You must prepare brief (circa 2 pages; about a paragraph per question) 

HIST 101: Discussion-Section Questions
Week Seven: March 2-March 6, 2020

1. The Roman historian Tacitus left us with a detailed description of
the Germanic tribes (not part of the Roman Empire) in “Germania.”
From his description, did Tacitus seem to admire the Germans, or
instead consider them to be “savages” or “barbarians”? Why do you
say so?

2. Tacitus’ “The Speech of Calgacus” describes an event from the
Romans’ invasion of Britain and their war of conquest against the
native people (known as the “Britons”). What is the British leader
Calgacus’ opinion of the invading Romans and their chances for
success?

3. As much as the Romans believed they were destined to conquer the
world, “The Speech of Calgacus” gives us the perspective not of the
conquerors, but instead of the conquered. With whom are you more
sympathetic: the Romans or the Britons? Why?

4. From reading “The Teaching of Jesus According to the Gospel of
Matthew,” what would you say were some of Jesus of Nazareth’s
complaints about the religious, social, and political worlds he lived in
of the early Roman Empire?

5. “The Martyrdom of Perpetua” has a complicated structure: it
begins and ends with an anonymous author, but the middle section
was written by Perpetua herself. To make things more difficult, there
are dream-visions included throughout. Perpetua and her friends
were executed in the North-African city of Carthage in 203 A.D. This
was a time in which Christianity was illegal in the Roman Empire (and
would be for another hundred years!), but also in which Jesus of
Nazareth had already been gone for about 170 years. From reading
this text, what are some of the basic things that we can learn about
Christianity and Christians in the Roman Empire in this period?

6. From all of these texts, how would you describe what resistance to
the Romans, to their laws, or to their customs looked like during the
Empire? And what picture of the Romans do we get from these texts?

How Did Non-Romans Live in (or Resist) a Roman World?