In this third blog I will be talking about the great things that the ancient empires left us, but we will also learn of the bad things that went on during these times that we would not want happening today. The Roman empire has been one of the most talked about empire all around the world for ages since the rise to the fall and up until today. I will be talking about the documentaries The Spartans by Bettany Hughes, Meet the Romans by Mary Beard and also some of the discussion will include parts of the readings from the book The World by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto on chapters 5,6, and 7.
The television show Meet the Romans by Mary Beard talks about how the Roman empire came to be and how it expanded. The Romans were very liberal we could say about who became a Roman citizen and about how people led their lives. In the Roman Empire to you did not have to fight to become Roman one just had to learn something useful that would be good the the empire. Slaves could become Romans if they were freed by their masters and learned to work all and make a decent living. Rome had many immigrants because they knew that they had a chance of a better life where they could live and work and have enough food to eat everyday. The Roman warriors were meant to die and that is why they did not mind having people from other places because that way the empire could expand into another part of the world. Although it seemed like a great place to live for men it was not so for women. Women were second class citizens and they had no saying or vote in what happened in the empire. They could not be in the same place as man and they could only be house wives or prostitutes. The Romans empire was made up of all different cultures that with time eventually became Roman.
In the documentary by Bettany Hughes she talks about how fierce the Spartans were. She explains how they were a very liberal and sexual empire. They were born to fight and to die if they had to to keep their empire at the top of everyone else. The government had a say on which new born would survive and which one would be given up because he was not fit to become a soldier for the empire. Infanticide was common in ancient Sparta because the government wanted to have the best soldiers and since every male had to become a soldier they had to be able to survive and they had no space for the weak. Another thing that was different about Sparta was that women had freedom, they could become warriors too and when the men were away fighting they ruled the streets and had a saying on what happened in the empire, they were a great part of the expansion of the Spartan Empire.
Rome is located in Italy and is near the Mediterranean sea. Rome is a place that is made up of different geographic terrains. It is made up of mountains and lowlands that divide the East and the West, these lands were also very fertile, and they are climatically different as well. On the other hand Sparta was a very small land with only a few house and public buildings that had no constructed walls up until about the end of the 4th century.
The citizens of Rome were all from many different parts of the ancient world as I have said before, people migrated to Rome to look for a better life and eventually became citizens, frees slaves could also become citizens if they learned to do something that would benefit themselves and the empire. The Romans needed people because they were not having enough offspring to keep the empire growing while the warriors were out on war and dying off. The trade mark for Rome was the fact that they had people from everywhere that eventually became Roman and then they too could go to war to fight for the empire. The Spartans on the contrary had to be born Spartan and had to train their entire lives to earn their citizenship as Spartans, well the males at least. They could only be the best and the fittest to be able to become Spartans.
During these times there was trade going on, since Italy is a very small place with not enough resources to be able to feed the entire Roman city they had to trade good with other parts of the world, they mostly traded for olive oil because they depended on it for almost everything in a daily basis. In other parts of the world during the dark ages the lack of space for growing crops made them over exploit their land and eventually more vulnerable to disease and famine, some of these people were also more vulnerable to their enemies. Also the ambition of some of these civilizations drove them to do things that they should not have done, and made them fall as a civilization.
People in the ancient times were predominantly ruled by their elites, not very often were these elite women. It would be rare to find ans ancient civilization ruled by a women in ancient times because they were normally second class citizens who had no voice or vote. Only in Sparta would one be able to see that women had a little bit more freedom to be who they wanted to be. they could become warriors and manage their cities while the men were away at war. But going back to the fact that only the elite males could rule a civilization and make them grow as a civilization. Only those who knew how to handle power were able to make their cities into empires and conquer land away from home. But rulers often got greedy and wanted to rule and manage people in an unfair way and they wanted to take land, but really did not have the resources to do so and that would cause them to fall. Although this failed attempts at conquering the world did have an impact on different places because while they were trying to conquer there was cultural diffusion.
As the empires grew stronger and bigger the cultural differences were becoming less and less, people were becoming one and they shared their different cultures and religions. All this cultures eventually became one and the people became one as well. Immigration, slavery and war played a very big role on the acculturation of all these different peoples. Culture all over the world is something very important to everyone, culture is how we identify ourselves and it is on what we pride ourselves to be. Romans took all these different cultures and made them one. We the new people always look to Rome Specifically because it was one of the most influential empires that ever happened, but it happened because the people made a strong and large empire of different peoples merging into one becoming stronger.
All in all, we have learned a lot about ancient empires, about their ways of life and what was acceptable and what was not. Immigration, slavery, and wars have shaped our world since the beginning of time. These three things are what have given us all our different cultures and languages and government. We also know that at least in one part of the ancient world were women able to be a little bit more free than in any other empire in the ancient times, but this city was also one of the most brutal in the ways in which to give their citizens a voice and their empire a name. We also learned that they were very liberal and many things that we thought were not accepted were actually happening in the ancient world.
Beard, Mary. Meet the Romans 2013
Hughes, Bettany. The Spartans
I would like to have seen more discussion of the FA chapters.
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