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The Roman Empire. Or Republic. Or... Which Was It? Crash Course World History #10
The Roman Empire. Or Republic. Or... Which Was It? Crash Course World History #10
Rome transformed from a city-state into one of history’s most dominant empires. John Green explains how the Roman Republic became—or already was—an empire.
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Key Ideas
As this video progresses, key ideas will be introduced to invoke discussion.
Think about the following questions as you watch the video
- What were the two classes in Roman society?
- What was a dictator and what were they supposed to do?
- What was the source of Julius Caesar’s power? What events allowed him to become sole ruler of Rome?
- Why didn’t the assassination of Julius Caesar restore the Roman Republic?
- According to John Green, when did Rome became an empire?
: Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History,
: and today we're going to learn about the Roman Empire,
: which of course began when two totally nonfictional twins,
: Romulus and Remus, who'd been raised by wolves,
: founded a city on seven hills.
: Mr. Green, Mr. Green, what, what does SPQR stand for?
: It means, "Shut Piehole Quickly, Rapscallion."
: No, it means, "Senatus Populusque Romanus,"
: one of the mottos of the Roman republic.
: So today we're going to do some old-school Great Man history
: and focus on Julius Caesar while trying to answer a question,
: "When, if ever, is it okay to stab someone 23 times?
: (music playing)
: Shakespeare answers that question
: by saying that Roman senators killed Caesar
: because he was going to destroy the Roman republic,
: but even if that's true, we still have to answer
: whether A) the Roman republic was worth preserving,
: and B) whether Caesar actually destroyed it.
: One of the things that made the Roman republic endure--
: both in reality and in the imagination--
: was its balance.
: According to the Greek historian Polybius,
: "The three kinds of government--
: "monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy--
: "were all found united in Rome.
: "And it was no easy thing to determine with assurance,
: "whether the entire state
: was an aristocracy, a democracy, or a monarchy."
: At the heart of this blended system was the Senate,
: a body of legislators chosen
: from a group of elite families.
: Rome was divided into two broad classes:
: the patricians, the small group of aristocratic families;
: and the plebeians, basically everyone else.
: The Senate was a sort of a mixture of legislature
: and giant advisory council.
: Their main job was to set policy for the consuls.
: Each year the Senate would choose from among its ranks
: two co-consuls to serve as sort of the chief executives of Rome.
: There needed to be two
: so that they could check each other's ambition,
: and also so that one could, you know,
: take care of Rome domestically
: while the other was off fighting wars,
: conquering new territory.
: There were two additional checks on power.
: First, the one-year term.
: I mean, how much trouble
: can you really do in a year, right?
: Unless you're the C.E.O. of Netflix, I mean,
: he destroyed that company in, like, two weeks.
: And, secondly, once a senator had served as consul,
: he was forbidden to serve as consul again
: for at least ten years.
: Although that went a little bit like you say
: you're only going to eat one Chipotle burrito per week,
: and then there are a few exceptions,
: and then all of a sudden you're there every day,
: and, yes, I know guacamole is more, just give it to me!
: But, right, we were talking about the Romans.
: So, the Romans also had a position of dictator,
: a person who would who would take over in the event
: that the republic was in imminent danger.
: The paradigm for this selfless Roman ruler was Cincinnatus,
: a general who came out of comfortable retirement
: at his plantation, took command of an army,
: defeated whatever enemy Rome was battling,
: and then laid down his command and returned to his farm,
: safe in the knowledge that one day
: the second-largest city in Ohio would be named for him.
: If that model of leadership sounds familiar to Americans,
: by the way, it's because George Washington
: was heavily influenced by Cincinnatus
: when he invented the idea of the two-term president.
: So along comes Caesar, Gaius.... Gayus?
: No it's Gaius, I know from "Battlestar Galactica."
: Gaius Julius Caesar was born around 100 BCE
: to one of Rome's leading families.
: His birth was somewhat miraculous,
: requiring a surgical procedure
: that we know today as a Caesar-ean section.
: Coming as he did from the senatorial class,
: it was natural that Caesar would serve
: in both the army and the Senate, which he did.
: He rose through the ranks,
: and after some top-notch generaling,
: and a gig as the governor of Spain,
: he decided to run for consul.
: In order to win, Caesar needed financial help,
: which he got from Crassus, one of Rome's richest men.
: Crassus ran a private fire company whose business model
: was essentially, "Hey, I notice your house is on fire.
: Give me some money, and I'll help you out with that."
: Caesar succeeded in becoming consul in 59 BCE
: and thereafter sought to dominate Roman politics
: by allying himself with Crassus
: and also with Rome's other most powerful man,
: the general Pompey.
: You'll no doubt remember Pompey
: from his fascination with Alexander the Great.
: Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar
: were the so-called First Triumvirate,
: and the alliance worked out super well... for Caesar.
: Not so well for the other two. Let's go to the Thought Bubble.
: After a year as consul
: that included getting the Senate to pass laws
: largely because of intimidation by Pompey's troops,
: Caesar landed the governorship of Gaul,
: at least the southern part of Gaul that Rome controlled.
: He quickly conquered the rest of Gaul,
: and his four loyal armies--
: or legions, as the Romans called them--
: became his source of power.
: Caesar continued his conquests, invading Britain
: and waging another successful war against the Gauls.
: While he was away, Crassus died in battle with the Parthians
: and Pompey, who had become Caesar's rival and enemy,
: was elected consul.
: Pompey and the Senate decided to try to strip Caesar
: of his command and recall him to Rome.
: If he returned to Rome without an army,
: Caesar would have been prosecuted for corrupt consuling
: and also probably exceeding his authority as governor,
: so instead he returned with the 13th Legion.
: He crossed the Rubicon River, famously saying,
: "The die is cast," or possibly, "Let the die be cast."
: Sorry, Thought Bubble, sources disagree.
: Basically, Caesar was invading his own hometown.
: Pompey was in charge of Rome's army,
: but, like a boss, fled the city,
: and by 48 BCE Caesar was in total command
: of all of Rome's holdings,
: having been named both dictator and consul.
: Caesar set out to Egypt to track down Pompey
: only to learn that he'd already been assassinated
: by agents of the Pharaoh Ptolemy.
: Egypt had its own civil war at the time
: between the Pharaoh and his sister/wife Cleopatra.
: Ptolemy was trying to curry favor with Caesar
: by killing his enemy, but Caesar was mad in that
: the-only-person-who-gets-to- tease-my-little-brother-is-me
: kind of way, except with murder instead of teasing.
: So Caesar sided with-- and skoodilypooped with-- Cleopatra.
: Thank you, Thought Bubble.
: Cleopatra went on to become the last pharaoh of ancient Egypt
: and then bet on Marc "I am the Wrong Horse" Antony instead of
: Emperor "There is a Baby Attached to My Leg" Augustus.
: But before all that, Caesar made his way back from Egypt to Rome,
: stopping off to defeat a few kings in the east on his way,
: and was declared dictator again.
: That position that was later extended for ten years,
: and then for life.
: He was elected consul in 46 BCE and then again in 45 BCE,
: this last time without a co-consul.
: By 45 BCE Caesar was the undisputed master of Rome,
: and he pursued reforms that strengthened his own power.
: He provided land pensions for his soldiers,
: restructured the debts of a huge percentage of Rome's debtors,
: and also changed the calendar
: to make it look more like the one we use today.
: But by 44 BCE, many senators had decided
: that Caesar controlled too much of the power in Rome,
: and so they stabbed him 23 times
: on the floor of the Roman Senate.
: Caesar was duly surprised about this and everything,
: but he never said, "Et tu, Brute"
: when he realized Brutus was one of the co-conspirators.
: That was an invention of Shakespeare.
: The conspirators thought the death of Caesar would
: bring about the restoration of the Roman republic,
: and they were wrong.
: For one thing, Caesar's reforms were really popular
: with the Roman people,
: who were quick to hail his adopted son Octavian,
: as well as his second-in-command
: Marc "I am the Wrong Horse" Antony,
: and a dude named Lepidus, as a Second Triumvirate.
: This triumvirate was an awesome failure,
: degenerating into a second civil war.
: Octavian and Antony fought it out.
: Antony, being the wrong horse, lost.
: Octavian won, changed his name to Caesar Augustus,
: became sole ruler of Rome, attached a baby to his leg,
: adopted the title "emperor,"
: and started printing coins identifying himself
: as Divini Filius:
: the son of God-- more on that next week.
: Although Augustus tried to pretend that the forms
: of the Roman Empire were still intact,
: the truth was he made the laws,
: and the Senate had become
: nothing more than a rubber stamp.
: Which reminds me,
: it's time for the Open Letter.
: (music playing)
: Movie magic!
: An open letter to the Roman Senate.
: Oh, but first, let's check
: what's in the secret compartment.
: Ah, it's a harmonica!
: Stan, do you want me to play some old Roman folk songs?
: Very well.
: (playing blues riff on harmonica)
: Stan, I just want to thank you for doing such a good job
: of overdubbing there.
: Dear Roman Senate,
: Whether you were rubber stamping
: the laws of Emperor Augustus,
: or stabbing Caesar on the floor of your sacred hall,
: you were always doing something!
: I don't want to sound nostalgic
: for a time when people lived to be 30,
: a tiny minority of adults could vote,
: and the best fashion choice was bedsheets,
: but oh my God, at least you did something!
: Your Senate was chosen from among the patrician class.
: Our Senate here in the United States is chosen
: from among the obstructionist class.
: But don't get me wrong, Roman Senate, you were terrible.
: Best wishes, John Green.
: So, did Caesar destroy the Roman republic?
: Well, he started a series of civil wars,
: he seized power for himself,
: he subverted the ideas of the republic,
: he changed the constitution, but he's only really to blame
: if he was the first one to do that-- and he wasn't.
: Take the general Marius, for instance,
: who rose to power on the strength of his generalship
: and on his willingness to open up the army to the poor,
: who were loyal to him personally, and not to Rome,
: and whom he promised land
: in exchange for their good service in the army.
: This of course required the Romans
: to keep conquering new land
: so they could keep giving it to new legionnaires.
: Marius also was consul five times in a row
: 60 years before Caesar.
: Or look at the Roman general Sulla who, like Marius,
: ensured that his armies would be more loyal to him personally
: than to Rome, but who marched against Rome itself,
: and then became its dictator, executing thousands of people
: in 81 BCE, 30 years before Caesar entered the scene.
: There's another way of looking at this question altogether
: if we dispense with Great Man History.
: Maybe Rome became an empire before it had an emperor.
: Like, remember the Persian Empire?
: You'll recall that empire had some characteristics
: that made it... imperial.
: Like a unified system of government,
: continual military expansion,
: and a diversity of subject peoples.
: The Roman Empire had all three of those characteristics
: long before it became the Roman Empire.
: Like, Rome started out as a city,
: and then it became a city-state,
: and then a kingdom, and then a republic,
: but that entire time, it was basically comprised
: of the area around Rome.
: By the fourth century BCE,
: Rome started to incorporate its neighbors,
: like the Latins and the Etruscans,
: and pretty soon they had all of Italy under their control,
: but that's not really diversity of subject peoples.
: I mean, nothing personal, Italians,
: but you have a lot of things in common,
: like the constant gesticulations.
: If you want to talk about real expansion and diversity,
: you've got to talk about the Punic Wars.
: These were the wars that I remember primarily because
: they involved Hannibal crossing the Alps
: with freaking war elephants, which was probably the last time
: that the elephants could have risen up
: and formed their awesome secret elephant society
: with elephant planes and elephant cars.
: In the First Punic War, Rome wanted Sicily,
: which was controlled by the Carthaginians.
: Rome won, which made Carthage cranky,
: so they started the Second Punic war.
: In 219 BCE, Hannibal attacked a Roman town
: then led an army across Spain,
: and then crossed the freaking Alps with elephants.
: Hannibal and his elephant army almost won,
: but alas, they didn't, and as a result, the Romans got Spain.
: People in Spain are definitely not Romans--
: despite Russell Crowe's character in "Gladiator"--
: which means that by 201 BCE Rome was definitely an empire.
: The Third Punic War was a formality--
: Rome found some excuse to attack Carthage
: and then destroyed it so completely
: that these days you can't even find it on a map.
: Eventually this whole area, and a lot more,
: would be incorporated into a system of provinces
: and millions of people would be ruled by the Roman Empire.
: And it's ridiculous to say that Rome was a republic
: until Augustus became Rome's first official emperor,
: because by the time he did that, Rome had been an empire
: for almost 200 years.
: There's a reason I'm arguing that the death of the republic
: came long before Caesar and probably around the time
: that Rome became an empire.
: If anything destroyed the idea of republican Rome,
: it was the concentration of power into the hands of one man.
: And this man was always a general.
: I mean, you can't march on Rome without an army, after all.
: Why were there such powerful generals?
: Because Rome had decided to become an empire,
: and empires need to expand militarily.
: Particularly, the Roman Empire needed to expand militarily
: because it always needed new land
: to give its retired legionnaires.
: That expansion created the all-powerful general,
: and the incorporation of diverse peoples
: made it easier for them to be loyal to him
: rather than to some abstract idea of the republic.
: Julius Caesar didn't create emperors.
: Empire created them.
: Next week, we'll be discussing Christianity,
: so that shouldn't be controversial.
: Until then, thanks for watching.
: Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller,
: our script supervisor is Danica Johnson.
: The show is written
: by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself,
: and our graphics team is Thought Bubble.
: Last week's Phrase of the Week was
: "Pre-Distressed Designer Jeans."
: If you want to guess at this week's Phrase of the Week
: or suggest new ones, you can do so in comments,
: where you can also ask questions about today's video,
: which our team of historians will endeavor to answer.
: Thanks for watching, and as we say in my hometown,
: don't forget to be awesome.
: Whoa!
: Jeez!
: and today we're going to learn about the Roman Empire,
: which of course began when two totally nonfictional twins,
: Romulus and Remus, who'd been raised by wolves,
: founded a city on seven hills.
: Mr. Green, Mr. Green, what, what does SPQR stand for?
: It means, "Shut Piehole Quickly, Rapscallion."
: No, it means, "Senatus Populusque Romanus,"
: one of the mottos of the Roman republic.
: So today we're going to do some old-school Great Man history
: and focus on Julius Caesar while trying to answer a question,
: "When, if ever, is it okay to stab someone 23 times?
: (music playing)
: Shakespeare answers that question
: by saying that Roman senators killed Caesar
: because he was going to destroy the Roman republic,
: but even if that's true, we still have to answer
: whether A) the Roman republic was worth preserving,
: and B) whether Caesar actually destroyed it.
: One of the things that made the Roman republic endure--
: both in reality and in the imagination--
: was its balance.
: According to the Greek historian Polybius,
: "The three kinds of government--
: "monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy--
: "were all found united in Rome.
: "And it was no easy thing to determine with assurance,
: "whether the entire state
: was an aristocracy, a democracy, or a monarchy."
: At the heart of this blended system was the Senate,
: a body of legislators chosen
: from a group of elite families.
: Rome was divided into two broad classes:
: the patricians, the small group of aristocratic families;
: and the plebeians, basically everyone else.
: The Senate was a sort of a mixture of legislature
: and giant advisory council.
: Their main job was to set policy for the consuls.
: Each year the Senate would choose from among its ranks
: two co-consuls to serve as sort of the chief executives of Rome.
: There needed to be two
: so that they could check each other's ambition,
: and also so that one could, you know,
: take care of Rome domestically
: while the other was off fighting wars,
: conquering new territory.
: There were two additional checks on power.
: First, the one-year term.
: I mean, how much trouble
: can you really do in a year, right?
: Unless you're the C.E.O. of Netflix, I mean,
: he destroyed that company in, like, two weeks.
: And, secondly, once a senator had served as consul,
: he was forbidden to serve as consul again
: for at least ten years.
: Although that went a little bit like you say
: you're only going to eat one Chipotle burrito per week,
: and then there are a few exceptions,
: and then all of a sudden you're there every day,
: and, yes, I know guacamole is more, just give it to me!
: But, right, we were talking about the Romans.
: So, the Romans also had a position of dictator,
: a person who would who would take over in the event
: that the republic was in imminent danger.
: The paradigm for this selfless Roman ruler was Cincinnatus,
: a general who came out of comfortable retirement
: at his plantation, took command of an army,
: defeated whatever enemy Rome was battling,
: and then laid down his command and returned to his farm,
: safe in the knowledge that one day
: the second-largest city in Ohio would be named for him.
: If that model of leadership sounds familiar to Americans,
: by the way, it's because George Washington
: was heavily influenced by Cincinnatus
: when he invented the idea of the two-term president.
: So along comes Caesar, Gaius.... Gayus?
: No it's Gaius, I know from "Battlestar Galactica."
: Gaius Julius Caesar was born around 100 BCE
: to one of Rome's leading families.
: His birth was somewhat miraculous,
: requiring a surgical procedure
: that we know today as a Caesar-ean section.
: Coming as he did from the senatorial class,
: it was natural that Caesar would serve
: in both the army and the Senate, which he did.
: He rose through the ranks,
: and after some top-notch generaling,
: and a gig as the governor of Spain,
: he decided to run for consul.
: In order to win, Caesar needed financial help,
: which he got from Crassus, one of Rome's richest men.
: Crassus ran a private fire company whose business model
: was essentially, "Hey, I notice your house is on fire.
: Give me some money, and I'll help you out with that."
: Caesar succeeded in becoming consul in 59 BCE
: and thereafter sought to dominate Roman politics
: by allying himself with Crassus
: and also with Rome's other most powerful man,
: the general Pompey.
: You'll no doubt remember Pompey
: from his fascination with Alexander the Great.
: Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar
: were the so-called First Triumvirate,
: and the alliance worked out super well... for Caesar.
: Not so well for the other two. Let's go to the Thought Bubble.
: After a year as consul
: that included getting the Senate to pass laws
: largely because of intimidation by Pompey's troops,
: Caesar landed the governorship of Gaul,
: at least the southern part of Gaul that Rome controlled.
: He quickly conquered the rest of Gaul,
: and his four loyal armies--
: or legions, as the Romans called them--
: became his source of power.
: Caesar continued his conquests, invading Britain
: and waging another successful war against the Gauls.
: While he was away, Crassus died in battle with the Parthians
: and Pompey, who had become Caesar's rival and enemy,
: was elected consul.
: Pompey and the Senate decided to try to strip Caesar
: of his command and recall him to Rome.
: If he returned to Rome without an army,
: Caesar would have been prosecuted for corrupt consuling
: and also probably exceeding his authority as governor,
: so instead he returned with the 13th Legion.
: He crossed the Rubicon River, famously saying,
: "The die is cast," or possibly, "Let the die be cast."
: Sorry, Thought Bubble, sources disagree.
: Basically, Caesar was invading his own hometown.
: Pompey was in charge of Rome's army,
: but, like a boss, fled the city,
: and by 48 BCE Caesar was in total command
: of all of Rome's holdings,
: having been named both dictator and consul.
: Caesar set out to Egypt to track down Pompey
: only to learn that he'd already been assassinated
: by agents of the Pharaoh Ptolemy.
: Egypt had its own civil war at the time
: between the Pharaoh and his sister/wife Cleopatra.
: Ptolemy was trying to curry favor with Caesar
: by killing his enemy, but Caesar was mad in that
: the-only-person-who-gets-to- tease-my-little-brother-is-me
: kind of way, except with murder instead of teasing.
: So Caesar sided with-- and skoodilypooped with-- Cleopatra.
: Thank you, Thought Bubble.
: Cleopatra went on to become the last pharaoh of ancient Egypt
: and then bet on Marc "I am the Wrong Horse" Antony instead of
: Emperor "There is a Baby Attached to My Leg" Augustus.
: But before all that, Caesar made his way back from Egypt to Rome,
: stopping off to defeat a few kings in the east on his way,
: and was declared dictator again.
: That position that was later extended for ten years,
: and then for life.
: He was elected consul in 46 BCE and then again in 45 BCE,
: this last time without a co-consul.
: By 45 BCE Caesar was the undisputed master of Rome,
: and he pursued reforms that strengthened his own power.
: He provided land pensions for his soldiers,
: restructured the debts of a huge percentage of Rome's debtors,
: and also changed the calendar
: to make it look more like the one we use today.
: But by 44 BCE, many senators had decided
: that Caesar controlled too much of the power in Rome,
: and so they stabbed him 23 times
: on the floor of the Roman Senate.
: Caesar was duly surprised about this and everything,
: but he never said, "Et tu, Brute"
: when he realized Brutus was one of the co-conspirators.
: That was an invention of Shakespeare.
: The conspirators thought the death of Caesar would
: bring about the restoration of the Roman republic,
: and they were wrong.
: For one thing, Caesar's reforms were really popular
: with the Roman people,
: who were quick to hail his adopted son Octavian,
: as well as his second-in-command
: Marc "I am the Wrong Horse" Antony,
: and a dude named Lepidus, as a Second Triumvirate.
: This triumvirate was an awesome failure,
: degenerating into a second civil war.
: Octavian and Antony fought it out.
: Antony, being the wrong horse, lost.
: Octavian won, changed his name to Caesar Augustus,
: became sole ruler of Rome, attached a baby to his leg,
: adopted the title "emperor,"
: and started printing coins identifying himself
: as Divini Filius:
: the son of God-- more on that next week.
: Although Augustus tried to pretend that the forms
: of the Roman Empire were still intact,
: the truth was he made the laws,
: and the Senate had become
: nothing more than a rubber stamp.
: Which reminds me,
: it's time for the Open Letter.
: (music playing)
: Movie magic!
: An open letter to the Roman Senate.
: Oh, but first, let's check
: what's in the secret compartment.
: Ah, it's a harmonica!
: Stan, do you want me to play some old Roman folk songs?
: Very well.
: (playing blues riff on harmonica)
: Stan, I just want to thank you for doing such a good job
: of overdubbing there.
: Dear Roman Senate,
: Whether you were rubber stamping
: the laws of Emperor Augustus,
: or stabbing Caesar on the floor of your sacred hall,
: you were always doing something!
: I don't want to sound nostalgic
: for a time when people lived to be 30,
: a tiny minority of adults could vote,
: and the best fashion choice was bedsheets,
: but oh my God, at least you did something!
: Your Senate was chosen from among the patrician class.
: Our Senate here in the United States is chosen
: from among the obstructionist class.
: But don't get me wrong, Roman Senate, you were terrible.
: Best wishes, John Green.
: So, did Caesar destroy the Roman republic?
: Well, he started a series of civil wars,
: he seized power for himself,
: he subverted the ideas of the republic,
: he changed the constitution, but he's only really to blame
: if he was the first one to do that-- and he wasn't.
: Take the general Marius, for instance,
: who rose to power on the strength of his generalship
: and on his willingness to open up the army to the poor,
: who were loyal to him personally, and not to Rome,
: and whom he promised land
: in exchange for their good service in the army.
: This of course required the Romans
: to keep conquering new land
: so they could keep giving it to new legionnaires.
: Marius also was consul five times in a row
: 60 years before Caesar.
: Or look at the Roman general Sulla who, like Marius,
: ensured that his armies would be more loyal to him personally
: than to Rome, but who marched against Rome itself,
: and then became its dictator, executing thousands of people
: in 81 BCE, 30 years before Caesar entered the scene.
: There's another way of looking at this question altogether
: if we dispense with Great Man History.
: Maybe Rome became an empire before it had an emperor.
: Like, remember the Persian Empire?
: You'll recall that empire had some characteristics
: that made it... imperial.
: Like a unified system of government,
: continual military expansion,
: and a diversity of subject peoples.
: The Roman Empire had all three of those characteristics
: long before it became the Roman Empire.
: Like, Rome started out as a city,
: and then it became a city-state,
: and then a kingdom, and then a republic,
: but that entire time, it was basically comprised
: of the area around Rome.
: By the fourth century BCE,
: Rome started to incorporate its neighbors,
: like the Latins and the Etruscans,
: and pretty soon they had all of Italy under their control,
: but that's not really diversity of subject peoples.
: I mean, nothing personal, Italians,
: but you have a lot of things in common,
: like the constant gesticulations.
: If you want to talk about real expansion and diversity,
: you've got to talk about the Punic Wars.
: These were the wars that I remember primarily because
: they involved Hannibal crossing the Alps
: with freaking war elephants, which was probably the last time
: that the elephants could have risen up
: and formed their awesome secret elephant society
: with elephant planes and elephant cars.
: In the First Punic War, Rome wanted Sicily,
: which was controlled by the Carthaginians.
: Rome won, which made Carthage cranky,
: so they started the Second Punic war.
: In 219 BCE, Hannibal attacked a Roman town
: then led an army across Spain,
: and then crossed the freaking Alps with elephants.
: Hannibal and his elephant army almost won,
: but alas, they didn't, and as a result, the Romans got Spain.
: People in Spain are definitely not Romans--
: despite Russell Crowe's character in "Gladiator"--
: which means that by 201 BCE Rome was definitely an empire.
: The Third Punic War was a formality--
: Rome found some excuse to attack Carthage
: and then destroyed it so completely
: that these days you can't even find it on a map.
: Eventually this whole area, and a lot more,
: would be incorporated into a system of provinces
: and millions of people would be ruled by the Roman Empire.
: And it's ridiculous to say that Rome was a republic
: until Augustus became Rome's first official emperor,
: because by the time he did that, Rome had been an empire
: for almost 200 years.
: There's a reason I'm arguing that the death of the republic
: came long before Caesar and probably around the time
: that Rome became an empire.
: If anything destroyed the idea of republican Rome,
: it was the concentration of power into the hands of one man.
: And this man was always a general.
: I mean, you can't march on Rome without an army, after all.
: Why were there such powerful generals?
: Because Rome had decided to become an empire,
: and empires need to expand militarily.
: Particularly, the Roman Empire needed to expand militarily
: because it always needed new land
: to give its retired legionnaires.
: That expansion created the all-powerful general,
: and the incorporation of diverse peoples
: made it easier for them to be loyal to him
: rather than to some abstract idea of the republic.
: Julius Caesar didn't create emperors.
: Empire created them.
: Next week, we'll be discussing Christianity,
: so that shouldn't be controversial.
: Until then, thanks for watching.
: Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller,
: our script supervisor is Danica Johnson.
: The show is written
: by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself,
: and our graphics team is Thought Bubble.
: Last week's Phrase of the Week was
: "Pre-Distressed Designer Jeans."
: If you want to guess at this week's Phrase of the Week
: or suggest new ones, you can do so in comments,
: where you can also ask questions about today's video,
: which our team of historians will endeavor to answer.
: Thanks for watching, and as we say in my hometown,
: don't forget to be awesome.
: Whoa!
: Jeez!