Roman History and Historiography
This domain tests the institutional and chronological spine of Roman history from the regal period to late antiquity, together with the historians who shaped the narrative. Questions pair magistracies with powers, dates with events, and passages with their authors' methods and biases.
Chronology
- 753 BC traditional foundation (Varronian); 509 first consuls; 494 first plebeian secession; 451–450 Twelve Tables; 367 Licinian–Sextian laws.
- 264–241, 218–201 and 149–146 the three Punic Wars; 133 Tiberius Gracchus; 107 Marius' first consulship; 91–88 Social War; 88–82 Sulla; 63 Catiline; 49 Rubicon; 44 Caesar killed; 31 Actium; 27 the settlement of Augustus.
- AD 14 Augustus dies; 69 the Year of the Four Emperors; 79 Vesuvius; 117 Trajan's maximum extent; 212 Constitutio Antoniniana; 476 deposition of Romulus Augustulus.
- Roman dates are AUC: BC = 754 − AUC, so AUC 700 = 54 BC and AUC 753 = 1 BC.
Magistracies and the Principate
- Cursus honorum: quaestor (minimum age 30), aedile or tribune, praetor (39), consul (42); censors and dictators stand outside the ladder.
- Tribune of the plebs: sacrosanct, holding intercessio (veto), convoking the concilium plebis.
- Assemblies: comitia centuriata (consuls, war and treason), comitia tributa (most legislation and lower magistrates).
- Augustus: tribunicia potestas, maius imperium, the title princeps, and the Res Gestae as controlled self-presentation.
Historiography
- Livy: annalistic, moralising, with composed speeches; Polybius: pragmatic history, the mixed constitution in Book 6, anacyclosis.
- Sallust: Thucydidean moral decline; Tacitus: Annals and Histories, claiming sine ira et studio; Suetonius: biographical and anecdotal; Dio, Josephus, Ammianus.
- Non-literary evidence: Fasti consulares, coin legends and imperial titulature, the Vindolanda tablets, the Res Gestae.
Worked example
A passage praises Rome's balanced constitution. Reasoning: identify Polybius 6, where consuls (monarchic), senate (aristocratic) and people (democratic) check one another. The framework is Greek constitutional theory deployed to explain Roman success within the cycle of constitutions. It is not a neutral description of late Republican politics, and Polybius writes as a Greek hostage analysing a power he admires.
Traps
- Assuming the consular year always began on 1 January; before 153 BC it began in March.
- Confusing the tribunus plebis with a tribunus militum.
- Treating Livy's speeches as verbatim records.
- Conflating the first triumvirate (60/59) with the second (43).
- Calling Octavian 'Augustus' in contexts before 27 BC.