Roma Aeterna, v. 1.0.
1st Century CE - 9th Century CE
1st Century CE: The Roman Empire gradually conquers Germania Magna, Bohemia, Dacia, Nubia, and Britannia. In Northern Europe, only Scandinavia, Caledonia, Hibernia, and the great Sarmatian plain remain outside Rome’s control. In early 1st Century CE, the Romans get a long string of victories in Germania, annexing it up to the Elbe. A victorious war spurred by a Nubian invasion grants control of Nubia as well. This builds a momentum during the early and middle span of the century that leads to the annexation of Bohemia, Dacia, and Germania Magna up to the Vistula-Carpathians-Dneister line. The assimilation of Germania Magna and Dacia repeats the pattern of Gallia and Hispania in the previous centuries: there are a few crushed rebellion attempts and some decades of unrest, then those areas gradually pacify down in long-term development and the onset of Romanization. The conquest of Britannia occurs in the mid-late span of the century, as the new Northern provinces are settling down, and follows the same basic pattern as well. The Roman leaders spurn the conquest of Cimbria, Caledonia, and Hibernia, deeming those lands of little overall value for the effort. Defensive fortifications are built at the borders of Cimbria and Caledonia, and at the Vistula-Dniester line to protect Roman Britannia and Germania-Dacia.
The borders of the Empire are established at the Vistula-Carpathians-Dniester line in Eastern Europe, and at the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile in Africa. Romanization of Northern Europe starts in earnest as its conquest and the urge to make good use of all that new and underexploited land spur the discovery of various technological improvements (heavy plough, three-field system, and horse collar) which allow extensive development of Northern Europe. Control of amber sources in Northern Germania and iron-rich Germanic provinces benefits Rome economically as well. Over the next two centuries, the Roman road system is expanded across Northern Europe to reach the Eastern border.
2nd Century: At the turn of the century, the ongoing pacification and settlement of Germania Magna, Dacia, and Britannia is reducing the military burden in the North (also thanks to the new, much shorter Eastern border) and it allows to recruit sizable numbers of new Germanic auxiliaries. This enables a new round of expansion for the Roman Empire as a major campaign against Parthia is prepared.
Despite various difficulties, the legions freed up from the shortened borders in Europe, and the expanded size of the Auxiliary corps, allow Rome to deal Parthia a decisive defeat in a series of campaigns. The peace treaty with Parthia turns Mesopotamia and Armenia into Roman provinces and makes Persia an unofficial client state of Rome (even if it keeps formal independence) that keeps a good neighbour policy with the Empire. The new Roman border in the Middle East is set at the Zagros Mountains, where the Empire builds defensive fortifications. Some rebellions of the Jewish community in Judea, Cyprus, Alexandria, and Cyrene also occur during this period, but may be contained and suppressed without excessive trouble, thanks to the extra manpower. During the rest of the century, other minor campaigns extend the borders of Roman Nubia province to the Sudd and the outskirts of the Ethiopian Highland. Extensive development of Northern Europe is ongoing with the settlement of Romanized natives, discharged veterans, and colonists from other parts of the Empire in the new provinces, as the new agricultural technologies cause a strong increase of agricultural yield, tax revenues, and population throughout the area.
Driven by conquests in the Middle East, the Roman state undergoes the renovation and expansion of the Suez Canal waterway that existed since Ancient Egypt. Over time, it proves fundamental to allow Rome efficient communication between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, and to improve trade and cultural exchanges with the Asian civilizations. The success of the project (which causes the lock to be developed) also provides the later inspiration for the creation of the European canal system.
News from Parthia about a mighty and sophisticated civilization in the Far East spurs Rome to send a flotilla of triremes and liberunes to seek contact with China. The voyage is nothing short of epic, and lasts a little more than a year, as the fleet reaches India, reprovisions, and follows the coasts of South East Asia up to China and back. But the rewards are huge, as the Roman explorers make official diplomatic contact with Han China, whose dignitaries are impressed by the powerful strangers coming from the Far West. In a few years, regular diplomatic contacts and trade deals are established across Central Asia by land and by sea routes across India and South East Asia. Both civilizations greately benefit from the strong trade links and from the groundbreaking cultural and technological exchanges that gradually follow.
It is a time of significant technological progress for the main Eurasian civilizations: various important discoveries are first adopted and gradually mastered and spread through the Roman Empire over the next two centuries from improved contacts with India and China (papermaking, blast furnace & cast iron, seed drill, hand crank, crossbow, and woodblock printing) or independent development (wheelbarrow, abacus, caliper, waterwheel & watermill, solid-treed saddle & stirrups, iron horseshoes, and cranes). On its side, China gains knowledge of concrete, glassware, reverse-overshot type waterwheels, balistas, onagers, plumbing, and screw presses.
3rd Century CE: this is a time of major crisis for Rome as a row of civil wars, climactic changes, plagues, and foreign invasions strike the Empire. A political change in Persia, with the takeover of a ruling elite hostile to Roman influence, causes it to break away from Roman control and turn aggressive. Under the impact of the civil wars, the Empire breaks down in several warring breakaway states, while invading Persia makes inroads into Armenia, Syria, and Mesopotamia. However, the territorial and economic expansion and the technological improvements of the last two centuries prevent the crisis from causing the irreversible economic and social damage that the Empire would have suffered in their absence. By the last part of the Century, the political unity of Rome and its Eastern borders are gradually re-established as the various fragments of the Empire get consolidated in two halves, then re-unified, and the Persians are eventually pushed back beyond the Zagros.
At the start of the century, Roman citizenship is granted to all free subjects of the Empire.
In the aftermath of the crisis, several extensive reforms are established and gradually entrenched over the following two centuries, to deal with the issues revealed by the crisis:
- A professional scholar bureaucracy is created, broadly based on a modified version of the Chinese model (fairly well-known thanks to regular contacts with the Far East) combined with Roman ideas derived from the administrative arm of the military; it helps to improve the overall efficiency of the state and to balance the influence of the professional military and its military administrative arm; the two branches of the civil service (and more broadly, the army and the bureaucracy) share responsibilities with varying degrees of authority in different areas of the Empire, and often exchange personnel, especially with the military branch "retiring" in the civilian service through a preferential recruitment channel.
- A new specialized military corps in Italy (the Legio I Italica) is created to be a counterweight for the Praetorian Guard (and vice-versa).
- A system of strong property rights with lease and usufruct contracts for land development akin to sharecropping is created. Reform of land ownership combines the recognition of private ownership and the rewarding of cultivators with a harvest share commensurate with their efforts. A tax reform lifts restrictions to finance and commerce and establishes property titles as the assessment basis; this encourages the wealthy elites away from absentee landholding and in intensive development of agriculture and related pursuits like pottery and brick-making, mining, quarrying, and forestry. Over time this also gradually encourages investment in trade and industry as a “secondary” source of income, such as factory tanneries, textile manufacture, pottery workshops and such as part of the landed estate, and trade as part of the sales and raw materials purchasing channels.
- The Army is restructured to create a mobile force, and the provisions are strengthened to grant veterans substantial land grants by the state in the provinces when they discharge, both in the less developed areas of the Empire and from the vast estates expropriated because of the civil wars.
- With the extension of the citizenship, the recruitment pool of the Auxiliares has been largely drying up, so they are reformed to become a militia-reserve corps manned by veteran legionaries who ended their regular military service along with local cohorts recruited as militias and law enforcement corps in the non-militarized provinces or amongst trusted allies and mercenary forces from beyond the border in frontier provinces. They support enlisted legionaries by training recruits, policing rear areas, garrisoning forts and other rear-echelon duties, and form the backbone of a second-tier defensive system and law-enforcement network that spans the Empire (performing duties as city watchmen and highway patrols against banditry). Existing forms of local law enforcement and control, either military (stationarii, beneficiarii, vigiles) or local (paraphylakes, diogmitai, iuventutes, doryphoroi) are gradually incorporated in this system. In emergency situations, the veteran troops in the Auxiliares may be recalled into active service in the legions.
- To compensate veterans for the extended service, legionaries are given full rights of conubium - full legal marriage - with their women and legitimacy for their children.
- With the extension of citizenship, the existing system of consultative provincial assemblies and legations to the central government is strengthened and extended throught the Empire. Each province has meetings of representatives of the ruling classes of the province at a significant cultic centre at which issues get be discussed, loyal proclamations issued, petitions presented, and ceremonies held. The provincial assembly (or local cities if they get the assembly's permission, especially if legations from competing cities would present their cases against each other) regularly sends a legation of highly qualified, influential and smart men to Rome to present the Emperor with a proclamation of loyalty on every session (they meet annually or at longer, but regular, intervals, sometimes coinciding with sacred games) and uses the opportunity to send their petitions and grievances along. The legation stays in Rome more or less permanently and only returns to report to the next assembly. Over time this grows into an informal but effective representation of the provinces, which eventually gets formalized with their admission in the Senate’s ranks. The new meritocratic professional civil service, and its preferential recruitment of the “retired” upper echelons of the army, also provides many new members to the Senate, which evolves to improve its representative character of the various Roman elites across the Empire and strengthen the ties between them and the Imperial government.
- A series of groundbreaking laws provide a formal codifying of the Imperial succession (the ruling Emperor nominates his successor with the Senate’s assent) and lays the basis for a rough but effective power-sharing agreement between the Emperor and the Senate. The Emperor manages military affairs and administration of the state, and may make minor laws by decree, but all legislation that affects taxation, the functioning of the Roman state, or the rights of Roman citizens in a major way needs the consent of the Senate.
- A policy is established of significant limitations for the amount of troops a single general may command, and of swapping generals around on a regular basis between various areas of the Empire, barring emergencies and special authorization of the Emperor. While this harms effectiveness somewhat, it significantly reduces the risk of revolts, and other military reforms, technological improvements, and good care for troop training, arms, and generalship largely make up for it.
4th Century: A recovering Roman Empire begins a new cycle of expansion and significant technological progress. It reaps the benefits from the reforms, two centuries of Romanization of Northern Europe, as well as some technological advances that substantially improve the quality of Roman cavalry and archery, spurred by the ongoing conflicts with Persia. A series of military campaigns lead to the conquest and gradual pacification of Arabia, Caledonia, and Hibernia. The conflict with Persia intermittently continues to an indecisive result, which still allows Rome a successful entrenchment of the Zagros line and to get the upper hand in border clashes more often than not, due to gradual improvement of its cavalry and archery. Northern Europe is becoming more and more populous and economically developed, and coming close to Western Europe in character, while the latter is getting akin to the Mediterranean lands in importance as an heartland of the Empire. By now, Mesopotamia is more or less as Roman in character as the Eastern Mediterranean lands.
The successful example of the Suez Canal pushes various Emperors to undergo a vast program of canal construction in Northern Europe. Over the next two centuries an extensive canal system is built and gradually extended to link the Rhine, Scheldt, Meuse, Seine, Loire, Rhone, Saone, and Garonne rivers in Gallia, and the Rhine, Weser, Elbe, Oder, and Vistula rivers in Germania. Other canals are also built in Germania and Dacia to link the Rhine with the Danube (as Roman engineers master the technique of summit level canals), the Elbe and the Oder with the Danube, and the Vistula with the Dniester.
Several technological innovations are introduced in this period and gradually spread in the Empire over the next two centuries, including mobile type printing, artesian wells, grindstones, horizontal loom, distillation, wine press, soap, water hammer, arched saddle, longbow, and spurs.
Renewed confidence of the Roman people in their society results into the strong revitalization of European polytheism: the various polytheistic religions that exist within the Empire (Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Semitic, Egyptian, etc.) are merged into an inclusive syncretistic “Romanist” system and pantheon, which borrows strong pantheistic and monistic elements from Roman philosophy (especially Stoicism and Epicureanism), Buddhism, and Hinduism. It develops the doctrine that an universal immanent divine force exists, which creates fate and natural law, and the various gods are self-aware universal archetypal expressions of natural law, who wear different faces and names in different cultures, and may partially affect (but not entirely abrogate) fate and natural law in their respective fields of responsibility. Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern mystery cults and monotheistic religions (such as Christianity, Mithraism, and Zoroastrianism) begin to lose influence and popularity or to be gradually absorbed into Romanism.
A system of unitary procedure and law, with recognized authorities to provide legal opinion and formalized educational institutions for practitioners, is developed.
Legal reforms create increasingly complex financial instruments in trade, banking and investment, including limited liability and full legal personage, and different legal systems for slavery: 'house' slaves are provided with an extended set of legal rights and become trusted retainers who act as commercial agents, estate administrators, and other vital functionaries, perform paramilitary functions, provide skilled labor and ultimately form a stratum of 'ministerial' upper class, while 'chattel' slaves remain a labor reserve or luxury consumption good (ever more costly, but ultimately disposable).
A toned-down form of temporary "house slavery" is developed to provide apprenticeship: A house-born slave (verna) who shows promise in youth is trained, either in-house or by being lent or sold to someone who has use for him (trade in gifted children is brisk). Once he has the required skills (as an accountant, merchant, administrator, physician, artisan or whatever), he works for the profit of his owner. These people only change hands rarely, and if they do it is for large sums. Traditionally, after ten to fifteen years of service (in comfortable quarters and nice conditions, with some informal pay), they are granted their freedom and continue to work for their masters, now for pay. Some may strike out on their own, though they are still bound to them by legal ties (may not compete with them or act against their interests). Many former owners provide seed capital for their freedmen. Many free-born but poor children join a modified form of this system by temporary slavery contracts that provide legally-enforceable guarantees of liberation after a fixed term of service and of personal freedom for the temporary “apprentice slave”.
5th Century: Various groups of Central Asian nomads unify in a vast confederation and make a massive breakout in Germania and Dacia. The effort to contain the nomad invaders absorbs the Empire’s energies for the good part of the century, and forces it to shelve any plans for an all-out effort to conquer Persia. However, by now Rome has the internal stability and military resources to reduce the nomad breakout to a huge, very taxing, decades-long but manageable border security problem, instead of an insurmountable existential threat. The improved cavalry and archery developed in the Persian wars allow the legions, who have maintained their excellent infantry quality, to be an effective match for nomad breakouts. Eventually the invaders are defeated and repelled by the Roman legions, using combined arms tactics between heavy cavalry and archers. The conflict leads to the Roman annexation of the Bosporan kingdom and a strip of territory in Eastern Europe up to the Neman-Western Bug-Southern Bug line. Rome undergoes the construction of an extensive fortification system on the Eastern border (the “Great Limes”) which becomes the effective twin of China's Great Wall. In the aftermath of the nomads’ onslaught, Eastern Europe experiences some sizable demographic changes: several Germanic and Slavic peoples are pushed in Sarmatia to mingle with Baltic and Iranic tribes, while several others are allowed to settle in the Empire (on the Romans’ terms) to help populate the new border provinces. Romanization and development of coastal Arabia proceeds apace. Hostilities with Persia cool down as that empire is also suffering a major series of attacks from steppe nomads on its Central Asian border. A series of border clashes between Rome and Aksum entrench their border on the outskirts of the Ethiopian highlands, as the Romans are too exhausted to seriously contemplate a conquest of Aksum.
The Romanist religion spreads to become the faith of the majority of the Roman Empire's population in the West and the plurality in the East. A kind of informal religious leadership for Romanism is gradually established both as a subset of the civil service and as a body of scholars that combine expertise in classical literature (especially as relevant to mythology), law, philosophy, and religious ritual. Gradually the body of lore expected from Romanist scholars grows to include logic, mathematics, and empirical expertise in medicine and natural philosophy as well. Romanist scholars undergo a vast effort to organize an extensive corpus of Greco-Roman literature and philosophy relevant to Romanism, and to integrate it with the compiled oral literature from other traditions within the Empire, such as the Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic cultures. Mystery cults largely fall in obscurity as the vast majority of their following is absorbed by Romanism. Middle Eastern monotheistic and dualistic religions (Christianity, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism) steadily keep losing influence, following, and sympathies within the Empire, as many Roman citizens come to see such “alien” religions as a distasteful, unwholesome, and troublesome expression of disloyalty to Roman culture. The Emperors and the Senate heavily tax and heap legal penalties on followers of religions who refuse to give allegiance to Rome and the Emperor in Romanist ceremonies.
The "Roman Agricultural Revolution" takes off. Roman traders and explorers travel across most of the Old World, and establish an early global economy across most of Asia and Africa and all of Europe, with their trade networks extending from the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Indian Ocean and China Sea in the east. The global economy established by Roman traders across the Old World, enables the diffusion of many crops and farming techniques among different parts of the Roman world, as well as the adaptation of crops and techniques from and to regions beyond the Roman world. Hundreds of new crops are diffused throughout Roman lands, which previously had not grown these crops, as a result of the Roman Agricultural Revolution. Some of these crops include rye, sugar cane, rice, citrus fruit, apricots, bananas, coconut palms, cotton, aubergines, saffron, lemons, sour oranges, eggplants, limes, almonds, figs, sorghum, mangos, artichokes, spinach, carrots, hard wheat, colocasia, plantains, and watermelons, among hundreds of other crops. Romans start developing a scientific approach to agriculture based on three major elements: sophisticated systems of crop rotation, where land is cropped four or more times in a two-year period, highly developed irrigation techniques, using machines such as norias, water mills, water raising machines, dams and reservoirs, which allow to greatly expand the exploitable land area, and the introduction of a large variety of crops which are studied and catalogued according to the season, type of land and amount of water they require. Manufacture of silk spreads in the Roman Empire.
Technological progress continues, with the diffusion of many numerous innovative industrial uses of water mills, early industrial uses of tidal power, wind power, and fossil fuels such as petroleum, and the earliest large factory complexes. A variety of industrial mills are invented in the Roman world, including fulling mills, gristmills, hullers, paper mills, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills, sugar mills, tide mills, and windmills. Roman engineers also invent crankshafts, connecting rods, and water turbines, first employ gears in mills and water-raising machines, and pioneer the use of dams as a source of water power, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines.
Rural slavery changes as well as a result of the economic and legal changes: latifundia rural labourers become more akin to serfs than chattel slaves. They are granted some more personal rights, but their freedom of movement is still restricted. They live in estate enclosed villages, forming a nerwork of sub-communities, which are managed by a freedman steward, whom worked his way to his position, and lives in a bigger house than his former kind, whom either live in huts or in slave-barracks. Records are kept on slave families, individuals, and their relations and they are sometimes moved around the estate, or traded to other estates, to prevent inbreeding. Every now and then, children from the slave families may be collected by servants of the landlord to become either new household staff, or perform seasonal work on the lord’s villa/manor. Gifted or surplus children may be sold on through the market system, and enter the urban household slavery system, where they are given to professionals as slave-apprentices, or given as rewards to the landlord's social clients. Slaves from beyond the Empire serve alongside condemned criminals in dangerous occupations, such as mining and gladiatorial combat.
Educational institutions for legal practitioners begin to transform under the influence of Romanist scholarship into a full-fledged higher education system as they provide education into other subjects. Their curriculum grows to include law, medicine, philosophy, Romanist classics, mathematics, grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, accounting, architecture/engineering, and natural philosophy.
6th Century: A renewed major effort by Rome to conquer Persia hits the latter in a moment of serious weakness due to an ongoing civil war caused by dynastic strife, and leads to Roman conquest and annexation of the Persian plateau. Conquered Persia however remains a hotbed of rebellion and strife due to the remarkable ability of Persian culture to successfully resist Romanization (a trait the Persians only appear to share with the Jews among the peoples of Western Eurasia) and the increasingly hostile attitude of Roman culture to Middle Eastern monotheist religions. The latter also leads to a renewed row of rebellions by the Jewish community, which the Legions quash. The Empire also faces and successfully repels the encroachment in southern Sarmatia by another Central Asian nomad confederation. Roman legions are able to use the military tactics they have mastered in the previous century, to very good effect. The new nomad threat increases the interest of the Imperial government to build up the border Sarmatian provinces as a strong frontier bulwark.
A major effort is started to connect the border territories in Western Sarmatia to the Roman road and canal system and foster their settlement. The canal system is gradually expanded to link the Vistula with the Niemen and Western Bug, as well as the Danube with the Dniester and Southern Bug. After several centuries of settlement and development, Northern Europe has essentially reached the level of Western Europe in population and economic development, and in combination both areas make for a second heartland of the Empire that matches the one of the Mediterranean lands in importance for the Roman civilization. By now, coastal Arabia is more or less as Roman in character as Mesopotamia. Plague hits again the Empire, stopping Roman expansion in Asia as the plans for an invasion of India are shelved. The plague heightens interest into medicine and natural philosophy in Roman culture.
Many industries are generated due to the Roman Agricultural Revolution, including the earliest industries for agribusiness, astronomical instruments, ceramics, chemicals, distillation technologies, clocks, glass, mechanical hydro-powered and wind-powered machinery, matting, mosaics, pulp and paper industry, perfumery, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, rope-making, shipping, shipbuilding, silk, sugar, textiles, weapons, and the mining of minerals such as sulfur, ammonia, lead and iron. The first large factory complexes are built for many of these industries. The Roman domestic water system is improved, with the development of a widespread network of sewers, public baths, drinking fountains, piped drinking water supplies, and widespread private and public toilet and bathing facilities in all cities.
Two types of economic systems are developing in parallel in the Roman world. Command economy and politically-driven investment by the government bureaucracy and military, most prominent in newly-acquired and far-off provinces, prompt agricultural development and colonization of under-exploited lands, typically combining the settlement of veterans and colonists in state colonies and in individual land grants, building and extension of the road network, the canal network in Europe, and the irrigation system in the Middle East, as well as the establishment of an extensive postal system. At the same time, the first market economy and earliest forms of merchant capitalism, most prominent in the Mediterranean provinces, but also briskly expanding to Britannia, Gallia, Hispania, and Germania, take root; a vigorous monetary economy is created on the basis of the expanding levels of circulation of a stable high-value currency (the denarius), with market-driven agricultural development, involving the spread of advice, education, and free seeds, and the introduction of high value crops or animals to areas where they were previously unknown, the development of an extensive international trade network, and widespread manufacturing. Innovative new business techniques and forms of business organization are introduced by economists, merchants and traders during this time. Such innovations include the earliest trading companies, big businesses, contracts, bills of exchange, long-distance international trade, the first forms of limited partnerships, the issuing of insurance, and the earliest forms of credit, debt, profit, loss, capital, capital accumulation, circulating capital, capital expenditure, revenue, cheques, promissory notes, trusts and charitable trusts, startup companies, savings accounts, transactional accounts, pawning, loaning, exchange rates, bankers, money changers, ledgers, deposits, assignments, the double-entry bookkeeping system, and lawsuits.
Technological progress steadily continues in the Roman world: new technologies that spread in the Empire include buttons, mirrors, rat traps, spectacles, spinning wheels, magnets, compass, counterweight trebuchets, astrolabes, rib vault, coffee, hang glider, hard soap, shampoo, nitric acid, alembic, valve, reciprocating, combination lock, quilting, pointed arch, and surgical catgut.
The formalized higher education system spreads throughout the Roman Empire and takes the shape of an informal “university” system as they develop an effective accreditation system through letters of commendation: teachers write those for promising students, and one collects a series of them from a number of senior philosophers/doctors/architects/jurists/whatever until one is effectively recognized as an established scholar. This gets official support by Imperial authority as the letters of commendation become a preferential title of merit for civil service recruitment and getting appointments in some branches of the military, and some branches of the civil service are accredited as the senior ranks of the commendation system (e.g. as jurisconsults of imperial authority or archiatroi). The students of the great institutions where the most accredited masters cluster become the academic elite, while the majority of accredited scholars walk out of provincial schools with letters of commendation detailing what they learned and from who.
The development of the “university” system, supported by Romanist culture, spurs a heightened empiric interest into logic, mathematics, natural philosophy, and medicine: notable scientific advances of the 6th-9th centuries include the first definitions of the scientific method, development of a decimal place value number system and the zero, systematization of arithmetic and algebra, solution of linear and quadratic equations, and those polynomials of higher degree that could be reduced to quadratics through substitution, first developments in differential calculus, the theory of impetus, the first integrated systematization of mechanics, optics and hydrodynamics, the development of chemistry, rediscovery of atomism, advances in trigonometry with the definition of the trigonometric functions, advances in surgery with the standardization of surgical instruments, the development of a mathematical scale to quantify the strength of drugs, and a system that would allow a doctor to determine in advance the most critical days of a patient's illness, the introduction of systematic experimentation and quantification into the study of physiology, the discovery of the contagious nature of infectious diseases, the introduction of quarantine to limit the spread of contagious diseases, and the introduction of experimental medicine and clinical trials.
Monotheistic religions have been marginalized to a tiny minority by Romanism in the West, and reduced to a minority in the Middle East (except Persia). Several riots and uprisings occur in the Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian communities against the unfair tax burden and legal penalties that these minorities suffer. Besides harsh military repression, the Emperors and the Senate retaliate by enforcing more of the above in the form of several unfavourable property and inheritance codes on these religious minorities. This further accelerates the decline of Christianity and Zoroastrianism across the region (except in the Persian plateau). Only the Jew community apparently remains strong thanks to its close-knit community support system. Zoroastrianism also remains widespread in Persia, where it is seen as a element of “nationalist” resistance to Roman rule.
7th Century: The Empire gradually recovers from the effects of the plague. However, a nasty dynastic and political crisis leads to the first major bout of civil wars in four centuries and the breakdown of the Empire in several fragments. Rebellious Persians seize the opportunity to re-establish the independence of their empire. By the end of the century, clashes between the various breakaway Roman states lead to their consolidation into a Western Roman Empire and an Eastern Roman Empire, again mirroring the West-East division that tends to surface in times of strife for the Roman polity (a parallel to the similar North-South division in Imperial China).
Renewed uprisings by Jews and Zoroastrians are quelled by the Romans with large-scale repressions, enslavement, and deportations, which eventually spell an end to the existence of those communities as a recognizable significant element in the Roman population. The successful breakaway of Persia however protects the heartland of Zoroastrianism from the brunt of large-scale Roman persecution. Survivors are largely expelled beyond the borders of the Empire, to settle in Persia, Central Asia, Aksum, and Sarmatia. Religious dissidence otherwise gradually dies out in Roman Middle East as the surviving elements of the Christian and Manichean communities convert to Romanism or flee to Persia to escape the unfavourable Roman tax and property regime.
Notable technological developments of this period include the hourglass, mechanical clocks, dry compass, cross-staff, mariner's astrolabe, stern-mounted rudder, arch bridge, steel crossbow, and oil paint.
Despite the very good quality that the Roman road and canal system has achieved, the vast extension the Empire has reached and the growing amount of trade between different areas of the Roman world and beyond spur the interest of the army, civil service, and private traders into ways to make sea and land transport and communication more reliable and efficient.
By the end of this century Romanism has become the faith of the overwhelming majority of the population in the Roman Empire.
8th Century: By the end of this century, the Roman Empire reunifies after a century and half of division as the WRE conquers the ERE in a series of military clashes. Ongoing conflicts between the Romans and Persia first show an indecisive outcome, then a Persian breakthrough in the Middle East, and eventually a successful Roman counterattack and the re-establishment of the classical Zagros border.
The reunification wars and the perennial conflict with Persia heighten the interest of the Roman elite for logistic and communication efficiency concerns. The Roman road and canal system already does a lot to improve them for many areas of the Empire in comparison to other civilizations of similar technological level. However, there are many areas of the Roman Empire that cannot be efficiently reached by the road-canal system, either for military, administrative, or trade purposes, and Roman seafaring capabilities are yet fully up to the task; so both the Imperial government and the Roman trading elites seek for supplementary solutions.
On one hand, this spurs interest in developing more efficient seafaring technologies. The Romans have been gradually and significantly improving their navigational capabilities during the last few centuries, especially as it concerns the reliability of naval trade exchanges with India and China. Now this results in a concerted effort to improve the quality of Roman shipbuilding, in order to develop a truly ocean-worthy navy and merchant fleet. On the other hand, efforts to improve the quality of communications for military and administrative purposes result in the proposal of a comprehensive post-rider network service to operate on a regular schedule throughout the Empire. The expenses to establish such a service are heavy, so the issue is hotly debated in the Imperial bureaucracy and the Senate. Eventually, the expense issue is surmounted when representatives of the trading elites in the Senate propose, and the imperial bureaucracy accept, to fund the system through a new tax in exchange for opening the service to private correspondence and business messages, too. All the while, serious effort is given by various Roman scholars and engineers to develop a reliable optical telegraph system, on the basis of the available, but less efficient, hydraulic telegraph systems.
By the last part of the century, a new threat surfaces for Rome, as the Norse barbarians from Scandinavia, so far deemed not really worth the effort of conquest by the Roman ruling elite, start to seriously harass the Roman world with frequent raids on towns laying on the coasts and along the rivers of Western and Northern Europe.
In the aftermath of division and reunification of the Roman state, some important political reforms are enacted: the Senate’s membership is reformed to make it fully representative of landed and trading urban elites across the Empire, as well as the upper echelons of the army and the civil service; in the case that established Imperial succession breaks down, the revised succession law mandates that the new Emperor gets elected by a Senate supermajority consensus which effectively guarantees a say to the various elements of the Roman ruling elite; a systematic codification of the various basic laws that regulate the functioning of the Roman state is formalized as Rome’s “Great Law”; members of the army and civil service are required to swear (and subject to a training that emphasizes) loyalty to the Emperor, the Senate, and the Great Law.
9th century: Naval raids by Norse barbarians and a new onslaught of steppe nomad invaders in Western Sarmatia and Bosporus make for serious security problems for Rome during this period, and force the Empire to expand the size of the military and redeploy several legions in the threatened areas. Although this contains the problem to a degree, it remains an insufficient and costly response, fueling the efforts to build a truly ocean-worthy Navy for Rome and some second thinking about the strategic importance of the Baltic. Fortunately Persia is also experiencing similar, just as serious, security problems on its northern border, which forces a lull in the long-standing Roman-Persian feud.
By the end of the century, the steadily improving quality of the Roman Navy allows the Empire to gradually gain the level field, then somewhat of an upper hand, in the conflict with the Norse raiders. The Romans make several punitive raids of their own in Scandinavia, but due to the poor value of the land, they do not make a serious effort to conquer most of the region. The one exception is Cimbria and coastal southern Sweden, which Roman legions invade and ruthlessly subjugate, in an effort to gain full control of the access to the Baltic. The conflict also stirs some significant interest in the Roman elites for the fertile and amber-rich lands of the Baltic coast. This however is not acted upon, due to the military effort of containing and repelling the steppe nomads' breakout in Western Sarmatia and Bosporus (a task the Legions have become remarkably effective at, after several centuries of experience). The Roman comeback makes the Norse re-focus their attention and ambitions to Sarmatia, where some organized polities are arising from the commingling of Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, and Iranic peoples in the northern woodlands and the southern plains.
Over the century, the postal service gradually spreads across the Empire, and a sufficiently efficient and reliable optical telegraph system is eventually mastered by Roman scholars and engineers. In the following two centuries, it is adopted and gradually spread across the Empire by the postal service, whose speed and efficiency of communication it vastly improves. In combination, the development of a truly ocean-worthy naval technology and the optical telegraph system do away with many of the long-standing logistical and communication troubles of the Roman Empire. Other important technological achievements of Rome in this period include the wine press, artesian well, threadwheel crane, stationary harbour crane, compound crank, vertical windmill, watermark, forest glass, liquor, and chimney. Most importantly, there is also the adoption of the Hindu positional decimal numeral system, and the mastery of some mathematical discoveries, such as negative numbers, thanks to exchanges with India. Despite some initial resistance by traditionalists, the Hindu numeral system soon proves its decisive superiority in commercial bookkeeping, conversion of weights and measures, the calculation of interests, money-changing, and numerous other applications. This leads to its relatively quick adoption by Roman trading elites, and, a bit more slowly, by the Imperial government and businessmen and craftsmen at large as well.
