278-314 CE (Superpowers)

''Although Marcus had enriched the empire, he left a number of messes for his son, Heracleitus, to handle. Once the war with Saxon raiders was won, Heracleitus ushered Rome into a new Pax Romana, similar to that initiated by his grandfather. Under its new emperor, Rome transitioned from a country maintained through military power and commerce into a more unified civilization.''

National postal service
A great many factors are required to unify a state. It can not occur overnight nor can it happen by mere military subjugation and economic co-operation. The people must, as it were, be of one mind. This mean homogeneity of the flow of information and of education. One step for Rome toward this ideal was founding a single state postal service that could connect the entirety of Europe in the second largest communication network in the world.

Already, the government and Legion could communicate over the extensive cursus vehicularis. Military reports, tax revenue, and updates on foreigners were all received through this nationwide network. Regular citizens were not privy to this service but Caesar Heracleitus would fix this defect within the first few weeks of his reign.

One advantage to opening the cursus vehicularis to private citizens was the possibility for profit. Originally, the courier service was only available to persons carrying a diploma (certificate) recognizing their position in the military or government. Only a message of public importance could be sent on the clabulae of the service to return to Italy or go from Italy to another province but since nothing was stopping someone with a diploma from sending personal messages or even friends and family on clabulae, the system was constantly abused at the expense of the empire. Although opening the service to the public would not prevent such abuses by officials avoiding its cost, other users of the system would cover the costs of their abuses.

As a service, the new postal network functioned through two systems. The faster cursus velox had messengers travel simply on horseback carrying military reports in a distinctive baton, provincial messages in a purse slung over one shoulder, and private letters in saddle bags. A normal journey was broken into stages based on two independent changes: (1) switching of horses and (2) switching of couriers. When an  emergency report had to be delivered directly to the emperor, the original courier would continue the journey to Rome, even after he had passed on the baton to another courier. By this means, the message itself would arrive as quickly as possible but the original courier would still arrive at the usual pace, allowing the emperor to receive an oral report from someone present at whatever event sparked the emergency report.

A courier would change horses at every mutation (change station) along his journey. Before Heracleitus opened the service, the average distance separating two mutationes was around 12 km (~8 Roman miles), along routes serviced by the cursus. He did not change this separation along existing routes but new routes had mutationes separated by exactly 10 Roman miles (~15 km). Depending on its frequency of use, a change station woud have anywhere from ten to forty horses, maintained by a proportional number of grooms. A courier would pass his mail onto another courier after 6 hours of travel, allowing continuous transport for messages across the empire. This exchange happened at one of many mansiones (rest stations) along the routes. These were privately owned lodges providing food, rest, and smithing for weary travelers of any kind. The manceps (owner) of the mansion received no wage from the government (i.e. he is not a publicanus) but profited by renting rooms to other travelers. Originally, the Senate had worked out deals with owners of existing mansiones to house their couriers for the cursus vehicularis. During the opening of the service to the public, Heracleitus ordered the construction of new mansiones along new courier routes and sold these to prospective buyers on a contract requiring the owner of the mansion to provide free lodging to couriers. An individual mansion also functioned as a mutation, carrying the appropriate number of horses for passing couriers.

Using this elaborate system, a message could be delivered along the cursus velox at a consistent pace. Switching horses took about ten minutes and a single courier would switch horses after about a forty minute journey. On one such leg of his journey, a courier would cover around 15 km (~10 Roman miles). Over the course of a day, this service could transport messages at least 25 times that distance, accounting for inefficiencies in swapping horses or riders (e.g. chit-chat). Nevertheless, this amounted to a respectable 375 km traveled each day. News of a defeat in Athens would easily reach Rome in six days, when older ways of transporting messages would take almost two weeks to relay the same message. This enormous increase in speed owed itself to the ability of the service to profit from private use. Otherwise, such a network of riders and horses would be far too costly to maintain over an empire. Even with this advantage, messages could only be relayed across major routes, requiring couriers from more remote locations to reach a mutation at a slower pace before their message could, as it were, ride the wave.

Unfortunately for your average Gaius, the cursus velox was far too expensive for his needs. A citizen could have a letter delivered to any major city in the empire over the fast service for a fee of twenty denarii. At this price, it is fortunate that there was another service dedicated to less urgent deliveries. This cursus clabularis consisted of carts driven by mules along the major highways. Traveling at the trotting pace of mules and without the elaborate exchanges of the cursus velox, the clabularis could manage a modest 30 km per day. Sending a letter by cart from Brundisium to Mediolanum, across only the length of Italy, would take around 42 days at this rate of travel. Unlike the cursus velox, which would continuously send messages over land across national distances, the cursus clabularis only operated within specific zones such as Italy, Greece, Anatolia, Gaul, and Hispania. Since these zones overlapped, it was possible to send something over longer distances but this would incur an additional fee. Sending a letter by cart within one zone cost a single denarius. For a price of fifty denarii, a citizen could send a package no larger than one cubitus through one zone of the cursus clabularis.

All postal transactions performed by citizens had to be performed at any of the many licensed stationes (post offices) located throughout the major provinces. Payments were stored in a chest, with details of the transaction such as sender, destination, recipient, and date getting recorded for bookkeeping. If records didn't match a station's revenue or were shown to be missing deliveries that got recorded at some destination - say someone pocketed a payment - then the guilty party would be fired and charged triple whatever he stole.

While manceps on the highways were not employed by the government, the publicani stationes (postal workers) running a post office received a respectable one denarius in daily wages, as did couriers working the routes. Even a city such as Rome only had a single station, greatly simplifying the processing of deliveries.

Overall, around 110 publicani stationes and over 1,400 couriers were employed by the Senate once the new cursus vehicularis and its stationes were considered complete across major cities in 281 CE. Construction and procurement costs for stationes, carts, and horses amounted to nearly 84 million denarii for the Senate. Maintenance of the system at its current size would be a further 900,000 denarii per year but this was more than offset by the nearly three million denarii the service procured in revenue over the same period. The cursus vehicularis was truly a profitable and advantageous public service.

The service founded by Heracleitus evolved into the modern Imperium Cursorium (Imperial Mail), the government-owned postal service founded in 1066 CE. Until the Civil War, the cursus vehicularis connected the empire in a nationwide social network that reached across cultural borders. A message could be relayed during summer, from one end of the empire to the other, in as little as fifteen days. This speed was a marvel of social engineering, greatly contributing to the growing unity of the Imperium. Nothing would match the fastest speeds of the cursus vehicularis until the advent of steam-driven vehicles.

International trade
With international trade through the Kingdom of Aksum rising, the Senate desired a more direct commercial line to rich nations like India and China. The surest route to expanding unmediated trade required twofold efforts. Ports on the Mare Rubrum side had to increase ship capacities, which they did by 278. The emperor even directly commissioned the Grand Harbour of Petra, a vast port with a capacity comparable to the ports and shipyards of Alexandria. From an infrastructural point of view, Rome was well on its way to oriental trade.

However, the next necessity, strengthening ties with oriental merchants, was not as easy. The Indian state of Andhra was already a loyal trading partner of Rome but other Indian merchants were more reluctant to do business with strange white foreigners. The chosen approach was openly investing in coastal towns of the Kushan Empire to accustom merchants to dealing with Romans and show them the Imperium's wealth. Trade was picking up when the Senate finally contacted Emperor Vasudeva II in April 291. A trade agreement, granting Roman merchants special privileges in Kushan ports and publicizing trade with Rome was established by both empires, for their mutual benefit, in 294. Much to Rome's shock, the Kushan's economic practices and coins closely resembled the Greek economic model, drawing in curious intellectuals, interested in ancient cultures, from Rome.

China was a harder nut to crack. Largely unified under the Jin dynasty of emperors, the Chinese were focusing on combating internal instability, the same unrest which split the nation again in a war among eight Jin princes and produced the Wu Hu uprisings in 291 and 304 respectively. All the while, the regular trade of luxuries along the Silk Road continued with persistent sea trade to India and the Aksumites. Rome had little chance of opening new commercial avenues in this region while it suffered from civil war and sought stale commercial practices.

Aksum, far from losing business as its European rival expanded, flourished during the growth of Roman trade as the commercial growth unintentionally helped Roman merchants trade with Aksumite port towns. Riches of international commerce compounded with Aksum's naturally great deposits of gold fostered an unprecedented growth of the Aksumite economy. By 320 CE, Aksum owned a kingdom one fifth the size of Rome's empire. Its people enjoyed a living standard on a similar scale, with luxuries like silk and spice and plentiful necessities.

Persia
Sassanid Persia did not benefit from the failing silk trade along land routes but was certainly not hurt by the trade agreement offered by Heracleitus in 274. But peaceful trade between these old enemies could not last.

Senators, jealous of Persia's metallurgical wealth and angered by its incursions into their vassal, Armenia, sent five legions in 281 to retake Armenian lands and steal Persian mines. Shah Bahram II retaliated with 83,900 troops. Armenia, for its part, supported Rome in defending its territories by contributing 22,000 soldiers under King Tiridates III of Arsacid himself. The ensuing Armenian War pacified Persia for decades to come.

The Roman coalition of 25,600 legionaries, 5400 sagittae, 6700 horsemen alongside 19,000 infantry and 1500 chariots from Armenia combined into an outnumbered army of 53,000 soldiers. Where they lacked size, coalition forces more than made up for in discipline and equipment. Roman legions were notorious for battlefield support by ballista (artillery) of which the manuballista, a handheld sniper-crossbow, and polybolos, a semi-automatic arrow cannon, were the most infamous. Persian infantry tended to be wiped out at long-range while cavalry charges, usually an effective tactic in ancient warfare, were stopped by sniping lead horses.

Brief stints of combat allowed the coalition to dwindle Persian forces to a more manageable scale. When the logistics fell into Rome's favor, a cavalry charge was led against daylami heavy infantry at the Battle of Hatra, wiping one of the Persians' only defenses against direct assaults of that kind.

Suffering heavy losses of its elite daylamite infantry and dealing with Turkish tribes to the east, Persia sued for peace in 284 despite holding in reserve a capacity to levy a militia 150,000 strong.

King Tiridates, having been killed in the Battle of Agbatana, left his son to rule Armenia as Khosrov III. Since the kingdom was indebted to Rome for its defense and could only expect further security under the empire, Khosrov stepped aside so that the Caesar might rule his kingdom in his place. Thus Rome inherited the kingdom of Armenia in 283 and three legions were stationed there after the war with Persia.

More specifically, Caesar inherited Armenia, designating it private imperial territory in the manner of Egypt. Thus a praefectus armenicus, a member of the equestrian order, was made governor of Roman Armenia stationed in the former royal palace in Noarakaghak, referred by its governors as Noaracagac. Coins were minted by the Senate to commemorate the annexation of the new province, bearing the inscription 'ARMENIA IN IMPERIUM ROMANUM' (Armenia under Roman authority). Once again, the empire firmly held the Middle East.

Securing the Imperium (281-300)
The empire of one city, Rome, had grown under its princeps civitatis - effectively absolute autarchs - to inordinate proportions, well beyond what could be governed by a single polity. With the annexation of territory in Armenia, Rome controlled its largest area to date. Though unrivaled on the international field, the Imperium Romanum was still able to lose enormous sums of denarii and numbers of citizens in wars with countries like Persia.

Separating the empire from a foreign and barbaric outer world were the limites Romanes - frontiers of the empire. Along many limes were minor fortifications but provinces like Pannonia, Dacia and Germania were guarded by massive stone and mortar valla (walls) totaling 1600 km of the frontiers. Rome's most troublesome border was, of course, the Limes Arabicus which sat against Persia. Heracleitus sought to remove this vulnerability in his empire's hide and forever manage military conflicts with Rome's greatest neighbour.

The instrument of his plan was a great wall, stretching from the Mare Axeinum to the Mare Rubrum, designed to divide Rome from Persia and would nearly double the length of stone walls protecting the limites.

Straight as a sword from end to end, the Vallum Magnum Judaecum (Great Wall of Judaea) physically divides Asia Minor, without gaps in its 1,501 km fortifications, into distinct geopolitical regions.

Engineering of the day rendered the final product of 295 CE impenetrable from the east. The rear fortifications were 17.8 m tall and 10.4 m wide at the base. Constructed in two layers, this wall could merely be dented by the large siege weapons of the day. Its east-facing layer was composed of 1.48 m thick stone blocks stacked together for three meters of solid defenses. The posterior layer, by contrast, is made of brick and mortar, absorbing the impact of heavy blows to the wall. The face of the wall slopes to soften direct hits.

At each (Roman) mile along the VMJ's length, a castrum (fort) houses anywhere from 100 to 1000 archers. Artillerymen (ballistarii) operate the more than 4210 scorpiones and ballistae on the main wall.

A brick and mortar wall, half the first's dimensions, lay 4.44 m ahead of the main wall. It was more vulnerable than the primary fortifications as heavy onagers could gradually tear it down. In front of it was a 4.44 m deep, 2.96 m wide fossa (ditch) along nearly its entire length, terminating a few miles from the seas on either end. The VMJ's permanent fortification which was at the fore was a 1.48 m high solid concrete palisade, intended to block siege engines and horses from directly approaching the secondary wall.

As a defense for the eastern frontier, the Great Wall of Judaea was a monumental piece of architecture. The front and rear fortifications were all but unbreakable with third century technology. Even with the advent of the cannon, these walls could stand hours of bombardment. The purpose of the middle wall was to absorb damage that would have gone to the main wall, allowing the entire complex to survive besieging many times longer than a less well equipped wall could manage. The near indestructibility of the tertiary concrete palisade limited direct approach of the walls to infantry and nullified the threat of battering rams.

Another fortification, the Vallum Tripolitanum, was built along the border of Mauretania Caesariensis to restrict the growing threat of Berber tribes and non-Roman Mauri to Africa Proconsularis, allowing legions to be concentrated in one province rather than two. This simple 832 km wall was completed in 299.

Preceding the construction of the new fortifications was the defeat of the Kingdom of Saxon in 286. Coming on the tail of the war with Persia, this second victory for Rome ushered in the Pax Romana of Rome's second millennium. Safe behind its walls, the empire flourished.

General prices saw slight deflation in the 280's when silver purity of the denarius was increased to 93.1%, a tremendous 3.68 grams of the precious metal. More than enough was being mined to maintain supplies. In fact, a substantial horde of gold and silver was stored in the major banks of the Capitol, for use in emergencies. Now that the mines of Mauretania were safe from raiders, their supply flowed freely into Rome.

In the province of Noricum, a region famous for its unusually high-quality iron, the Senate was expanding iron mines in the 270's to generate an income double what the province produced before Heracleitus' reign. The iron produced there went on to create virtually all the military equipment used by legionaries, from their gladius to the buckles on parts of their armor. Iron from the province was so far ahead of other recognized supplies of the metal in durability that it was given the name noricum, what chemists would later discover is a kind of low carbon iron (steel) that would eventually be classified as a distinct alloy. Ironworks in Noricum expanded to match the growing supply of ore from the mines.

Mediterranean trade benefitted from the empire's provinces increasing commercial specialization. Since piracy was still a problem the Roman fleet was tasked with sweeping the North African coast for ships suspected of pirate activity. A total of 916 people were arrested and tried for pirating imperial trade routes - most were executed. About a dozen ships, recognized by merchants for attacking them at sea, were scuttled and their owners, if they were not arrested, were compensated and told to seek a new profession.

Ports in Athens, Corinthia, Syracusae, Ephesus, Tyrus and over 90 other coastal towns were subsidized by the Roman government, raising Aegean trade by 64% and trade with the east coast by 41%, by volume of goods transported, between the years 272 and 299.

Provincial specialization
One historical theme that permeated the development of Rome from the 3rd century to the 6th century was the shift of provincial economies to specialized production of goods. While Roman economic theory had not advanced a notion of comparative advantage, the government recognized the absolute advantage to focusing a region's productive capacities toward a single type of good. Noricum iron is an early example of this realization but it was also shown earlier in Egyptian wheat, and eventually Nubian gold and German woodworking.

A new concept that moral philosophers associated with the Lyceum picked up from Rome's efforts to focus production was that of ampliatio cum moles (economies of scale, or literally amplification with size). It was found that increasing the size of a single manufacturing effort would cut costs for the manufacturer - in an analogous manner to the advantage that one massive army holds over many smaller armies with the same combined number of troops.

Many factors are recognized in the modern theory of economies of scale but what was known at the time was: As of the reign of Heracleitus, the government was not actively or enthusiastically engaging in policies promoting specialization of production. This really took hold under the guidance of Agricola. Nevertheless, the theory was being discovered during Heracleitus' reign, with one treatise, De Ampliatio cum Moles, written in 297.
 * 1) Storage per unit volume becomes cheaper with larger volumes of goods (volumes rise faster than surfaces of the container or store house).
 * 2) Bulk purchases of resources are cheaper per unit than smaller purchases.
 * 3) Dissemination of the finished good is cheaper per unit when transporting in bulk.
 * 4) Larger production efforts allow for more individual specialists in the production process; these specialists are more efficient at what they do than generalized laborers or managers.
 * 5) People being surrounded by other people of the same trade can more easily learn that trade and improve at it through exposure.
 * 6) Local infrastructure and resources might be specially suited to producing certain goods.

Christianity
A minor cult of people following the dead Jewish rabbi Joshua - known to his followers as Khristos - was exhibiting an uncanny growth among the populace of the Roman Empire. Mesopotamia was the first province to become de facto Christian, a regional influence only expanded with the addition of Christian Armenia to the empire in 283.

The ideals of Christianity - meek inheriting the earth and suffering enhancing virtues - resonated with the lower classes, giving proselytization an almost viral effectiveness. Nevertheless, the spread of Christians was mostly geographical, branching out from Judaea, which firmly resisted it, into eastern provinces like Egypt and Syria. By sea, Christians made it to Hispania, Britannia, Mauretania and Rome itself within the lifetime of St. Paul. This is the story of its early expansion during the 1st century after the Christ figure.

In the West, Christianity met resistance in the polytheism practiced by Greeks, Romans and Phoenicians, which was led by influential priestly orders. The four great religious bodies of Rome - the Augurs, the Pontiffs, the Sybils and the Epulones - strongly influenced the political, economic and celebratory lives of Romans through their scriptures, rituals, oracles and dignitas. For Christianity to emerge publicly in Rome, it would need to match or even supplant these collegia before gaining a foothold. This could only be done by gradual conversion.

In the Pax Romana of Heracleitus' reign, the patrician elite were also falling under the "witchcraft of the Christian cult". Christian ideals not only affirmed their growing appreciation of universal peace but met with approval in Greece among the intellectuals and philosophers, who brought their ideas to the dinner tables of Roman villas. The result was a significant foothold for Christianity among the upper class of citizens.

In Judaea, Christianity only met greater disdain. The Roman commander in the region, George, was accused in 302 of favoring Christians in his allocation of imported grain and of spending provincial funds on Christian priests. The emperor, for his part, respected the Jews for their role in the empire's peacetime economy and had a particular disdain for these followers of Christ. For this reason, many senators were forced to worship in secret. When news of George's favoritism reached Rome, Heracleitus was conflicted. George was one of his finest commanders but his actions could neither be condoned nor left unpunished.

Heracleitus' response was the lex ritua Romana, forcing all officers of the Legion - except the Jewish ones - to make weekly sacrifices to the Roman gods while stationed in a secure castrum. There was almost no resistance to the law since legionaries tended to be of the middle class or wealthier lower class, putting them between the primary demographics of Christian proselytization. Those who were Christian abided by the law as good soldiers.

That is soldiers other than George. Due to his prestige, he arranged a meeting with the Caesar in Alexandria to denounce the new law and publicly declare his membership in the Christian cult. Disturbed by the zeal of one of his favorite legates, Heracleitus spared no expense in bringing the most eloquent Roman polytheists to argue the case for the empire's illustrious state religion. George's non-compliance gave the emperor no choice but to set an example by executing him on grounds of heresy.

Donating his possessions to the poor, George met his executioner outside the Porta Esquilina with dignity. The assembled crowd consisted of tens of thousands of Roman Christians, some from the Senate, surreptitiously wishing to pay respects to a martyr of their cause.

Urban crisis (301-310)
Increasing internal commerce with Egypt was necessitated by rapid urbanization in Italy on a scale beyond any seen in the classical or pre-classical eras.

Rome surpassed Alexandria as the planet's largest urban center in the 1st century BCE when their populations were 400,000. At the turn of the millennium, Rome was home to over a million people and in 300 CE housed a population of nearly 1,730,000 in the form of 1.2 million citizens and 500,000 slaves. A city of that size had never been seen before and logistical strategies for maintaining this behemoth were required on the spot.

Italian farms supplied barely 30% of the Eternal City's agricultural needs but all of its wine, garum and olive oil. Half of Rome's regular food arrived on ships in the ports of Ostia and Naples from Egypt, Syria, Mauretania and Hispania, and the other 20% came over land from Gaul and Germania Superior. Most Italian cities required similar farming systems to survive. While this made Italy immensely dependent on the empire, there was no alternative means of sustaining cities the size of which could be found in Italia.

Unfortunately, this system was fragile. In 302, the East suffered a serious of droughts leading to famines. The emperor was left with the difficult decision of who to permit to suffer: Italy or half its empire. Shortages were soon experienced in Egypt, Syria and Arabia by Fall, trickling into Italy through the winter months. To compensate for shortages, shipments were requested from across the empire in small degrees both to Italy and the East, mitigating loss of life from famine.

Countermeasures to what was becoming known as the Urban Crisis (Cladis Urbs) were costing the state more than four million denarii a month and only suppressed the death toll to 410,000 in that first year. 303 did not bring an amelioration of the crisis as attempts to compensate for low crop yields rendered many fields in Egypt and Syria practically unusable. The result was another year of famines, killing an additional 790,000 people.

Besides short-term policies providing food to the hungry, the Senate legislated against what they correctly perceived as the growing problem of Italy's overurbanization. The lex migratus urbanus brought rural flight under stricter regulation, forcing anyone buying a house in the ten largest cities to submit to a background check and acquire a government permit, which would not be issued if the buyer is a new resident and the quota for rural immigrants for the requested city has been met. Establishing reasonable immigration quotas took nearly a year of research. Nevertheless, the next century vindicated the government's efforts.

A year after the crisis, the Senate passed an omnibus bill covering a host of urban regulations. The magna lex urbana covered such topics as: necessary sewer coverage for different sized cities, number of city gates per unit of population, number of street cleaners, maximum height for private houses, minimum street width and the recommended number of banks, markets, hospitals and post offices for different population sizes. This corpus of laws brought down the average population density of Italian cities, further staving off another crisis.

As a final measure, the emperor initiated a program of subsidizing the colonization of Dacia, Raetia and Belgica. This had the secondary advantages of distilling the local populations and opening avenues for Roman citizenship to naturally grow. Heracleitus' colonization measures were continued by his next two successors.

Ireland
With the Mediterranean rid of organized piracy and firmly under Italy's heel, there was the small matter of magnifying Rome's control over the other three major seas: the Mare Rubrum, Mare Axeinum and Mare Germanicum. The latter desperately needed subjugation to remain in Roman control. Saxons had traveled past Britannia to the island of Hibernia (Ireland), setting themselves up as warlords over the local villages. Their ability to build galleys made them a threat to Roman naval security in the North Sea. The best solution to piracy which stems from landed polities was obvious.

Heracleitus sent his adopted son, formerly Flavius Valerius Constantinus, to Hibernia at the helm of four legions, in 305, after securing support from the Senate. Landing in the southeast, Constantine's strategy was to capture the major coastal warlords for execution in Rome and destroy the towns of landlocked Saxon dictators.

Unaffiliated Hibernii tended to be neutral towards the Romans or grateful for removing the Saxons from their homeland. Some of the locals were even recruited as militia for absorbing casualties in the legions. However, the size of Hibernia made progress slow. Constantine deposed the last warlord in 314, returning to Rome for the empire's first Triumph in over three decades. In hindsight, the event's scale was absurd given the demographic and economic insignificance of Hibernia but as it marked the addition of 84,421 km ² and came so long after the annexation of Armenia in 283, it gave the emperor an opportunity to celebrate another expansion of his empire. Coins were minted bearing the inscription, "HIBERNIA ROMANA".

Consolidation of the new territory would not be easy given how wild Hibernia was compared with the empire. None of the populace spoke Latin. Communicating with them was only possible in Pict dialects learned in Britannia and Caledonia. They were unaccustomed to civil authority, recognizing only the respect given to a local ruler or the fear of a mighty warlord. Fortunately, Rome could supply both influences.

Fear came in the form of subjugation under two legions stationed there. Uprisings were infrequent, as taxation was light, but when they happened dissenters were crushed without remorse. Natives were in awe of the legionaries' capabilities in combat, bearing a respect for how effectively they could fight when outnumbered. Militias were outlawed on any scale and authority was spread from Rome through the fort known as Collinora, built in the south-eastern mountains of Hibernia around 319 CE.

Reverence was supplied by the cult of personality for dead emperors, the ancestors of the current Caesar. Many temples were built in Hibernian villages to divine Claudius, Augustus and Sulla among others.

Constantine's popularity, as a commander and heir to the emperor, rose after returning triumphant to Rome. His achievements made him popular with the people and respected by the patrician class of Rome. As Constantine came to power in 324, he had more initial popularity than any emperor since Marcus Aurelius.

Later rule (311-324)
With all his spending, Heracleitus ran the national treasury to nothing by 302. Seven congiaria were given over his 52 years as Caesar, one adding up to 800 denarii per citizen to celebrate Pax Romana in 284. These continued even after the state started incurring debt in 303, peaking at 44% of GDP in 317.

Measures to compensate for public debt were slow to come. Taxes were raised to 13% on landowners, 12% on Mediterranean trade, 9% on purchasing a house and other amounts elsewhere across the board. Heavier taxation magnified government revenue by 60%, justified on the grounds of maintaining the Pax Romana. In reality, military spending was growing very slowly as the size of auxiliary forces was falling and being concentrated in military bases like the Vallum Magnum Judaecum. Thus the portion it took out of government income came to an all time low. The treasury and fiscus were restored to positive values; without debt; during the reign of the next emperor around 338 CE. The intermediate years of national debt caused inflation of the Roman currencies and softened levels of spending among the poorer non-citizens, many of whom were reduced to merely subsistence farming.

Sadly, the austerity measures of Heracleitus combined with consistently high taxes brought economic growth to a halt; a stagnation from which Rome did not recover until 346. A near absence of war did little to help Rome's slumping economy since military spending could have boosted national industry and agriculture.

While internal progress was brought to a halt in economic, political and scientific areas, the empire had never experienced greater security than on Heracleitus' death in September 324. The ancient Roman rival of Persia was pacified at last: weakened to a low point in its history, kept back by an impenetrable wall on the limes Arabicus and separated from Rome by a wide buffer zone in Mesopotamia and Armenia. The Rhine frontier, which had been secure for decades, was joined by the Danubian frontier and Tripoli frontier as those borders received a wall of their own. At the time, no terrestrial force possessed the capacity to successfully invade Rome.

Statistics for the Roman Empire of 324 AD
Population: 85 million people (28.5% of humans)

Area: 6,424,000 km ²

GDP: 8.1 billion denarii (~$162 billion US)

Treasury: 3 million denarii (~$60 million US)

National Debt: 2.1 billion denarii (25.9% of GDP)

Government revenue: 672 million denarii (~$13.4 billion US)

Military spending: 302 million denarii (44.9% of revenue or 3.7% of GDP)

Size of the Legions: 156,000 legionaries (30 legions), 253,150 auxiliaries and 10,000 praetorian guards

Legislature: 600 senators