ABSTRACT
After a period of turbulence which culminated tellingly in Julius Caesar’s career, the Roman Republic (already with a considerable empire) gave way during the reign of Octavian (declared ‘Augustus’ in 27 BC) to the ensuing Principate, or system of Imperial rule. Under a long succession of Emperors, some as famous as others were infamous, the Roman Empire was extended and consolidated. Its power was unrivalled, its greatness unchallenged, its stability apparently ensured. In AD 330 the Emperor Constantine moved its capital to Byzantium (renamed Constantinople, and since 1930, Istanbul), facilitating the formalisation (by the 400s) of the Western and Eastern Empires. ‘Rome’ spanned the ‘civilised’ world, and where it also included ‘uncivilized’ regions, attempted to restrain, if not encompass, them. Yet by 476 the Western Roman Empire had collapsed, its last Emperor, Romulus Augustus, being deposed by the Goths. Although the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire survived until the Ottoman Turks sacked Constantinople in 1453, ‘Rome’ – ‘the eternal city’ – increasingly became a memory, oft despised in the Christian West, until many of its culture’s ideals were revived in what we call ‘the Renaissance’.
