Sulla was born into a branch of the patrician gens Cornelia, but his family had fallen to an impoverished condition at the time of his birth. Lacking ready money, Sulla spent his youth amongst Rome’s ...
In 102 BC the Cimbri returned from Hispania into Gaul and together with the Teutones decided to invade Italy. The Teutones were to head south and advance toward Italy along the Mediterranean coast; th ...
Marius was born in 157 BC in the town of Arpinum in southern Latium. The town had been conquered by the Romans in the late 4th century BC and was given Roman citizenship without voting rights. Only in ...
In general, the optimates favored the nobiles and opposed the ascension of novi homines into Roman politics, but exceptions exist.Cicero, for example, a strong supporter of the optimates' cause, was h ...
A historian of the Late Republic cautions against understanding the terms populares and optimates as formally organized factions with an ideological basis:“ Our chief contemporary witnesses to the po ...
Central to the Gracchi reforms was an attempt to address economic distress and its military consequences. Much public land had been divided among large landholders and speculators who further expanded ...
While many issues divide proponents and opponents of land reform, the questions below can help one to evaluate land reform in a more objective manner:Is private property of any sort legitimate? If so, ...
Land ownership and tenure Main article: Land ownership and tenureLand ownership and tenure can be perceived as controversial in part because ideas defining what it means to access or control land, suc ...
Lex Claudia (Classical Latin: ) was a law established in ancient Rome in 218 BC. The law was written by Quintus Claudius, then Tribune of the Plebs, stating that no senator or senator’s son could own ...
In public service, hereditary Knights had their own version of the senatorial cursus honorum, or conventional career-path, which typically combined military and administrative posts. After an initial ...
Regal era (753 to 509 BC) According to Roman legend, Rome was founded by its first king, Romulus, in 753 BC. However, archaeological evidence suggests that Rome did not acquire the character of a unif ...
There are two types of merchant.A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant, typically dealing in large quantities of goods. Some wholesale merchants only organize ...
There are two possible origins for farm.Derivation from classical Latin Some sources derive "farm" with its French version ferme, most notably used in the context of the Fermiers Generaux, from the me ...
Mercantilism was economic warfare and was well suited to an era of military warfare. Since the level of world trade was viewed as fixed, it followed that the only way to increase a nation's trade was ...
Mercantilism was the dominant school of thought in Europe throughout the late Renaissance and early modern period (from the 15th to the 18th century). Mercantilism encouraged the many intra-European w ...
