Roman Culture

The Period of Kings: Culture

Week 2

Founding of Rome Myth-Review

◦Mother Rhea Silvia (Vestal Virgin—they kept the sacred fires burning) and Father Mar (Ares—God of War)

◦The boys were descendants of the Trojan prince and great warrior Aeneas made famous from Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid.

◦In another version of the story the father of the boys is the hero Hercules.

◦Over time, the city of Rome expanded to cover the seven surrounding hills of Aventine Hill, Caelian Hill, Capitoline Hill, Esquiline Hill, Palatine Hill, Quirinal Hill, and Viminal Hill.

◦Romulus died when he mysteriously disappeared in a whirlwind.

◦The poet Ovid once wrote that Romulus was turned into a god named Quirinus and went to live on Mount Olympus with his father Mars.

Society

◦For the Romans, it was not true that all people are created equal. Roman society, like most ancient societies, was heavily stratified. Some of the people resident in ancient

Rome were slaves, who lacked any power of their own. Unlike modern era slaves, however, Roman slaves could win or earn their freedom.

◦In the early years, at the top of Roman Society were kings who held supreme power, but soon enough the kings were thrown out. Likewise, the rest of the social hierarchy was also adaptable:

◦The lower, plebeian class, by nature most of the Roman population, wanted, demanded, and got more.

◦A wealthy class developed between the nobles and plebeians.

Multiple Choice

Roman society was stratified, what did that mean?

• They had only one class of people

• They had multiple classes of people

Slaves

◦At the top of the Roman hierarchy were the patricians and when there was one, a king. At the opposite end were the powerless slaves. Although a Roman Paterfamilias 'father of the family' could sell his dependents into slavery, this was rare. Slaves could also enter the system through children

abandoned at birth and through birth to another slave, but the main source of Roman slavery was warfare. In the ancient world, those captured during war became slaves (or were killed or ransomed).

Slaves

◦ The Roman peasantry was mostly replaced by large landowners with plantations worked by slaves. Not just landowners had slaves. There were state slaves and domestic slaves. Slaves came to be highly specialized. Some earned enough money to buy their freedom

Multiple Choice

The main source of slaves came from where?

• The plebians

• Warfare

• Greece

Proletariat and Plebeian

The ancient Roman proletariat was recognized by King Servius Tullius as the lowest class of Roman citizens. Because of the slave-based economy, proletarian wage-earners had a hard time getting money. Later, when Marius reformed the Roman army, he paid the proletarian soldiers. The name refers directly to their chief function for Rome, the production of  'offspring’.

Equestrians and Patricians

◦Equites came to be a social class just under the patricians. Their number included Rome's successful businessmen.

◦The patricians were the Roman upper class. They were probably originally relatives of the patres 'fathers' - the heads of the families of the old Roman tribes. In the beginning, the patricians held all the power of Rome. Even after the plebeians won their rights, there were vestigial positions reserved for patricians. Vestal virgins had to be from patrician families and Roman patricians had special marriage ceremonies.

◦Zeus / Jupiter

◦Hera / Juno

◦Poseidon / Neptune

◦Athena / Minerva

◦Ares / Mars

◦Aphrodite / Venus

◦Apollo / Apollo

◦Artemis / Diana

◦Hephaestus / Vulcan

◦Hermes / Mercury

◦Demeter / Ceres

◦Hestia / Vesta replaced by

Dionysus / Bacchus

Roman Gods

◦The Romans had thousands of gods. They believed that there were spirits and guardian gods for everything. Trees, rocks, streams, bridges, everything had its own guardian spirit or god. There were guardian gods for your house and even for the different parts of the house. There was a kitchen god, a door god, a bath god, and of course a sleeping god. The gods had a job - to take care of the people of the house, to watch over and protect them. If you or your family were forgetful about proper worship or the giving of sacrifices to the gods, then bad things would happen to you. The Romans blamed everything that went bad on people forgetting to worship the gods properly.

Roman Gods Cont...

◦As Rome expanded and grew, the Romans encountered people who worshiped other gods. If those people had fought extremely well, the Romans figured that their gods must be pretty good, so the Romans adopted those gods and made them Roman gods as well. They gave those gods Roman names. The Romans loved the Greek gods so much that they adopted the gods and all the myths and legends about them. They changed some

of the personalities of the ancient Greek gods to better fit the Roman way of life.

◦The Romans built huge and fancy temples to their gods wherever they went. Every city in the Roman empire had a forum, which was ringed by temples to the gods. There were impressive temples all over the Roman Empire. Every day, the ancient Romans brought offerings of meat and other items to at least one nearby temple. Usually they visited more than one temple every day.

◦The Romans also honored their gods by providing festivals for them. All the major gods had a festival day. Some of the gods even had more than one day in the year. These festivals would be paid for by either wealthy Romans, who did it to earn favor from the gods, or by the government of Rome. Festivals were free to the general public. Since the Romans worshiped many gods, there were about 200 major festivals each year.

Multiple Choice

Most of Roman culture came from which civilization?

• Greece

• England

• Africa