preview

Rome Dbq Essay

Decent Essays

During the period of time between 600BCE-600CE, sometimes known as the Classical Era, empires were gradually forming in different regions of the world. Effective militaries, politics, and organization sparked the rise of these great civilizations. In the Chinese region, Han China gained superiority, in India the Mauryan and Gupta, in the Middle East Persia, and finally in the Mediterranean Rome. Overall, Rome was a successful civilization because of its imposing military, crucial organization, and social progress. However, Rome did have its shortcomings in the form of leadership. These attributes contribute to Rome’s successful place in history. One of the most prominent reasons for Rome’s quick success was its powerful military. Its disciplined …show more content…

Rome was extremely organized in the sense that it had in-depth infrastructure and politics. For example, the Roman road network was most complex and advanced road network in the classical world. (Doc 3) Travel, trade, and military actions were all made quicker and easier. This, of course, kept the empire alive for so long. Rome was also organized politically. From a very early point in its history, Rome wrote extensive laws. This is shown by codes such as the Twelve Tables, detailing points such as different ways to deal with debt. (Doc 7) Codes of law such as this are indicative of Rome’s early political organization. The main purpose of creating laws such as these was to maintain order and control over the people of Rome. Without laws and codes detailing aspects of life, the civilization would not be very effective in governing its people. Not only was Rome highly organized, it also had a significant amount of social progress. This can be seen in the ability for people in the civilization to become citizens. In Rome almost every person living in the empire can be a citizen with the exception of slaves. (Doc 8) This contrasts with other civilizations such as Athens that only offered citizenship to males born in the republic. This social progress found in Rome in combination with the great organization of the civilization aided Rome in lowering unrest and adding to the overall …show more content…

One of the main shortcomings of Rome is bad leadership. Often during the empire period, rulers who inherited the throne were brutal, ineffective, unstable, or all of the above. Some, like Nero or Tiberius, were incredibly intolerant to certain groups such as Christians. They provided brutal punishments and abused people who identified with Christian ideas. (Doc 2) This obviously produced a large amount of civil unrest and led to a decline in the empire’s prowess. A very detailed account of this was provided by another Roman historian by the name of Tacitus. The people he was trying to get to with this account was the people of Europe. He wanted to describe intolerance and bad leadership to the majority of Europe’s population in order to warn them about the dangers of intolerance. In addition to these brutal leaders, towards the end of the empire rulers were dying at an increased rate. Many emperors were killed either in battle, by assassination, or by disease. (Doc 5) The increased rate in which emperors died could be indicative of bad leadership or more unrest. It certainly led to more unrest in the empire. While there were a few examples of great leaders in Roman history, the majority of the leaders towards the end of the civilization were subpar accelerating its

Get Access