Overview of the Roman Empire | World History | Khan Academy

When you hear of Ancient Rome or the Roman Empire, the Roman Republic, immediately images of the Roman legions come to mind. These conquering armies conquered much of the Mediterranean. You might have images of the Roman Senate; names like Julius Caesar and Augustus might come to mind. You might think of some of the famous architecture, some of which you can still see if you were to visit Rome. These are all real images of Rome, or they're appropriately associated with it.

We'll talk about most of these things in some depth, but Rome did not start out that way. The purpose of this video is to give us an overarching arc of the history of Rome, to be able to place it within history both in terms of time and geography. Just to make sure we can read what I did here ahead of time, I have up here a high-level timeline. Down here, I have a timeline that zooms in a little bit, goes into a few more details.

You can see this timeline on top; it's going from the 8th Century BCE all the way to the 5th Century CE. It's covering over 1,000 years of history, and I needed it to cover over 1,000 years of history because the Roman Empire, right? We could even say just the Western Roman Empire covers that much. That doesn't even cover the entire legacy of the Roman Empire because, when we get into the 4th Century CE, you have a split where you have the Eastern and the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern is often known as the Byzantine Empire, that goes on until 1453 CE.

So, another thousand years until they are conquered by the Ottomans. The legacy of the Roman Empire, even formerly as an Empire, is significant. Then it continues on. Much of Western Civilization, especially Europe and the Mediterranean, has its foundations in the Roman Empire and then, before that, Greek civilization. The Roman Empire is really up there alongside the Persian Empire as one of the really great civilizations or empires.

When I say "great," you should take that with a grain of salt. Great, I'm saying it was big; it was powerful, but not everything they did was great. They had a lot of slavery; they were very cruel; they were sometimes very violent. So take these terms "great" with a grain of salt.

Now that we get this timeline up here, and then down here, I'm going to go—whoops—down here I have some maps that are going to show how the Roman Empire grew and then eventually splits and declines. But as we go to this top timeline, we see the founding of Rome in the 8th Century BCE. This date, 753, is the date that's often given to the founding of Rome by Romulus, one of twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, raised by a She-Wolf. They were abandoned and raised by the She-Wolf, as legend would have it.

Romulus eventually killed his brother and then becomes the first king of Rome. We don't know how much of this is true; I suspect a lot of this is very legendary. A legend would have it that Rome is named for Romulus, but some historians today think, well, it might have been the other way around. We have the city of Rome; they needed a founding story. Hey, let's say this person Romulus started it.

We don't know the exact date, but there seems to be a reasonable consensus that around this mid-8th Century BCE, you have the founding of the city of Rome. However, it's important to realize that at that point, the founding of the city, the kingdom of Rome, it wasn't a significant power on the Italian Peninsula at the time. Where I have this X marked, that's where Rome is, and what you see in green is actually the Etruscan civilization.

For most of the period of the Roman Kingdom, so this period right over here, it's actually the Etruscans that are the dominant power. For significant fractions of this, they were dominant over the Roman Kingdom, over the city of Rome. As we get to 509 BCE, this is when the Roman Republic is established. In this blue-green color, this is the kingdom; the gold color, this yellow color is the Republic, and then the red color is when the Empire gets established by Julius Caesar and his adopted son Augustus.

As we get into this, I guess you could say this Republic period of or into the Roman Republic, this is when it starts to really exert itself as more of a dominant influence in the region. It continues to be a dominant influence in the region for several hundred years. As we get into the first several hundred years in the Common Era, so after the time of Jesus, as we get into the 200s and 300s, this is when we start to see a real decline of the Roman Empire.

The Western Empire, at least, gets sacked multiple times in the 5th Century, and the year 476 is what's typically given for the end of the Roman Empire. But even that's not exactly the end of the Roman Empire because, in the 4th Century, you have the Roman Empire splitting into these Eastern and Western Empires. The Eastern later gets known as the Byzantine Empire that goes on for another thousand years until, as I mentioned, it's taken over by the Ottomans.

To get more of an appreciation for how the Roman Empire grew and then eventually starts to shrink, I have some maps over here. So this first map, this is roughly from the 3rd Century BCE and 3rd Century BCE. You might remember Rome is a Republic at this time, but it's not the dominant power in the Mediterranean. Just to give ourselves some bearings, you might remember that in the late 4th Century BCE, that's when Alexander conquers much of or most of Greece, Macedonia, the Persian Empire, which included at the time Egypt.

As we get into the 3rd Century BCE, you still have the fragments of Alexander's Empire that are still significant powers in the region. You also have the Carthaginian Empire, which you see here in blue, in North Africa and southern Spain. In this period, you have a series of wars between the Romans and the Carthaginians known as the Punic Wars. We'll do videos in depth on the Punic Wars; they're called the Punic Wars because the term "Punic" comes from what the Romans call the Phoenicians, and Carthage was actually settled, founded by ancient Phoenicians.

You could kind of consider this the Phoenician Wars or the descendants of the Phoenician Wars, but that's why it's called Punic. The Romans eventually win the multiple rounds of Punic Wars, take over their territory, and eventually destroy Carthage. Carthage is destroyed in 146 BCE, and we'll talk more about that in more detail.

Now, as we go into the 1st Century BCE, this is when Rome goes from being a Republic to an Empire. It happens when the general Julius Caesar is able to conquer Gaul for the Roman Republic. So Gaul is modern-day France and some other surrounding regions, and he is so powerful that when he comes back to Rome, a civil war ensues. Julius Caesar is able to essentially win the civil war, declare himself dictator, and then his adopted son Augustus, right over here, is in 27 BCE declared Emperor.

That's the beginning of the Roman Empire. We keep going, and I think I've already mentioned it once in this video, but eventually we get a split in the 4th Century CE where we have Eastern and Western halves of the Roman Empire. The Western side is centered at Rome; the Eastern side is centered at what was originally Byzantium, renamed Constantinople and today Istanbul. As we get into the 5th Century, that's when the Western Empire especially starts to really go into decline and is eventually sacked in 476, but the Eastern Empire keeps on going.