Alright so when we last chatted with the Romans they had eliminated their Kings after the rape of Lucretia and now were under the direction of the Senate. The senate eventually created the position of consul, which was held by two people simultaneously, and they were something akin to a dual president, or in the case of Rome it would be closer to like dual Hitlers.
Aww fuck, the only thing they can't agree on is where to invade next!
The interesting thing about Rome was that their constitution was extremely complex, involving consuls, senators, praetors, magistrates and checks and balances to each group, but none of it was written down. the real drive of history in Rome and its government is not the details of this legislative body, but rather the struggles between the common people of the Republic and the aristocracy.
So initially we see the Patrician Era, or the age of aristocracy, when the monarchy fell and the position of consul was created the consuls ruled the country in much the same manner as the kings had before. During a war in 494 BC the lower classes, who were the soldiers of the Republic, threw down their weapons and left, demanding that they have the right to select their own officials. After some debate it was decided that perhaps the ability to wage war was necessary and the Plebeians were given the Plebeian Council.
It was during the Republican era that we see Rome harness the power of architecture to create domes and arch's, which classed the hell out of their cities, versus their Greek counterparts. Slaves were kept by wealthy, and even not so wealthy families, to the point that at one time roughly 25% of Romes population was slaves. The major difference between our modern view of slavery and the Roman model was that the slaves were from pretty much everywhere. The Greeks were common slaves, used for educational purposes, Germanic slaves were used for labor, etc. Further slaves were often freed when they had completed whatever work their master had planned for them, and could also earn money to buy their freedom. The Roman household of the time also had an interesting view of religion, your home was your temple. Each home would have an altar, which would have a statue or image of the household God. Popular God's of the time were Jupiter and Mars, though all kinds of crazy Indo-European deities pop up, like snake Gods and such. Most of the Roman religious tradition however was lifted from the Greeks, who also kindly shared their philosophical beliefs with the Romans...at the tip of a sword.
Now then, back to the history bit. Around 390 or 387 BC a group of Gauls under the leadership of Brennus...
Damn that's one bad dude. Anyway, the Gauls were tromping about the lands North of Rome, what was once Etruria, and wanted a land they could call home. They entered into negotiations with the tribes in Etruria, asking if they could have a parcel of land to live on, the Etrurians had recently come under roman control so they asked Rome to send diplomats to decide what should be done. Rome sent the Fabii brothers (pronounced like Fabio, but with an 'I' instead of an 'o')
So these three 'diplomats' arrive at the Gaul encapment, at roughly the same time as an army from the nearby city. The Fabii 'break the law of nations' I.E. they grabbed their swords and started stone killing Gauls.
The Fabians manage to kill a Gallic leader as well as make good an escape. The Gauls send an actual diplomat to Rome asking that the male models be handed over to them for trial. Rome, being Rome decides that instead of that, they'll promote the Fabians to the position of Consul for how kick ass they are. The Gauls respond with a declaration of war and start marching towards Rome. Rome responded by sending six legions of its best troops, or whoever was laying around. In these days you paid for your outfit and weapons in the army, so the legion would put all the rich older citizens on the front lines and the poorer half naked soldiers on the wings. Further the army used a phalanx formation like the Greeks, which was effectively big spear walls pushed together into even larger walls of spears. The Gauls arrived with around 24,000 men, nearly equal to the Romans and proceeded to drive away the poorly armed wings of the army and then surrounded the wealthy aristocrats in the center...slaughtering them. Romes upper class was now basically bleeding out about 14 miles North of town. The fleeing legions returned to Rome and left the door open, allowing the Gauls to storm the city. The citizenry of Rome fled to one of the seven hills, Capitoline and beat back repeated assaults. The Senate was quickly informed and a man named Camillus was given temporary dictator powers and a generalship. Camillus set about trying to organize some kind of rescue for Rome, which was busily being sacked by the super tough Brennus.
Brennus eventually figured out how to circumvent the defenders and forced a surrender demanding a metric shit ton of gold as payment. Once this business was done Camillus showed up with his new army and battled Brennus on the streets of Rome. This did not pan out for either side and after a hard pointless fight Brennus and Camillus agreed to meet the following day outside of the city. This second fight worked out badly for Brennus who was defeated and forced to retreat. Rome was safe and some important lessons were learned. Some of these included things like not letting your aristocracy do all the fighting, outfitting your army equally so you don't have a bunch of poorly armed plebs running around getting stabbed. Finally the Romans figured out that there were a great many things they didn't know about tactics, and as such they adopted a new 'manipular' form of legion. A 'manipule' is the Roman term for military unit, at the front of the army would be javelin units called Hastati, behind them were the Principes, who did the majority of the hand to hand fighting, and when you needed to break the will of the opposing force you sent in the last unit the Triarii, who were mainly veterans and well armed and armored soldiers. This defeat also caused the Romans to build larger walls around Rome, which you would've thought would have been one of those clever ideas they picked up from the Greeks, but apparently not.
So, this is the Roman Republic, up to the sack of Rome. Join us next time when we see what the Greeks have been doing during all this nonsense.
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