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| }} | common_name = Roman Empire | continent=Eurasia |region=Mediterranean |status=Empire | life_span = }} 330–1453 }} | p1=Roman Republic |image_p1= | s1=Byzantine Empire |image_s1= | image_coat=Augustus Aureus infobox version.png |coa_size=170px |symbol_type=''Aureus'' of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor. | image_map = Roman Empire Trajan 117AD.png | image_map_caption = The Roman Empire in 117 AD, at its greatest extent.〔Bennett, J. ''Trajan: Optimus Princeps''. 1997. Fig. 1. Regions east of the Euphrates river were held only in the years 116–117.〕 | capital = }} | }} }} | common_languages = * Latin (official until 610) * Greek (official after 610) * Regionallocal languages | religion = | Christianity }} | government_type = Mixed, functionally absolute monarchy | title_leader = Emperor | year_leader1 = |leader1 = Augustus | year_leader2 = 98–117 |leader2 = Trajan | year_leader3 = 284–305 |leader3 = Diocletian | year_leader4 = 306–337 |leader4 = Constantine I | year_leader5 = 379–395 |leader5 = Theodosius I | year_leader6 = 474–480 |leader6 = Julius Nepos | year_leader7 = 527–565 |leader7 = Justinian I | year_leader8 = 1081–1118 |leader8 = Alexius I | year_leader9 = 1449–1453 |leader9 = Constantine XI | legislature = Senate | era = Classical antiquity to Late Middle Ages | date_pre = 32–30 BC |event_pre = Final War of the Roman Republic | year_start = 30–2 BC |event_start = Empire established | date_event1 = AD 117 |event1 = Empire at its greatest extent | date_event2 = 330 |event2 = Constantinople becomes capital | date_event3 = 395 |event3 = | date_event4 = 476 |event4 = Fall of Western Empire | date_event5 = 1202–1204 |event5 = Fourth Crusade | year_end = 1453 |date_end=29 May |event_end=Fall of Constantinople | stat_year1 = 25 BC〔John D. Durand, ''Historical Estimates of World Population: An Evaluation'', 1977, pp. 253–296.〕 |stat_area1 = 2750000 |stat_pop1 = 56800000 | stat_year2 = 117 AD 〔|stat_area2 = 5000000 |stat_pop2 = | stat_year3 = 390 AD 〔 |stat_area3 = 4400000 |stat_pop3 = | currency = Sestertius, Aureus, Solidus, Nomisma | footnotes = }} |today= }} The history of the Roman Empire covers the history of Ancient Rome from the fall of the Roman Republic in 27 BC until the abdication of the last Emperor in 476 AD. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the Republic in the 6th century BC, though didn't expand outside of Italy until the 3rd century BC.〔Christopher Kelly, ''The Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction'' (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 4ff.; Claude Nicolet, ''Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire'' (University of Michigan Press, 1991, originally published in French 1988), pp. 1, 15; T. Corey Brennan, ''The Praetorship in the Roman Republic'' (Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 605 ''et passim''; Clifford Ando, "From Republic to Empire," in ''The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World'' (Oxford University Press, pp. 39–40.〕 Civil war engulfed the Roman state in the mid 1st century BC, first between Julius Caesar and Pompey, and finally between Octavian and Mark Antony. Antony was defeated at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate and People of Rome made Octavian ''imperator'' ("commander") thus beginning the Principate (the first epoch of Roman imperial history, usually dated from 27 BC to 284 AD), and gave him the name Augustus ("the venerated"). The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs: the Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors—Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero—before it yielded in 69 AD to the strife-torn Year of Four Emperors, from which Vespasian emerged as victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty, to be followed by the Nerva–Antonine dynasty which produced the "Five Good Emperors": Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and the philosophically inclined Marcus Aurelius. In the view of the Greek historian Dio Cassius, a contemporary observer, the accession of the emperor Commodus in 180 AD marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron"〔Dio Cassius (72.36.4 ), Loeb edition translated E. Cary〕—a famous comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon, to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. In 212, during the reign of Caracalla, Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the Empire. But despite this gesture of universality, the Severan dynasty was tumultuous—an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution—and following its collapse, the Roman Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century, a period of invasions, civil strife, economic disorder, and plague.〔Brown, P., The World of Late Antiquity, London 1971, p. 22.〕 In defining historical epochs, this crisis is sometimes viewed as marking the transition from Classical Antiquity to Late Antiquity. Diocletian (reigned 284–305) brought the Empire back from the brink, but declined the role of ''princeps'' and became the first emperor to be addressed regularly as ''domine'', "master" or "lord".〔Adrian Goldsworth, ''How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower'' (Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 405–415.〕 This marked the end of the Principate, and the beginning of the Dominate. Diocletian's reign also brought the Empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity, the "Great Persecution". The state of absolute monarchy that began with Diocletian endured until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476. Diocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate Emperor (the Tetrarchy).〔Potter, David. The Roman Empire at Bay. 296–98.〕 Confident that he fixed the disorders that were plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, and the Tetrarchy soon collapsed. Order was eventually restored by Constantine, who became the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the eastern empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the Empire was divided along an east–west axis, with dual power centers in Constantinople and Rome. The reign of Julian, who attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion, only briefly interrupted the succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I, the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 AD after making Christianity the official religion of the Empire.〔Chester G. Starr, ''A History of the Ancient World, Second Edition.'' Oxford University Press, 1974. pp. 670–678.〕 The Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century as Germanic migrations and invasions overwhelmed the capacity of the Empire to assimilate the migrants and fight off the invaders. The Romans were successful in fighting off all invaders, most famously Attila the Hun, though the Empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the Empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place the end of the Western Roman empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.〔Isaac Asimov. ''Asimov's Chronology of the World.'' Harper Collins, 1989. p. 110.〕 By placing himself under the rule of the Eastern Emperor, rather than naming himself Emperor (as other Germanic chiefs had done after deposing past Emperors), Odoacer ended the Western Empire by ending the line of Western Emperors. The eastern Empire exercised diminishing control over the west over the course of the next century. The empire in the East—known today as the Byzantine Empire, but referred to in its time as the "Roman Empire" or by various other names—ended in 1453 with the death of Constantine XI and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks.〔Asimov, p. 198.〕 ==27 BC–AD 14: Augustus== Octavian, the grandnephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar, had made himself a central military figure during the chaotic period following Caesar's assassination. In 43 BC at the age of twenty he became one of the three members of the Second Triumvirate, a political alliance with Marcus Lepidus and Mark Antony.〔Eck, Werner; translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider; new material by Sarolta A. Takács. (2003) The Age of Augustus. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. p12〕 Octavian and Antony defeated the last of Caesar's assassins in 42 BC at the Battle of Philippi, although after this point, tensions began to rise between the two. The triumvirate ended in 32 BC, torn apart by the competing ambitions of its members: Lepidus was forced into exile and Antony, who had allied himself with his lover Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, committed suicide in 30 BC following his defeat at the Battle of Actium (31 BC) by the fleet of Octavian. Octavian subsequently annexed Egypt to the empire.〔Paul K. Davis, 100 Decisive Battles from Ancient Times to the Present: The World’s Major Battles and How They Shaped History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 63.〕 Now sole ruler of Rome, Octavian began a full-scale reformation of military, fiscal and political matters. The Senate granted him power over appointing its membership and over the governors of the provinces.〔Abbott, 269〕 In doing so, the Senate had created for Octavian what would become the office of Roman emperor. In 27 BC, Octavian offered to transfer control of the state back to the Senate.〔Abbott, 267〕 The senate refused the offer, in effect ratifying his position within the state and the new political order. Octavian was then granted the title of "Augustus" by the Senate〔Abbott, 268〕 and took the title of ''Princeps'' or "first citizen".〔 Augustus (as modern scholars usually refer to him from this point) was seen by the Senate and People of Rome as the savior of the Republic, and as such he operated within the existing constitutional machinery. He thus rejected titles that Romans associated with monarchy, such as ''rex'' ("king"). The dictatorship, a military office in the early Republic typically lasting only for the six-month military campaigning season, had been resurrected first by Sulla in the late 80s BC and then by Julius Caesar in the mid-40s; the title ''dictator'' was never again used. As the adopted heir of Julius Caesar, Augustus had taken ''Caesar'' as a component of his name, and handed down the name to his heirs of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. With Vespasian, one of the first emperors outside the dynasty, ''Caesar'' evolved from a family name to a formal title. Augustus created his novel and historically unique position through consolidating the constitutional powers of several Republican offices. He renounced his consulship in 23 BC, but retained his consular ''imperium'', leading to a second compromise between Augustus and the Senate known as the ''Second Settlement''. Augustus was granted the authority of a tribune (''tribunicia potestas''), though not the title, which allowed him to call together the Senate and people at will and lay business before it, veto the actions of either the Assembly or the Senate, preside over elections, and gave him the right to speak first at any meeting. Also included in Augustus's tribunician authority were powers usually reserved for the Roman censor; these included the right to supervise public morals and scrutinize laws to ensure they were in the public interest, as well as the ability to hold a census and determine the membership of the Senate. No tribune of Rome ever had these powers, and there was no precedent within the Roman system for consolidating the powers of the tribune and the censor into a single position, nor was Augustus ever elected to the office of Censor. Whether censorial powers were granted to Augustus as part of his tribunician authority, or he simply assumed these responsibilities, is a matter of debate. In addition to tribunician authority, Augustus was granted sole ''imperium'' within the city of Rome itself; all armed forces in the city, formerly under the control of the prefects, were now under the sole authority of Augustus. Additionally, Augustus was granted ''imperium proconsulare maius'' (power over all proconsuls), the right to interfere in any province and override the decisions of any governor. With maius imperium, Augustus was the only individual able to grant a triumph to a successful general as he was ostensibly the leader of the entire Roman army. The Senate re-classified the provinces at the frontiers (where the vast majority of the legions were stationed) as imperial provinces, and gave control of them to Augustus. The peaceful provinces were re-classified as senatorial provinces, governed as they had been during the Republic by members of the Senate sent out annually by the central government.〔Eck, Werner; translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider; new material by Sarolta A. Takács. (2003) The Age of Augustus. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. p40〕 Senators were prohibited from even visiting Roman Egypt, given its great wealth and history as a base of power for opposition to the new emperor. Taxes from the Imperial provinces went into the ''fiscus'', the fund administrated by persons chosen by and answerable to Augustus. The revenue from senatorial provinces continued to be sent to the state treasury ''(aerarium),'' under the supervision of the Senate. The Roman legions, which had reached an unprecedented 50 in number because of the civil wars, were reduced to 28. Several legions, particularly those with members of doubtful loyalties, were simply demobilised. Other legions were united, a fact hinted by the title ''Gemina'' (Twin). Augustus also created nine special cohorts to maintain peace in Italia, with three, the Praetorian Guard, kept in Rome. Control of the ''fiscus'' enabled Augustus to ensure the loyalty of the legions through their pay. Augustus completed the conquest of Hispania, while subordinate generals expanded Roman possessions in Africa and Asia Minor. Augustus' final task was to ensure an orderly succession of his powers. His stepson Tiberius had conquered Pannonia, Dalmatia, Raetia, and temporarily Germania for the Empire, and was thus a prime candidate. In 6 BC, Augustus granted some of his powers to his stepson,〔Abbott, 272〕 and soon after he recognized Tiberius as his heir. In 13 AD, a law was passed which extended Augustus' powers over the provinces to Tiberius,〔Abbott, 273〕 so that Tiberius' legal powers were equivalent to, and independent from, those of Augustus.〔 Attempting to secure the borders of the empire upon the rivers Danube and Elbe, Augustus ordered the invasions of Illyria, Moesia, and Pannonia (south of the Danube), and Germania (west of the Elbe). At first everything went as planned, but then disaster struck. The Illyrian tribes revolted and had to be crushed, and three full legions under the command of Publius Quinctilius Varus were ambushed and destroyed at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9 by Germanic tribes led by Arminius. Being cautious, Augustus secured all territories west of Rhine and contented himself with retaliatory raids. The rivers Rhine and Danube became the permanent borders of the Roman empire in the North. In 14 AD Augustus died at the age of seventy-five, having ruled the empire for forty years, and was succeeded as emperor by Tiberius. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of the Roman Empire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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