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Marshall High School Mr. Cline Western Civilization I: Ancient Foundations Marshall High School Unit Five AA * a Roman Pleb and a Medieval Peasant

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Marshall High School Mr. Cline Western Civilization I: Ancient Foundations Marshall High School Unit Five AA * a Roman Pleb and a Medieval Peasant The Dark Ages Marshall High School Mr. Cline Western Civilization I: Ancient Foundations Marshall High School Unit Five AA * A Roman Pleb and a Medieval Peasant • Meet Ianus the Roman pleb and John the medieval peasant. • Ianus lives in a four-story apartment building in the sprawling city of Rome. • John lives in a thatch hut in one of the hundreds of tiny villages scattered around medieval Europe. • Ianus went to school. He can read and write. • Right now, Ianus is using this skill to draw lewd graffiti, but if he so desired, he had access to thousands of pieces of literature from all over the Empire at one of Rome's many libraries. • John doesn't even know what a school is, let alone a library. • He's only ever heard of one book, the Bible, and at any rate, the only person in the village who can read is the priest. * A Roman Pleb and a Medieval Peasant • Ianus starts his day off with a trip to the baths, where he soaks in the hot tubs and then has a drink of water from a nearby fountain. • John hasn't had a bath in months. In fact, he's fairly certain that baths are sinful, though he's not sure why. The closest thing John has to running water is a nearby stream. • Ianus spends his day off attending one of Rome's many festivals. • He catches the first play of an annual theatre competition. • From there, he heads to the horse races at the Circus Maximus. • Tired of the ponies, Ianus wanders around the market, where he touches silk from China, tastes olives from Greece, sees paper from Egypt, and smells spices from across three continents. • Ianus finishes his day watching a nice gladiatorial fight at Rome's massive stadium, the Coliseum. * A Roman Pleb and a Medieval Peasant • John spends his day off attending church. • After services, there'll be a market day - oh boy! - with peddlers and storytellers and maybe even a maypole! • John hopes the peddlers bring some more apples from the village next door, but no such luck. The peddler caravan got waylaid by bandits. No market today! Poor John. • How do we explain this disconnect? • Ianus lived at the height of the Roman Empire, around 100 CE. • John lived hundreds of years after Ianus, around 600 CE. • So why is John's world so small and pathetic while Ianus' world is huge and interesting? • The answer explains why we call “The Dark Ages,” well, dark! * The Loss of Classical Culture • Well, if we imagine the course of Western civilization like a tree, ever since its inception, it has branched out. • Philosophy, literature, art, law, and religion all spread out in a hundred different directions. • With the ascent of Christianity and the Dark Ages, Western civilization took a new course, and all this branching out ended. • Many branches of culture died off or were cut short. • The few branches that remained all turned inward, toward a central religious core. • All art, all philosophy, all literature, all law, all thought became tied to Christianity. • This inward-turning focus persisted for almost a thousand years. • Western civilization only really began branching out again with the Renaissance and the Reformation. * Causes for the Loss of Classical Culture • Why did this happen? • Well, there were several factors. • Many of these branches died out naturally. • The Roman Empire had been united by a common language. • As Germanic peoples with new languages invaded the empire, this common language was lost and literacy plummeted. • Very few people could read the works of the ancient world, and pretty much no one was writing anything new. • The barbarians who invaded the Roman Empire had little use for poetry or philosophy. • Their culture was far more primitive. With no one to appreciate or maintain these branches of culture, many of them died off simply from disuse. * Causes for the Loss of Classical Culture • Why did this happen? • Well, there were several factors. • Yet many of the branches were willfully destroyed as the early Church tried to wipe out its competition. • Any idea that challenged the new order was destroyed. • Religions that had persisted for centuries were wiped out overnight. • Entire schools of philosophy were put to the torch. • Only Church-approved beliefs were allowed to survive, and these were tightly controlled to keep them in line with Christian orthodoxy. • Anyone who tried to start a new branch or explore other, non- Christian ways of thought was labeled a heretic. • Their ideas were banned, and their followers faced a grisly demise. * Impacts of the Loss of Classical Culture • This pruning of the tree of civilization had a lasting impact on European history. • In the course of a few centuries, Europe went from being the most literate, technologically advanced, cosmopolitan place on Earth to being one of the most illiterate, backward, insulated places on Earth. • Literacy all but vanished from Europe. • This meant that the wisdom of the ancients was lost for centuries. • We only have these ancient writings today because Irish and Islamic scholars preserved them for us. • It also meant that most Europeans had no way of recording new ideas. • Without writing, no progress could be made. • Europeans were left to spin their wheels for centuries. • Technological advancement ground to a halt, while more literate cultures, like Islam, quickly outpaced Europe in technological progress. * Impacts of the Loss of Classical Culture • The study of human anatomy, once a respected science, was labeled as witchcraft, leading to a steady decline in medicine. • The secrets behind Roman engineering were lost for centuries. • Medieval Europeans could see the wonders built by the ancient Romans, like running water, highways, and domes, but they could not replicate them. • In the instability that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, trade ground to a halt. • Without trade, there was no way to spread goods and ideas across Europe. • As merchants vanished, so too did many craftsmen, who no longer had a market for their crafts. • Cities died as their populations dispersed back to villages in the countryside. * Impacts of the Loss of Classical Culture • And before you knew it, Ianus' world had turned into John's world. • Europe would have to wait almost a thousand years to regain its former glory. * The Foreigners • If you recall from our unit on the empire, one of the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire, that lead to these Dark Ages, was the invasion of large masses of foreigners pushed out of their land through a combination of; • Attacks by the Huns forcing them to move west • The introduction of agriculture causing a population boom that forced people to look for land in the west • The riches of the Roman Empire, and the possibility of sharing in that wealth if one moved west • So, let’s take a look at some of the major groups of these foreigners * The Foreigners • The Visigoths • The Visigoths were a tribe of people from the southern part of Scandinavia. • They were the first Germanic tribe to settle in the Roman Empire. • They assimilated (the process by which one people take on the language and culture of another) into Rome by adopting native cultural activities. • When the Visigoths were allowed to enter the Empire to escape the Huns, however, they were unhappy with bad treatment received from imperial officials, and they began battling against Rome. • After the Emperor was killed, the new Emperor Theodosius offered the Visigoths land and money to make peace. • When Theodosius died and the Empire was left to be split between his two sons, things between the Romans and the Visigoths got worse. • When the Visigoths had received land and payment from Theodosius, they had agreed to provide recruits for the Roman army. * The Foreigners • The Visigoths • The leader of the Visigoths was named Alaric. • He was angry that his people were required to provide military service to Rome and wanted to fight against them. • Alaric captured the city of Rome in 410. • He died soon after the capture of Rome and the Visigoths moved to Southern France and Spain to settle. • The Ostrogoths • Closely related to the Visigoths was another tribe called the Ostrogoths. • Ostrogoths were a group of people who settled in eastern parts of Europe. • The leader of the Ostrogoths was named Theodoric. • Theodoric had been a prisoner in Constantinople, the current capital of Rome, for a decade. While in captivity, he learned a lot about the culture. Theodoric invaded the Empire and took control of Northern Italy. He ruled the area by allowing his people to follow gothic laws while Romans could follow Roman law. Out of respect for the Roman culture he had developed in captivity, he even helped rebuild ruined monuments. After Theodoric's death in 526, the Ostrogoths lost control in Rome and were driven out. They moved north, settling above the Alps and did not seek control in Rome afterwards. The Vandals While the Goths were invading and settling in Rome, another Germanic tribe was also attempting to take control of the Empire. The Vandals were a Germanic tribe that had a habit of looting the cities they invaded. The Vandals first settled in areas of Spain until they were pushed out by the Visigoths. They then expanded to gain control over areas in North Africa. In 455, they became powerful enough to take over Rome. The Vandals held power over Rome until they were defeated by the Romans in 533. This tribe was not very artistic and left little in the area of art and artifacts.
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