SPQR

Rewritten

'Roman history is always being (reinterpreted, falsified, rewritten)'

We

'In some ways \_____ know more about ancient Rome than the Romans themselves did'

destiny

The Romans eventually saw their empires as part of a 'manifest \____'

puzzles

The original motivations behind Rome's expansion remain 'one of history's great (mysteries, puzzles, enigmas)'

endemic

'Rome expanded into a world not of communities living at peace with one another but of \_______ (constant, brutal, endemic) violence'

bases

Rome entered 'a world of rival power \_____, backed up by military force'

militaristic

'Most of Rome's enemies were as (militaristic, violent, greedy) as the Romans', but they did not win.

Romans

For the expansion of Rome up to the 4th century there are no accounts written by contemporary \_______ at all.

1st

The first century for which we have masses of evidence on Rome is the \________ century BCE.

landed

All high-level Roman politicians came from 'a wealthy, l\________ background'

brick

Even in the first century BC, most Roman buildings were made of \____ or local stone.

squalid

Rome before the emperors was 'unimpressive, not to say s\_____'

malaria

Disease common in marshy ancient Rome

1 million

Although in theory about \_____ Roman men formed 'the people' in voting terms in the first century, usually a few thousand or hundred chose to turn up to vote..

influential

'Exactly how \_______ the people were has always - even in the ancient world - been one of the big controversies in Roman history'

law

Only the Roman 'people' could make \____

lifetime

'We have access to more Roman literature...than any one person could now thoroughly master in the course of a \_____'

Sallust

Historian who was an ally of Caesar, infamously corrupt as a governor in N. Africa, but a sharp analyst

146

Sallust complained that Rome's moral fibre had been destroyed by Rome's success, especially after the year ...

chapter

An ancient 'book' was about the size of a modern \----

Persistent

(Regular, occasional, persistent) hunger was a feature of life for most Romans

history

The Romulus story is 'myth and legend...even though Romans assumed that it was, in broad terms, \____'

concocted

The unheroic elements of the foundation narrative - murder, rape, abduction - have led some modern historians to suggest the whole story was 'c\______ as...anti-propaganda by Rome's enemies and victims'

desperate

Depictions of Roman foundation narrative as foreign inventions represent an 'over-ingenious, not to say d\---- attempt' to explain its oddities

Roman

\_______ writers never stopped telling, retelling and debating the story of Romulus and Remus

scores

There are (dozens, hundreds, scores)\____ of versions of the story of Romulus and Remus

flooded

Despite Cicero's praise of Romulus' choice of the site of Rome, the Tiber often \_____

Livy

Most modern accounts of Romulus and Remus go back to the version of \_____

20s

Livy began writing in the (40s, 30s, 20s) BCE

perish

According to Livy, when Romulus killed his brother, he said 'So \____ anyone else who shall leap over my walls.'

preoccupied

Concerning the Rape of the Sabines, Roman writers were p\----- by the 'apparent criminality and violence of the incident'.

unmarried

Livy insists that all the Sabine women who were abducted were u\---- at the time.

just

The Roman writers argue that the Sabine women were abducted only after neighbours refused a treaty. Thus it was a '\_____ war'

anxieties

Beneath the surface of the Roman foundation narratives lie 'some of the most important themes of later Roman history, as well as some of the deepest Roman cultural a....'

marriage

The story of the Sabine women raises questions about 'the nature of Roman m\____'

war

The story of the Sabine women reconciling husbands and fathers raises the theme of civil\----

unpalatable

To many Romans, the killing of Remus was 'the most (appalling, unpalatable, embarrassing) aspect of the foundation.'

fratricide

The Romulus and Remus story suggests that 'f... was hard-wired into Roman politics'.

genes

Civil war, we might say, was in the Roman (genes, psyche, character)

outsiders

'Roman political culture's extraordinary openness and willingness to incorporate o\______'

barbarians

Romans 'were often xenophobic and dismissive of people they called...'

citizenship

Despite their prejudices, the Romans gradually gave the inhabitants of their provinces '\____', culminating in 212 CE.

brutal

'Roman slavery was in some respects as \_____ as Roman methods of military conquest'

life

Slavery was not necessarily a \____ sentence

freedom

Slaves 'were regularly given their \____. or they bought it'

manumission

Roman term for freeing slaves

enlarged

According to a 3rd C Macedonian king, liberating slaves was a means by which 'the Romans have (bolstered, strengthened, enlarged) their country'.

blurred

Rome is a culture where the 'fuzzy boundary between myth and history' is particularly (fuzzy, blurred, unclear)'.

pure

The Romulus and Remus story is '(partly, mainly, pure) myth.'

stroke

'Very few towns or cities are founded at a \____, by a single individual'

Romulus

The name '\____' 'was an imaginative construction out of "Roma".'

Rome

'"Romulus" was merely the archetypal "Mr \____"'

devotion

The Romans believed that 'their pious \____ to religion' was behind their extraordinary success.

gods

'any failure they encountered could be put down to some fault in their dealings with the ...' That might be ignoring bad omens, wrongly conducting a ritual or riding 'roughshod over religious rules'

underwrote

'Religion (undermined, underpinned, underwrote) Roman power'

Numa

Although religion is involved in the story of Romulus, King \_____ was called 'the founder of Roman religion.'

book

Roman religion had no official doctrine, 'no holy ... and hardly even what we would call a belief system.'

knew

Romans '..... the gods existed; they did not believe in them in the internalised sense familiar from most modern world religions.'

Rome

Roman religion was not so much about personal salvation or morality as about keeping the relationship between ..... and the gods in order

rituals

The 'performance of \_____' was vital to Roman religion

sacrifice

'The \____ of animals was a central element in most [Roman religious] rituals.'

doing

'In general, it was a religion of \______, not believing.'

calendar

Numa introduced the Vestal Virgins and the \____, which established 'the framework for the annual roster of festivals, holy days and holidays.'

army

Servius Tullius supposedly organised a census which was further used to organise elections and the \_______

populous

In the 'comitia centuriata', the centuries varied in size. The rich were divided into 80 centuries, while there were only 20-30 for the more p\___ lower classes

poorest

There was just one century for 'the mass of the very \_____' voting for the comitia centuriata

wealthy

'Power was vested in the \_____, both communally and individually.'

small

Servius Tullius could not have produced the comitia centuriata system for Rome: it was too complex and the city too \______

individual

The story of Servius Tullius establishing the census so early underlined the importance of certain features of Roman politics, such as the power of the state over the \______

census

The story of an early \______ under Servius Tullius shows the Roman commitment to 'documenting, counting and classifying.'

political

Servius Tullius' reforms pointed to the 'traditional connection between \____ and military roles of the citizen.'

privilege

A 'treasured assumption' of the Roman elite was that 'wealth brought both political responsibility and political p\-------'

rabble

Cicero - Servius Tullius divided the people in the census 'to ensure that voting power was under the control not of the \____ but of the wealthy'

principle

Cicero - Servius Tullius ensured that 'the greatest number did not have the greatest power - a \_____ that we should always stand by in politics.' In fact it was a hotly debated principle.

bloody

The reigns of the last three Etruscan kings were particularly (harsh, bloody, brief)

unlikely

The idea that Rome under the Etruscan kings was an 'Etruscan possession' is 'most \___'

takeover

Etruscans: 'there is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest a major t\___'

links

Romans and Etruscans: 'close \____ between the two cultures, yes; conquest, no'

names

Roman, Greek and Etruscan n\_____ found on tombs reflect mobility

warlords

Regal times: 'this was a world of big men and w\___: powerful individuals who were relatively mobile

archaeologists

On the early period of Rome, 'there is not a single piece of evidence on whose dating all \_____ agree'

proximity

Rome by the time of the Tarquins benefited 'from its prime position for trading and its p\--- to wealthy Etruria'

30,000

Rome's 6th century population may have been (10,000; 30,000; 60,000; 75,000)

regal

The rape of the Sabines AND of Lucretia are 'mythic', symbolically marking the beginning and end of the \____ period

fidelity

'pudicitia' refers to '\______' of wife to husband, and Lucretia exemplified it

political

The rape of Lucretia was 'a fundamentally \_____ moment', as it led directly to the expulsion of the kings

retrospective

The story of the vow of Lucius Junius Brutus that Rome would be rid of kings forever was 'partly a r\____ prophecy', as the author knew of Brutus' descendant's assassination of Caesar.

Lars

Pliny believed that \____ Porsenna was a king of Rome

Consuls

....'were to be the most important, defining officials of the new Republic.'

separation

'there was never any formal \_____ in Rome between [the] military and civilian roles' of politicians.

unmonarchical

Although consuls took over from kings, they embodied several 'key, and decidedly unm... principles of the new political regime.'

together

Three vital qualities of consuls: elected; in office for just a year; they held office\----

temporary

'Two central tenets of Republican government were that office holding should always be t\---- and that, except in emergencies power should always be shared.'

freedom

'Underpinning the whole [Republic] was one single, overriding principle: namely, \____ or libertas.'

free

The first word of the second book of Livy's 'History', concerning the story of Rome after the monarchy, is '\-----'

liberty

The definition of 'Roman \____' was a 'controversial question' from the creation of the Republic

gradual

The creation of the Republic must have been more 'g\-----' and messier than the Romans believed

invented

There is much debate about when the office of consul was \___

Collatinus

The first two consuls were Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius C\_____

chronology

Livy acknowledged that it was 'simply too long ago' to sort out an accurate \____ of the early officeholders