The compatibility is only partial between the characteristics of the imperial symbol and a minimal definition of nationalism. The first problem consists in a specific and dominant posterity at least since beginning of twentieth century, namely the polemical reduction of empire to imperialism. However, Saint Augustine redefines the four monarchies and explains the cycle, which culminates with Roman Empire, as moving towards coming of the Antichrist. This makes sense in the context of conflict of cities of Regnum Italicum against the Roman Germanic Saint Empire. In the Roman case, that is the precise role of humanitas to distinguish between the two main kinds of human beings: those living in wild state as Barbarians and those who have been improved by culture. The empire is generally considered as a particular form of domination over its subjects and a historical movement of greedy territorial expansion. An Empire is thus an administrated political form where by center exercises control over the peripheral areas.