Lesson video

Hello, welcome to lesson eight of the Roman Britain unit.

In today's lesson, we're going to be looking at how were Roman beliefs similar to those of the ancient Greeks.

Let's have a look at the agenda together now.

Here's the agenda for today's lesson.

The lesson is split into two halves.

In the first half, we're going to be looking at, how did the ancient Greeks influence Roman religion? And then in the second half we'll look at, how did the ancient Greeks influence Roman culture? Which you may remember is another way of saying, way of living.

For this lesson you will need an exercise book or paper, a pencil or a pen, and of course, those historical brains of yours, which are by now are full of great, fantastic knowledge on a Roman Britain.

So pause the video now to make sure you've got all those things and then resume once you're ready to get started.

In this first part of the lesson, we're going to be looking at, how did the ancient Greeks influence Roman religion? And when we say the word influence, we mean, how did the ancient Greeks affect or change Roman religion? And because by now we are expert historians, of course, we're going to start with a timeline.

This is the timeline that we've seen in previous lessons that shows us where the Roman empire fits into history.

There's also a pink box there now, which shows approximately where the ancient Greek period fits in.

And you can see there is some overlap, which means the Roman empire for a short time existed at the same time as the ancient Greeks.

So how did the ancient Greeks influence Roman religion? Well, you may remember that the Romans believed in many different gods.

And in fact, sometimes when they conquered another country, they would take on the gods of that country as their own.

You also may remember in Britain, some of their gods got mixed up with some of the gods that the British people worshipped.

Well, the Romans, they really, really liked the gods of ancient Greece or the gods that the ancient Greeks believed in.

And so they took most of them and just gave them a Roman name, for example, Jupiter, who was the King of the gods in the view of the Romans, he was simply an adaption of the ancient Greek god Zeus.

Juno, who the Romans believed was the queen of the gods.

She was adapted from the ancient Greek God of Hera.

And Minerva who was a goddess of wisdom in the Roman empire, she was adapted from the ancient Greek God, Athena.

So ancient Greeks, they had many gods, the Roman empire, they really liked those gods.

So they took on the same gods and they gave them Roman names.

So based on that knowledge, let's see if we can complete the following tasks.

What you need to do is, using the different names of the gods here, can you match the Roman gods with the Greek gods that they were adapted from? So the best way to do this is firstly, identify who are the Roman gods and then write them down.

And then next to them, write down who were the Greek gods they were adapted from.

And when you're ready to get started, pause the video to complete your task and then resume once you're finished.

Okay, let's go through those gods now and see which Roman gods were adapted from which ancient Greek gods.

So the first one, Jupiter, King of the gods remember.

Which ancient Greek God was he adapted from? What's that you say? Zeus, well done.

Yes, it was Zeus who Jupiter was adapted from.

The next one, Juno.

Do you remember what she was queen of? Queen of the gods, nice one.

And which ancient Greek God was she adapted from? Or goddess, should I say? It was Hera.

Well done if you've got that.

And then lastly, it was the Roman God was Minerva and she was adapted from Athena.

Well done on completing that task.

Let's move on to the next part of the lesson.

What we're going to look at now is, how did the ancient Greeks influence Roman culture? What's another way of saying culture? That's right, way of living.

So how did the ancient Greeks influence the Romans way of living? Now much of Roman culture was influenced by the ancient Greek and the Romans even took that to the countries they conquered, including Britain.

Now, one way in particular that the ancient Greeks influenced the Romans was in their architecture, or another way of saying that is in their buildings.

For example, the ancient Greeks, in many of their buildings used columns, which look like the picture that's on your screen now.

The Romans adapted that and so in many Roman buildings, you will see lots of these tall columns that look like they're holding up the entire structure.

Now, one style that the ancient Greeks used to use in their buildings was something called the Corinthian Order and the Corinthian Order used a very elaborate, or complicated and very detailed decorations.

And the Romans, they took one look at that and they thought, oh, that looks fantastic.

And so in many of the Roman buildings, they used the ancient Greek style of the Corinthian order, which means they had lots of columns and they had lots of very detailed and complicated decorations on their buildings.

We're now going to complete a very interesting task that is going to help us understand how the ancient Greeks influenced Roman architecture.

On your screen are two temples.

There's one Greek temple, and there's one Roman temple.

What I would like you to do is write down the similarities.

So the things that are the same with these temples and also the differences.

So the things that are different between the Greek and Roman temples and try and write down as many as you can.

For example, one thing that is similar between these two temples is that they both have a pointed roof.

Okay? And you may be looking at these pictures and thinking, Mr. Barber, there's not that much different about them.

Well, you're going to have to look very, very carefully to find the differences.

So pause the video now to complete your task and resume once you're finished.

Okay.

Let's have a look now at the similarities and differences between these two temples.

And I took some notes myself.

Here's some of the thoughts that I wrote down.

So the first thing I noted was that there are of course, columns, loads of columns, in fact, and that builds on what we learned earlier.

The ancient Greeks use lots of columns and this very much influenced the Romans.

Now, if you were being really eagle eyed, which means you were like really able to spot some tiny details, you may have noted actually, these two temples have the exact same number of columns along the side, and across the front.

Across the front, they both have six columns.

And along the side, they both have 11 columns.

So gold star, pat on the back, if you've managed to notice that tiny detail.

As I said earlier, another similarity is you can see they've both got that pointed roof and they both have the exact same rectangular shape.

You may also notice that they look like they might be made of the same material.

And a lot of Roman and Greek temples were made of a material called marble.

Now, what was different about these two temples? That was very hard to spot, wasn't it? Again, if you were really eagle eyed, you might have noticed something that we spoke about earlier.

The Roman temple has got very, very elaborate designs on it.

Doesn't it? They're very detailed and they're very complicated.

If you look along the top near the roof of the Roman temple, and also at the top of their columns as well, it's very elaborate design.

On the other hand, the Greek temple, it is less elaborate.

I mean, it looks very nice to look at, but it doesn't have the same amount of elaborate design on it.

And that's something that did happen.

The Romans went even more elaborate with some of their designs.

Another way that the ancient Greeks influenced the Romans was through pottery, art, and sculptures.

Let's start with pottery.

Now, Greek pottery was very popular all across the Mediterranean.

The Greeks used a very particular style and they used to paint lots of pictures of gods and heroes onto their pots.

They would also use an orange clay and paint onto it in black.

The Romans really liked this style and they copied it and they would use lots of this very elaborative decorative, pottery to store water, food, and wine.

The ancient Greeks also influenced the Romans in art and sculptures.

Well, particularly portraits and sculptures and statues in ancient Rome would often be found in public buildings or even people's homes.

And we can see an example of that.

I'm trying to find it on your screen now.

Now the Romans really liked the ancient Greek style of sculptures, and there are many sculptures of Roman Emperors and gods and other important figures.

But one thing that was different about the Roman style was that they would try and be as realistic as possible in their statues and sculptures.

So for example, if someone, they were making a sculpture of looked very old, they wouldn't try and make them look younger.

They would make a very realistic sculpture of what that person looked like.

The ancient Greeks though, they would always try and make the people that they were sculpting, look as good as possible.

So they might try and give them really big muscles, or they might try and make them look way younger than they actually were.

So based on the information that we've just gone through, you're now going to complete the following tasks, complete the sentences below by adding the missing words.

When you're ready to complete this task, pause the video and resume once you're finished.

Okay, are we ready to go? Let's do this.

So sentence A, the Romans admired Greek pottery and adapted their designs by showing pictures of something and heroes.

Hmm.

What else did they paint onto their pottery? I know heroes, what was the other thing? What's that? Absolutely right.

They painted gods and heroes onto their pottery.

B, Greek statues, heavily influenced Roman sculptures and statues would be seen in public buildings and where else might they be seen? Absolutely right.

They would often be seen in homes as well.

And then lastly, Roman statues were often more something than Greek statues.

What did I say was different about the Roman style? That's right.

They were more realistic than the Greek statutes.

Okay, well done on completing that task.

You've got some excellent knowledge on how the ancient Greeks influenced Roman culture now.

Well done on all the fantastic learning that you've done today.

There are just two things that you need to do now.

First of all, write down the three most memorable things that you've learned from the lesson.

And then once you've finished with that, make sure you complete the exit quiz at the end.

That's going to really help in solidifying that really valuable historical knowledge for you.

Have a great day.

And I look forward to teaching you again soon.