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 in the arms. 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 and raped, but went home at the end of the day with their spoils instead of settling in. That said, as time went on Romans got better at fighting them.

The Romans finally sought to put an end to this bullshit in 58BCE when they gave the Populare Consul Gaius Julius Caeser Imperium (the Authority to Command a Roman Army) and sent him 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 senetorial 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 was technically not supposed to do. This caused a civil war in which Pompeius Magnus was chased across the east of the Empire until he was killed by some Egyptians. During the war Caeser was given the office of dictator, and eventually took the position Dictator for Life. The rest of the Roman Senators did not like this, because Caeser began to look like a King to them. So they stabbed him to death.

After that, his adopted son Agustus Caeser 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 posistion. From then on, Rome would have the facade of a Republic but power would ultimately lie in the hands of the Emperor.

The next two hundred years would see a succession of Emperors taking each others 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 boarders during this period, conquering Britain and Dacia, but by 117 CE the Empire had reached it's maximum extent.

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 238 AD. The third century saw the rise and fall of 26 emperors in the span of 30 years, most of whom were benign military dictators at best and pretty fun guys to be around at worst. If a rival Legate with Imperial Ambitions of being Emperor did not do them in, their own soldiers would due to the fact that they did not like having their paycheques put off indefinately. In short, instead of adding new lands and incomes to the Empire or defending the Empire against Barbarian invaders, the Roman Army was mostly involved in fighting the Roman Army. This parade of failure finally came to a halt in 268AD with Emperor Diocletian, who inherited a gutted out husk on the verge of social, military, and economic collapse. Diocletian's solution was to institutionalize the decline. He split the empire in two, devalued the currency, and reached terms with the Sassanid Persians to the east. 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 a new Christian warlord became Emperor and dubbed himself Constantine. He oversaw a radical reorganization of his society, bringing relative peace to the east and cementing Constantinople as it's capital. The western empire wasn't so lucky. The emperor Valens allows 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 today. 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, beset on all sides, calls more Germans in to help him retake Italy. They happily do so and then, to the surprise of nobody, claim it for themselves and move right in to form the Ostrogoth empire.

In the east things continued on for hundreds of years. This new Byzantine empire would ebb and flow, but was eventually subsumed by the younger and more energetic Muslim empires of the east. In the west the new barbarian overlords would gaze on ruined Roman cities and start trying to piece their wonders back together. The later descendants of these barbarians came to idolize Rome, starting a tradition of furious masturbation that continues down to this very article.

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 explaime being King Pyrrhus of Epirus, who who's very name now means "victory that cost so much it is render worthless".

The biggest downside of this system was that each soldier had to equip himself, which limits the recruitment pool 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 off death and those weak and undisciplined was washed up. Each legionary was armed with:

• 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 stakes to 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 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 phalanx, which proven 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 swordsman wasn'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 Onagre 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 onagre, 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.

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.

Latter 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.

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 bending.

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