Roman Empire

The ancient empire centered on Rome that, at its height, spanned the Mediterranean basin and much of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. It profoundly shaped Western civilization through its legal, political, cultural, and institutional legacies, and its rise and fall serve as recurring points of historical comparison.

Claims that use this term

• Western civilization continues to be influenced by the Roman Empire.
• All free men in the Roman Empire were to be given full Roman citizenship
• Yemen supplied the Roman Empire with frankincense and myrrh.
• Many commentators made direct comparisons between contemporary Western society and the fall of ancient Greece and ancient Rome. In her book Because They Hate, Brigitte Gabriel wrote, ‘What brought down the Roman Empire? It was decay from within. What brought down the Greek Empire? Decay from within. You are seeing the beginning of the demise of the greatest nation in the world, the United States of America, because of a cancer that eats and devours from within.’ (2008, 218).
• Traditional intellectuals trace their origins to slavery and freedmen in the Roman Empire.
• Medieval Europe was economically cruder than the Roman Empire it replaced