Socrates

Letha Schmidt

March 14, 2007

Professor Wolk

Midterm

1. Pericles was a very influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during n the city's Golden Age. He had such a profound influence on Athenian society that he was acclaimed as "the first citizen of Athens". He led his countrymen during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. He also promoted the arts and literature, which became the reason why Athens holds the reputation of being the educational and cultural center of the Greek world. He began a project that built most of today’s surviving structures. This project beautified the city and gave work to the people.

2. Solon was a famous Athenian lawmaker and poet. He began a series of political reforms that greatly increased citizen participation in Athenian government. He canceled all land debt, outlawed new loans that were based on humans being collateral and freed people who had been enslaved due to debt. But because he refused to redistribute the land he never solved the problem. His reforms, unfortunately, did not please the wealthy or the poor. He left Athens for about ten years to travel and died not long after his return. However, he spent that period warning people against rulers who would not uphold his reforms.

3. A polis, when used to describe classical Athens, is often translated as "city-state." The word originates from the ancient Greek city-states, which developed during the Archaic period. The term city-state which originated in English does not fully translate the Greek term. The term polis changed with the development of the government and finally with the emergence of a citizenship notion between the land owners, it came to describe the entire body of citizens. This became the most important meaning of the term polis in ancient Greece.

4. Cincinnatus was an ancient Roman political figure. He was regarded by the Romans as one of the heroes of early Rome and as a model of Roman virtue and simplicity. As a persistent opponent of the plebeians, he resisted the proposal of Terentilius to draw up a code of written laws. He lived in humble circumstances, working on his own small farm. His career simply put is semi-legendary.

Essays

3. The Crisis of the Third Century is the name used for the collapse of the Roman Empire. The sheer size of the empire was the primary reason for the collapse in power of the Romans. The Romans had great difficulty in maintaining power over all of their empire. Supplying their army was a major problem as their lines of communications were stretched to the limit. The power of the empire rested with the success of the Roman Army, when this success began to weaken, the empire start to collapse.

The Romans were successful in the art of war from the beginning of the monarchy to the collapse of the Roman Empire. Many reasons account for the collapse, one of which was the lack of a big enough army to protect the entire empire. With the empire covering thousands of miles, the army had little in the way of back up to help protect against any attacks that were carried out against them. This along with poor communication made it difficult for the empire to continue to grow or maintain its size. Tribes outside of the empire attacked the borders. The defenses of the empire were strong on the edges but weak in the middle. Once a tribe broke through the defenses it was easy for them to keep going.

The fight for power throughout the empire was also a large part of the collapse.

The emperors of Rome were greedy. Plus the powerful generals kept fighting amongst themselves about who should be the next emperor. In 73 years there were 23 emperors and twenty of them were murdered. Soldiers wanted pay increases, poor people were driven to crime and with a increase in tax some people had to pay one third of their wages towards taxes. The borders were costing more to defend but the empire needed a strong army to protect those borders.

The Roman roads were essential for the growth of the Roman Empire, by enabling the Romans to move their armies. The Roman road system spanned around 53,000 miles. It made it easy for the Roman armies to march from one town to the next. But the road system that was designed to keep out enemies instead gave them a path to follow.