Evolution and Triumph of Roman Civilization - Research Paper Example

Initially, the Roman civilization had a leap from a monarchy to an aristocratic republic and later into a Roman empire. “During its twelve-century history, the Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy to an oligarchic republic to an immense empire” (“History of Rome”). This paper will mainly focus on the distinct religious, political, military, economic, language and artistic structures of Roman civilization, which were the main factors that acted as the effective pillars in building up an effective empire.

While focusing on the religious structure of the Roman civilization, it emerges that it mainly resembled the Greek gods. The religious practices of the Romans can be divided into three main phases. The first phase of the religious structure encompassed the three main gods namely Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus collectively known as Archaic Triad. The intervention of Greek influence in the Roman religion ultimately led to the transformation from the Archaic worship to more Greek dominated Captioline Triad.

In this way of worship, Mars and Quirinus were replaced by Minerva and Juno. Next came the third phase, during which there was gradual diminishing of the triad worship, which was further accentuated due to the emergence of Christianity with the birth of Jesus Christ. “The beginning of the third phase and the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman empire occurred in 312 BC, upon conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great” (“Roman religion”).Thus, it was from this Roman Empire, Christianity spread all throughout the world, and evolved through ages thereby becoming one of the prominent religions of the world.

This part of the paper will discuss the political and military structures of Roman civilization. Initially, the Romans formed a government called ‘Republic’ where people elected the officials who governed the state, and they took care of the welfare of the voters. Furthermore, they framed their constitution popularly known as “The Constitution of Roman republic” which ensembled a complex set of unwritten laws and other traditions that depicted the political setup of ancient Romans. “Romans created their first legal code by formally writing down some of their laws, which collectively became known as the Law of the Twelve Tables” (“Rome influence Western civilization”).

The essential political bodies of the Roman Republic included the highest-ranking officials called Consuls. Then the Senate which consisted of nearly three hundred men who had control over the foreign and other financial policies. Finally, the Assemblies, consisting of the Centuriate and the Tribal assembly, which performed numerous roles in the Roman Republic. The paramount feature of the Roman political structure was that women were excluded from the political activity and only men participated in the government and took over the welfare activities.

The other important aspect of the Roman civilization would be its military structure with the Roman legions being the key driving force behind the expansion of the Roman Empire. Well trained and disciplined military men known as the legionaries fought with both military and strategic advantage. They had sound organization capacity and the troops were well equipped with effective weapons which were quite advanced in those times. The other vital element to be discussed would be the economic structure of ancient Romans.