The Roman Empire was a political, territorial and cultural identity which ruled a vast extension of land around the Mediterranean sea about 2000 years ago:
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| Roman Empire in 210 AD. |
The Roman Empire was under control of the emperor. An emperor was like a god - king. A king because he had absolut power; and a god because he was worsiped as a divine figure. There were temples advocated to the emperor all over the empire:
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| Imperial temple, in Mérida. |
Roman Empire was organized in provinces: Dacia, Tracia, Britannia, Aegyptus, Italia... Each province was ruled by a Governor. Santa Amalia, our town, was placed in the province of Lusitania; although on that time its was not called Santa Amalia. It was "Lacipea"...
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| Roman provinces. Trajan period. |
The language spoken all over the empire was Latin. From that old language many actual languages come, like Spanish, Portuguese, French or Italian. For this reason it is not so difficult to understand what Italian or Portuguese people are saying: we still keep many simmilar words and expressions which come directly from latin.
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| Latin inscription from Mérida. |
The Roman Empire was also a military power. All its territories had been added or conquered. So, the Roman Army had an undeniable importance. The army was organized in Legions. A legion was a group of 5.000 professional soldiers, well trained and equipped. There were about 30 legions in the Roman Empire.
A key for the success of Roman Empire was engineering. Romans had deep and solid scientific knowledges: maths, physics, calculation, watering systems... Thanks to this knowledge they could create awesome structures, like bridges, roads, sewers, walls, theatres, temples, bath houses... All these structures were a great publicity for the empire. It was like: "Hey, barbarians. Look at what we, the Romans, can do".
When talking about the Roman Empire, we cannot forget the importance of law; the so called Roman Law. Romans were capable of creating a very solid corpus of rules, concerning to all different fields of life: Family Law, Commercial Law, Criminal Law... Under this frame, peace and order spreaded all over the Roman world during the "PAX ROMANA": a period of about 200 years without war or conflict within the borders of the Empire.
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| Roman law written on a bronzce stele. |
But after 300 AD. the empire started to weaken, for diverse reasons: climatic change, lack of food, barbarian invasions, economic crisis... Finally, in 476 AD, the Western Roman Empire collapsed. However, even today we can see its remains by everywhere, as remind of how bright and powerful once the empire was.
