Section Two:

"There never was an 'early Roman Empire.' It was always a late afternoon kind of thing."

--R.A. Lafferty
   Past Master
   (1968)

Egypt, 1445 B.C.: Religious syncretism and universalism. A new, disturbing realism in art.

2107 A.D.
Islam, 1481 A.D.: Death of Mohammed II. Accession of Sultan Bajazet II.

2110 A.D.
China, 190 B.C.: The Former Han Dynasty supports economic growth through government enterprise and an expansionist policy westward.

2118 A.D.
Rome, 9 B.C.: A Roman army penetrates to the Elbe.

Islam, 1492 A.D.: The Spanish complete the conquest of Muslim Spain.

Islam. 1492 A.D.: Bajazet II invades Hungary and defeats the Hungarians at the Save River.

2120 A.D.
Islam, 1494 A.D.: The birth of Suleiman the Magnificent.

2125 A.D.
Islam, 1499 A.D.: The Turks defeat the Venetian fleet; Lepanto surrenders.

2127 A.D.
Islam, 1501 A.D.: The Sheik of Ardabil, Ismail I, conquers Persia and establishes the Safavid Dynasty.

2137 A.D.
Rome, 9 A.D.: A Roman army is destroyed in the Teutoberger Forest.

2138 A.D.
Islam, 1512 A.D.: The death of Bajazet II.

2140 A.D.
Islam, 1514 A.D.: Sultan Selim I attacks Persia.

2141 A.D.
Rome, 14 A.D.: Augustus dies and is succeeded by Tiberius.

Islam, 1515 A.D.: Selim conquers eastern Anatolia and Kurdistan.

Egypt, 1406 B.C.: Beginning of the reign of Amen-hotep III, who violated tradition by marrying the common woman, Tiy.

Egypt, 1406 B.C.: The beginning of the obsession with the colossal in art. The Colossi of Memnon are built.

2142 A.D.
Islam, 1516 A.D.: Selim defeats the Muslim Egyptians and conquers Syria.

2143 A.D.
Islam, 1517 A.D.: The Turks take Cairo. The Two Holy Places fall under the Sultan's protection.

2146 A.D.
Islam, 1520 A.D.: Accession of Suleiman the Magnificent, during whose reign the empire reaches its greatest extent.

2147 A.D.
Islam, 1521 A.D.: Suleiman takes Belgrade.

2152 A.D.
Islam, 1526 A.D.: The Turks defeat the Hungarians at the catastrophic Battle of Mohacs.

2153 A.D.
Rome, 26 A.D.: Tiberius retires to Capri and becomes increasingly strange.

2155 A.D.
Islam, 1529 A.D.: The Turks lay siege to Vienna. The apogee of empire is reached. They are soon forced to withdraw.

2160 A.D.
China, 140 B.C.: Accession of Emperor Wu-ti, the "Marshall Emperor," under whom the empire reaches its greatest extent.

Islam, 1536 A.D.: Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, conquers and briefly holds Tunis.

2163 A.D.
China, 137 B.C.: Sentiment grows that the government should rule more by example than force. State military and economic activities fall under suspicion.

2164 A.D.
Rome, 37 A.D.: Tiberius dies and is succeeded by the already strange Caligula.

China, 136 B.C.: Confucianism becomes the official philosophy of the Empire.

2167 A.D.
Islam, 1541 A.D.: Suleiman annexes Hungary.

2169 A.D.
Rome, 42 A.D.: Caligula is assassinated by the Praetorian Guard and succeeded by Claudius.

2170 A.D.
Rome, 43 A.D.: Rome begins colonization of Britain.

2172 A.D.
Egypt, 1375 B.C.: Amen-hotep IV comes to power, eventually changing his name to Akh-en-Aton.

2174 A.D.
Islam, 1548 A.D.: The Turks occupy the Persian city of Tabriz.

2178 A.D.
Egypt, 1369 B.C.: The former theological ideology of society is rejected. A new, universal, manifest god is proclaimed.

Egypt, 1369 B.C.: The Amarna Period begins. Old canons of art are rejected for experimental techniques.

Egypt, 1369 B.C.: Vast, uneconomic building projects are begun at home while the empire aboard threatens to collapse.

2185 A.D.
Rome, 58 A.D.: Nero comes to power through the intrigues of his mother, Agrippina.

2186 A.D.
Islam, 1560 A.D.: The Turks rout the Spanish Fleet off Tripoli.

2191 A.D.
Rome, 64 A.D.: First persecution of Christians.

2192 A.D.
Rome, 65 A.D.: Nero orders his chief minister and one-time tutor, the philosopher Seneca, to commit suicide.

Islam, 1566 A.D.: Death of Suleiman the Magnificent. Selim II becomes Sultan.

2195 A.D.
Rome, 68 A.D.: Nero is forced to commit suicide after a coup.

Rome, 68 A.D.: The emperors Galba, Otho and Vitellinus follow in quick succession.

Egypt, 1352 B.C. The Pharaoh's loathsome favorite and co-ruler, Smenk-ka-Re, comes to an untimely end. 2196 A.D.
Rome, 69 A.D.: The soldier emperor Vespasian comes to power.

2197 A.D.
Islam, 1571 A.D.: Don John of Austria defeats the Turkish fleet off Lepanto, ending the era of Turkish naval predominance.

2200 A.D.
Islam, 1574 A.D.: Murad III becomes Sultan.

China, 100 B.C.: The historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien writes the definitive history of ancient China.

2203 A.D.
Egypt, 1344 B.C.: A restoration of order and piety is attempted. However, the successor of the heretic ruler is assassinated. His name is Tut-ankh-Amon.

It is a great age for attempts to revive traditional forms of piety, indeed for traditional usages generally. Old liturgical languages come back, as do archaic forms of dress for official occasions and ancient honorific titles. There is often a somewhat fancy-dress atmosphere to these exercises, however. People do them, not because they believe the theology or political theory behind them, or because they believe, as their ancestors did, that they are the right thing to do. They do them because they believe that these customs contribute to social order, or they simply enjoy them as kitsch. In fact, few of these anachronisms develop any great vitality; they are faddish for a few years and then are abandoned again. In terms of entertainment value, after all, they have to compete with popular culture and an unofficial "serious" culture which are still quite lively and maintain many modern features.

Indeed, even when the cultural policy of the Empire is traditionalist in intent, it is likely to mutate in quite new ways, for the simple reason that historical styles are cultivated with more enthusiasm than understanding. Official Egyptian policy after the Hyskos period, for instance, was obviously directed at restoring the integrity of the civilization's cultural and political life. Even so, the art of the early imperial period developed realistic touches which were quite unsettling to those familiar with the classic styles of the Middle Kingdom. More to the point, in all civilizations, the art of this period tends to become simply bigger. Gigantic statuary, planned cities with sweeping vistas, buildings that test the limits of contemporary engineering, these sprout up all over the world. At the domestic level, art becomes more and more derivative, even among the wealthy. It can still be skillful, even moving, but technique becomes ever more frozen. It is, perhaps, in the fine arts that innovation first ceases because all questions have been answered.

Here too, of course, there is a great deal of simple kitsch. During this period, for instance, there was a generation when Roman domestic architecture took on a decided Egyptianizing tendency, as did the fancy-religions patronized by the wealthy. Much the same happened in the Empire of the West in connection with the conventional art of the Far East (except, curiously enough, in the Far East itself, where Biedermeier decor experienced a last, ghastly revival). In general, however, decoration proceeds in too eclectic a manner to permit of regional or period characterization. Thus, while the cores of the twenty-second century cities contained buildings of a size which no other civilization could have managed, the interiors of these structures would have held few surprises for anyone born after 1950 A.D.

Several civilizations achieved their maximum territorial extent during this period, and none later acquired territory which they held for any length of time or developed to any purpose. Both Rome and Islam were checked in their attempts to expand into different parts of Europe. China's expansion seems to have been limited more by the logistics of supporting armies greatly distant from the heartland of civilization than by the military prowess of the barbarians. The same was true, on a smaller scale, of Egypt. Only Rome and the West attempted to colonize lands that were really new to their civilizations, the former by the effort to settle Britain, the latter by its long and only partially successful assault on the planets of the inner solar system (excluding Venus). The British project seemed to have been entirely successful, as did the lunar cities. The vitality of the smaller bases of the more distant planets, which were necessarily more self-supporting, appeared then and later to be more problematical.

One of the many questions which it is the function of the early empire to answer is, "Just how silly can the emperor be without causing the empire to collapse?" The answer, in every case, is "Very silly indeed." This formulation of the matter, of course, trivializes the experience of thousands of public servants whose careers, and occasionally whose lives, were at the mercy of a universal autocrat who might not always be in perfectly secure possession of his right mind. To limit this problem, some civilizations develop an office of censor or chief minister whose job it is precisely to police the excesses of Imperial enthusiasm. Some, like Rome, simply permitted the emperor to surround himself with thugs and secret police agents more dangerous to him than to the populace. Despite this, however, lunacy will out, and a universal state can sometimes give it a very broad stage.

Perhaps the most famous of these freaks was the Amarna period of Egyptian history, precisely contemporary with Nero's Rome. In neither of these episodes was the emperor actually insane. Clinically demented rulers who try to actually rule, such as Caligula, do not live long. In both the Egyptian and the Roman instances, we find examples of cranks raised to positions of supreme power. A crank is an otherwise sane person whose mind is dominated by some theory or ambition which does not really merit that much attention. There have been great cranks in history, and these two were among the greatest of them all.

The difference, of course, was that Nero merely embarrassed the imperial office with his pretensions as an actor, while Akh-en-Aton undermined the theocratic principle by trying to substitute his fancy religion for the traditional state cults. His essentially private cult of monotheistic sun worship is often discussed as if it were a great advance on the traditional religion of Egypt, and much ink has been spilt trying to connect it to the faith of the ancient Hebrews. In point of fact, Akh-en-Aton's religious universalism, of which he was the chief and only prophet, was as ersatz as anything a nineteenth century Western theosophist might have conceived. Not unconnected with his assault on traditional piety was his patronage of the anti-traditional elements in the art of the imperial period, the caricature-like realism which flew in the face of Egypt's hard-won standards of dignity and public virtue. No less serious than the consequences of these enthusiasms, he neglected the defense of the empire while squandering its wealth on a new show-city for which there was no particular need.

Indeed, compared to Akh-en-Aton's antics, Nero's reign was a model of sober good government. The Roman emperor, after all, conducted a reasonably successful foreign policy, and he did not actually bankrupt the state. As a rule, he was only dangerous to his relatives and his immediate subordinates. The exception to this was his initiation of the antichristian persecution, an eccentric element of Roman policy which yet persisted through most of the imperial period. Finally, it might be noted that there is some reason to believe that he was a better actor than Roman historians were willing to admit.

In any event, the early imperial period closes with a bit of a chill. If the military have dominated hitherto, the civilians point to the stresses which an expansionist policy has created and push for a policy of retrenchment. If the imperial administration has been largely civilian in nature, then it is time for soldier emperors to exert some discipline over the government and the barbarian environment of the empire. Even in Egypt, whose fragile Asiatic empire collapsed for several decades, this development is just a slight change of emphasis, one quite beyond the horizon of most imperial citizens. Indeed, most activities of "the Empire" have a certain abstract quality for most people. The Emperor, whoever he may be, is usually respected and often loved. However, he almost never comes to visit, and the doings of his government have little direct effect on everyday life.