Roman Empire
What is Rome? Today it's the capital city of Italy, 1000 years ago it looked like this...
But it didnt start that way. A thousand years before that...
It started as a small tribal settlement.
Founding myth
1100 BC - the Fall of Troy
The events were written down 400 years later by a man named Homer who wrote the Illiad and The odyssey.
The Trojans were now refugees and is said they settled in the region of what is now Rome.
The Legend goes that a Trojan woman was impregnated by the God Mars and gave birth to two demigods.
Two brothers, Romulous & Remus were seen as a threat by the King who killed the mother. The king was afraid of what might happen if he killed the sons of a God so he put in a basket and put them in the Tiber river hoping the elements would kill them for him.
Instead, they were found by a she-wolf who raised the two boys. The two boys suckled on the wolf and survived in the wild. A shepherd found the boys and took them back to civilization. After being captured and taken to the king he recognized them. They killed him and ran away. They were followed by supporters who hated the king. After an argument about which hill to build their city on Romulous killed Remus and named the city after himself and became its first King.
The Kings sons always became the next King. However, one of these descendants was hugely unpopular and was run out of town into exile. Rome swore it would never have a king again.
The began the Age of the Roman Republic in 509BC.
They had two elected leaders who served only a single year long term. Voted in by 300 elders of respected families. 1 year of service. Couldn't serve again for 10 years.
After 200 years of protest and lobbying the vote was opened to all free Roman men.
Rome got attacked by the Gauls in the north and spent 100 years fighting them. As they won battle after battle they signed treaties with their enemies and enrolled their soldiers into their Roman legions.
They then fought their way south against the Greeks. The Greeks were weakened by the arguing and infighting that had come after Alexander the Great died.
They took all of Italy except Sicily.
By 146 BC they had defeated Greece and Carthage in modern day Tunisia and taken those lands, half of Spain, all of the Mediterranean, Croatia, Albania and Macedonia.
Within years later, Turkey and the Levant were also occupied. In the north, France and Britain were defeated.
Fall of the Republic
Unpaid slave labor put farmers out of business. The rich bought the land from them for cheap and poor farmers had no choice but to move to the city. This resulted with a lack of food. The poor protested but the rich had their leaders killed.
71BC - Spartacus slave rebellion
Julius Caesar - 44BC
Julius Caesar was a powerful speaker and people around him were swayed by things he said.
He became consul of Rome but the rich didnt like him. The senators were determined to keep life good for the rich and not worry about the poor. Julius Caesar wanted the people to like him so he gave men land and became popular with the poor. He also made rich and powerful connections.
When his year in the consul was over he got three Roman territories to govern. He was given 4 Roman Legions and paid for an extra 2 himself.
Julius Caesar started by defending his assigned territories but it quickly became an invasion of tribal territories. Some of the tribes surrendered and asked for help defending their lands against a Germanic tribe. Caesar accepted. The problem was that the tribe was a tax paying ally of Rome. This upset the Senate who felt like he was out of control. Caesar also crossed the English channel to explore Britain. At the time Britain was seen as a mysterious place and some Romans didn't believe it really existed.
Caesar organized two more Legions from the defeated tribes which meant he had now 8 Legions. The senate were fearful of his power and popularity and called him back to Rome to face charges for illegal unauthorized wars.
Tradition said that a generally had to release his legions before coming to a parade in Rome. But Julius Caesar didn't.He knew that if he left his post he would no longer have diplomatic immunity. The senate was fearful of how strong and popular he had become and were secretly planning to get rid of him.
So he lead his army and fought a civil war against fellow Romans. He captured Rome and chased his rivals out of the country. His rival fled to Egypt where the Pharaoh had him executed and presented his head to Caesar as a gift. Caesar wasn't impressed and had the Pharaoh killed and made Cleopatra queen of Egypt. He had a child with her.
When he got back to Rome he named himself emperor and dictator for life (which wasn't a negative word back then.) And claimed control of everything and he built great temples and even gave is the calendar we use today and added the leap year. The month of July is named after him.
Julius Caesar was a beloved dictator but some felt that he was too powerful and Rome didn't need a king but needed a senate. There in the senate he was attacked by the senators and stabbed 23 times.
"Through action, a man becomes a hero,
through death, a hero becomes a legend,
through time, a legend becomes a myth
through myth, man takes action."
Nazi salute, Mousilini came from Roman times and the dictators saw themselves as modern day Julius Caesars. Other people in history, such as the French Napoleon Bonaparte and the Italian Benito Mussolini, have defined themselves as Caesarists. Nazi Salute is modelled after a Roman salute signaling a declaration of trust.
The Holy Roman Empire, that was not overly holy, not Roman and not an Empire. Nazi's regarded it as the First Reich and idealized getting back to that life.
Augustus - 27BC
Pompeii - 79AD
Marcus Aurelius - 180 AD
Marcus Aurelius wasn't just Emperor but also an excellent Philosopher.
Stoicism
1. Imagine the worst case scenario and realize it's not the end of the world.
2. Don't get too excited, don't congratulate yourself too much and don't berrate yourself too hard. All our decisions are half chance.
3. Letting your emotions get carried away takes you further from your mental restart. If emotions don't run wild, a quick restart is possible.
4. We suffer not from the events of our lives, but from out judgements about them. You don't know if something will be truly bad until after it happens.
5. Through trials we can learn how to avoid difficulties in the future.
6. Without opponents you'll never know what you're capable of.
7. “We are often more frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” — Seneca
8. “It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.” —Marcus Aurelius
COMMODUS
Renamed Rome after himself, has statues where was depicted similar to Hercules and claimed he was the son of the god Jupiter.
He named the Roman citizens, Commodians.
He would fight in the Gladiator arenas but always fight opponents who agreed to lose or feared to win. He often injured and killed them and they were afraid to touch him. He charged a high salary for his appearances and charged it to the city.
After his terrible rein, they tried to poison him but he threw it up. So they had a fellow Gladiatorial Fighter strangle him in the baths. After everything went back to normal and Rome went back to being Rome.
Slaughtered 100 Lions in the arena while a crowd watched.
Watch Gladiator.
Roman's loved pitting a light and quick Gladiator against and a slow and powerful one and debating who is better.
Gladiators were valuable property and were treated like today's athletes.
Crisis of the Third Century - 235AD
50 year period with 26 Emperors
A single year saw 5 Emperors named
The Empire was split into 3 competiting Empires in 301AD
Constantine I - 307AD
Waged a civil war against the two other Emperors and won sole control of all of Rome by 324.
He moved the Roman capitol to Byzantium which he renamed, Constantinople, after himself and Today it is known as Istanbul, Turkey.
Became Christian and gave the Bishop of Rome power making him the Pope.
400 Years later a letter would be forged. Known as the Donation of Constantine it asserted that the Pope was named supreme ruler of Western Europe by Constantine.
How do we figure out something is forged? Language, Historical Accuracy
The Fall of the Roman Empire Film
HYPATIA 415 AD
Philosopher, Astronomer and Mathematician killed by a Christian mob.
Film: Agora
Legacy
Names of the months...
- January is “the month of Janus” the Roman god of beginnings and endings. Janus presided over doors and gates—appropriate for the beginning of the year. Indeed, Janus was usually depicted with faces looking backward and forward, as is characteristic of a new year.
- February, “the month of cleansing,” is derived from februa, the name of a Roman purification festival held on the 15th of this month.
- March is named after the god of war and a planet: Mars. In ancient Rome, several festivals of Mars took place in March because that was the earliest month of the year when the weather was mild enough to start a war. At one time, March was the first month in the Roman calendar. The Romans changed the order of months several times between the founding of Rome and the fall of the Roman Empire.
- April is from the Latin Aprillis, which is a derivative of the Latin base apero-, meaning “second.” April was named as such because of the tweaking of the ancient Roman calendar, where April was the second month.
- May springs from the Greek goddess Maia, daughter of Atlas and mother of Hermes. She was a nurturer and an earth goddess, which certainly explains her connection with this springtime month, when flowers and crops burst forth.
- June descends from Juno, wife of Jupiter, and the Roman ancient goddess of marriage and childbirth.
- July was named in honor of Julius Caesar right after his assassination in 44 B.C., with July being the month of his birth. July is the first month in the calendar that bears the name of a real person, rather than a deity.
- August represents another Roman ruler having been enshrined. In 8 B.C., the month Sextilis (“sixth”) was renamed after Augustus, nephew of Julius Caesar and the first emperor of Rome. The emperor’s name came from the Latin augustus, which gave rise to the adjective “august,” meaning “respected and impressive.”
- September, from the Latin septem (“seven”), seems as if it should be the seventh month of the year.
- The names for October (octo), November (novem), and December (decem) suggest that they would be the eighth, ninth, and tenth months. And they once were, when the Roman lunar calendar started the year in March at harvest time. But all that changed in 46 B.C., when January became the first month of the new Julian calendar, making September through December the ninth–twelfth months of the year.
Latin words and phrases
German tribes invaded Rome and one called the Vandals from Germany sacked the Capitol and that's where the word Vandal comes from.
Census
Alta Vista
Roman numerals
Constantine
Hypatia
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