Notes

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2. Ashoka means 'without sorrow'. This was ironic mainly because after Ashoka's father, the king, had died, he slaughtered his brothers to take the throne, then went into war with a neighboring state, and left battlefields full of the corpses of soldiers and warriors. This may seem to fit Ashoka's name, because it appears to be so gruesome and cruel, although he felt a great remorse for not only killing soldiers and warriors, but for murdering fathers, sons, teachers, and others, which destroyed a society. For this destruction he felt a great remorse, which provided the irony for his name.

3. After all of the violence, Ashoka converted to Buddhism, which was a more passive and peaceful religion. After this conversion, he began to do everything in order to help the Mauryan empire. He abolished slavery, established schools and hospitals, had wells dug, and had trees planted which gave shade to travelers as they passed by. He created a lasting legacy by doing all of this to help his empire grow, even though he gave up on his military expansion due to the fact that he converted to Buddhism.

4. After helping his empire tremendously, Ashoka created a 'factory' which manufactured large stone pillars with his symbol, the lion, at the top. These pillars were inscribed with his laws, in his ancient language. The problem were that these laws were lost in history, as later nobody could decipher the ancient language, until the 1800's when an English man was able to decode the language, telling of all of the laws of Ashoka, which were pretty much the first human rights. This deciphering was the breakthrough that provided insight into Ashoka the Great.

5. Yin Zheng, was the emperor of the Qin dynasty. After he had conquered all of the states, he named himself 'The First Emperor', naming his vast new empire China.

6. The most important breakthrough developed under Yin Zheng, was a unified empire. This was only possible due to his unified systems of weights, measures, currency, and most importantly, writing. These all led to the possibility of one large empire, something that wasn't possible for Ashoka's Mauryan empire.

7. In order to keep Yin Zheng's large unified empire under control, he used the system of legalism. This system created sets of laws and orders, for which there were punishments if they were broken, and rewards if they were followed. This legalist approach, although, was challenged by Confucianism later.

8. Although Rome and China were very strong and large empires, each having a population of close to 50 million people, being a bit over four and a half thousand miles away from each other, they had never heard of one another. They both approached themselves as being the supreme rulers, the Romans being the rulers of 'The Whole Earth' and the Chinese considering themselves the rulers of 'All Under Heaven.' This assumption of the fact that they had no serious competition showed that each was not aware of the other.

9. After Julius Caesar had become a 'living god', painting his face red to impersonate the god Jupiter, he had become a dictator or king in Rome. A few hundred years before this Rome had abandoned monarchy and dictatorship, which led Roman senators to take action. In March of 44 BC, the senate of Rome was meeting in a theater, which they had brought Caesar to. The senate presented Caesar with a petition as a distraction, for while he was going over it, the senate members began to stab him, and after over 20 stabs, his 'friend' finished him with one more. If he had not been corrupted by power, seeking to become a 'living god' to the people of Rome, he would not have been killed by the senate, and therefore, it was his seek for more power that led to his demise.

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