Michael Fontaine gave a riveting talk about how the Roman Empire came to be as well as how the Roman Empire fell. The last time that I had discussed the Roman Empire in depth was in 7th grade history but it was a topic that I enjoyed then so I figured that I would probably enjoy it now. I was glad that he presented the material in such a way that was engaging and very “story-like” as opposed to a boring documentary. The republic of Rome had some parallels in terms of how the U.S. is governed in that representatives from each city-state/district represent their population and come together collectively to make decisions. This is similar to how the U.S. is governed in that we have representatives by state that advocate for different laws, etc.

The only problem with this talk was that I felt that he didn’t tie in the Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic to a bigger, overarching theme. It seemed like it was just an informative lecture.