By the second century CE the Roman Empire, now encompassing the Mediterranean basin and beyond, was in its glory days. With conquest largely completed, the pax Romana (Roman peace) generally prevailed and commerce flourished, as did the arts and literature. The empire enjoyed a century (96-180 CE) of autocratic but generally benevolent rule. In 155 CE a well-known scholar and orator form the city of Smyrna on the west coast of Anatolia (present-day Turkey) arrived for a visit to the imperial capital of Rome. He was Aelius Aristides (ca. 117-181 CE), a widely traveled Greek-speaking member of a wealthy landowning family whose members had been granted Roman citizenship several decades earlier. While in Rome, Aristides delivered to the imperial court and in front of the emperor, Antonius, a formal speech of praise and gratitude, known as a panegyric, celebrating the virtues and achievements of the Roman Empire.
Read the following excerpt The Roman Oration by Aelius Aristides in 155 CE.
Answer the following questions, in paragraph form, following the guidelines on the Forum Instructions and Grading handout (shared with you in Google). You do not have to address each question in order, but you must address all five questions within your answer. Your answer should be multiple paragraphs. Include citations from the article, The Roman Oration (Doc 1) and from textbook Ways of the World chapter three (Strayer 149).
1. What does Aristides identify as the unique features of the Roman Empire? Which of these features in particular may have given the empire a measure of legitimacy in the eyes of its many subject peoples? What other factors, unmentioned by Aristides, may have contributed to the maintenance of Roman authority?
2. What does Aristides mean by referring to the empire as a "common democracy of the world"?
3. Why might Aristides, a Greek-speaking resident of a land well outside the Roman heartland, be so enamored of the empire?
4. To what extent does Aristides' oration provide evidence for the development of a composite Greco-Roman culture and sensibility within the Roman Empire.
5. How does this speech compare, in both style and content, with that of Pericles' Funeral Oration?
