When did the Roman empire cease to be? In YOUR opinion...

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Originally Posted by Commilitone

I think it ended with Caesar, whih means when the republic fell.

In my opinion, Rome was built to be republic, not an empire. And Caesar wanted to change that too rapidly.

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But it was pretty obvious that Rome as a republic didn't work either. Either the lazy, corrupt senators mishandled various wars, or it all devolved into civil wars. Concentration of power was the only way to achieve stability, but with the expanding borders of the empire, stability became a problem again despite that improvement. It was just too easy for general X waay over in the other end of the empire to achieve some victories defending the empire, then use his loyal legions to march on Rome to get a bigger slice of the power while the Caesar was far away defending the empire on some other border.

The basic problem was never really solved, but just circumvented by subdividing the empire. But the divisions of the empire (tetrarchy and whatnot) just meant that the empire evolved toward splitting into autonomous parts, eventually becoming two separate states.

When the barbarians managed to get process_rq working

:viking: + cheats = :smg:

Who were the Romans?

The Romans claimed their ethnos or nation was composed of 35 clans and/or societies.

These were the:
Aemilia also called Flaminia; a suburb of Rome
Aniensis (Juniorum) named after the Anio, a tributary to the Tiber, which in turn was named after Anius, a king of Etruria who allegedly drowned there.
Arniensis possibly from Arne, a town destroyed by Hercules.
Camilia clan and priestly society dedicated to the service of the national gods.
Claudia from Appius Claudius, descendant of the Sabine chieftain Atta Clausus. Appius Claudius settled with a large retinue near Rome. This patrician Claudian clan later members formed the first dynasty of Post-Republic Period.
Clustumina have no idea?
Collina One of the four original urban tribes of Rome, and followers of the Roman goddess that presided over the local hills.
Cornelia major patrician clan with several distinct steps, the Lentuli, Scipiones and the Balbi.
Esquilina one of the four original urban tribes of Rome.
Fabia major patrician clan whose name was derived from the word faba or bean. Also associated with the Fabaria and the goddess Ceres.
Falerna/Falerina a clan at Rome, possibly from Falerii, from Etruria near the mouth of the Tiber.
Galeria possibly a pre-Latin Roman clan?

no time now...
others were
Horatia
Lemonia
Maecia
Menenia
Oufentina/Oufetina
Palatina
Papiria
Poblilia
Pollia
Pomptina/Pontina
Quirina
Romilia
Sabatia/Sabatina
Scaptia
Sergia
Stellatina
Suburana
Teretina
Tromentina
Velina
Voltinia/Votinia
Voturia

So, the point here is...

by the time of Augustus, the ethnic Romans accounted for only about 10% (possibly less) of the overall population controlled by the leardership of the Claudian clan. Holy Roman Batman! I suppose for Gibbons, 'The Decline and Fall of the Claudian Polyglotistic Cosmopolitan Intercontinental Chiefdom,' just wouldn't do?

[QUOTE=Dayve]That i would absolutely have to disagree with. Europe was ruled by Christianity for a thousand years, there was nothing but war, suppression, murder and suffering. Thou shalt not kill applies only to certain people. It seemed to be perfectly alright for a Christian following the "Thou shalt not kill" rule to massacre untold millions of muslims and take their daughters as sex slaves.

If you had read my post properly, that was exactly what I said, that Christians did not behave as good christians have, but the opposite, and with the pope blessing as in the Crusades, as you correctly noted.

Pharnakes siad 'This is why paganism is the best religon, and is the oldest. Thought I'm an aethisist, not a paganist.'. Even if I am a christian I totally agree with you, i respect aetheism , and fully understand why people decide to be so. The great three religions, Judaism Christianity and Islam only brought useless suffering to many people in the four corners of the earth.


Cheers

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Originally Posted by mrtwisties

In all seriousness, though, I think the British Empire can be usefully compared to the Roman one. In both cases, the civilisation continued (after a fashion) long after the political unit crumbled.

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But whereas the Roman Empire was taken from them by force, the British Empire was given back peacefully in most cases.

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Originally Posted by Pharnakes

This is why paganism is the best religon, and is the oldest. Thought I'm an aethisist, not a paganist.

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I had would have to disagree with that. No one religion is better than any other. Religion in all it's different guises is just a reason to kill someone else because the lies they believe are different from the lies you believe. Atheism is the way forward! Think of how many conflicts and wars could've have been avoided if we all refused to play along with their deceitful game and just got along!

:focus:

In my opinion, the Roman Empire ceased to be in 1453. However way you look at it, the Eastern Empire was still Roman, it had just adapted to suit the times in which it "lived".

Meh, religion is like any other artifact. It is only what people for their own reasons make out of it, no more and no less.

The Christians started playing collective monkey business with the Thou Shalt Not Kill decree around three hours after they heard the Empire had gone Christian, for example, and looking at the religious-right moonbats in the US these days (or merely the office of chaplain quite ubiquitous in militaries, even those of the most thoroughly secularised Western states) one can conclude people haven't changed too much.

I think the following are the things that stood out most from the markings of the fall of Rome.

The foolish emperor Valens welcomed barbarians (and the Visigoths) into Rome and allowed them to fight for Rome, for a price. This cost Rome a lot, the tax rates increased and riots broke out all over the empire, the barbarians weren't loyal and demanded more and more to be paid. All that plus the attacking factions and barbarian hordes who came from nowhere.

The Romans employed barbarian foederati for the pretty simple reason they had about two choices - let the buggers settle in Roman territory in return of thereafter defending it from other incursions, or watch the buggers carve themselves a new home out of Roman territory as they were kind of short of armies to do too much about it. Their whole system was basically falling apart between a growing inability to pay for the armies needed to defend their tax base, with due constant reductions in that base and still greater difficulties in footing the bills...

As they AFAIK were actually kind of short of population too in many places (owing, among other things, to what may have been the entry of smallpox and several other virulent diseases into western Eurasia around the time), it's kinda obvious why they tended to be willing to negotiate.

I know it is kindda off topic, but

I think it was crucial factor that caused the empire to be over when the Legion system declined: quality of training decreased, Rome started to use Germanic soldiers, etc.:inquisitive:

Eh, I don't really see how that would work out. Once the citizen-soldier system collapsed the Roman armies were filled with whatever could be scraped together (ie. whoever was assed out enough that the "three hots and a cot" plus reasonably regular pay and potential for some social mountaineering an army career offered were a sufficient attraction), to a large degree from the slums of the cities and dirt-poor rural hinterlands. Barbarian volunteers from over the border probably made superior soldier material really, since coming from a highly pugnacious and rather sylvan culture most of them probably had considerably better basic combat skills than the flotsam and jetsam available from the Empire itself.

And drill is something you can teach to even horses.

Right, candies and cream-puffs have a tenancy to become the killed, rather than the killer.

Three hots and a cot?

"Steady meals and a roof over your head." Been a pretty strong lure for the famished rag-proletariat to follow the recruiter's drum since quite long ago.
Dying under banners sort of beats starving in the gutter, basically.

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Originally Posted by Watchman

"Steady meals and a roof over your head."

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I thought that '3hot&cot' was largely an unfrequented, US American military Idiom?

What can I say ? I read a lot. :beam:

What is Empire?

From wiki, as I am lazy.

An empire (from the Latin "imperium", denoting military command within the ancient Roman government) is a state that extends dominion over populations distinct culturally and ethnically from the culture/ethnicity at the center of power. Empire contrasts with the example of a federation, where a large or small multi-ethnic state - or even an ethnically homogeneous one — relies on mutual agreement amongst its component political units which retain a high degree of autonomy. Additionally, one can compare physical empires with potentially more abstract or less formally structured hegemonies in which the sphere of influence of a single political unit (such as a city-state) dominates a culturally unified area politically or militarily.

The modern term "empire" derives from the Latin word imperium, a word coined in what became possibly the most famous example of this sort of political structure, the Roman Empire. For many centuries, the term "Empire" in the West applied exclusively to states which considered themselves to be successors to the Roman Empire.

The discovery of the New World provided an opportunity for many European states to embark upon programs of imperialism on a model equal to the Roman and Carthaginian colonization. Under this model (previously tried in the Old World in the Canary Islands and in Ireland), subject states became de jure subordinate to the imperial state, rather than de facto as in earlier empires. This led to a good deal of resentment in the client states, and therefore probably to the demise of this system by the early- to mid-twentieth century.

The 19th century saw the birth or strength of many European colonial empires, all of them dismembered by the 20th century. One problem with the European imperial model came from arbitrary boundaries. In the interest of expediency, an imperial power tended to carve out a client state based solely on convenience of geography, while ignoring extreme cultural differences in the resulting area. An example of the attendant problems occurred in the Indian sub-continent. Formerly part of the British Empire, when the sub-continent gained its independence it split along cultural/religious lines, producing modern India and the two-part country of Pakistan, which later split yet again resulting in the independence of Bangladesh [3]. In other areas, like Africa, those borders still shape present days countries, and the African Union made its explicit policy to preserve them in order to avoid war and political instability.


The point here is...

that due to the modern usage of the word, Rome was technically an Empire while it only held authority within Italy (in the Early Republic Period).