Boii
The Boii were a Gallic tribe of the Iron Age, attested at various times in Cisalpine Gaul, parts of Bavaria, in and around Bohemia, parts of Poland, Gallia Narbonensis. In addition the archaeological evidence indicates that in the 2nd century BC Celts expanded from Bohemia through the Kłodzko Valley into Silesia, now part of Poland and the Czech Republic, they first appear in history in connection with the Gallic invasion of north Italy, 390 BC, when they made the Etruscan city of Felsina their new capital, Bononia. After a series of wars they were decisively beaten by the Romans in a Battle of Mutina and their territory became part of the Roman province of Cisalpine Gaul. According to Strabo, writing two centuries after the events, rather than being destroyed by the Romans like their Celtic neighbours,he Boii were driven out of the regions they occupied. Around 60 BC, a group of Boii joined the Helvetii's ill-fated attempt to conquer land in western Gaul and were defeated by Julius Caesar, along with their allies, in the Battle of Bibracte.
Caesar settled the remnants of that group in Gorgobina, from where they sent two thousand to Vercingetorix's aid at the Battle of Alesia six years later. The eastern Boii on the Danube were incorporated into the Roman Empire in 8 AD. From all the different names of the same Celtic people in literature and inscriptions it is possible to abstract a Continental Celtic segment, boio-. There are two major derivations of this segment, both presupposing that it belongs to the family of Indo-European languages: from'cow' and from'warrior.' The Boii would thus be either "the herding people" or "the warrior people." The "cow" derivation depends most on the Old Irish legal term for "outsider:" ambue, from Proto-Celtic *ambouios, "not a cattle owner." In a reference to the first known historical Boii, Polybius relates that their wealth consisted of cattle and gold, that they depended on agriculture and war, that a man's status depended on the number of associates and assistants he had. The latter were the *ambouii, as opposed to the man of status, *bouios, a cattle owner, the *bouii were a class, "the cattle owners."
The "warrior" derivation was adopted by the linguist Julius Pokorny, who presented it as being from Indo-European *bhei-, *bhī-, "hit. Boii would be from the o-grade of *bhei-, *bhoi-; such a connection is possible if the original form of Boii belonged to a tribe of Proto-Indo-European speakers long before the time of the historic Boii. If, the case the Celtic tribe of central Europe must have been a final daughter population of a linguistically diversifying ancestor tribe; the same wider connections can be hypothesized for the "cow" derivation: the Boeotians have been known for well over a century as a people of kine, which might have been parallel to the meaning of Italy as a "land of calves." Indo-European reconstructions can be made using *gʷou- "cow" as a basis, such as *gʷowjeh³s. Contemporary derived words include Boiorix and Boiodurum in Germany, their memory survives in the modern regional names of Bohemia, a mixed-language form from boio- and Proto-Germanic *haimaz, "home": "home of the Boii," and'Bayern', derived from the Germanic Baiovarii tribe.
According to the ancient authors, the Boii arrived in northern Italy by crossing the Alps. While of the other tribes who had come to Italy along with the Boii, the Senones and Cenomani are attested in Gaul at the time of the Roman conquest, it remains therefore unclear where the Central European origins of the Boii lay, if somewhere in Gaul, Southern Germany or in Bohemia. Polybius relates that the Celts were close neighbors of the Etruscan civilization and "cast covetous eyes on their beautiful country." Invading the Po Valley with a large army, they drove out the Etruscans and resettled it, the Boii taking the right bank in the center of the valley. Strabo confirms that the Boii emigrated from their lands across the Alps and were one of the largest tribes of the Celts; the Boii occupied the old Etruscan settlement of Felsina. Polybius describes the Celtic way of life in Cisalpine Gaul as follows: They lived in unwalled villages, without any superfluous furniture, their possessions consisted of cattle and gold, because these were the only things they could carry about with them everywhe
Parma
Parma is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its architecture, art, prosciutto and surrounding countryside. It is home to the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world. Parma is divided into two parts by the stream of the same name; the district on the far side of the river is Oltretorrente. Parma's Etruscan name was adapted by Romans to describe the round shield called Parma; the Italian poet Attilio Bertolucci wrote: "As a capital city it had to have a river. As a little capital it received a stream, dry". Parma was a built-up area in the Bronze Age. In the current position of the city rose a terramare; the "terramare" were ancient villages built of wood on piles according to a defined scheme and squared form. During this age the first necropolis were constructed; the city was most founded and named by the Etruscans, for a parma was a Latin borrowing, as were many Roman terms for particular arms, Parmeal and Parmnial are names that appear in Etruscan inscriptions.
Diodorus Siculus reported that the Romans had changed their rectangular shields for round ones, imitating the Etruscans. Whether the Etruscan encampment was so named because it was round, like a shield, or whether its situation was a shield against the Gauls to the north, is uncertain; the Roman colony was founded in 183 BC, together with Mutina. Parma had a certain importance as a road hub over the Via Claudia, it had a forum, in. In 44 BC, the city was destroyed, Augustus rebuilt it. During the Roman Empire, it gained the title of Julia for its loyalty to the imperial house; the city was subsequently sacked by Attila, given by the Germanic king Odoacer to his followers. During the Gothic War, Totila destroyed it, it was part of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna and, from 569, of the Lombard Kingdom of Italy. During the Middle Ages, Parma became an important stage of the Via Francigena, the main road connecting Rome to Northern Europe. Under Frankish rule, Parma became the capital of a county. Like most northern Italian cities, it was nominally a part of the Holy Roman Empire created by Charlemagne, but locally ruled by its bishops, the first being Guibodus.
In the subsequent struggles between the Papacy and the Empire, Parma was a member of the Imperial party. Two of its bishops became antipopes: Càdalo, founder of the cathedral, as Honorius II. An independent commune was created around 1140. After the Peace of Constance confirmed the Italian communes' rights of self-governance, long-standing quarrels with the neighbouring communes of Reggio Emilia and Cremona became harsher, with the aim of controlling the vital trading line over the Po River; the struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines was a feature of Parma too. In 1213, her podestà was the Guelph Rambertino Buvalelli. After a long stance alongside the emperors, the Papist families of the city gained control in 1248; the city was besieged in 1247–48 by Emperor Frederick II, however crushed in the battle that ensued. Parma fell under the control of Milan in 1341. After a short-lived period of independence under the Terzi family, the Sforza imposed their rule through their associated families of Pallavicino, Sanvitale and Da Correggio.
These created a kind of new feudalism, building castles throughout the city and the land. These fiefs evolved into independent states: the Landi governed the higher Taro's valley from 1257 to 1682; the Pallavicino seignory extended over the eastern part of today's province, with the capital in Busseto. Parma's territories were an exception for Northern Italy, as its feudal subdivision continued until more recent years. For example, Solignano was a Pallavicino family possession until 1805, San Secondo belonged to the Rossi well into the 19th century. Between the 14th and the 15th centuries, Parma was at the centre of the Italian Wars; the Battle of Fornovo was fought in its territory. The French held the city in 1500–1521, with a short Papal parenthesis in 1512–1515. After the foreigners were expelled, Parma belonged to the Papal States until 1545. In that year the Farnese pope, Paul III, detached Parma and Piacenza from the Papal States and gave them as a duchy to his illegitimate son, Pier Luigi Farnese, whose descendants ruled in Parma until 1731, when Antonio Farnese, last male of the Farnese line, died.
In 1594 a constitution was promulgated, the University enhanced and the Nobles' College founded. The war to reduce the barons' power continued for several years: in 1612 Barbara Sanseverino was executed in the central square of Parma, together with six other nobles charged of plotting against the duke. At the end of the 17th century, after the defeat of Pallavicini and Landi the Farnese duke could hold with firm hand all Parmense territor
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (consul 187 BC)
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was a twice Roman consul, Pontifex Maximus and Princeps Senatus. A scion of the ancient Patrician gens Aemilia, he was most the son of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, with his brothers being Lucius and Quintus. According to Polybius, Lepidus was "the handsomest man of his time," as well as, in the words of Diodorus, being "gifted with superior intelligence". Combining these qualities with an impeccable aristocratic birth, political skill and a reputation for bravery, Lepidus soon rose to become one of the leading Romans of his generation. Lepidus was the great-grandfather of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus the Triumvir. Although he was only 15 at the time of the Battle of Cannae in the 2nd Punic War, it was that Lepidus first distinguished himself. If not at Cannae itself in one of the battles following it, Lepidus saved the life of one of his countrymen by killing his assailant. For this act of gallantry, the Senate ordered an equestrian statue of the young man erected on the Capitoline to commemorate the deed.
It was a remarkable honour for one so young and one that marked Lepidus out for the future greatness he would achieve. That year, 216 BC, Lepidus' father, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, an augur and twice consul and Marcus and his two brothers staged funeral games for three days in his honour. In 201, Lepidus and two colleagues were sent as ambassadors by the Senate to King Ptolemy of Egypt, both to announce Rome's victory over Carthage and ensure that Rome's alliance with Egypt would continue through the coming war with Philip of Macedon, which the Romans were preparing for. Ptolemy was still only a young boy at this time and there is a tradition that Lepidus for a time acted himself during his stay in Egypt as the king's guardian and for a time governed the country; this appeal to Rome for the Senate to send a regent to them was, according to Justin, made by the Egyptians themselves. At this time while in Alexandria, Lepidus sailed to meet with Philip while the king was besieging Abydus, in an attempt to persuade him to lift the siege and abandon his attacks on Pergamum and the Rhodians, who had appealed to Rome.
Lepidus delivered a message from the Senate that Philip of Macedon must cease from making war on any other Greeks and agree to pay compensation to Attalus of Pergamum and Rhodes for any damage caused. If Philip would not agree to these terms he and Macedon would soon find themselves at war with Rome. Rejecting the demands and saying that he was ready for war, Philip took the city and Lepidus departed; the result of the king's refusal of Lepidus' terms was the outbreak of the Second Macedonian War. In 193 Lepidus served as Curule Aedile along with his kinsman Lucius Aemilius Paullus, during which time the two Aemilii constructed two new porticoes, or arcades, in Rome, one of them being the Porticus Aemilia. Elected as Praetor in 192, Lepidus served his term into 190 as governor of Sicily. Due to the ongoing war between Rome and Antiochus in the East, Lepidus was charged with the defence of the island from attack as well as ensuring that one-fifth of all the corn produced was sent to support the armies campaigning in Greece.
In 190 Lepidus left Sicily early before his term as governor had expired without first asking the permission of the Senate to do so and hastened back to Rome in order to stand in the consular elections. This, counted against him and made him unpopular with the people as he was accused of abandoning his province and responsibilities in order to satisfy personal ambition. Following the vote, only one candidate, Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, a rival of Lepidus, had achieved the required majority, but that still meant that the other consulship was vacant. However, the following day, Nobilior co-opted the candidate who had come second, Gnaeus Manlius Vulso, as his colleague and the two assumed the Consulship for 189. Lepidus had polled third out of the four candidates, behind Manlius but ahead of Marcus Valerius Messalla; this humiliating defeat for the aristocratic patrician Lepidus, who saw the consulship as his birthright, further embittered a hatred that had existed between him and Nobilior. The following election, held in 189, Lepidus again stood as a candidate for the consulship.
Nobilior, returned to Rome to conduct and oversee the elections and he used his position to prevent any votes being cast for Lepidus, his personal enemy. As a result, although this time unfairly, Lepidus once more suffered the humiliation of defeat in the elections and could justly blame Nobilior. Instead, Marcus Valerius Messalla, who the previous year had polled behind Lepidus, Gaius Livius Salinator were elected consul. For the third successive time, Lepidus stood as a consular candidate in 188, this time he was successful and was elected consul with Gaius Flaminius as his colleague. In 187 Lepidus was at last consul, and, as he and Flaminius assumed office, word reached the Senate that the Ligurians were preparing to make war on Rome; the threat of attack so close to Rome made the Senate take the matter and it decreed that both Consuls should have Liguria assigned as their joint-province and command. Lepidus opposed this, protesting that Nobilior and Manlius were still acting like kings in the East though their terms had expired and yet the Senate still intended to confine both consuls to Liguria without recalling or replacing either of the two Eastern commanders.
Either Nobilior and Manlius should be replaced, or their armies should be disbanded and they return to Rome. The Senate agreed to recall Nobilior and Manlius from the East, but reiterated its decision that both Lepidus and Flaminius were to take command in Liguria. From 180 onwards, he was pontifex maximus and from 179, he was princeps s
Po Valley
The Po Valley, Po Plain, Plain of the Po, or Padan Plain is a major geographical feature of Northern Italy. It extends 650 km in an east-west direction, with an area of 46,000 square kilometres including its Venetic extension not related to the Po river basin; the flatlands of Veneto and Friuli are considered apart since they do not drain into the Po, but they combine into an unbroken plain. The plain is the surface of an in-filled system of ancient canyons extending from the Apennines in the south to the Alps in the north, including the northern Adriatic. In addition to the Po and its affluents the contemporary surface may be considered to include the Savio and Reno to the south, the Adige, Brenta and Tagliamento of the Venetian Plain to the north, among the many streams that empty into the north Adriatic from the west and north. Geo-political definitions of the valley depend on the defining authority; the Po Basin Water Board, authorized in 1989 by Law no. 183/89 to oversee "protection of lands, water rehabilitation, the use and management of hydro resources for the national economic and social development, protection of related environment" within the Po basin, has authority in several administrative regions of north Italy, including the plain north of the Adriatic and the territory south of the lower Po, as shown in the regional depiction included with this article.
The law defines the Po basin as "the territory from which rainwater or snow and glacier melt flows on the surface, gathers in streams of water either directly or via tributaries...". The United Nations Environment Program includes the Alps and Apennines as far as the sources of the tributaries of the Po but excludes Veneto and that portion of Emilia-Romagna south of the lower Po; the altitude of the valley through which the Po flows, exclusive of its tributaries, varies from 4 m below sea level in the Polesine subregion to about 2,100 m at the river's origin in the southern Piedmontese province of Cuneo known as the Provincia granda. The valley is crossed by a number of affluents running down from the Alps in the north and from the Apennines in the south; the Po's major affluents include the Tanaro, Trebbia and Secchia in the south, Dora Riparia, Dora Baltea, Ticino, Adda and Mincio in the north. The Po Valley and the Adriatic overlay a foreland basin and a system of buried ancient canyons surviving from the tectonic collision of an offshore land mass, with the mainland, an incident within the collision of the African and Eurasian plates.
Since the Messinian the system has been filling with sediment from the older Apennines but from the Alps. The shoreline of the Adriatic depends on a balance between the sedimentation rate and isostatic factors; until about 1950 the Po delta was prograding into the Adriatic. After that time due to human alteration of geologic factors, such as the sedimentation rate, the delta has been degrading and the coastline subsiding, resulting in ongoing contemporaneous crises in the city of Venice, where much irreplaceable art and architecture is to be lost due to soaring sea level in the next centuries. Where the land surface now dips below sea level the river must run at a relative elevation between dikes; the Malossa gas condensate field was discovered in 1973 and produces at depths of 6 km from the Upper Triassic Dolomia Principale dolomite and the Lower Jurassic Zandobbio dolomite, capped by the Lower Cretaceous Marne di Bruntino marl. The Po Valley is regarded as a syncline, or dip in the crust due to compression at the edges.
Regardless of whether this concept describes its geology, the valley is manifestly a sediment-filled trough, or virtual syncline, continuous with the deeps of the Adriatic Sea. The surface terrain is therefore divided into two overall types of landform: the plain, or flat surface of the fill, the anticline at the edges, taking the form of hilly country in which the outcrops of the original rock are visible along with alluvial fans formed from the outwash of the more severe anticlinal terrain; the valley is broadly divided into an upper, drier part not suited for agriculture, a lower fertile, well irrigated section, known in Lombardy and western Emilia as la Bassa, "the low". The upper areas of the Po valley take local names which reflect in their meanings their being modestly suited for farming. So we have the Piedmontese vaude and baragge, the Lombard brughiere and Groane, or, exiting from the Po valley proper, the Friulian magredi, areas remote from reachable water tables and covered with dense woods or dry soils.
This specific meaning for "lower plain" derive from a geologic feature called the fontanili line or zone, a band of springs around the Val Po, heaviest on the north, on the lowermost slopes of the anticline. It varies from a few kilometres to as much as 50 km wide; the fontanili line is the outcrop, or intersection, of the anticline's water table with the surface at the edge of the bassa. The rock above the line is porous. Surface water in the intermittent streams of the mountains tends to disappear below ground only to spring out again in the spring zone; the spring zone is called "the middle valley." Sur
Appian Way
The Appian Way is one of the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient republic. It connected Rome to Brindisi, in southeast Italy, its importance is indicated by its common name, recorded by Statius: Appia longarum... regina viarum "the Appian Way the queen of the long roads" The road is named after Appius Claudius Caecus, the Roman censor who began and completed the first section as a military road to the south in 312 BC during the Samnite Wars. The Appian Way was used as a main route for military supplies since its construction for that purpose in 312 B. C; the Appian Way was the first long road built to transport troops outside the smaller region of greater Rome. The few roads outside the early city were Etruscan and went to Etruria. By the late Republic, the Romans had expanded over most of Italy and were masters of road construction, their roads began at Rome, where the master itinerarium, or list of destinations along the roads, was located, extended to the borders of their domain — hence the expression, "All roads lead to Rome".
Romans had an affinity for the people of Campania, like themselves, traced their backgrounds to the Etruscans. The Samnite Wars were instigated by the Samnites when Rome attempted to ally itself with the city of Capua in Campania; the Italic speakers in Latium had long ago been incorporated into the Roman state. They were responsible for changing Rome from a Etruscan to a Italic state. Dense populations of sovereign Samnites remained in the mountains north of Capua, just north of the Greek city of Neapolis. Around 343 BC, Rome and Capua attempted to form a first step toward a closer unity; the Samnites reacted with military force. Between Capua and Rome lay the Pontine Marshes, a swamp infested with malaria. A tortuous coastal road wound between Ostia at the mouth of the Neapolis; the Via Latina followed its ancient and scarcely more accessible path along the foothills of Monti Laziali and Monti Lepini, which are visible towering over the former marsh. In the First Samnite War the Romans found they could not support or resupply troops in the field against the Samnites across the marsh.
A revolt of the Latin League drained their resources further. They settled with Samnium; the Romans were only biding their time. The first answer was the colonia, a "cultivation" of settlers from Rome, who would maintain a permanent base of operations; the Second Samnite War erupted when Rome attempted to place a colony at Cales in 334 and again at Fregellae in 328 on the other side of the marshes. The Samnites, now a major power after defeating the Greeks of Tarentum, occupied Neapolis to try to ensure its loyalty; the Neapolitans appealed to Rome, which expelled the Samnites from Neapolis. In 312 BC, Appius Claudius Caecus became, he was of the gens Claudia, who were patricians descended from the Sabines taken into the early Roman state. He had been given the name of the founding ancestor of the gens, he was a populist. A man of inner perspicacity, in the years of success he was said to have lost his outer vision and thus acquired the name caecus, "blind". Without waiting to be told what to do by the Senate, Appius Claudius began bold public works to address the supply problem.
An aqueduct secured the water supply of the city of Rome. By far the best known project was the road, which ran across the Pontine Marshes to the coast northwest of Naples, where it turned north to Capua. On it, any number of fresh troops could be sped to the theatre of operations, supplies could be moved en masse to Roman bases without hindrance by either enemy or terrain, it is no surprise that, after his term as censor, Appius Claudius became consul twice, subsequently held other offices, was a respected consultant to the state during his years. The road achieved its purpose; the outcome of the Second Samnite War was at last favorable to Rome. In a series of blows the Romans reversed their fortunes, bringing Etruria to the table in 311 BC, the year of their revolt, Samnium in 304; the road was the main factor that allowed them to concentrate their forces with sufficient rapidity and to keep them adequately supplied, wherein they became a formidable opponent. The main part of the Appian Way was started and finished in 312 BC.
The road began as a leveled dirt road upon which mortar were laid. Gravel was laid upon this, topped with tight fitting, interlocking stones to provide a flat surface; the historian Procopius said that the stones fit together so securely and that they appeared to have grown together rather than to have been fitted together. The road was cambered in the middle and had ditches on either side of the road which were protected by retaining walls; the road began in the Forum Romanum, passed through the Servian Wall at the porta Capena, went through a cutting in the clivus Martis, left the city. For this stretch of the road, the builders used the via Latina; the building of the Aurelian Wall centuries required the placing of another gate, the Porta Appia. Outside of Rome the new via Appia went through well-to-do suburbs along the via Norba, the ancient track to the Alban hills, where Norba was situated; the road at the time was a via a gravel road. The Romans built a high-quality road, with layers of cemented stone over a layer of small stones, drainage ditches on either side, low retaining walls on sunken portions, dirt pathways for sidewalks.
The via Appia is believed to have be
Insubres
The Insubres or Insubri were a Gaulish population settled in Insubria, in what is now the Italian region of Lombardy. They were the founders of Mediolanum. Though Gaulish at the time of Roman conquest, they were the result of the fusion of pre-existing Ligurian and Celtic population with Gaulish tribes; the Insubres are mentioned by Cicero, Livy, Pliny the Elder and Caecilius Statius. Polybius called the Insubres the most important Celtic tribe of the Italian peninsula, while according to the Livy they were the first to inhabit Cisalpine Gaul, from the 7th century BC; the Insubres were part of the Golasecca culture, which takes its name from a town near Varese, where Abbot Giovanni Battista Giani made the first findings of about fifty Celtic graves with pottery and metal objects. It is a culture that developed at the end of the Late Bronze Age, between the rivers Po, Serio and Sesia, which has its counterpart in the Central European Hallstatt culture; the Insubres culture followed what was a slow end of its own evolution.
Thanks to the cultural and commercial exchanges with neighboring areas, such as Etruria and Transalpine Gaul, the Insubres knew progress and created a distinct society of their own. In the light of archaeological findings it can be assumed that it was an oligarchic society, where power was in the hands of a few Lords; the History of the Insubres, like that of other Gauls and of Italic peoples, was written by ancient Roman and Greek writers. Apart from Livy's section on the Gallic Invasion of northern Italy, their writings came in the context of their covering Roman history and concentrated on battles between the Romans and the Insubres and other Gallic tribes in northern Italy In 225 BC, the Insubres and the Boii, their Gallic neighbours to the south of the River Po, rebelled against Rome; this was prompted by developments that started in 283 BC, when unspecified Celts besieged Arretium and defeated a Roman force that came to the aid of the city. The Romans sent envoys to negotiate the release of Roman prisoners.
A Roman army was sent to the ager Gallicus, the name the Romans gave to an area on the Adriatic coast, conquered by the Senone Gauls. This army routed a Senone force, occupied their territory, killed most of the Senones and drove the rest out of their land. Afraid that the same fate might occur to them, the neighbouring Boii joined the Etruscans in a rebellion, their combined force was defeated at the Battle of Lake Vadimo in the same year. What prompted the Insubres to join the Boii in another rebellion was a law passed in Rome that provided for the subdivision of the ager gallicus into Roman administrative units; this created fears among the Boii and Insubres that the Romans were now fighting wars to exterminate and expel the enemy and annex their territoryIn 225 BC, the Boii and Insubres paid large sums of money to Gaesatae mercenaries led by Aneroëstes and Concolitanus. The Gaesatae were Gauls from the Roman name for what is now southern France. A force of up to 70,000 men ravaged Etruria.
The Gauls encountered Roman forces near Clusium. They defeated the Romans at the Battle of Faesulae, they were routed by the combined forces of the two Roman consuls, Lucius Aemilius Papus and Gaius Atilius Regulus, at the Battle of Telamon. After the Battle of Telamon, the Romans attacked and defeated the Boii and forced them to submit to Rome. In 224 BC, the Romans attacked Insubre territory. In 223 BC, the Insubres sued for peace; the Romans were now determined to be in control of Gallia Cisalpina, the Roman name for the area where the Gallic tribes of northern Italy lived. In 222 BC, the Romans besieged Acerrae, an Insubre fortification on the right bank of the River Adda between Cremona and Laus Pompeia; the Insubres could not relieve Acerrae because the Romans controlled all the strategic points around it. Therefore, they hired 30,000 Gaesatae mercenaries and, led by Viridomarus, they besieged Clastidium, an important and strategically well placed town of the Marici, a Ligurian people who were Roman allies, hoping that this would force the Romans to lift their siege.
Instead, the Romans split their forces. The consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus headed for Clastidium and his colleague Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus continued the siege of Acerrae. At the Battle of Clastidium, Marcus Claudius defeated the Gallic forces and killed Viridomarus in single battle. Meanwhile, Gnaeus Cornelius took Acerrae. With the fortress taken and the Insubre king dead, the Romans easily took the capital of the Insubres, which they named Mediolanum; the Insubres were forced to become Roman allies. The Romans founded garrisoned colonies at Placentia; the former was on the north bank of the River Po and the latter was close to its south bank. This was done to secure the crossing of the gateway to Liguria, they established a garrison at Mutina, to become a colony in 182 BC. In 218 BC, the Insubres and the Boii rebelled in anticipation of Hannibal's invasion of Italy in the Second Punic War, they attacked Cremona and Placentia, forcing the settlers to flee to Mutina, besieged. The praetor Lucius Manlius Vulso set off from Ariminum with 1,600 cavalry.
He was ambushed twice on the way. He was in turn besieged nearby; the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio was sent to support him with fresh troops. Meanwhile, Hannibal reached Italy, he defeated Publius Scipius at the Battle of Ticinum, in In
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Roman Republic period of the ancient Roman civilization. Ruled by emperors, it had large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus. From the constitutional reforms of Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, the Empire was a principate ruled from the city of Rome; the Roman Empire was ruled by multiple emperors and divided in a Western Roman Empire, based in Milan and Ravenna, an Eastern Roman Empire, based in Nicomedia and Constantinople. Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustus after capturing Ravenna and the Roman Senate sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople; the fall of the Western Roman Empire to barbarian kings, along with the hellenization of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire, is conventionally used to mark the end of Ancient Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The previous Republic, which had replaced Rome's monarchy in the 6th century BC, became destabilized in a series of civil wars and political conflict.
In the mid-1st century BC Julius Caesar was appointed as perpetual dictator and assassinated in 44 BC. Civil wars and proscriptions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesar's adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC; the following year Octavian conquered Ptolemaic Egypt, ending the Hellenistic period that had begun with the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon in the 4th century BC. Octavian's power was unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power and the new title Augustus making him the first emperor; the first two centuries of the Empire were a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana. It reached its greatest territorial expanse during the reign of Trajan. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus. In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a crisis that threatened its existence, but was reunified under Aurelian. In an effort to stabilize the Empire, Diocletian set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West.
Christians rose to power in the 4th century following the Edict of Milan in 313 and the Edict of Thessalonica in 380. Shortly after, the Migration Period involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and the Huns of Attila led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire. With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD by Odoacer, the Western Roman Empire collapsed and it was formally abolished by emperor Zeno in 480 AD; the Eastern Roman Empire, known in the post-Roman West as the Byzantine Empire, collapsed when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks of Mehmed II in 1453. Due to the Roman Empire's vast extent and long endurance, the institutions and culture of Rome had a profound and lasting influence on the development of language, architecture, philosophy and forms of government in the territory it governed Europe; the Latin language of the Romans evolved into the Romance languages of the medieval and modern world, while Medieval Greek became the language of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Its adoption of Christianity led to the formation of Christendom during the Middle Ages. Greek and Roman art had a profound impact on the late medieval Italian Renaissance, while Rome's republican institutions influenced the political development of republics such as the United States and France; the corpus of Roman law has its descendants in many legal systems of the world today, such as the Napoleonic Code. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Neoclassical architecture. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, though it did not expand outside the Italian peninsula until the 3rd century BC, it was an "empire" long before it had an emperor. The Roman Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of towns left to rule themselves and provinces administered by military commanders, it was ruled, not by annually elected magistrates in conjunction with the senate. For various reasons, the 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which led to rule by emperors.
The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of imperium, which means "command". Successful consuls were given the honorary title imperator, this is the origin of the word emperor since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors upon their accession. Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts and civil wars from the late second century BC onward, while extending its power beyond Italy; this was the period of the Crisis of the Roman Republic. Towards the end of this era, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar was perpetual dictator before being assassinated; the faction of his assassins was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by an army led by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian's division of the Roman world between themselves did not last and Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, ending the Final War of the Roman Republic. In 27 BC the Senate and People of Rome made Octavian princeps ("first citi
