Role of Fear in Roman History

Name

Instructor 's name

Course

Date

ROLE OF FEAR IN ROMAN HISTORY

The focal point of this essay is to explain the role of Fear in Roman history . It would be evaluated and explained how paranoia lead to Roman expansion , and how well did it serve to protect the empire from attack The role of fear would also be evaluated and examined in the context of Roman reaction to Christianity and in the Roman budgetary priorities

It could be well mentioned that fear has played a key function in the

br development and sustainability of an empire down the ages and the Roman Empire was no different . But before the fear mechanism of the Roman Empire is ascertained it is important to evaluate the usage of fear in the political arena as a whole

The need of unification is an important aspect of any empire whatsoever There are different factors that contribute to this unification model Sometimes it is ethnicity or religion and other times it could be language but to sustain this unification over a long period of time a state needs to have the constant threat formulation . It can be mentioned that an army is to be maintained to defend the boundaries of an empire and more often than not when the boundaries of a nation spreads beyond an optimum limit its needs more soldiers to guard them . These soldiers are paid and these are always professional soldiers but bread cannot be the only motivation for these men . The extra motivation comes as a well formulated model laid down by the statesmen . This formulation is the implementation of fear mechanism (B , 375

It could be mentioned that if there is a constant threat of invaders then the motivation to guard the frontiers would automatically increase among the personnel who are guarding the boundaries . Additionally , the huge army that is to be maintained by the empire runs on the resources obtained from its citizen as taxes . The citizens are persuaded to pay the taxes willfully if they feel that paying taxes would be beneficial for them in the long run as that would ensure their safety by maintaining a large army and guarding the frontiers from invading armies (Powell , 49

For Rome these invading army consisted of different nationalities over different period of time . Initially , this threat was provided by the Etruscans and at a later stage it was provided by generals like Hannibal . During the latter parts of the Roman Empire the threats were instrumental in the form of barbarian invasions mainly from the northern European regions . These tribes included the Goths , the Visigoths , the Gaul , Vandals and the Huns

In a way these invasions , particularly the one lead by Hannibal actually paved the way for the expansion of the Roman Empire . It is an interesting fact to know that the fear principal that made the Roman Empire to stand and fight as a unified force against invaders was channeled to the mechanism for expansion . This is because with...