Roman Empire Geography

In its time, the Roman Empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen. The fact that the Romans were able to control and obtain an empire of this size was due to plenty of factors, but the main ones are the Roman army, the Roman roads, Pax Romana, the borders of the empire, and the benefits of the barbarians who became ruled by the empire. On their own, these factors wouldn’t do much at all, but such a combination brought great success.

Upon their return to Palestine after their release from exile, the Jews were struggling to “maintain their religious and social identity” (Wenham & Walton, 2011, p. 7) and found themselves in the midst of great military powers, first the Greeks, and then the Romans. Their influences on the Jews were remarkable. This essay will examine the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD by describing a typical Greco-Roman city, then discuss the various levels of Roman administrative structure, explain where local authority resided in the cities/villages of 1st-century Palestine, and finally support with Scripture the structure of authority within the Gospels and Acts.

Despite Rome’s impressive amount of money, people, core values, and supposed strength, Rome fell indefinitely due to lower-class problems, foreign invasions, and legal injustice. Because of its lower-class

In 146 B.C.E. the Roman Republic marched on the city of Corinth, the most powerful and wealthiest city state at the time of the attack. The Romans easily conquered Corinth and established themselves as one of the most dominant forces the Mediterranean world had ever seen. The Romans were not finished yet, they gained control over the entire Mediterranean world, most of Western Europe, and many of the Asian territories taken over by Alexander the great. The Romans had great military institutions, powerful political views, the smarts, and learned many lessons on how to rule the large areas around them. The Romans expanded so greatly during the period of 300-50 B.C.E. because of the pure drive, and how badly they wanted to expand.

Rome needs money to strive and without it, it was more likely to collapse as the economy went down the drain. Due to deadly illnesses being transmitted to the Roman Empire, it allowed the economy to suffer severely. The illness, measles that had arrived from southern Asia, had decimated the population leaving 250,000 people left from a million in the Roman Empire (Doc. #8). Due to the military having to hire Germanic soldiers to guard their frontiers, they needed money to pay the troops. The demand for money to pay for these troops then added to the demands on the state’s budget, just as declining production cut into tax revenues. Taxes became severe on the citizens of the empire, wealthy men were treated more valuable than the poor and unprincipled men inflicted injuries on others (Doc. #6). The Roman Empire treating the wealthy with more respect could be due to their need for money in the state’s budget and hoping some of them would have the heart to donate money, preventing the fall of Rome. Taxes were raised for obvious reasons. The empire knew they were having money problems and needed to get more out of the citizens spending habits, also to prevent the fall of Rome. The natural disaster that struck the Roman Empire in 366 CE could also contribute economically to the fall of Rome since the there was a devastation left and all recoveries to the city cost money (Doc. #7). The

One day, they had decided to separate Rome into two parts: The Western Half and the Eastern Half. But the Eastern Half had more power than the other, so they were uneven. According to Document E, it states that “A [wealthy lawbreaker] … is not punished for his injustice, while a poor man … undergoes the legal penalty.” This means that the poor and the rich were mistreated. The poor people were punished when guilty, but the rich aren’t. Also, “taxes are very severe, and unprincipled men inflict injuries on others.” This can be troubling for many Romans because needing to pay taxes and to get hurt in the process will make others need to pay even more for medical

The Roman Empire was one of the most popular empires that there ever was. It was also one of the largest as it went as far as Memphis in the South and Europe in the North (document 3). The empire’s location was not the best. Water practically surrounded the entire empire. The Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea, Atlantic Ocean, and Caspian Sea were all ports of water around it. However, that did not hold back the empire’s power, as it quickly adapted and used it to their advantage. Sea trade, deep harbors, and roads are a few of the ways that the Roman Empire used their location to help themselves.

The fall of the Roman Empire was caused by many things from barbarian invasions to a failing economy, many things went wrong for this empire all at one time the economy started to fail and even the people stopped working and joining the army and I want to know why and in this paper I will be explaining how exactly such a strong and once prosperous empire fell so quickly. If we really want to figure what actually happened to the Roman Empire we must start at the beginning of the downfall and many believe this was in the year 295 A.D when the Roman Emperor Theodosius died and the empire was taken over by his two sons Arcadius in the east and Honorius in the west and they were relatively good emperors and many people loved Honorius and he was the staple emperor for the Western Half of The Empire. But then the barbaric invasions started 11 years later and that was really the start of the fall but they also had other problems besides that, many of the politicians were only concerned with beating each other out of the political positions and not focusing to much on the threat of the

The Western Roman Empire is historically known for their drastic fall. Before they were an empire, 509 BC to 27 BC, they were a republic. The republic ended when Octavian changed his name to Augustus and took control. The empire was preserved from Augustus’s reign in 27 BC to the fall in 476 AD. What caused the fall of the empire? The social and cultural aspect in the Western Roman Empire was declining, as was the economy, which led to the weakening of the military- all causing the fall of the Roman Empire. The Roman culture was being changed dramatically, including the old Roman virtues. The economy was in trouble with jobs and therefore, money. And lastly, what some believe to be the main cause, the inability of the army to hold back the invaders.

Whether you prefer to say Rome fell due to the invasions or simply morphed into the oppressive and the corrupt government, economic policies of the emperors had a heavy impact on the lives of the citizens of Rome. The Roman Empire acquired money by taxation or by finding new sources of wealth, like land. However, it had reached its furthest limits, so land acquisition was no longer an option. As Rome lost territory, it also lost its revenue base.In doc# 4: we can see how the economy and citizens were taken advantage of and how the economy was not stable enough, led to the fall of Rome. The empire's main focus was on expanding and funding towards the military and politics. They did not think of the flaws that came with expanding and soon realized that to expand they had to gain military strength, and that costs a lot of money. Immediately the government created high taxes taking advantage of the citizens that leaned on the government welfare system, forcing them to basically pay for advances in the military. This affected small business and companies to crash because they could not afford these taxes, leaving the economy weakened. Therefore the economy could no longer help provide for the military expansion and lead to military weakening. And when the military and the economy was down due to this “internal decay” Rome was easy to conquer and lost all power and eventually fell. Doc# 3 also shows that due to the expansion and Rome wanting to be a world power, it caused a distraction and the economy was used to fund the military success and power, with high taxes. The more it expanded the more the taxes cost and the weaker the economy was. Due to the money that was taken from the economy, Wages being low, slaves disappearing, great estates growing, agriculture was being dominated, it

The Roman Empire was considered the biggest empire. The empire conquered 3 million square miles of land and it managed to do this because of it’s stable government and its military. Rome maintained much of its peace from 27 bc to 180 ad and this era is called Pax Romana which essentially, was the golden age of Rome. However, after Pax Romana, Rome declined from 180 ad to 476 ad. During the declination of Rome empire, the Roman empire was divided into an eastern and a western empire and was controlled by 2 emperors; one in the east and one in the west. Rome did this in order for the emperors to share power and to manage between situations such as war effectively. Since Rome was divided into 2 sections, barbaric groups such as goths, started

As Rome was facing attacks from the outside there was an even deeper problem happening from within and it was their economy. Rome’s constant war and overspending in building its empire was becoming costly. As their treasury depleted they decided to impose hard taxation to account for the new expense they were generating. Which actually caused many people who were apart of the upper class to move to the countryside to avoid the oppressive taxes(Andrews) . Another economic problem is that inflation began to occur. Marcus Aurelius increased the copper content of the silver coins and then after that there was even more severe inflation on it way(Starr 144-145). A third problem with the economy, also politically, was that there was an ever growing expansion of bureaucracy. The expansion of their government caused more and more officials to have to be paid. Not to mentions cities already were having a hard

As the Roman Empire began to fall, it was split into Eastern and Western sections. The emperor at the time, Constantine, declared that the new imperial residence, Byzantium, would become the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. After experiencing economic issues and invasions from the Huns, the Western part of the Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476. With a wealthy, strong, and prosperous capital, the eastern half of the Roman Empire survived and became known as the Byzantine Empire. This wealth and stability allowed for significant achievements to be made.

In the First Civilizations, geography played an important role. The Fertile Crescent allowed the increase in trade and exchange of goods between people. This lead to the migration of individuals from different regions which contributed to technology advances. Throughout this civilization, the culture was shared between city-states and the society was very stratified. Soon after, the king created a new law code, known as the Code of Hammurabi. He believed that this would help keep stability. As we have read in Inferno, it was similar to this law code. If anyone disobeyed or broke the law, they had severe punishments. For example, in Inferno, if you betrayed a ruler or society, you were put into the ninth circle where Lucifer resided. In that

In the year 330 Constantine founded a new imperial city in the east, which became known as Constantinople. Accompanying Diocletian's system of tetrarchy, the creation of this new city affirmed the separation of the Roman Empire into the east and the west. The Eastern Roman Empire held a series of advantages over the west both socially and economically. The Western Roman Empire was the weaker empire and a bad leadership and government along with attacks from barbarians led to the demise of the Western Roman Empire.