Step #5 : Ancient Age. Rome and Carthage

Rome emerged as the new Mediterranean city state in Italy around 300 BC, rival to Carthage, which dominated from its North African seat the Western Mediterranean as the incumbent power; like Corinth and Alexandria did the Eastern Mediterranean as centers of trade.

Alexandria was the granary of Europe as also the procurer of gold from Numidia and precious stones and spices from the Indies. Europe, a poor uninhabited continent, now a prey to invading nomadic immigration from Eastern lands, had silver mines, iron ore and tin mines, that produced it riches, meager in comparison to affluent Orient and ancient, fertile Egypt, cradles of civilization around their three iconic rivers : the Nile, the Euphrates and the Tigris.

After the Hellenes having challenged the Achaemenids, after Alexander's brilliant, unmatchable military campaign conquering all of near Asia, the Ptolemy dynasty created a residual civilization of Greek culture around Alexandria, as did Corinth in Peloponnese and Syracuse in Sicily; to disseminate Hellenic legacy as continuators of Athen's old tradition.

But the Romans, allegedly sons of Aeneas of Troy, of Romulus and Remus, twin progeny nourished by a she-wolf, created a Republic around Rome's seven hills bordered by the river Tiber; to defy Etruscan domination of Italy and subsequently Carthage's primacy, as trading city influencing the confines of the Italian, Gallic and Spanish coastline of western Europe.

When the Punic War broke out between Rome and Carthage, it took three wars over a hundred years, from 250 BC to 146 BC, for Rome to conquer Carthage and inherit its Hispanic colonies, as well its pre-eminence in North Africa. The same year, Roman legions destroyed and burnt Corinth; thus making the whole Mediterranean its "Mare Nostrum". The age of organised military violence-plunder of bullion for monetary use-slave labour civilization was born like never before since Pharaoh's Egypt and Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonian times.

Republican Rome now imposed its hegemony on the Mediterranean regions of ancient world from the columns of Hercules to the river Tigris. But a republic run by a powerful and increasingly corrupt elite, as all power corrupts even the most industrious of people.

Its legions, its Lex Romana and its burgeoning civilization, based on slave labour and military conscription, obtained by enrolling conquered tribes into its mighty army, became the disciplined symbol of its power. The Roman legion's standards now ruled over Dacia, modern Romania, all the way to the Danube. Never had the world seen such a mighty administrative and military machine that imposed manifest destiny abroad but respected above all within its own confines amongst its own citizens, the rule of law and the status of the Lawmakers; who sat in its Senate, girded in purple, as rulers of the world. The written word was what made Rome master of the world. And owner of its material riches.

Such inordinate power, like in Pericles's Athens, led to corruption and civil war, between the rival political clans of Optimates and Populares; those who represented respectively the interests of the aristocrats and the people in a dying Republic, whose values Cicero tried to defend against the rising tide of hubris.

Julius Caesar, a patrician by birth, having conquered in a remarkable military campaign the large territory of ancient Gaul all the way to the Rhine and the Atlantic ocean, even beyond into England, obscure island; having ruled over Hispania and Algarve previously as Rome's Consul in Lisbon; now crossed the Rubicon to challenge the Senate and impose dictatorship on Rome, as Alexander's successor; unquestioned master of the greatest empire that had ever existed as a general who had never known defeat like his role model. Iconic moment in History, the crossing of the Rubicon represented symbolically the death of Greek democracy and Republican laws and the victory of dictatorship; profound regression in the march of human progress.

The emergence of Caesar as Imperator over Rome, as world dictator of its empire, would leave a poisoned legacy to western world. As in the inevitable demise of its Empire under the weight of its own corruption, the legacy of democracy and republic, the essence of western civilization, its tradition of logic and empirical science, would be lost for centuries to western man.

Greek civilization's heritage would lie dormant for many centuries in West, during the dogmatic Christian age known as the Dark Ages. Until the Renaissance period would resuscitate it.

The punishment that the Gods or destiny would reserve for Rome and Italy would be terrible. For having ruled the world in its iron grasp of ruthless dictatorship and Empire, the Romans and Italians would never know independence for one thousand five hundred years. Their lands forever a prey to foreign ambitions, their people oppressed in servitude and turmoil, all the while they fought like lions to achieve their own independence.

For the ages to come the legacy of Imperial Rome would fascinate each generation to our current times as apogee of absolute power; supreme symbol of man's ambition to rule alone his fellow men. Kaiseridée : imperial, hubristic greed, to breed a militarist society based on plunder and slave labour, within the constraints of a universal religious construct of socially networked hierarchy to serve it, became its timeless legacy.

As Imperial Rome declined under the increasing weight of its own corruption and runaway administrative cost to feed the beast of Imperial predatory construct; forever more profligate in its expenditures than in its revenues; forever changing its Imperial leader via palatial and military intrigues; its new incumbent, Constantine, named Emperor after being victorious military general, had the brilliant idea to distance himself from the internecine political conflicts of Rome's endogenous heritage. He built his new capital at Constantinople at the extremity of the continent overlooking the Asian land mass. He also chose to change the social framework of the Empire's religion, opting for the heretical faith of Christianity, an obscure offshoot of Judaic religion, draped in its own liturgy after the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where the Gospels of four Evangelical disciples were transcribed as God's word for the ages, based on word of mouth transmission over generations, as no living contemporaries or written document of Jesus's times existed. It was politically used by Emperor to replace the pagan tradition of Greece, and its Olympic Gods under Zeus, know as Jupiter to Romans; that had increasingly fallen into realm of increasingly chaotic superstition.

The new religion and capital were supposed to renew the Empire's appeal to its burgeoning dependencies. It achieved the opposite, creating dissension between ancient and new capital, that would destroy imperial cohesion, lead to ultimate destruction of Empire, at the hands of mercenary barbarian armies who replaced gradually the conscripted legions of ancient Roman tradition. But it would leave the social fabric of the new Christian faith to captivate the European continent. The force of religion would unite peoples there where brute Imperial force had failed.