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406 Rosetta Stone monarchy was patriarchal, like the Roman society The king had supreme power over his “family” but was also responsible for their welfare A weak senate and assembly advised the king and had the power to approve the appointment of a king In many ways the Senate, made up of wealthy and respected Roman leaders and elders, known as patricians, acted in a fashion similar to the U.S Supreme Court; they judged the constitutionality and correctness of the king’s actions but rarely acted against his wishes The Assembly, on the other hand, was made up of male citizens of Rome whose parents were native Romans It was the institution that represented the majority of the population, known as plebeians, and granted absolute authority to the king In the sixth century b.c.e the Roman monarchs were Etruscans from a powerful empire based in northern Italy who briefly controlled Rome When an Etruscan prince from the ruling family, known as the Tarquins, raped the wife of a prominent patrician, Rome rebelled and expelled the Etruscans The reign of the Roman Republic began following the expulsion Two consuls inherited monarchial power, patricians elected to serve as head of state for one year Although the consuls held imperium, they were severely limited by annual reelection, by the ability to veto the actions of the other consul, and by an empowered Roman Senate These constraints caused conservative governance, which proved harmful during extended military conflicts, leading to the creation of proconsuls who were consuls permitted by the Senate to extend their term of office Below the consuls were financial officers known as quaestors, military officers known as praetors, and accounting officers, known as censors Even though imperium was separated by different branches of Roman government, it was concentrated in the hands of patricians In response to this reality, the plebeians struggled to gain political power and equality In 450 b.c.e., the Law of Twelve Tables resulted from the class struggle, codifying Roman law By 445 b.c.e plebeians gained the right to marry a patrician and in 367 b.c.e gained the right to run for the consulship and other positions, leading to the Licinian-Sextian Laws, which required one consul to be plebeian Julius Caesar’s assumption of power led to the establishment of the Roman emperorship, known as the princeps, in 44 b.c.e For the following half-millennium, Roman emperors controlled a vast European and Mediterranean empire, which slowly eroded In an attempt to prevent the collapse, Emperor Diocletian split the empire in two and based it in Rome and Constantinople in 285 b.c.e., ultimately leading to a full split in 395 b.c.e and Rome’s fall in 476 b.c.e See also polis; Roman Empire; Rome: decline and fall Further reading: Cary, M., and H H Scullard A History of Rome: Down to the Reign of Constantine New York: St Martin’s Press, 1975; Hooker, Richard “Rome.” Washington State University Available online URL: http://www.wsu.edu (September 2005) Arthur Holst Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone was discovered by French soldiers during the Napoleonic conquest and occupation of Egypt (1798–1801) With the same inscription in hieroglyphics, demotic (a later form of ancient Egyptian), and Greek, the text is a 196 b.c.e commemoration to Ptolemy V Epiphanes The French savants (intellectuals) that Napoleon had brought with him to study all aspects of Egypt and its society, recognized the stone’s importance as possibly providing vital keys to decoding and translating ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, but they were forced to give it, along with a large number of other ancient Egyptian artifacts, to the British after the French were militarily defeated by British forces The British ultimately placed the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum in London, where it is still displayed along with a vast number of other ancient Egyptian artifacts The French scholar Jean-Franỗois Champollion used the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone to decipher names and other hieroglyphic pictographs and letters Beating out a number of rivals to be the first to decipher hieroglyphic texts, Champollion’s work led to subsequent translations of hieroglyphic texts and to a fuller understanding of ancient Egyptian history and society and was a major contribution in the field of Egyptology See also Egypt, culture and religion; Ptolemies Further reading: Adkins, Leslie, and Roy Adkins The Keys of Egypt: The Race to Read the Hieroglyphs London: HarperCollins, 2000 Ray, John The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007 Janice J Terry
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