Making of the West Peoples and Cultures Value Edition 5th Edition By Hunt - Test Bank

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·      A description of the city of Rome: The population of Rome numbered nearly one million in the first century. With such a large population, Rome suffered from severe overcrowding and inadequate living conditions. Most city dwellers lived in small wooden apartments, not private houses. Since crooked contractors often used inferior materials, these apartment buildings sometimes collapsed. The better-off tenants lived on the lower floors, the poorer tenants on the upper floors. Though aqueducts delivered fresh water into the city, most tenants lacked running water and toilets. They had to carry jugs of water upstairs and make do with public latrines or chamber pots. Needless to say, Rome lacked an adequate sanitation system that could keep pace with the volume of human excrement produced daily. The main outlets for removing waste and human and animal carcasses were, unfortunately, the Tiber River and vultures and dogs. To keep clean, residents used public baths that charged minimal fees. In addition to the hazards posed by disease, urban dwellers also had to deal with severe unemployment and underemployment and devastating fires.

·      The measures that Roman leaders took to address these problems: Augustus and subsequent emperors believed that it was their duty as the people’s patron to provide their clients with certain basic services, including a fire department. Augustus also distributed grain to more than 250,000 persons in Rome, which allowed more than 700,000 persons to survive. Rulers also provided gladiatorial shows and other (usually violent) forms of public entertainment. Had they not provided these services, Roman rulers would likely have faced protests and riots in the streets. Even at gladiatorial shows, Roman emperors were confronted with waves of popular discontent over shortfalls in the supply of free grain. They were never able to solve many of the basic problems of public health and inadequate sanitation.

·      Augustus’s invention of the principate: While Augustus fundamentally transformed Rome’s political system into a quasi-monarchy, he maintained the façade of a republic. He retained the consulships, the Senate, and the assemblies. He chose not to declare himself king but to bestow upon himself the honorary title princeps, or “first man,” a term from the Roman republic indicating the most distinguished senator. The Senate, in turn, voted to give Augustus the powers of a tribune without his formally holding the office. He also received the powers of the consuls with the proviso that his power would be superior to the power of the actual consuls. This arrangement allowed Augustus to rule the state without filling any formal executive office; he was not a dictator, as had been his two predecessors, Sulla and Julius Caesar. Instead, the basis of his power was his control of the army and the treasury, the two most important sources of power in Rome. He professionalized the army and added retirement benefits for soldiers, steps that solidified the troops’ personal loyalty to him. He created the praetorian guard, a unit of several thousand troops stationed in Rome. The praetorian guard provided security for Augustus and prevented rebellion at home. As these examples make clear, Augustus’s control of the army and the praetorian guard rested on the traditional patron-client system—but one that had been notably expanded. That Augustus had become the supreme patron of Rome was made clear when the Senate formally proclaimed Augustus “Father of His Country” in 2 B.C.E.

·      The power of symbols: Augustus’s invention of the princeps allowed him to fuse the past and the present. His retention of the trappings of the republic gave legitimacy to what was a de facto seizure of power. His public relations efforts were designed to convey these messages. Roman coins, for instance, bore slogans such as “Father of His Country” to remind Romans of Augustus’s moral authority.

·      Christianity’s Jewish origins: Christianity took shape in a troubled region of the Roman Empire in which Rome’s governors and rulers were perpetually worried about rebellion by their Jewish subjects. Many Jews loathed the Romans and were waiting for God to send them the Messiah (“anointed one”), who would restore God’s rule. Jesus himself was a Jew whose mission began with travels around Judaea’s countryside, where he taught that God’s kingdom was coming. He did not in fact urge rebellion against the Romans; instead, he taught that the true kingdom of God would be found in heaven, not on earth. During his short lifetime, Jesus found many followers. When he took his message to Jerusalem, however, he was executed on orders of the Roman governor, who feared that Jesus might incite a Jewish revolt.

·      The role of Paul: How, then, was Christianity transformed from a Jewish sect to a universal religion? A decisive role was played by Paul of Tarsus, a Roman citizen and Jew who had never known Jesus personally. After Jesus’s death, his disciples and followers still considered themselves to be Jewish and followers of Jewish laws; they spread the Christian message primarily to Jews throughout the Mediterranean world. Paul, in contrast, argued that Jesus’s message applied to all of humanity, Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews) alike. Converts did not have to live according to Jewish law and undergo circumcision. In the aftermath of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 C.E., Christianity began to separate from Judaism.

·      The role of Christian martyrs: Despite Paul’s outreach to the Gentiles, Christianity grew relatively slowly during its first centuries. Facilitating its spread, however, was the growing number of martyrs who emerged during sporadic waves of persecution by Roman authorities. Some Romans feared that the Christians’ denial of the old gods would provoke divine wrath upon the empire; others alleged that Christians were cannibals and were sexually promiscuous. Others noted that some Christians were refusing to serve in the Roman army or to take part in the imperial cult. Stories of the martyrs’ courage in the face of torture and death inspired those who saw in Christianity a faith that gave its adherents the power to endure terrible suffering. The early church father Tertullian even proclaimed that “the martyrs’ blood is the seed of the Church.” The persecution was never widespread enough to stamp out the new faith altogether, but it was visible enough to generate new waves of conversions.

·      The emerging Christian hierarchy: The early Christian movement was divided by disagreements over doctrine and administration. Christians ultimately responded by creating an official hierarchy based, in part, on the principle of apostolic succession. This doctrine stated that the Apostles had appointed the first bishops as their successors, giving these officials the authority that Jesus had originally given to the Apostles. Though the bishops could not resolve all doctrinal disputes, they did use their authority to define orthodoxy and heresy.

·      Military factors: By the third century, Rome was beginning to face significant threats on its borders. On the empire’s northern and eastern frontiers in Europe, the Roman army was confronted by Germanic tribes who had had been moving from east to west. On the eastern edge of the empire, a new Persian dynasty, the Sasanids, fought to recreate the ancient Persian Empire. In diverting troops to the eastern Mediterranean, Rome weakened its defense of the northern borders and of Italy itself, which was facing invasions from the north. To ward off these threats, Rome was forced to hire many northern warriors as mercenaries and surround the city with a larger wall.

·      Economic factors: Paying salaries for up to 450,000 troops greatly strained imperial finances. Septimius Severus and his son Caracalla simply opted to drain the treasury to provide tender to the army. They even increased the soldiers’ regular wages and gave them bonuses as well. These policies led to long-term disaster. Faced with runaway inflation, some of the emperors responded by debasing imperial coinage, meaning they put less silver in each coin. Such steps only accelerated the spiral of runaway inflation as merchants raised prices to make up for the debased coinage’s value.

·      Political factors: This combined military and economic crisis plunged the empire into nearly fifty years of ruinous civil wars. More than two dozen men, most of whom hailed from the ranks of the army, held power during this time. Those that did not live up to their promises were assassinated by the army; others died in battle.

·      Demographic factors: The population of the empire declined during this era as a result of the civil wars and economic hardship but also because of natural disasters, including earthquakes and epidemics. Such demographic declines only worsened the situation, since the frontier areas were now more vulnerable to raids by Germanic tribes and bands of robbers.

·      Although Augustus restored elected offices and only occasionally served in them, he had the Senate grant him the powers, though not the office, of a tribune for life. Thus he was given the legal power to issue decrees and to compel compliance with them, and he was obeyed because his military reforms secured the loyalty of the army. He had taken the final step in transforming a citizen army into a paid professional force, setting terms of enlistment and guaranteeing soldiers’ pay and benefits, which were subsidized by an inheritance tax on citizens. Although the wealthy complained, the soldiers’ gratitude toward Augustus gave him supreme power in the state.

·      Slave owners often permitted slaves who ran businesses for them to keep some of the profits. Masters also frequently paid slaves a gratuity for sexual favors, and slave-prostitutes sometimes received gifts of money from their clients. However the money was earned, slaves could save it and apply it toward purchasing their freedom and that of their families. In other cases, slaves were granted their freedom in their masters’ wills. Because Rome granted citizenship to freed slaves, those who gained their freedom could become wealthy and could even join the social elite.

·      Literary works of Augustus’s time reflected his desire to reinforce peace and stability by restoring traditional morality and virtue. Virgil’s The Aeneid told the story of the Trojan hero Aeneas, believed by Romans to be their distant ancestor. Similarly, even though Livy’s history of Rome spelled out the ruthless actions of Augustus and his supporters, it nevertheless supported the princeps’ goals by emphasizing that success and stability depended on traditional values of loyalty and self-sacrifice. Horace’s poems were less subtle. One celebrated Augustus’s victory at Actium.

·      Under the principate, the emperor had the power of both a consul and the tribune. As such, there were few constraints on the emperor’s power. However, the emperor had to pay careful attention to the power wielded by the praetorian guard and the army, which he commanded. To avenge personal insults, the praetorian guard assassinated Caligula, who was regarded as a monster for his murderous behavior. Likewise, the generals in the army toppled Nero from his throne; the depraved former emperor enlisted a servant to help him slit his own throat.

·      According to the Roman legal system, society was divided into the “better people” (senators, equites, decurions, and retired army veterans) and the “humbler people” (everyone else). Romans believed that individuals of higher status had a greater responsibility for public good and that they deserved special treatment under the law. Thus, “better people” who committed crimes received lighter penalties than “humbler people” guilty of the same crimes, and only the “humbler people” could be tortured during criminal investigations.

·      Individual families generally desired many children because so many infants died young; families wanted numerous offspring to ensure that at least one would grow to adulthood and carry on the family name. In an effort to ensure greater reproduction, women married very young so that they would have more fertile years in which to bear children. The state wanted to maintain a high birthrate because its stability and prosperity depended on a growing population to serve the expanding needs of the empire. The emperor and some members of the elite tried to encourage reproduction by supporting needy children or adopting them into their own families.

·      Paul of Tarsus, a Jewish persecutor of Jesus’s followers, underwent a conversion after seeing a vision. Even though he had apparently never seen or heard Jesus during Jesus’s lifetime, Paul argued for an interpretation of Jesus’s mission that differed from the view espoused by the Apostles and their followers. The Apostles’ message was aimed at Jews, and they believed that true followers of Jesus had to follow the strict personal and social laws set forth in the Torah. Paul, however, believed that it was the mission of Jesus’s followers to also seek converts among the Gentiles (non-Jews), and he taught that converts did not need to follow strict Jewish law in order to attain salvation as long as they believed in the divinity of Jesus and his teachings.

·      When bishops gained their positions through “apostolic succession,” their offices and authority could be traced directly back to Jesus’s apostles, who had appointed the first bishops. The bishops were able to pass on the holy power they received through this link with the Apostles, thereby creating priests able to administer the sacraments, such as communion and baptism, which believers considered to be necessary for salvation. This link with the Apostles also enhanced the authority of the bishops to decide what was “true” doctrine (orthodoxy) and what was not (heresy).

·      Isis was viewed as a kind, compassionate goddess who cared about the suffering of her followers. For example, artwork often depicted Isis as a loving mother goddess, nursing her son. Because she was believed to have brought her husband back to life after his murder, followers also believed that Isis could give them spiritual life after death as well. Finally, the followers of Isis were expected to adhere to high ethical standards. Thus, the religion appealed to its followers’ personal emotions while also providing ethical guidance for their lives.

·      While Emperor Septimius Severus, Caracalla’s father, had raised soldiers’ pay by one-third, Caracalla increased it by another 40 to 50 percent. He also spent enormous sums on grandiose building projects, such as the largest public baths ever seen in Rome, covering many square blocks of the city. To resolve the fiscal crisis brought on by these expenditures, Caracalla took the enormous step of extending Roman citizenship to virtually every man and woman in the empire, which increased the amount of taxes paid since only citizens paid inheritance taxes or fees for freeing slaves. This step did little to solve the empire’s fiscal problems, however, because Caracalla continued to spend wildly in the remaining five years of his reign.