History of Rome: From Ancient Republic to Christian Capital

The Eternal City: Origins and Early History

Rome is one of the most storied cities in the entire world, both because of its age and because of its importance in world history. The city is almost 3,000 years old and has been continuously inhabited. While it has sometimes been more influential than at other times, it has played an important role on the world stage since the era in which it became the center of Christendom. This paper examines the history of the Eternal City, focusing on how it changed after the coming of Christianity.

The city was founded in the ninth century BCE as a village and grew in size and importance over much of its first 1,500 years. In the decades before it became the center of Christianity, the city served as the capital of a powerful Mediterranean empire whose power extended into northern Europe and Africa through an aggressive process of colonization, enforced by a large and highly disciplined army. While many people think of its role as the papal seat as its most important, it is arguable that the pre-Christian history of Rome had a greater influence on the world and continues to shape the modern era.

There is evidence of human settlement on the same site dating back at least 10,000 years, but the oldest chapters of the city's history are often forgotten because they are obscured by the myth of the city's "birth" in the eighth century BCE. According to legend, a pair of twins named Romulus and Remus — supposedly raised by a wolf who nursed them in infancy — founded the city (Kertzer 18). These twins established the beginning geographic footprint of the city, abducted women to provide mates for the first citizens so that the city would endure, and established the basic structure of Roman government.

From Republic to Empire

Through about the end of the first century BCE, Rome was rarely at peace, fending off various invasions from neighboring peoples and invading its neighbors as well. For the last decades of this era, Rome was a republic — a condition that would end as the empire grew bigger and more complex. The burdens of governing such a large empire could not be sustained by elected officials who came and went every year (Ward-Perkins 23–24).

By the end of the Roman Republic, the population of Rome had reached approximately two million people, making it the largest city in the world. The form of government thus shifted to that of an empire. Longer-ruling emperors brought a measure of stability to Rome — at least when those emperors were skilled and humane. When they were bad rulers, however, they were often very bad indeed, and the empire suffered greatly during their reigns (Ward-Perkins 27).

The Decline of the Old Order

By around 400 AD, the old social and physical structures of Rome were in decline, the city losing power both within its own empire and within the Western world as a whole (Miles 41). The decline of the old order created a space for the ascension of Christianity, which had begun in the first century AD. For the first two centuries of the Christian era, Roman authorities classified Christianity as simply a sect of Judaism and therefore did not treat it as a distinct religion in its own right.

Conclusion

Over the next centuries, until Rome was overtaken by northern, Germanic tribes, Rome would rise to become the center of the world's Christian powers — all of which would be lost with the beginning of the Middle Ages (Kertzer 214).