1. Fundamentally speaking, lz, you must first understand the basic history of the Roman Empire: in the 500-year history of the Roman Empire, only the first 200 years can be called a stable and unified history; In the last 300 years, Rome as a whole fell into various separatist civil strife, but later, in order to quell the civil strife, the second emperor and the second deputy emperor separated, which was actually a split state; During this period, although the so-called short peace appeared in Constantine, it was only a flash in the pan. The Roman Empire has existed for 500 years. In fact, this brand has only been hung for 500 years.

Take a slightly similar example: The Spring and Autumn Period and the early Warring States Period can be regarded as the history of the Zhou Dynasty, but was China in fact the Zhou Dynasty? The same is true of the Roman Empire, but compared with the past few weeks, Rome does not even have a royal family (the emperor is not hereditary), but only maintains this signboard of the Roman Empire.

By the way, according to the eyes of the Catholic Church, this brand was actually hung up for nearly a thousand years.

2. The Roman Empire is called the Empire. In fact, it is not an empire with centralized power. In essence, it is still like the city-state (province) alliance in the Republic of China. The provinces take the Roman city-state as the leader, recognize its suzerain status and have a high degree of autonomy. Therefore, for the provinces, the Lord of the Roman city-state (that is, the Roman emperor) is no longer dissolute and has little to do with himself; At the same time, at that time, "Rome" was a symbol of civilization-it had a good reputation as a part of Rome and it was not dragged down by the center of Rome. Why not a polis?

We also use the analogy of the Zhou dynasty: just like the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there is no harm in respecting the Zhou emperor, and you can also gain the right of righteousness. The vassal States are also willing to be independent of the world. In the same way, even in the Roman Empire, this brand is valuable and there is no need to smash it.

3. In fact, in the final analysis, lz believes that the Roman Empire should have died long ago (in my opinion, the unified and peaceful Roman Empire has actually died long ago), because "those who win the hearts of the people win the world." I say this sentence is not suitable for the history of western Europe.

Since the Qin Dynasty, China's regime has formed a top-down "family-oriented" emperor-bureaucratic regime. Since power is from top to bottom, the survival of the upper regime is an important issue-and "winning the hearts of the people and winning the world" is the core theory of the survival of the upper regime, so it is a wise saying in China.

As I said before, the Roman Empire was essentially an alliance between provinces. For this alliance, the upper regime (the center of imperial power) is not so important-after all, the provinces have a high degree of autonomy, so they are popular or unpopular. For provinces, the sun rises and sets, so the survival of the "Roman Empire" is not bad for "winning people's hearts", just to see if it is of use value.