Short Answer Type Question:
Q1. Suppose the emperor Trajan had actually managed to conquer India and the Romans had held on to the country for several centuries. In what ways do you think India might be different today?
ANSWER:
If roman emperor Trajan had actually managed to conquer India, India would be different today on following aspects:
(i) Changes in art, architecture, literature and law as was evident even in the case of Indo Greek.
(ii) Exchange of ideas , roman law would have helped growth of Indian law.
(iii) Conversion and Christianization.
(iv) Concept of public baths and entertainment.
(v) Slavery would probably have become more rampant as roman society was known to use slave labour in every sector- agriculture, mining ,handicrafts etc.
(vi) Indian agriculture would have benefitted from roman diversified application of water.
(vii) The hitherto caste and class differences would have been further stratified.
(viii) The pattern of Indian trade ,would probably have under grown vast changes.
Q2. Go through the chapter carefully and pick out some basic features of Roman society and economy which you think make it look quite modern.
ANSWER:
Basic features of the Roman society:
(i) The concept of amusement.
(ii) Prevalence of vast diversity in religious cults.
(iii) The considerable legal rights women enjoyed in owning and managing property.
(iv) Divorce was relatively easy and needed no more than a notice of intent to dissolve the marriage by either husband or wife.
Basic features of the Roman economy:
(i) Preference to live in urban centres.
(ii) Cities as bedrock of the imperial system.
(iii) Disputes between the rich and poor.
(iv) Widespread use of money , such as silver denarius, and gold solidi.
(v) Competition amongst regions for control of the markets in olive oil.
Q3.What does ‘Post – Roman’ mean in the 540’s?
ANSWER:
The general prosperity was especially marked in the East where population was still expanding till the sixth century, despite the impact of the plague which affected the Mediterranean in the 540’s. In the West, by contrast, the empire fragmented politically as Germanic groups from the North took over all the major provinces and established kingdoms that are best described as ‘Post-Roman’.
Q4.Who was Columella?
ANSWER:
Columella, a first-century writer who came from the south of Spain, recommended that landowners should keep a reserve stock of implements and tools, twice as many as they needed to improve the better situation of laborers.
Q5.What had occurred after Prophet Muhammad’s death by 642?
ANSWER:
By 642, barely ten years after Prophet Muhammad’s death, large parts of both the Eastern Roman and Sasanian empires had fallen to the Arabs in a series of confrontations. Though, those conquests, which eventually a century later extended up to Spain, Sind and Central Asia, began in fact with the subjection of the Arab tribes by the emerging Islamic state, first within Arabia and then in the Syrian desert on the fringes of Iraq.
Q6.What is Frankincense?
ANSWER:
Frankincense is the European name for an aromatic resin used in incense and perfumes. It is tapped from Boswellia trees by slashing the bark and allowing the exuded resins to harden. The best quality of it came from the Arabian peninsula.
Q7.Define the territorial position of the Roman empire.
ANSWER:
The continents of Europe and Africa are separated by a sea, called the Mediterranean that stretches all the way from Spain in the west to Syria in the east and it was the heart of Rome’s empire. To the north, the boundaries of the empire were formed by two great rivers, the Rhine and the Danube and to the south, by the huge expanse of desert called the Sahara. This vast stretch of territory was the Roman empire.
Q8.What does the term ‘Republic’ refer to in the history of the Roman empire?
ANSWER:
The Republic was the name for a regime in which the power lay with the Senate, a body dominated by a small group of wealthy families who formed the ‘nobility’. The Republic represented the government of the nobility, exercised through the body called the Senate. The Republic lasted from 509 BCE to 27 BCE, when it was overthrown by Octavian, the adopted son and heir of Julius Caesar.
Q9.How army was the important key institution of imperial rule in the Roman empire?
ANSWER:
The Roman had a paid professional army where soldiers had to put in a minimum of 25 years of service. The existence of paid army was a distinctive feature of the Roman empire. It was an organized body in the empire by the fourth century and had the power to determine the fate of emperors. The soldiers would trouble for better wages and service conditions. These agitations often took the form of revolt.
Q10What was the policy of taxation in the Roman empire?
ANSWER:
The great urban centers of the Mediterranean were the base of the grand system of the Roman empire. It was through the cities that ‘government’ was able to tax the regional countrysides which generated much of the wealth of the empire. The local upper classes actively collaborated with the Roman state in administering their own territories and raising taxes from them.
Q11.How had the Roman survived their lives during famine?
ANSWER:
The famine for many successive years in many provinces had clearly displayed for men of any understanding the effect of malnutrition in generating illness. So the city- dwellers, collected and stored enough grain for the next year immediately after the harvest, carried off all the wheat, barley, beans and lentils, and left to the peasants various kinds of pulses-after taking quite a large proportion of these to the city. After consuming what was left in the course of the winter, the country people had to resort to unhealthy foods in the spring. They ate twigs, shoots of trees and bushes and roots of inedible plants.
Q12.What was the typical form of marriage in the third century of Rome?
ANSWER:
Males married in their late twenties or early thirties; while women were married in the late teens or early twenties. There was an age gap between husband and wife. As a result, there was inequality. Marriages were generally arranged, and there is no doubt that women were often subject to domination by their husbands. Divorce was relatively easy and needed no more than a notice of intent to dissolve the marriage by either husband or wife.
Q13.How was the economic condition in the early Roman empire?
ANSWER:
The empire had a substantial economic infrastructure of harbors, mines, quarries, brickyards, olive oil factories, etc. Wheat, wine and olive-oil were traded and consumed in huge quantities, and they came mainly from Spain, the Gallic provinces, North Africa, Egypt and to a lesser extent, Italy where conditions were suitable for these crops. Liquids like wine and olive oil were transported.
Q14.How had the Roman empire been considered the wealthiest empire in case of fertility of land?
ANSWER:
The Roman empire included many regions that had a reputation of exceptional fertility. Campania in Italy, Sicily, the Fayum in Egypt, Galilee, Byzacium (Tunisia), Southern Gaul (called Gallia Narbonensis) were among the most densely settled or wealthiest parts of the empire, like Strabo and Pliny. The best kinds of wine came from Campania. Sicily and Byzacium exported large quantities of wheat to Rome. Galilee was densely cultivated, and Spanish olive oil came mainly from numerous estates {fundi) along the banks of the river Guadalquivir in the south of Spain.
Long Answer Type Question:
Q1.What do you think about the importance of Latin and Greek languages in the Roman empire?
ANSWER:
“Greek East” and “Latin West” are the terms that are used to distinguish between the two parts of the Greco-Roman world, especially the eastern regions where Greek was the lingua franca, and the western parts where Latin filled this role. During the Roman empire a division had persisted between Latin and Greek speaking areas. This division was encouraged by administrative changes in the empire’s structure between the third and fifth centuries, which led ultimately to the establishment of separate Eastern and Western Roman empires.
Latin and Greek were the dominant languages of the Roman empire. The language of the ancient Romans was Latin, which served as the “language of power”. Latin was omnipresent in the Roman empire as the language of the law courts in the West, and of the military everywhere. A great number of Roman citizens would have lacked Latin, though they were expected to acquire at least token knowledge, and Latin remained a marker of “Romanness”.
Greek had become a shared language around the Eastern Mediterranean and into Asia Minor as a consequence of the conquests of Alexander the Great. The “linguistic frontier” dividing the Latin West and the Greek East passed through the Balkan peninsula. Educated Romans, particularly those of the ruling elite, studied and often achieved a high degree of fluency in Greek, which was useful for diplomatic communications in the East even beyond the borders of the empire. The use of Greek at international level was one condition that enabled the spread of Christianity, as indicated for example by the choice of Greek. With the dissolution of the empire in the West, Greek became the dominant language of the Eastern Roman empire.
Q2.What do you know about Augustus? Explain.
ANSWER:
Augustus was the founder of the Roman empire and its first Emperor, ruling from 27 BCE until his death in 14 CE. He was born Gaius Octavius into an old and wealthy equestrian branch of the Plebeian Octavii family. In 44 BCE he was adopted posthumously by his maternal great-uncle Gaius Julius Caesar following Caesar’s assassination. Together with Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus, he formed the Second Triumvirate to defeat the assassins of Caesar. Following their victory at Phillipi, the Triumvirate divided the Roman Republic among them and ruled as military dictator.
Lepidus was kept into exile and stripped of his position and Antony committed suicide following his defeat at the Battle of Actium by Augustus in 31 BC.
After the demise of the Second Triumvirate, Augustus restored the outward facade of the free Republic, with governmental power vested in the Roman Senate, the executive magistrates, and the legislative assemblies. In reality, however, he retained his autocratic power over the Republic as a military dictator. By law, Augustus held a collection of powers granted to him for life by the Senate, including supreme military command, and those of tribune and censor. It took several years for Augustus to develop the framework within which a formally republican state could be led under his rule. He rejected monarchial titles, and instead called himself Princeps Civitatis (“First Citizen”). The resulting constitutional framework became known as the Principate, the first phase of the Roman Empire.
Q3.How was the reign of Augustus by 27 BC? Discuss.
ANSWER:
The reign of Augustus initiated an era of relative peace known as the Pax Romana (The Roman Peace). Despite continuous wars or imperial expansion on the empire’s frontiers and one year-long civil war over the imperial succession, the Roman world was largely free from large-scale conflict for more than two centuries. Augustus dramatically enlarged the empire, annexing Egypt, Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Raetia, expanded possessions in Africa and Germania, and completed the conquest of Hispania.
Beyond the frontiers, he secured the empire with a buffer region of client states, and made peace with the Parthian empire through diplomacy. He reformed the Roman system of taxation, developed networks of roads with an official courier system, established a standing army, and also the Praetorian Guard, created official police and fire-fighting services for Rome, and rebuilt much of the city during his reign.
Augustus died in 14 AD at the age of 75. He might have died from natural causes. He was succeeded as emperor by his adopted son (also steps on and former son-in-law), Tiberius.
Q4.Explain the system of administration governed by politicians of senatorial rank in Rome.
ANSWER:
In ancient Rome, provinces were generally governed by politicians of senatorial rank, usually former consuls. A later exception was the province of Egypt, incorporated by Augustus. After the death of Cleopatra it was ruled by a governor of equestrian rank only, perhaps as a discouragement to senatorial ambition as Egypt was considered Augustus’s personal property, following the tradition of earlier, hellenistic kings.
The territory of people who were defeated in war might be brought under various forms of treaty, in some cases entailing complete subjection. The formal annexation of a territory created a “province” in the modern sense of an administrative unit that was geographically defined. Republican provinces were administered in one-year term by the consuls and praetors who had held office the previous year.
Rome started expanding beyond Italy during the First Punic War. The first permanent provinces to be annexed were Sicily in 241 BC and Sardinia in 237 BC. Military expansionism kept increasing the number of these administrative provinces, until there were no longer enough qualified individuals to fill the posts.
The terms of provincial governors often had to be extended for multiple years, and on occasion the Senate awarded imperium even to private citizens, most notably Pompey The Great. Prorogation undermined the republican constitutional principle of annual elected magistracies, and the amassing of disproportionate wealth and military power by a few men through their provincial commands was a major factor in the transition from a republic to imperial autocracy.
Q5.What was the policy of education in the Roman empire?
ANSWER:
Education in the Roman empire contributed to the social mobility that characterized the earlier period of Imperial history known as the Principate.
Education was available only for those who could pay for it, since there was no state- supported system of schools with public funding.
A higher rate of literacy is indicated among military personnel than among the general population. Educated women were not unusual, and there was an expectation that upper-class girls would at least attend primary school, probably in the same classes as boys. Only an elite few, regardless of gender, went on to receive secondary education.
Modest number of slaves were educated and they played a key role in promoting education and the culture of literacy. Teachers, scribes, and secretaries were likely to be slaves. The education of slaves was not discouraged, and slave-children might attend classes with the children of their masters. Book stores were already well-established in Rome by the beginning of the Imperial period, and are found also in urban centers of the provinces.
Books were expensive, but by the later period, popular genres of literature indicated reading for pleasure among non-elites. Emperor sponsored libraries that were to some extent public, and a wealthy individual might donate a library for a community, or accumulate impressive private collections to which in-house scholars might be attached. Literacy is thought to have declined in late antiquity during the transition away from the classical institutions and practices that supported it.
Q6.How was the infrastructure during the Roman empire?
ANSWER:
The infrastructure system in ancient Rome was complex. A system of thirteen Roman aqueducts provided the inhabitants of Rome with water of varying quality, the best being reserved for potable supplies. Water was used in public baths and in latrines. Inferior types of latrine systems have been found in many places, such as house steads, a Roman fort on Hadrian’s Wall in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and elsewhere that flushed waste away with a stream of water. Romans used sea sponges on a stick and dipped in vinegar after defecation.
The Romans had a complex system of sewers covered by stones. They recycled public bath waste water by using it as part of the flow that flushed the latrines. Terracotta piping was used in the plumbing that carried waste water from homes. The Romans were the first to seal pipes in concrete to resist the high water pressures developed in siphons and elsewhere. Beginning around 5th century BC, city officials called aediles supervised the sanitary systems. They were responsible for the efficiency of the drainage and sewage systems, the cleansing and paving of the streets, prevention of foul smells, and general oversight of brothels, taverns, baths, and other water supplies. Roman rubbish was often left to collect in alleys between buildings in the poor districts of the city. It sometimes became so thick that stepping stones were needed.
The empire of Rome, especially the city itself, had a huge demand for water. The average Roman consumed over 200 gallons of water per day. Wealthy households had water supplied to their settlements unlike many poor who could not afford this. Even these people enjoyed the luxuries of Rome’s public baths, fountains, and public toilets equipped with sinks.
River Tiber was the city’s main water source before any aqueducts were constructed. As the population of Rome increased, however, the Romans taste for water became too much for the river to supply.
The paved roads were all constructed so they would require minimal amount of repair and provide a very smooth surface for travelling.
Q7.How was economic scenario of the Roman empire?
ANSWER:
The Roman economy was underdeveloped and underachieved, as subsistence agriculture, urban centers that consumed more than they produced in terms of trade and industry, low status artisans, slowly developing technology, and lack of economic rationality.
Some cities were known for particular industries or commercial activities, and the scale of building in urban areas indicates a significant construction industry. Papyri preserve complex accounting methods that suggest elements of economic rationalism and the Empire was highly monetized. Although the means of communication and transport were limited in antiquity, transportation in the 1st and 2nd centuries expanded greatly, and trade routes connected regional economies.
Economic dynamism opened up one of the avenues of social mobility in the Roman empire. Social advancement was thus not dependent solely on birth, patronage, good luck, or even extraordinary ability. Although aristocratic values permeated traditional elite society, a strong tendency toward plutocracy is indicated by the wealth requirements for census rank. Prestige could be obtained through investing one’s wealth in ways that advertised it appropriately: grand country estates or town houses, durable luxury items such as jewels and silver ware, public entertainments, funerary monuments for family members or co-workers, and religious dedication such as altars. Guilds and corporations provided support for individuals to succeed through networking, sharing sound business practices, and willingness to work.
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