Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mr. Barber and I am feeling very lucky right now because not only do I get to teach you, but I also get to teach you about one of the most exciting and interesting topics in all of history, which is Roman Britain.

In this lesson, we're going to particularly look at how did the Roman empire become so powerful.

Now you may be wondering who is this guy.

Well, I'm a history teacher and I live here in London.

And one thing to know about me is that I am very passionate about history.

And one reason I'm so passionate about history is because I think the stories we hear and learn about in history are even more exciting and interesting than any fictional story out there.

I wonder what it is that you would like about history? So, as I said before, today we are going to look at how did the Roman Empire become so powerful.

Let's have a look at the agenda for our lesson now.

So what we're going to look at today, is first of all what is an empire, then we're going to look at in more detail, what was the Roman empire.

Then we'll have a think about how did Rome become a republic.

And finally, we'll look at how did Rome become an empire.

Now for this lesson, all you need are three things, some paper or an exercise book, a pencil, or a pen, and most importantly a brain.

So pause the video now, so you can get those things and then let's get started and find out about what is an empire.

So now what we're going to do is, we're going to have a deep look at what is an empire.

And this is really important, because if we are going to become expert historians on the Romans, then it's really important that we understand what an empire is in the first place.

And here is the definition that we are going to use for empire in all of our lessons.

So an empire is lots of countries or states all ruled by one person or state.

I'm just going to repeat that again, lots of countries or states all ruled by one person or state.

And by the word state, in there at the end, we mean a government.

So it could be ruled by one person who's in charge of lots of different countries, or it could be one government in charge and owning lots of different countries or states.

And the perfect example of this, is of course, the Roman Empire.

Because the Roman Empire covered all these countries or states that we see in red on this map.

And the map actually shows us is the year 150 AD, where historians say the Roman Empire was at its largest.

Now what countries do you notice in there? The big noticeable thing for me is that actually Britain, not all of Britain, but part of Britain was part of the Roman Empire in 150 AD.

And we know this is definitely an empire because it includes lots of countries or states because we can see them all in red.

And it was also an empire because they were all ruled by one state, which was the State of Rome, which you can see there in the purple box.

Rome controlled all this territory as part of the Roman Empire.

Now, what I'd like you to do now to help solidify that definition of empire in your minds, is that I'd like you to write your own sentence using the word empire, and this is going to be really helpful in memorising that definition, okay.

So for example, I wrote a little sentence earlier using the word empire and I just wrote, empires include many countries, okay.

So you're going to come up with your own sentence using the word empire, and you're going to write that down.

And to help you, I've included the definition there as well.

So pause the video now to complete that task.

So by now we are well on our way to becoming expert historians on the Roman Empire.

And now that we have a good understanding of what an empire is, let's have a deeper look into what was the Roman Empire.

So first of all, the Roman Empire was the largest empire of the ancient world.

And if you think back to that fantastic map we saw earlier, it covered parts of Europe, Africa, and Western Asia.

And one thing in particular, the Romans were very good at, was spreading their culture to all the different parts of their empire or another way of thinking about that, is that the Romans were able to spread their way of living to all the different parts of their empire.

Now we're back to the fantastic map and the reason I've done that is I just I want us to take another moment to appreciate how big this empire was at its peak or another way of saying that is when it was at its biggest.

And another key thing that I would really like you to remember, is that all of this empire was controlled by one state.

What's the name of that state, can you remember? Correct, it is Rome.

So please remember, Rome was the state that controlled all of this empire and it is still a city today.

Do you know which country it is, the capital city of? That's correct, it is in fact Italy.

And you're probably wondering when did this empire actually exist? Well, it lasted for a very long time.

So it lasted from 27 BC to 476 AD.

And this timeline is very helpful in showing us where it fits into human history.

So it shows approximately when you were born and each of those blocks represents 500 years.

And if you count those blocks yourself, you can really get an appreciation for how long ago this was.

And it came after the Ancient Greek Period.

And because it was such a long time ago, we consider it to be part of ancient history.

Now, based on those facts that we've just learned, you are going to read these sentences a, b and c, and you need to decide whether they are true or false.

And that shouldn't be too hard based on the things that we have learned together.

So pause the video now, and I don't mind if you write it down or to say it to the screen and resume once you're finished.

Okay, hopefully you've managed to read those sentences and decide whether they are true or false.

Let's go through them very quickly together now.

So, sentence a, the Roman Empire conquered the entire globe, is that true or false? Well, hopefully you got this one, it is false.

It was really big remember, but it did not conquer the entire globe.

That would have been very difficult back then to try and conquer the entire globe.

Sentence b, the Romans spread their culture across their empire? That is of course true.

And what's another way of saying that do you think? The Romans spread their way of life across their empire, so that is indeed true.

And then sentence c, the Roman Empire existed before the Ancient Greek Period? Mmmmh, is that true or false? It is in fact false.

The Roman Empire started after the Ancient Greek Period.

So, by now we know what an empire is, and we have a bit more knowledge or factual information about what the Roman Empire was.

Now, we're going to look at how did Rome become a republic? And you might be wondering what a republic is.

A republic is a country that doesn't have a king or a queen.

But to start off with, we are going to look at how did Rome get created in the first place? And the story begins long ago with two brothers Cuckoo Romulus and Remus.

Who lived in what we now know today as Italy.

And Romulus and Remus were the sons of a princess.

And they had a very difficult early life because the king at that time, supposedly he wanted to kill Romulus and Remus because he thought one day they might grow up and try and overrule him or try and take his power and make it their own.

So the story goes that their mother hid Romulus and Remus by a river.

And actually they were in a lot of danger at that time, but they were saved by god called Tiberius.

And then when they were babies, they were actually supposedly raised by a wolf.

And you can see in this picture here, a famous statue which shows the two brothers Romulus and Remus and the wolf that they were supposedly raised by.

Now later in their life, Romulus and Remus, both became shepherds.

And they decided that they were going to build a city together and that city would become Rome.

However, the brothers later had an argument and the argument was so serious that Romulus actually killed Remus, his own brother and thus Romulus became the first ever King of Rome.

So, based on that story that we've just been through together, on how the city of Rome was started, can you please do the following task.

For each of these sentences, can you write down what the missing words are? So sentence a, b, c, and d, read through the sentence and you just need to write down what words do you think belong in the missing areas.

And you can pause the video now and resume once you're finished.

Okay, so you've been through those sentences now, let's have a look at what words belong where.

So sentence a, Romulus and somebody were two brothers who built this city of somewhere.

I wonder what the words that belong there are.

It is of course, Romulus and Remus, were the two brothers.

And they built the city of Rome.

Sentence b, when they were babies, the king wanted to kill them, so they would not claim to rule, which means they were taking, he thought they would take power from them.

You may have phrased that a bit differently, and you might have written something like overrule him or take his power, that's okay if you did that, because that is still correct.

Sentence c, the two brothers were raised by a, can you remember? It was a she-wolf or a wolf, if you wrote that down, that's absolutely fine.

And then d, Romulus killed his brother and became the first? What did you get for that one? It was the King of Rome.

So give yourself a big pat on the back if you got those answers.

Let's continue to look at now, how Rome eventually becomes a republic.

So after Romulus's time as King, there were another six kings of Rome.

The last of those Kings was called Tarquin the Proud, which is a very interesting name.

And this is a picture of him here on the right hand side.

Now, Tarquin the Proud was not a very popular King and he ruled so badly that the people of Rome rebelled against him, and then they were no longer kings of Rome anymore.

And Rome was effectively run or managed by a group of powerful and rich families who were called patricians.

Now that might be a new word for you.

And so what's helpful when learning a new word is start trying to saying it back as often as possible.

So try it yourself, patricians, that's right, patricians, patricians, okay, I think we've got the hang of it.

So the patricians, they were the wealthy families, rich families who now controlled Rome.

And this is what Roman society soon began to look like.

So the patricians, they actually elected two people called the consuls who would rule over everyone.

There was also a group called the Senate and they were also elected.

So people voted for them and their job was to advise the consuls.

There was also a group and this was most people at that time, and they were called the plebeians.

Again, it might be helpful to practise pronouncing that, plebeians, nice one.

Plebeians were just the normal Roman citizens, the everyday people in Roman society.

Another group that existed were called freemen, and freemen were people who used to be enslaved, but now they had actually bought or paid to be free.

And then lastly, and this is a really sad part of history in the Roman empire, there were the enslaved people.

So many people in Roman society enslaved people and forced them to work against their wishes.

So, based on the different groups that we have just discussed, I would like you to complete the following task.

On a piece of paper, write down the numbers one to six, just like I've done on the left here.

What I would like you to do, is list the different groups of Roman society in order of how much or the amount of power that you think they had.

And actually I'm going to give you a little helping hand.

So at the top, number one, the most powerful group, were consuls, 'cause they were elected by the patricians to rule over everybody.

So number one, the most powerful.

At number six, and this really tragic part of Roman history, were the enslaved people, 'cause they were forced to work, they had very little of their own power.

So that's why they're at the bottom.

What you are going to do now, is pause the video and using the groups that we spoke about they're here on the right hand side, fill in the numbers now, based on how much power you think they had in Roman society.

So pause the video now to complete that task and resume once you've finished.

Okay, by now you've listed the different groups and that's quite a difficult task.

And so well done on completing it, here is the order that the groups belong in.

So at number two, the Senators, because they're not quite the most powerful people, but they do have a lot of influence in society 'cause they advise the most powerful people in society, the consuls.

And number three, it is the patricians, because they also are quite powerful because they help choose the Senators and the consuls.

Number four is the plebeians, do you remember who the plebeians are? That's right, they are the normal Roman citizens.

So not that much power.

And then number five is the freemen, because the freemen they're former enslaved people, but they don't have that much power or influence in Roman society.

So by now, we know what an empire is, we know what was the Roman Empire, and we know how Rome became a republic.

What we're going to do in this last part of the lesson is look at how did Rome become an empire? So how did it grow from just being a city to becoming a huge empire that covered many parts of the globe.

So Rome began to expand a lot when it became a republic.

And there were two key ways in which they originally started to expand or grow their empire.

The first way was by using the Roman army to take over new areas, because the Roman army was very well trained and very well organised.

So their first way was using the Roman army.

The second way was that Roman leaders would make deals or like arrangements with nearby tribes or nearby states and as a result of those deals, those areas or tribes would then become part of the Roman Empire.

And early in this period, the Romans were involved in a series of wars called the Punic Wars.

And the Punic Wars were fought between Rome and another empire, which was known as Carthage.

And these wars took place for over 100 years.

The key wars took place in 264 BCE, 218 BCE and 146 BCE.

And one of the most famous generals for Carthage was a man called Hannibal.

And he is very famous for having an army in which they used elephants.

And you can see in this picture in here, Hannibal with the red cloak on there, guiding his army through the Alpine Mountains, which are very close to Italy.

This is another fantastic map, which shows us the territory that Carthage had at the time of the Punic Wars.

So everything in red are areas that belonged to Carthage.

And everything in blue are areas that belonged to the Romans.

So at the end of the Punic Wars, the Romans had become very, very powerful.

They actually defeated all of the enemy armies in Carthage, and they destroyed the city of Carthage, which was like the capital, the main city of their empire.

It's at this stage after defeating Carthage, that Rome truly becomes an empire.

Because if we go back to this lovely map, all the areas that were red that had previously belonged to Carthage were now part of the Roman Empire.

And if we think back to that definition of empire, can you remember it? Lots of countries or states controlled by one person or state.

So now we have Rome controlling lots of countries or states, and they're all controlled by one state, the State of Rome.

So, we are now going to complete one final task.

And what I would like you to do, is answer the following questions in full sentences.

Number one, name two ways that the Romans expanded their empire? And number two, what happened at the end of the third Punic War? And to help you out, I've put some sentence stanzas in there to help guide your thinking, so it might be a bit easier to write these down.

So when you're ready, pause the video to complete your task and resume once you are finished.

Okay, I think we are good to go now.

Let's have a look at the answers for this and see how we did.

So number one, named two ways that the Romans expanded their empire? Well, one way that the Romans expanded their empire was by using their army to take over new territory.

And you again, you might have phrased that slightly different from me, but as long as you are writing something along the lines of they're using their army, that is absolutely fine.

Another way that the Romans expanded their empire was? Of course it was by making deals with nearby states or tribes as well.

Number two, what happened at the end of the third Punic War? Well, let's have a look, at the end of the third Punic War, the Romans defeated the enemy armies and they destroyed Carthage, the city of Carthage.

And you may have also written and Rome became an empire, if you did that, excellent job, you've really, really been paying attention very well there.

But as long as you got defeated the enemy armies and destroyed Carthage, then you've got that question absolutely correct.

That brings us to the end of today's lesson and a really big well done on all the fantastic learning that you've achieved today.

Before we finish, there are just two things that I'd like to ask you to do.

The first thing, is I'd like you to look back on the work you've done and write down what you think are the three most important things you've learned.

It's completely up to you, what those things are, but I think it would be really helpful to do that, to help remember everything that we've learned.

The second thing that I'd like you to do, is make sure you complete that final quiz at the end of this lesson.

Again, I think that's going to be really, really beneficial for you remembering lots of the information that we've gone over today.