Gaius julius caesar documentary full#
Gaius julius caesar documentary series#

To avoid meeting Caesar’s fate, he made sure to make his position as absolute ruler acceptable to the public by apparently restoring the political institutions of the Roman republic while in reality retaining all real power for himself. In the wake of this devastating defeat, Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide.īy 29 B.C., Octavian was the sole leader of Rome and all its provinces. In 31 B.C., Octavian triumped over the forces of Antony and Queen Cleopatra of Egypt (also rumored to be the onetime lover of Julius Caesar) in the Battle of Actium. With Octavian leading the western provinces, Antony the east, and Lepidus Africa, tensions developed by 36 B.C. Consul Mark Antony and Caesar’s great-nephew and adopted heir, Octavian, joined forces to crush Brutus and Cassius and divided power in Rome with ex-consul Lepidus in what was known as the Second Triumvirate. Less than a year later, Julius Caesar was murdered on the ides of March (March 15, 44 B.C.) by a group of his enemies (led by the republican nobles Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius). and 123-22 B.C., respectively) ended in the reformers’ deaths at the hands of their opponents. Attempts to address these social problems, such as the reform movements of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (in 133 B.C. The gap between rich and poor widened as wealthy landowners drove small farmers from public land, while access to government was increasingly limited to the more privileged classes. Rome’s complex political institutions began to crumble under the weight of the growing empire, ushering in an era of internal turmoil and violence. The first Roman literature appeared around 240 B.C., with translations of Greek classics into Latin Romans would eventually adopt much of Greek art, philosophy and religion. Rome’s military conquests led directly to its cultural growth as a society, as the Romans benefited greatly from contact with such advanced cultures as the Greeks. At the same time, Rome also spread its influence east, defeating King Philip V of Macedonia in the Macedonian Wars and turning his kingdom into another Roman province. In the Third Punic War (149–146 B.C.), the Romans captured and destroyed the city of Carthage and sold its surviving inhabitants into slavery, making a section of northern Africa a Roman province.

Gaius julius caesar documentary full#

The first two Punic Wars ended with Rome in full control of Sicily, the western Mediterranean and much of Spain.

Gaius julius caesar documentary series#

Rome then fought a series of wars known as the Punic Wars with Carthage, a powerful city-state in northern Africa. Though the Gauls sacked and burned Rome in 390 B.C., the Romans rebounded under the leadership of the military hero Camillus, eventually gaining control of the entire Italian peninsula by 264 B.C. While they were referred to as “Rex,” or “King” in Latin, all the kings after Romulus were elected by the senate.ĭuring the early republic, the Roman state grew exponentially in both size and power. There are seven legendary kings of Rome: Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Martius, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus (Tarquin the Elder), Servius Tullius and Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin the Proud (534-510 B.C.). A line of Sabine, Latin and Etruscan (earlier Italian civilizations) kings followed in a non-hereditary succession.

After killing his brother, Romulus became the first king of Rome, which is named for him. Left to drown in a basket on the Tiber by a king of nearby Alba Longa and rescued by a she-wolf, the twins lived to defeat that king and found their own city on the river’s banks in 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Mars, the god of war. Origins of RomeĪs legend has it, Rome was founded in 753 B.C. was one of the most dramatic implosions in the history of human civilization. The long and triumphant reign of its first emperor, Augustus, began a golden age of peace and prosperity by contrast, the Roman Empire’s decline and fall by the fifth century A.D. After 450 years as a republic, Rome became an empire in the wake of Julius Caesar’s rise and fall in the first century B.C. Among the many legacies of Roman dominance are the widespread use of the Romance languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian) derived from Latin, the modern Western alphabet and calendar and the emergence of Christianity as a major world religion. Internal Struggles in the Late Republicīeginning in the eighth century B.C., Ancient Rome grew from a small town on central Italy’s Tiber River into an empire that at its peak encompassed most of continental Europe, Britain, much of western Asia, northern Africa and the Mediterranean islands.