Assyrians. I had

a woman in class a number of years go who was descended from the

Assyrians. It often described the Assyrians and the said area here as

Antioch after the Anticous family. Right about this period, 149-146,

an event did occur that had an impact on probably more the United

States than anywhere else. A family of Jewish zealots decided that

they didn't want to follow the Syrian decided that they worship Syrian

Gods within their temples, and that was the family known as the

Maccabiah family. The Maccabiah family rose up and it looked like

they were going to be defeated, took refuge in a temple where there

was only enough oil to keep them able to see and cook and survive for

one day. But miracle of miracles, which of course comes from Fiddler

On the Roof -- to pass on a little Jewish music here -- it lasted for

eight days. And out of that came a miner Jewish holiday named --

Christmas? No. Kwanza? No. Out of it came Chanukah. However,

Chanukah remained a holiday for the Jews until they came to the United

States and tried to find something to keep their kids from wanting to

get Christmas presents. And it explode as perhaps a major holiday

when they could tell their children, hey, you get presents for eight

days to celebrate the miracle that took place. You're eight times

better than the one Christmas day. Sorry. Picking on people here,

including myself. The fact is that it has become a major holiday, at

least in this country and some other parts of the world, and it was

miner originally. The point being that Syria was being weakened, in

any case, and the Romans moved in and took over the Palestinian state

as well or Israel and this area of Syria. And so Rome now expanded it

boundaries. It now controlled the Mediterranean Sea. What Rome was,

was the hegemony H-E-G-M-O-M-Y, meaning the unit of the mediterranean

and the argument for the ending of Rome was when it lost that hegmony

of the mediterranean sea, which we're going to be talking about of

course a little later when we talk about the decline and

transformation of Rome itself.

The Romans did allow the Jews and various cultures to maintain,

but mainly the Jews to maintain their identity, their temples and

their religion and set up a puppet king or family, the Herod family to

rule as king of the Jews. And that's going to basically be the

history for the next 150 years, until Rome decides that the Jews,

seeing themselves as the chosen people, are too damn arrogant and

decide to eliminate them and move them out of the area of the Levant

basically at around 70 AD, causing something known as the diaspora

D-I-A-S-P-O-R-A, which sends the Jews out into Syria, Turkey, and into

Europe, and creates within their various ceremonies such as Passover

where they say next year in Israel or next year in Palestine or next

year in Jerusalem when we mean to return. They did return officially

with the State of Israel in 1948; obviously, almost 2,000 years later.

And of course we know the conflict. We don't need to go into that

this semester.

Now, we have a major problem that has occurred in Rome that I

implied before. And that is that continuous warfare based on soldiers

legions who are from farming families, begins to eliminate the working

class, the farmers. And so, as I pointed out before, there are these

wealthy draft exempt individuals who begin to buy up the farms and

create what we call latifundia, large agribusiness, if you will. And

who we now have, of course, are slaves to work it for them and the

tremendous homeless class who are rebel rousing like the Plebeians did

300 years before in Rome. This is now time for the Kennedy brothers

to step in, Tiberius Kennedy and Gaius Kennedy. Their last name is

actually Gracchus. It's definitely -- let me spell it correctly,

G-R-A-C-C-H-U-S, Tiberius t-I-B-E-R-I-U-S, Gaius G-A-I-U-S? Tiberius

takes over as council and -- by the way, the Maccabiah rebellion is

put down by 135 BCE. In any case -- or 133.

Tiberius is a reformer who speaks to the people. He comes from

an aristocratic patrician family, but he begins the process of

agriculture reform. He begins to try to distribute land. He cuts

down on the taxes. In other words, he speaks to the masses. And he's

assassinated. He's assassinated by the senator, who believed that he

was cutting into the profits. We don't know if Lyndon Johnson was

involved or not, but we do know it was an integration of many senators

that were involved. And so in 133 BCE the Senate restores the full

power. However, in 123 or there abouts, Tiberius' brother guy, which

is elected tribune, and he comes forth with loads of reforms and

pushes these wide reforms. However, again instigated by the Senate,

riots break out and Gaius is murdered assassinated in 121 BCE.

The next history of Rome basically is a continuous conflict

between the haves and the have nots, between, in a sense, the

patrician and the new patrician class, the wealthy landholders and

slave holders and the working class or what the Marxians refer to as

the lupen proliterian. Loupen means the unemployables. L-U-P-E-N.

And it is a conflict between Marius and Sulla M-A-R-I-U-S and

S-U-L-L-A. Marius represents the Plebeian class, sort of a Demi God,

who appeals to the masses and their emotions. Where Sulla is the hero

of the patrician Senate. And they have their sides, their armies,

they continue battles throughout the next 30 years. In the year 100,

Julius Caesar is born. And at that same time, Marius is now counsel

for the sixth time. The Civil War continues back and forth -- 90

Marius is control, 89 Sulla controlled. Some of the outer provinces,

including the Athenians, rise up against the Romans to take advantage

of the conflict. Finally, Sulla defeats Marius' son, and he is called

dictator for life in 82, but he steps down in 79 and dies. And now

Rome is sort of left in confusion.

And in 71, perhaps one of the other most famous events in Roman

history occurs. A gladiator, a slave by the name of Spartacus rises

up and produces an army of thousands of gladiators and slaves.

Massive army. He may have reached as much as 100,000 rebellions of

people who set their base around Mount Vesuvius. Spartacus, great

book, novel that was made into a movie that was recently released with

the stuff that they cut out in the late 50s with Tony Curtis kissing

some man and stuff like that, making more the modern homosexual stuff

put in. Where's Jessica to pick on me today on that? In any case,

based on that what happens in the Howard fast into is reflecting an

individual who fights for freedom, an individual who fights for the

people, an individual who fights to end slavey, sort of a Nat Turner

if you will.

In 1918, 1919 right after World War I, a massive Marxist movement

in Germany called itself the Spartacus movement. Spartacus has been a

name that was picked up by numerous communist movements in celebration

in the fight against slavery. In any case, it is very difficult to

put up with the hundreds of thousands of Roman legions. And by 70,

BCE the slave rebellion led by Spartacus is put down. And about

10,000 slaves gladiators have their heads cut off, and they're put on

polls or they are crucified on polls. Interesting point, by the way,

the Romans very seldom crucified on crosses. They actually hung their

people on straight polls which was a little easier, I guess, because

you just cut down a tree. And instead of on crosses, they only needed

two nails, so they saved money. But in the meantime, all along the

apian rode, the road that leads to Rome, these polls with people dying

on them were placed. So coming in from most areas into the cities of

Rome, you would see what happens to slaves who rebel. It must have

been a horrible stink as well, now that I think about it.

At around the same period of time, what happens is, in Rome, the

creation of a triumvirate, meaning three individuals, decide to rule

Rome for the people. And among those three is a man named Julius

Caesar. Caesar becomes a hero by the others, in essence, to get rid

of them, to fight the galls and the Britains. Caesar crosses into the

Germanic/French areas and actually goes into Britain as well. And

these are basically Celtic people that he is confronting who paint

themselves with blue paint. In England, the term Britain comes from

blue painted people. And of course they're apparently quite wild and

quite unforgiving and they never stop. Translation, they are berserk

in their battle arrangements. However, Caesar is fairly successful,

not as great in England. He writes back to Rome various letters and

talks about his accomplishments. Like many charismatic leaders, he

has the ability to promote himself like John Kennedy with his PT 109.

I think that was the title of the book talking about his exploits in

World War II, building on their character, brings more people to their

support. Trouble back at home. His isolation makes him decide to

return to Rome a conquering hero at around 50 BCE. I think most of

you know the slogan that for some reason appears on Marlboro boxes of

cigarettes, I have no idea why -- "I came, I saw, I conquered" -- was

the element of his commentary on gall. And then he was told not to

come back under threat of banishment and death. And he crosses the

Rubicon into the Roman territories. And of course the other famous

statement attributed to him, "the die is cast ". The Romans played

dice, die meaning the dice are thrown or the die is cast, singular.

Obviously, the hero base, the veteran legions that he controlled in

gall were able to defeat whatever little resistance there was. And he

enters Rome a conquering hero. Within the next six years, he

introduces major reforms in Rome.

One of the big reforms that he introduces, not just for the

people, but for the city itself, is to stop all trucks from coming

into road during the day to reduce traffic into the city which has

become almost unbearable. The trouble is that they are now coming in

at night; and therefore, Rome is a city that is very difficult to

sleep in. It is also a city that is very prone to fire. People

cooked within their apartments. And I do mean apartments. I think

the most amazing thing when I visited Rome was to see that they

actually had apartment buildings. Granted, they weren't 60-70 stories

high, but they did run five, six, seven stories. And inside of those,

they did not have the kind of fireplaces that would take the heat out

or the smoke out. And therefore, there was a lot of smoke in the

city, pollution, if you will. Romans loved to go to the countryside.

And when they made money, they moved the hell out of the city to live

somewhere where they could breathe fresh air. Now, please note the

major pollution was not just the smoke. The major pollution was the

vast amount of horses because they create pollution. We sometimes

don't think about it.

One of the things that was very noticeable to me in the City of

Herculinium was that when you walk down the streets -- Herculinium, by

the way, is one of the cities that was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius

when it erupted around 79 AD CE. And Pompeii I think we're familiar

with. Pompeii was covered with ash to the extent that when people

began to dig, they realized there were holes in the ground. And they

poured plaster in them, and they were able to find how the bodies,

animals and humans, died, what position they were and where they were.

They were actually burned away leaving gaps in the ash. But

Herculinium was covered by mud slides. And was not dug up until many

years after Pompeii. Herculinium was a working city. Pompeii was a

resort for the wealthy Romans. They had their villas in Pompeii.

Herculinium, as you walk down the cobblestone roads, the carriages,

trucks, whatever you want to call them that were pulled by horses, had

worn these thick grooves into the cobblestone. And so what happened

was that when the carts were being moved by horses. They actually

were like on railroad tracks. They were in these grooves. They were

at least six to eight inches in depth in the city, showing the kind of

heavy traffic that existed over the two centuries of Roman

transportation into the City of Herculinium, and of course similar in

Rome itself.

Caesar increased the dole and of course the consent -- which is

the bread and of course the circuses as well and basically acted in

the emergency capacity as dictator. It did appear to the Roman

senators that he was going to take over as dictator for life creating

an ending the republic. And so another plot against a people's

representative, even if he was a demigod, in 44 BCE on the Ides of

March, and there were more than one Ides. Every few months they have

an Ides which were sort of evil days. On the 15th of March 44 BCE, a

group of senators waylaid him on the steps of the Senate in the forum

where Roman business took place, which sort of was like the Washington

DC mall. And they stabbed him to death. And of course et tu Brutus

or you do my son or whatever the words Shakespeare put in his mouth.

A Historians said since Greek was the common alternative .. and

you too brother, just let you know.

THE PROFESSOR: I hadn't heard that. Et tu Brutus is Latin.

A And he wouldn't have spoken Latin as his dying words. Greek was

the common tongue even among the educated. It's just Latin was the

formal Senate tongue.

THE PROFESSOR: Maybe. I suppose. I don't know. For my

perspective, Caesar, who liked to appeal to the people and be a member

of the masses rather thanking out as an elitist, I think would have

used the Latin. Where in a situation where he was talking to other

senators who were assassinating him, maybe the Greek does make sense.

That's interesting. I had never heard that. Oh well. Either way,

you too brother makes more sense than you too my son. Although again,

there are those who feel that Brutus was his illegitimate son. As

many of you know, Caesar had no children or you didn't know that by

his wife Copernia. And but he did apparently have a child with

Cleopatra. Now, that again is debatable historically, but there seems

to be some evidence that at least there was one child that he did

produce. In his going to Egypt in his meeting Cleopatra, she sure was

no Elizabeth Taylor. Cleopatra, at the time he met her and had the

affair, was about 13 years of age. We call that pornography,

pedophile, and in our society, justly he would be hung. However, she

was a seductress -- is that the word? She seduced men and used the

power of her wiles obviously later with Mark Anthony. But the

jealousy of his wife may well arranged around the fact that he had

produced a child with her. Again, at the funeral oration, Mark

Anthony, his friend, "I come to bury Caesar and not to praise him ".

Some of the words in part come out of Caesar based on some of the

reports of the speech. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your

ears. You've heard those terms before I think at some point?

The next history, as long as we're dealing with history today, is

the battle, the conflict between Marcus Orelius and Caesar's nephew

Octavian, who, at the time of Julius Caesar's, death was about 18 or

19. He believed he was the rightful heir to the throne and some

believe he may have been. And so from 44 BCE until about 3l BCE,

civil war broke out as to who was the true descendant or follower of

Caesar. With the battle of Actium A-C-T-I-U-M, Octavian forces won

and Mark Antony was killed, as we know. And when the reports of his

death, which may have been a little exaggerated by the time they

reached Cleopatra, his love, she was so upset about his death or

realized her death was coming, that she put an asp to her breast. I

always wondered, asps at a breast. An asp is a snake. I was going to

translate it, but that's the way it's written. And a very poisonous

one apparently. And she died of snake venom. And at this point,

Octavian takes over and sets himself up as the principus, the first

citizen of Rome P-R-I-N-C-I-P-U-S. By 29 BCE, he is basically ruling

as an emperor. The Roman republic is over, despite the using and the

continued use at least ceremonial of the Constitution of Rome making

it appear as a republic. Octavian takes the name Augustus or the Agus

one, and the title for top counsel which he really is now, Caesar from

the Caesar family. And they're going to rule for another 70 years as

a family. Octavian Augustus spreads the Roman empire and the era is

often known as the paxromana P-A-X-R-O-M-A-N-A, the Roman peace.

Intrigue goes on in the palace. But the trappings now of a true

monarchy occur. And what we have now until his death is an

efficiently run citizen, organized controlled, and in some ways

working for the benefit of the people, destroying of the -- or ending

some of the chaos that was coming about at the end of the Roman

republic. So for 500 years, from 509 or 507, as your book says -- 509

is the way some books say it. And the way I learned it, until 44 or

29 BCE, we have 500 years of a republic. And now we are entering 500

years of the empire period.

Power corrupts and absolute corrupts absolutely. While Tiberius

who followed Octavian in office was old and somewhat fair, the next

couple of emperors except for one, the next few emperors were

basically absolutely insane, no ifs ands or buts about it. Caligilar

believed he was a living God. And of course the Roman emperors began

to decare himself god. He basically had his greatest affair with his

sister. He opened a house of prostitution and forced all of the noble

women to participate. There's no way to describe the absolute

insanity that went on with the corruption of power. I'm going to show

a DVD or have on at least a little later one of the greatest British

productions based on the -- by Robert Graves, I Claudius and Claudius

the God.

Claudius survived the insanity because the leaders of Rome, the

assassins and the women of Rome, the families who wanted to take over

and the military saw him as an imbecile. He stuttered. He had a

limp. And he specifically played dumb, although he was quite a

scholar and historian. And so he survived where everybody else was

assassinated or almost everyone else. And it's a very interesting

story based on the works of the great Roman historian, but also a --

what's the word I'm looking for -- the works that were like a tabloid

like the National Inquirer, the lives of the 12 Caesars written after

100 AD by a man called Seutonius S-U-E -- I'm sorry S-E-U-T-O-N-I-U-S,

which tells not only what they did but all the dirt. It's

pornographic in its approach, telling all about how Robert Kennedy

killed Marilyn Monroe, all that kind of garbage that we find and love

in history. And so much of the works of that we have about the 12

Caesars comes from Seutonius' lives of the 12 Caesars.

I'm just wondering at what point. I think I'm going to take a

break in the history here because that can get boring and go into the

life in Rome. I have a videotape I'll show on Monday. It's about 15

minutes, but I brought it just to remember it. I was going to show it

today about life, laughter, and love in Rome. All peoples laugh. It

seems to be distinctive of the human race quite different from the

Clingons. And we love and the Romans loved writing sonnets to love

and they loved dealing with humans. And they loved satire. It's

amazing how they attacked each other. Even Julius Caesar in the

writings was attacked in a humorous writing. And they survived the

patrician class but they were opening able to express themselves.

Translation, within limitations, free speech prevails. One of the

stories deals with Kato and Julius Caesar in the Senate. I don't

remember the exact outcome of it, but Caesar comes in late and Kato

begins to attack him for coming in late. And Caesar says, well, I'm

sorry, but you'll need to speak to your wife about why I'm late type

of an approach that goes on back and forth in the bantering of life

itself.

Rome may have reached a population of about 2 million during the

time and period of Augustus. About one-third or that population were

unemployed. We've already described certain elements of the city.

The hippodrome was the horse races and the chariot races and of course

the famous movie Ben Her. It must have been played by Charleston

Heston. Charleston Heston played all those roles back then. What's

interesting is that it was similar to the British soccer games where

you have the hooligans. The people of Rome loved not only the games

including the hippodrome and the horse races and the chariot races,

but they organized into colors, I guess similar to what we talk about

in some of the ghettos today, wearing the wrong color gets you killed.

The various teams or stables or whatever you want to call it had

colors. And if you walked into the wrong area of town wearing the

wrong coloration, you would be murdered, killed, assassinated. Fights

broke out, wars broke out between the colors, unemployed, by which

group they supported. Rome was a dangerous city at times. We think

of our cities having street lights or gas lights and police. There

were no street lights. There were no gas lights. There was no

police. If you went out at night, you were risking your life. So if

you did, you went out with retainers, meaning people who stood guard

with you. There were times that some of the royal palace would go out

and have fun at the people's expenses. Nero used to love going out

and attacking people when he was a teenager, not just robbing them,

but killing them. This was sort of part of the fun of being royalty.

So life in Rome had its advantages of being a city. It had diversity,

different cultures, but it also had a lot of tension between the

various classes, which within, limitations were controlled by the

Roman legions and certainly by the dole, the free bred and circuses,

the TV, if you will, of the particular era of time. Yes, there were

plagues. But most of all, the Romans upper and lower class loved

their baths. And by baths it was sort of like the Sutro baths in San

Francisco which some of you may or may not be familiar with. They're

no longer there but they still have the signs and everything to them.

There was also one in Hayward. These are large swimming pool areas.

And the Romans had hot and cold baths. And while they went in often

nude, the women and men were somewhat separated. They had steam

rooms. In other words, they had 24 Hour Fitness areas. And for all

classes, in the early afternoon, they had what the term that we're

familiar with, a siesta. Although they didn't go to sleep. They took

a break to head to the baths. And so whenever you go to a Roman city,

be it Herculinium or Pompeii, that's preserved today, you'll see these

massive baths. In Rome the largest were the baths of caracalla

C-A-R-A-C-A-L-L-A that could accommodate thousands of people at one

time. The baths of caracalla became the model of the earlier Penn

Station in New York. The baths of caracalla rooms are still there.

And every summer the Romans have major operas outside the baths or

what remains of the baths of caracalla. The Romans loved singing, and

as a result, has not changed dramatically. And they loved their

entertainment. They loved their relaxation. They loved their life.

They loved their women. We'll talk more about their love of food and

they're enjoyment of throwing it up by vomiting. They'll talk to you

about that on Monday.

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