As someone who didn’t have much understanding about how the polarization between the two political parties occurred, I found this rose cafe seminar to be very helpful and informative. I found it shocking that the polarization of the two parties really emerged after the civil right act when people believed that there had to be a greater divide between the two parties. They had to better represent the beliefs of the American people. Also, I found it shocking that both the democratic and republican parties found themselves more to the far right and the far left when compared to other parties around the world. The polarization continues to progress with our current president and other political campaigns dividing the two parties more and more. I found it really fascinating that we are currently in a very detrimental political climate, but yet it seems like when I am with my friends we very rarely bring up conversations about politics. I always wondered as to what the reason for this was. I didn’t know if it was because everyone understands that political decisions just end up becoming very heated and since we all have to deal with stressful academic life, we don’t want to add more stress onto that with decisions on politics.

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.

Professor Michael Fontaine explained how Rome grew to be the dominant force of Europe, and its fall that was just a great. As a Classical Professor at Cornell, I would imagine Professor Fontain has to often explain the history of Greece and Rome. I recalled a majority of the information he gave us from world history in high school, but Fontaine went much more in depth with the history of Roman politics, not just as a republic, but as an empire.

However, Professor Fontaine did not connect his lesson to contemporary politics I would have loved to hear the rest of his presentation. He flipped through multiple slides with pictures of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on them, ann while it was interesting to relearn the history of roman politics, I wished to know more about how it affects our society today.  How does having a republic versus a democracy affect the scope of United States politics? How can we relate Julius Caesar’s reign to Trump? And they tangential in any way? I would be very interested in a follow up Rose Cafe that explores this avenue of thought.

On this week, we had Professor Fontaine join us to tell us about the Roman empire. We used the nice TV that was in Dr. Avery’s apartment. My background is in the hard sciences, so this was a very interesting lecture about a topic outside of my usual studies that had always interested me. He told us about events in mostly chronological order, and the social and military changes that occurred within the empire and how they affected its growth and success. The most interesting part was that ancient Rome had a system of government very similar to that currently used in many countries in the world today. They had a representation-by-population system, which meant that one representative was chosen from each district, and collectively they made decisions about the state. They even had their own voting system. The empire expanded because of one single ruler seizing power (Julius Caesar), but this falls apart if power is abused or the people are dissatisfied and start a revolt. Overall, extremely fascinating and it felt like Dr. Fontaine was telling us an engaging story rather than giving an academic lecture.

For an empire that started off about the same size as Ithaca, the fact that we base our governmental system on this Roman republic is extremely remarkable. What’s interesting to note is how developed the republic was for its time period. The gave many civil liberties to people that other republics and civilizations would deny in future years. In a sense, the liberties that we are able to enjoy today are derived from these liberties and those who are still denied these liberties even seem to have been denied them back in Rome. Does this mean that the United States should get their act together an improve on this foundation that was established thousands of years ago? Most definitely. Yet the thousands of years of history has not improved the civil liberties that certain people enjoy today. There is still rampant discrimination based on gender, sex, and race and while advancements have definitely been made for some, within the thousands of years between these two countries, one would expect that everyone would be able to enjoy the same civil liberties as one another. Instead, we must do more and be active in trying to achieve civil liberties for all so that all people will have the same advantages and not be put at a disadvantage over things that they have no control over.

Rome may seem advanced society, living in architecture that would be comparable to modern structures, but the true evaluation of a society’s development is the breadth of rights and dignity given to its people. As we sat around an intriguing presentation about the various battles, victories and tragedies, or ancient Rome, I was fascinated with all the advanced developments and accomplishments that Rome had achieved so early in its development. It wasn’t until we started asking questions in the last few moments of the presentation when it struck my attention that the people of Rome still harbored on the idea of slavery. While the women of Rome were far more privileged that those of other locations, it still seemed that the idea of people of color honoring those same civil liberties was still far at hand. In my opinion, no matter how vast a land or how much wealth a nation can accumulate, it still boils down to how is justice served to those whole live and breathe the same air as us, to truly determined how advanced a civilization is become. It is true that Rome was more developed that most nations at the time, but of course there was much room for improvement. This is an interesting issue that still rests at hand to this very day, and can provide a progression of improvement of civil liberties granted to people of all backgrounds and identities, and can also remind us that we may get carried away with glam and glist, but at the very heart of human interaction is the way we treat those who are different that us.

This week, I attended a Rose Cafe featuring Professor Michael Fontaine, who is in the classics department at Cornell. The discussion was an overview of the history of Rome spanning hundreds of years. I didn’t previously know this, but Rome started as a city roughly the size of Ithaca. This city began as a representative republic, similarly to the United States (the founding fathers built the constitution based off of early Roman government). However, competition from surrounding areas forced Rome to fight and expand, and once they started expanding they never stopped. Over the course of 400 years, the small Roman city expanded across the entire Mediterranean Sea. From this point, Rome was so big that it was impossible to rule as a republic. This is when Augustus Caesar took control of Rome and steered them to become an Empire. The Empire stood with a fake senate to give the illusion of the Empire holding for another 400 years, expanding more and more before finally falling.

The most interesting part of this discussion was the parallel Professor Fontaine drew between Rome’s emperors and dictators from the mid 1900’s. Augustus Caesar referred to himself as “The Leader”, which is identical to the language used by dictators such as Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong, and Adolf Hitler. Additionally, Caesar had his statue erected all over the Roman Empire to remind people who their leader was. As he aged, the statues remained in the image of his younger self to give the image that his reign was still as strong as ever. Even today, there are some countries where the prime minister have their portraits in every important building in the country. These parallels show that the signs of overreaching governments do not change over time, tyrannical leaders seek absolute control and tend to act in very similar ways to each other.

It is a rare lecture that can transport you back in time. This Wednesday evening, we were all treated to such a talk at this week’s Rose Cafe. Professor Fontaine gave a detailed political history of the Rome that followed its transition from a republic to an empire. There were a number of fantastic pieces of information, but one of the sets of facts I found most interesting was the conditions that women lived under during the republic. Before Rome became the vast, sprawling Catholic empire most of us would characterize it as, women enjoyed a variety of rights not offered to them in other ancient western societies. The two rights that intrigued me most were their ability to divorce easily, and their ability to own property.

Of course, conditions were far from perfect. They did not have the right to vote in the republic, and enjoyed far fewer rights than their male counterparts. Rome may have been somewhat progressive by Greek standards, but it was in no means “progressive” or any beacon of hope for how equitable societies should be run. The reason these facts struck me the way that they did is because of how these rights changed with the spread of Catholicism. It goes with out saying that laws surrounding marriage were drastically changed, but other rights women had enjoyed changed as well, including things like property rights.

I think it would be interesting to consider the global historical rise of Catholicism from the perspective, as a study of rights and privileges that women lost as it spread.