Rome and the Western Mediterranean · Part 5 · The rise of Rome · B2–C1
Rome Conquers the Mediterranean
Part 5 of Rome and the Western Mediterranean: in the second century BCE, Rome defeated the kingdoms of the Greek east and the peoples of Spain, and became the master of the Mediterranean. Wealth, art and enslaved people poured into Italy, and the empire changed Rome itself. Cause and effect (as a result, led to, resulted in, due to), with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, how Rome became the master of the sea we live on.
And of us. Egypt was the last of the great kingdoms to fall.
War after war, and one city after another. Ask also what it cost, and who paid.
After defeating Carthage, Rome turned east. In a series of wars, it defeated Macedon and the Seleucid king Antiochus III. In 196 BCE, a Roman general announced at the Isthmian Games that the Greeks were free; fifty years later, Rome ruled Greece directly.
In 146 BCE, the same year Carthage was destroyed, Rome destroyed the Greek city of Corinth. In the west, it fought for decades against the peoples of Spain, whose silver mines made Rome rich. In 133 BCE, the last king of Pergamon died and left his kingdom to Rome in his will.
Conquest brought Rome enormous wealth: taxes, silver, works of art, and hundreds of thousands of enslaved people. Most of it went to the rich families who commanded the armies and ran the provinces. Many ordinary Roman farmers, away at war for years, lost their land.
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