ancient Rome

According to tradition, Romulus was Rome’s first king. His legendary reign was filled with deeds expected of an ancient city founder and the son of a war god. Thus he was described as having established Rome’s early political, military, and social institutions and as having waged war against neighboring states. Romulus was also thought to have shared his royal power for a time with a Sabine named Titus Tatius. The name may be that of an authentic ruler of early Rome, perhaps Rome's first real king; nothing, however, was known about him in later centuries, and his reign was therefore lumped together with that of Romulus.

The two main social orders in ancient Rome were the patricians and the plebeians. The two were in a political struggle lasting for more than 200 years. In the beginning, the patricians were supposed to have enjoyed a monopoly of power, while the plebeians began with nothing except the right to vote in the assemblies. During the course of the struggle the plebeians, however, were believed to have won concessions gradually from the patricians through political agitation and confrontation, and they eventually attained legal equality with them.

The two assemblies of the Roman Republic were the centuriate assembly (comitia centuriata), which was military in nature and composed of voting groups called centuries (military units), and the tribal assembly (comitia tributa), a nonmilitary civilian assembly. The tribal assembly met within the city and was more democratic in its organization.

The series of wars between Rome and Carthage are known as the Punic Wars. The First Punic War ( First Carthaginian War) was fought from 264–241 BCE, the Second Punic War (Second Carthaginian War) was fought from 218–201 BCE, while the Third Punic War (Third Carthaginian War) was fought from 149–146 BCE.

Augustus, also called Augustus Caesar, was the first Roman emperor following the republic, which had been finally destroyed by the dictatorship of Julius Caesar. His autocratic regime is known as the principate because he was the princeps, the first citizen, at the head of that array of outwardly revived republican institutions that alone made his autocracy palatable. With unlimited patience, skill, and efficiency, he overhauled every aspect of Roman life and brought durable peace and prosperity to the Greco-Roman world.