The Roman Empire
By: Fonta • Essay • 1,136 Words • May 19, 2010 • 1,262 Views
The Roman Empire
The Roman Empire had a huge task in front of them while it was first starting out and while it was becoming a dominant dynasty in the early civilizations. The main problem that the book "Discovering the Global Past" points out is how the Roman Empire found itself growing a little too quickly. The Roman Empire started out very small on the Tiber River and grew abruptly without warning. Before they knew it, they were not a small power but now one with a great number of people with a great number of cultures intertwined within the Roman Empire. They were now spread over an immense portion of land with much power coming with it. The question now is how they are going to be able to handle all of this power and continue to dominate the world without any blueprints to help them out from previous dynasties because it had never been done before. We now have some evidence to help understand this and to show how it did happen. So courtesy of the "Discovering the Global Past" they have seven pieces of evidence that will help prove that the Roman Empire could handle the challenge of taking on the mastery of world power.
The first piece of evidence that I have is The Achievements of the Divine Augustus, which states all of the achievements and accomplishments that helped him conquer the world under the Roman Empire. In this piece of evidence it shows all of Caesar Augustus' tactics he used to help him conquer the world. Many of which were war related. He gained most of his power by going to war and overthrowing that particular ruler. Thus this helped him gain respect which was also a key factor in his dominance. Once gaining the respect of the Roman Senate and also the republic he became the top runner to be "elected sole guardian of the laws and moral with supreme authority" (Source #1, 96). But Augustus refused to take that role of leadership in the Empire. He did many things in which the people love such as repairing the capitol and the theater of Pompey which cost a great amount and he did it without any public recognition. He did a number of things to help out the ruins and made the cities better by rebuilding them and making them nice again. Also what he wasn't going to finish by his death he would make sure his heirs would complete it. This list goes on and on of things that Augustus had done to help out the lives of people under the Roman Empire. This piece of evidence showed the strength that Roman Empire would soon have because they were still on the rise. The second piece of evidence that I have is Powers and Titles of the Emperor. This was a key part of having a successful empire. Once the Roman Empire was established they thought up a hierarchy to help control the empire. The good thing that came out of this was that the senate and the republic agreed to pass all the power entirely to Augustus. Now that they had a good ruler, it showed that their empire was growing and was a very strong for to be reckoned with. With such a high status Augustus and his successors expected a lot of support from the people and from the Roman senate.
The third piece of evidence that was available was the Roman Coin of the Reign of Emperor Nero. This was a coin that was minted during the Emperor Nero which had his portrait on it along with his name, his relationship to Caesar Augustus, and the four most prized titles that he had been awarded. They do this to help show and advertise their public image. But this wasn't the only way that Emperor's helped their public image and helps make them well known. They would make statues