Highlighting Fun!!!

Today in West Civ, we read/skimmed through the chapter, reading and highlighting important sections. I had already highlighted it already. :) To start off, the Romans imitated Greek civilization and improved on it as a result through government and warfare. They had endless expansion that lead to social conflicts, political crisis, civil war, and unstable rule by powerful army commanders until the new form of government developed. The Romans arrived in a Mediterranean land with farming resources that were basically similar to those of Greece or Palestine, but able to support a larger population. In the beginning of the republic, Res Publica meaning people's business, the Romans started out with a senate. The senate's purpose was to advise the king and were a council of elders chosen by a pool of patricians. In 500 B.C. Rome over threw the Etruscans rulers and abolished the monarchy. The plebeians were the common people or lower class citizens, who were not benefited by the laws, but gained power over 500 years as the Republic formed. They demanded that the laws were written down for everyone to refer to. They were eventually written on slabs called the Twelve Tables.