Ancient Rome
Beginning in the eighth century B.C., Ancient Rome grew from a small town on central Italy’s
Tiber River into an empire that at its peak encompassed most of continental Europe, Britain,
much of western Asia, northern Africa and the Mediterranean islands. Among the many
legacies of Roman dominance are the widespread use of the Romance languages (Italian,
French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian) derived from Latin, the modern Western
alphabet and calendar and the emergence of Christianity as a major world religion. After 450
years as a republic, Rome became an empire in the wake of Julius Caesar’s rise and fall in the
first century B.C. The long and triumphant reign of its first emperor, Augustus, began a golden
age of peace and prosperity; by contrast, the empire’s decline and fall by the fifth century A.D.
was one of the most dramatic implosions in the history of human civilization.
Origins of Rome
As legend has it, Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Mars, the god of
war. Left to drown in a basket on the Tiber by a king of nearby Alba Longa and rescued by a
she-wolf, the twins lived to defeat that king and found their own city on the river’s banks in 753
B.C. After killing his brother, Romulus became the first king of Rome, which is named for him.
A line of Sabine, Latin and Etruscan (earlier Italian civilizations) kings followed in a non -
hereditary succession.
Did you know? Four decades after Constantine made Christianity Rome's official religion, Emperor
Julian—known as the Apostate—tried to revive the pagan cults and temples of the past, but the
process was reversed after his death, and Julian was the last pagan emperor of Rome.
Rome’s era as a monarchy ended in 509 B.C. with the overthrow of its seventh king, Lucius
Tarquinius Superbus, whom ancient historians portrayed as cruel and tyrannical, compared to
his benevolent predecessors. A popular uprising was said to have arisen over the rape of a
virtuous noblewoman, Lucretia, by the king’s son. Whatever the cause, Ro me turned from a
monarchy into a republic, a world derived from res publica, or “property of the people.”
The Early Republic
The power of the monarch passed to two annually elected magistrates called consuls; they
also served as commanders in chief of the army. The magistrates, though elected by the
people, were drawn largely from the Senate, which was dominated by the patricians, or the
descendants of the original senators from the time of Romulus. Politics in the early republic
was marked by the long struggle between patricians and plebeians (the common people), who
eventually attained some political power through years of concessions from patricians,
including their own political bodies, the tribunes, which could initiate or veto legislation.
Military Expansion
During the early republic, the Roman state grew exponentially in both size and power. Though
the Gauls sacked and burned Rome in 390 B.C., the Romans rebounded under the leadership
of the military hero Camillus, eventually gaining control of the en tire Italian peninsula by 264
B.C. Rome then fought a series of wars known as the Punic Wars with Carthage, a powerful
city-state in northern Africa. The first two Punic Wars ended with Rome in full control of Sicily,
the western Mediterranean and much of Spain. In the Third Punic War (149 –146 B.C.), the
Romans captured and destroyed the city of Carthage and sold its surviving inhabitants into
slavery, making a section of northern Africa a Roman province. At the same time, Rome also
spread its influence east, defeating King Philip V of Macedonia in the Macedonian Wars and
turning his kingdom into another Roman province.
Rome’s military conquests led directly to its cultural growth as a society, as the Romans
benefited greatly from contact with such advanced cultures as the Greeks. The first Roman
literature appeared around 240 B.C., with translations of Greek classics into Latin ; Romans
would eventually adopt much of Greek art, philosophy and religion.
Internal Struggles in the Late Republic
Rome’s complex political institutions began to crumble under the weight of the growing empire,
ushering in an era of internal turmoil and violence. The gap between rich and poor widened as
wealthy landowners drove small farmers from public land, while access to government was
increasingly limited to the more privileged classes. Attempts to address these social problems,
such as the reform movements of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (in 133 B.C. and 123 -22 B.C.,
respectively) ended in the reformers’ deaths at the hands of their opponents.
Gaius Marius, a commoner whose military prowess elevated him to the position of consul (for
the first of six terms) in 107 B.C., was the first of a series of warlords who would dominate
Rome during the late republic. By 91 B.C., Marius was struggling against attacks by his
opponents, including his fellow general Sulla, who emerged as military dictator around 82 B.C.
After Sulla retired, one of his former supporters, Pompey, briefly served as consul before
waging successful military campaigns against pirates in the Mediterranean and the forces of
Mithridates in Asia. During this same period, Marcus Tullius Cicero, elected consul in 63 B.C.,
famously defeated the conspiracy of the patrician Cataline and won a reputation as one of
Rome’s greatest orators.
Caesar’s Rise
When the victorious Pompey returned to Rome, he formed an uneasy alliance known as the
First Triumvirate with the wealthy Marcus Licinius Crassus (who suppressed a slave rebellion
led by Spartacus in 71 B.C.) and another rising star in Roman politics: Gaius Julius Caesar.
After earning military glory in Spain, Caesar returned to Rome to vie for the consulship in 59
B.C. From his alliance with Pompey and Crassus, Caesar received the governorship of three
wealthy provinces in Gaul beginning in 58 B.C.; he then set about conquering the rest of the
region for Rome.
After Pompey’s wife Julia (Caesar’s daughter) died in 54 B.C., and Crassus was killed in battle
against Parthia (present-day Iran) the following year, the triumvirate was broken. With old-
style Roman politics in disorder, Pompey stepped in as sole consul in 53 B.C. Caesar’s
military glory in Gaul and his increasing wealth had eclipsed Pompey’s, and the latter teamed
with his Senate allies to steadily undermine Caesar. In 49 B.C., Caesar and one of his legions
crossed the Rubicon, a river on the border between Italy from Cisalpine Gaul. Caesar’s
invasion of Italy ignited a civil war from which he emerged as dictator of Rome for life in 45
B.C.
From Caesar to Augustus
Less than a year later, Caesar was murdered by a group of his enemies (led by the republican
nobles Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius). Consul Mark Antony and Caesar’s great-
nephew and adopted heir, Octavian, joined forces to crush Brutus and Cassius and divided
power in Rome with ex-consul Lepidus in what was known as the Second Triumvirate. With
Octavian leading the western provinces, Antony the east, and Lepidus Africa, tensions
developed by 36 B.C. and the triumvirate soon dissolved. In 31 B.C., Octavian triumped over
the forces of Antony and Queen Cleopatra of Egypt (also rumored to be the onetime lover of
Julius Caesar) in the Battle of Actium. In the wake of this devastating defeat, Antony and
Cleopatra committed suicide.
By 29 B.C., Octavian was the sole leader of Rome and all its provinces. To avoid meeting
Caesar’s fate, he made sure to make his position as absolute ruler acceptable to the public by
apparently restoring the political institutions of the Roman republic while in reality retaining all
real power for himself. In 27 B.C., Octavian assumed the title of Augustus, becoming the first
emperor of Rome.
Age of the Emperors
Augustus’ rule restored morale in Rome after a century of discord and corruption and ushered
in the famous pax Romana–two full centuries of peace and prosperity. He instituted various
social reforms, won numerous military victories and allowed Roman literature, art, architecture
and religion to flourish. Augustus ruled for 56 years, supported by his great army and by a
growing cult of devotion to the emperor. When he died, the Senate elevated Augustus to the
status of a god, beginning a long-running tradition of deification for popular emperors.
Augustus’ dynasty included the unpopular Tiberius (14 -37 A.D.), the bloodthirsty and
unstable Caligula (37-41) and Claudius (41-54), who was best remembered for his army’s
conquest of Britain. The line ended with Nero (54-68), whose excesses drained the Roman
treasury and led to his downfall and eventual suicide. Four emperors took the throne in the
tumultuous year after Nero’s death; the fourth, Vespasian (69-79), and his successors, Titus
and Domitian, were known as the Flavians; they attempted to temper the excesses of the
Roman court, restore Senate authority and promote public welfare. Titus (79 -81) earned his
people’s devotion with his handling of recovery efforts after the infamous eruption of Vesuvius,
which destroyed the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
The reign of Nerva (96-98), who was selected by the Senate to succeed Domitian, began
another golden age in Roman history, during which four emperors–Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus
Pius, and Marcus Aurelius–took the throne peacefully, succeeding one another by adoption, as
opposed to hereditary succession. Trajan (98-117) expanded Rome’s borders to the greatest
extent in history with victories over the kingdoms of Dacia (now northwestern Romania) and
Parthia. His successor Hadrian (117-138) solidified the empire’s frontiers and continued his
predecessor’s work of establishing internal stability and instituting administrative reforms.
Under Antoninus Pius (138-161), Rome continued in peace and prosperity, but the reign
of Marcus Aurelius (161–180) was dominated by conflict, including war against Parthia and
Armenia and the invasion of Germanic tribes from the north. When Marcus fell ill and died near
the battlefield at Vindobona (Vienna), he broke with the tradition of non-hereditary succession
and named his 19-year-old son Commodus as his successor.
Decline and Disintegration
The decadence and incompetence of Commodus (180-192) brought the golden age of the
Roman emperors to a disappointing end. His death at the hands of his own ministers sparked
another period of civil war, from which Lucius Septimius Severus (193-211) emerged
victorious. During the third century Rome suffered from a cycle of near-constant conflict. A
total of 22 emperors took the throne, many of them meeting violent ends at the hands of the
same soldiers who had propelled them to power. Meanwhile, threats from outside plagued the
empire and depleted its riches, including continuing aggression from Germans and Parthians
and raids by the Goths over the Aegean Sea.
The reign of Diocletian (284-305) temporarily restored peace and prosperity in Rome, but at a
high cost to the unity of the empire. Diocletian divided power into the so-called tetrarchy (rule
of four), sharing his title of Augustus (emperor) with Maximian. A pair of generals, Galerius
and Constantius, were appointed as the assistants and chosen successors of Diocletian and
Maximian; Diocletian and Galerius ruled the eastern Roman Empire, while Maximian and
Constantius took power in the west.
The stability of this system suffered greatly after Diocletian and Maximian retired from office.
Constantine (the son of Constantius) emerged from the ensuing power struggles as sole
emperor of a reunified Rome in 324. He moved the Roman capital to the Greek city of
Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. At the Council of Nicaea in 325, Constantine
made Christianity(once an obscure Jewish sect) Rome’s official religion.
Roman unity under Constantine proved illusory, and 30 years after his death the eastern a nd
western empires were again divided. Despite its continuing battle against Persian forces, the
eastern Roman Empire–later known as the Byzantine Empire–would remain largely intact for
centuries to come. An entirely different story played out in the west, where the empire was
wracked by internal conflict as well as threats from abroad–particularly from the Germanic
tribes now established within the empire’s frontiers–and was steadily losing money due to
constant warfare.
Rome eventually collapsed under the weight of its own bloated empire, losing its provinces
one by one: Britain around 410; Spain and northern Africa by 430. Attila and his brutal Huns
invaded Gaul and Italy around 450, further shaking the foundations of the empire. In
September 476, a Germanic prince named Odovacar won control of the Roman army in Italy.
After deposing the last western emperor, Romulus Augustus, Odovacar’s troops proclaimed
him king of Italy, bringing an ignoble end to the long, tumultuous history of ancient Rome.
Ancient Greece
The term Ancient, or Archaic, Greece refers to the time three centuries before the classical
age, between 800 B.C. and 500 B.C.—a relatively sophisticated period in world history.
Archaic Greece saw advances in art, poetry and technology, but most of all it was the age in
which the polis, or city-state, was invented. The polis became the defining feature of Greek
political life for hundreds of years.
The Birth of the City-State
During the so-called “Greek Dark Ages” before the Archaic period, people lived scattered
throughout Greece in small farming villages. As they grew larger, these villages began to
evolve. Some built walls. Most built a marketplace (an agora) and a community meeting place.
They developed governments and organized their citizens according to some sort of
constitution or set of laws. They raised armies and collected taxes. And every one of these
city-states (known as poleis) was said to be protected by a particular god or goddess, to whom
the citizens of the polis owed a great deal of reverence, respect and sacrifice. (Athens’s deity
was Athena, for example; so was Sparta’s.)
Did you know? Greek military leaders trained the heavily armed hoplite soldiers to fight in a massive
formation called a phalanx: standing shoulder to shoulder, the men were protected by their neighbor's
shield. This intimidating technique played an important role in the Persian Wars and helped the
Greeks build their empire.
Though their citizens had in common what Herodotus called “the same stock and the same
speech, our shared temples of the gods and religious rituals, our similar customs,” every
Greek city-state was different. The largest, Sparta, controlled about 300 square miles of
territory; the smallest had just a few hundred people. However, by the dawn of the Archaic
period in the seventh century B.C., the city-states had developed a number of common
characteristics. They all had economies that were based on agriculture, not trade: For this
reason, land was every city-state’s most valuable resource. Also, most had overthrown their
hereditary kings, or basileus, and were ruled by a small number of wealthy aristocrats.
These people monopolized political power. (For example, they refused to let ordinary people
serve on councils or assemblies.) They also monopolized the best farmland, and some even
claimed to be descended from the gods. Because “the poor with their wives and children were
enslaved to the rich and had no political rights,” Aristotle said, “there was conflict between the
nobles and the people for a long time.”
Colonization
Emigration was one way to relieve some of this tension. Land was the most important source
of wealth in the city-states; it was also, obviously, in finite supply. The pressure of population
growth pushed many men away from their home poleis and into sparsely populated areas
around Greece and the Aegean. Between 750 B.C. and 600 B.C., Greek colonies sprang up
from the Mediterranean to Asia Minor, from North Africa to the coast of the Black Sea. By the
end of the seventh century B.C., there were more than 1,500 colonial p oleis.
Each of these poleis was an independent city-state. In this way, the colonies of the Archaic
period were different from other colonies we are familiar with: The people who lived there were
not ruled by or bound to the city-states from which they came. The new poleis were self-
governing and self-sufficient.
The Rise of the Tyrants
As time passed and their populations grew, many of these agricultural city -states began to
produce consumer goods such as pottery, cloth, wine and metalwork. Trade in these goods
made some people—usually not members of the old aristocracy—very wealthy. These people
resented the unchecked power of the oligarchs and banded together, sometimes with the aid
of heavily-armed soldiers called hoplites, to put new leaders in charge.
These leaders were known as tyrants. Some tyrants turned out to be just as autocratic as the
oligarchs they replaced, while others proved to be enlightened leaders. (Pheidon of Argos
established an orderly system of weights and measures, for instance, whil e Theagenes of
Megara brought running water to his city.) However, their rule did not last: The classical period
brought with it a series of political reforms that created the system known as demokratia, or
“rule by the people.”
Archaic Renaissance?
The colonial migrations of the Archaic period had an important effect on its art and literature:
They spread Greek styles far and wide and encouraged people from all over to participate in
the era’s creative revolutions. The epic poet Homer, from Ionia, produced his Iliad and
Odyssey during the Archaic period. Sculptors created kouroi and korai, carefully proportioned
human figures that served as memorials to the dead. Scientists and mathematicians made
progress too: Anaximandros devised a theory of gravity; Xenophanes wrote about his
discovery of fossils; and Pythagoras of Kroton discovered his famous theorem.
The economic, political, technological and artistic developments of the Archaic period readied
the Greek city-states for the monumental changes of the next few centuries.
A Brief History Of Chinese Civilization
Some of the world's earliest civilizations formed in what we now know as China and Taiwan.
The origin of Chinese Civilization is dated back to the Paleolithic Age when Homo Erectus lived in the
area more than a million years ago. One archaeological site at Shanxi Province is dated back to
some 1.27 million years. Then came the Neolithic Age which came around 10,000 BC and carries an
evidence of the proto-Chinese millet agriculture, and even settlement along the famous Yangtze
River is said to be around 8,000 years old. In the latter half of the Neolithic Age, the establishment of
the Yellow River civilization led to the establishment of the Yangshao culture, which is known to have
yielded the most significant sites from the era.
Early Civilizations
The early Chinese Civilization included the Xia Dynasty which remained from around 2100 BC until
1600 BC, and is described in the ancient Records of the Grand Historians, from which pottery and
shells have been excavated that belonged to this period. After that, it was followed by the Shang
Dynasty which existed from 1600-1046 BC. The oracle bones were found during this time which had
divination records inscribed on it. The beginning of the Zhou Dynasty was witnessed in 1046 to 256
BC which actually emerged in the Yellow River Valley and they began their rule under the semi-feudal
system. The spring and autumn or the Warring States Period saw the annexation by the local military
leaders, and the modern system of Sheng and Xian emerged in the country.
Dynastic China
The foremost early dynasty was the Qin Dynasty, which came into being from 221-206 BC. In this,
the Kings subdued the parts of the Han Chinese homeland and united them under a central legalized
government. The other dynasty was Han Dynasty and its period consisted of 202 BC – AD 220. This
was regarded as the golden age in the Chinese History, which actually consolidated the foundation
of China. Xin dynasty period began in AD 9 and it was said to be the short-lived dynasty, but many
economic reforms were undertaken during this period. The other main dynasties which followed after
this was Jin Dynasty, Northern and southern dynasties, Sui Dynasty, Tang dynasty, Five dynasties
and the Ten Kingdoms, Yuan Dynasties, and finally it reached the Qing Dynasty.
Xinhai Revolution
The Xinhai Revolution is also known as the Chinese Revolution or the Revolution of 1911, which
threw the last Imperial dynasty of China and that, was the Qing Dynasty. It led to the Formation of
Republic of China. The revolution witnessed many revolts, and the uprisings and the main turning
point of this movement was the Wuchang Uprising which was actually a result of mishandling of the
Railway Protection Movement. It is seen that the Republic of China in Taiwan (or Formosa) and the
People’s Republic of China each consider themselves as the true successors of the Xinhai
Revolution.
Modern Taiwan and the People's Republic of China
The People’s Republic of China made the Japanese troops surrender in the mainland and Taiwan
following World War II, and after that the main aim was to look after the economic development
of Taiwan. There were many international projects started in the mainland, and Taiwan also
developed into a major international trading power. The latter even possesses the highest foreign
exchange reserves across the globe.
