ABSTRACT
The Qin Dynasty and the Roman Empire similarly rose on active conquests, this policy of empire building seems obvious to us. The Romans further traced imperial domination to higher authority, as Marcus Tullius Cicero said: it was by our scrupulous attention to religion and by our wise grasp of a single truth, that all things are ruled and directed by the will of the gods, that we have overcome all peoples and nations. Rome engaged in war almost annually for nearly three centuries since it expanded beyond its Latin neighborhood. More specifically, it went to war in at least 203 years during the 215-year period from 264 BCE when the legions invaded Sicily to 49 BCE, when Julius Caesar marched on Rome. Caesar's clemency was famous; sometimes he did not kill all his prisoners but only chopped off the hands of warriors. For his eight-year Gallic campaign, the number of enemy dead reported ranged from 400,000 to 1 million.
