2. Who am i?
• Enormous multi-cultural society
• Technological advancements
• Economically draining and overstretched armed
forces
• Sense of itself as unique and endowed with a global
mission
• Its concern about foreigners penetrating its borders
• Its apparent determination to maintain military
superiority
3. Comparing nations
• The Roman Empire became overextended abroad
and corrupt and dictatorial at home and then
collapsed.
• What can we then infer about America?
4. Rome: A Republic
• Republic: elected officials govern the state
• Patricians: heads of a few aristocratic families
• Plebeians: common people
• The plebeians refused to fight for Rome until the
patricians granted them more rights.
• The plebeians elected tribunes to protect them
against unjust treatment. They could veto harmful
laws made by the plebeians.
5. Republican government
• Together the patricians and
plebeians created a practical
and flexible unwritten
constitution
• Later around 450BC, the
Law of the Twelve Tables
was compiled and became
Rome’s first law code.
• This is comparable to our Bill
of Rights.
• The plebeians had insisted
that they be written down.
