Imbalance Created Fallen Societies

The Romans had to live with multiple political assassinations in a short amount of time. The rulers were very misleading and unfair which led to them being assassinated. Thirteen out of twentyone rulers were assassinated in 235A.D through 283 A.D. (Document A) Most emperors didn’t even last three years.With political assassinations being common the Roman military was starting

To start Rome’s government started to lose power and become very weak. The emperor's constantly changed, dieing every 2 years or so. The causes of the emperors deaths were rarely due to natural causes such as diseases or age. In document A it states that the main cause of the deaths of the emperors was assassination, typically by a Roman general who would become the next emperor afterwards. This constant shift caused instability.

Rome also had bad government leadership. 2. In the fall of Rome, military mistakes led to soldiers

Many emperors died due to assassination most likely due to some citizens in disbelief of what the emperors truly were. The 12 emperors that died due to assassination is a very high amount showing how much all of Rome wasn’t in 100% agreement with each other, (Doc 3). With all the assassinations on the emperors, the city of Rome went into obvious unrest and wasn’t the most agreeing society.

During Rome’s slow decline, the early problems were shown in leadership. . After numerous deaths, the years 235-285 CE became a time of despair for Rome. Examples of this was how various leaders ruled from 1-2 years, but a few lasted a few months,according to the chart in Document A. Gordian I & II ruled as co leaders, but lasted about less than a year,but Gordian I died of suicide, which could of been an effect of the constant leaders taking over the empire. Without a strong and stable leadership, the people of the empire began to stir. Assassination was a main cause of death among the emperors. There was too much assassination, it meant that there were no stable leadership to hold the empire. Nevertheless, there were deeper problems to worry about as the army too, started to deteriorate.

In the blink of an eye a Roman emperor was assassinated, just like that, that's all it took. Document A, Roman emperors it declares that only 22 Roman emperors ruled over 50 your time and 13 were assassinated or killed, cloistered one by one. This reinforcement validates that the Roman military was bending over backwards to gate stability with their empire. Supplementary, it also put more compression on to whomever was ruling over Rome. In conjunction with defending the Roman ruler, the rulers were constantly wiped out by assassins.

After the rule of many prosperous emperors, Rome experienced a period of crisis from 235-285 CE. Almost all of the 19 emperors that ruled during this time were assassinated or died in battle (doc A). From the chart one can conclude that the people were not satisfied with their leaders, therefore they killed them. Rome was built on the idea of pleasing its people as seen by the various forms of entertainment during the Republic.

Rome was falling apart. When people are fighting against themselves, they are being selfish and killing if each other. This is important because they are making the military weak. They do not want to work together anymore. According to Doc B, “Customary armor began to seem heavy since soldiers rarely wore it… asked emperor to set aside breastplates and helmets.”

One trait every army must have to be successful is the willingness and drive to dominate. The Roman army took these traits to a whole different level. The Romans were very extreme in battle as well. They often enjoyed humiliating other city-states by burning them to the ground. In 264 B.C.E. a battle between other Greek city-states forced Rome and Carthage, who dominated the western part of the Mediterranean, into conflict. The First Punic War was for the control of Sicily.4 This battle lasted twenty-three years.4 The Romans were losing a lot of men, but they continued to battle on.4 Finally, the persistence paid off.4 The Romans learned how to fight by sea and cut off the Carthaginian supply line into

Both the Han and Roman empires had many corrupt government officials that helped lead to their decline. In the Roman empire, people began to fight to become the next emperor. This infighting led to 25 unnatural deaths of Roman emperors in a 50 year span. Each new ruler became more and more corrupt, and wanted to become emperor for the title, not to help a fragile empire re-strengthen itself into one of the greatest world powers in history. Similarly, in the final days of the Han empire, the court officials began to focus on their personal needs rather than those of the dwindling

At this stage in the Roman Empire things were extremely dangerous and many power struggles within the royal family were arising. With the demise of the

An example of this is the Anti- Federalist concerns about a republican government not working on a scale this large or diverse. Like the Roman empire, whose government was based on the idea on classical republicanism, they believed it would fall and turn into a monarchy in order to control its people. The Federalist needed a theory to combat this argument so James Madison complied wrote in Federalist 10 that factions were the great enemy of society. Madison defines a faction as “a number of citizens,... who united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Factions are dangerous because there will be a majority faction and then a risk of tyranny will arise, because the

The Erudite faction is known for their knowledge and they think ignorance was the cause of the war that divided them into factions. There are symbols through the story like that fact that people from Erudite wear blue because it is a color that supposedly stimulates the brain that show how much they value knowledge. As a result they eliminate everyone who is considered ignorant for disobeying their orders. This is a way to control the society and population. In Divergent an important oppressive character is Jeanine Matthews. Jeanine Matthews is the leader of the Erudite which continuously oppresses the society. In the book Jeanine Matthews says the line “Amazing, isn't it? Everything we think of that makes up a person - thoughts, emotions, history - all wiped away by chemistry.” that supports the fact that she values knowledge and more important erases those things that makes us humans. Another way that Erudite uses control to oppress the others is that Jeanine Matthews writes articles about Abnegation that are based on lies to make them look bad and be disliked by the

The lawlessness environment makes the society disorder and many people start to offense the government rules.

Despite Roth’s commentary on social stratification, Divergent feels less like a dystopian allegory and more like teenage angst with a bit of romance and lots of violence thrown in. There is little reference to social or political strife (Erudite seems to want control simply for the sake of being in power, not because of misgovernment by Abnegation), and no real exposition to show how greatly the dystopian society of the future is different than the society of today. The novel neglects to explore the causes of the Great War (an important factor to the birth of a factionalized society) and fails to plausibly convey how such a political and social system could exist 100 years without confrontation and uprising. Why would each faction cede power to one other faction (effectively silencing their own voices) rather than opt for a government run by a council of equal number of