WEBVTT

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- [Instructor] Last video,
we end with the conquests

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of Alexander the Great,
how he's able to conquer

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most of the map that we see right up here,

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especially from Greece all the
way through the Middle East

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through Persia and getting
to the borders of India.

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Conquering Egypt as well.

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And we mentioned that he
had a very short life,

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and after his death, his empire was split.

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But coincident with that
time we have other powers

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in other parts of the
Mediterranean that are growing.

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Mainly the Romans, and Rome
was established several

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hundred years before the
time of Alexander the Great,

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but by that time they're
starting to conquer more and more

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of the Italian peninsula right over here,

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what we would now consider
the Italian peninsula.

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You also have a power in
Carthage forming right over here

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on the north African coast.

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Carthage was initially
a Phoenician settlement.

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The Phoenicians, famous
for our phonetic alphabet.

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The Phoenicians were based in what is now

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modern day Lebanon and
Syria and they were traders

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and they settled throughout
the Mediterranean.

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And Carthage and the Carthaginian
power or civilization

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was a fairly significant one at this time.

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And you could imagine
when there are two powers

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that are close to each
other, they might want to be

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going after the same interests
or conquest the same land,

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or they might view each other as a threat,

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they tend to start fighting each other.

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And that is true of Rome and Carthage.

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And the wars that they fought,

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they were called the Punic
Wars, and they occurred

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between 264 BCE and 146 BCE.

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You have the Punic Wars, Punic.

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And once again, we will do
many videos on the Punic Wars,

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but these are the wars that
involved Hannibal famously

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taking elephants across the
Alps in order to attack Rome.

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And we see it right over
here on our little timeline.

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The Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome.

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And just to be clear, this
little purple shaded in

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on our timeline, that
represents the Carthage

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and the Carthaginian civilization.

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I guess you could say power.

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And this is Rome.

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But eventually Rome wins
decisively and is actually able

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to wipe out Carthage,
literally wipe it out.

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And so Rome more and more
is becoming the dominant

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power in the Mediterranean,
and as you will see shortly,

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well beyond the Mediterranean.

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In this period Rome is a republic.

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And when we talk about a
republic, we're talking about

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some type of representation,
although it's not the same form

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of representation that
we would think today.

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We would be talking some
form of preserving rights.

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Once again, not exactly
as what we would do today.

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But as we get to the middle
of the first century BCE,

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we have a very successful Roman general,

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you might have heard
his name, Julius Caesar,

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who was able to take power of Rome,

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who was able to be the dictator of Rome.

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And in power he starts
to end the republic,

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and he does many other things.

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He starts rearranging the calendar,

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gets a month named after him, July,

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and then he gets assassinated
and his adopted son Augustus

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takes power.

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And Augustus is often
considered to be the first true

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emperor of Rome, that
the republic is now over.

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And he, too, gets a month
named after him, August.

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Now at around the same
time, you have another

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very significant figure that shows up,

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and obviously Jesus is a
significant figure in religion,

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but that has effect on history.

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His teachings are the basis of a religion

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that's going to have profound consequences

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for the rest of history, for the world.

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And even though we might
have this, you could say,

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the secular timeline of BCE,

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refers to before the common
era, or CE, the common era.

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Right now the year I'm
making this video is 2016 CE.

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Those are secular versions
of a calendar which is,

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essentially, centered on Jesus' birth

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or pretty close to Jesus' birth.

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Instead of BC, it would be before Christ.

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Instead of CE, we say AD, in
the year of our Lord in Latin.

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And Jesus, it's important
to note, because sometimes

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people might learn about the life of Jesus

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and they might think about the holy land

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and Nazareth and Jerusalem
and whatever else,

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but it's important to
realize that at that time,

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Jesus was born and raised
and grew up and died

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as part of the Roman Empire.

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In fact, when he was born,
which wasn't actually zero BCE,

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or zero we should just say,
year zero, we now think

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it was pretty close to 4 BCE or 4 BC.

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So he was born in the reign of Augustus

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and he died in the reign of Tiberius.

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So some of the first Roman emperors.

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So with that, we have our overview

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of especially ancient civilization.

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And in the next few
videos, or many vidoes,

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we will go deeper and drill
deep into each of these topics

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that we referred to, but
hopefully the last few videos

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give you a high-level
view of what was happening

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in the world both in
terms of time and space