![]() Cicero, when he called Rome eternal, thought of the Roman Empire being eternal, but he never distinguished between city and Empire. However, nowadays we think of Rome as a city being eternal. Footnote 10 Here, of course, it refers to the Roman Empire in a territorial sense.Īll the same it is telling that there was no more concrete term for the Roman state or the Empire. It is found again in phrases that may indicate ‘the Roman reputation’ or ‘fame’, Footnote 6 but also in the sense of ‘power’: ‘Go, and with the help of the gods, restore the unconquerable Roman name!’ Footnote 7 It is encountered frequently as well as a term for ‘the Roman people’: ‘But, they added, the immortal gods, taking pity upon the Roman name, had spared the innocent armies.’ Footnote 8 It can be used in a more abstract sense for ‘the existence’ or ‘identity’ of Rome: ‘the Volsci, their ancient foes, had armed for the purpose of extinguishing the Roman name.’ Footnote 9 In the fourth century the Isaurians are described as inhabiting a region ‘in the middle of “the Roman name”’. ![]() Footnote 5 The expression nomen Romanum occurs quite frequently in Augustan literature, notably in the work of Livy, where I count more than twenty instances. That is no longer the case when Cicero says: ‘Who has such a hatred, one might almost say for the Roman name, as to despise and reject the Medea of Ennius or the Antiope of Pacuvius, and give as his reason that though he enjoys the corresponding plays of Euripides he cannot endure books written in Latin?’ Footnote 3 Another clear instance is: ‘Plans have been formed in this state, O judges, for destroying the city, for massacring the citizens, for extinguishing the Roman name.’ Footnote 4 Here civitas, urbs, cives and nomen Romanum are used in one and the same sentence in four different meanings, all designating essential aspects of Rome. It indicated all that was Rome: the people, the state, the Empire and its reputation.Ĭicero is the first to use this term frequently: ‘For so great is the dignity of this empire, so great is the honour in which the Roman name is held among all nations.’ Footnote 2 Here it can still be interpreted as merely a term for ‘reputation’. The expression that most often is used for the ‘Roman state’ in Latin is nomen Romanum, the Roman name. Footnote 1 In its classical age there was hardly a straightforward name for the Roman state, for civitas was a fluid term that could simply indicate any tribe or city, but could also refer to its citizens. Those we often call ‘the Byzantines’ called themselves citizens of the Roman Empire, and the Byzantine Emperors were called Roman Emperors until the fall of Constantinople in the fifteenth century. Rome was the Empire, and that is what it remained until the fifteenth century, for the Byzantine Empire is a modern appellation. It was a city, but it was also far more than that. Rome was no state it was no people it was not the capital of an Empire. ![]() In the case of Rome, things are even more complicated. Or things may be a little more ambiguous: Amsterdam is capital of the Netherlands, but The Hague (‘s Gravenhage) is seat of the government and, most of the time but not always as a matter of principle, royal residence. They could be transferred from one city to another, as in the case of Bonn and Berlin, St Petersburg and Moscow. Others, such as Washington, DC, and Brasilia, have been created in more recent periods. They are permanent, having been there if not forever, then for many centuries: London, Paris and Lisbon, for instance. The transfer of an imperial capital seems a drastic step, but conceptually simple.
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