The Effects Of Romes Expansion Essay Research — страница 6

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practical soldier he had one ambition: to retire from the imperiate alive. And he managed to do it (an exceptional feat). To stem the descent into chaos, he decided that the Empire was too large to be administered by a central authority, so he divided it in half. A colleague, Maximian would rule the western half, and the seat of government was in Nicomedia. Maxima recognized Diocletain as ?Agustus?, or the senior ruler of the Roman emperor. Beneath these two were appointed to each two officials, called Caesars, no only to help manage the administration, but to assume their respective empires on the death of the emperor. In this way, the succession was always guaranteed and the successors had already spent much of their career administering the empire. This would prevent both the

possibility of the ambitious seizing of the imperiate by provincial generals and would prevent incompetence from assuming control of the Empire. This was a brilliant strategy and, with other innovations, stabilized the Empire. Diocletian was the first emperor to manifestly break with Roman tradition. He shifted the seat of power to the east, on Nicomedia in Turkey. He also adopted eastern ideas of monarchy; he no longer called himself princeps or even imperator, but dominus, or ?Lord.? He took a crown and wore royal clothing; he demanded and got out and out worship by his subjects. In 305, Diocletian retired to farm to raise cabbages; he forced Maxmiam also to retire. So the imperiate passed without fuss to their two Caesars. This brilliant system, so promising in its inception,

fell apart immediately as the two emperors began feuding. Within a year, the sin of one of the original Caesars gained the throne: Constantine (396-337). Like Diocletian, he ruled only half of the Roman Empire, the western half. But in 324, he abandoned the system and ruled over a single, united empire. However, he shifted the seat of government east to his own city in Turkey, Constantinople. Constantine was like Diocletian his affection for eastern ways of life and eastern views of monarchy. He took on himself all the trappings of an eastern king, as Diocletian had done, and declared the imperiate to be hereditary. After eight hundred years without a monarch, Rome had finally returned back to monarchy. Constantine, however, is one of the most noted rulers in Rome for he was the

first emperor to convert to Christianity. Although he didn?t make Christianity a state religion, his conversion provoked a wild proliferation of the faith, particularly in the Eastern Empire. Constantine, however never really became a Christian ruler. He retained all the trappings of power including the demand that he be venerated as a god, as Diocletian had done. Constantine, however, had several problems with his new faith. The first was that there was no established doctrine. In fact, there were as many forms of Christianity as there were communities of Christians. The second was more pressing, for foundational Christianity was manifestly anti-political. Its founder, Jesus of Nazareth, consistently condemned worldly authority and insisted that the Christian siege is a

non-worldly, individualistic, non-political life. As a result, the foundational Christian texts are not only anti-Roman, but consistently dismissive of human worldly authority. If Christianity were going to work as a religion in a state ruled but a monarch that demanded worship and absolute authority, it would have to be changed. To this end, Constantine convened a group of Christian bishops at Nicea in 325; there, the basic orthodoxy of Christianity was instantiated in what came to be called the Nicene Creed, the basic statement of belief for orthodox Christianity. Constantine accomplished more, however, for the Nicene council also ratified his own power and Christianity would begin the long struggle, lasting to this day, between the anti-political ideas of Jesus of Nazareth and

the Christianity that is compromised to allow for human authority and power. When Constantine died, he divided the Empire between his three sons who, as you might expect, began fighting one another over a complete control of the Empire. His sons all adopted Christianity as well, but the emperor, Julian the Apostate (361-363), opposed the religion and tried to undo it by dismissing all the Christians from the government. He was little too late and reigned a little too briefly, though, to have any real effect. The government of Rome during the fourth century essentially traces out a history of dynastic squabbles and constant internal fractiousness; it wasn?t until the end of the century, in the rule of Theodosius (379-365), that Rome was again united under a single emperor.