Roman Empire

A map of the Roman Empire at it's height, civilizing the fuck out of unwashed Barbarians

The Roman Empire (Imperium Romanum) was a civilization which was based out of the Italian City of Rome. It was notable for unifying the Mediterranean under their rule and being one of the most advanced civilizations of Classical Antiquity, with only the Chinese Han Dynasty, Indian Satavahana Empire, Mesoamerican Empires, and the Parthian Empire (With the Persian Empire succeeding it) surpassing/rivaling it....

Roman History 101

The Roman Empire from a larger view, here seen sitting next to its two older siblings while being surrounded by other minor Empires and States (Colored light brown). Although from a certain view angle, the awkward and humorous shape of the Han Dynasty makes it look like its about to 'touch' poor old Parthian Empire.

The Early days

According to the Legends, Rome was founded in 753 BCE. What is more well established is that Rome used to be one of several city states in Italy and was ruled by a King. Eventually the Romans got fed up with monarchy and did away with their kings, becoming a Republic. At the top of Rome were Patricians, wealthy landowners who could run for senate if they served as officers in the army. That army had a lot to do because the Romans ended up conquering their rivals one by one. Those people who accepted Roman Rule were integrated into the empire without much fuss, those that did not were enslaved. Either way each new conquest giving them manpower and money to conquer more city states. Underneath them were the Plebians, who were regular citizens who did not own much land but still had civil right and eventually managed to get the Patricians to give them their own council. Eventually they eliminated their rivals and got most of Italy under their control, even if they had to put up with unwashed Gauls rampaging through their northern frontier.

In case the shit hit the fan, the Roman Senate would appoint a Dictator to sort said shit out quickly and thoroughly. Whatever a Dictator said was law and he had absolute control over the military. That said, for four centuries every dictator who was elected served for a short term and then gave up his position without a fuss.

The Punic Wars

Meanwhile, in what is now Tunisia there was another power on the rise, a city called Carthage. The Carthaginians were good traders, were ruled by an elite class or wealthy merchants and financiers and spent their money on Mercenaries, which they used to conquer an empire of their own in Africa. Eventually their began to be some friction between the two groups as Carthage moved into Sicily and Sardinia. This let to three wars called the Punic Wars where Rome and Carthage clashed.

The first Punic War (264 BCE to 241 BCE) involved the Romans fighting the Carthaginians over Sicily and Sardinia. The Romans begin to take to the sea for the first time. A Carthaginian war galley crashed on the shores of Italy and the Carthaginians were so go good as to use standardized and numbered components to speed up production (for people interest in the history of manufacturing, that's standardized interchangeable parts two thousand fucking years before Eli Whitney), the Romans quickly copied the design. Eventually the Carthaginians threw in the towel and accepted terms with the Romans , even though one of their generals, Hamilcar Barca had been doing well in his campaign up until then. He got pissy about this and led an army into Spain. The Carthaginian government did not authorize this, but since news of this came back with a lot of money they allowed him to continue and set up his own personal kingdom in Spain. From which, he and his son Hannibal prepared for round two.

Eventually shit happened involving a Greek colony in 218 BCE and Rome and Carthage were at War. Hannibal marshaled his army and marched east through Spain. Then he took the Romans by surprise by marching that army, with tens of thousands of men, horses, supply carts and fucking elephants so forth across the alps and into Italy. More than half of his army froze to death doing this, but he still managed to get this force through, and once it was there, it was damn near unstoppable. Every time the Romans mustered up a huge army and sent it against him, Hannibal was able to shatter it. However, he did not have the gear to take Rome itself (the battle of Cannae, killed just enough to prevent it), so he decided to lay waste to the roman countryside instead. The only strategy that worked against him was Fabius Maximus's strategy of following Hannibal's army around and launching surprise raids, eating away at their numbers bit by bit. Everyone in Rome hated Fabius for this because was seen as a cowardly thing to do instead of going against Hannibal face to face gloriously, but this ploy did work at eating away at his numbers and slowing him down.

Meanwhile, the Romans then managed to attack Spain and eventually broke Carthage's hold on the Iberian peninsula. When Hannibal's brother tried to reinforce his position, the Romans managed to intercept his force and destroy it. Then they managed to take advantage of some conflicts among a few of Carthage's vassels to gain a foothold there and gathered up an army to take the fight to Africa. Hannibal was recalled to defend Carthage and at Zama his army was defeated in 202 BCE. Carthage was reduced in size to a small state, which the Romans would eventually genocide off the map.

Notably, this period saw the stardom of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, who displayed tactical, strategic, and logistical genius by consistently kicking the shit out of armies four times the size of his using tactical tricks such as tricking the enemy into fighting exhausted, launching surprise assaults at night, and taking advantage of a low tide to march his forces over to a coastal city and set up siege ladders, while distracting the defenders with only a hundred soldiers. After defeating Hannibal at Zama using the man's own tactics, he was offered absolute power in the republic, but gracefully declined.

The Height of the Roman Republic

With Carthage Dead, there was nothing left which could stop Rome from taking over the Mediterranean world. When Rome wanted to conquer an area they gave the local rulers two choices...

• Become a client state to Rome: the leaders got to keep their positions and titles and whatnot, but adopted roman foreign policy, did not get into any fights with other client states, sent a percentage of their tax income to Rome, had roman citizens in their lands accountable to Roman Law and provide auxiliaries to Rome's military, and in return get stuff built like aqueducts, roads sewers and public baths.
• Resist and be conquered by Rome's large, battle tested and well equipped legions and end up killed, most of your people enslaved, your lands re-settled by Romans and your legacy purged.

Either way, they added land after land to the Empire. The resistance to the locals may have often been strong at first, but lessened due to peace, stability and economic opportunities. This made the Empire quite diverse in terms of ethnicity and religions (if said religions did not cause trouble and people were willing to worship the Roman gods on the side). Though conquered people started out as subjects, they could become full fledged citizens through a variety of means. The end result was not just one capital region ruling over dozens of vassal cultures who always struggled to throw off the yoke of the outside oppressor, but a multicultural melting pot which took conquered peoples and made them into more Romans.

In terms of politics there were two rough "parties" in the senate. The Optimates, which was an old boys club of senators who wanted power strictly in the hands of the senatorial class and the Populares, who wanted more power for themselves and sought to gain that power by getting the support of the common people. The Optimates were in charge at first, but gradually the Populares gained more influence. This eventually led to the creation of a standing army, numerous great public works and the subsidization of grain and eventually giving away free bread to Citizens in Rome.

The Rise of the Empire

Besides the Carthaginians, the group that was a major pain in the ass to ancient Rome was the Gauls, Celtic barbarians who lived in what's now France and (early on) Northern Italy. The Romans fought with the Gauls many times and had their butts kicked by them on occasion, including having Rome sacked by them in 390 BCE. Unlike Carthage, the Gauls were not a single unified power bent on empire building, but rather a collection of small bickering tribes who looted, raped, and drank magic strength potions their druids cooked up, but went home at the end of the day with their spoils instead of settling in as rulers of subject populations. That said, the Romans got better at fighting them as time went on and got better at keeping the Gauls in their place. Even so, they would remain a threat until the last century BC when they were finally sorted out.

The Romans finally sought to put an end to this bullshit in 58 BCE when they gave the Populare Consul Gaius Julius Caesar Imperium (the authority to command a Roman army) and sent him off with some legions to deal with the Gauls. And over eight years he did just that, and sent back to Rome stories of his campaigns to win over more public support. This made him a lot of enemies among the senatorial classes, including his former ally and consul Pompeius Magnus. His term in charge of the legions was about to expire when he decided to return to Rome victorious, which he was technically not supposed to do. This caused a civil war in which Pompeius Magnus was chased across the east of the Republic until he was killed by some Egyptians. During the war, Caesar was given the office of dictator, and eventually named dictator perpetuo. The rest of the Roman Senators did not like this because Caesar began to look like a king to them, so they conspired to make his lifetime reign come to an abrupt end. On the 15th of March, 44 BCE, a gang of senators sneak attack'd Caesar outside the Theatre of Pompey.

After that, his adopted son and heir Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (born Gaius Octavius, he would later drop the Octavianus though historians generally call him "Octavian" to distinguish him from his adopted father) gained considerable political influence. Again, many members of the Senate saw him as trying to become king. This led to some more civil wars, which ultimately secured his position. Following the Battle of Actium, Octavian consolidated power over the Republic over the course of twenty-odd years. From then on, Rome would have the facade of a Republic but power would ultimately lie in the hands of the princeps senatus. Historians refer to this half of the Empire's life as the "Principate."

The next two hundred years would see a succession of Emperors taking each other's positions, sometimes peacefully and sometimes through assassination. Some were decent enough at administrating, others were batshit insane. A few attempted to formalize dynasties, but this rarely worked. Rome continued to expand its borders during this period, conquering Britain and Dacia, but by the ascension of Hadrian in 117 CE, the Empire had reached its maximum extent. Future Emperors would only attempt to maintain the borders.

Fall from Greatness

While historians have developed entire cottage industries arguing over when and why the Empire collapsed, it is widely regarded to have started around AD 235 with the assassination of Alexander Severus by his own troops, who didn't agree with his policy of diplomacy with the Germanic tribes while he focused on the threat of the Sassanid Persian Empire in the east. The next 33 years saw a succession of "barracks emperors," who mostly came to power through force of arms and were either murdered or killed in action, meaning that the Roman Legions spent more time fighting each other than foreign threats for almost a century. The Republic suffered a devastating plague in 251 and was split into three competing states by 258: Illyria, Rome, and Gallia, who each claimed to be the legitimate successors of the Republic. All this civil unrest, compounded with rapid currency inflation, made inter-provincial trade extremely dangerous and unprofitable

This parade of failure finally slowed down in 274 when Aurelian reunited the Republic. His successor, Diocletian, finally established formal rules of succession and figured out how to rule such a vast area: he eventually split the Republic into four administrative regions and appointed co-emperors in a tetrarchy. Diocletian did away with most of the illusions of primus inter pares, styling himself as an autocrat with the title dominus, and marking the beginning of the historical "Dominate" period of the Roman Empire. He also led a campaign to eradicate an obscure religious cult that had sprung up in Judea a couple centuries earlier and now infested the Empire. How successful Diocletian's reforms actually were in the long run are debated by scholars, but his conspicuous failure to be murdered or go insane secured him a place in history as a great Emperor.

The newly split empire enjoyed a modicum of peace, but the rot was deep. After Diocletian died, the Empire promptly descended into the kind of regional clusterfucking that he had worked so hard to prevent. In the east, Constantine, the Christian convert son of caesar Constantius, eventually wrested control of the Empire and built a new imperial resident at Byzantium, which would soon be nicknamed Constantinopolis (Constantine's city) and formally established the dynastic succession of the Empire.

The Western empire wasn't so lucky. The emperor Valens allowed numerous Germanic tribes to crash on Rome's proverbial couch (their couch having been stolen by Huns) which resulted in a rebellion and his death. From here on in, barbarian tribes made themselves increasingly comfortable, repeatedly sacking Rome and generally imposing themselves on whatever poor bastard was pretending to be Emperor that day. From there the slide accelerated quickly. Attila the Hun joined the party and was only shamed into leaving by the incredible pope-fu of Leo I. The last Western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustus, a puppet of his father and beset on all sides, lost his power when a coalition of mercenaries demanded that his father cede a third of Italy to them. Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno stated that "one monarch is enough for the world" when asked for help to retake the West. AD 476 saw the end of the Western Roman Empire and the beginning of the historical Middle Ages.

Byzantium

To the east, things were a bit better. As previously mentioned, Diocletian divided the Empire into two bodies, the western empire ruled from Rome (which we described) and the eastern ruled from Byzantium, which remained more or less intact. Byzantium was located at the Bosporus (the straits between the Agean and Black Seas), giving it control of trade with people in what is now the Ukraine as a steady source of income. The change of the center of empire did have its effects, most notably Greek replacing Latin as the official language. There was some internal conflicts in Byzantium's early history, mainly religious in nature over the most trivial matters of theology and conflicts with the Parthians. Nevertheless, the Byzantines retained much of Rome's knowledge and technology, notably with the construction of the Hagia Sophia.

At no point did the state call itself the Byzantine Empire; from beginning to end, it was the Roman Empire / Imperium Romanum / Basilea Rhomaion. It wasn't called the Byzantine Empire until at least 1857 and is still only referred to as such for historical bookkeeping purposes.

Remember that obscure religious movement that Diocletian tried to wipe out? Constantine embraced it and convened two councils to come to a consensus on church doctrine, though he did not declare it the state religion; that was left to Theodosius in 380. Because of Constantine's sudden change of character, Christianity became a major player in European politics.

This period also provided Byzantium with its most successful emperor, Justinian. Among his accomplishments was the creation of the Justinian Code and his efforts to reclaim the lands which had fallen into barbarism. These were spearheaded by his general Belesarius, who reconquered the Adriatic coastline, Italy, Sardinia, North Africa, and even parts of Spain by 557 and would hold onto said areas for some time, redeveloping them. For a bit it seemed like the Roman Empire would come back, albeit more Greek and based out of a different city. But there were things which undermined this. The first being disputes over the most petty matters of theology which caused divisions and unrest in the empire, but this would be exploited by a new power. Both the Romans and the Byzantines had viewed Arabia as a worthless stretch of desert populated by a few irrelevant tribes and trading cities, until these tribes were united in the name of a new religion called Islam and moved out. They managed to take Egypt and pushed northward to take over the Parthian Empire. In 674, the Arabs even managed to muster up a fleet and attacked Constantinople, but the city endured because A: it had really big thick walls and B: the Byzantine Navy had Greek fire. Exactly what "Greek fire" was is something historians are not so sure about as the Byzantines guarded the secret so well that even they eventually forgot the recipe for the stuff, but most people think it was a flammable liquid expelled via pumps that could turn a wooden warship into kindling.

During this time, the western and eastern branches of the Christian Church gradually grew apart. The East-West Schism was established on July 16, 1054, when the Pope excommunicated the Bishop of Constantinople. The Fourth Crusade was supposed to reconquer Jerusalem, but some Catholic crusaders decided to take a detour and sack Constantinople in 1204. They set up Latin empires in the conquered territories, forcing the government into exile until Michael VIII Palaiologos reconquered the city. But what was left of the the Byzantine Empire was but a shell.

The Eastern Roman Empire ended when the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople on May 29, 1453. The Empire of Trebizond, which had seceded from the Empire shortly before the sack of Constantinople, remained the de facto successor state to the Empire until it was surrendered to the Ottomans in 1461.

Legacy

Even after it's fall, the Roman Empire left a mark on western civilization in terms of writing, language, architecture, legal systems and philosophy. Many major European cities like London or Milan started out as Roman Colonies. In certain fields (in praticular medicine, sanitation and plumbing) the Romans were more advanced than their European counterparts up until fairly recently. The end of the middle ages is generally known as "the Renaissance", the rebirth of western civilization which did involve some attempts by the upper class to recreate the better aspects of the Empire. For this reason various subsequent western cultures attempted to try to recreate some of Rome's Grandeur. The more obvious of these was the Holy Roman Empire. The Tsardom of Russia proclaimed itself as The Third Rome. Numerous other European monarchs as well as Ottoman Sultans declared themlseves as being Emperors or Kaisers/Tsars. Monarchs drew upon the idea of the authority and splendor of the Emperors, Republics drew on the roman concepts of rule of law, elected governments and civil rights.

Romans at War

Long story short, you don't get an Empire which reached from Iraq to Portugal without being good at fighting and the Romans were good at that. At first the Romans fought in basically the same way as the Greeks did, as spear wielding Hoplites, but latter became more and more swordsmen. At first it was the duty of every able bodied male adult roman citizen who was wealthy enough to afford weapons and armor to keep and to take up arms when called to fight. These Republican Armies were divided into five types of soldiers...

• Velites: The poorest people with light armor (if any) armed with slings and javelins who would pelt the enemy formations at a distance to kill a few guys and disrupt their ranks, then run away.
• Equites: Rich bastards (though not rich enough to be Patricians) who could afford horses. They used those horses to serve as light cavalry, scouting, skirmishing and running down enemy soldiers.
• Hastati: Common soldiers armed with swords and a bit of armor, new recruits and poor people, put at the front of the main roman formations.
• Principes: People who were better off than the Hastati and had seen some combat. If the Hastati failed to break the enemy lines, they fell back and the Principes come in.
• Triarii: The hardened veterans serving as the best equipped heavy infantry, they were as hard as nails. If the Principes failed, you brought in these guys.

This is not including mercenaries that they would use to pad out the ranks.

Another thing of note was at the time, Rome had a near endless supply of troops, the city alone had a population in the millions, combine with their allied cities, resulting in Rome being able to replace any losses quickly. Best explained by King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who who's very name now means "victory that cost so much it is rendered worthless".

The biggest downside of this system was that each soldier had to equip himself, which limits the recruitment pool to guys with a bit more cash than usual and heavier soldiers to relatively rich people. This problem was solved by Gaius Marius, who reformed Roman army from basically militia to the army of professional soldiers, supplied and equipped by the state who's full time job was fighting for their 20 year terms of service. And thus the fabled Roman Legions was born. While roman legionnaires was recruited mostly from poor people, they where the toughest motherfuckers of their time, as each must first pass the boot camp of death and those weak and undisciplined were washed up. Each legionary was armed with:

• Steel armour, also known as Lorica Segmentata, designed to provide a nice balance of protection and mobility.
• Shortsword, also known as Gladius, his main weapon, optimized for fighting in tight sword-and-shield formation.
• Big shield, also known as Scutum, his second main weapon, used for bashing people to ensure they won't strike back while you're poking them to death with gladius.
• Javelin, also known as Pilum, used for breaking enemy formations by maiming their front ranks or destroying their shields.
• Two wooden stakes to kill vampires set up a portable fortress every night.
• A sling, used to kill those annoying lightly armored skirmishers and shoot retreating enemies in the back.
• A set of lead balls to throw them with aforementioned sling.
• A pack with a blanket, pot, shovel, wineskin and supply of grain so they could march all day long
• A set of hardened steel balls to Hold The Fucking Line.

The Legions also were Rome's odd job men. If they needed to police a province, set up a mine, build a road or similar, they had the Legionaries do it. Each Legion had 6,000 men when at full strength that was divided into sub-units of 80 called Centuries, each led by a especially badass and literate motherfucker called a Centurion and six centuries made a Cohort. Each centuria can fight as one huge unit, called a phalanx, which proved to be effective against barbarians, or split into ten smaller squads called maniples, which on their part was great against other phalanxes, due to their high mobility and flexibility, and because romans being swordsmen weren't as good at phalanxing as other nations, focused on mostly spearmen. Hilariously, both "phalanx" and "maniple" words means the same (finger), just the first one is Greek, and the second is Latin.

Roman legion was also the first army that used siege engines on the field, as they realized ballista bolts and stone "shrapnel" thrown by their Onager catapults could do horrible things to enemy infantry, especially heavy one, which tends to stick in very tight formations. Generally, each centuria had it's own ballista, and each cohort - it's own onager, and a legion also had a separate unit of combat engineers, who's job was to maintain legion's engines and build new ones if needed. Each Legion also had a small amount of light cavalry attached to it used for scouting and chaseing down fleeing enemies.

The Legions were backed up by Auxilia, non citizens recruited from the provinces to serve in the Roman Army. They served for 20 years like the Legionaries, but where the Legionary got a big sum of money at the end of his tour of duty, the Auxilery got full citizenship. Auxileries generally served in various specialized roles, such as archers, skirmishers and cavalry. To prevent Auxilia forces from rebelling they were usually stationed far away from their homelands, a fact which also diversified the individual provinces of the Empire. In short, think of them like being the Imperial Guard minus a fair load of Grimdark.

Later Legions made increasingly heavy use of Heavy Cavalry, largely due to conflicts with the Persians in the East. As things fell apart in the western Roman Empire, Rome could not afford to raise, train and support the legions. As such, they turned more and more to foreign mercenaries for military strength. This proved to be a really bad move as these Mercenaries were of dubious loyalty at best and garrisons of them eventually turned to taking over areas for themselves or betraying the Romans to invaders.

The Roman military first took to the sea during the First Punic Wars. The Romans were always more at home than on land while the Carthaginians had plenty of experience in naval combat. As such, in addition to using the fairly conventional ramming prows, the Romans stationed a large number of troops aboard their ships and invented a device called a corvus, a pivot mounted ramp with a pair of spikes on the end that could be dropped onto enemy ships. This allowed the Romans an edge in boarding enemy ship. After they kicked Carthage's butt, they were mostly engaged in anti-piracy work. Contrary to what movies might have you think, the Romans did not use slaves to man their galley's oars. Instead they hired free people (mostly non citizens) to man them, as they made better rowers and they were not prone to rebellion in battle. Occasionally the navy would buy a few slaves if there was a real pressing need for naval manpower, but they would immediately free them before letting them near the oars.

Roman Empire Analogs in Fantasy

To save time, let's just say the Roman Empire is one of the most heavily copied Cultures in fiction.

• Imperium of Man - While the Imperium also draws inspirations from other political systems (many like the Nazis were also base on the Romans), it's aesthetics and government are strongly based around Roman designs.
  • Ultramar - Ultramar, Roboute Guilliman's home system, is heavily based around a Greek-Roman hybrid empire.
• Codex Alera - Romans end up in a fantasy world and learn how to train sprit Pokémon. That may sound odd but that's actually the literal origin of how the books were written in fact, the author Jim Butcher, was challenged to write a book using two "lame" ideas, the idea in question were "lost Rome legion" and "Pokémon"

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