Transcript for:
Overview of Ancient Rome and its Empire

when you hear of Ancient Rome or the Roman Empire the Roman Republic immediately images of the Roman Legions come to mind these conquering armies conquering much of the Mediterranean you might have images of the Roman senate names like Julius Caesar and Augustus might come to mind you might think of some of the famous AR architecture some of which you can still see if you were to visit Rome and these are all real images of Rome or they're appropriately associated with it and we'll talk about most of these things in some depth but Rome did not start out that way and the purpose of this video is to give us an overarching arc of the history of Rome to be able to place it within history both in terms of time and geography so just to make sure we can read what I did here ahead of time is I have up here as I have a a high level timeline and then down here I have a timeline that Zooms in a little bit goes into a few more details and you can see this timeline on top it's going from the 8th Century BCE all the way to the fifth century CE so it's covering over 1,000 years of history and I needed it to cover over 1,000 years of History because the Roman Empire right we could even say just the the the Western Roman Empire covers that much and that doesn't even cover the entire Legacy of the Roman Empire because when we get into the 4th Century the 4th century CE you have a split where you have the eastern and the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern often known as the Byzantine Empire that goes on until 1453 CE so another thousand years until they are conquered by the Ottomans so the legacy of the Roman Empire even formerly as an Empire is significant and then it continues on much of Western Civilization especially Europe and the Mediterranean has its foundations in the Roman Empire and then before that Greek civilization and the Roman Empire is really up there alongside the Persian Empire is one of the really great civilizations or Empires and when I say great you should take that with a grain of salt great I'm saying it was big it was powerful but not everything they did was great they had a lot of slavery they were very cruel they were sometimes very violent uh so take the these terms great with the grain of salt so now that we get this timeline up here and then down here I'm going to go whoops down here I have a some maps that are going to show how the Roman empire grew and then eventually splits and declines but as we go to this top timeline we see the founding of Rome in the 8th Century BCE and this date 753 is the date that's often given to the founding of Rome by ramulus one of twin brothers ramulus and Remis raised by a She Wolf they were abandoned and raised by the She Wolf as Legend would have it and then ramulus eventually killed his brother and then becomes the first king of Rome we don't know how much of this is true I suspect a lot of this is very reg legendary a legend would have it that Rome is named for Romulus but some historians today think well it might have been the other way around we have the city of Rome they needed a founding story hey let's say this person ramulus started it and we don't know the exact date but there some there seems to be a reasonable consensus that around this you know mid 8th Century BCE you have the founding of the city of Rome but it's important to realize that at that point this the founding of the city the the kingdom of Rome it wasn't a significant power on the Italian Peninsula at the time where I have this x marked that's where Rome is and what you see in green this is actually the at truscan civilization and for most most of this of this period of the Roman Kingdom so this period right over here it's actually the atrans that are dominant power and for signific fractions of this they were dominant over the Roman Kingdom over the city of Rome but as we get to 59 BCE this is when the Roman Republic is established and in this blue green color this is the kingdom the gold color this yellow color is the Republic and then the red color is the when the Empire gets established by Julius Caesar and his adopted son Augustus and as we get into this I guess you could say this Republic period of or into the Roman Republic this this is when it starts to really exert itself as more of a dominant influence in the region and it continues to be a dominant influence in the region for several hundred years and then as we get into the first several hundred years uh in the Common Era so after the time of Jesus as we get into the 200s the 300s this is when we start to see a real decline of the Roman Empire empire and the Western Empire at least gets sacked multiple times in the fifth century and the year 476 is what's typically given for the end of the Roman Empire but even that's not exactly the end of the Roman Empire because in the 4th Century you have the Roman Empire splitting into this eastern and western Empires and the Eastern later gets known as the Byzantine Empire that goes on for another 40 that goes on for another thousand years until it's as I as I mentioned I think earlier taken over by the Ottomans but to get more of appreciation for how the Roman Empire grew and then eventually starts to shrink I have some maps over here so this first map this is roughly from the the 3r century BCE and 3D Century BCE you might remember Rome is a republic at this time but it's not the dominant power in the Mediterranean just to give ourselves some bearings you might remember that uh in the late 4th Century BCE that's when Alexander conquers much of or most of Greece Macedonia the Persian Empire which include included at the time Egypt and as we get into the 3r century B.C you still have the the fragments of Alexander's Empire that these are still significant powers in the regions you also have the carthaginian Empire which you see here in blue in North Africa and southern Spain and this period you have a series of Wars between the Romans and the carthaginians known as the Punic Wars and we'll do videos in depth on the Punic Wars they're called the Punic Wars because the term Punic it comes from what the Romans call the Phoenicians and Carthage was actually SE was actually settled founded by ancient Phoenicians so you could call it you can kind of consider this The Phoenician war and and or the descendants of The Phoenician Wars but the the that's why it's called Punic but the Romans eventually win the the multiple rounds of Punic Wars take over their territory and and eventually destroy Carthage Carthage is destroyed in 146 BCE and we'll talk more talk about that in more detail now as we go into the first century BCE this is when Rome goes from being a republic to an Empire and it happens when the general Julius Caesar he's able to conquer Gaul for the RO for the Roman Republic so Gaul is modern-day France and some other surrounding regions and he is so powerful that when he comes back to to Rome a civil war ensues and Julius Caesar is able to essentially win the civil war declare himself dictator and then his adopted son Augustus right over here is in 27 BCE declared Emperor and that's the beginning of the Roman Empire and we keep going and I think I've already mentioned it once in this video but eventually we get a split in the 4th Century CE where we have eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire the western side centered at Rome the Eastern side centered at what was originally Byzantium renamed Constantinople and today Istanbul and as we get into the fifth century that's when the Western Empire especially starts to really go into Decline and is eventually sacked in 476 but the Eastern Empire keep keeps on going