Seriously why everyone want to be rome so bad? Like its okay to just be the leader of your own big murderous empire without having to rip off Caesar again

  • CrimsonSage [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I am not saying it is less than any other empire, I am saying that the sheer length of its existence makes for an exciting story or contraction. The fact that it managed to survive as a sociocultural formation after the fall of egypt is quite amazing from my perspective. I honestly have a pet theory that Basil II was actually one of the worst emperors in terms of the long term survivability of the empire as a social unit.

      • CrimsonSage [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        He also worked to systematically undermine the local elites in the frontiers which left them much more fragile to social co-option. He then took the power that the local elites had wielded and centralized it in himself, but made no institutional provision to insure that this system of social control could be propagated beyond this death.