NAME ______________________________________ DATE _______________ CLASS _________

Assessing Background
Knowledge netw rks
The Romans

Directions: Using what you already know about the Roman Republic and Roman
expansion, match each word in the left column with its corresponding answer in the
right column.

a. government by three people with

1. patricians
equal power

b. standards of justice that applied to all

people, which included principles of
“innocent until proven guilty,” the right
2. Pax Romana
to a judge, and the judge’s responsibility
to weigh evidence before arriving at
a decision

c. craftspeople, merchants, small farmers,

and less wealthy landowners in the
3. Hannibal Roman Republic, who paid taxes, owed
military service, and could vote but could
not be elected to government office

d. Roman ruler who was assassinated by a

4. Augustus

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group of leading senators

e. period of almost 200 years of peace and

5. plebeians prosperity under the rule of five good
Roman emperors

f. Octavian’s title given to him by the

6. Virgil Senate, which also declared him a god
when he died

g. greatest of the Carthaginian generals,

who attacked Rome and began the
7. triumvirate
Second Punic War but was eventually
defeated by the Romans

8. Nero h. Augustan poet and author of the Aeneid

i. wealthy landowners in the Roman

9. Law of Nations Republic, who became Rome’s ruling
class

j. corrupt Roman emperor known for

10. Julius Caesar
his excesses