Roman Governing Techniques
The Roman Empire began being ruled by a king. The Roman aristocrats threw over the king and established a republic. The republic had a senate that made the laws. It had two councils that acted similarly to our modern-day presidents. All people in government were elected. The Romans created a government based on the same democratic principles as the Greeks
The Romans built roads that allowed them to travel quickly and squash rebellions to centralize their rule further. Those roads also helped with communication and trade. Other infrastructure projects included aqueducts, sewer systems, baths, and arenas for entertainment. For many of the conquered territories, the quality of life improved.
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There was a deep conflict between the rich (patricians) and the poor (plebeians). That led to the creation of the Assembly that represented the interests of the plebeians. A written code of laws called the 12 Tables gave patricians and plebeians protection from an abusive government.
The Republic would end when Julius Caesar tried to become dictator. Some senators that feared Caesar assassinated him on March 15 44 BCE. His nephew, Octavian avenged Caesar by killing those senators. Octavian would then become emperor ending the Republic. He changed his name to Augustus and ruled from 64 BCE to 14 CE. During Octavian's reign there was a period of peace that led to economic prosperity in the empire called PAX ROMANA.
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Center of the Known World & Expansion
The Romans would conquer all of their neighbors in the Italian Peninsula. Over the next 500 years, they would conquer Europe and North Africa. The Romans believed they had conquered the entire world and that Rome was the center of this world. Julius Caesar once claimed that Rome was the center of the world and that the further out you traveled, the more savage people would become. They called non-Romans savages. They did, however, adopt the ideas of other cultures if they found value in them. The Romans, for example, believed that the Greeks had a more advanced civilization. Although they conquered and enslaved the Greeks, those same Greeks served as teachers for the Romans.
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Religion
Culturally, Rome came to adopt a foreign religion. The first religious adoption came as the Romans adapted their gods from Greek gods. By 313 CE Christianity, a Middle Eastern religion, had taken over the Romans when Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official state religion.
Romans believed that they were descended from the gods. However, during the Republic, power was legitimized by elections. Rome developed the world’s first clearly identifiable political parties. Until the republic’s decline, the results of elections were universally respected. This can be seen in the Roman battle standard “SPQR,” for Senatus populusque Romanus (“The Senate and the people of Rome”).