Summary of the Roman Empire

Ancient Rome

Virtual tour of a Roman Villa

A day in the life of a 10 year old boy

The End of the Empire

The Empire eventually came to an end, but many parts of it lasted

longer than you might think. The decline began in the third century, but it took several centuries for the Empire to be completely dissolved.

The Romans have influenced many areas of our life. Some include

language, law, science, politics and architecture. In the Renaissance at the end of the Middle Ages people rediscovered Roman ideas and applied many of them.

Life in the Roman Empire was as varied as it is today:

Rome, with more than a million inhabitants, was bigger

than any modern city in Britain apart from London.

It had blocks of flats called 'insulae', streets with pedestrian crossings, lavish public baths, public lavatories seating up to 60 people... and huge amounts of graffiti. Every night hundreds of slaves came out to clean the streets. Wagons were only allowed to use the city at night.

The Romans invented concrete, which allowed them to build large buildings, with huge domes. One famous building was the Pantheon, which still survives.

A system of nine aqueducts supplied Rome with 222 million gallons of water a day.

Pont du Gard

We still have many remains of the Roman Empire in our world today:

• Many roads still follow the routes of Roman roads.

• The Latin language still survives:

The academic names of flowers and animals.

Words such as 'exit'

Many schools, football clubs and coins have a Latin motto.

The names of the months and the names of the planets.

In the United States the Senate, which is the part of the body that makes United States law, is named after the Roman Senate.

We still use Roman numerals, I, II, III, IV etc, on clocks, buildings etc.

Many Roman roads, buildings and aqueducts still survive to this day.

Many films and TV dramas have been made about the Roman Empire. eg Gladiator (2000) with Russell Crowe, and the Doctor in Doctor Who travels back in time to Pompeii during the Roman Empire.

Roman trade

Roman Trade

The Roman economy was huge and complex:

The Romans were brilliant at mining precious metals..

Rich Romans owned huge agricultural estates called

latifundia, worked by slaves. Roman farming methods were more technologically advanced than the Middle Ages, and they used irrigation, water mills, manure and mechanical reapers.

Different areas specialised in different produce – eg wine in southern Italy and wheat in Egypt. Britain was invaded for its wheat crop.

The Roman Empire can be seen as a system to take produce from the provinces to the city of Rome. It has been estimated that Rome imported half a million tons of wheat a year.

The Romans built straight, paved roads, such as the Via Appia in Italy. In Britain, Watling Street ran from London to Wroxeter in Shropshire. It was a saying that 'all roads lead to Rome', and the routes and remains of many of them still survive.

The Roman Empire was almost always at war

The Roman army comprised half-a-million men.

This was about 30 legions. The troops were often based a long way from where they had been conscripted.

Roman soldiers marching in battle formation

The Romans were not always successful.

In AD9, up to 20,000 soldiers were killed in the Teutoburg Forest in Germany. However, in the years that followed, Roman legions marched through the area, slaughtering the Germanic people. The Romans usually won in the end because they had more money, resources and a very effective military machine.

The Roman invasion of Britain

The Origins of Rome

The Romans traced their history back to the year 753BC, and

two brothers, Romulus and Remus. Legend has it that the brothers could not agree where to build a new city and consulted the birds to see which brother had chosen the right spot. In fact, Rome started to grow in the 6th century BC, out of a number of small villages on hills next to the River Tiber.

Britain was conquered by Emperor Claudius in AD43, despite fierce resistance by the chieftain Caratacus and a rebellion by Boudicca (AD60). However, the Romans were not able to conquer Scotland – their Ninth Legion may have been destroyed there and in the 120s they pulled back behind Hadrian's Wall.

Coin bearing the image of Claudius

The Roman Empire grew until it stretched from Portugal to Persia (today's Iran), and from Scotland to the Sahara desert. It was at its biggest under the Emperor Trajan in AD101, when it may have had 100 million inhabitants.

After a crisis in the third century AD, Rome slowly declined, and the Western Empire finally collapsed in AD476.

Suetonius

In 27BC, Augustus established the Roman Empire, which was from then on ruled by an absolute Emperor.

It is difficult to know much about politics in the Roman Empire because little survives from the time. Most of what we know about the Roman emperors comes from Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars (AD119). Not only was this many years after the events, but Suetonius hated the emperors for destroying the Senate, and he filled his books with the most disgusting rumours. Trying to construct a history from Suetonius is like trying to write a history of modern times using only celebrity gossip

The Romans

Summary of the Roman Empire