The essence of this chapter for last-minute revision: definitions, key facts, dates and tables. The full notes, with the complete explanation, are available separately.
1 The chapter in one frame
An Empire Across Three Continents
EuropeItaly, Spain, Gaul, Britain, up to the Rhine and Danube
AfricaEgypt, North Africa with Carthage, up to the Sahara
AsiaSyria, Palestine, reaching the Euphrates and Armenia
| Boundary | Formed by |
|---|---|
| North | The rivers Rhine and Danube |
| South | The Sahara desert |
| East | The Euphrates, and beyond it the rival empire of Iran |
| West and centre | The Mediterranean, from Spain to Syria, the heart of the empire |
2 Numbers worth remembering
60 mnpopulation of the empire in the mid-second century CE
25emperors in 47 years during the third-century crisis
6 lakhsoldiers in the army by the fourth century CE
| Number | What it counts |
|---|---|
| 25 years | Minimum service for a soldier in the paid professional army |
| 176 days | Days of the year filled with shows (spectacula) in one surviving calendar |
| 5.4 million denarii | Annual yield of Herod’s client kingdom, over 125,000 kg of gold |
| 50 million | Amphorae said to lie broken at Monte Testaccio in Rome |
| 3 million of 7.5 million | Slaves in the total Italian population under Augustus |
| 1,000 | Members of the Senate by the early third century, about half from Italian families |
| 4,000 lbs of gold | Yearly income of many great Roman houses (Olympiodorus of Thebes) |
| 2.5 million solidi | Egypt’s annual tax under Justinian, about 35,000 lbs of gold |
3 Dates and rulers at a glance
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 509–27 BCE | The Roman Republic; power lies with the Senate |
| The empire itself is split into two broad phases, “early” and “late”, with the third century CE as the watershed between them. | |
| 27 BCE | Augustus founds the Principate |
| 14–37 CE | Tiberius, Augustus’s adopted heir |
| 66–70 CE | The great Jewish revolt; Jerusalem captured |
| 79 CE | Vesuvius erupts, burying Pompeii and killing the Elder Pliny |
| 98–117 CE | Trajan; the empire reaches its greatest extent about 115 CE |
| 113–17 CE | Trajan’s campaign across the Euphrates, abandoned by his successors |
| 140–160 CE | Spanish olive oil at its commercial peak |
| 193–211 CE | Septimius Severus |
| 212 CE | All free inhabitants of the empire made Roman citizens |
| 224–225 CE | The Sasanian dynasty founded in Iran |
| 233–280 CE | Germanic confederacies attack the Rhine and Danube provinces |
| 253–68 CE | Gallienus; senators excluded from military command; Palmyra destroyed (273) |
| 284–305 CE | Diocletian; the empire reorganised into 100 provinces (297) |
| 312–37 CE | Constantine; converts in 312, founds Constantinople in 324 |
| 378 CE | The Goths crush Roman armies at Adrianople |
| 398 CE | A law orders workers to be branded so runaways can be identified |
| 408–50 CE | Theodosius II, who compiled the “Theodosian Code” |
| 410 CE | Rome sacked by the Visigoths |
| 425 CE onwards | North African dominance in oil broken; the East becomes the major exporter |
| 527–65 CE | Justinian; Africa recovered from the Vandals in 533; plague from the 540s |
| 622 CE | Muhammad and his companions leave Mecca for Medina |
| 642 CE | Large parts of the eastern Roman and Sasanian empires fall to the Arabs |
4 The three players, and the sources
| Institution | What to say about it in one line |
|---|---|
| The emperor | Sole ruler from 27 BCE; succession by descent, natural or adoptive |
| The Senate | Wealthy landowning families, lifetime membership; wrote most of the surviving histories |
| The army | Paid, professional, 25 years’ service; could decide an emperor’s fate |
| Kind of source | What it includes |
|---|---|
| Texts | Histories called “Annals”, letters, speeches, sermons, laws |
| Documents | Inscriptions cut in stone, in Greek and Latin, and papyri |
| Material remains | Buildings, monuments, pottery, coins, mosaics, whole landscapes |
5 Voices from the chapter
| Who | What they tell us |
|---|---|
| Galen, physician | City-dwellers hoarded a year’s grain; peasants ate twigs, shoots and roots |
| Tacitus (55–117 CE) | Social groups in order; the Pedanius Secundus case and Nero’s troops |
| Cassius Dio, via Fergus Millar | Trajan at the Persian Gulf, wishing he were as young as Alexander |
| Columella, southern Spain | Keep double the tools; organise workers in squads of ten |
| Pliny the Elder | Condemned slave gangs chained by the feet; described Alexandria’s sealed factories |
| Josephus | Galilee: “every inch of the soil has been cultivated” |
| Olympiodorus of Thebes | The incomes of Rome’s great houses in the early fifth century |
| Augustine, bishop of Hippo | His mother’s beatings; parents selling children into 25 years’ servitude |
| Shapur I, Iran | His own inscription: 60,000 Romans annihilated, Antioch captured |
6 Trade, workers and society, in tables
| Phase | Who dominated the oil and wine trade |
|---|---|
| 140–160 CE | Spanish olive oil, in Dressel 20 containers, beating Italian producers |
| 3rd–4th centuries | North African olive estates |
| After 425 CE | The East: the Aegean, southern Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine |
| Region | Known for |
|---|---|
| Campania (Italy) | The best wines |
| Sicily and Byzacium (Tunisia) | Wheat exported to Rome |
| Galilee | Every inch cultivated, in Josephus’s words |
| Baetica (southern Spain) | Olive oil from fundi along the Guadalquivir |
| Numidia (Algeria) | Less developed; transhumance, huts called mapalia |
| Northern Spain | Celtic-speaking peasantry in hilltop villages, castella |
| Method of control | The chapter’s example |
|---|---|
| Close supervision | Columella’s squads of ten and his double stock of tools |
| Search and sealing | Alexandria’s frankincense factories: sealed aprons, masks, body searches |
| Chaining | Slave gangs chained by the feet, condemned by Pliny the Elder |
| Branding | The law of 398 CE, so runaways could be identified |
| Debt bondage | Agreements cast as debt contracts; children sold into 25 years’ servitude |
| High wages | Anastasius built Dara in under three weeks by paying well |
| Early empire (Tacitus’s order) | Late empire |
|---|---|
| Senators (patres) | Senators and equites merged into one expanded aristocracy, at least half of African or eastern origin |
| Leading equites | |
| “Respectable” people of the great houses | A middle class tied to imperial service, plus merchants and farmers |
| The plebs sordida | The humiliores: rural, industrial, migrant and casual labour, artisans, and still many slaves |
| Slaves |
7 Definitions, exactly as they must be written
All definitions in one place
Papyrus / papyrologistsAn Egyptian reed processed into writing material; the scholars who study surviving papyri
Principate / PrincepsAugustus’s regime from 27 BCE, publicly styled as rule by the Senate’s “leading citizen”
Republic / SenateRome’s pre-27 BCE regime, where power lay with the wealthy, lifetime-member Senate
Roman cityAn urban centre with its own magistrates, council and a rural “territory” of subject villages
DenariusA Roman silver coin of about 4½ g pure silver, the empire’s early currency
Roman nuclear familyHusband, wife and children, with the wife keeping independent legal control of her own property
AmphoraeThe standard shipping containers for Mediterranean wine and olive oil
TranshumanceA herder’s seasonal movement between mountain and lowland pasture
EquitesThe second most powerful Roman class, often traders, bankers and shipowners as well as landowners
HumilioresThe vast lower classes: rural labourers, artisans, casual workers and slaves
SolidusConstantine’s 4½ g gold coin, the currency of the late empire
ChristianisationThe gradual, uneven spread of Christianity to become the empire’s dominant religion
Late antiquityThe empire’s final transformative phase, roughly the fourth to seventh centuries CE
Quick Revision: read this the night before the exam
- Rome and Iran divided most of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, separated by the Euphrates
- Augustus founded the Principate in 27 BCE; emperor, Senate and paid professional army were the three players
- Client kingdoms became taxed provinces; Italy alone was not a province
- Cities, not a modern government, were how an empire of 60 million was run
- Third-century crisis: Sasanian Iran from 225, Germanic invasions 233–280, 25 emperors in 47 years
- Roman wives owned property independently and could divorce by notice, yet married far younger than their husbands
- Literacy was patchy: graffiti everywhere at Pompeii, professional scribes in Egypt
- Wheat, wine and oil crossed the Mediterranean in amphorae; Spain, then North Africa, then the East led the trade
- Slavery mattered less over time as wage and debt-bonded labour grew; supervision, branding and debt contracts controlled both
- Society ran from senators and equites down to the humiliores, and the two top groups merged in the late empire
- Diocletian and Constantine remade the state: 100 provinces, the gold solidus, Constantinople, and Christianity
- The West broke into post-Roman Germanic kingdoms; the East survived as Byzantium, which lost large parts of its eastern provinces to the Arabs by 642 CE
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