Consuls: These were the two executive officials who governed Rome during the period of the republic. These two rulers held executive and judicial authority. They were elected by the comitia centuriata (an assembly of soldiers) and were approved by the Senate to serve one-year terms. These officials usually came from the ranks of the Senate and returned to it when their term as consul ended. Patricians: These were the wealthy aristocrats who monopolized political power in the early Roman republic.
“How Constantine rose to Power” When his father was made Caesar, Constantine was left at the court of the emperor Diocletian, where he was under the watchful eye of Galerius, who was Caesar with Constantius. When Diocletian and Maximian resigned in 305, Constantius and Galerius became emperors. Constantius requested that Constantine be sent to him in Britain, and Galerius reluctantly complied. Constantius died at York the next year. There, his soldiers proclaimed Constantine emperor, but much rivalry for the vacated office ensued.
The Life and Times of Marcus Junius Brutus The Roman Republic reached the conclusion of its existence starting with the reign of Julius Caesar around 50 BCE. The transition period that ended with the rule of Octavian was marred by civil war and political upheaval. The civil war began with Julius Caesar boldly crossing the Rubicon in defiance of Pompey and the Republicans. Throughout the war that would ultimately end with Pompey and the Optimates being crushed at Pharsalus in 48 BCE, Marcus Junius Brutus, descendent of the great Lucius Junius Brutus, sided with his former enemy Pompey in defense of the Republic. Despite this treason, he was granted full pardon from Julius Caesar who had always held him in high esteem.
From 650 BC to 509 BC, an Italian tribe referred to as the Etruscans dominated the Northern Italy, including Rome. They borrowed much of their culture from the Creek colonists in the south. This included their alphabet (Roman Military). It believed that the Etruscans aided in founding the Roman monarchy and ruled Rome from 600 to 500 BC. The Roman nobility overthrew the last Etruscan king in 509 BC and instituted their own republican constitution, which included two representatives.
The Hellenistic Period When the Hellenistic Period emerges in 323BC, Alexander the Great is the reigning conqueror. His father, Philip of Macedon, had united the Grecian states and was driving back the Persian forces out of Asia Minor. As the pressure mounts, he is assassinated during a festival. Alexander succeeded his father’s leadership and
How did the Successor Kings attempt to legitimise their monarchies in the century following the death of Alexander the Great? After the unexpected and youthful death of King Alexander the Great in 323BC, the successor Kings that followed his reign only disjointed the once vast and resilient empire. The immediate successors after Alexander were called the Diadochi, and they were the first generation of military and political leaders after the death of the Macedonian king and conqueror, Alexander the Great in 323 (Botdford and Robinson). The six successors that are mentioned in this essay all took on the monarchy with different ideas, strategies, boundaries and goals. Legitimising their monarchies seemed extremely difficult after Alexander’s death, and after the standard he had set for the successors that followed his legacy.
Constantine was estimated to be born around AD272 with his father being Constantius, a senior army officer and later Augustus of the Roman Empire. Constantius died in AD306 and Constantine was proclaimed Augustus by his father’s troops. Under Diocletian, there was a divide of East and West with each having a respective leader. When the Battle of the Mivilian Bridge occurred between Maxentius and Constantine in which Constantine was victorious, Licinius, also in AD313 defeated Maximin and Banks informs us that “Licinius was now supreme in the East, as was Constantine in the West”. As Wand believed, “This battle marks an epoch, for it helped to make the first Christian Empire and so affected the history of European civilisation down to the present time”.
In his epic poem Metamorphoses, Ovid uses a variety of metaphoric changes and transformations to represent social and political issues existing in Rome at the time. Ovid wrote the Metamorphoses in the beginning of the first century A.D., a period of relative peace During this time, Augustus was consolidating much of the power of the Republic into the executive branch, and ultimately to himself. Throughout the Metamorphoses, Ovid uses various stories to represent the ongoing political dynamic in Rome: As the Roman Republic withered away and Augustus all but formally established himself as emperor, the Roman Senate lost its power and influence, and the Roman people lost their voice in government. In book II of the Metamorphoses, the episode of Jove, Callisto, and Arcas, Ovid tells how Jupiter deceives and rapes the nymph Callisto. Juno, Jupiter’s wife, is outraged at her husband’s infidelity, but takes her anger out on Callisto, beating her as punishment.
The first Punic war was between 264 and 241 B.C. which was about twenty-three years of destruction (Bing, 2006). Around 146 B.C. Carthage attracted neighboring nations, like the Roman Empire, and was destroyed in 146 B.C. at the end of the Punic Wars (Google.com Timeline).
In 1481, Mehmed II mysteriously died at the age of 52. It is believed that he was poisoned by his son Bayezid. The Byzantine Empire was the successor state to the Roman Empire, which lasted from the years 330–1453. In the Byzantine Empire the main language spoken was Greek. Constantine was the Emperor who reunited the Empire into one.