Collapse of the Roman Republic

hey everyone what's going on I know it's been a while since I've put one of these videos out for you guys but I figured we have some down time right now so I figured I might as well put out another video about the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire I also wanted to send a message out to you guys to let you know that we will be starting online distance learning classes not next week but the week after starting on Monday April 20th but it's really gonna be important that starting next week you guys really pay attention to everything that I put out there on view on canvas and on the remind app so you guys are just aware of the instructions that you need to follow and what you guys will need to be doing anyway hope you guys enjoy this video take care alright everyone what's going on welcome back to another video about the Roman world if this is the first of my videos that you're checking out from my youtube channel I recommend starting at the beginning of my playlist on the Roman world and early Christianity and then working your way up to this one but anyway the topic for today's video is going to be about the collapse of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire and the key question that we're focusing on here today is what caused Rome to go from an indirect democracy with a separation of powers that would go on to influence the United States of America and force them to revert back to an imperial monarchy as with all my videos I'll send along some notes to go with these if you're following on the start notes for module 6 in the Roman world and Christianity you'll be picking this up in section to be titled the Republic collapses it starts on the bottom of page 2 and it goes through to about the top of page 4 so where we left off in some of the previous videos right the first one we talked about the origins of Rome talked about how it was a city-state on the Italian peninsula that was originally a monarchy ruled by a king in time however they changed their government structure and they went from being a monarchy to a representative or indirect democracy or you could call it a republic they were called the Roman Republic they had various different government bodies that made laws and enforced laws they had separation of powers between the assemblies the Senate and the consuls and their form of government would go on to influence the separation of powers and the representative democracy that we have in the United States of America they would influence that years later when our founding fathers were writing the Constitution all right and then finally in the last video we talked about the epic saga of the three Punic Wars that Rome fought against Carthage because of these wars where Rome went on to defeat the Carthaginians Hannibal Barca and all of their army of elephants and everything like that because of that Rome experienced rapid expansion throughout the Mediterranean area and that's kind of where we left off wrong used to be the city-state then it started to include all of Italy but after the Punic Wars they started to grow and expand into an empire all right so Rome's victory in the Punic Wars if you were a Roman enthusiast you would obviously think that that's a good thing right they won these wars but what I will point out is that the Punic Wars were the first in a series of falling dominoes that would lead to the end of the Republican form of government and to the rise of an imperial monarchy so what happened there as you can see Rome just completely destroyed Carthage in the third Punic War they won the first two the first two were close Wars and the third one Rome completely annihilated Carthage burn the city to the ground and sewed salt in the fields so that Carthage would never rise to challenge them again now the big effect of this was that Rome and Carthage they were the two big players in the Mediterranean area and without Carthage there was no one left to check Rome's power and their expansion through the Mediterranean and as you can see here over the next hundred years Rome began to grow at a rapid pace their army went on an absolute tear and you can see their empire expanded you could all go ahead and circle they started originally just in Italy but over the next hundred years they would conquer all of these lands and I'll even circle the lands in Africa that they held alright so they held Carthage's lands in North Africa they conquered Spain they conquered all of Greece and makedonia they even went so far as to conquer parts of Asia Minor over here in Anatolia so Rome began to grow at a very rapid pace now you might be asking yourself well how did this lead to the end of their indirect democracy well one of the key effects of Rome's expansion was a rise in the use of slavery remember we pointed out before that slavery was a big part of the Roman economy there were many slaves in Rome system and these slaves didn't have the right to vote they didn't have the right to participate in government they were outside of the world social structure and most of these slaves that the Romans picked up some of them were like debt slaves so if you owed a debt to someone else you could go into slavery but most of the Roman slaves were enemies that they conquered in other Wars so as Rome goes in and starts conquering more lands well guess what more conquests just mean more slaves to help fuel their economy now from an economic standpoint this might sound like a good thing right that means they can do more work the thing is all of these slaves ended up working on the wealthy plantations they didn't just go to everyone you had to be able to afford a slave and the ones that could afford it were these wealthy big landowners and as these wealthy big landowners began to grow and develop these huge estates with hundreds of slaves working on them it began to push off the poor plebeian farmers these lower-class farmers of Roman society these lower-class citizens they began getting forced off of their land because they could not compete with these massive slave run estates that the wealthy patricians owned so the rise in conquests and the expansion of Roman Empire led to more slavery and more slavery ended up creating greater economic inequality what that means the gap between rich and poor began to get wider so what happens when that goes down well a lot of those poor farmers they moved off of their land and moved into the big cities big cities began to get more and more crowded so that's where you get things like poverty crime violence disease homelessness other destabilizing factors that would ultimately work to upend the Roman society now it wasn't like there was anyone that there was no one trying to do anything about this there were several Romans key Romans that were trying to change this system of slavery and get it so that it was more fair for the lower classes of Roman society most notable abundant were the graças brothers Tiberius and Gaius Krakus these two brothers were members of the Roman assemblies and they attempted to create reforms that would be make the system more fair for the plebeian Romans so they tried to do things like limit the size of plantations and give some of the land back to the poor now obviously you can imagine that this threatened the wealth and power of the patricians these patricians who saw these changes in these reform happening this threatened their way of life and they argued listen it's our plantations that are feeding the Roman society our plantations are making all the crops and food that's feeding our society you can't just go in then and start taking away our land but either way this ended up creating a lot of destabilization and the result that happens is both brothers were assassinated and this did not go over well in Roman society imagine a really popular figure in American society becoming assassinated a good example would be Martin Luther King jr. after Martin Luther King Jr's assassination there were riots throughout much of America all right in the case of Rome it was even worse you had civil wars following the assassinations of the graças brothers three of the most famous civil wars that happened occurred over the next 75 years and these were what was known as the servile Wars they call them serve I'll serve I'll when you think of that word think about the word servant all right so with that being said given that it was like the servant wars there were all Wars that started as slave revolts most of them the first two started on the island Cicely the other one started on Italy near Rome but it wasn't just the slaves fighting the wars against the Romans these slaves had the support of many of the freemen and poor lower-class Romans in society fighting alongside them probably the most notable was the third servile war that one was led by a group of gladiators most famous among them was a man named Spartacus all right I know it's a very graphic HBO series about him called Spartacus I cannot recommend that to you guys because it's rated R but what I can recommend is a 1960 movie about the third servile war called Spartacus in fact starring Kirk Douglas but anyway again more civil wars in Roman society this only further served to destabilize their society all right so on top of the social order and the economic term turmoil you had a lot of military upheaval as well at this point you have to think these soldiers that are making up the Roman army a lot of them come from the poorer ends of Roman society there are fewer and fewer wealthy patricians serving in the Roman legions now these soldiers in the Roman legions were getting very unhappy with the system rather than fighting for patriotism or for protecting the Roman land or trying to support the good of Rome they really just now were fighting for pay and fighting for their leaders that were supporting and feeding them now this might sound wrong to you right you might think that's not right they should be fighting for their country they should be Patriots but keep in mind these are the very men who were kicked off of their own farmland by the very slaves that they had conquered earlier in previous Wars so to be honest the Roman Society in the Roman system wasn't doing them any good the only people helping them out were the military commanders that were paying and feeding them and so the army became very very powerful but it wasn't very loyal to Rome itself all right so now we're gonna talk about the tale of one of these very very powerful leaders most notably you had Julius Caesar so there were three men starting in the year 60 BCE I'll go ahead and underline that there were three Roman politicians that controlled politics for ten years I'm not saying that they were kings and that they ran the entire system although all three of them did serve as consul but it was kind of like they had the most power and they had the most influence throughout society and because there were three of them they were known as the first triumvirate the three men that made that up were named Julius Caesar Crassus and Pompey now the one that we know about really well all right there's a salad named after him his Julius Caesar Caesar was a great general and for a year as per Roman tradition he served as consul of Rome but then after that he went on to go out and become governor of the province of Gaul now Gaul by the way is the modern region of the Roman Empire that we would call today France and you can see it on a map over here so Caesar was very very well known and very very famous in Roman society because he would be the general that would bring Gaul under Roman control he went through and conquered all of this region and because of this he became very popular among his troops Caesar was kind of like Alexander the Great he did not lead from the rear he led from the front line so in the battles he was always out in front on his horse and because of that he became very popular among his troops all right and this started to worry the other two members of the triumvirate Crassus and Pompey those two looked at Caesar and said we'll wait a second this guy is getting very popular kind of too popular I don't know if we want him to keep that level of popularity so what happened well as you see there Pompey and Crassus they felt threatened by Caesars popularity so they told Caesar look they sent the message to them they said you have to disband your army get rid of your whole army and you have to return to Rome well Caesar he did one of those two things he returned to Rome but he brought his whole army with him and he marched his army on Rome and basically said look you two are out I'm in control now and he did this because he thought it was what was good for the Roman Republic he thought that he could be the one to restore order and restore state stability to Roman society so again in 50 BCE Caesar he brought his army in this picture right here is the famous picture of Caesar leading his army across the Rubicon River into Rome but he chased Pompey and Crassus and their supporters out of Rome which led to a series of civil wars over the next six years you're gonna see here there's a lot of civil wars in Roman society over this time but ultimately that what happened was remember when Rome was at war the Roman Republican government had this little tool in place called the dictatorship and under the dictatorship a leader of the Roman society one of the consuls or whoever it might be they could give that one person complete absolute power for a period of six months to basically say look we're in a crisis right now we need somebody who can take quick decisive action and control everything so in 50 BCE they gave that power to Caesar and they just sort of kept bending it along for him they just kept saying okay Caesar you can be dictator for another year okay for another two years that's fine in 44 BCE what happened is Caesar finally defeated Pompey and Crassus but the Romans at that point were like look this is our guy he's the guy who's gonna restore stability in order to all of this in 44 he was appointed and I know you can't see it over my face but they appointed him dictator for life so now we're beginning the system begin to we're seeing the system begin to transition from Republican government to now we've got this guy who's the one guy in charge for the rest of his life starting to take shape of start to look a little bit more like a monarchy at this point now Caesar though unfortunately for him his life didn't last that much longer it was cut short only months later here's the thing Caesar used his new power to attempt more reform right he saw the instability in the system he saw that the poor and the discontent in Roman society were unhappy so what he did he went ahead and tried to create some more reforms first of all he colonized a lot of new lands and said poor farmers you guys can set up shop over here also he started creating a lot of public buildings and the idea behind this was you could create jobs for those people to build them right create some jobs that way we can use the government to pay those people and give them something to do so they're not just busy sitting around planning another revolt however the Senate did not really like what Caesar was up to when they looked at this they said he's not someone just trying to help the people for the good I mean sure maybe what he's doing now is good but imagine if you get some crazy person or some insane leader with that level of power they argued that Caesar was a tyrant they argued that he was abusing his power and violating the rules of the twelve table that made up the basis of Roman society so after more and more plotting and more and more deliberation on March 15 44 BCE Caesar went to talk to the Senate now there's an old legend that Caesar's wife Calpurnia s' she actually begged him not to go to the Senate that day she claimed that she saw in a dream a vision of him being stabbed and sure enough that's what happened Caesar was stabbed 23 times by the members of the Senate so again to put this in context you have to imagine the President of the United States going to speak to the members of Congress and the members of Congress are so furious so angry and so desperate that they all pull out a bunch of knives and clubs and stab him to death this is what happened on March 15th 44 BCE they called that the Ides of March so anyway Caesar is stabbed to death in 44 BC he is no longer dictator for life because well his life has ended but we're gonna end up with some more dictators now because the one man was who was in charge of everything he's gone now and some more people are gonna try to grab that power and the people that did this were called what we would say another group of three men the second triumvirate and they were named made up of Caesars grand nephew / Caesar had also adopted and has his son his name was Octavian Caesar the other was a general named Mark Antony and then there was an older politician named Lepidus so those three ruled Roman society for about five years but guess what eventually they would be at each other's throats again and we would have another civil war what happened while eventually Octavian got tired of Lepidus trying to pull the strings so he kicked Lepidus out of the government then Mark Antony he had this famous relationship and you can see in the picture here with a woman named Cleopatra Cleopatra was the famous well-known queen of Egypt well-known for her beauty but also well known for just her power and her ability to get things done in Egyptian society so Mark Antony and Cleopatra they fall in love and Octavian doesn't like this he tries to argue that Mark Anthony is planning to run the Roman Republic from the east so ultimately you have a splitting of forces in Rome Mark Antony and Cleopatra is forces in the East versus Octavian's forces in the West and they have another long drawn-out Civil War finally after several years unfortunately for Mark Antony and Cleopatra it was Octavian that would win in the end specifically it was the Battle of Actium a naval battle the biggest naval battle and recorded history up to that point that would decide the fate and ultimately decide the war in Octavian's favor as for Mark Antony and Cleopatra after that battle Octavian sent forces to seize them but the two of them committed suicide together by ingesting poison venom according to the legend anyway so at this point after the final war you now have one man in power Octavian Augustus Caesar like I said he is the grand nephew of Julius Caesar and he was as technically his adopted son and he was crowned emperor specifically they gave him the title Imperator which means supreme military commander but that's where we get the term Emperor from also they changed his name you noticed before we only called him Octavian well now they changed his name to Octavian Augustus Caesar namely being that Augustus means exalted one and Caesar kind of became the new term for the emperor of Rome and that was it at this point Octavian came through and he was the one man in charge again they named him dictator for life and when they named me a dictator for life or Augustus as we call him now Augustus went through and he made a bunch of changes to Roman society he did restore some aspects of the Republic he got rid of a bunch of the Assemblies but he did restore the Senate to their seats but ultimately this title of Emperor the one man the one monarch in charge of this entire empire that became a permanent fixture it didn't go away after this so now we're at the point of monarchy and that would last Imperial and purge imperial monarchs would rule Rome for almost another 500 years but that being said a lot of Augustus's leadership and the changes that he instituted ended up being for good for Rome they entered a period of peace and prosperity that was overseen by several Empire emperors some really good some really bad and some just in the middle but they did have this period of peace and prosperity called the Pax Romana which we'll take a look at in another video so in summary what you can see here all right individual events played role in the fall of the Republic for sure you had things like the assassination of Caesar the assassinations of the graças brothers earlier you had Civil War Between Augustus and Mark Antony all of these definitely played a role but that being said there were a lot of destabilizing political social and economic forces in play over the span of a century that would lead to this in the long run it wasn't like this just happened because of these individual events the economic inequality the continual expansion and the size of the Empire and then a lot of these social upheaval all of that played a role in transforming Rome from an indirect democracy into an imperial monarchy alright that's it for this video guys I know it was long but it was it's a good topic to explore especially since there are people out there who might argue look the United States of America could be headed down that road itself I don't know you can draw a lot of parallels between the two societies that's for sure but anyway I hope you enjoyed it again like I said at the top make sure you guys are staying tuned for new information from me I'm gonna get back to trying posting some of these videos on a daily basis just to keep you guys up to speed and up-to-date about the Roman Empire hope you guys enjoyed it take care and again look after yourselves stay safe bye bye

Channel: Mr. Stark's Class

Views: 2,003

Keywords: World History, Ancient World History, Rome, Roman Republic, Roman Empire, Caesar, Crassus, Pompey, Gracchus Brothers, Ides of March, Augustus Caesar

Id: SbV-vCCis04

Length: 26min 13sec (1573 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020