3.3 Graeco-Roman culture

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• Middelbare school
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• Leerjaar 1

3.3 Graeco-Roman culture

Learning objectives:

• You can write down some features of Roman culture.

•  You can explain how Graeco-Roman culture spread and what consequences that had for Germanic culture.

•  You can describe how the Roman Empire came to an end.

Free farmers

Slaves 

Merchants and crafspeople 

Proletarians 

Elite 

3.3 Graeco-Roman culture

Roman culture

•  Romans admired the Greek culture, they adopted many aspects of Greek architecture, sculpture, poetry and religion
  
• Greek gods would be renamed: Zeus was now called Jupiter; his wife Hera would be Juno etc.
  
• Because the Romans took over so many things from the Greeks, we speak of a Graeco-Roman culture.

3.3 Graeco-Roman culture

Meeting local cultures

• Graeco-Roman culture spread across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East (because of all the conquests)
• People were allowed to keep their own religion and culture.
  
• The local people would work for the Romans or trade with them. In return, they would learn about the Roman culture
  

3.3 Graeco-Roman culture

3.3 Graeco-Roman culture

The Romans

• They also had their own customs: emperors were gods, clothing (toga), gladiator games, bathhouses

• Good architects, engineers (roads, bridges, forts, central heating, sewers), but also organizers (army, administration)
  
• Roman law: thought through and applied throughout the empire

3.3 Graeco-Roman culture

The collapse of the Roman Empire

• The Empire (around 200AD) had some big problems:
  

1) The army was too small for the long borders

2) Taxes were so high so farmers abandoned their farms -->  agricultural production fell 

3) Soldiers felt a bigger connection to their general than their emperor

4) Power struggles between emperors 

3.3 Graeco-Roman culture

Meeting local cultures

• People (Germanic) started dressing like Romans, learned Latin, even their gods changed. Germanic peoples = people who lived in Germany and the Netherlands
  
• When the Germanic peoples came into contact with the Romans their culture changed: they started to write & read, got Latin names, started worshipping in temples etc.
  
•  The arrival of the Romans had enormous consequences for Germanic culture.
  

3.3 Graeco-Roman culture

The collapse of the Roman Empire

• The Roman Empire split into two (395): Western Roman Empire and Eastern Roman Empire (so two emperors)
• The Eastern Empire survived until 1453
• The Western Roman Empire fell earlier (because of these issues). The Empire was also invaded by peoples such as the Visigoths and the Vandals. They were looking for farmland, protection etc.
• The Great Migration (they could come to the Roman Empire but had to defend it)

3.3 Graeco-Roman culture

The collapse of the Roman Empire

• The Western Empire fell due to this migration (plundering, new kingdoms etc.)
  
• Collecting taxes was hard and the empire wasn't united
  
• 476: Last Western emperor was overthrown 
  
• Start of the Middle Ages
  

Write down the four big problems in the Roman Empire in the 4th century