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Ancient Rome

SOC-961
3 Credits
Online
4.87/5.00
SOC-961
3 Credits
Online
4.87/5.00

Discover how a small village of hills near the Italian coast grew to dominate the Mediterranean world and become the center of the strongest empire in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. Designed to cover national social studies standards for this content area, the course will help you understand how much we, as part of Western Civilization, owe to the ancient Romans. Learn how Roman ingenuity and creative borrowing from the cultures they dominated enabled the Romans to excel in architecture, law, government, technology (including aquaducts, bridges, and roads), military success, literature, art, and religion.

Engage with your students in noticing similarities and differences in ancient Rome and the U.S.A. as world super-powers in their day. Explore how Rome changed from a republic to an empire ruled by autocratic emperors who even claimed to be gods. Finally, be able to explain how this world power divided into two empires, each of which gradually diminished in influence and importance, and eventually ceased to exist. Yet, its legacy continued to shape Europe for centuries thereafter. While the Roman Empire is no more, understanding how our modern world works requires awareness of how ancient Rome laid a foundation on which much of the modern world rests.

NOTE: Required book must be purchased separately.

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Dr. Allen Carden

Instructor
As both a teacher of history at the college and university level for over four decades, and a researcher and writer of history, my love for studying the past and sharing my insights has only increased with time. A great history class in my junior year of high school grabbed my interest and helped establish a trajectory that has been so much more than a job; it has been an adventure, a passion, and I would even say a ministry in which the search for truth and exposure of historical error has fascinated me. I love taking complex historical events and persons and trying to make them understandable and relevant to my students. It is my privilege to be not only an instructor of continuing education courses for Fresno Pacific University, but also to be a full-time professor of history at this fine institution. One of the joys of my professional life life has been developing 17 courses for FPU's continuing education offerings, primarily in history but also in education and cross-cultural studies. Enriching the fund of knowledge for teachers through these courses has been very satisfying.