Rome becomes dominant | World History | Khan Academy

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

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

most of the map that we see right up here,

especially from Greece all the
way through the Middle East

through Persia and getting
to the borders of India.

Conquering Egypt as well.

And we mentioned that he
had a very short life,

and after his death, his empire was split.

But coincident with that
time we have other powers

in other parts of the
Mediterranean that are growing.

Mainly the Romans, and Rome
was established several

hundred years before the
time of Alexander the Great,

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

of the Italian peninsula right over here,

what we would now consider
the Italian peninsula.

You also have a power in
Carthage forming right over here

on the north African coast.

Carthage was initially
a Phoenician settlement.

The Phoenicians, famous
for our phonetic alphabet.

The Phoenicians were based in what is now

modern day Lebanon and
Syria and they were traders

and they settled throughout
the Mediterranean.

And Carthage and the Carthaginian
power or civilization

was a fairly significant one at this time.

And you could imagine
when there are two powers

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

going after the same interests
or conquest the same land,

or they might view each other as a threat,

they tend to start fighting each other.

And that is true of Rome and Carthage.

And the wars that they fought,

they were called the Punic
Wars, and they occurred

between 264 BCE and 146 BCE.

You have the Punic Wars, Punic.

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

but these are the wars that
involved Hannibal famously

taking elephants across the
Alps in order to attack Rome.

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

The Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome.

And just to be clear, this
little purple shaded in

on our timeline, that
represents the Carthage

and the Carthaginian civilization.

I guess you could say power.

And this is Rome.

But eventually Rome wins
decisively and is actually able

to wipe out Carthage,
literally wipe it out.

And so Rome more and more
is becoming the dominant

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

well beyond the Mediterranean.

In this period Rome is a republic.

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

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

of representation that
we would think today.

We would be talking some
form of preserving rights.

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

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

we have a very successful Roman general,

you might have heard
his name, Julius Caesar,

who was able to take power of Rome,

who was able to be the dictator of Rome.

And in power he starts
to end the republic,

and he does many other things.

He starts rearranging the calendar,

gets a month named after him, July,

and then he gets assassinated
and his adopted son Augustus

takes power.

And Augustus is often
considered to be the first true

emperor of Rome, that
the republic is now over.

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

Now at around the same
time, you have another

very significant figure that shows up,

and obviously Jesus is a
significant figure in religion,

but that has effect on history.

His teachings are the basis of a religion

that's going to have profound consequences

for the rest of history, for the world.

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

the secular timeline of BCE,

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

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

Those are secular versions
of a calendar which is,

essentially, centered on Jesus' birth

or pretty close to Jesus' birth.

Instead of BC, it would be before Christ.

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

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

people might learn about the life of Jesus

and they might think about the holy land

and Nazareth and Jerusalem
and whatever else,

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

Jesus was born and raised
and grew up and died

as part of the Roman Empire.

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

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

it was pretty close to 4 BCE or 4 BC.

So he was born in the reign of Augustus

and he died in the reign of Tiberius.

So some of the first Roman emperors.

So with that, we have our overview

of especially ancient civilization.

And in the next few
videos, or many vidoes,

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

that we referred to, but
hopefully the last few videos

give you a high-level
view of what was happening

in the world both in
terms of time and space