Roman Culture
Spartacus
The 1960 film Spartacus claims to tell the story of the famous slave revolt, also known as the Gladiator War, which terrorized Rome for years and can be pinpointed as one of the most influential causes of the eventual destruction of the Roman Republic and its descent into imperialism and tyranny. One must say "claims to be," rather than "is," in this case because the film is wildly inaccurate historically. The creators of this work were, of course, aware of its lack of historical authenticity, which is partly attributed to the artistic necessity of condensing four years of political upheaval and constant warfare into less than four hours. Indeed, condensation of time is the biggest historical inaccuracy here -- for example, many main Roman characters are rather indiscriminately condensed in time, such as Gracchus who appears to be a combination of two Gracchus brothers active fifty years before Spartacus, or the condensation of Crassus with Sulla as a military tyrant. Among these many historical inaccuracies is a serious distortion of the facts regarding slavery in the Roman Republic. This distortion is not so much made explicit as it is subtly portrayed through-out the film. The bare realities of slave demographics and culture are obscured, the slave revolutionaries are simultaneously idealized and made less effective warriors than they were historically, and Spartacus as an individual suffers the same fate.
The obfuscation of slave life is subtle but pervasive, in that slavery in Rome is frequently made to appear more like American slavery than is quite accurate. There are several ways in which this happens -- first, in this film the source of slaves appears to be mainly through natural reproduction and occasionally the kidnapping or enslaving of free...
Ancient Roman Culture: Dressing for Democracy Ancient Roman Culture DRESSING FOR DEMOCRACY Governance, Food, Clothing, Jewelry and Marriage Ancient Roman Influences Some have argued that for good or for bad the Ancient Romans put the people into democracy. They sought to give life to the Greek concept of governance by the people, often by establishing rules and expectations that would encourage its citizens to be equally recognized, at least within certain parameters. Even though it
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Roman Religion in Antiquity There are few topics today as hotly debated and as historically violent as religion. In ancient times the shift from polytheism to monotheism in terms of the way in which the world worshiped gave rise to events such as the Inquisition and the Crusades in the name of converting the world to a single religion. In the name of other monotheistic religions, people have imposed upon themselves
Roman Civilization: The Pre-Christian Centuries The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze Roman Civilization. Specifically it will discuss the pre-Christian centuries of Roman civilization, including personal impressions, supported by cited research. The Pre-Christian centuries built the foundations of Rome and Roman civilization, and clearly show just how a major civilization develops, grows, and moves on from its roots. Early Roman civilization was complex, extremely modern for its time,
The Greek god which was considered to rule over all the other gods was Zeus. Along with several other gods, he lived on Mount Olympus. Greeks believed that each god was assigned to hold a certain position on one of the three existing places: heaven, earth, and sea. In contrast, Romans believed that their gods were everywhere, executing the tasks that they had to do. The Roman counterpart of Zeus
Roman Empire and the Athenian Empire were alike in many ways. Both developed a culture based on the same mythology in order to unite their people in belief (the Romans Latinized the Greek gods and goddesses but the narratives remained largely the same). Individuals like Socrates in Athens or the early Christians in Rome were persecuted for teaching a faith that opposed the native mythology (Haaren, 2010). Both empires expanded
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