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Study Guide
Bulliet, chapter 5
An Age of Empires: Rome and Han China
1. natural resources of Italy
2. location, location, location
3. the “anchor” of the early Roman economy
4. Roman conquests of Italy
5. Roman Republic
6. Roman women
7. Roman slavery
8. Roman Senate
9. patron/client relationship
10. Wars with Carthage
11. Second Punic War 218 to 202 BC.E.
12. Hannibal and Scipio
13. Wars with Hellenized eastern kingdoms & city states
14. Roman rule of provinces
15. Roman citizenship and military service
16. expansion of the empire
a. long terms for military service
b. dispossession of small farmer
c. expanded use of slave labor power
d. rise of latufundia
e. increasing concentrations of wealth
f. increasing concentrations of political power
17. Slave revolts --- Sicilian slave revolts and Spartacus
a. First Slave Revolt 135-132 B.C.E.
b. Second Slave Revolt 104-100 B.C.E.
c. The Revolt of Spartacus 73-71 B.C.E.
18. dispossessed of Rome
19. Rome as a urban center
20. Gracchi 137 to 121 BCE --- The Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, went down
in history as two martyrs to the cause of social reform. Both were killed by
members of the Senate for attempting to make the system more friendly to the
lower classes of Rome.
21. bread and circuses
22. Spartacus and Crassus
a. Spartacus bio
b. Spartacus as gladiator
c. Spartacus as warrior/commander
d. Spartacus and Crixus
e. Spartacus and David
f. Crassus bio
g. Crassus’s bid for glory
h. Crassus and Pompey
23. From: Spartacus
By Howard Fast
“Go back to the Senate (said Spartacus) and give them the ivory rod. I make you legate.
Go back and tell them what you saw here. Tell them that they sent their cohorts against
us, and that we have destroyed their cohorts. Tell them that we are slaves ---- what they
call the instrumentum vocale. The tool with a voice. Tell them what our voice says. We
say that the world is tired of them, tired of your rotten Senate and your rotten Rome. The
world is tired of the wealth and splendor that you have squeezed out of our blood and
bone. The world is tired of the song of the whip. It is the only song the noble Romans
know. But we don’t want to hear that song anymore. In the beginning all me were alike
and they lived in peace and they shared among them what they had. But now there are
two kinds of men, the master and the slave. Bu there are more of us than there are of
you, many more. And we are stronger than you, better than you. All that is good in
mankind belongs to us. We cherish our women and stand next to them and fight beside
them. But you turn your women into whores and our women into cattle. We weep when
our children are torn from us and we hide our children among the sheep, so that we may
have them a little longer; but you raise your children like you raise cattle. You breed
children from our women, and you sell them in the slave market to the highest bidder.
You turn men into dogs, and send them into the arena to tear themselves to pieces for
your pleasure, and as your noble Roman ladies watch us kill each other, they fondle dogs
in their laps and feed them precious tidbits. What foul crew you are and what a filthy
mess you have made of life! You have made a mockery of all men dream of, of the work
of a man’s hands and the sweat of a man’s brow. Your own citizens live on the dole and
spend their days in the circus and the arena. You have made a travesty of human life and
robbed it of all its worth. You kill for the sake of killing, and your gentle amusement is
to watch blood flow. You put little children into your mines and work them to death in a
few months. And you have built your grandeur by being a thief to the whole world. Well
it is finished! Tell your Senate that it is all finished. That is the voice of the tool. Tell
your Senate to send their armies against us, and we will destroy those armies as we have
destroyed this one, and we will arm ourselves with the weapons of the armies you send
against us. The whole world will hear the voice of the tool --- and to the slaves of the
world, we will cry out, Rise up and cast off your chains! We will move through Italy,
and wherever we go, the slaves will join us --- and then, one day, we will come against
your eternal city. It will not be eternal then. Tell your Senate that. Tell them that we
will let them know when we are coming. Then we will tear down the walls of Rome.
Then we will come to the house where your Senate sits, and we will drag them out of
their high and mighty seats, and we will tear off their robes so that they may stand naked
and be judged as we have always been judged. But we will judge them fairly and we will
hand them a full measure of justice. Every crime they have committed will be held
against them, and they will make a full accounting. Tell them that, so that they may have
time to prepare themselves to examine themselves. They will be called to bear witness,
and we have long memories. Then, when justice has been done, we will build better
cities, clean, beautiful cities without walls --- where mankind can live together in peace
and in happiness. There is the whole message for the Senate. Bear it to them. Tell them
that it comes from a slave called Spartacus . . .”
24. Julius Caesar
a. Caesar in Gaul
b. Caesar’s political ambitions
c. Caesar and the First Triumvirate
d. Caesar and “tyranny”
e. Caesar and the poor
f. Assassination of Caesar
25. Augustus
26. Roman Principate
27. Roman defensive military posture
28. pax romana
29. aqueducts, roads, concrete, arches, vaults and domes
30. Romanization
31. Roman occupation of Judea
32. Jesus
33. Paul
34. who was attracted to the message?
35. spread of Christianity
36. early persecution of Christians
37. third-century crisis (235–284 C.E.)
38. Diocletian (emperor from 284-305)
39. Constantine (272-337 C.E.)
40. Roman Christianity
41. Han Dynasty (206 B.C.E. – 220 C.E.)
a. “mandate of Heaven”
b. “meet the new boss . . .” --- The masses had played a key role in the
uprising. But they did not benefit from its outcome. The new empire was
scarcely different from the old.” (Harman)
Han Dynasty Map - (206 BC to 220 AD - 426 Years)
42. Accomplishments of the Han
a. Continuation of tight, centralized authority/administration
b. Tributary system on frontiers
c. Han synthesis
d. Promotion of Confucianism (academy), even selecting government
officials by tests on Confucian literature
e. Extend and protect silk route to Roman dominated Mediterranean world
f. Expansion of empire to Indo-China, Central Asia, southern Manchuria and
northern Korea
g. Suppression peasant rebellions (e.g., 17 B.C.E. Yellow River uprising)
h. ***Merchant classes --- The merchants were unwilling to break with the
other privileged classes and put forward a program of social
transformation capable of drawing behind it the rebellious peasants,
adopting instead the quietist Buddhist religion of India.
i. Height of Chinese power, prosperity and culture
i. Iron production, tools, weapons
ii. Silks, porcelains, jade
iii. Technology (e.g., iron ploughs, tools, fertilizers, crop rotation,
water-wheel, wheel barrow, sun dial, water clock, paper)
iv. Literature
1. The Confucian Classics
2. histories
v. Religions
1. Buddhism
2. Confucianism
3. Daoism
vi. Intermingling beliefs
vii. Strong family ties
43. 4th century crisis --- “The Chinese Empire, like the Roman Empire, fell apart in
the face of economic breakdown and famine within, and incursions by
‘barbarians’ from without” (Harman)
a. drought, famine, plagues in the North --- emergence of rival ‘barbarian’
kingdoms
i. new barbarian kingdoms and assimilation
ii. introduction of several innovations: horse collar, saddle, stirrup,
bridge building techniques, mountain road techniques, medicinal
plant
b. Yet, no “dark ages”
c. Shift in production to the South --- The agricultural devastation of the
North was soon offset by the vigorous and sustained expansion of rice
cultivation in the Yangtze region
44. Fall of the Han
a. Factionalism within the ruling clan
b. Corruption and inefficiency
c. Peasant uprisings (e.g., Yellow Turban Revolt 184 C.E.)
d. Spread of banditry
e. Attacks by nomads
f. Ambitions of rural warlords
g. Factionalism/political fragmentation (three separate states)
h. Migrations south
i. Traditional Chinese culture rolls on