The Roman Empire Stuggles

• The Roman Empire Struggles
• 99 problems
• In the third century AD
• epidemic disease spreads throughout the Empire
• its too hard to defend the frontier against the barbarians
• emperors began to lose their hold on power
• stayed in power for an average of two and a half years,due to wars or assassination
• maintaining armies is expensive
• still too many poverty- stricken  citizens
• Diocletian to the rescue
• 284 AD- Diocletian's reforms
• increase the size of the army to 400,00
• 1/3 bigger than during Augustus' time
• recruit from the ranks of the barbarians
• Divide Roman territories into smaller provinces
• this new government had 20,000 officials- ten times more than under Augustus
• they were more efficient at collecting higher taxes- this greater yield provided for a larger army
• advantage of this is there good be more ideas about how to do things
• disadvantage is that the government people could be corrupt and try to take over
• Time marches on...
• 300 AD
• 60 million people in the Roman Empire
• several million are Christians
• Christianity has quite am appeal to the poor and disenfranchised- and there are plenty of those
• more Christians- more face-to-face contacts-more conversions- more offspring
• some Christians are even gaining positions of power, becoming the ruling elite
• during this time there was persecution which can mean messing with someone business, making them fight, or hurting them
• To persecute or not to persecute
• Diocletian ( ruled from 284-305) left Christians alone at first
• Then he undertook the most systematic persecution of all
• Constantine ruled as emperor 306-337
• What was his connection with Christianity?
• and how did he reconstruct the empire?

Then after theses notes we got in groups and worked on a PowerPoint answering some questions about Christianity and Constantinople.
the information that we put on the powerpoint was:

• in 313 Constantine issued the edict of Milan, which ended persecution and gave the people freedom to worship
• It was Constantine's choice to standardize Christianity
• Constantine was a Christian himself
• He was exposed to Christianity by his mother, Helena
• Christian conversion was the turning point of Christianity and was called the triumph of the church sometimes
• It is unknown when began to believe in the Christian God
• During the wars, he began ti use the cross as his symbol stating that he had saw it one day above the sun with words ' Conquer by this sign"
• In the fourth century the cities became centers of social life for wealthy landowners and of Christian religious life
• Edict One =Diocletian was irritated by the boldness of the Christians. So he ordered to have all of their Churches and scriptures burned; preventing the religious gathering of Christians.
• Edict Two=Thinking that his first edict wasn't working fast enough, Diocletian had all the priests and bishops arrested. So many religious powers were arrested that the other criminals had to be released. 
• Edict Three=Diocletian stated that if any Christian in jail could be released. They had to make a sacrifice to the Roman Gods, some people willingly did it and other were forced by being tortured into making the decision. 
• Edict Four
•  Created an army with about half a million  troops
• -Created a gold coinage to pay for the army
• - Built a new capital called Constantinople that was originally called Byzantium
• - He abolished  crucifixion but replaced it with hanging
• -Gadiatorial games were cancelled in 325 BC