Roman Empire (27 BCE–395 CE)

Not to be confused with Holy Roman Empire

Roman Empire Imperium Rōmānum Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων
27 BCE–395 CE
The Roman Empire in 280
Common languages	Latin Ancient Greek
Dominant mode of production	Slavery
History
• Empire established	27 BCE
• East-West division	17 January 395 CE
• Fall of Western Roman Empire	4 September 476
Area
• Total	5,000,000 km²(117 CE)
Population
• 25 BCE estimate	56,800,000

The Roman Empire was an ancient state that existed in Europe, West Asia, and North Africa. It split into two parts in 395, and the western part fell to a series of Germanic kingdoms. While the western part of the Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, the eastern part would live on for nearly a thousand more years, until 1453 CE.

History

Formation

The populist general Julius Caesar won the civil war of the Roman Republic in 45 BCE but was soon assassinated. Mark Antony and Octavian, the leaders of his faction defeated the pro-Senate opposition of Brutus and Cassius but then went to war against each other, with Octavian (renamed Augustus) becoming a military dictator and proclaiming himself the first emperor of Rome.

Expansion

In 9 CE, Germanic tribes at Teutoborg defeated 30,000 Roman soldiers. Roman expansion slowed sharply after 50 CE and almost entirely ended by the late second century. Rome's last attempt to conquer northern Britain was defeated in 211 by guerrilla warfare. In 378, Goths destroyed the entire field army of the eastern empire in Thrace at the Battle of Adrianopole. The late empire became reliant on barbarian mercenaries from the same groups that Rome was fighting against.

Decline and collapse

In the mid-fourth century, the Huns moved westward from the Eurasian steppe. They were skilled horse riders and archers and herded cattle, sheep, and goats. When they reached Eastern Europe, they overran the Ostrogoths and drove the Visigoths into the Roman Empire. The Huns forced Gothic peasants to pay tribute, which allowed them to strengthen their military. Attila became king of the Huns in 434 and attacked Gaul in 451. Celtic peasants sometimes joined forces with the Huns, but later joined with the landlords because of the Huns' predatory behavior, defeating Attila and sending him back to Eastern Europe where he died two years later.

Between 410 and 476, barbarians gradually took over parts of the Western Roman Empire until Western Europe was completely divided into various proto-states.

Mode of production

Ancient Rome was a slave society that relied on war for its supply of slaves. The wealthy ruling class lived their whole lives without working and viewed their slaves as subhuman. In the last two centuries of the empire, the slave mode of production began to decline. Population and production decreased and many large estates were broken into smaller ones. Slave owners freed many slaves because they could not profit from their labor and because many slaves intentionally destroyed or damaged the means of production. These people became small-scale producers called coloni, who later developed into the serfs of feudalism.

The Roman Empire was weakened by internal slave revolts and external invasions and eventually collapsed, ending slavery as the dominant mode of production in Europe.

References