Rise Of The Roman Empire Essay

Prior to the expansion of the Roman empire after the Second Punic War, the average Roman citizen seemed to be focused on service to the state, particularly through political and military service. Religiously Romans were focused on state supported deities that were associated with the founding and ideals of Rome. In the social aspects of Roman life, they were focused on the family, headed by the father, who supremely ruled and was revered in a fashion similar to the structure of the citizens and the state (Morey, 1901a). As they incorporated more foreign realms they would often take aspects of those societies and incorporated them into their own lives. Though aspects of many regions made their way into Rome, the most influential of them was Greek culture and society.

As part of this, they began making personal displays of wealth to impress their peers (Morey, 1901b, para. 16). An ancient world version of keeping up with the Joneses” that could serve to separate the gains that were made with unification of the plebeian and patrician classes. It led to making a new class gap that had been heading towards equalization. This was fed into by philosophies that began being introduced such as the Epicurean ideals to seek out the pleasures of life. A soldier of the state has no need to seek out pleasure, they should find their joy in exceptional service to and betterment of the Roman Empire. But the adoption of Greek philosophies did not only cause negative effects, it also led to the idea of Romans applying laws equally to not only Roman citizenry, but to foreigners in the empire (Millner et al., n.d., para. 5). This idea of equality under the law was probably one of the factors that allowed the Romans to keep their empire unified through their territorial expansion and the Punic