Dear Reader,

I chose to write this multigenre paper on the influence that Ancient Rome has had on the rest of the world. I have always been interested with world history and the Romans in particular. The brutality of the Roman society, with their entertainment and warfare, just astounded me as a child while reading books and watching television. I was always fascinated with library books that explained the Roman Empire, so my curiosity was piqued when I heard we could pick any topic that we wanted for this paper.

Before I had started to research the topic of the Roman Empire, I had already learned a lot from children's library books and movies (such as “Gladiator”). I had already known a lot about Roman warfare and the gladiators, I could even tell you the different classifications of gladiators and their weapons of choice. However, once I entered high school, I started to get bogged down with things that I had to remember, and my Roman history knowledge moved to the “back seat.”

I entered this project with a precise curiosity, “How much of an impact has Rome played on today's culture?” After realizing the broad path of my speculation, I decided to narrow the question down into three main categories, warfare, religion, and entertainment. One specific enigma that I wished to solve for each category was the concept of media's portrayal as compared to the real story. I am happy to say that my findings made for a spectacular month's worth of work and fascination.

I found most of my information from many informative websites, and even some online encyclopedias. To me, the Internet is a great way to find all of the data that you need, because you don't have to flip through a lot of pages, all you have to do is search with Google^tm. However, I was able to recall some great information from memory that I was able to double-check using the Internet.

Of all the things I have learned from this project, one of the most important is how the media and entertainment world has changed our perspective on ancient history. I was fascinated to learn that many of the gods that the Romans worshiped, were simply “plagiarized” from the Greeks, but given a personality to match the Roman society. However, I was able to find many more accuracies about warfare and entertainment in the media today, not much was changed to help give the violence a “different” look. The Romans lived for violence, even their biggest form of entertainment involved fighting to the death. Needless to say, today's media has emphasized this to a point where we can envision ourselves in these times and imagine what it was like to live in this time period.

After all of my research, I have gained a newly appreciated respect for how difficult it was to live during the time of the Romans. I could not imagine being born a slave, and having to kill other slaves in a Coliseum to win my freedom. One thing I would like for you to take away from this project, is that media is a great personification of the accurate history of many events. Though they may add cinematic “gold” to connect with the audience, they are able to create a true masterpiece without having to change many of the historical facts.

 

 

 

I have added three genres to my paper to help provide some representation for those who did not clearly understand the essay. I included a short story that is fictionally-based on a boy from Carthage, the opponents of Rome, who finds himself in a time of great distress during the final Punic War between Rome and Carthage. I have also created a movie that puts together some of the best representations of media's hard work to create great movies out of some of the best Roman History. Last but not least, I created a DVD cover for the movie, a visual summarization of the things that will be seen in the movie. I urge you to consider doing some additional research on the things that you see here, and that you use this new-found knowledge to increase your understanding of the world around you.

Sincerely,

 

Dylan Mayer