The late Republic, from 133 BC onward, saw substantial domestic strife, often anachronistically seen as a conflict between optimates and populares, referring to conservative and reformist politicians, respectively. It then embarked on a long series of difficult conquests, defeating Philip V and Perseus of Macedon, Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire, the Lusitanian Viriathus, the Numidian Jugurtha, the Pontic king Mithridates VI, Vercingetorix of the Arverni tribe of Gaul, and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.Īt home, during the Conflict of the Orders, the patricians, the closed oligarchic elite, came into conflict with the more numerous plebs this was resolved peacefully, with the plebs achieving political equality by the 4th century BC. Rome defeated Carthage at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC, becoming the dominant power of the ancient Mediterranean world. Its greatest strategic rival was Carthage, against which it waged three wars. After the Gallic sack, Rome conquered the whole Italian peninsula in a century and thus became a major power in the Mediterranean. Its first enemies were its Latin and Etruscan neighbours, as well as the Gauls, who sacked Rome in 387 BC. Unlike the Pax Romana of the Roman Empire, throughout the republican era Rome was in a state of quasi-perpetual war.
Roman institutions underwent considerable changes throughout the Republic to adapt to the difficulties it faced, such as the creation of promagistracies to rule its conquered provinces, or the composition of the senate. There were annual elections, but the republican system was an elective oligarchy, not a democracy a small number of powerful families largely monopolised the magistracies. Its political organization developed at around the same time as direct democracy in Ancient Greece, with collective and annual magistracies, overseen by a senate. Roman society at the time was primarily a cultural mix of Latin and Etruscan societies, as well as of Sabine, Oscan, and Greek cultural elements, which is especially visible in the Ancient Roman religion and its Pantheon. During this period, Rome's control expanded from the city's immediate surroundings to hegemony over the entire Mediterranean world. The Roman Republic ( Latin: Res publica Romana ) was the era of classical Roman civilization beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom (traditionally dated to 509 BC) and ending in 27 BC with the establishment of the Roman Empire.
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