Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of the Fall of the Roman Republic up to the death of Julius Caesar.----more----
2000 years ago Rome was a mighty empire. It used to have Kings. However, the people of Rome decided that the Kings were cruel so they got rid them. After that they chose their rulers by elections. They promised to never have a King again.
Rome got more powerful. Her mighty armies conquered other countries because they were very disciplined. At first the Roman farmers would also be soldiers and then go back to their crops when the fighting was finished. As there was more and more fighting, further and further away Rome needed to have soldiers who were just soldiers. However, they didn’t know what jobs the soldiers could do when they had finished being a soldier.
The generals had a good idea. They decided to give the land that Rome had conquered to the soldiers. This made the soldier fight extra hard. However, it also made the soldiers very loyal to the generals who were going to give them land. Over time the soldiers became more loyal to their generals than to Rome.
Many Roman generals got rich and powerful. No one more so than Julius Caesar. He was a brilliant general. He conquered Gaul which was the Roman name for France.
However, the senators back home were suspicious of Caesar. They told him to come home alone without his army. Caesar invaded instead. He conquered Rome and became the most powerful Roman. He chased his enemies and defeated them. Then he met an Egyptian Queen called Cleopatra and she became his girlfriend.
Back in Rome the senators were worried that Caesar wanted to make himself a King. One day they stabbed him to death in the senate. Even his friend Brutus stabbed him.
The people who stabbed him thought they had won. They thought that they had saved Rome from having a King. However, they had forgotten that Caesar had friends, that his army loved him and so did the people of Rome.
In two weeks time we will tell the rest of the story and how Rome got its first Emperor.
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