Since I had success with this channel with a good documentary on the Indus River Valley documentary, I thought I would take another shot at a documentary from this channel. It is January, and I suppose it is early to be thinking about planning lessons for the next school year but I want to start showing ancient world documentaries to help teachers prepare for the upcoming school year. This time, we are going forward to the Roman Empire. The run time for this documentary is 49:57 and is part of the series The Rise of the Great Powers series.
Rome would rise from the ashes of defeat to create an Empire that would cover the Mediterranean world. After suffering a horrendous defeat at the hands of Hannibal Barca, Rome would go on the offensive and rise from that defeat. How would they rise from this horrible defeat? What was the secret behind the rise of Rome? In this episode, the secret behind the rise of Rome is revealed and it is Roman citizenship. Why would Rome employ citizenship to build an empire? The year is 216 and in Cannae. The Roman army suffered one of its greatest defeats. Over 80,000 men were killed in this battle. Among the 80,000, one-third of the senate was killed. Now nothing stood between the enemy and Rome. No state had ever endured such losses. Who could inflict such losses on the Roman Empire? The man who brought such destruction to the Romans was named Hannibal Barca. He was one of the greatest generals in the Ancient World. He had sworn that he would be an enemy of Rome. How could Rome rise from these ashes? History tells us that Rome would become a great empire. How could Hannibal fail so miserably in his quest to defeat Rome? Carthage was a growing empire on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. They were slowly losing control of the sea Rome and the Carthaginians wanted revenge. The Barca family wanted revenge against Rome and Hannibal Barca was raised with a sense that he needed to get revenge. The Second Punic War began with an attack on a Roman Ally. The Romans were going to expand into Spain and Hannibal wanted to stop that. The Roman Navy was already seizing control of the Mediterranean Sea and would easily defeat the Carthaginian Navy. Hannibal Barca would have to change tactics and he would look for a land fight. The Romans thought he would take the fight to Spain and never dreamed of the Carthaginian army would cross the Alps in the middle of winter. However, Hannibal would campaign against Rome by crossing the Alps. Rome was stunned by the sudden appearance of Hannibal and his large army in Northern Italy. The war was about to begin in the heart of Rome. The Romans were caught off guard and they needed to muster an army as quickly as possible. However, this would be a challenge because Rome was not a single entity. The Italian peninsula was made up of independent city-states that Rome oversaw. The city-states would have to unite in order to defeat Hannibal Barca’s army. This seemed to parallel what Athens had to do with the other Greek City states to help battle the Persians. It is funny to see how history seems to repeat itself. Then there is a long discussion on how Hannibal managed to pull off the win against Rome. Hannibal long admired Alexander the Great and so he planned on employing the tactics that Alexander the Great did when he conquered Persia. He planned on conquering Rome itself in hopes that the Roman allies would fall and follow Carthage. So how could Rome turn things around against such a ferocious foe? How would they build their empire in the light of this coming army? Tune into the rest of this episode to find out. I honestly do not know how you can top Mary Beard and her series on the Roman Empire. The summary that was provided for this episode seemed really wrong because, for the most part, the documentary focused on Hannibal, the Punic Wars, and how Rome turned defeat into Victory. It was good and nice to get some different voices when it comes to Roman history. This would be on my consideration list for documentaries to show in a classroom.
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The purpose of this blog is to share information on what can be used in a classroom, private school, or home school setting as well as serve as a portfolio of my personal and professional work. The reviews are my opinions and should be treated as such. I just want to provide a tool for teachers to select documentaries for their classrooms. |