Suggested topics for a paper on the Roman Empire.

Like the paper on the Republic, these are only suggestions. You can change them, narrow the them
down, or even ignore them and come up with your own (doubtless better) ideas. If you have an idea
of your own, please be sure to clear it with me before doing too much work on it, just in case.

• Augustus and later emperors had to avoid calling themselved kings, and had to pay attention
to the fact that many Romans still believed in the Republic.
◦ How did they go about this and/or what were the effects.
◦ Alternatively, why did the Romans persist in believing in the Republic for so long after it
was effectively dead?
• Tiberius is often credited with taking the first small steps towards an administrative system
based on freedmen experts and record-keeping. This process continued for literally hundreds
of years, eventually giving them “Byzantine” bureaucracy, which is the system we still have
today, courtesy of the Eastern empire and the Ottomans.
◦ How did this develop?
◦ In what ways did Roman life chage as a result of this development?
• Caligula – a bad emperor. Claudius – a good one. And so on. But good and bad are tricky
definitions. It depends who you are and what your point of view is. What might the realities
of “good” and “bad” rule be in the 1st century? Consider the positions of the rich and the
urban and agricultural poor, and how they might each have underestood the actions of
emperors like these.
• Provinces:
◦ Why were the Romans so keen to enclose the Mediterranean (“mare nostrum” = “our
sea”). Why did they deal so brutally with Israel after nearly a century of friendly
relations with the ruling family of the Herods?
◦ What was the attraction of expanding into Britain (Claudius), Dacia (Trajan), and
beyond the Danube (many emperors)? Was it worth it?
◦ How did the Romans go about administering their provinces?
◦ Why was it such a disaster that they never succeeded in expanding beyond the Rhine?
• Pay the army! Imperial taxation was very limited, and quite largely restricted to financing
the army. Government was, by modern standards, also extremely limited.
◦ What were the effects of continual demands for pay—and pay increases—on the Roman
economy?
◦ How did the Romans go about ensuring their armies were paid?
◦ How did they fulfil the rest of the functions of government, for which they were not
collecting taxes?
• A Hellenistic empire? Hadrian loved Athens, not Rome. Many emperors spent little time in
Rome (they were more concerned with the borders and wars, either of agression or defense)
and over the period from the beginning of the first century to the fourth or even fifth, the
Roman empire became largely Greek in culture. Why? How?
• “I came to Rome a city of bricks; I left it a city of marble” (Augustus, supposedly). Of
course he didn’t – he built a few fine buildings in central Rome and improved several more.
The process of turning Rome, Athens and other cities into magificent monumental centers
took at least two centuries, and only ever had an effect on the city center. But of course
there were also huge public works – gigantic bathhouses, acqueducts and so on. Most
Romans in Rome lived in 6 or 7 storey brick, concrete and wood apartment blocks called
‘insulae’.
◦ How did the Romans go about this?
◦ How did they perceive the process of building on this scale?
◦ How did they go about it?
 • Christians (and all sorts of other religions)?
◦ Why did religion change so dramatically in the Roman empire starting around the time
of Christ?
◦ Why do you think Christianity was ultimately successful?
◦ Why was the imperial administration more afraid of Christianity than of other religions?
• The big picture… What legacies have the Romans left us? (And please – not just “Life of
Brian”!). I leave it to you to be selective here – you cannot possibly cover all the issues, so
perhaps focus on one!

One or two subjects you should probably not touch, because we are not likely to have time to cover
them fully in class, or because the textbook which, for most purposes, stops with Hadrian, does not
cover them sufficiently:
• The arrival of the barbarians.
• The ‘triumph’ of Christianity.
• The fall of (Western) Rome.
• The success of Byzantium.
If you do choose to cover one of these topics, you will have to show me in advance that you have
sufficient background knowledge and have done your research!