10.3 Europe: 500 to 401 b.c.  (Page 3/4)

NOTE: Insert 21: GREECE DURING THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

Upper balkans

There was culture in Thrace and in the Greek colonies along the coast of the Black Sea. Many cities had developed in Macedonia and by 450 B.C., under the reign of Alexander I, a veneer of Hellenic civilization had appeared on the ruling classes of this area. (Ref. 218 )

Italy

Italy at this time was a motley of independent tribes and towns. There was still a northern Etruscan presence near the Po River, with various cities there. Virgil, the Roman poet of part Etruscan origin, describes his home of Mantua as composed of three races which apparently included Etruscans, Venetians and Umbrians, the latter two being Indo-European Italic speakers.

In Etruria, itself, in addition to Tarquinii and Caere, which we discussed at some length in the last chapters, we should now discuss Vulci, the city-state just north of Tarquinii.

In this 5th century B.C. it showed a marked Athenian influence, with the Athenian "black-figure" pottery flooding the community. No less than 40% of all Attic pottery that has been excavated in Etruria is from Vulci. But this city's real claim to fame was its bronze-work, with multiple cast bronze statues which were in turn exported afar, including back to Greece. It is possible that Servius Tullius who ruled as King of Rome after Tarquinius Priscus, was a Vulcentine with the original name of Mastarna. (Ref. 75 ) Early in the century the Etruscans, at the height of their power and allied with the Carthaginians, were at war with the Sicilian Greeks of Syracuse and their King Hiero 1. (Please see also 1, B, this chapter), and in a great naval battle off Cumae about 474 B.C. the Etruscan navy was destroyed. They were then forced to withdraw from Campania and this secured the liberation of Rome from Etruscan control. Even then, Cumae and Capua alike were still subjected to several years (430 - 423 B.C.) of fighting some hard-nosed mountain, Italic-speaking tribes, the Samnites. It was the descendants of the latter who eventually forged a new Campanian nation. In addition to the resistance of the Campanian Greeks the city-state of Caere was further damaged by an attack by sixty Syracusan warships which plundered harbors on the mainland and overran Elba and Corsica. (Ref. 75 )

Up to this point Rome had actually only controlled an area of about nineteen by nineteen miles, but they soon defeated the Sabines and expanded into their area. In spite of the smallness of Rome, this was the period of the Roman Republic. At the beginning (494 B.C.) there was the first "secession" in which the plebes withdrew from Rome to form their own city, forcing concessions from the patricians such as the right to have officers of their own, tribunes and aediles. In the Republic there were four classes of citizens; the Patricians, consisting of the superior clans which supplied Rome with generals, consuls and laws for five centuries (the Mantii, Valerii, Aemili, Cornelii, Fabii, Horatii, Claudii and Julii); the Equites, or business men; the Plebs, or commons; and finally the Slaves. The Roman Senate consisted of 300 members made up of clan heads from three basic tribes, although occasionally an Equite got into that body. As a result of a political battle for better laws for the Plebs, a commission was sent to Greece to study the legislations of Solon and other lawmakers and on their return, ten men (decemviri) formed a new code call "the Twelve Tables" which were approved by the Assembly and became the first written form of a legal structure of Rome (450 B.C.), serving as the basic law for the next 900 years. In 443 B.C. appeared the institution of censorship and in 432 the first law designed to check electoral corruption was passed. At the end of the century the long war of Rome against the Etruscan city, Veii in Tuscany was started. At the same time the Gauls descended again from the north and the Etruscans were squeezed in the middle. (Ref. 48 )