Roman Empire

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The Roman Empire is defined as that period of time, between 27 BCE and 476 CE, when the city of Rome ruled the known world. The Roman Empire begins when Augustus Caesar becomes the first Emperor of Rome and ends when the last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, is deposed by the Germanic King Odoacer.

Following the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE, Gaius Octavius Thurninus, Julius Caesar's nephew and heir, became the first Emperor of Rome and took the name Augustus Caesar. Julius Caesar himself never held the title `Emperor' but, rather, `Dictator' a title the Senate could not help but grant him as Caesar held supreme military and political power at the time. In contrast, the Senate lavished praise and power on Augustus because he had destroyed Rome's enemies and brought much needed stability.

Augustus ruled the Empire from 30 BCE until 14 CE when he died. In that time, as he said himself, he "found Rome a city of clay but left it a city of marble." Augustus reformed the laws of the city and the Empire by extension, secured Rome's borders, initiated vast building projects, and secured the Empire a lasting name as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, political and cultural powers in history. The Pax Romana (Roman Peace) also known as the Pax Augusta which he initiated and maintained, was a time of peace and prosperity hitherto unknown.

Following Augustus’ death, power passed to his heir, Tiberius, who continued many of the Emperor’s policies but lacked the strength of character and vision which so defined Augustus. This trend would continue, more or less steadily, with the emperors who followed. The great exception is the period of the Five Good Emperors of Rome, between 96 and 180 CE, when five exceptional men ruled in sequence. The Five Good Emperors were Nerva (96-98) Trajan (98-117) Hadrian (117-138) Antoninus Pius (138-161) and Marcus Aurelius (161-180). Under their leadership, the Roman Empire grew stronger, more stable, and expanded in size and scope. The Roman Empire grew so large that the central government in the city of Rome could no longer effectively rule the vast territory. In 285 CE the Emperor Diocletian divided the empire in half, creating the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire (known also as the Byzantine Empire).

It was this grand empire which was still thriving in 312 CE when Constantine defeated his rival, Maxentius, at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. Believing that Jesus Christ was responsible for his victory, Constantine initiated a series of laws which culminated in the decree making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, both eastern and western. At the First Council of Nicea, Constantine presided over the gathering to codify the faith and decide on important issues such as the divinity of Jesus and which manuscripts would be collected to form the book we know today as The Bible.

Theodosius I (379-395) took Constantine’s religious reforms to their natural ends, outlawed pagan worship throughout the empire, closed the schools and universities and converted pagan temples into Christian churches. It was during this time that Plato’s famous Academy was closed by Theodosius’ decree. Many of his reforms were unpopular with both the Roman aristocracy and the common people who held to the traditional values of pagan practice. The unity of social duties and religious belief which paganism provided was severed by the institution of a religion which removed the gods from the earth and human society and proclaimed only one God who ruled from the heavens. Theodosius I devoted so much effort to promoting Christianity that he seems to have neglected other duties as Emperor and would be the last to rule both Eastern and Western Empires.

From 376-382 Rome fought a series of battles against invading Goths known today as the Gothic War. At the Battle of Adrianople, 9 August 378, the Roman Emperor Valens was defeated and this battle historians mark as the beginning of the decline of the Western Roman Empire. Various theories have been suggested as to the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire but, even today, there is no universal agreement on what those specific factors were. Edward Gibbon has famously argued in his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that Christianity played a pivotal role in that the new religion undermined the social mores of the empire which paganism provided. The theory that Christianity was a root cause in the Western Empire’s fall was debated long before Gibbon, however as Orosius argued Christianity’s innocence in Rome’s decline as early as 418 CE. Orosius claimed it was primarily paganism itself and pagan practices which brought about the fall of Rome. Other influences which have been noted range from the corruption of the governing elite to the ungovernable vastness of the empire to the growing strength of the Germanic tribes.

Whatever the factors may have been, the Western Roman Empire officially ended 4 September 476 when Emperor Romulus Augustus was deposed by the Germanic king Odoacer (though some historians date the end as 480 CE with the death of Julius Nepos). The Eastern Roman Empire continued on as the Byzantine Empire until 1453 and, though known early on as simply `the Roman Empire’, it did not much resemble that entity at all. The Western Roman Empire would become re-invented later as The Holy Roman Empire but that entity, also, was far removed from the Roman Empire of antiquity and was an `empire’ in name only. After the slow decline and fall, the Roman Empire would never rise again.

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