Roman Empire

The Roman Empire (Latin: Imperium Romanum, Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a principate with Italy as metropole of the provinces and the city of Rome as sole capital (27 BC - AD 286). The adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire in AD 380 and the fall of the Western Roman Empire to Germanic kings conventionally marks the end of Classical antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The eastern half of the empire survived as the Byzantine Empire until being occupied and heavily weakened after the Fourth Crusade of 1204, and then completely overthrown by the Ottoman Empire in 1453.

Your task, Roman, and do not forget it, will be to govern the peoples of the world in your empire. These will be your arts – and to impose a settled pattern upon peace, to pardon the defeated and war down the proud.
—Virgil

Due to the Roman Empire's vast extent and long endurance, the institutions and culture of Rome had a profound and lasting influence on the development of language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government in the territory it governed, and far beyond.

Quotes

B

• Rome has bequeathed us understandings of freedom and citizenship, as well as imperialist exploitation, along with today's political vocabulary from "senators" to "dictators." He has lent us his sayings — "fear the Greeks, even if they bring gifts" and "play the violin while Rome burns" and even "where there is life, there is hope". And he has evoked laughter, awe and fear to a more or less equal extent.
  • Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2017), p. 15

G

• The terror of the Roman arms added weight and dignity to the moderation of the emperors. They preserved peace by a constant preparation for war; and while justice regulated their conduct, they announced to the nations on their confines, that they were as little disposed to endure, as to offer an injury.
  • Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1 (1776)

H

• What an awful book the Corpus Juris is, this Bible of selfishness! I've always found the Roman code as detestable as the Romans themselves. These robbers want to safeguard their swag, and they seek to protect by law what they have plundered with the sword; hence the robber became a combination of the most odious kind, soldier and lawyer in one. Truly, we owe the theory of property, which was formerly a fact only, to these Roman thieves.
  • Heinrich Heine, "Memoiren", in Die Gartenlaube (1884). Translated in Max Brod, Heinrich Heine: The Artist in Revolt (New York UP, 1957), p. 77

K

• The Romans introduced into all their provinces a system of law so fair and so strong, that almost all the best laws of modern Europe have been founded on it. Everywhere the weak were protected against the strong; castles were built on the coast with powerful garrisons in them; fleets patrolled the Channel and the North Sea. Great roads crossed the island from east to west and from north to south.
  • Rudyard Kipling and C. R. L. Fletcher, School History of England (1911). Quoted in Sarah J. Butler, Britain and Its Empire in the Shadow of Rome (A&C Black, 2012), p. 56

N

• Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam:
    profuit iniustis te dominante capi.
  dumque offers victis proprii consortia iuris,
    urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat.
  • For nations far apart thou hast made a single fatherland; under thy dominion captivity hath meant profit even for those who knew not justice: and by offering to the vanquished a share in thine own justice, thou hast made a city of what was erstwhile a world.
  • Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, De Reditu Suo, 63; translated by J. W. Duff (Loeb Classical Library, 1934)

O

• The history of the Roman Empire is also the history of the uprising of the Empire of the Masses, who absorb and annul the directing minorities and put themselves in their place. [...] The epoch of the masses is the epoch of the colossal.
  • José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (1929), ch. 2

S

• Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
  Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.
  Kingdoms are clay. Our dungy earth alike
  Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life
  Is to do thus [Embracing]
  • William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1607), act 1, sc. 1

T

• To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire, and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
  • Tacitus, Agricola (c. AD 98), ch. 30 (Oxford Revised Translation)

V

• Your task, Roman, and do not forget it, will be to govern the peoples of the world in your empire. These will be your arts – and to impose a settled pattern upon peace, to pardon the defeated and war down the proud.
  • Virgil, Aeneid (c. 30–19 BC), bk. 6, ll. 850–3; translated by David Alexander West (Penguin Classics, 1990); extract quoted in Simon Baker, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (Random House, 2010), p. 7

W

• The Roman Empire was a world-wide confederation of aristocracies for the perpetuation of human servitude.
  • Bouck White, The Call of the Carpenter (1914), p. 7

See also

• Empire
• Pax Romana
• Rome
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

External links

Encyclopedic article on Roman Empire on Wikipedia