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 --- Roman Empire ---
 
 The Roman Empire was a state that controlled the Mediterranean and much of Western Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa during the classical period. The Roman Republic had previously conquered most of these territories, which became ruled by emperors following triumvir Octavian's rise to power and establishment of a Principate regime in 27 BC.  By the 4th century AD the empire split into western and eastern halves. The Western Empire collapsed in 476 AD, while the Eastern Empire endured until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
 By 100 BC, the city of Rome had expanded its rule from the Italian peninsula to most of the Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilised by civil wars and political conflicts, which culminated in the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27 BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power (imperium) and the new title of Augustus, marking his accession as the first Roman emperor. The vast Roman territories were organized into senatorial provinces, governed by proconsuls who were appointed by lot annually, and imperial provinces, which belonged to the emperor but were governed by legates.
 The first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana (lit. 'Roman Peace'). Rome reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan (r. 98–117 AD), but a period of increasing trouble and decline began under Commodus (r. 180–192). In the 3rd century, the Empire underwent a 49-year crisis that threatened its existence due to civil war, plagues and barbarian invasions. The Gallic and Palmyrene empires broke away from the state and a series of short-lived emperors led the Empire, which was later reunified under Aurelian (r. 270–275). The civil wars ended with the victory of Diocletian (r. 284–305), who set up two different imperial courts in the Greek East and Latin West. Constantine the Great (r. 306–337), the first Christian emperor, moved the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium in 330, and renamed it Constantinople. The Migration Period, involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by 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 Augustus in 476 by Odoacer, the Western Empire finally collapsed. The Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire survived for another millennium with Constantinople as its sole capital, until the city's fall in 1453.
 Due to the Empire's extent and endurance, its institutions and culture had a lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government across its territories. Latin evolved into the Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the language of the East. The Empire's adoption of Christianity resulted in the formation of medieval Christendom. Roman and Greek art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance. Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque, Renaissance, and Neoclassical architecture, influencing Islamic architecture. The rediscovery of classical science and technology (which formed the basis for Islamic science) in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution. Many modern legal systems, such as the Napoleonic Code, descend from Roman law. Rome's republican institutions have influenced the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, the early United States, and modern democratic republics.
 
 
 == History ==
 
 
 === Transition from Republic to Empire ===
 
 Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though not outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. The Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of self-ruled towns (with varying degrees of independence from the Senate) and provinces administered by military commanders. It was governed by annually elected magistrates (Roman consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. The 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of imperium, meaning "command" (typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls or generals were given the honorary title imperator (commander); this is the origin of the word emperor, since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors.
 Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies, and civil wars from the late second century BC, (see Crisis of the Roman Republic) while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. In 44 BC Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated by a faction that opposed his concentration of power. This faction was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian. Antony and Octavian divided the Roman world between them, but this did not last long. Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him the title Augustus ("venerated") and made him princeps ("foremost") with proconsular imperium, thus beginning the Principate, the first epoch of Roman imperial history. Although the republic stood in name, Augustus had all meaningful authority. During his 40-year rule, a new constitutional order emerged so that, upon his death, Tiberius would succeed him as the new de facto monarch.
 
 
 === Pax Romana ===
 
 The 200 years that began with Augustus's rule are traditionally regarded as the Pax Romana ("Roman Peace"). The cohesion of the empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent and put down "mercilessly and swiftly". The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors—Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero—before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as the victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, followed by the Nerva–Antonine dynasty which produced the "Five Good Emperors": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.
 Among the so-called "Five Good Emperors", Hadrian (r. 117–138) is particularly noted for consolidating the empire's frontiers and embarking on ambitious building projects throughout the provinces. In Judaea, which had long been the center of Jewish national and religious life, his reign marked a decisive turning point. After earlier Jewish resistance to Roman rule, Hadrian visited the region in 129/130 AD and refounded Jerusalem as the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina, naming it after his family (Aelius) and the Capitoline Triad. The refoundation overlaid the destroyed Jewish city with a new Roman urban plan, and included the construction of a Temple to Jupiter on the site of the former Jewish Temple. Later tradition and archaeological evidence also indicate a Temple of Venus near the site of the Holy Sepulchre.
 Hadrian's measures, combined with restrictions on Jewish practices, helped spark the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 AD). After crushing the uprising, Roman forces expelled most Jews from Jerusalem, barring their entry except on certain days, and rebuilt the city as a statement of imperial power and domination. Most scholars consider Hadrianic Aelia to have been unwalled, with free-standing gate complexes (such as the northern gate beneath today's Damascus Gate) rather than a continuous defensive circuit.
 
 
 === Transition from classical to late antiquity ===
 
 In the view of contemporary Greek historian Cassius Dio, the accession of Commodus in 180 marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron", a comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the Empire's decline.
 In 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. The Severan dynasty was tumultuous; an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution and, following its collapse, the Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague. In defining historical epochs, this crisis sometimes marks the transition from classical to late antiquity. Aurelian (r. 270–275) stabilised the empire militarily and Diocletian reorganised and restored much of it in 285. Diocletian's reign brought the empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the "Great Persecution".
 Diocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate tetrarch. Confident that he fixed the disorder plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, but the Tetrarchy collapsed shortly after. Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east–west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. Julian, who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 after making Christianity the state religion.
 
  
 
 
 === Fall in the West and survival in the East ===
 The Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century. The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila, but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.
 Odoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Roman emperor. He died in battle in 1453 against Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces during the siege of Constantinople. Mehmed II adopted the title of caesar in an attempt to claim a connection to the former Empire. His claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, but not by European monarchs.
 
 
 == Geography and demography ==
 
 The Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The Latin phrase imperium sine fine ("empire without end") expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Virgil's Aeneid, limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by Jupiter. This claim of universal dominion was renewed when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions, the Romans directly altered their geography, for example cutting down entire forests.
 Roman expansion was mostly accomplished under the Republic, though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. Under Augustus, a "global map of the known world" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the creation of the most comprehensive political geography that survives from antiquity, the Geography of Strabo. When Augustus died, the account of his achievements (Res Gestae) prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of the Empire. Geography alongside meticulous written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration.
 
 The Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan (r. 98–117), encompassing 5 million km2. The traditional population estimate of 55–60 million inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of the world's total population and made it the most populous unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. 21st-century demographic studies have argued for a population peak from 70 million to more than 100 million. Each of the three largest cities in the Empire—Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch—was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century.
 As the historian Christopher Kelly described it:
 
 Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine–Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea, to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of the Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled the Mediterranean ... referred to by its conquerors as mare nostrum—'our sea'.
 
 Trajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders (fines) were marked, and the frontiers (limites) patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall, which separated the Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort. In the eastern provinces, rural administration often relied on inscribed boundary stones to demarcate land and regulate taxation.
 
 
 == Languages ==
 
 Latin and Greek were the main languages of the Empire, but the Empire was deliberately multilingual. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill says "The main desire of the Roman government was to make itself understood". At the start of the Empire, knowledge of Greek was useful to pass as educated nobility and knowledge of Latin was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. Bilingual inscriptions indicate the everyday interpenetration of the two languages.
 Latin and Greek's mutual linguistic and cultural influence is a complex topic. Latin words incorporated into Greek were very common by the early imperial era, especially for military, administration, and trade and commerce matters. Greek grammar, literature, poetry and philosophy shaped Latin language and culture.
 
 There was never a legal requirement for Latin in the Empire, but it represented a certain status. High standards of Latin, Latinitas, started with the advent of Latin literature. Due to the flexible language policy of the Empire, a natural competition of language emerged that spurred Latinitas, to defend Latin against the stronger cultural influence of Greek. Over time Latin usage was used to project power and a higher social class. Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a "rule" that first started during the Punic Wars. Different emperors up until Justinian would attempt to require the use of Latin in various sections of the administration but there is no evidence that a linguistic imperialism existed during the early Empire.
 After all freeborn inhabitants were universally enfranchised in 212, many Roman citizens lacked a knowledge of Latin. The wide use of Koine Greek was what enabled the spread of Christianity and reflects its role as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during the time of the Empire. Following Diocletian's reforms in the 3rd century AD, there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west. Spoken Latin later fragmented into the incipient romance languages in the 7th century AD following the collapse of the Empire's west.
 The dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite obscures the continuity of other spoken languages within the Empire. Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin, gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages. References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages, particularly in Egypt with Coptic, and in military settings along the Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic, Gaulish, and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding of laws and oaths. In Africa, Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions into the 2nd century. In Syria, Palmyrene soldiers used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, an exception to the rule that Latin was the language of the military. The last reference to Gaulish was between 560 and 575. The emergent Gallo-Romance languages would then be shaped by Gaulish. Proto-Basque or Aquitanian evolved with Latin loan words to modern Basque. The Thracian language, as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia, are attested in Imperial-era inscriptions.
 
 
 == Society ==
 
 The Empire was multicultural, with "astonishing cohesive capacity" to create shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples. Public monuments and communal spaces open to all—such as forums, amphitheatres, racetracks and baths—helped foster a sense of "Romanness".
 Roman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies. The civil war preceding Augustus caused upheaval, but did not effect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships—patronage, friendship (amicitia), family, marriage—continued to influence politics. By the time of Nero, however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator.
 The blurring of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility, both upward and downward, to a greater extent than all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited, was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities (collegia and sodalitates): professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing troupes, and burial societies.
 
 
 === Legal status ===
 
 According to the jurist Gaius, the essential distinction in the Roman "law of persons" was that all humans were either free (liberi) or slaves (servi). The legal status of free persons was further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the ius Latinum, "Latin right"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by non-citizens. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, were peregrini, non-Romans. In 212, the Constitutio Antoniniana extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. This legal egalitarianism required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that distinguished between citizens and non-citizens.
 
 
 ==== Women in Roman law ====
 
 Freeborn Roman women were considered citizens, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase ex duobus civibus Romanis natos ("children born of two Roman citizens"). A Roman woman kept her own family name (nomen) for life. Children most often took the father's name, with some exceptions. Women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could hold considerable fortunes.
 The archaic manus marriage in which the woman was subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into the marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was a factor in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed compared to many other cultures up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it was a point of pride to be a "one-man woman" (univira) who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce, nor to speedy remarriage after being widowed or divorced. Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A mother's right to own and dispose of property, including setting the terms of her will, gave her enormous influence over her sons into adulthood.
 
 As part of the Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate conduct as a means of promoting "family values". Adultery was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act (stuprum) between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place: a married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery if he had sex with a prostitute or person of marginalized status. Childbearing was encouraged: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the ius trium liberorum).
 
 
 ==== Slaves and the law ====
 
 At the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Roman Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical "slave societies" in which slaves constituted at least a fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants; the majority of slaves provided trained or unskilled labour. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on the exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves were on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until gradually ceasing in the 6th and 7th centuries with the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy.
 
 Laws pertaining to slavery were "extremely intricate". Slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood. They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation, torture, and summary execution. A slave could not as a matter of law be raped; a slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law. Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called conubium, but their unions were sometimes recognized. Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual fund (peculium) that he could use, depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave. Within a household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave acting as the master of others. Talented slaves might accumulate a large enough peculium to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law (Lex Fufia Caninia) limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will.
 Following the Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves. Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuchs in the late 1st century prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will "for lust or gain".
 Roman slavery was not based on race. Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Foreign slaves had higher mortality and lower birth rates than natives and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females).
 During the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates. Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among the poor were other sources. Vernae, by contrast, were "homegrown" slaves born to female slaves within the household, estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his vernae faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of the family household and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family.
 
 
 ==== Freedmen ====
 
 Rome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens; any future children of a freedman were born free, with full rights of citizenship. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed active political freedom (libertas), including the right to vote. His former master became his patron (patronus): the two continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. During the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. The rise of successful freedmen—through political influence or wealth—is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of a high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by inscriptions throughout the Empire.
 
 
 === Census rank ===
 
 The Latin word ordo (plural ordines) is translated variously and inexactly into English as "class, order, rank". One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the ordo to which an individual belonged. Two of the highest ordines in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, cities or colonies were led by decurions, also known as curiales.
 
 "Senator" was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate. A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million sestertii. Not all men who qualified for the ordo senatorius chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in the 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the ordo senatorius, but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards.
 In the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Italy, with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from the easternmost province, Cappadocia, was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the Severan dynasty (193–235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland (patria).
 Senators were the traditional governing class who rose through the cursus honorum, the political career track, but equestrians often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, equites or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors, but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified a man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at Cádiz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track (tres militiae) to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration.
 The rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility, a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher ordines brought distinction and privileges, but also responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services (munera). Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for the functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged to return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life.
 In the later Empire, the dignitas ("worth, esteem") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as vir illustris ("illustrious man"). The appellation clarissimus (Greek lamprotatos) was used to designate the dignitas of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. "Grades" of equestrian status proliferated.
 
 
 ==== Unequal justice ====
 
 As the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours (honestiores) and humbler folk (humiliores). In general, honestiores were the members of the three higher "orders", along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative "worth" (dignitas) of the defendant: an honestior could pay a fine for a crime for which an humilior might receive a scourging.
 Execution, which was an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic, could be quick and relatively painless for honestiores, while humiliores might suffer the kinds of torturous death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts. In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as honestiores, especially if they declined to fulfil religious responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created the conditions of martyrdom.
 
 
 == Government and military ==
 
 The three major elements of the Imperial state were the central government, the military, and the provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens, agricultural fields, and religious sites. The Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to rule through force alone. Cooperation with local elites was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions.
 Communities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence incentivized compliance. Roman government was thus limited, but efficient in its use of available resources.
 
 
 === Central government ===
 
 The Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with divinely sanctioned authority (auctoritas). The rite of apotheosis (also called consecratio) signified the deceased emperor's deification. The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of powers from several republican offices. The emperor made himself the central religious authority as pontifex maximus, and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate, the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in the Dominate.
 The emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate, he was expected to be accessible and deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero, the influence of the latter was regarded with suspicion, and the emperor's council (consilium) became subject to official appointment for greater transparency. Though the Senate took a lead in policy discussions until the end of the Antonine dynasty, equestrians played an increasingly important role in the consilium. The women of the emperor's family often intervened directly in his decisions.
 Access to the emperor might be gained at the daily reception (salutatio), a development of the traditional homage a client paid to his patron; public banquets hosted at the palace; and religious ceremonies. The common people who lacked this access could manifest their approval or displeasure as a group at games. By the 4th century, the Christian emperors became remote figureheads who issued general rulings, no longer responding to individual petitions. Although the Senate could do little short of assassination and open rebellion to contravene the will of the emperor, it retained its symbolic political centrality. The Senate legitimated the emperor's rule, and the emperor employed senators as legates (legati): generals, diplomats, and administrators.
 The practical source of an emperor's power and authority was the military. The legionaries were paid by the Imperial treasury, and swore an annual oath of loyalty to the emperor. Most emperors chose a successor, usually a close family member or adopted heir. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his status and authority to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive without the allegiance of the Praetorian Guard and the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the donativum, a monetary reward. In theory, the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but did so mindful of acclamation by the army or Praetorians.
 
 
 === Military ===
 
 After the Punic Wars, the Roman army comprised professional soldiers who volunteered for 20 years of active duty and five as reserves. The transition to a professional military began during the late Republic and was one of the many profound shifts away from republicanism, under which an army of conscript citizens defended the homeland against a specific threat. The Romans expanded their war machine by "organizing the communities that they conquered in Italy into a system that generated huge reservoirs of manpower for their army". By Imperial times, military service was a full-time career. The pervasiveness of military garrisons throughout the Empire was a major influence in the process of Romanization.
 The primary mission of the military of the early empire was to preserve the Pax Romana. The three major divisions of the military were:
 
 the garrison at Rome, comprising the Praetorian Guard, the cohortes urbanae and the vigiles, who functioned as police and firefighters;
 the provincial army, comprising the Roman legions and the auxiliaries provided by the provinces (auxilia);
 the navy.
 
 Through his military reforms, which included consolidating or disbanding units of questionable loyalty, Augustus regularized the legion. A legion was organized into ten cohorts, each of which comprised six centuries, with a century further made up of ten squads (contubernia); the exact size of the Imperial legion, which was likely determined by logistics, has been estimated to range from 4,800 to 5,280. After Germanic tribes wiped out three legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, the number of legions was increased from 25 to around 30. The army had about 300,000 soldiers in the 1st century, and under 400,000 in the 2nd, "significantly smaller" than the collective armed forces of the conquered territories. No more than 2% of adult males living in the Empire served in the Imperial army. Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts, ostensibly to maintain the public peace, which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians served only sixteen years.
 The auxilia were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries—thus, around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments. The Roman cavalry of the earliest Empire were primarily from Celtic, Hispanic or Germanic areas. Several aspects of training and equipment derived from the Celts.
 The Roman navy not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions but also in the protection of the frontiers along the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another duty was protecting maritime trade against pirates. It patrolled the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic coasts, and the Black Sea. Nevertheless, the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.
 
 
 === Provincial government ===
 An annexed territory became a Roman province in three steps: making a register of cities, taking a census, and surveying the land. Further government recordkeeping included births and deaths, real estate transactions, taxes, and juridical proceedings. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, the central government sent out around 160 officials annually to govern outside Italy. Among these officials were the Roman governors: magistrates elected at Rome who in the name of the Roman people governed senatorial provinces; or governors, usually of equestrian rank, who held their imperium on behalf of the emperor in imperial provinces, most notably Roman Egypt. A governor had to make himself accessible to the people he governed, but he could delegate various duties. His staff, however, was minimal: his official attendants (apparitores), including lictors, heralds, messengers, scribes, and bodyguards; legates, both civil and military, usually of equestrian rank; and friends who accompanied him unofficially.
 Other officials were appointed as supervisors of government finances. Separating fiscal responsibility from justice and administration was a reform of the Imperial era, to avoid provincial governors and tax farmers exploiting local populations for personal gain. Equestrian procurators, whose authority was originally "extra-judicial and extra-constitutional", managed both state-owned property and the personal property of the emperor (res privata). Because Roman government officials were few, a provincial who needed help with a legal dispute or criminal case might seek out any Roman perceived to have some official capacity.
 In the High Empire, Italy was legally distinguished from the provinces, and along with some favored provincial communities, enjoyed immunity from the property tax and poll tax. However, under the Emperor Diocletian, Italy lost these privileges and was subdivided into provinces.
 
 
 === Law ===
 
 Roman courts held original jurisdiction over cases involving Roman citizens throughout the empire, but there were too few judicial functionaries to impose Roman law uniformly in the provinces. Most parts of the Eastern Empire already had well-established law codes and juridical procedures. Generally, it was Roman policy to respect the mos regionis ("regional tradition" or "law of the land") and to regard local laws as a source of legal precedent and social stability. The compatibility of Roman and local law was thought to reflect an underlying ius gentium, the "law of nations" or international law regarded as common and customary. If provincial law conflicted with Roman law or custom, Roman courts heard appeals, and the emperor held final decision-making authority.
 In the West, law had been administered on a highly localized or tribal basis, and private property rights may have been a novelty of the Roman era, particularly among Celts. Roman law facilitated the acquisition of wealth by a pro-Roman elite. The extension of universal citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire in 212 required the uniform application of Roman law, replacing local law codes that had applied to non-citizens. Diocletian's efforts to stabilize the Empire after the Crisis of the Third Century included two major compilations of law in four years, the Codex Gregorianus and the Codex Hermogenianus, to guide provincial administrators in setting consistent legal standards.
 The pervasiveness of Roman law throughout Western Europe enormously influenced the Western legal tradition, reflected by continued use of Latin legal terminology in modern law.
 
 
 === Taxation ===
 
 Taxation under the Empire amounted to about 5% of its gross product. The typical tax rate for individuals ranged from 2 to 5%. The tax code was "bewildering" in its complicated system of direct and indirect taxes, some paid in cash and some in kind. Taxes might be specific to a province, or kinds of properties such as fisheries; they might be temporary. Tax collection was justified by the need to maintain the military, and taxpayers sometimes got a refund if the army captured a surplus of booty. In-kind taxes were accepted from less-monetized areas, particularly those who could supply grain or goods to army camps.
 The primary source of direct tax revenue was individuals, who paid a poll tax and a tax on their land, construed as a tax on its produce or productive capacity. Tax obligations were determined by the census: each head of household provided a headcount of his household, as well as an accounting of his property. A major source of indirect-tax revenue was the portoria, customs and tolls on trade, including among provinces. Towards the end of his reign, Augustus instituted a 4% tax on the sale of slaves, which Nero shifted from the purchaser to the dealers, who responded by raising their prices. An owner who manumitted a slave paid a "freedom tax", calculated at 5% of value. An inheritance tax of 5% was assessed when Roman citizens above a certain net worth left property to anyone outside their immediate family. Revenues from the estate tax and from an auction tax went towards the veterans' pension fund (aerarium militare).
 Low taxes helped the Roman aristocracy increase their wealth, which equalled or exceeded the revenues of the central government. An emperor sometimes replenished his treasury by confiscating the estates of the "super-rich", but in the later period, the resistance of the wealthy to paying taxes was one of the factors contributing to the collapse of the Empire.
 
 
 == Economy ==
 
 The Empire is best thought of as a network of regional economies, based on a form of "political capitalism" in which the state regulated commerce to assure its own revenues. Economic growth, though not comparable to modern economies, was greater than that of most other societies prior to industrialization. Territorial conquests permitted a large-scale reorganization of land use that resulted in agricultural surplus and specialization, particularly in north Africa. Some cities were known for particular industries. The scale of urban building indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism, and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies. The supply contracts for the army drew on local suppliers near the base (castrum), throughout the province, and across provincial borders.
 Economic historians vary in their calculations of the gross domestic product during the Principate. In the sample years of 14, 100, and 150 AD, estimates of per capita GDP range from 166 to 380 HS. The GDP per capita of Italy is estimated as 40 to 66% higher than in the rest of the Empire, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income.
 Economic dynamism resulted in social mobility. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, wealth requirements for rank indicate a strong tendency towards plutocracy. Prestige could be obtained through investing one's wealth in grand estates or townhouses, luxury items, public entertainments, funerary monuments, and religious dedications. Guilds (collegia) and corporations (corpora) provided support for individuals to succeed through networking. "There can be little doubt that the lower classes of ... provincial towns of the Roman Empire enjoyed a high standard of living not equaled again in Western Europe until the 19th century". Households in the top 1.5% of income distribution captured about 20% of income. The "vast majority" produced more than half of the total income, but lived near subsistence.
 
 
 === Currency and banking ===
 
 The early Empire was monetized to a near-universal extent, using money to state prices and debts. Augustus established a practical three-tier currency system that Romans used in their daily lives: gold coins (aureus) for major purchases and wealth storage, silver coins (denarius) that workers earned and used to pay taxes, and bronze/brass coins, especially the brass sestertius and dupondius, along with the copper as and smaller denominations, that people used for everyday shopping and small transactions. Most accounts, rents, and public fees were reckoned in sesterces (HS), even when payment arrived as denarii, aurei, or the bronze pieces converted at the fixed ratios of one aureus to twenty-five denarii, one denarius to four sesterces, and one sesterce to four asses. Because the bronzes circulated by face value rather than metal content, Romans in the first and second centuries counted coins rather than weighing them, and bullion or ingots were rarely treated as pecunia ("money") outside frontier contexts. This reliance on token bronzes underpinned the fiduciary character of Roman coinage and contributed to the debasement of the silver denominations in the later Empire, even as standardized money promoted trade, market integration, and a substantial money supply for commerce and saving.
 Rome had no central bank, and regulation of the banking system was minimal. Banks of classical antiquity typically kept less in reserves than the full total of customers' deposits. A typical bank had fairly limited capital, and often only one principal. Seneca assumes that anyone involved in Roman commerce needs access to credit. A professional deposit banker received and held deposits for a fixed or indefinite term, and lent money to third parties. The senatorial elite were involved heavily in private lending, both as creditors and borrowers. The holder of a debt could use it as a means of payment by transferring it to another party, without cash changing hands. Although it has sometimes been thought that ancient Rome lacked documentary transactions, the system of banks throughout the Empire permitted the exchange of large sums without physically transferring coins, in part because of the risks of moving large amounts of cash. Only one serious credit shortage is known to have occurred in the early Empire, in 33 AD; generally, available capital exceeded the amount needed by borrowers. The central government itself did not borrow money, and without public debt had to fund deficits from cash reserves.
 Emperors of the Antonine and Severan dynasties debased the currency, particularly the denarius, under the pressures of meeting military payrolls. Sudden inflation under Commodus damaged the credit market. In the mid-200s, the supply of specie contracted sharply. Conditions during the Crisis of the Third Century—such as reductions in long-distance trade, disruption of mining operations, and the physical transfer of gold coinage outside the empire by invading enemies—greatly diminished the money supply and the banking sector. Although Roman coinage had long been fiat money or fiduciary currency, general economic anxieties came to a head under Aurelian, and bankers lost confidence in coins. Despite Diocletian's introduction of the gold solidus and monetary reforms, the credit market of the Empire never recovered its former robustness.
 
 
 === Mining and metallurgy ===
 
 The main mining regions of the Empire were the Iberian Peninsula (silver, copper, lead, iron and gold); Gaul (gold, silver, iron); Britain (mainly iron, lead, tin), the Danubian provinces (gold, iron); Macedonia and Thrace (gold, silver); and Asia Minor (gold, silver, iron, tin). Intensive large-scale mining—of alluvial deposits, and by means of open-cast mining and underground mining—took place from the reign of Augustus up to the early 3rd century, when the instability of the Empire disrupted production.
 Hydraulic mining allowed base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale. The total annual iron output is estimated at 82,500 tonnes. Copper and lead production levels were unmatched until the Industrial Revolution. At its peak around the mid-2nd century, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000 t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800 AD. As an indication of the scale of Roman metal production, lead pollution in the Greenland ice sheet quadrupled over prehistoric levels during the Imperial era and dropped thereafter.
 
 
 === Transportation and communication ===
 
 The Empire completely encircled the Mediterranean, which they called "our sea" (Mare Nostrum). Roman sailing vessels navigated the Mediterranean as well as major rivers. Transport by water was preferred where possible, as moving commodities by land was more difficult. Vehicles, wheels, and ships indicate the existence of a great number of skilled woodworkers.
 Land transport utilized the advanced system of Roman roads, called "viae". These roads were primarily built for military purposes, but also served commercial ends. The in-kind taxes paid by communities included the provision of personnel, animals, or vehicles for the cursus publicus, the state mail and transport service established by Augustus. Relay stations were located along the roads every seven to twelve Roman miles, and tended to grow into villages or trading posts. A mansio (plural mansiones) was a privately run service station franchised by the imperial bureaucracy for the cursus publicus. The distance between mansiones was determined by how far a wagon could travel in a day. Carts were usually pulled by mules, travelling about 4 mph.
 
 
 === Trade and commodities ===
 
 Roman provinces traded among themselves, but trade extended outside the frontiers to regions as far away as China and India. Chinese trade was mostly conducted overland through middlemen along the Silk Road; Indian trade also occurred by sea from Egyptian ports. The main commodity was grain. Also traded were olive oil, foodstuffs, garum (fish sauce), slaves, ore and manufactured metal objects, fibres and textiles, timber, pottery, glassware, marble, papyrus, spices and materia medica, ivory, pearls, and gemstones. Though most provinces could produce wine, regional varietals were desirable and wine was a central trade good.
 
 
 === Labour and occupations ===
 
 Inscriptions record 268 different occupations in Rome and 85 in Pompeii. Professional associations or trade guilds (collegia) are attested for a wide range of occupations, some quite specialized.
 Work performed by slaves falls into five general categories: domestic, with epitaphs recording at least 55 different household jobs; imperial or public service; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining. Convicts provided much of the labour in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal. In practice, there was little division of labour between slave and free, and most workers were illiterate and without special skills. The greatest number of common labourers were employed in agriculture: in Italian industrial farming (latifundia), these may have been mostly slaves, but elsewhere slave farm labour was probably less important.
 Textile and clothing production was a major source of employment. Both textiles and finished garments were traded and products were often named for peoples or towns, like a fashion "label". Better ready-to-wear was exported by local businessmen (negotiatores or mercatores). Finished garments might be retailed by their sales agents, by vestiarii (clothing dealers), or peddled by itinerant merchants. The fullers (fullones) and dye workers (coloratores) had their own guilds. Centonarii were guild workers who specialized in textile production and the recycling of old clothes into pieced goods.
 
 
 == Architecture and engineering ==
 
 The chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch, vault, and dome. Some Roman structures still stand today, due in part to sophisticated methods of making cements and concrete. Roman temples developed Etruscan and Greek forms, with some distinctive elements. Roman roads are considered the most advanced built until the early 19th century.
 Roman bridges were among the first large and lasting bridges, built from stone (and in most cases concrete) with the arch as the basic structure. The largest Roman bridge was Trajan's bridge over the lower Danube, constructed by Apollodorus of Damascus, which remained for over a millennium the longest bridge to have been built. The Romans built many dams and reservoirs for water collection, such as the Subiaco Dams, two of which fed the Anio Novus, one of the largest aqueducts of Rome.
 
 The Romans constructed numerous aqueducts. De aquaeductu, a treatise by Frontinus, who served as water commissioner, reflects the administrative importance placed on the water supply. Masonry channels carried water along a precise gradient, using gravity alone. It was then collected in tanks and fed through pipes to public fountains, baths, toilets, or industrial sites. The main aqueducts in Rome were the Aqua Claudia and the Aqua Marcia. The complex system built to supply Constantinople had its most distant supply drawn from over 120 km away along a route of more than 336 km. Roman aqueducts were built to remarkably fine tolerance, and to a technological standard not equalled until modern times. The Romans also used aqueducts in their extensive mining operations across the empire.
 Insulated glazing (or "double glazing") was used in the construction of public baths. Elite housing in cooler climates might have hypocausts, a form of central heating. The Romans were the first culture to assemble all essential components of the much later steam engine: the crank and connecting rod system, Hero's aeolipile (generating steam power), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps), and gearing (in water mills and clocks).
 
 
 == Daily life ==
 
 
 === City and country ===
 The city was viewed as fostering civilization by being "properly designed, ordered, and adorned". Augustus undertook a vast building programme in Rome, supported public displays of art that expressed imperial ideology, and reorganized the city into neighbourhoods (vici) administered at the local level with police and firefighting services. A focus of Augustan monumental architecture was the Campus Martius, an open area outside the city centre: the Altar of Augustan Peace (Ara Pacis Augustae) was located there, as was an obelisk imported from Egypt that formed the pointer (gnomon) of a horologium. With its public gardens, the Campus was among the most attractive places in Rome to visit.
 City planning and urban lifestyles was influenced by the Greeks early on, and in the Eastern Empire, Roman rule shaped the development of cities that already had a strong Hellenistic character. Cities such as Athens, Aphrodisias, Ephesus and Gerasa tailored city planning and architecture to imperial ideals, while expressing their individual identity and regional preeminence. In areas inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples, Rome encouraged the development of urban centres with stone temples, forums, monumental fountains, and amphitheatres, often on or near the sites of preexisting walled settlements known as oppida. Urbanization in Roman Africa expanded on Greek and Punic coastal cities.
 
 The network of cities (coloniae, municipia, civitates or in Greek terms poleis) was a primary cohesive force during the Pax Romana. Romans of the 1st and 2nd centuries were encouraged to "inculcate the habits of peacetime". As the classicist Clifford Ando noted:
 
 Most of the cultural appurtenances popularly associated with imperial culture—public cult and its games and civic banquets, competitions for artists, speakers, and athletes, as well as the funding of the great majority of public buildings and public display of art—were financed by private individuals, whose expenditures in this regard helped to justify their economic power and legal and provincial privileges.
 
 In the city of Rome, most people lived in multistory apartment buildings (insulae) that were often squalid firetraps. Public facilities—such as baths (thermae), toilets with running water (latrinae), basins or elaborate fountains (nymphea) delivering fresh water, and large-scale entertainments such as chariot races and gladiator combat—were aimed primarily at the common people.
 The public baths served hygienic, social and cultural functions. Bathing was the focus of daily socializing. Roman baths were distinguished by a series of rooms that offered communal bathing in three temperatures, with amenities that might include an exercise room, sauna, exfoliation spa, ball court, or outdoor swimming pool. Baths had hypocaust heating: the floors were suspended over hot-air channels. Public baths were part of urban culture throughout the provinces, but in the late 4th century, individual tubs began to replace communal bathing. Christians were advised to go to the baths only for hygiene.
 
 Rich families from Rome usually had two or more houses: a townhouse (domus) and at least one luxury home (villa) outside the city. The domus was a privately owned single-family house, and might be furnished with a private bath (balneum), but it was not a place to retreat from public life. Although some neighbourhoods show a higher concentration of such houses, they were not segregated enclaves. The domus was meant to be visible and accessible. The atrium served as a reception hall in which the paterfamilias (head of household) met with clients every morning. It was a centre of family religious rites, containing a shrine and images of family ancestors. The houses were located on busy public roads, and ground-level spaces were often rented out as shops (tabernae). In addition to a kitchen garden—windowboxes might substitute in the insulae—townhouses typically enclosed a peristyle garden.
 The villa by contrast was an escape from the city, and in literature represents a lifestyle that balances intellectual and artistic interests (otium) with an appreciation of nature and agriculture. Ideally a villa commanded a view or vista, carefully framed by the architectural design.
 Augustus' programme of urban renewal, and the growth of Rome's population to as many as one million, was accompanied by nostalgia for rural life. Poetry idealized the lives of farmers and shepherds. Interior decorating often featured painted gardens, fountains, landscapes, vegetative ornament, and animals, rendered accurately enough to be identified by species. On a more practical level, the central government took an active interest in supporting agriculture. Producing food was the priority of land use. Larger farms (latifundia) achieved an economy of scale that sustained urban life. Small farmers benefited from the development of local markets in towns and trade centres. Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation and selective breeding were disseminated throughout the Empire, and new crops were introduced from one province to another.
 
 Maintaining an affordable food supply to the city of Rome had become a major political issue in the late Republic, when the state began to provide a grain dole (Cura Annonae) to citizens who registered for it (about 200,000–250,000 adult males in Rome). The dole cost at least 15% of state revenues, but improved living conditions among the lower classes, and subsidized the rich by allowing workers to spend more of their earnings on the wine and olive oil produced on estates. The grain dole also had symbolic value: it affirmed the emperor's position as universal benefactor, and the right of citizens to share in "the fruits of conquest". The annona, public facilities, and spectacular entertainments mitigated the otherwise dreary living conditions of lower-class Romans, and kept social unrest in check. The satirist Juvenal, however, saw "bread and circuses" (panem et circenses) as emblematic of the loss of republican political liberty:
 
 The public has long since cast off its cares: the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses.
 
 
 === Health and disease ===
 
 Epidemics were common in the ancient world, and occasional pandemics in the Empire killed millions. The Roman population was unhealthy. About 20 percent—a large percentage by ancient standards—lived in cities, Rome being the largest. The cities were a "demographic sink": the death rate exceeded the birth rate and constant immigration was necessary to maintain the population. Average lifespan is estimated at the mid-twenties, and perhaps more than half of children died before reaching adulthood. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to disease. Land and sea connections facilitated and sped the transfer of infectious diseases across the empire's territories. The rich were not immune; only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius's fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.
 The importance of a good diet to health was recognized by medical writers such as Galen (2nd century). Views on nutrition were influenced by beliefs like humoral theory. A good indicator of nutrition and disease burden is average height: the average Roman was shorter in stature than the population of pre-Roman Italian societies and medieval Europe.
 
 
 === Food and dining ===
 
 Most apartments in Rome lacked kitchens, though a charcoal brazier could be used for rudimentary cookery. Prepared food was sold at pubs and bars, inns, and food stalls (tabernae, cauponae, popinae, thermopolia). Carryout and restaurants were for the lower classes; fine dining appeared only at dinner parties in wealthy homes with a chef (archimagirus) and kitchen staff, or banquets hosted by social clubs (collegia).
 Most Romans consumed at least 70% of their daily calories in the form of cereals and legumes. Puls (pottage) was considered the food of the Romans, and could be elaborated to produce dishes similar to polenta or risotto. Urban populations and the military preferred bread. By the reign of Aurelian, the state had begun to distribute the annona as a daily ration of bread baked in state factories, and added olive oil, wine, and pork to the dole.
 Roman literature focuses on the dining habits of the upper classes, for whom the evening meal (cena) had important social functions. Guests were entertained in a finely decorated dining room (triclinium) furnished with couches. By the late Republic, women dined, reclined, and drank wine along with men. The poet Martial describes a dinner, beginning with the gustatio ("tasting" or "appetizer") salad. The main course was kid, beans, greens, a chicken, and leftover ham, followed by a dessert of fruit and wine. Roman "foodies" indulged in wild game, fowl such as peacock and flamingo, large fish (mullet was especially prized), and shellfish. Luxury ingredients were imported from the far reaches of empire. A book-length collection of Roman recipes is attributed to Apicius, a name for several figures in antiquity that became synonymous with "gourmet".
 Refined cuisine could be moralized as a sign of either civilized progress or decadent decline. Most often, because of the importance of landowning in Roman culture, produce—cereals, legumes, vegetables, and fruit—were considered more civilized foods than meat. The Mediterranean staples of bread, wine, and oil were sacralized by Roman Christianity, while Germanic meat consumption became a mark of paganism. Some philosophers and Christians resisted the demands of the body and the pleasures of food, and adopted fasting as an ideal. Food became simpler in general as urban life in the West diminished and trade routes were disrupted; the Church formally discouraged gluttony, and hunting and pastoralism were seen as simple and virtuous.
 
 
 === Spectacles ===
 
 When Juvenal complained that the Roman people had exchanged their political liberty for "bread and circuses", he was referring to the state-provided grain dole and the circenses, events held in the entertainment venue called a circus. The largest such venue in Rome was the Circus Maximus, the setting of horse races, chariot races, the equestrian Troy Game, staged beast hunts (venationes), athletic contests, gladiator combat, and historical re-enactments. From earliest times, several religious festivals had featured games (ludi), primarily horse and chariot races (ludi circenses). The races retained religious significance in connection with agriculture, initiation, and the cycle of birth and death.
 Under Augustus, public entertainments were presented on 77 days of the year; by the reign of Marcus Aurelius, this had expanded to 135. Circus games were preceded by an elaborate parade (pompa circensis) that ended at the venue. Competitive events were held also in smaller venues such as the amphitheatre, which became the characteristic Roman spectacle venue, and stadium. Greek-style athletics included footraces, boxing, wrestling, and the pancratium. Aquatic displays, such as the mock sea battle (naumachia) and a form of "water ballet", were presented in engineered pools. State-supported theatrical events (ludi scaenici) took place on temple steps or in grand stone theatres, or in the smaller enclosed theatre called an odeon.
 Circuses were the largest structure regularly built in the Roman world. The Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, became the regular arena for blood sports in Rome. Many Roman amphitheatres, circuses and theatres built in cities outside Italy are visible as ruins today. The local ruling elite were responsible for sponsoring spectacles and arena events, which both enhanced their status and drained their resources. The physical arrangement of the amphitheatre represented the order of Roman society: the emperor in his opulent box; senators and equestrians in reserved advantageous seats; women seated at a remove from the action; slaves given the worst places, and everybody else in-between. The crowd could call for an outcome by booing or cheering, but the emperor had the final say. Spectacles could quickly become sites of social and political protest, and emperors sometimes had to deploy force to put down crowd unrest, most notoriously at the Nika riots in 532.
 
 The chariot teams were known by the colours they wore, with the two main teams being the Blues and the Greens. Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. Circuses were designed to ensure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions (naufragia), which were nonetheless frequent and satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a magical aura through their early association with chthonic rituals: circus images were considered protective or lucky, curse tablets have been found buried at the site of racetracks, and charioteers were often suspected of sorcery. Chariot racing continued into the Byzantine period under imperial sponsorship, but the decline of cities in the 6th and 7th centuries led to its eventual demise.
 The Romans thought gladiator contests had originated with funeral games and sacrifices. Some of the earliest styles of gladiator fighting had ethnic designations such as "Thracian" or "Gallic". The staged combats were considered munera, "services, offerings, benefactions", initially distinct from the festival games (ludi). To mark the opening of the Colosseum, Titus presented 100 days of arena events, with 3,000 gladiators competing on a single day. Roman fascination with gladiators is indicated by how widely they are depicted on mosaics, wall paintings, lamps, and in graffiti. Gladiators were trained combatants who might be slaves, convicts, or free volunteers. Death was not a necessary or even desirable outcome in matches between these highly skilled fighters, whose training was costly and time-consuming. By contrast, noxii were convicts sentenced to the arena with little or no training, often unarmed, and with no expectation of survival; physical suffering and humiliation were considered appropriate retributive justice. These executions were sometimes staged or ritualized as re-enactments of myths, and amphitheatres were equipped with elaborate stage machinery to create special effects.
 Modern scholars have found the pleasure Romans took in the "theatre of life and death" difficult to understand. Pliny the Younger rationalized gladiator spectacles as good for the people, "to inspire them to face honourable wounds and despise death, by exhibiting love of glory and desire for victory". Some Romans such as Seneca were critical of the brutal spectacles, but found virtue in the courage and dignity of the defeated fighter—an attitude that finds its fullest expression with the Christians martyred in the arena. Tertullian considered deaths in the arena to be nothing more than a dressed-up form of human sacrifice. Even martyr literature, however, offers "detailed, indeed luxuriant, descriptions of bodily suffering", and became a popular genre at times indistinguishable from fiction.
 
 
 === Recreation ===
 
 The singular ludus, "play, game, sport, training", had a wide range of meanings such as "word play", "theatrical performance", "board game", "primary school", and even "gladiator training school" (as in Ludus Magnus). Activities for children and young people in the Empire included hoop rolling and knucklebones (astragali or "jacks"). Girls had dolls made of wood, terracotta, and especially bone and ivory. Ball games include trigon and harpastum. People of all ages played board games, including latrunculi ("Raiders") and XII scripta ("Twelve Marks"). A game referred to as alea (dice) or tabula (the board) may have been similar to backgammon. Dicing as a form of gambling was disapproved of, but was a popular pastime during the festival of the Saturnalia.
 After adolescence, most physical training for males was of a military nature. The Campus Martius originally was an exercise field where young men learned horsemanship and warfare. Hunting was also considered an appropriate pastime. According to Plutarch, conservative Romans disapproved of Greek-style athletics that promoted a fine body for its own sake, and condemned Nero's efforts to encourage Greek-style athletic games. Some women trained as gymnasts and dancers, and a rare few as female gladiators. The "Bikini Girls" mosaic shows young women engaging in routines comparable to rhythmic gymnastics. Women were encouraged to maintain health through activities such as playing ball, swimming, walking, or reading aloud (as a breathing exercise).
 
 
 === Clothing ===
 
 In a status-conscious society like that of the Romans, clothing and personal adornment indicated the etiquette of interacting with the wearer. Wearing the correct clothing reflected a society in good order. There is little direct evidence of how Romans dressed in daily life, since portraiture may show the subject in clothing with symbolic value, and surviving textiles are rare.
 The toga was the distinctive national garment of the male citizen, but it was heavy and impractical, worn mainly for conducting political or court business and religious rites. It was a "vast expanse" of semi-circular white wool that could not be put on and draped correctly without assistance. The drapery became more intricate and structured over time. The toga praetexta, with a purple or purplish-red stripe representing inviolability, was worn by children who had not come of age, curule magistrates, and state priests. Only the emperor could wear an all-purple toga (toga picta).
 Ordinary clothing was dark or colourful. The basic garment for all Romans, regardless of gender or wealth, was the simple sleeved tunic, with length differing by wearer. The tunics of poor people and labouring slaves were made from coarse wool in natural, dull shades; finer tunics were made of lightweight wool or linen. A man of the senatorial or equestrian order wore a tunic with two purple stripes (clavi) woven vertically: the wider the stripe, the higher the wearer's status. Other garments could be layered over the tunic. Common male attire also included cloaks, and in some regions, trousers. In the 2nd century, emperors and elite men are often portrayed wearing the pallium, an originally Greek mantle; women are also portrayed in the pallium. Tertullian considered the pallium an appropriate garment both for Christians, in contrast to the toga, and for educated people.
 Roman clothing styles changed over time. In the Dominate, clothing worn by both soldiers and bureaucrats became highly decorated with geometrical patterns, stylized plant motifs, and in more elaborate examples, human or animal figures. Courtiers of the later Empire wore elaborate silk robes. The militarization of Roman society, and the waning of urban life, affected fashion: heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, and the toga was abandoned, replaced by the pallium as a garment embodying social unity.
 
 
 == Arts ==
 
 Greek art had a profound influence on Roman art. Public art—including sculpture, monuments such as victory columns or triumphal arches, and the iconography on coins—is often analysed for historical or ideological significance. In the private sphere, artistic objects were made for religious dedications, funerary commemoration, domestic use, and commerce. The wealthy advertised their appreciation of culture through artwork and decorative arts in their homes. Despite the value placed on art, even famous artists were of low social status, partly as they worked with their hands.
 
 
 === Portraiture ===
 
 Portraiture, which survives mainly in sculpture, was the most copious form of imperial art. Portraits during the Augustan period utilize classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Republican portraits were characterized by verism, but as early as the 2nd century BC, Greek heroic nudity was adopted for conquering generals. Imperial portrait sculptures may model a mature head atop a youthful nude or semi-nude body with perfect musculature. Clothed in the toga or military regalia, the body communicates rank or role, not individual characteristics.
 Portraiture in painting is represented primarily by the Fayum mummy portraits, which evoke Egyptian and Roman traditions of commemorating the dead with realistic painting. Marble portrait sculpture were painted, but traces have rarely survived.
 
 
 === Sculpture and sarcophagi ===
 
 Examples of Roman sculpture survive abundantly, though often in damaged or fragmentary condition, including freestanding statuary in marble, bronze and terracotta, and reliefs from public buildings and monuments. Niches in amphitheatres were originally filled with statues, as were formal gardens. Temples housed cult images of deities, often by famed sculptors.
 Elaborately carved marble and limestone sarcophagi are characteristic of the 2nd to 4th centuries. Sarcophagus relief has been called the "richest single source of Roman iconography", depicting mythological scenes or Jewish/Christian imagery as well as the deceased's life.
 
 
 === Painting ===
 
 Initial Roman painting drew from Etruscan and Greek models and techniques. Examples of Roman paintings can be found in palaces, catacombs and villas. Much of what is known of Roman painting is from the interior decoration of private homes, particularly as preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius. In addition to decorative borders and panels with geometric or vegetative motifs, wall painting depicts scenes from mythology and theatre, landscapes and gardens, spectacles, everyday life, and erotic art.
 
 
 === Mosaic ===
 
 Mosaics are among the most enduring of Roman decorative arts, and are found on floors and other architectural features. The most common is the tessellated mosaic, formed from uniform pieces (tesserae) of materials such as stone and glass. Opus sectile is a related technique in which flat stone, usually coloured marble, is cut precisely into shapes from which geometric or figurative patterns are formed. This more difficult technique became especially popular for luxury surfaces in the 4th century (e.g. the Basilica of Junius Bassus).
 Figurative mosaics share many themes with painting, and in some cases use almost identical compositions. Geometric patterns and mythological scenes occur throughout the Empire. In North Africa, a particularly rich source of mosaics, homeowners often chose scenes of life on their estates, hunting, agriculture, and local wildlife. Plentiful and major examples of Roman mosaics come also from present-day Turkey (particularly the (Antioch mosaics), Italy, southern France, Spain, and Portugal.
 
 
 === Decorative arts ===
 
 Decorative arts for luxury consumers included fine pottery, silver and bronze vessels and implements, and glassware. Pottery manufacturing was economically important, as were the glass and metalworking industries. Imports stimulated new regional centres of production. Southern Gaul became a leading producer of the finer red-gloss pottery (terra sigillata) that was a major trade good in 1st-century Europe. Glassblowing was regarded by the Romans as originating in Syria in the 1st century BC, and by the 3rd century, Egypt and the Rhineland had become noted for fine glass.
 
 
 === Performing arts ===
 
 In Roman tradition, borrowed from the Greeks, literary theatre was performed by all-male troupes that used face masks with exaggerated facial expressions to portray emotion. Female roles were played by men in drag (travesti). Roman literary theatre tradition is represented in Latin literature by the tragedies of Seneca, for example.
 More popular than literary theatre was the genre-defying mimus theatre, which featured scripted scenarios with free improvisation, risqué language and sex scenes, action sequences, and political satire, along with dance, juggling, acrobatics, tightrope walking, striptease, and dancing bears. Unlike literary theatre, mimus was played without masks, and encouraged stylistic realism. Female roles were performed by women. Mimus was related to pantomimus, an early form of story ballet that contained no spoken dialogue but rather a sung libretto, often mythological, either tragic or comic.
 
 Although sometimes regarded as foreign, music and dance existed in Rome from earliest times. Music was customary at funerals, and the tibia, a woodwind instrument, was played at sacrifices. Song (carmen) was integral to almost every social occasion. Music was thought to reflect the orderliness of the cosmos. Various woodwinds and "brass" instruments were played, as were stringed instruments such as the cithara, and percussion. The cornu, a long tubular metal wind instrument, was used for military signals and on parade. These instruments spread throughout the provinces and are widely depicted in Roman art. The hydraulic pipe organ (hydraulis) was "one of the most significant technical and musical achievements of antiquity", and accompanied gladiator games and events in the amphitheatre. Although certain dances were seen at times as non-Roman or unmanly, dancing was embedded in religious rituals of archaic Rome. Ecstatic dancing was a feature of the mystery religions, particularly the cults of Cybele and Isis. In the secular realm, dancing girls from Syria and Cadiz were extremely popular.
 Like gladiators, entertainers were legally infames, technically free but little better than slaves. "Stars", however, could enjoy considerable wealth and celebrity, and mingled socially and often sexually with the elite. Performers supported each other by forming guilds, and several memorials for theatre members survive. Theatre and dance were often condemned by Christian polemicists in the later Empire.
 
 
 == Literacy, books, and education ==
 
 Estimates of the average literacy rate range from 5 to over 30%. The Roman obsession with documents and inscriptions indicates the value placed on the written word. Laws and edicts were posted as well as read out. Illiterate Roman subjects could have a government scribe (scriba) read or write their official documents for them. The military produced extensive written records.
 Numeracy was necessary for commerce. Slaves were numerate and literate in significant numbers; some were highly educated. Graffiti and low-quality inscriptions with misspellings and solecisms indicate casual literacy among non-elites.
 The Romans had an extensive priestly archive, and inscriptions appear throughout the Empire in connection with votives dedicated by ordinary people, as well as "magic spells" (e.g. the Greek Magical Papyri).
 Books were expensive, since each copy had to be written out on a papyrus roll (volumen) by scribes. The codex—pages bound to a spine—was still a novelty in the 1st century, but by the end of the 3rd century was replacing the volumen. Commercial book production was established by the late Republic, and by the 1st century certain neighbourhoods of Rome and Western provincial cities were known for their bookshops. The quality of editing varied wildly, and plagiarism or forgery were common, since there was no copyright law.
 
 Collectors amassed personal libraries, and a fine library was part of the cultivated leisure (otium) associated with the villa lifestyle. Significant collections might attract "in-house" scholars, and an individual benefactor might endow a community with a library (as Pliny the Younger did in Comum). Imperial libraries were open to users on a limited basis, and represented a literary canon. Books considered subversive might be publicly burned, and Domitian crucified copyists for reproducing works deemed treasonous.
 Literary texts were often shared aloud at meals or with reading groups. Public readings (recitationes) expanded from the 1st through the 3rd century, giving rise to "consumer literature" for entertainment. Illustrated books, including erotica, were popular, but are poorly represented by extant fragments.
 Literacy began to decline during the Crisis of the Third Century. The emperor Julian banned Christians from teaching the classical curriculum, but the Church Fathers and other Christians adopted Latin and Greek literature, philosophy and science in biblical interpretation. As the Western Roman Empire declined, reading became rarer even for those within the Church hierarchy, although it continued in the Byzantine Empire.
 
 
 === Education ===
 
 Traditional Roman education was moral and practical. Stories were meant to instil Roman values (mores maiorum). Parents were expected to act as role models, and working parents passed their skills to their children, who might also enter apprenticeships. Young children were attended by a pedagogue, usually a Greek slave or former slave, who kept the child safe, taught self-discipline and public behaviour, attended class and helped with tutoring.
 Formal education was available only to families who could pay for it; lack of state support contributed to low literacy. Primary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic might take place at home if parents hired or bought a teacher. Other children attended "public" schools organized by a schoolmaster (ludimagister) paid by parents. Vernae (homeborn slave children) might share in-home or public schooling. Boys and girls received primary education generally from ages 7 to 12, but classes were not segregated by grade or age. Most schools employed corporal punishment. For the socially ambitious, education in Greek as well as Latin was necessary. Schools became more numerous during the Empire, increasing educational opportunities.
 
 At the age of 14, upperclass males made their rite of passage into adulthood, and began to learn leadership roles through mentoring from a senior family member or family friend. Higher education was provided by grammatici or rhetores. The grammaticus or "grammarian" taught mainly Greek and Latin literature, with history, geography, philosophy or mathematics treated as explications of the text. With the rise of Augustus, contemporary Latin authors such as Virgil and Livy also became part of the curriculum. The rhetor was a teacher of oratory or public speaking. The art of speaking (ars dicendi) was highly prized, and eloquentia ("speaking ability, eloquence") was considered the "glue" of civilized society. Rhetoric was not so much a body of knowledge (though it required a command of the literary canon) as it was a mode of expression that distinguished those who held social power. The ancient model of rhetorical training—"restraint, coolness under pressure, modesty, and good humour"—endured into the 18th century as a Western educational ideal.
 In Latin, illiteratus could mean both "unable to read and write" and "lacking in cultural awareness or sophistication". Higher education promoted career advancement. Urban elites throughout the Empire shared a literary culture imbued with Greek educational ideals (paideia). Hellenistic cities sponsored schools of higher learning to express cultural achievement. Young Roman men often went abroad to study rhetoric and philosophy, mostly to Athens. The curriculum in the East was more likely to include music and physical training. On the Hellenistic model, Vespasian endowed chairs of grammar, Latin and Greek rhetoric, and philosophy at Rome, and gave secondary teachers special exemptions from taxes and legal penalties. In the Eastern Empire, Berytus (present-day Beirut) was unusual in offering a Latin education, and became famous for its school of Roman law. The cultural movement known as the Second Sophistic (1st–3rd century AD) promoted the assimilation of Greek and Roman social, educational, and esthetic values.
 Literate women ranged from cultured aristocrats to girls trained to be calligraphers and scribes. The ideal woman in Augustan love poetry was educated and well-versed in the arts. Education seems to have been standard for daughters of the senatorial and equestrian orders. An educated wife was an asset for the socially ambitious household.
 
 
 === Literature ===
 
 Literature under Augustus, along with that of the Republic, has been viewed as the "Golden Age" of Latin literature, embodying classical ideals. The three most influential Classical Latin poets—Virgil, Horace, and Ovid—belong to this period. Virgil's Aeneid was a national epic in the manner of the Homeric epics of Greece. Horace perfected the use of Greek lyric metres in Latin verse. Ovid's erotic poetry was enormously popular, but ran afoul of Augustan morality, contributing to his exile. Ovid's Metamorphoses wove together Greco-Roman mythology; his versions of Greek myths became a primary source of later classical mythology, and his work was hugely influential on medieval literature. The early Principate produced satirists such as Persius and Juvenal.
 The mid-1st through mid-2nd century has conventionally been called the "Silver Age" of Latin literature. The three leading writers—Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius—committed suicide after incurring Nero's displeasure. Epigrammatist and social observer Martial and the epic poet Statius, whose poetry collection Silvae influenced Renaissance literature, wrote during the reign of Domitian. Other authors of the Silver Age included Pliny the Elder, author of the encyclopedic Natural History; his nephew, Pliny the Younger; and the historian Tacitus.
 The principal Latin prose author of the Augustan age is the historian Livy, whose account of Rome's founding became the most familiar version in modern-era literature. The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius is a primary source for imperial biography. Among Imperial historians who wrote in Greek are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Josephus, and Cassius Dio. Other major Greek authors of the Empire include the biographer Plutarch, the geographer Strabo, and the rhetorician and satirist Lucian.
 From the 2nd to the 4th centuries, Christian authors were in active dialogue with the classical tradition. Tertullian was one of the earliest prose authors with a distinctly Christian voice. After the conversion of Constantine, Latin literature is dominated by the Christian perspective. In the late 4th century, Jerome produced the Latin translation of the Bible that became authoritative as the Vulgate. Around that same time, Augustine wrote The City of God against the Pagans, considered "a masterpiece of Western culture".
 In contrast to the unity of Classical Latin, the literary esthetic of late antiquity has a tessellated quality. A continuing interest in the religious traditions of Rome prior to Christian dominion is found into the 5th century, with the Saturnalia of Macrobius and The Marriage of Philology and Mercury of Martianus Capella. Latin poets of late antiquity include Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, and Sidonius Apollinaris.
 
 
 == Religion ==
 
 The Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success to their collective piety (pietas) and good relations with the gods (pax deorum). The archaic religion believed to have come from the earliest kings of Rome was the foundation of the mos maiorum, "the way of the ancestors", central to Roman identity.
 Roman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of do ut des, "I give that you might give". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine. For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine to offer prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities. Neighbourhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances; as many as 135 days were devoted to religious festivals and games (ludi).
 In the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion adapted to support the new regime. Augustus justified one-man rule with a vast programme of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called "emperor worship" expanded on a grand scale the traditional veneration of the ancestral dead and of the Genius, the divine tutelary of every individual. Upon death, an emperor could be made a state divinity (divus) by vote of the Senate. The Roman imperial cult, influenced by Hellenistic ruler cult, became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity. Cultural precedent in the Eastern provinces facilitated a rapid dissemination of Imperial cult, extending as far as Najran, in present-day Saudi Arabia. Rejection of the state religion became tantamount to treason.
 The Romans are known for the great number of deities they honoured. As the Romans extended their territories, their general policy was to promote stability among diverse peoples by absorbing local deities and cults rather than eradicating them, building temples that framed local theology within Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. By the height of the Empire, numerous syncretic or reinterpreted gods were cultivated, among them cults of Cybele, Isis, Epona, and of solar gods such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue.
 Mystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the afterlife, were a matter of personal choice, practiced in addition to one's family rites and public religion. The mysteries, however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, which conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of "magic", conspiracy, and subversive activity. Thus, sporadic and sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists. In Gaul, the power of the druids was checked, first by forbidding Roman citizens to belong to the order, and then by banning druidism altogether. However, Celtic traditions were reinterpreted within the context of Imperial theology, and a new Gallo-Roman religion coalesced; its capital at the Sanctuary of the Three Gauls established precedent for Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity. The monotheistic rigour of Judaism posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and granting of special exemptions. Tertullian noted that Judaism, unlike Christianity, was considered a religio licita, "legitimate religion". The Jewish–Roman wars resulted from political as well as religious conflicts; the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD led to the sacking of the Second Temple and the dispersal of Jewish political power (see Jewish diaspora).
 
 Christianity emerged in Roman Judaea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century and gradually spread out of Jerusalem throughout the Empire and beyond. Imperially authorized persecutions were limited and sporadic, with martyrdoms occurring most often under the authority of local officials. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, the emperor attempted to deflect blame from himself onto the Christians. A major persecution occurred under the emperor Domitian and a persecution in 177 took place at Lugdunum, the Gallo-Roman religious capital. A letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, describes his persecution and executions of Christians. The Decian persecution of 246–251 seriously threatened the Christian Church, but ultimately strengthened Christian defiance. Diocletian undertook the most severe persecution of Christians, from 303 to 311.
 From the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers condemned the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire as "pagan". In the early 4th century, Constantine I became the first emperor to convert to Christianity. He supported the Church financially and made laws that favored it, but the new religion was already successful, having moved from less than 50,000 to over a million adherents between 150 and 250. Constantine and his successors banned public sacrifice while tolerating other traditional practices. Constantine never engaged in a purge, there were no "pagan martyrs" during his reign, and people who had not converted to Christianity remained in important positions at court. Julian attempted to revive traditional public sacrifice and Hellenistic religion, but met Christian resistance and lack of popular support.
 
 Christians of the 4th century believed the conversion of Constantine showed that Christianity had triumphed over paganism (in Heaven) and little further action besides such rhetoric was necessary. Thus, their focus shifted towards heresy. According to Peter Brown, "In most areas, polytheists were not molested, and apart from a few ugly incidents of local violence, Jewish communities also enjoyed a century of stable, even privileged, existence". There were anti-pagan laws, but they were not generally enforced; through the 6th century, centers of paganism existed in Athens, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere.
 According to recent Jewish scholarship, toleration of the Jews was maintained under Christian emperors. This did not extend to heretics: Theodosius I made multiple laws and acted against alternate forms of Christianity, and heretics were persecuted and killed by both the government and the church throughout late antiquity. Non-Christians were not persecuted until the 6th century. Rome's original religious hierarchy and ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.
 
 
 == Legacy ==
 
 Several states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successor. The Holy Roman Empire was established in 800 when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as Roman emperor. The Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second), in accordance with the concept of translatio imperii. The last Eastern Roman titular, Andreas Palaiologos, sold the title of Emperor of Constantinople to Charles VIII of France; upon Charles' death, Palaiologos reclaimed the title and on his death granted it to Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors, who never used it. When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even launched an invasion of Otranto with the purpose of re-uniting the Empire, which was aborted by his death. In the medieval West, "Roman" came to mean the church and the Catholic Pope. The Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Byzantine Empire and is still used by Greeks.
 The Roman Empire's control of the Italian Peninsula influenced Italian nationalism and the unification of Italy (Risorgimento) in 1861. In the United States, the founders saw Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism as models for the mixed constitution, but regarded the emperor as a figure of tyranny.
 
 
 == See also ==
 
 Byzantine Empire under the Justinian dynasty – Period of Byzantine history from 518 to 602
 Daqin ("Great Qin") – Ancient Chinese name for the Roman Empire; see also Sino-Roman relations
 Gallo-Roman site of Sanxay – Structures in Vienne, France
 Imperial Italy – Aspect of politics in Fascist ItalyPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
 List of political systems in France
 List of Roman dynasties
 Outline of ancient Rome
 
 
 == Notes ==
 
 
 == References ==
 
 
 === Citations ===
 
 "Aelia Capitolina". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 20 September 2025.
 "Jerusalem: History". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 20 September 2025.
 "What was Hadrian's relationship with his Jewish subjects?". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 20 September 2025.
 "Aelia Capitolina" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). 1911. p. 256.
 Magness, Jodi (2023). "Jerusalem's Northern Defences Under Hadrian". Palestine Exploration Quarterly. 155 (1): 1–17. doi:10.1080/00310328.2022.2160201 (inactive 2 January 2026).{{cite journal}}:  CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2026 (link)
 
 
 === Sources ===
 
 
 == External links ==
 
 BBC: What the Romans Did for Us
 Roman Archaeological Sites
 Roman-Empire.net, learning resources and re-enactments
 The Historical Theater in the Year 400 AD, in Which Both Romans and Barbarians Resided Side by Side in the Eastern Part of the Roman Empire
 
 --- French Revolution ---
 
 The French Revolution was a period of political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the Coup of 18 Brumaire on 9 November 1799. Many of the revolution's ideas are considered fundamental principles of liberal democracy, and its values remain central to modern French political discourse. It was caused by a combination of social, political, and economic factors which the existing regime proved unable to manage.  
 Financial crisis and widespread social distress led to the convocation of the Estates General in May 1789, its first meeting since 1614. The representatives of the Third Estate broke away and re-constituted themselves as a National Assembly in June. The Storming of the Bastille in Paris on 14 July led to a series of radical measures by the Assembly, including the abolition of feudalism, state control over the Catholic Church in France, and issuing the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. 
 The next three years were dominated by a struggle for political control. King Louis XVI's attempted flight to Varennes in June 1791 further discredited the monarchy, and military defeats after the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in April 1792 led to the insurrection of 10 August 1792. As a result, the monarchy was replaced by the French First Republic in September, followed by the execution of Louis XVI himself in January 1793.
 After another revolt in June 1793, the constitution was suspended, and political power passed from the National Convention to the Committee of Public Safety, dominated by radical Jacobins led by Maximilien Robespierre. About 16,000 people were sentenced by the Revolutionary Tribunal and executed in the Reign of Terror, which ended in July 1794 with the Thermidorian Reaction. Weakened by external threats and internal opposition, the Committee of Public Safety was replaced in November 1795 by the Directory. Its instability ended in 1799 with the coup of 18 Brumaire and the establishment of the Consulate, with Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul.
 
 
 == Causes ==
 
 The Revolution resulted from multiple long-term and short-term factors, culminating in a social, economic, financial and political crisis in the late 1780s. Combined with resistance to reform by the ruling elite and indecisive policy by Louis XVI and his ministers, the result was a crisis the state was unable to manage.
 Between 1715 and 1789, the French population grew from 21 to 28 million, 20% of whom lived in towns or cities, Paris alone having over 600,000 inhabitants. This was accompanied by a tripling in the size of the middle class, which comprised almost 10% of the population by 1789. Despite increases in overall prosperity, its benefits were largely restricted to the rentier and mercantile classes, while the living standards fell for wage labourers and peasant farmers who rented their land. Economic recession from 1785, combined with bad harvests in 1787 and 1788, led to high unemployment and food prices, causing a financial and political crisis.
 While the state also experienced a debt crisis, the level of debt itself was not high compared with Britain's. A significant problem was that tax rates varied widely from one region to another, were often different from the official amounts, and were collected inconsistently. The complexity and lack of accountability caused resentment among all taxpayers. Attempts to simplify the system were blocked by the regional Parlements which approved financial policy. The resulting impasse led to the calling of the Estates General of 1789, which became radicalised by the struggle for control of public finances.
 Louis XVI was willing to consider reforms, but he often backed down when faced with opposition from conservative elements within the nobility. Enlightenment critiques of social institutions were widely discussed among the educated French elite. At the same time, the American Revolution and the European revolts of the 1780s inspired public debate on issues such as patriotism, liberty, equality, and democracy. These shaped the response of the educated public to the crisis, while scandals such as the Affair of the Diamond Necklace fuelled widespread anger at the court, nobility, and church officials.
 
 
 == Crisis of the Ancien Régime ==
 
 
 === Financial and political crisis ===
 France faced a series of budgetary crises during the 18th century as revenues failed to keep pace with expenditure. Despite solid economic growth, the use of tax farmers meant this was not reflected in a proportional growth in state tax income. As the nobility and Church benefited from a variety of exemptions, the tax burden fell mainly on the lower classes. Reform was difficult because new tax laws had to be registered with regional judicial bodies or parlements that were able to block them. The king could impose laws by decree, but this risked open conflict with the parlements, the nobility, and those subject to new taxes.
 France primarily used loans to fund the 1778 to 1783 Anglo-French War. Even after it ended, the monarchy continued to borrow heavily, and by 1788, half of state revenue went on servicing its debt. In 1786, the French finance minister, Calonne, proposed reforms including a universal land tax, the abolition of grain controls and internal tariffs, and new provincial assemblies appointed by the king. The new taxes were rejected, first by a hand-picked Assembly of Notables dominated by the nobility, then by the parlements when submitted by Calonne's successor Brienne. The notables and parlements argued that the proposed taxes could only be approved by an Estates-General, a representative body that last met in 1614.
 The conflict between the Crown and the parlements became a national political crisis. Both sides issued a series of public statements, the government arguing that it was combating privilege, and the parlement defending the ancient rights of the nation. Public opinion was firmly on the side of the parlements, and riots broke out in several towns. Brienne's attempts to raise new loans failed, and on 8 August 1788, he announced that the king would summon an Estates-General to convene the following May. Brienne resigned and was replaced by Jacques Necker.
 In September 1788, the Parlement of Paris ruled that the Estates-General should convene in the same form as in 1614, meaning that the three estates would meet and vote separately, with votes counted by estate rather than by head. As a result, the clergy and nobility could combine to outvote the Third Estate, despite representing less than 5% of the population. With the relaxation of censorship and laws against political clubs, a group of liberal nobles and middle class activists known as the Society of Thirty launched a campaign for the doubling of Third Estate representation and individual voting. The public debate sparked an average of 25 new political pamphlets published each week from 25 September 1788. 
 One of the most influential was written by Abbé Sieyès. Titled What Is the Third Estate?, it denounced the privilege of the clergy and nobility, and argued the Third Estate represented the nation and should sit alone as a National Assembly. Activists such as Jean Joseph Mounier, Antoine Barnave and Maximilien Robespierre organised regional meetings, petitions and literature in support of these demands. In December, the king agreed to double the representation of the Third Estate, but left the question of counting votes for the Estates-General to decide.
 
 
 === Estates-General of 1789 ===
 
 The Catholic Church in France was wealthy, owning nearly 10% of all land, as well as receiving annual tithes. However, three-quarters of the 303 clergy elected were parish priests, many of whom earned less than unskilled labourers and had more in common with their poor parishioners than with the bishops of the first estate.
 The Second Estate elected 322 deputies, representing about 400,000 men and women, who owned about 25% of the land and collected seigneurial dues and rents from their tenants. Most delegates were town-dwelling members of the noblesse d'épée, or traditional aristocracy. Courtiers and representatives of the noblesse de robe (those who derived rank from judicial or administrative posts) were underrepresented.
 Of the 610 deputies of the Third Estate, about two-thirds held legal qualifications and almost half were venal office holders. Less than 100 were in trade or industry, and none were peasants or artisans. To assist delegates, each region completed a list of grievances, known as Cahiers de doléances. Tax inequality and seigneurial dues (feudal payments owed to landowners) headed the grievances in the cahiers de doleances for the estate.
 On 5 May 1789, the Estates-General convened at Versailles, with Necker reiterating that each estate should decide separately how and when it would meet and vote in common with the other estates. On the following day, each estate was to separately verify the credentials of their representatives. The Third Estate, however, voted to invite the other estates to join them in verifying all the representatives of the Estates-General in common, and to agree that votes should be counted by head. Negotiations continued until 12 June when the Third Estate unilaterally began verifying its own members. On 17th, the Third Estate declared itself to be the National Assembly of France and that all existing taxes were illegal. 
 
 By 19 June, they had been joined by more than 100 members of the clergy. Shaken by this challenge to his authority, the king agreed to a reform package he would present personally to the Estates-General. The Salle des États was closed to prepare for the joint session, but the members of the Estates-General were not informed in advance. Finding their meeting place closed next day, they took the so-called Tennis Court Oath, undertaking not to disperse until a constitution had been agreed.
 At the royal session, Louis XVI announced a series of reforms and stated no new taxes or loans would be implemented without the consent of the Estates-General. However, he then undermined this by re-stating his original demand for all three to sit and vote separately. The Third Estate refused to leave the hall and reiterated their oath not to disperse until a constitution had been agreed. Over the next days more members of the clergy joined the National Assembly. On 27 June, faced with popular demonstrations and mutinies in his French Guards, Louis XVI commanded the members of the first and second estates to join the third in the National Assembly.
 
 
 == Constitutional monarchy (July 1789 – September 1792) ==
 
 
 === Abolition of the Ancien Régime ===
 Even the limited reforms the king had announced went too far for Marie Antoinette and Louis' younger brother the Comte d'Artois. On their advice, Louis dismissed Necker again as chief minister on 11 July. On 12 July, the Assembly went into a non-stop session following rumours that the king was planning to use the Swiss Guards to force it to close. The news brought crowds of protestors into the streets, and soldiers of the elite Gardes Françaises refused to disperse them.
 On 14 July many of these soldiers joined a crowd attacking the Bastille, a royal fortress with large stores of arms and ammunition. Its governor, Bernard-René de Launay, surrendered after several hours of fighting that cost the lives of 83 attackers. Launay was taken to the Hôtel de Ville, where he was killed and his head placed on a pike and paraded around the city. Although rumoured to hold many prisoners, the Bastille held only seven: four forgers, a lunatic, a failed assassin, and a deviant nobleman. Nevertheless, it was a potent symbol of the Ancien Régime and it was demolished in the following weeks. Bastille Day has become the French national holiday.
 
 Alarmed by the prospect of losing control of the capital, Louis appointed the Marquis de Lafayette commander of the National Guard, with Jean-Sylvain Bailly as head of a new administrative structure known as the Commune. On 17 July, Louis visited Paris accompanied by 100 deputies, where he was greeted by Bailly and accepted a tricolore cockade to loud cheers. However, it was clear power had shifted from his court; he was welcomed as 'Louis XVI, father of the French and king of a free people.'
 The short-lived unity enforced on the Assembly by a common threat quickly dissipated. Deputies argued over constitutional forms, while civil authority rapidly deteriorated. On 22 July, former Finance Minister Joseph Foullon and his son were lynched by a Parisian mob, and neither Bailly nor Lafayette could prevent it. In rural areas, wild rumours and paranoia resulted in the formation of militia and an agrarian insurrection known as the Great Fear. The breakdown of law and order and frequent attacks on aristocratic property led much of the nobility to flee abroad. These émigrés funded reactionary forces within France and urged foreign monarchs to back a counter-revolution.
 In response, the Assembly published the August Decrees which abolished feudalism. Over 25% of French farmland was subject to feudal dues, providing the nobility with most of their income; these were now cancelled, along with church tithes. While their former tenants were supposed to pay them compensation, collecting it proved impossible, and the obligation was annulled in 1793. Other decrees included equality before the law, opening public office to all, freedom of worship, and cancellation of special privileges held by provinces and towns.
 With the suspension of the 13 regional parlements in November, the key institutional pillars of the old regime had all been abolished in less than four months. From its early stages, the Revolution therefore displayed signs of its radical nature; what remained unclear was the constitutional mechanism for turning intentions into practical applications.
 
 
 === Creating a constitution ===
 
 On 9 July, the National Assembly declared itself the National Constituent Assembly and appointed a committee to draft a constitution and statement of rights. Twenty drafts were submitted, which were used by a sub-committee to create a Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, with Mirabeau being the most prominent member. The declaration was approved by the Assembly and published on 26 August as a statement of principle.
 The Assembly now concentrated on the constitution. Mounier and his monarchist supporters advocated a bicameral system, with an upper house appointed by the king, who would also have the right to appoint ministers and veto legislation. On 10 September, the majority of the Assembly, led by Sieyès and Talleyrand, voted in favour of a single body, and the following day approved a "suspensive veto" for the king, meaning Louis could delay implementation of a law but not block it indefinitely. In October, the Assembly voted to restrict political rights, including voting rights, to "active citizens", defined as French males over the age of 25 who paid direct taxes equal to three days' labour. The remainder were designated "passive citizens", restricted to "civil rights", a distinction opposed by a significant minority, including the Jacobin clubs. By mid-1790, the main elements of a constitutional monarchy were in place, although the constitution was not accepted by Louis until 1791.
 Food shortages and the worsening economy caused frustration at the lack of progress and led to popular unrest in Paris. This came to a head in late September 1789, when the Flanders Regiment arrived in Versailles to reinforce the royal bodyguard and were welcomed with a formal banquet as was common practice. The radical press described this as a 'gluttonous orgy' and claimed the tricolour cockade had been abused, while the Assembly viewed their arrival as an attempt to intimidate them.
 On 5 October, crowds of women assembled outside the Hôtel de Ville, agitating against high food prices and shortages. These protests quickly turned political, and after seizing weapons stored at the Hôtel de Ville, some 7,000 of them marched on Versailles, where they entered the Assembly to present their demands. They were followed to Versailles by 15,000 members of the National Guard under Lafayette, who was virtually "a prisoner of his own troops".
 When the National Guard arrived later that evening, Lafayette persuaded Louis that the safety of his family required their relocation to Paris. Next morning, some of the protestors broke into the royal apartments, searching for Marie Antoinette, who had escaped. They ransacked the palace, killing several guards. Order was eventually restored, and the royal family and Assembly left for Paris, escorted by the National Guard. Louis had announced his acceptance of the August Decrees and the declaration, and his official title changed from 'King of France' to 'King of the French'.
 
 
 === Catholic Church ===
 Historian John McManners argues "in eighteenth-century France, throne and altar were commonly spoken of as in close alliance; their simultaneous collapse ... would one day provide the final proof of their interdependence." One suggestion is that after a century of persecution, some French Protestants actively supported an anti-Catholic regime, a resentment fuelled by Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, considered a philosophical founder of the revolution, wrote it was "manifestly contrary to the law of nature... that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities, while the hungry multitude goes in want of necessities."
 
 The Revolution caused a massive shift of power from the Catholic Church to the state; although the extent of religious belief has been questioned, elimination of tolerance for religious minorities meant by 1789 being French also meant being Catholic. The church was the largest individual landowner in France, controlling nearly 10% of all estates and levied tithes, effectively a 10% tax on income, collected from peasant farmers in the form of crops. In return, it provided a minimal level of social support.
 The August Decrees abolished tithes, and on 2 November the Assembly confiscated all church property, the value of which was used to back a new paper currency known as assignats. In return, the state assumed responsibilities such as paying the clergy and caring for the poor, the sick and the orphaned. On 13 February 1790, religious orders and monasteries were dissolved, while monks and nuns were encouraged to return to private life.
 The Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 12 July 1790 made them employees of the state, established rates of pay, and developed a system for electing priests and bishops. Pope Pius VI and many French Catholics objected to this since it denied the authority of the Pope over the French church. In October, 30 bishops wrote a declaration denouncing the law, further fuelling opposition. When clergy were required to swear loyalty to the Civil Constitution in November, it split the church between the 24% who complied and the majority who refused. This stiffened popular resistance against state interference, especially in traditionally Catholic areas such as Normandy, Brittany and the Vendée, where only a few priests took the oath and the civilian population turned against the revolution. The result was state-led persecution of "refractory clergy", many of whom were forced into exile, deported, or executed.
 
 
 === Political divisions ===
 The period from October 1789 to spring 1791 is usually seen as one of relative tranquility, when some of the most important legislative reforms were enacted. However, conflict over the source of legitimate authority was more apparent in the provinces, where officers of the Ancien Régime had been swept away but not yet replaced by new structures. This was less obvious in Paris, since the National Guard made it the best policed city in Europe, but disorder in the provinces inevitably affected members of the Assembly.
 
 Centrists led by Sieyès, Lafayette, Mirabeau and Bailly created a majority by forging consensus with monarchiens like Mounier, and independents including Adrien Duport, Barnave and Alexandre Lameth. At one end of the political spectrum, reactionaries like Cazalès and Maury denounced the Revolution in all its forms, with radicals like Maximilien Robespierre at the other. He and Jean-Paul Marat opposed the criteria for "active citizens", gaining them substantial support among the Parisian proletariat, many of whom had been disenfranchised by the measure.
 On 14 July 1790, celebrations were held throughout France commemorating the fall of the Bastille, with participants swearing an oath of fidelity to "the nation, the law and the king." The Fête de la Fédération in Paris was attended by the royal family, with Talleyrand performing a mass. Despite this show of unity, the Assembly was increasingly divided, while external players like the Paris Commune and National Guard competed for power. One of the most significant was the Jacobin club; originally a forum for general debate, by August 1790 it had over 150 members, split into different factions.
 The Assembly continued to develop new institutions; in September 1790, the regional Parlements were abolished and their legal functions replaced by a new independent judiciary, with jury trials for criminal cases. However, moderate deputies were uneasy at popular demands for universal suffrage, labour unions and cheap bread, and over the winter of 1790 and 1791, they passed a series of measures intended to disarm popular radicalism. These included exclusion of poorer citizens from the National Guard, limits on use of petitions and posters, and the June 1791 Le Chapelier Law suppressing trade guilds and any form of worker organisation.
 The traditional force for preserving law and order was the army, which was increasingly divided between officers, who largely came from the nobility, and ordinary soldiers. In August 1790, the loyalist General Bouillé suppressed a serious mutiny at Nancy; although congratulated by the Assembly, he was criticised by Jacobin radicals for the severity of his actions. Growing disorder meant many professional officers either left or became émigrés, further destabilising the institution.
 
 
 === Varennes and after ===
 
 Held in the Tuileries Palace under virtual house arrest, Louis XVI was urged by his brother and wife to re-assert his independence by taking refuge with Bouillé, who was based at Montmédy with 10,000 soldiers considered loyal to the Crown. The royal family left the palace in disguise on the night of 20 June 1791; late the next day, Louis was recognised as he passed through Varennes, arrested and taken back to Paris. The attempted escape had a profound impact on public opinion; since it was clear Louis had been seeking refuge in Austria, the Assembly now demanded oaths of loyalty to the regime and began preparing for war, while fear of 'spies and traitors' became pervasive.
 
 Despite calls to replace the monarchy with a republic, Louis retained his position but was generally regarded with acute suspicion and forced to swear allegiance to the constitution. A new decree stated retracting this oath, making war upon the nation, or permitting anyone to do so in his name would be considered abdication. However, radicals led by Jacques Pierre Brissot prepared a petition demanding his deposition, and on 17 July, an immense crowd gathered in the Champ de Mars to sign. Led by Lafayette, the National Guard was ordered to "preserve public order" and responded to a barrage of stones by firing into the crowd, killing between 13 and 50 people.
 The massacre badly damaged Lafayette's reputation; the authorities responded by closing radical clubs and newspapers, while their leaders went into exile or hiding, including Marat. On 27 August, Emperor Leopold II and King Frederick William II of Prussia issued the Declaration of Pillnitz declaring their support for Louis and hinting at an invasion of France on his behalf. In reality, the meeting between Leopold and Frederick was primarily to discuss the partitions of Poland; the declaration was intended to satisfy Comte d'Artois and other French émigrés, but the threat rallied popular support behind the regime.
 Based on a motion proposed by Robespierre, existing deputies were barred from elections held in September for the French Legislative Assembly. Although Robespierre was one of those excluded, his support in the clubs gave him a political power base not available to Lafayette and Bailly, who resigned respectively as head of the National Guard and the Paris Commune. The new laws were gathered together in the 1791 Constitution, and submitted to Louis XVI, who pledged to defend it "from enemies at home and abroad". On 30 September, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved, and the Legislative Assembly convened the next day.
 
 
 === Fall of the monarchy ===
 The Legislative Assembly is often dismissed by historians as an ineffective body, compromised by divisions over the role of the monarchy, an issue exacerbated when Louis attempted to prevent or reverse limitations on his powers. At the same time, restricting the vote to those who paid a minimal amount of tax disenfranchised a significant proportion of the 6 million Frenchmen over 25, while only 10% of those able to vote actually did so. Finally, poor harvests and rising food prices led to unrest among the urban class known as sans-culottes, who saw the new regime as failing to meet their demands for bread and work.
 This meant the new constitution was opposed by significant elements inside and outside the Assembly, itself split into three main groups. 264 members were affiliated with Barnave's Feuillants, constitutional monarchists who considered the Revolution had gone far enough, while another 136 were Jacobin leftists who supported a republic, led by Brissot and usually referred to as Brissotins. The remaining 345 belonged to La Plaine, a centrist faction who switched votes depending on the issue, but many of whom shared doubts as to whether Louis was committed to the Revolution. After he officially accepted the new Constitution, one recorded response was "Vive le roi, s'il est de bon foi!", or "Long live the king – if he keeps his word".
 Although a minority in the Assembly, control of key committees allowed the Brissotins to provoke Louis into using his veto. They first managed to pass decrees confiscating émigré property and threatening them with the death penalty. This was followed by measures against non-juring priests, whose opposition to the Civil Constitution led to a state of near civil war in southern France, which Barnave tried to defuse by relaxing the more punitive provisions. On 29 November, the Assembly approved a decree giving refractory clergy eight days to comply, or face charges of 'conspiracy against the nation', an act opposed even by Robespierre. When Louis vetoed both, his opponents were able to portray him as opposed to reform in general.
 
 Brissot accompanied this with a campaign for war against Austria and Prussia, often interpreted as a mixture of calculation and idealism. While exploiting popular anti-Austrianism, it reflected a genuine belief in exporting the values of political liberty and popular sovereignty. Simultaneously, conservatives headed by Marie Antoinette also favoured war, seeing it as a way to regain control of the military, and restore royal authority. In December 1791, Louis made a speech in the Assembly giving foreign powers a month to disband the émigrés or face war, an act greeted with enthusiasm by supporters, but suspicion from opponents.
 Barnave's inability to build a consensus in the Assembly resulted in the appointment of a new government, chiefly composed of Brissotins. On 20 April 1792, the French Revolutionary Wars began when French armies attacked Austrian and Prussian forces along their borders, before suffering a series of disastrous defeats. In an effort to mobilise popular support, the government ordered non-juring priests to swear the oath or be deported, dissolved the Constitutional Guard and replaced it with 20,000 fédérés; Louis agreed to disband the Guard, but vetoed the other two proposals, while Lafayette called on the Assembly to suppress the clubs.
 Popular anger increased when details of the Brunswick Manifesto reached Paris on 1 August, threatening 'unforgettable vengeance' should any oppose the Allies in seeking to restore the power of the monarchy. On the morning of 10 August, a combined force of the Paris National Guard and provincial fédérés attacked the Tuileries Palace, killing many of the Swiss Guards protecting it. Louis and his family took refuge with the Assembly and shortly after 11:00 am, the deputies present voted to 'temporarily relieve the king', effectively suspending the monarchy.
 
 
 == First Republic (1792–1795) ==
 
 
 === Proclamation of the First Republic ===
 
 In late August, elections were held for the National Convention. Restrictions on the franchise meant the number of votes cast fell to 3.3 million, versus 4 million in 1791, while intimidation was widespread. The Brissotins split between moderate Girondins led by Brissot, and radical Montagnards, headed by Robespierre, Georges Danton, and Jean-Paul Marat. While loyalties constantly shifted, voting patterns suggest roughly 160 of the 749 deputies can generally be categorised as Girondists, with another 200 Montagnards. The remainder were part of a centrist faction known as La Plaine, headed by Bertrand Barère, Pierre Joseph Cambon, and Lazare Carnot.
 In the September Massacres, between 1,100 and 1,600 prisoners held in Parisian jails were summarily executed, the vast majority being common criminals. A response to the capture of Longwy and Verdun by Prussia, the perpetrators were largely National Guard members and fédérés on their way to the front. While responsibility is still disputed, even moderates expressed sympathy for the action, which soon spread to the provinces. One suggestion is that the killings stemmed from concern over growing lawlessness, rather than political ideology.
 On 20 September, the French defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Valmy, in what was the first major victory by the army of France during the Revolutionary Wars. Emboldened by this, on 22 September the Convention replaced the monarchy with the French First Republic and introduced a new calendar, with 1792 becoming "Year One". The next few months were taken up with the trial of Citoyen Louis Capet, formerly Louis XVI. While evenly divided on the question of his guilt, members of the convention were increasingly influenced by radicals based within the Jacobin clubs and Paris Commune. The Brunswick Manifesto made it easy to portray Louis as a threat to the Revolution, especially when extracts from his personal correspondence showed him conspiring with Royalist exiles.
 On 17 January 1793, Louis was sentenced to death for "conspiracy against public liberty and general safety". 361 deputies were in favour, 288 against, while another 72 voted to execute him, subject to delaying conditions. The sentence was carried out on 21 January on the Place de la Révolution, now the Place de la Concorde. Conservatives across Europe called for the destruction of revolutionary France, and in February the Convention responded by declaring war on Britain and the Dutch Republic. Together with Austria and Prussia, these two countries were later joined by Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Tuscany in the War of the First Coalition.
 
 
 === Political crisis and fall of the Girondins ===
 The Girondins hoped war would unite the people behind the government and provide an excuse for rising prices and food shortages. Instead, they found themselves the target of popular anger and in what proved a disastrous strategic move, many left Paris for the provinces. The first conscription measure or levée en masse on 24 February sparked riots in the capital and other regional centres. Already unsettled by changes imposed on the church, in March the traditionally conservative and royalist Vendée rose in revolt. On 18th, General Charles François Dumouriez was defeated at Neerwinden and defected to the Austrians. Uprisings followed in Bordeaux, Lyon, Toulon, Marseille, and Caen. The Republic seemed on the verge of collapse.
 The crisis led to the creation on 6 April 1793 of the Committee of Public Safety, an executive committee accountable to the convention. The Girondins made a fatal political error by indicting Marat before the Revolutionary Tribunal for allegedly directing the September massacres; he was quickly acquitted, further isolating the Girondins from the sans-culottes. When Jacques Hébert called for a popular revolt against the "henchmen of Louis Capet" on 24 May, he was arrested by the Commission of Twelve, a Girondin-dominated tribunal set up to expose 'plots'. In response to protests by the Commune, the Commission warned "if by your incessant rebellions something befalls the representatives of the nation, Paris will be obliterated".
 
 Growing discontent allowed the clubs to mobilise against the Girondins. Backed by the Commune and elements of the National Guard, on 31 May they attempted to seize power in a coup. Although the coup failed, on 2 June the convention was surrounded by a crowd of up to 80,000, demanding cheap bread, unemployment pay and political reforms, including restriction of the vote to the sans-culottes, and the right to remove deputies at will. Ten members of the commission and another twenty-nine members of the Girondin faction were arrested, and on 10 June, the Montagnards took over the Committee of Public Safety.
 Meanwhile, a committee led by Robespierre's close ally Louis Antoine de Saint-Just was tasked with preparing a new constitution. Completed in only eight days, it was ratified by the convention on 24 June and contained radical reforms, including universal male suffrage. However, normal legal processes were suspended following the assassination of Marat on 13 July by the Girondist Charlotte Corday, which the Committee of Public Safety used as an excuse to take control. The 1793 Constitution was suspended indefinitely in October.
 Key areas of focus for the new government included creating a new state ideology, economic regulation, and winning the war. They were helped by divisions among their internal opponents; while areas like the Vendée and Brittany wanted to restore the monarchy, most supported the Republic but opposed the regime in Paris. On 17 August, the Convention voted a second levée en masse; despite initial problems in equipping and supplying such large numbers, by mid-October Republican forces had re-taken Lyon, Marseille and Bordeaux, while defeating Coalition armies at Hondschoote and Wattignies. The new class of military leaders included a young colonel named Napoleon Bonaparte, who was appointed commander of artillery at the siege of Toulon thanks to his friendship with Augustin Robespierre. His success in that role resulted in promotion to the Army of Italy in April 1794, and the beginning of his rise to military and political power.
 
 
 === Reign of Terror ===
 
 Although intended to bolster revolutionary fervour, the Reign of Terror rapidly degenerated into the settlement of personal grievances. At the end of July, the Convention set price controls on a wide range of goods, with the death penalty for hoarders. On 9 September, 'revolutionary groups' were established to enforce these controls, while the Law of Suspects on 17 September approved the arrest of suspected "enemies of freedom". This initiated what has become known as the "Terror". From September 1793 to July 1794, around 300,000 were arrested, with some 16,600 people executed on charges of counter-revolutionary activity, while another 40,000 may have been summarily executed, or died awaiting trial.
 Price controls made farmers reluctant to sell their produce in Parisian markets, and by early September the city was suffering acute food shortages. At the same time, the war increased public debt, which the Assembly tried to finance by selling confiscated property. However, few would buy assets that might be repossessed by their former owners, a concern that could only be alleviated by military victory. This meant the financial position worsened as threats to the Republic increased, while printing assignats to deal with the deficit further increased inflation.
 On 10 October, the Convention recognised the Committee of Public Safety as the supreme Revolutionary Government and suspended the constitution until peace was achieved. In mid-October, Marie Antoinette was convicted of a long list of crimes and guillotined; two weeks later, the Girondist leaders arrested in June were also executed, along with Philippe Égalité. The "Terror" was not confined to Paris, with over 2,000 killed in Lyons after its recapture.
 
 At Cholet on 17 October, the Republican army won a decisive victory over the Vendée rebels, and the survivors escaped into Brittany. A defeat at Le Mans on 23 December ended the rebellion as a major threat, although the insurgency continued until 1796. The extent of the repression that followed has been debated by French historians since the mid-19th century. Between November 1793 and February 1794, over 4,000 were drowned in the Loire at Nantes under the supervision of Jean-Baptiste Carrier. Historian Reynald Secher claims that as many as 117,000 died between 1793 and 1796. Although those numbers have been challenged, François Furet concludes it "not only revealed massacre and destruction on an unprecedented scale, but a zeal so violent that it has bestowed as its legacy much of the region's identity."
 At the height of the Terror, not even its supporters were immune from suspicion, leading to divisions within the Montagnard faction between radical Hébertists and moderates led by Danton. Robespierre saw their dispute as de-stabilising the regime, and, as a deist, objected to the anti-religious policies advocated by the atheist Hébert, who was arrested and executed on 24 March with 19 of his colleagues. To retain the loyalty of the remaining Hébertists, Danton was arrested and executed on 5 April with Camille Desmoulins, after a show trial that arguably did more damage to Robespierre than any other act in this period.
 The Law of 22 Prairial (10 June) denied "enemies of the people" the right to defend themselves. Those arrested in the provinces were sent to Paris for judgment; from March to July, executions in Paris increased from 5 to 26 per day. Many Jacobins ridiculed the festival of the Cult of the Supreme Being on 8 June, a lavish and expensive ceremony led by Robespierre, who was also accused of circulating claims he was a second Messiah. Relaxation of price controls and rampant inflation caused increasing unrest among the sans-culottes, but the improved military situation reduced fears the Republic was in danger. Fearing their own survival depended on Robespierre's removal, on 29 June three members of the Committee of Public Safety openly accused him of being a dictator. Robespierre responded by refusing to attend Committee meetings, allowing his opponents to build a coalition against him. In a speech made to the convention on 26 July, he claimed certain members were conspiring against the Republic, an almost certain death sentence if confirmed. When he refused to provide names, the session broke up in confusion. That evening he repeated these claims at the Jacobins club, where it was greeted with demands for execution of the 'traitors'. Fearing the consequences if they did not act first, his opponents attacked Robespierre and his allies in the Convention next day. When Robespierre attempted to speak, his voice failed, one deputy crying "The blood of Danton chokes him!"
 
 After the Convention authorised his arrest, he and his supporters took refuge in the Hotel de Ville, which was defended by elements of the National Guard. Other units loyal to the Convention stormed the building that evening and detained Robespierre, who severely injured himself attempting suicide. He was executed on 28 July with 19 colleagues, including Saint-Just and Georges Couthon, followed by 83 members of the Commune. The Law of 22 Prairial was repealed, any surviving Girondists reinstated as deputies, and the Jacobin Club was closed and banned.
 There are various interpretations of the Terror and the violence with which it was conducted. Furet argues that the intense ideological commitment of the revolutionaries and their utopian goals required the extermination of any opposition. A middle position suggests violence was not inevitable but the product of a series of complex internal events, exacerbated by war.
 
 
 === Thermidorian reaction ===
 
 The bloodshed did not end with the death of Robespierre; southern France saw a wave of revenge killings, directed against alleged Jacobins, Republican officials and Protestants. Although the victors of Thermidor asserted control over the Commune by executing their leaders, some of those closely involved in the "Terror" retained their positions. They included Paul Barras, later chief executive of the French Directory, and Joseph Fouché, director of the killings in Lyon who served as Minister of Police under the Directory, the Consulate and Empire. Despite his links to Augustin Robespierre, military success in Italy meant Bonaparte escaped censure.
 
 The December 1794 Treaty of La Jaunaye ended the Chouannerie in western France by allowing freedom of worship and the return of non-juring priests. This was accompanied by military success; in January 1795, French forces helped the Dutch Patriots set up the Batavian Republic, securing their northern border. The war with Prussia was concluded in favour of France by the Peace of Basel in April 1795, while Spain made peace shortly thereafter.
 However, the Republic still faced a crisis at home. Food shortages arising from a poor 1794 harvest were exacerbated in northern France by the need to supply the army in Flanders, while the winter was the worst since 1709. By April 1795, people were starving, and the assignat was worth only 8% of its face value; in desperation, the Parisian poor rose again. They were quickly dispersed and the main impact was another round of arrests, while Jacobin prisoners in Lyon were summarily executed.
 A committee drafted the Constitution of the Year III, approved by plebiscite on 23 September 1795 and put into place on 27 September. Largely designed by Pierre Daunou and Boissy d'Anglas, it established a bicameral legislature, intended to slow down the legislative process, ending the wild swings of policy under the previous unicameral systems. The Council of 500 was responsible for drafting legislation, which was reviewed and approved by the Council of Ancients, an upper house containing 250 men over the age of 40. Executive power was in the hands of five directors, selected by the Council of Ancients from a list provided by the lower house, with a five-year mandate.
 Deputies were chosen by indirect election, a total franchise of around 5 million voting in primaries for 30,000 electors, or 0.6% of the population. Since they were also subject to stringent property qualification, it guaranteed the return of conservative or moderate deputies. In addition, rather than dissolving the previous legislature as in 1791 and 1792, the so-called 'law of two-thirds' ruled only 150 new deputies would be elected each year. The remaining 600 Conventionnels kept their seats, a move intended to ensure stability.
 
 
 == French Directory (1795–1799) ==
 
 Jacobin sympathisers viewed the French Directory as a betrayal of the Revolution, while Bonapartists later justified Napoleon's coup by emphasising its corruption. The regime also faced internal unrest, a weak economy, and an expensive war, while the Council of 500 could block legislation at will. Since the directors had no power to call new elections, the only way to break a deadlock was rule by decree or use force. As a result, the directory was characterised by "chronic violence, ambivalent forms of justice, and repeated recourse to heavy-handed repression."
 Retention of the Conventionnels ensured the Thermidorians held a majority in the legislature and three of the five directors, but they were increasingly challenged by the right. On 5 October, Convention troops led by Napoleon put down a royalist rising in Paris; when the first legislative elections were held two weeks later, over 100 of the 150 new deputies were royalists of some sort. The power of the Parisian sans-culottes had been broken by the suppression of the May 1795 revolt; relieved of pressure from below, the Jacobin clubs became supporters of the directory, largely to prevent restoration of the monarchy.
 Removal of price controls and a collapse in the value of the assignat led to inflation and soaring food prices. By April 1796, over 500,000 Parisians were unemployed, resulting in the May insurrection known as the Conspiracy of the Equals. Led by the revolutionary François-Noël Babeuf, their demands included immediate implementation of the 1793 Constitution, and a more equitable distribution of wealth. Despite support from sections of the military, the revolt was easily crushed, while Babeuf and other leaders were executed. Nevertheless, by 1799 the economy had been stabilised, and important reforms made allowing steady expansion of French industry. Many of these remained in place for much of the 19th century.
 Prior to 1797, three of the five directors were firmly Republican; Barras, Révellière-Lépeaux and Jean-François Rewbell, as were around 40% of the legislature. The same percentage were broadly centrist or unaffiliated, along with two directors, Étienne-François Letourneur and Lazare Carnot. Although only 20% were committed Royalists, many centrists supported the restoration of the exiled Louis XVIII in the belief this would bring peace. The elections of May 1797 resulted in significant gains for the right, with Royalists Jean-Charles Pichegru elected president of the Council of 500, and Barthélemy appointed a director.
 
 With Royalists apparently on the verge of power, Republicans attempted a pre-emptive coup on 4 September. Using troops from Napoleon's Army of Italy under Pierre Augereau, the Council of 500 was forced to approve the arrest of Barthélemy, Pichegru and Carnot. The elections were annulled, 63 leading Royalists deported to French Guiana, and laws were passed against émigrés, Royalists and ultra-Jacobins. The removal of his conservative opponents opened the way for direct conflict between Barras and those on the left.
 Fighting continued despite general war weariness, and the 1798 elections resulted in a resurgence in Jacobin strength. Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in July 1798 confirmed European fears of French expansionism, and the War of the Second Coalition began in November. Without a majority in the legislature, the directors relied on the army to enforce decrees and extract revenue from conquered territories. Generals like Napoleon and Barthélemy Catherine Joubert became central to the political process, while both the army and directory became notorious for their corruption.
 It has been suggested the directory collapsed because by 1799, many 'preferred the uncertainties of authoritarian rule to the continuing ambiguities of parliamentary politics'. The architect of its end was Sieyès, who when asked what he had done during the Terror allegedly answered "I survived". Nominated to the directory, his first action was to remove Barras, with the help of allies including Talleyrand, and Napoleon's brother Lucien, president of the Council of 500. On 9 November 1799, the coup of 18 Brumaire replaced the five directors with the French Consulate, which consisted of three members, Napoleon, Sieyès, and Roger Ducos. Most historians consider this the end point of the French Revolution.
 
 
 == Role of ideology ==
 
 The role of ideology in the Revolution is controversial with Jonathan Israel stating that the "radical Enlightenment" was the primary driving force of the Revolution. Cobban, however, argues "[t]he actions of the revolutionaries were most often prescribed by the need to find practical solutions to immediate problems, using the resources at hand, not by pre-conceived theories."
 The identification of ideologies is complicated by the profusion of revolutionary clubs, factions and publications, absence of formal political parties, and individual flexibility in the face of changing circumstances. In addition, although the Declaration of the Rights of Man was a fundamental document for all revolutionary factions, its interpretation varied widely.
 While all revolutionaries professed their devotion to liberty in principle, "it appeared to mean whatever those in power wanted." For example, the liberties specified in the Rights of Man were limited by law when they might "cause harm to others, or be abused". Prior to 1792, Jacobins and others frequently opposed press restrictions on the grounds these violated a basic right. However, the radical National Convention passed laws in September 1793 and July 1794 imposing the death penalty for offences such as "disparaging the National Convention", and "misleading public opinion."
 While revolutionaries also endorsed the principle of equality, few advocated equality of wealth since property was also viewed as a right. The National Assembly opposed equal political rights for women, while the abolition of slavery in the colonies was delayed until February 1794 because it conflicted with the property rights of slave owners, and many feared it would disrupt trade. Political equality for male citizens was another divisive issue, with the 1791 constitution limiting the right to vote and stand for office to males over 25 who met a property qualification, so-called "active citizens". This restriction was opposed by many activists, including Robespierre, the Jacobins, and Cordeliers.
 The principle that sovereignty resided in the nation was a key concept of the Revolution. However, Israel argues this obscures ideological differences over whether the will of the nation was best expressed through representative assemblies and constitutions, or direct action by revolutionary crowds, and popular assemblies such as the sections of the Paris commune. Many considered constitutional monarchy as incompatible with the principle of popular sovereignty, but prior to 1792, there was a strong bloc with an ideological commitment to such a system, based on the writings of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Montesquieu, and Voltaire.
 Israel argues the nationalisation of church property and the establishment of the Constitutional Church reflected an ideological commitment to secularism, and a determination to undermine a bastion of old regime privilege. While Cobban agrees the Constitutional Church was motivated by ideology, he sees its origins in the anti-clericalism of Voltaire and other Enlightenment figures.
 Jacobins were hostile to formal political parties and factions which they saw as a threat to national unity and the general will, with "political virtue" and "love of country" key elements of their ideology. They viewed the ideal revolutionary as selfless, sincere, free of political ambition, and devoted to the nation. The disputes leading to the departure first of the Feuillants, then later the Girondists, were conducted in terms of the relative political virtue and patriotism of the disputants. In December 1793, all members of the Jacobin clubs were subject to a "purifying scrutiny", to determine whether they were "men of virtue".
 
 
 == French Revolutionary Wars ==
 
 The Revolution initiated a series of conflicts that began in 1792 and ended with Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815. In its early stages, this seemed unlikely; the 1791 Constitution specifically disavowed "war for the purpose of conquest", and although traditional tensions between France and Austria re-emerged in the 1780s, Emperor Joseph II cautiously welcomed the reforms. Austria was at war with the Ottomans, as were the Russians, while both were negotiating with Prussia over partitioning Poland. Most importantly, Britain preferred peace, and as Emperor Leopold II stated after the Declaration of Pillnitz, "without England, there is no case".
 In late 1791, factions within the Assembly came to see war as a way to unite the country and secure the Revolution by eliminating hostile forces on its borders and establishing its "natural frontiers". France declared war on Austria in April 1792 and issued the first conscription orders, with recruits serving for twelve months. By the time peace finally came in 1815, the conflict had involved every major European power as well as the United States, redrawn the map of Europe and expanded into the Americas, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean.
 From 1701 to 1801, the population of Europe grew from 118 to 187 million; combined with new mass production techniques, this allowed belligerents to support large armies, requiring the mobilisation of national resources. It was a different kind of war, fought by nations rather than kings, intended to destroy their opponents' ability to resist, but also to implement deep-ranging social change. While all wars are political to some degree, this period was remarkable for the emphasis placed on reshaping boundaries and the creation of entirely new European states.
 In April 1792, French armies invaded the Austrian Netherlands but suffered a series of setbacks before victory over an Austrian-Prussian army at Valmy in September. After defeating a second Austrian army at Jemappes on 6 November, they occupied the Netherlands, areas of the Rhineland, Nice and Savoy. Emboldened by this success, in February 1793, France declared war on the Dutch Republic, Spain, and Britain, beginning the War of the First Coalition. However, the expiration of the 12-month term for the 1792 recruits forced the French to relinquish their conquests. In August, new conscription measures were passed, and by May 1794 the French army had between 750,000 and 800,000 men. Despite high rates of desertion, this was large enough to manage multiple internal and external threats; for comparison, the combined Prussian-Austrian army was less than 90,000.
 
 By February 1795, France had annexed the Austrian Netherlands, established their frontier on the left bank of the Rhine and replaced the Dutch Republic with the Batavian Republic, a satellite state. These victories led to the collapse of the anti-French coalition; Prussia made peace in April 1795, followed soon after by Spain, leaving Britain and Austria as the only major powers still in the war. In October 1797, a series of defeats by Bonaparte in Italy led Austria to agree to the Treaty of Campo Formio, in which they formally ceded the Netherlands and recognised the Cisalpine Republic.
 Fighting continued for two reasons; first, French state finances had come to rely on indemnities levied on their defeated opponents. Second, armies were primarily loyal to their generals, for whom the wealth achieved by victory and the status it conferred became objectives in themselves. Leading soldiers like Lazare Hoche, Jean-Charles Pichegru and Lazare Carnot wielded significant political influence and often set policy; Campo Formio was approved by Bonaparte, not the Directory, which strongly objected to terms it considered too lenient.
 Despite these concerns, the Directory never developed a realistic peace programme, fearing the destabilising effects of peace and the consequent demobilisation of hundreds of thousands of young men. As long as the generals and their armies stayed away from Paris, they were happy to allow them to continue fighting, a key factor behind sanctioning Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt. This resulted in aggressive and opportunistic policies, leading to the War of the Second Coalition in November 1798.
 
 
 == Slavery and the colonies ==
 
 In 1789, the most populous French colonies were Saint-Domingue (today Haiti), Martinique, Guadeloupe, the Île Bourbon (Réunion) and the Île de la France. These colonies produced commodities such as sugar, coffee and cotton for exclusive export to France. There were about 700,000 slaves in the colonies, of which about 500,000 were in Saint-Domingue. Colonial products accounted for about a third of France's exports.
 In February 1788, the Society of the Friends of the Blacks was formed in France with the aim of abolishing slavery in the empire. In August 1789, colonial slave owners and merchants formed the rival Club de Massiac to represent their interests. When the Constituent Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August 1789, delegates representing the colonial landowners successfully argued that the principles should not apply in the colonies as they would bring economic ruin and disrupt trade. Colonial landowners also gained control of the Colonial Committee of the Assembly from where they exerted a powerful influence against abolition.
 People of colour also faced social and legal discrimination in mainland France and its colonies, including a bar on their access to professions such as law, medicine and pharmacy. In 1789–1790, a delegation of free coloureds, led by Vincent Ogé and Julien Raimond, unsuccessfully lobbied the Assembly to end discrimination against this group. Ogé left for Saint-Domingue where an uprising against white landowners broke out in October 1790. The revolt failed, and Ogé was killed.
 In May 1791, the National Assembly granted full political rights to coloureds born of two free parents but left the rights of freed slaves to be determined by the colonial assemblies. The assemblies refused to implement the decree and fighting broke out between the coloured population of Saint-Domingue and white colonists, each side recruiting slaves to their forces. A major slave revolt followed in August.
 In March 1792, the Legislative Assembly responded to the revolt by granting citizenship to all free coloureds and sending two commissioners, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel, and 6,000 troops to Saint-Domingue to enforce the decree. On arrival in September, the commissioners announced that slavery would remain in force. Over 72,000 slaves were still in revolt, mostly in the north.
 Brissot and his supporters envisaged an eventual abolition of slavery but their immediate concern was securing trade and the support of merchants for the revolutionary wars. After Brissot's fall, the new constitution of June 1793 included a new Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen but excluded the colonies from its provisions. In any event, the new constitution was suspended until France was at peace.
 In early 1793, royalist planters from Guadeloupe and Saint-Domingue formed an alliance with Britain. The Spanish supported insurgent slaves, led by Jean-François Papillon and Georges Biassou, in the north of Saint-Domingue. White planters loyal to the republic sent representatives to Paris to convince the Jacobin controlled Convention that those calling for the abolition of slavery were British agents and supporters of Brissot, hoping to disrupt trade.
 In June, the commissioners in Saint-Domingue freed 10,000 slaves fighting for the republic. As the royalists and their British and Spanish supporters were also offering freedom for slaves willing to fight for their cause, the commissioners outbid them by abolishing slavery in the north in August, and throughout the colony in October. Representatives were sent to Paris to gain the approval of the convention for the decision.
 The Convention voted for the abolition of slavery in the colonies on 4 February 1794 and decreed that all residents of the colonies had the full rights of French citizens irrespective of colour. An army of 1,000 sans-culottes led by Victor Hugues was sent to Guadeloupe to expel the British and enforce the decree. The army recruited former slaves and eventually numbered 11,000, capturing Guadeloupe and other smaller islands. Abolition was also proclaimed on Guyane. Martinique remained under British occupation, while colonial landowners in Réunion and the Îles Mascareignes repulsed the republicans. Black armies drove the Spanish out of Saint-Domingue in 1795, and the British troops withdrew in 1798.
 In republican controlled areas from 1793 to 1799, freed slaves were required to work on their former plantations or for their former masters if they were in domestic service. They were paid a wage and gained property rights. Black and coloured generals were effectively in control of large areas of Guadeloupe and Saint-Domingue, including Toussaint Louverture in the north of Saint-Domingue, and André Rigaud in the south. Historian Fréderic Régent states that the restrictions on the freedom of employment and movement of former slaves meant that, "only whites, persons of color already freed before the decree, and former slaves in the army or on warships really benefited from general emancipation."
 
 
 == Media and symbolism ==
 
 
 === Newspapers ===
 
 Newspapers and pamphlets played a central role in stimulating and defining the Revolution. Prior to 1789, there have been a small number of heavily censored newspapers that needed a royal licence to operate, but the Estates General created an enormous demand for news, and over 130 newspapers appeared by the end of the year. Among the most significant were Marat's L'Ami du peuple and Elysée Loustallot's Revolutions de Paris. Over the next decade, more than 2,000 newspapers were founded, 500 in Paris alone. Most lasted only a matter of weeks but they became the main communication medium, combined with the very large pamphlet literature.
 Newspapers were read aloud in taverns and clubs and circulated hand to hand. There was a widespread assumption that writing was a vocation, not a business, and the role of the press was the advancement of civic republicanism. By 1793 the radicals were most active but initially the royalists flooded the country with their publication the "L'Ami du Roi" (Friends of the King) until they were suppressed.
 
 
 === Revolutionary symbols ===
 To illustrate the differences between the new Republic and the old regime, the leaders needed to implement a new set of symbols to be celebrated instead of the old religious and monarchical symbols. To this end, symbols were borrowed from historic cultures and redefined, while those of the old regime were either destroyed or reattributed acceptable characteristics. These revised symbols were used to instil in the public a new sense of tradition and reverence for the Enlightenment and the Republic.
 
 
 ==== La Marseillaise ====
 
 "La Marseillaise" (French pronunciation: [la maʁsɛjɛːz]) became the national anthem of France. The song was written and composed in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, and was originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin". The French National Convention adopted it as the First Republic's anthem in 1795. It acquired its nickname after being sung in Paris by volunteers from Marseille marching on the capital.
 The song is the first example of the "European march" anthemic style, while the evocative melody and lyrics led to its widespread use as a song of revolution and incorporation into many pieces of classical and popular music. De Lisle was instructed to 'produce a hymn which conveys to the soul of the people the enthusiasm which it (the music) suggests.'
 
 
 ==== Guillotine ====
 
 The guillotine remains "the principal symbol of the Terror in the French Revolution." Invented by a physician during the Revolution as a quicker, more efficient and more distinctive form of execution, the guillotine became a part of popular culture and historic memory. It was celebrated on the left as the people's avenger, for example in the revolutionary song La guillotine permanente, and cursed as the symbol of the Terror by the right.
 Its operation became a popular entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators. Vendors sold programmes listing the names of those scheduled to die. Many people came day after day and vied for the best locations from which to observe the proceedings; knitting women (tricoteuses) formed a cadre of hardcore regulars, inciting the crowd. Parents often brought their children. By the end of the Terror, the crowds had thinned drastically. Repetition had staled even this most grisly of entertainments, and audiences grew bored.
 
 
 ==== Cockade, tricolore, and liberty cap ====
 
 Cockades were widely worn by revolutionaries beginning in 1789. They pinned the blue-and-red cockade of Paris onto the white cockade of the Ancien Régime. Camille Desmoulins asked his followers to wear green cockades on 12 July 1789. The Paris militia, formed on 13 July, adopted a blue and red cockade. Blue and red are the traditional colours of Paris, and they are used on the city's coat of arms. Cockades with various colour schemes were used during the storming of the Bastille on 14 July.
 The Liberty cap, also known as the Phrygian cap, or pileus, is a brimless, felt cap that is conical in shape with the tip pulled forward. It reflects Roman republicanism and liberty, alluding to the Roman ritual of manumission, in which a freed slave receives the bonnet as a symbol of his newfound liberty.
 
 
 === Symbols of the Old Regime ===
 
 In August and October 1793, revolutionary authorities ordered the exhumation of the remains of members of the royal family buried at the Saint-Denis basilica, which had served as the principal burial site of French royalty since the early Middle Ages. The remains were reburied in mass graves. These acts reflected revolutionary hostility toward royal authority and the symbolic power of dynastic memory.
 
 
 == Role of women ==
 
 Deprived of political rights by the Ancien Régime, the Revolution initially allowed women to participate, although only to a limited degree. Activists included Girondists like Olympe de Gouges, author of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, and Charlotte Corday, killer of Marat. Others like Théroigne de Méricourt, Pauline Léon and the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women supported the Jacobins, staged demonstrations in the National Assembly and took part in the October 1789 March to Versailles. Despite this, the 1791 and 1793 constitutions denied them political rights and democratic citizenship.
 In 1793, the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women campaigned for strict price controls on bread, and a law that would compel all women to wear the tricolour cockade. Although both demands were successful, in October the male-dominated Jacobins who then controlled the government denounced the Society as dangerous rabble-rousers and made all women's clubs and associations illegal. Organised women were permanently shut out of the French Revolution after 30 October 1793.
 At the same time, especially in the provinces, women played a prominent role in resisting social changes introduced by the Revolution. This was particularly so in terms of the reduced role of the Catholic Church; for those living in rural areas, closing of the churches meant a loss of normality. This sparked a counter-revolutionary movement led by women; while supporting other political and social changes, they opposed the dissolution of the Catholic Church and revolutionary cults like the Cult of the Supreme Being. Olwen Hufton argues some wanted to protect the Church from heretical changes enforced by revolutionaries, viewing themselves as "defenders of faith".
 
 
 === Prominent women ===
 
 Olympe de Gouges was an author whose publications emphasised that while women and men were different, this should not prevent equality under the law. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, she insisted women deserved rights, especially in areas concerning them directly, such as divorce and recognition of illegitimate children. Along with other Girondists, she was executed in November 1793 during the Terror.
 Madame Roland, also known as Manon or Marie Roland, was another important female activist whose political focus was not specifically women but other aspects of the government. A Girondist, her personal letters to leaders of the Revolution influenced policy; in addition, she often hosted political gatherings of the Brissotins, a political group which allowed women to join. She too was executed in November 1793.
 
 
 == Economic policies ==
 The Revolution abolished many economic constraints imposed by the Ancien Régime, including church tithes and feudal dues although tenants often paid higher rents and taxes. All church lands were nationalised, along with those owned by Royalist exiles, which were used to back paper currency known as assignats, and the feudal guild system eliminated. It also abolished the highly inefficient system of tax farming, whereby private individuals would collect taxes for a hefty fee. The government seized the foundations that had been set up (starting in the 13th century) to provide an annual stream of revenue for hospitals, poor relief, and education. The state sold the lands but typically local authorities did not replace the funding and so most of the nation's charitable and school systems were massively disrupted.
 
 Between 1790 and 1796, industrial and agricultural output dropped, foreign trade plunged, and prices soared, forcing the government to finance expenditure by issuing ever increasing quantities assignats. When this resulted in escalating inflation, the response was to impose price controls and persecute private speculators and traders, creating a black market. Between 1789 and 1793, the annual deficit increased from 10% to 64% of gross national product, while annual inflation reached 3,500% after a poor harvest in 1794 and the removal of price controls. The assignats were withdrawn in 1796 but inflation continued until the introduction of the gold-based Franc germinal in 1803.
 
 
 == Impact ==
 
 The French Revolution had a major impact on western history by ending feudalism in France and creating a path for advances in individual freedoms throughout Europe. The revolution represented the most significant challenge to political absolutism up to that point in history and spread democratic ideals throughout Europe and ultimately the world. Its impact on French nationalism was profound, while also stimulating nationalist movements throughout Europe. Some modern historians argue the concept of the nation state was a direct consequence of the revolution. As such, the revolution is often seen as marking the start of modernity and the modern period.
 
 
 === France ===
 The long-term impact on France was profound, shaping politics, society, religion and ideas, and polarising politics for more than a century. Historian François Aulard writes:"From the social point of view, the Revolution consisted in the suppression of what was called the feudal system, in the emancipation of the individual, in greater division of landed property, the abolition of the privileges of noble birth, the establishment of equality, the simplification of life.... The French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not merely national, for it aimed at benefiting all humanity."The revolution permanently crippled the power of the aristocracy and drained the wealth of the Church, although the two institutions survived. Hanson suggests the French underwent a fundamental transformation in self-identity, evidenced by the elimination of privileges and their replacement by intrinsic human rights. After the collapse of the First French Empire in 1815, the French public lost many of the rights and privileges earned since the revolution, but remembered the participatory politics that characterised the period. According to Paul Hanson, "Revolution became a tradition, and republicanism an enduring option."
 The Revolution meant an end to arbitrary royal rule and held out the promise of rule by law under a constitutional order. Napoleon as emperor set up a constitutional system and the restored Bourbons were forced to retain one. After the abdication of Napoleon III in 1871, the French Third Republic was launched with a deep commitment to upholding the ideals of the Revolution. The Vichy regime (1940–1944) tried to undo the revolutionary heritage but retained the republic. However, there were no efforts by the Bourbons, Vichy or any other government to restore the privileges that had been stripped away from the nobility in 1789. France permanently became a society of equals under the law.
 Agriculture was transformed by the Revolution. With the breakup of large estates controlled by the Church and the nobility and worked by hired hands, rural France became more a land of small independent farms. Harvest taxes were ended, such as the tithe and seigneurial dues. Primogeniture was ended both for nobles and peasants, thereby weakening the family patriarch, and led to a fall in the birth rate since all children had a share in the family property. Cobban argues the Revolution bequeathed to the nation "a ruling class of landowners."
 Economic historians are divided on the economic impact of the Revolution. One suggestion is the resulting fragmentation of agricultural holdings had a significant negative impact in the early years of 19th century, then became positive in the second half of the century because it facilitated the rise in human capital investments. Others argue the redistribution of land had an immediate positive impact on agricultural productivity, before the scale of these gains gradually declined over the course of the 19th century.
 In the cities, entrepreneurship on a small scale flourished, as restrictive monopolies, privileges, barriers, rules, taxes and guilds gave way. However, the British blockade virtually ended overseas and colonial trade, hurting the cities and their supply chains. Overall, the Revolution did not greatly change the French business system, and probably helped freeze in place the horizons of the small business owner. The typical businessman owned a small store, mill or shop, with family help and a few paid employees; large-scale industry was less common than in other industrialising nations.
 
 
 === Europe outside France ===
 Historians often see the impact of the Revolution as through the institutions and ideas exported by Napoleon. Economic historians Dan Bogart, Mauricio Drelichman, Oscar Gelderblom, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal describe Napoleon's codified law as the French Revolution's "most significant export." According to Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson the French Revolution had long-term effects in Europe. They suggest that "areas that were occupied by the French and that underwent radical institutional reform experienced more rapid urbanization and economic growth, especially after 1850. There is no evidence of a negative effect of French invasion."
 The Revolution sparked intense debate in Britain. The Revolution Controversy was a "pamphlet war" set off by the publication of A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, a speech given by Richard Price to the Revolution Society on 4 November 1789, supporting the French Revolution. Edmund Burke responded in November 1790 with his own pamphlet, Reflections on the Revolution in France, attacking the French Revolution as a threat to the aristocracy of all countries. William Coxe opposed Price's premise that one's country is principles and people, not the State itself.
 Conversely, two seminal political pieces of political history were written in Price's favour, supporting the general right of the French people to replace their State. One of the first of these "pamphlets" into print was A Vindication of the Rights of Men by Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft's title was echoed by Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, published a few months later. In 1792 Christopher Wyvill published Defence of Dr. Price and the Reformers of England, a plea for reform and moderation. This exchange of ideas has been described as "one of the great political debates in British history".
 In Ireland, the effect was to transform what had been an attempt by Protestant settlers to gain some autonomy into a mass movement led by the Society of United Irishmen involving Catholics and Protestants. It stimulated the demand for further reform throughout Ireland, especially in Ulster, and led to the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which was brutally suppressed by government troops. The German reaction to the Revolution swung from favourable to antagonistic. At first it brought liberal and democratic ideas, the end of guilds, serfdom and the Jewish ghetto. It brought economic freedoms and agrarian and legal reform. Above all the antagonism helped stimulate and shape German nationalism.
 France invaded Switzerland and turned it into the "Helvetic Republic" (1798–1803), a French puppet state. French interference with localism and traditions was deeply resented in Switzerland, although some reforms took hold and survived in the later period of restoration. France invaded and occupied the region now known as Belgium between 1794 and 1814. The new government enforced reforms, incorporating the region into France. Resistance was strong in every sector, as Belgian nationalism emerged to oppose French rule. The French legal system, however, was adopted, with its equal legal rights, and abolition of class distinctions.
 The Kingdom of Denmark adopted liberalising reforms in line with those of the French Revolution. Reform was gradual and the regime itself carried out agrarian reforms that had the effect of weakening absolutism by creating a class of independent peasant freeholders. Much of the initiative came from well-organised liberals who directed political change in the first half of the 19th century. The Constitution of Norway of 1814 was inspired by the French Revolution and was considered to be one of the most liberal and democratic constitutions at the time.
 
 
 === North America ===
 Initially, most people in the Province of Quebec were favourable toward the revolutionaries' aims. The Revolution took place against the background of an ongoing campaign for constitutional reform in the colony by Loyalist emigrants from the United States. Public opinion began to shift against the Revolution after the Flight to Varennes and further soured after the September Massacres and the subsequent execution of Louis XVI. French migration to the Canadas experienced a substantial decline during and after the Revolution. Only a limited number of artisans, professionals, and religious emigres were allowed to settle in the region during this period. Most emigres settled in Montreal or Quebec City. The influx of religious emigres also revitalised the local Catholic Church, with exiled priests establishing a number of parishes across the Canadas.
 In the United States, the French Revolution deeply polarised American politics, and this polarisation led to the creation of the First Party System. In 1793, as war broke out in Europe, the Democratic-Republican Party led by former American minister to France Thomas Jefferson favored revolutionary France and pointed to the 1778 treaty that was still in effect. George Washington and his unanimous cabinet, including Jefferson, decided that the treaty did not bind the United States to enter the war. Washington proclaimed neutrality instead.
 
 
 == Historiography ==
 
 The first writings on the French revolution were near contemporaneous with events and mainly divided along ideological lines. These included Edmund Burke's conservative critique Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and Thomas Paine's response Rights of Man (1791). From 1815, narrative histories dominated, often based on first-hand experience of the revolutionary years. By the mid-nineteenth century, more scholarly histories appeared, written by specialists and based on original documents and a more critical assessment of contemporary accounts.
 
 Dupuy identifies three main strands in nineteenth century historiography of the Revolution. The first is represented by reactionary writers who rejected the revolutionary ideals of popular sovereignty, civil equality, and the promotion of rationality, progress and personal happiness over religious faith. The second stream is those writers who celebrated its democratic, and republican values. The third were liberals like Germaine de Staël and Guizot, who accepted the necessity of reforms establishing a constitution and the rights of man, but rejected state interference with private property and individual rights, even when supported by a democratic majority.
 Jules Michelet was a leading 19th-century historian of the democratic republican strand, and Thiers, Mignet and Tocqueville were prominent in the liberal strand. Hippolyte Taine's Origins of Contemporary France (1875–1894) was modern in its use of departmental archives, but Dupuy sees him as reactionary, given his contempt for the crowd, and Revolutionary values.
 The broad distinction between conservative, democratic-republican and liberal interpretations of the Revolution persisted in the 20th-century, although historiography became more nuanced, with greater attention to critical analysis of documentary evidence. Alphonse Aulard (1849–1928) was the first professional historian of the Revolution; he promoted graduate studies, scholarly editions, and learned journals. His major work, The French Revolution, a Political History, 1789–1804 (1905), was a democratic and republican interpretation of the Revolution.
 Socio-economic analysis and a focus on the experiences of ordinary people dominated French studies of the Revolution from the 1930s. Georges Lefebvre elaborated a Marxist socio-economic analysis of the revolution with detailed studies of peasants, the rural panic of 1789, and the behaviour of revolutionary crowds. Albert Soboul, also writing in the Marxist-Republican tradition, published a major study of the sans-culottes in 1958.
 Alfred Cobban challenged Jacobin-Marxist social and economic explanations of the revolution in two important works, The Myth of the French Revolution (1955) and Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (1964). He argued the Revolution was primarily a political conflict, which ended in a victory for conservative property owners, a result which retarded economic development.
 In their 1965 work, La Revolution française, François Furet and Denis Richet also argued for the primacy of political decisions, contrasting the reformist period of 1789 to 1790 with the following interventions of the urban masses which led to radicalisation and an ungovernable situation.
 From the 1990s, Western scholars largely abandoned Marxist interpretations of the revolution in terms of bourgeoisie-proletarian class struggle as anachronistic. However, no new explanatory model has gained widespread support. The historiography of the Revolution has expanded into areas such as cultural and regional histories, visual representations, transnational interpretations, and decolonisation.
 
 
 == See also ==
 Age of Revolution
 Bourgeois revolution
 Cordeliers
 Democracy in Europe
 Glossary of the French Revolution
 History of France
 History of Savoy (1792–1815)
 Influence of the American Revolution on the French Revolution
 List of films set during the French Revolution and French Revolutionary Wars
 List of people associated with the French Revolution
 List of political groups in the French Revolution
 Musée de la Révolution française
 Paris in the 18th century
 Savoy's annexation to France (1792)
 Timeline of the French Revolution
 
 
 == Notes ==
 
 
 == References ==
 
 
 === Citations ===
 
 
 === Sources ===
 
 
 == Further reading ==
 
 
 == External links ==
 
 Museum of the French Revolution (French)
 Primary source documents from The Internet Modern History Sourcebook.
 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, a collaborative site by the Center for History and New Media (George Mason University) and the American Social History Project (City University of New York).
 French Revolution Digital Archive a collaboration of the Stanford University Libraries and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, containing 12000 digitised images
 The guillotined of the French Revolution factsheets of all the sentenced to death of the French Revolution
 Jean-Baptiste Lingaud papers, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania. Includes a vast number of name lists and secret surveillance records as well as arrest warrants for aristocrats and their sympathisers. Most notable in this part of the collection are letters and documents from the Revolutionary Committee and the Surveillance Committee.
 French Revolution Pamphlets, Division of Special Collections, University of Alabama Libraries. Over 300 digitised pamphlets, from writers including Robespierre, St. Juste, Desmoulins, and Danton.
 "The French Revolution's Legacy" BBC Radio 4 discussion with Stefan Collini, Anne Janowitz and Andrew Roberts (In Our Time, 14 June 2001)
 
 --- World War II ---
 
 World War II, or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945), was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.
 The causes of World War II included unresolved tensions in the aftermath of World War I, and the rise of fascism in Europe and militarism in Japan. Key events preceding the war included Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Spanish Civil War, the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and Germany's annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland. World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland, after which the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. Poland was also invaded by the Soviet Union in mid-September, and was partitioned between Germany and the Soviet Union under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic states and parts of Finland and Romania, while Germany conquered Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. After the fall of France in June 1940, the war continued mainly between Germany, now assisted by Fascist Italy, and the British Empire/British Commonwealth, with fighting in the Balkans, Mediterranean, and Middle East, East Africa, the aerial Battle of Britain and the Blitz, and the naval Battle of the Atlantic. By mid-1941, Yugoslavia and Greece had also been defeated by Axis countries. In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front.
 In December 1941, Japan attacked American and British territories in Asia and the Pacific, including Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, leading the United States to enter the war against the Axis. Japan conquered much of coastal China and Southeast Asia, but its advances in the Pacific were halted in June 1942 at the Battle of Midway. In early 1943, Axis forces were defeated in North Africa and at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. An Allied invasion of Italy in July resulted in the fall of its fascist regime, and Allied offensives in the Pacific and the Soviet Union forced the Axis to retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded France at Normandy, and the Soviet Union advanced into Central Europe. During the same period, Japan suffered major setbacks, including the crippling of its navy by the United States, the loss of key Western Pacific islands, and defeats in South-Central China and Burma.
 The war in Europe concluded with the liberation of German-occupied territories and the invasion of Germany by the Allies which culminated in the fall of Berlin to Soviet troops, and Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. On 6 and 9 August, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Japan announced its unconditional surrender on 15 August, and signed a surrender document on 2 September 1945. World War II transformed the political, economic, and social structures of the world, and established the foundation of international relations for the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st century. The United Nations was created to foster international cooperation and prevent future conflicts, with the victorious great powers—China, France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the US—becoming the permanent members of its Security Council. The Soviet Union and the US emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War. In the wake of Europe's devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and of Asia. Many countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion.
 
 
 == Start and end dates ==
 
 Most historians agree that World War II began with the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and the British and French declarations of war on Germany two days later. Dates for the beginning of the Pacific War include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 18 September 1931.  Other proposed starting dates include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939. Others view the Spanish Civil War as the start or prelude to World War II.
 The date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 15 August 1945 (V-J Day), rather than with the formal surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945, which officially ended the war in Asia. A peace treaty between Japan and the Allies was signed in 1951. A 1990 treaty regarding Germany's future allowed the reunification of East and West Germany to take place. No formal peace treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union was ever signed, although the state of war between the two countries was terminated by the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, which also restored full diplomatic relations between them.
 
 
 == Background ==
 
 
 === Aftermath of World War I ===
 
 World War I radically altered the European political map. The most prominent nations of the Central Powers each lost territory in their respective peace treaties at the conclusion of the conflict. New nation-states were created out of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires.
 To prevent a future world war, the League of Nations was established in 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference. The organisation's primary function was to prevent armed conflict through collective security, military, and naval disarmament, as well as settling international disputes through peaceful negotiations and arbitration.
 Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I, irredentist and revanchist nationalism had emerged in several European states. These sentiments were especially pronounced in Germany due to the significant territorial, colonial, and financial losses imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Germany lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all its overseas possessions, while German annexation of other states was prohibited, reparations were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and capability of the country's armed forces.
 
 
 === Germany and Italy ===
 The German Empire was dissolved in the German revolution of 1918–1919, and a democratic government, later known as the Weimar Republic, was created. The interwar period saw strife between supporters of the new republic and hardline opponents on both the political right and left. Italy, as an Entente ally, had made some post-war territorial gains; however, Italian nationalists were angered that the promises made by the United Kingdom and France to secure Italian entrance into the war were not fulfilled in the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished representative democracy, repressed socialist, left-wing, and liberal forces, and pursued an aggressive expansionist foreign policy aimed at making Italy a world power, promising the creation of a "New Roman Empire."
 
 Adolf Hitler, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923, eventually became the chancellor of Germany in 1933 when President Paul von Hindenburg and the Reichstag appointed him. Following Hindenburg's death in 1934, Hitler proclaimed himself Führer of Germany and abolished democracy, espousing a radical, racially motivated revision of the world order, and soon began a massive rearmament campaign. France, seeking to secure its alliance with Italy, allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired as a colonial possession. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 when the Territory of the Saar Basin was legally reunited with Germany, and Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, accelerated his rearmament programme, and introduced conscription.
 
 
 === European treaties ===
 The United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front in April 1935 in order to contain Germany, a key step towards military globalisation; however, that June, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with Germany, easing prior restrictions. The Soviet Union, concerned by Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of Eastern Europe, drafted a treaty of mutual assistance with France. Before taking effect, though, the Franco-Soviet pact was required to go through the bureaucracy of the League of Nations, which rendered it essentially toothless. The United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August of the same year.
 Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno Treaties by remilitarising the Rhineland in March 1936, encountering little opposition due to the policy of appeasement. In October 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Rome–Berlin Axis. A month later, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy joined the following year.
 
 
 === Asia ===
 The Kuomintang party in China launched a unification campaign against regional warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allies and new regional warlords. In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Empire of Japan, which had long sought influence in China as the first step of what its government saw as the country's right to rule Asia, staged the Mukden incident as a pretext to invade Manchuria and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo.
 China appealed to the League of Nations to stop the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations after being condemned for its incursion into Manchuria. The two nations then fought several battles, in Shanghai, Rehe, and Hebei, until the Tanggu Truce was signed in 1933. Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese aggression in Manchuria, and Chahar and Suiyuan. After the 1936 Xi'an Incident, the Kuomintang and CCP forces agreed on a ceasefire to present a united front to oppose Japan.
 
 
 == Pre-war events ==
 
 
 === Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935) ===
 
 The Second Italo-Ethiopian War was a colonial war that began in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war began with the invasion of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia) by the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy (Regno d'Italia), which was launched from Italian Somaliland and Eritrea. The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia and its annexation into the newly created colony of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana); in addition it exposed the weakness of the League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy and Ethiopia were member nations, but the League did little when the former clearly violated Article X of the League's Covenant. The United Kingdom and France supported imposing sanctions on Italy for the invasion, but the sanctions were not fully enforced and failed to end the Italian invasion. Italy subsequently dropped its objections to Germany's goal of absorbing Austria.
 
 
 === Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) ===
 
 When civil war broke out in Spain, Hitler and Mussolini lent military support to the Nationalist rebels, led by General Francisco Franco. Italy supported the Nationalists to a greater extent than the Nazis: Mussolini sent more than 70,000 ground troops, 6,000 aviation personnel, and 720 aircraft to Spain. The Soviet Union supported the existing government of the Spanish Republic. More than 30,000 foreign volunteers, known as the International Brigades, also fought against the Nationalists. Both Germany and the Soviet Union used this proxy war as an opportunity to test in combat their most advanced weapons and tactics. The Nationalists won the civil war in April 1939; Franco, now dictator, remained officially neutral during World War II but generally favoured the Axis. His greatest collaboration with Germany was the sending of volunteers to fight on the Eastern Front.
 
 
 === Japanese invasion of China (1937) ===
 
 In July 1937, Japan captured the former Chinese imperial capital of Peking after instigating the Marco Polo Bridge incident, which culminated in the Japanese campaign to invade all of China following years of tension and low-level conflicts. The Soviets quickly signed a non-aggression pact with China to lend materiel support, effectively ending China's prior cooperation with Germany. 
 From September to November, the Japanese attacked Taiyuan, engaged the Kuomintang Army around Xinkou, fought Communist forces in Pingxingguan,Yang Kuisong, "On the reconstruction of the facts of the Battle of Pingxingguan" and wrestled control over China's northern railway netw