Roman Empire governance and social structures examined in recent scholarly pieces

Two recent Portuguese-language analyses explore aspects of ancient Rome. One essay links Roman criminal and slave systems to modern sociopolitical dynamics, describing the Republic’s Senate, consuls, praetors, censors and tribunes, and noting the large‑scale slave‑based agriculture that emerged after the Second Punic War. It also references modern scholars such as Leonice Knoch Zimmer and João Luis Ribeiro Fragoso in drawing parallels between ancient and contemporary power structures.

A second piece presents a set of advanced study questions on the Roman Empire, focusing on the Principate established by Augustus, the mechanisms that sustained the Pax Romana, and the empire’s military, economic and administrative organization. Correct answers identify the Principate as a system that retained republican forms while concentrating power in the emperor and attribute the Pax Romana’s stability to imperial authority, frontier troops and integrated administrative networks.