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100
The introduction of Bread and Circuses in Rome (123 BC)
Juvenal, a Roman poet, had come up with this name after witnessing all the citizens of Rome to have fallen prey to this scheme. He described it as to have absolute control over the rowdy plebians. The increase in slaves had increased unmployement therefore causing a mob of angry peasants. So the Roman goverment decided to have gladiator fights and give out free food to appease the people. -
100
Rome's Bankruptcy (50 BC)
At the height of its popularity the cost of the gladiatorial games at the Colosseum came to one third of the total income of the Roman Empire. The emperors who followed Honorius at first commissioned repairs to the Colosseum but as its political importance declined, together with the wealth of the Roman Empire, so did the enthusiasm for spending money on repairs. Constant warfare required heavy military spending. The Roman government was constantly threatened by bankruptcy and the emperors spent -
100
Murder of Julius Caesar 44 BC
February 44 BC, he declared himself dictator for life. This act, along with his continual effort to adorn himself with the trappings of power, turned many in the Senate against him. Sixty members of the Senate concluded that the only resolution to the problem was to assassinate Caesar.He stabbed by members of the Senate 35 times and died at the foot of Pompey's statue. -
Period: 100 to
Bread and Circuses to Microphone
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313
Legalization of Christianity (313 AD)
Constantine made Christianity legal in 313 Ad after many years of torture and cruelty against them. They were captured and killed. They were also a majority of the gladiators and were often fed to dogs or lions as a form of entertainment. This put an end to it. But the Christian belief in one god — who was not the emperor — weakened the authority and credibility of the emperor. -
404
Egyptian monk Telemachus 404AD
Telemachus jumped into the gladiator games in an attempt to halt them, but the mob stoned him to death. Emperor Honorius was at the games and in honour of the fallen monk he put an end to the games. -
476
The Fall of Rome
The Romans weathered a Germanic uprising in the late fourth century, but in 410 the Visigoth King Alaric successfully sacked the city of Rome. The Empire spent the next several decades under constant threat before Rome was raided again in 455, this time by the Vandals. Finally, in 476, the Germanic leader Odoacer overthrew the Emperor Romulus Augustulus. -
Thirty Years War
the Thirty Years War was primarily a struggle over the political and religious order within the Empire. It is considered one of the worst conflicts in Europe before the world wars. This sparked the evergrowing enmity between France and Germany. -
Emile Berliner coming to America
Tempted by the offer of a clerkship in a store partly owned by a man named Behrend, a Hanoverian who had emigrated to the United States some time earlier, and a desire to escape the military duty that faced most young men in the year of the Franco-Prussian War, Berliner persuaded his parents to allow him to accept the job offer and to emigrate to America. In late March 1870 he left Hanover. -
Franco-Prussian War
The emergence of Prussia as the leading German power and the increasing unification of the German states were viewed with apprehension by Napoleon III after the Prussian victory in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Bismarck, at the same time, deliberately encouraged the growing rift between Prussia and France in order to bring the states of Germany into a national union. France finally declared war. -
Invention of the microphone
Berliner saw the telephone for the first time and was filled with enthusiasm. He commenced to study the telephone. To his inquiring mind one of the instrument's weaknesses was its transmitter. Working alone in his rooming house he fashioned a new type of transmitter which he called a "loose-contact" transmitter, a type of microphone, which increased the volume of the transmitted voice. This was the most advanced form of the microphone -
Franks conquer Gaul ( Modern Day France)
The Franks from what is now Germany moved west and conquered the Low Lands and Roman Gaul, giving it their name as France. It took them several attempts and they helped in the fall of the Roman Empire -
Charlemagne coming in to power
The Carolingian Charlemagne (Charles the Great) restored the western Roman Empire in cooperation with the papacy and spread Christianity into central and northern Germany. His empire disintegrated by the mid-9th century. -
Split of the Roman Empire into two: The East and the West
The Roman Empire grew to be huge. It covered most of Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia. Just getting messages from Rome to the outer parts of the Empire took weeks. The Empire had become too large to rule effectively. The outer provinces were pretty much doing what ever they wanted.
Emperor Diocletian was looking for a way to fix this and other problems. He decided to actually break the empire into two, a western empire one based in Rome and an eastern in Byzantium.
