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Portal:Ancient Rome
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia * Wikipedia portals: Culture * Geography * Health * History * Mathematics * Natural sciences * People * Philosophy * Religion * Society * Technology edit The Ancient Rome Portal Ancient Rome was a civilization which began as a small agricultural community on the Italian Peninsula in the 8th century BC. Rome became a large empire which straddled the Mediterranean Sea. In its twelve centuries of existence, Roman civilization was firstly a monarchy, then a republic that combined oligarchy and democracy, and finally became an autocraticempire. Through conquest and assimilation, it came to dominate Western Europe, the entire Mediterranean Basin including the Near East and North Africa, the Balkans, and the Black Sea.The Roman empire went into decline in the 3rd century AD, and began to collapse in the 5th century AD. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the western part of the empire, includingHispania, Gaul, and Italy, broke into independent kingdoms in the 5th century. The eastern part of the empire, governed from Constantinople, survived this crisis, and remained intact for another millennium, until its last remains were finally annexed by the emerging Ottoman Empire. This eastern, medieval stage of the Empire is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire by historians.Roman civilization was part of the period of classical antiquity, alongsideancient Greece—a civilization that inspired much of the culture of ancient Rome. Ancient Rome made significant contributions to the development oflaw, war, art, literature, architecture, technology, and language in the Western world, and its history continues to have a great influence on the world today. |