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My Aspirations For This Class

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Personal Statement

My aspirations for this class originally was to study and learn the history of the Romans, in particular the Roman Republic Era, but when I learnt that we were to study Greek culture and society, I was disappointed. Although the class had surprised me and intrigued me, I still was still fascinated and oblivious to Roman history. Therefore I chose Pompey, a famous general and great rival of the legendary Caesar. Other than these two statements, I had not known any background information on Pompey.

My only real primary source, Plutarch, was a very direct and informative source, but lacked in the areas which would have helped my report. Plutarch retold Pompey’s life from beginning till end, but did not give any biased …show more content…

I found I had to sift through a lot of information about his military efforts before I could get to his political actions, which in comparison were short. I overcame this by choosing to rely on the texts and Plutarch, and if I found information coming from other sources which support that, I would use it. If I found new information that wasn 't found in the texts, I would not use it. This was my tactic to play it safe and not give out false information and perspective views.

My main problem when writing the report was that I had introduced too much of the historical side of Pompey, and ignored his influence on to society, or the society itself, which is the core of this report. I worry that even my final draft is still too much like a biography than a report.

I had to also study other important individuals such as Sulla, Caesar and Crassus, all who is just as difficult to study as Pompey. I found that more information about the political ambition of Pompey was given through texts about Caesar than texts about Pompey himself. This was probably because Pompey was a military minded individual, while Caesar relied on politics and the people for his power.

My opinion on Pompey was that he was too hasty and was not aware of the consequences for his actions. This would specifically affect me, for I too can relate and say that I am very boisterous and rash, do first

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