Similarities of Literature and Ancient History

Have you ever realized the connection between ancient history and modern literature? Many works of literature today are comparable to ancient history. Many of the starting qualities of a civilization are used in books and stories today. Roman government, social structure, and geography can be compared to these same features in Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The government can be compared because just like the patricians and the plebeians in Ancient Rome, Ralph and Jack’s groups faced the same factors. Social structures are also similar along with how geography determined the way people lived. Roman government, social structure, and geography are comparable to works of literature such as Lord of the Flies. Features from the ancient Roman Republic can be seen imitated in this novel. The Roman Republic was similar to the Lord of the Flies because they both had two groups of people in their government. The author says, “As a hierarchical society, struggle between the patricians, who consulted in the ruling class, and the plebeians, or everyone else, often grew violent” (Roman Republic). The two groups of people in the Roman Republic were the patricians and the plebeians. This can be compared to the different groups on the island in Lord of the Flies. The narrator says, “He and what seemed like a dozen others were rolling over and over, hitting, biting, scratching” (Golding, 240). There was a lot of violence between Ralph and Jack’s group and the island and they often fought over each other’s belongings. Jack’s group quickly came out on top because it had more people and they followed all of Jack’s orders. The patricians had power over the plebeians just like Jack’s group had over Ralph’s. They had more land, more food, and more power. Eventually, the plebeians were able to climb higher on the social scale and weren’t below the patricians anymore. The