Movie

Today we watched a movie about a crazy, maybe needing to go to a mental hospital, and he was determined to re-build Rome after the 6 day fire. That's pretty much it.

The Roman Empire

• Ides of March: Julius Caesar was stabbed to death 23 times by the senate.
• Octavian - AKA Caesar Augustus
• Augustus - the first emperor - getting it done
• begins the pax romana - a period of peace and prosperity
• built roads, aqueducts (brought water to the cities)
• set up civil service to take care of roads, the grain supply, even a postal service
• Augustus dies at age 76 in A.D. 14, and passes power to...
• Tiberius.
• but first, a word about Jesus. And Paul.
• Jesus was a Roman citizen and a practicing Jew
• At 30, he began his ministry (A.D. 31 - 33), preaching to the poor (and there were lots of 'em) in the empire, and reaching out to outsiders
• Statements like "My kingdom is not of this world" made the Romans (and the Jews) nervous, and they began to plan his execution
• the governor of the Roman province of Judaea, Pontius Pilate (prompted by Jewish high priests), sentences Jesus to death by crucifixion

That's how far we got in class.

Julius Caesar

We were underlining a bunch of stuff today and here they are:

• crossing the Rubicon: after you are content and committed to something, there is no turning back. the Rubicon River was a river in between Rome (the actual city), and other enemy cities.
• He was very powerful, but the poor people liked him, the assembly liked him, and the soldiers liked him, the only ones who didn't really like him were the senate.
• Proletarian: In ancient Rome,a propertyless but voting citizen.
• With the changes in Rome's society and politics, the character of its armies and their commanders also changed.
• Instead of the farmer-soldiers of old, it was now landless and propertyless proletarians who were drafted to fill the ranks of the legions.
• But Rome's citizen-soldiers were now "semi-professionals" who fought largely in the hope of bettering themselves through pay, loot, promotion, and above all grants of land or money to provide them with a living when they were discharged.
• Julius Caesar came from an old patrician family that had come down in the world, and he entered the city's politics as a young man determined to regain the fame and power of his ancestors.
• In the socials struggles, he sided with the poorer citizens and used his influence with them to advance his own cause.
• In 60 B.C. he began to collaborate Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey), an offer promoted by Sulla who had conquered many eastern Mediterranean lands.
• triumvirate: In ancient Rome, an alliance of three politicians that enabled them to control the Republic's decision making.
• 
  

Presentations cont.

Today there was a lot more people that presented, and my group was the last one to go. We made Roman Pancakes, fruit, and a honey sauce that was pretty good. I feel pretty confident in our project. The PowerPoint, I didn't choose, Bella did, and it was really cool. It looked kind of like a Roman book. Delaney did letters, and they looked really cool. I can tell she put work into it. I think that everyone had a good imagination with this project.

Presenting

Today we started to present our projects, and I ate some cookies that were pretty good, and a piece of I think it was cake, that wasn't very good but I ate it all anyway 'cause who wants to waste food? We pretty much only had enough time to get in two projects because the group with Andrew, Sung, JP, and Arri couldn't get their presentations up. So, Erica's group and Mattson went, and in the last 3 minutes of class we got Wheels in.

Test

Honestly, I thought that we would have an open blog test, but we didn't. I felt like I failed the test, but actually I got a 79 on it, and i'm happy with that. Although, I'm not happy that if I had gotten one more question right I would have gotten a B on it.

Some More Rome

Today we went over the test questions, and I have a strong feeling it is open blog which is totally fine with me. I think its open blog because we have two weeks to learn about Rome and Mr. Schicks been giving us hints like to detail our blogs and stuff. Here are the notes for today:

• They were a Roman Legion
• in an area had about 5000 soldiers
• part infantry (on foot)
• part cavalry (on horseback)
• groups of 80 - called century or centuries
• Flank left/flank right/flank center
•  Punic war:

             ○1st - Sicily//super strategic//Rome won

             ○ 2nd - Hannibal/ Cartheginian General// went the long/back/sneaky way in//Rome            won

             ○ 3rd - Romans saying - Rome had enough//not going to wait for Carriage to attack//Rome destroyed everything//not a stone on top of another stone

             ○ Romans winning this series of wars shaped our culture//if the Romans didn't win, we would be speaking a different language//probably wouldn't be Catholic

     ● where is Carriage located?

             ○ Northwestern Africa 

Rome

Today is my birthday, and Mr. Schick had everyone to sing happy birthday, which honestly was a little embarrassing. I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but I just didn't expect that. I also got to wear the birthday hat, but it was bothering me so I took it off. for the rest of class, we watched a few movies on the 1st and 2nd  Punic Wars. the guy was talking really fast and his voice was high pitched and annoying, but it sounded a lot like Jessie Eisenberg.

work out of the book

Today we did work out of the book, and there weren't that many notes:

·         Founding of Rome: settled and run by these two twin gentlemen named Remus and Romulus. Weren't raised the same as others, they were raised by a she-wolf.

·         Left to die in the river Tyver.

·         Saved! A she wolf finds and suckles them and a woodpecker feeds them.

·         Remus is killed.

·         Romulus founds the city and named it Rome.

·          

·         Gracchus brothers

·         Elected into the assembly

·         Were always trying to make things better for the poor.

·         If there was an attack or a war, everybody would be in it, the rich and the poor.

·         A lot of times, the poor would get in there and fight and do everything they can for Rome.

·         When they were away, they weren’t there to help

·         Left to the women and the kids to work and farm.

·         Sometimes you would have some of the rich people that were too old, and they would offer to buy the land

·         Women didn’t want to sell the land, but husband was away for a while, so they would sell it.

·         Not quite slavery, but almost (the people that sold the lands, were going to work for miserable wages).

·         Men would come back from war, and would find that they had been stripped from their property.

·         Horrible thing to do to the middle and lower classmen when the men were away.

·         Gracchus brothers – rich were already rich, so they were saying you have more land than you know what to do with, why don’t you give some of the land back to the people, you will still be very rich, but why don’t you give some of the land back? They were fighting in war for Rome!

·         Gracchus brothers made appeal in the senate, tried to approve it, but senators vetoed it, but eventually the Gracchus brothers won. But, one of the Gracchus brothers was beat to death with a chair and thrown in the Tigris River.

·         The latifundia: big estates that the rich managed to cumulate

·         Opportunity to take more land, taking advantage of it.

·         The Punic Wars

·          

·          

·         Roman methods of conquest and administration paid handsome dividends, for by 250 B.C., all of Italy south of the River Po was in Roman hands.

·         This success brought Rome in collision with a rival city-state beyond the sea: Carthage, on the coast of Africa.

·         Carthage became an oligarch and empire-building republic similar to Rome and had spread its influence across North Africa, southern Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily.

·         It was the Carthaginians’ interest in Sicily, lying between Africa and Italy, than brought them to conflict with the Romans.

·         The Punic wars (from Poeni, the Latin name for the Phoenicians) were waged on land and sea in three vicious rounds between 264 and 146 B.C.

·         1^st phase: Rome was able to force Carthage out of Sicily, but the North African city kept the rest of its empire.

·         2^nd phase: Carthaginian General Hannibal invaded Italy, defeated several Roman armies, and brought Rome to the brink of defeat.

·         3^rd phase (war): Carthage was captured after bitter fighting. The final act of vengeance, the Senate ordered the city to be leveled, its people sold into slavery, and even the ground on which it had stood to be solemnly cursed.

·         It was not until the time of Augustus, after 27 B.C., that the provinces began to share in the benefits of Roman order.

·         The result of absorbing kingdoms into empires was a spectacular increase in the pace of expansion.

·          

Rome

Today we went a little deeper with Rome than yesterday, and we were taking some notes about it. I left my notebook at  school, but I didn't have many notes. We were comparing the Roman government to the US government, and I thought it was kind of cool to see that our government system is so much like the Roman government system.