Key People
Aristotle
Aristotle (along with his mentor, Plato, and Plato’s mentor, Socrates) holds a firm place as one of the foundational figures in Western civilization. Virtually no discipline escaped his scholarship: aesthetics, music, morality, ethics, metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, politics, physics, anatomy, biology, zoology, optics, astronomy, geography, medicine, and more.
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was an expert military tactician and general and thus was instrumental in expanding the territories of Rome throughout Europe, especially in Gaul. Caesar was also a very talented politician, who eventually commanded political power in Rome and was appointed dictator for life.
Spotlight
Athenian Constitution
The Athenian Constitution, attributed to Aristotle, is a commentary on the development of constitutional democracy in ancient Greece. Essentially, the text, portions of which have not survived, is a history of ancient Greece from a political, constitutional perspective.
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Twelve Tables of Roman Law
The Twelve Tables of Roman Law contain information on specific points of law. Previously known only to the elite patrician classes, these descriptions and definitions of procedures, parental rights, remedies, and rights and responsibilities of creditors and debtors were instrumental in helping ease the social stresses that threatened to overturn the newly created Roman republic.
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Deeds of the Divine Augustus
The Deeds of the Divine Augustus is Augustus’s own testament of his achievements; it is a unique document authored by one of the most powerful and influential leaders in history. Augustus’s record of his reign ever remained a touchstone in the Roman world and greatly affected the administration of the empire, which offered a model of government consulted by political leaders down to and beyond the American Revolution.
