The purpose of this research is to examine selected issues relevant to Roman history from two different historical perspectives. The plan of the research will be to set forth the background of three topics from different eras of Roman history and then to discuss and illustrate the similarities and differences in perspective found in Kebric's Roman People and Greer and Lewis's A Brief History of the Western World. This research will deal with three instances of wholesale political transformation: the assassinations of the Gracchi and Julius Caesar, and the conversion of Constantine to Christianity.
The fate of the Gracchi provides insight into the fact that Roman society appears to have had a preference for organized social operation, while the Romans of the ruling classes appear to have been willing to resort to civil war in order to pursue their programs or protect what they had acquired. The background for the activities of Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus is the last era of the republic, during which the consequences of Rome's success in the Punic Wars began to be felt. Greer and Lewis (101) cite the emergence of latifundia, or large estates formed by appropriation and consolidation of smaller agricultural tracts on the part of war profiteers. The landowners used slave labor (from conquered territories) to work their estates, while free but destitute small farmers "drifted into the cities, especially Rome" (Greer and Lewis 101). Therefore the gap between rich and poor widened. Greer and Lewis make the point that this transformation of the republic's economic and class structure was accompanied by a transformation of values: "Gradually the old republican virtues were eroded by the temptations of wealth. Plain living and discipline gave way to indulgence and moral decay" (Greer and Lewis 102).
The long-term effect of this dynamic was the transformation of Rome from republic to imperial monarchy. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, ...