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What were the reasons for the fall of the roman republic
What were the reasons for the fall of the roman republic
The collapse of the roman republic essay
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“He is said to have been tall of stature… except that towards the end.” What was it that really led to the fall of the Roman Republic? There are a lot of different factors to consider when trying to determine what caused the collapse. By examining The Rubicon, The Life of Julius Caesar, and some accompanying handouts from class, this paper will discuss how the Roman Republic did not collapse because of one factor. The collapse of the Roman Republic was like that of a game of Jenga. Factors were pulled out of the Republican system just like a game of Jenga until the Republic could not stand anymore.
Before diving into the reasons for the Roman Republic’s collapse, there must be an explanation of the game Jenga. Jenga is a game where you create
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It has to do with another strong military leader called Pompey the Great. The disagreements and fighting between the two men created a civil war within the Roman Republic. People of the Republic did not know whether to join the forces of Julius Caesar or Pompey the Great. A great example of this can be found in Steven Saylor’s The Rubicon. There is a scene in The Rubicon where Gordianus and Tiro are in a tavern and there are a few men playing a game with dice. Anytime they cast the dice they yell “The die is cast!” which is a joke based on the words Caesar had said when he crossed the Rubicon. Tiro explains that the game has taken Caesar’s name and called the Venus Throw the Caesar Throw. Tiro then explains that this does not mean that the men had taken Caesar’s side, but that it is mostly superstition because Caesar is said to be descended from Venus. Nonetheless, this shows the divide that both Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great have created in …show more content…
Caesar was sole consul and at times acted like a king. The senate did not like this because the Romans held the tradition of a hatred of kings. It was then that the senate believed that Julius Caesar was a threat to the Republic. The senate and everyone liked Caesar, but they had decided that the best way to save the Republic was to assassinate Caesar. This was yet another piece of the game that was pulled out of the structure of the Roman Republic. Yes, the Romans were able to destroy the person that they thought was the threat to the Republic, but it was the position not the person that was the threat. With Julius Caesar gone, the void was still there for someone to fill.
The next block to be removed from the Roman Republic game of Jenga happens with the relationship between Marc Antony and Octavian. With the assassination of Julius Caesar came a full on war between the people who murdered him and Antony and Octavian. The Roman Republic was restored but not fully. Antony and Octavian never restored power to the senate. Instead they both formed an alliance along with Lepidus, called themselves the Second Triumvirate, and ruled the Rome Republic together. To show a symbol of Octavian’s alliance to Antony, he gave his daughter Octavia to marry
How was it possible that under the dictatorship and after the deification of Julius Caesar the Roman republic fell, when it had been structurally sound for four centuries before? When the republic was established around the end of the 6th century B.C.E., the Romans made clear that they wished to avoid all semblance of the monarchy that had ruled for two centuries before. (T.J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC), London and New York: Routledge, 1995; p. 215) The rule of the Republic was to be split into powers of the senate and consuls, a system that worked for over four centuries. The republic would face problems with the rise of the first triumvirate in 60 B.C.E., involving Julius Caesar, Crassus and Pompey. The triumvirate gained power that was intended to be in the hands of the senate and Roman assembly. This paved way to a situation in which a single man could sweep up the political power that previously belonged to the entire senate. Julius Caesar would use this tactic, following his campaigns of Gaul and Britton, to take sole dictatorship over Rome. While there were previous cases which individuals had been appointed as dictator, usually by the senate to serve for six months in a time of war, Caesar was appointed dictator three separate times.. After declining his first dictatorship, Caesar was awarded two more reigns as dictator for one and ten years, respectively. At this point Caesar was praised by the Roman people for his various military victories and had been awarded several awards and honors by the senate. Having conquered much of the surrounding territories, spanning from northern Africa to Greece, and enacting several reforms, Caesar was in the pro...
The Political Decay of the Roman Republic The fall of the Western Roman Empire was the first example in history on the collapse of a constitutional system which was caused by the internal decay in political, military, economics, and sociological issues. The government was becoming corrupt with bribery. Commanders of the Roman army turned their own army inward towards their own Constitutional systems, fueled by their own ruthless ambition. This paper will talk about how the violence and internal turmoil in 133 B.C.-27 B.C. was what provoked the economic stagnation in the city of Rome and to the end of the Republic and the many corrupt politicians and generals who only thought of nothing more than personal gains and glory. The senate lost control of the Roman military and the reason they rose against the senate was because the senate were no longer able to help manage the social problems or the military and administrative problems of the empire.
Julius Caesar (July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general, statesman, Consul, and author of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. On March 15 44 B.C.E, the Roman dictator Julius Caesar was murdered. There are multiple accounts of this incident, while all accounts came after the death of Caesar, the writing on the incident portray Julius Caesar to have been a selfish dictator.
In 509 B.C. the Romans declared themselves a republic, free from rule of the Etruscan kings. (“The Rise of…”) From that point on, the Roman’s form of government would never include the title of “king”, in fear that a single person would gain absolute power. The republic included a dictator (in emergencies), the senate, two consuls, and several other positions. (Bishop) Although the goal of creating a republic was to have a government that represented the wishes of its people, the Roman senate consisted of men of wealth or power, leaving most of the plebeians, or common people, out of the picture. Many of the emperors’ policies strengthened the power of the government, and therefore weakened the power of the plebeians. By the end of Sulla’s rule in 78 B.C., grain prices had risen substantially and there was large gap between the rich and poor. (“The Rise of…”) When Julius Caesar took power, he initiated several reforms that were much needed at the time. Caesar spent large volumes of money on entertaining the citizens, while expanding citizenship to people of conquered lands and lessening the power of the senate. His policies threatened the method of income of senators and around 60 senators, in the name of saving the republic, murdered Julius Caesar at a senate hearing in 44 B.C. Civil war then erupted in Rome and lasted over a decade. At the end of the blood brawl, it was Octavian who emerged victorious; he would be the first Roman Emperor and would be known as Augustus. (Morey) Although the “Liberators” (Julius Caesar’s assassins), might not have realized it, the day that Julius Caesar died was the same day that the republic died; t...
Finally his sudden death was the result of various personal factors that insulted the senators and created hate between Caesar and them, believing his death was expected. His death then led to a domino effect, which ends in the eventual collapse of the Roman Empire. Caesar was assassinated by his own Senate. Julius Caesar had many men conspiring against him with a plot to assassinate him. Among the 60 men plotting to murder him, many were senators, which included Marcus Junius Brutus, Decimus Brutus Albinus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Brutus believed the death of Caesar would bring the return of the old Roman spirit unfortunately, the city was in shock, and people became increasingly more aggressive, because Caesar was popular with the people of Rome. Unfortunately, peace was impossible and the conspirators fled to
Rome became a powerful empire engulfing much of Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia and what seemed like this great entity called the Romans were always in the search of more territory and land to conquer and assimilate into their ever growing vast empire. However, this was not always the case, before Rome became one of the greatest empires in all of history, Rome was a republic. They were government consisted of a Senate who much like our country today represented certain classes of the citizens of the Republic. During the growth and rise of the Roman republic conquering neighboring territories and competing for land grabs was not Romans primary objectives. Romans believed in the well being and wealth of Rome, and if that meant the total destruction of a potential adversary, then as history will show that is unfortunately to the detriment of the adversary what happened.
For those who are interested in learning about history, the Roman Empire and its civilization were one of the most interesting spotlights in the human history. The Roman Empire existed throughout a hundreds-years timeline, officially since 27 BC under the reign of Emperor Augustus. However, to learn how this great empire rose up, they have to back to the “the early Rome and the Republic” period. In this period, these events happened orderly, from the rise of Rome in the Italian peninsula that led to creating the Roman republic, the conflicts with the Carthage Empire, the conquest of the Mediterranean and it ended with the fall of the Roman Republic.
There were many reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. Each one interweaved with the other. Many even blame the initiation of Christianity in 337 AD by Constantine the Great as the definitive cause while others blame it on increases in unemployment, inflation, military expenditure and slave labour while others blame it on the ethical issues such the decline in morals, the lack of discipline of the armies and the political corruption within the Empire. Three major contributions that led to the collapse of the once great empire were: the heavy military spending in order to expand the Empire, the over-reliance on slave labour which led to an increase in unemployment, and the political corruption and abuse of power by the Praetorian Guard leading to the unfair selection of many disreputable emperors and the assassination of those not favoured by the Guard.
The Roman Republic had an upstanding infrastructure, a stable social system, and a balanced constitution that solidified Rome’s greatness. Regardless of its achievements, however, the Roman Republic owes much of its success to classical Greek cultures. These cultures, in conjunction with the fundamental values of Roman society, certified Rome as one of the most significant powers the world has ever seen.
The Roman Republic began approximately around 509 B.C. when the nobles drove the King and his family out of Rome. This monumental incident helped shape the start to the transformation of the monarchy into a republican governmental system. This is known to have begun by that of the Roman nobles trying to hold their power that they had gained. The Republic was “[a] city-state [which] was the foundation of Greek society in the Hellenic Age; in the Hellenistic Age, Greek cities became subordinate to kingdoms, larder political units ruled by autocratic monarchs” (Perry 105)
The decline and fall of the Roman Empire is a scholarly article written by Justin Ott about the Roman Empire and the events leading up to its fall. The article mostly focuses on the military and economy of Rome in the third century A.D. It lists in the beginning a few of the different theories people have of how Rome fell, including led poisoning and the spread of Christianity. The article seems to want to disprove these theories, showing how they are not the main causes for the collapse of Rome. “Gibbon’s arguments in these sections can be accurately summarized as “the insensible penetration of Christianity in the empire fatally undermined the genius of a great people.” The problem with this conclusion is two-fold. First of all, this explanation is too narrow as it is difficult to believe one single factor brought down the empire. More importantly, it is clear that the Eastern Roman Empire was by far more Christian than the West, therefore if Christianity was behind the fall, the East should have fallen first.” The article’s audience appears to be historians, or those who are interested in history, or just the Roman Empire. It
3)Gwynn, David M. The Roman Republic: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. Print.
The lack of war allowed the Roman Republic to stagnate and become self-indulgent. By the end of the Punic Wars, which combined these elements, Rome was sure to fail. Without a common thread uniting its society, the Roman Republic unraveled because it had nothing left holding it together. Works Cited (Plutarch, p. 269), (Holland, p. 14), (Plutarch, p. 319), (Holland, p. 33)
In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", Caesar is displayed as a powerful and dynamic figure in Rome because of his many accomplishments in previous wars as well as battles. When Caesar returns to Rome from a recent victorious defeat in battle, he receives a warm welcome by all the citizens of Rome. They consider and see Caesar as a hero and a strong individual, which is why they attempt to crown him King three times. A group of generals in Caesar's army are jealous and concerned with the amount of power Caesar has; they make arrangements to kill him. "Power is said to be a man's greatest desire he'll do whatever it takes to achieve his goal, even to kill." In comparison to Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" and the film Julius Caesar, we see many similarities. Furthermore, I will discuss these similarities in great depth.
The assassination of Julius Caesar was due to his increased power and the senate’s fear of losing political relevance. They were losing their freedoms and thought the only way to resolve this problem was to kill Caesar. Killing Caesar never really did anything to help make the government a democracy like the senate had wanted. Marcus Brutus and Cassius ended up leaving Rome, so their plot did not do anything to help them. Caesar was the leader of Rome, the top of the Roman Empire. The people he thought he could trust most, his so-called friends, took him to the bottom of the Roman Empire, to his grave.