In historiography, ancient Rome is Roman civilization from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, encompassing the Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic and Roman Empire until the fall of the western empire.[1] The civilization began as an Italic settlement in the Italian peninsula, dating from the 8th century BC, that grew into the city of Rome and which subsequently gave its name to the empire over which it ruled and to the widespread civilisation the empire developed. The Roman empire expanded to become one of the largest empires in the ancient world, though still ruled from the city, with an estimated 50 to 90 million inhabitants (roughly 20% of the world's population[2]) and covering 5.0 million square kilometres at its height in AD 117.[3] In its many centuries of existence, the Roman state evolved from a monarchy to a Classical Republic and then to an increasingly autocratic empire. Through conquest and assimilation, it eventually dominated the Mediterranean region, Western Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa, and parts of Northern and Eastern Europe. It is often grouped into classical antiquity together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern government, law, politics, engineering, art, literature, architecture, technology, warfare, religion, language, and society. Rome professionalised and expanded its military and created a system of government called res publica, the inspiration for modern republics[4][5][6] such as the United States and France. It achieved impressive technological and architectural feats, such as the construction of an extensive system of aqueducts and roads, as well as the construction of large monuments, palaces, and public facilities. By the end of the Republic (27 BC), Rome had conquered the lands around the Mediterranean and beyond: its domain extended from the Atlantic to Arabia and from the mouth of the Rhine to North Africa. The Roman Empire emerged with the end of the Republic and the dictatorship of Augustus Caesar. 721 years of Roman-Persian Wars started in 92 BC with their first war against Parthia. It would become the longest conflict in human history, and have major lasting effects and consequences for both empires. Under Trajan, the Empire reached its territorial peak. Republican mores and traditions started to decline during the imperial period, with civil wars becoming a prelude common to the rise of a new emperor.[7][8][9] Splinter states, such as the Palmyrene Empire, would temporarily divide the Empire during the crisis of the 3rd century. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the western part of the empire broke up into independent "barbarian" kingdoms in the 5th century. This splintering is a landmark historians use to divide the ancient period of universal history from the pre-medieval "Dark Ages" of Europe. The eastern part of the empire endured through the 5th century and remained a power throughout the "Dark Ages" and medieval times until its fall in 1453 AD. Although the citizens of the empire made no distinction, the empire is most commonly referred to as the "Byzantine Empire" by modern historians during the Middle Ages to differentiate between the state of antiquity and the nation it grew into.
Formal Latin literature began in 240 BC, when a Roman audience saw a Latin version of a Greek play. The adaptor was Livius Andronicus, a Greek who had been brought to Rome as a prisoner of war in 272 BC. Andronicus also translated Homer's Greek epic the Odyssey into an old type of Latin verse called Saturnian. The first Latin poet to write on a Roman theme was Gnaeus Naevius during the 200s BC. He composed an epic poem about the first Punic War, in which he had fought. Naevius's dramas were mainly reworkings of Greek originals, but he also created tragedies based on Roman myths and history. Other epic poets followed Naevius. Quintus Ennius wrote a historical epic, the Annals (soon after 200 BC), describing Roman history from the founding of Rome to his own time. He adopted Greek dactylic hexameter, which became the standard verse form for Roman epics. He also became famous for his tragic dramas. In this field, his most distinguished successors were Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Accius. These three writers rarely used episodes from Roman history. Instead, they wrote Latin versions of tragic themes that the Greeks had already handled. But even when they copied the Greeks, they did not translate slavishly. Only fragments of their plays have survived. Latin literature was at its height from 81 BC to AD 17.This period began with the first known speech of Cicero and ended with the death of Ovid. We know much more about early Latin comedy, because we have 20 complete plays by Plautus and 6 by Terence.These men modeled their comedies on Greek plays known as New Comedy. But they treated the plots and wording of the originals freely. Plautus scattered songs through his plays and increased the humor with puns and wisecracks, plus comic actions by the actors. Terence's plays were more polite in tone, dealing with domestic situations. His works provided the chief inspiration for French and English comedies of the 1600s, and even for modern American comedy.The prose of the period is best known through On Agriculture (160 BC) by Cato the Elder. Cato also wrote the first Latin history of Rome and of other Italian cities. He was the first Roman statesman to put his political speeches in writing as a means of influencing public opinion. Early Latin literature ended with Gaius Lucilius, who created a new kind of poetry in his 30 books of Satires (100s BC). He wrote in an easy, conversational tone about books, food, friends, and current events. In the early AD 100s, Juvenal perfected the biting form of satire that has influenced many later writers. Ancient thinkers wrote verse about what they observed in nature. They are generally referred to as Presocratic Philosophers. Many aspects of culture were still without distinct form then, during the Archaic Age of Ancient Greece. The origin of drama is mired in legend, but to the best of our information, drama seems to have arisen as part of religious worship and the word tragedy appears to come from the word goat song. The first element in Greek tragedy was the chorus, which danced and sang poetry created by the dramatist at the religious festivals. Actors came later, with the great tragedians. The man credited with creating the epics we know of as the Iliad and Odyssey, (whom we refer to as Homer) was a rhapsode, a person who accompanied his improvised performances with a musical instrument.
From its origin as a city-state on the peninsula of Italy in the 8th century BC, to its rise as an empire covering much of Southern Europe, Western Europe, Near East and North Africa to its fall in the 5th century AD, the political history of Ancient Rome was closely entwined with its military history. The core of the campaign history of the Roman military is an aggregate of different accounts of the Roman military's land battles, from its initial defense against and subsequent conquest of the city's hilltop neighbors on the Italian peninsula, to the ultimate struggle of the Western Roman Empire fo r its existence against invading Huns, Vandals and Germanic tribes. These accounts were written by various authors throughout and after the history of the Empire. Following the First Punic War, naval battles were less significant than land battles to the military history of Rome due to its encompassment of lands of the periphery and its unchallenged dominance of the Mediterranean Sea. The Roman army battled first against its tribal neighbours and Etruscan towns within Italy, and later came to dominate the Mediterranean and at its height the provinces of Britannia and Asia Minor. As with most ancient civilizations, Rome's military served the triple purpose of securing its borders, exploiting peripheral areas through measures such as imposing tribute on conquered peoples, and maintaining internal order.[1] From the outset, Rome's military typified this pattern, and the majority of Rome's campaigns were characterised by one of two types. The first is the territorial expansionist campaign, normally begun as a counter-offensive, in which each victory brought subjugation of large areas of territory and allowed Rome to grow from a small town to a population of 55 million in the early empire when expansion was halted. The second is the civil war, which plagued Rome from its foundation to its eventual demise. Roman armies were not invincible, despite their formidable reputation and host of victories, Romans "produced their share of incompetents"[5] who led Roman armies into catastrophic defeats. Nevertheless, it was generally the fate of even the greatest of Rome's enemies, such as Pyrrhus and Hannibal, to win the battle but lose the war. The history of Rome's campaigning is, if nothing else, a history of obstinate persistence overcoming appalling losses.