485-537 CE (Superpowers)

''Draco adopted an heir to the throne, restarting the tradition of an emperor selecting his successor for his apparent competence. His choice was Avitus, the son of a wealthy Sicilian who managed grain routes into Rome. The young man showed prowess in managing his late biological father's business, the results of which Draco noticed. Previously, an emperor would have adopted someone that had impressed them enough at some social event, but Draco saw fit to seek out his heir.''

Historical Statistics for 500 CE (1253 AUC)

Caesar Avitus (485-494)
As the first successor in a new dynastic line, Avitus had many expectations over his actions. The last dynasty had its ups and its downs, even the better emperors after Faustilon tended to ignore basic maintenance, to bloat the bureaucracy, and to allow the navy to fall into disrepair. Most of them initiated useful projects during their reign but their ignorance of these mundane parts of running a country had hurt the empire. Draco had shared some of the responsibility and authority for these functions with the Senate so that even incompetent future emperors would not hamper more fundamental public spending.

German industry
Draco had gone to great lengths to expand into Magna Germania. A decree had converted all land in the new territory into ager publicus (public land), meaning the state owned every square kilometer of Greater Germany. Every retiring legionary was given the choice between a German home in a colonial city (colonia) or a rural villa with a large plot of land. Germany was so large that emperors could continue this policy for a century, after which most of the land either became ager privatus (private land) or the site of public industries (e.g. some large swaths of land would be designated forestry zones, where trees would be given time to regrow for sustainable timber). By 600 CE, about 52% remained public land for some industrial purpose while the rest consisted either of enclosed urban communities or private villas for people making their own living in the woods.

At this time, Germany had been described as an "uncertain yet lucrative" place for citizens to live, with stories circulating of both great calamities and great fortunes. This era saw the birth of a new species of literature and plays in the form of frontier tales. For example, one play told the story of a lowly actor who set out to work the mines of Germany, only to stumble upon a mother lode of silver; a greedy centurion caught wind of his fortune in a small colony then pursued the man with the force of his centuria. Such stories became immensely popular in Italy and the non-German coloniae, leaving an indelible mark on Roman culture.

One of the most recognizable aspects of the frontier lifestyle was the risk of German bandits or raiders. Although most Germans were forced to migrate with the Huns, about a hundred thousand remained for various reasons and survived the legionary purge that swept through before the colonists. With no way of integrating into the coloniae, these tribal communities continued to exist for centuries in Germany, expressing general animosity toward Romans. Citizens who worked their own plantation or mine from their villa would frequently come to blows with these German natives. Sometimes a villa would disappear off the map, leaving behind a broken building and signs of a struggle, but the empire grew wise.

Three legions were stationed away from the border walls and had been tasked with protecting colonists. Originally, this was hard as even a Roman legion was limited in mobility by its sheer size. In 493, Avitus ordered the three legions to separate regularly into distinct centuriae that would act as patrol groups trying to cover as much ground as possible. These would sometimes subdivide further into conturbernia that would go from villa to villa checking on the situation and searching the forests. A single contubernium was a match for a German raiding party and a centuria could handle most German villages. Some richer colonists would pay for a permanent station of legionaries on their land, a practice that the emperor authorized as part of the new format of legions operating in the Limes Germanicus (German frontier).

Other citizens came to their own methods of defending themselves when legionaries could not be expected to show up in time. A market for selling the manuballista to civilians opened in Germany, authorized by the Senate. These weapons were handheld crossbows (optional mounting for greater accuracy) with a regular range extending to 500 meters. No other weapon in the world could be accurate at those distances, giving a colonist an advantage over raiders or bandits. Some merchants were allowed to purchase a ceiroballista for their caravans - effectively, a mobile artillery piece for fighting off German bandits. The Senate even gave a small number of smithies and woodshops designs for a polyboloi which could be fired from a moving cart. This artillery piece was a semi-automatic crossbow capable of firing up to 11 shots per minute.

This was an exciting time in Roman history. Citizens could begin new lives in Greater Germany, often arriving with free land and a generous subsidy from the Senate. Despite the occasional loss of shipments to German tribes, Rome profited immensely from public mines, plantations, sawmills, stampmills, and other types of watermills. Of course, its level of profits only rose with the level of infrastructure available in the new territory.

Mills had to be built near a river or an aqueduct, either of which could supply the energy for heavy industrial processes. For this, Avitus commissioned over a thousand kilometers of aqueducts throughout the colonies, going to cities, mines, and other sites for public industries. Private citizens could usually only afford access to water for mining operations by opening a contract for their mine (perhaps found on their property) wherein some profits went toward the Senate. More enterprising colonists could supply themselves with their own water by building simple wood and ceramic aqueducts. Germany was well-suited to producing on an industrial scale with fresh water. While there was a higher volume of river flow per square kilometer than almost anywhere else in Europe, there was a low population density, allowing this water to be devoted toward watermills instead of cities.

While Avitus would be commissioning aqueducts from 489 until his death, his first project for Germany was a network of roads that connected to the viae publicae princepesque (imperial public highways) in other provinces. Starting in 486, Avitus used maps of German rivers and existing colonies to plan the placement of major highways. Methods used by Faustilon for building his highway network were copied for the Germanic highways (literally - Avitus plagiarized old roadbuilding records for his project). Despite funneling hundreds of millions of denarii, the major roads weren't even completed until about a decade after his death.

Only three routes for the postal service were instituted in Germany and for now, these were far more sparcely supplied than the change stations (mutationes) and rest stations (mansiones) in the rest of the empire. Nevertheless, a message could still be sent along the route from the Gothic capital of Vinona, near the Limes Vistillum, to Rome in only seven days (once the roads and stations to that city were finished in 508).

Iron industry
One advantage the Chinese had over Romans had long been their invention of the blast furnace for making cast iron rather than the wrought iron that was forged in the bloomeries of Europe,  Africa, and the rest of Asia. Cast iron may be more brittle than wrought iron (i.e. less useful for items needing to keep an edge) but the versality of shapes into which it could be forged allowed for cheaper production of certain iron goods and components.

Around ~480, a blacksmith in the city of Virunum began to heat his furnaces beyond the melting point of iron. After a few little accidents, he learned to pour the resulting liquid iron into stone molds for casting. His method for raising the temperature of his bloomery was very tedious, requiring several men to work bellows for a long period of time and seeking to get around this issue, he worked with other craftsmen in Virunum to build a tall furnace which had multiple open ports for cold blasting air into the furnace. Ore was charged through the top with a limestone flux while air entered from the bottom, passing through the material being smelted. Iron would gradually descend through the furnace, coming out in molten form by opening a valve.

As a step forward in ironmaking, this method was really the final stage of about a century of evolution. Norica was an iron ore product with exceptional qualities, used by the military for its swords and armor segments. However, not all bloomeries in the province of Noricum produced such high quality iron, some were producing low quality iron that would be reforged at a different location into useable iron. This blacksmith who first created a blast furnace had only gone the extra step into overheating the iron into liquid form, improvising from there to get a workable final product.

This liquid iron became an extremely low quality iron. Due to its quality and the manner in which it was excreted from a furnace, its Roman inventor named it ferrum stercum (pig iron). Liquid pig iron could be cast into shapes while removing its impurities. The resulting cast iron was useful for iron kitchenware and farm implements, making its inventor, Titus Albucius Stena, a rich blacksmith. Another forge took to buying his pellets of solidified pig iron that could be reforged into norica. Indeed, it was cheaper to buy pig iron pellets for reforging than to directly forge norica from iron ore.

By 493, Stena accumulated enough wealth to build blast furnaces in other cities, namely Parisium and Lugdunum in Gaul. He ran these other facilities through a guild that he founded, wherein he could appoint people to operate his furnaces in other towns. This expansion was the beginning of a powerful industrial guild in the Roman Empire. While commissioning forges in Noricum for his reorganization of the Legion, Avitus caught wind of the unique products of the Stena Guild and offered generous incentives for him to expand his smithies into Magna Germania. This was the beginning of the most powerful commercial entity that would ever exist - the Danubian Labor Guild.

Bloomeries were by no means replaced by Stenan blast furnaces, since they were needed to produce wrought iron, but a wide variety of products could be made more cheaply from cast iron: figurines, armor harnesses, weapon handles, carriage wheels, farming tools, kitchenware, and other low intensity tools. Hammers, nails, gears, and other machinery components mostly had to be made from wrought iron since cast iron shattered under high tensile and impact stresses. Furthermore, armor plates, sword blades, and other military equipment solely consisted of norica.

Military reforms
Starting in 491, Avitus reformed the standard equipment and organization for the Legion. The gladius increased in length by ~14 cm so that it would be more effective in individual combat, only losing some of its stabbing profiency. The spatha became the primary weapon for auxiliary soldiers as a ~0.92 meter long sword while the equestrian spatha was redesigned to be 1.05 m. Equestrian swords were also rounded more at the tips to prevent sticking inside flesh when running down infantry.

A legionary's scutum (square shield) had dimensions of its central boss reduced to lower its weight. The purpose of shrinking the metal part of the shield was for legionaries to tire less easily, as its weight would be reduced, but without harming their ability to defend against arrows. A direct strike from any heavy weapon could now more easily break the scutum but this was a minor risk compared with the increased mobility of the legionary.

Loricae segmentatae were the standard armor of a legionary even before Avitus. Segmented armor plates on the cuirass were forged from norica in a process wherein only the outer layer had its characteristic hardness while the core was soft for absorbing the shock of heavy blows - a process known as case hardening. In his reforms, Avitus replaced numerous bronze components in the armor (e.g. buckles, hinges, tie-rings) with cast iron to reduce equipment costs. These parts could be standardized from casting molds which also permitted production of them en masse for regular orders by the Legion. Finally, plumbatae (darts) were permanently phased out of use in preference for assistance from artillery and archers. As part of his military reforms, Avitus intended to create a much more integrated and extensive role in the Legion for sagittarii (archers). Furthermore, legionaries retained access to the pilum (javelin) for use in a brief volley before engaging an enemy.

As for troop organization, Avitus kept the centuria at 80 legionaries but raised the number of centuries per cohort from six to eight so that there would be a total of 6,400 legionaries in every legion. In addition to infantry recruits, a legion also employed 80 centurions and now needed to be led by a dux (pl. duces), standardizing the leadership of legions. However, on the military hierarchy, a dux reported to the Legatus Augustus (often simply legatus) of the province or provinces in which he was stationed. This system had a clear command pyramid. Every group of ten legionaries (contubernium) had one of its men as decanus, who would report directly to their centurion. As commanding officer for a centurion, Avitus retooled the position of standard-bearer  (signiferius) to be the leader of a cohort. Under his reforms, cohortes were to be the main separable unit for the army, enforced by requiring every cohort in the entire armed forces to have a distinct shield pattern, standard, and other identifiers. Nevertheless, most soldiers were stationed and traveled together as a legion, so the legion remained the most recognizable division.

Regulations were also put in place that assigned one chirurgius legionis (field surgeon) to each centurion, formally enforcing a standard that had been employed haphazardly since the founding of the Corinthian Surgical Academy. Every contubernium was still assigned two servants to manage its pack mule and equipment. For equipment, each legionary had his own shovel and each cohort its own mobile brick kiln. When operating in a defensive capacity, within the provinces, a legion could leave all of its heaviest equipment wherever it was stationed, to allow faster response times. However, this was at the risk of being unable to create fortifications for circumvallation or contravallation of an entrenched enemy when they arrived.

As a final measure, Avitus redistributed command over archers and artillery directly to the legions, where before they had always been part of less mobile or less formal military groups. This reorganization involved precise standardization of how many of certain unit types would be allocated to each legion (usually as a specific number assigned to every cohort).

After the Avitan Military Reforms, a legion would have 1,600 sagittarii and 250 ballistarii (artillerymen). The latter were highly specialized units, trained either at the Academia Bellica in Carthage or from legionaries who apprenticed as "extra credit" with existing artillerymen by assisting in management of artillery pieces and learning how to perform their job. For now, the former was a far less prevalent means of learning how to build and operate siege equipment than the latter. In terms of standard siege weapons, each legion would field 40 polybolos, 10 mobile ceiroballistae, and 120 manuballistae. Each weapon needed only one ballistarius to operate once prepared. This set-up leaves an additional 80 ballistarii for preparing those weapons as well as for assembling then operating the less permanent siege engines such as onagers, rams, siege towers, and heavy ballistae.

When carrying all of its equipment, a legion brought enough wood to assemble several heavy siege weapons before a battle. Part of the advantage that the legion always had was its ability to supply itself on the field, construct fortifications in hours to days, and employ a wide range of military equipment. These reforms only magnified those positive qualities.

In his emphasis of the Legion, Avitus changed the role of auxiliaries, reducing their importance. Archers once constituted about a tenth of all auxiliaries but now those units had become part of the Legion. Maintenance of auxiliaries along provincial fortifications was handed down to the provincial government of an imperial province. These manipuli (divisions) of auxiliaries would be under the command of the legate of the province in which they were stationed. For the most part, Avitus ensured that these units would not see open battle outside of their respective provinces.

Rome needed a more structured and efficient military as an empire that was now firmly rooted in its territory. The professional arm of its military was the Legion, drawing from Rome's massive number of fit male citizens. Artillerymen came from a similar stock while archers were now solely citizens. The Auxilia was now functioinally a wing of the military that consisted of two sections: the Municipia included town guards employed by the city senate of an urbs at no less than one auxiliary for every 1,000 residents, and the Valla included border guards or fort contingents employed by a province. As another vital measure, Avitus instituted new  standard wages for different positions in the Legion and the Auxilia.

Meanwhile, the classis (navy) was in a sorry state. Scipio had separated the navy from the Legion and renewed its contingent of vessels but there had been few replacements or repairs since his renewal. Most ships were ones built during his reign, although what few new ships were built came straight from the drydocks of Carthage and were of a high quality. Avitus had little concern for the strength of the navy since Scipio had effectively isolated the Mare Internum from the rest of the world and the Red Sea, next most important body of water to Rome, was effectively patrolled for pirates by the mighty navy of the Aksum.

Altogether, Avitus left behind a leaner but stronger military for the empire. Long-term contracts were signed with smithies and woodshops to supplement what could not be produced in industries on public land. With the growing number of public mills and smithies in Magna Germania, maintenance costs for the military plummeted by their replacement of private contracts. In some ways, this was one of the final stages in the transition of Rome from an empire held together by force to a united civilization, in essense, the first "modern" state. Agricola had reformed taxation, Sapiens fixed the bureaucracy (although it was degrading), and now Avitus had reformed the military to a true standing industrial army.

Father of Geology
Building on Theophrastus and Aristotelian philosophy, a Thracian natural philosopher by the name of Nicomechus published a work in 489 entitled Classification of Stones. This text was the culmination of three decades of field work for the Lyceum, involving the study of minerals and rocks throughout the empire. One property of stones which Nicomechus had extensively investigated was their hardness. Any rock which could only be scratched diamond was labelled an Alpha stone, by quartz or anything harder was labelled a Beta stone, then so on for another ten stages. The lowest rocks by hardness could be scratched by soapstone and were classified as Lambda stones. His chart became standard for natural philosophers and miners after a few decades of circulation, appearing in various forms as posters or booklets for practical use.

Aside from the property of hardness, Nicomechus invented terms for classifying crystals by characteristic external shape. All of his classifications started from the more primitive designations of Theophrastus, correcting a number of his errors and extending his system over a larger number of stones even than Pliny (who was more prolific but less systematic than Theophrastus). In his work On Stones, Theophrastus had a primitive, informal way of discussing stones, often not going farther than saying that a certain colored stone was unusually heavy, smelly, hard, flammable, or lustrous. Nicomechus made vast improvements on his work, rigorously classifying stones by generally observable properties and distinguishing previously unrecognized differences of stones that had a similar appearances, a common error of early geological treatises.

On the whole, this text explained with rigorous detail how to identify the known ores for copper, iron, silver, tin, lead, zinc, sulphur, and mercury when out in the field. Older texts touched on such matters before Nicomechus but his exceeded other works in how systematically he classified ores and in how many unknown distinctions between ores he identified. Some of his success is attributable to the private financing of the Lyceum by mining guilds, who paid for his dozens of assistants and his lengthy trips to Egypt, Nubia, Arabia, Mauretania, and even once to India.

Perhaps the most useful descriptions in his Classification of Stones was his identification of certain environments and terrain with the ores that could be found in the area. What little attempts were made to explain these correlations were nowhere near as valuable as the sheer detail of what stones tended to be found in what environments. In some cases, Nicomechus had only seen coincidental correlations, that future geological philosophers would correct, but for the most part, his inferences on observation were sound. For example, he noted the effects of metals on nearby vegetation and drew images that helped identify ore veins. Citizens, magistrates, and guilds surveying Greater Germany for mines would make use of this text for the next few centuries.

For his work, Nicomechus is regarded by Roman historians as the father of geology. Not only did he revolutionize the practice of identifying rocks from their observable characteristics but he advanced certain geological theories such as the notion that layers of rock in a local region were deposited gradually over time, settling out of water in by the same mechanism as Antipedes had postulated shorelines were formed. This process would mean that younger rocks lay closer to the surface than older rocks, with no possibility of exceptions where old rocks lay above younger rocks. Despite this final detail being in error, his theory marks the first presentation of the principle of superposition that underlies much of modern geology.

Caesar Darius (494-507)
After Caesar Avitus was assassinated on tour in Leptis Magna, his brother Lucius Draconus Darius took power. Darius was an older man by this time but he had been grooming a son who showed great promise and was only given the curule throne by his brother on the condition that his son would succeed him when the time came. His son Lucius Draconus Lorus was an intelligent man of 24 who had graduated from the Academia Bellica three years ago with the highest honors. Lorus was away on campaign in Germany when he received the news of his uncle's death and of the ascension to power of his father.

Greek separatism
In 495, a famous Greek orator, philosopher, and historian named Elarnassus wrote a scathing treatise on the independence of the Greeks and the majesty of their culture. He accused Rome of being a parasite for Greek knowledge and technology as well as for stifling the development of the Greek understanding of nature. Although not affiliated with any school, Elarnassus had already drawn a great deal of local attention in Epirus and Achaia, delivering inspiring speeches on the agora of Athens and meeting with a number of wealthy Greeks, attending their dinners as an honored guest.

By his efforts, tens of thousands of Greeks were inspired in the cause of the independence of their nation from Rome. Oratories by Elarnassus would remind people of how Archimedes held off an entire fleet of ships with his inventions and how one Greek Macedonian (the two cultures had long since blended by this time) had nearly conquered the known world in his lifetime, using only the manpower of Greek cities and tactics of Greek design. In essence, he argued that everything that made Rome great was of Greek origin and invention; therefore, the Greeks would be more powerful without Rome weighing them down. Obviously, his words were far more eloquent than these, but none of his texts survive to the modern day.

Three years after the publication, the emperor caught wind of Elarnassus and his ideology. The danger such ideas posed to the stability of the empire was apparent. They could not be allowed continued dissemination. On this head, Darius ordered that all copies of Elarnassus' philosophies be burned and that Elarnassus himself be taken away for quiet execution. Anything public would only provide the opportunity for further proselytizing. In this manner, legionaries were sent into his home to take him into custody on June 24 of 498. He received a private trial in Rome at which he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to be strangled on the outskirts of the city.

Hundreds protested across Greece when news spread that Elarnassus had been kidnapped by the Legion. In many ways, his execution had only turned him into a martyr for Greek independence. Although protests were subdued by city guards, the issue of separation from the empire would not rest for long.

Resurgence of the Germans
While Greater Germany was coming more tightly under Roman control, the Germanic and Scythian tribes who once called the land their home were far away, struggling to maintain a cohesive society. A mere decade after overthrowing the Huns, these peoples were still transitioning to a less nomadic lifestyle - building homesteads and farms as well as concentrating their people into gradually larger towns. With such a large variety of cultures, none of which dominated, there was no clear geographic focus for leadership - no capital city or palace for the elected king. When the first Reiks Germanic was elected, he simply took to ruling from his home. Other Comites (Counts) had pledged loyalty to him on his election, meaning they would raise armies at his command and offer a portion of their tax revenues, but they continued to govern their own tribes in their traditional ways.

This feudal hierarchy functioned relatively efficiently for the tribes. Its central authority had arisen from a combination of historic continuation of the unity given through domination by the Huns and reverence for the Roman mode of governance. Otherwise, it is likely that the tribes would have splintered into smaller kingdoms in the format of nation-states each with a singular culture. As the tribes settled into agricultural societies, tribal leadership slowly evolved into servitude of the common laborers to chiefs. For the first three decades, this evolution was accelerated by the strict system enforced by the Huns, wherein a Hunnic governor would be lord of his appointed tribal chieftains or kings. As nomads became farmers and Hunnic despots were replaced by local lords, this hierarchy went from control over tribes by a governor to referral to the tribal leaders themselves for guidance. Since these leaders looked to the Concile Germanic and its Reiks for authority, they unintentionally moved toward a system wherein they exchanged security through their armies and laws for the fruits of the common person's labor in the fields.

Germanic agriculture was an inheritance from the Saxones and Gothi, who had primitive agrarian societies even during Hunnic occupation of their former lands. Although they were forced to leave behind their rudimentary farms when Rome made all of the Germanic and Scythian tribes migrate away from Magna Germania, they brought their practices with them. The Huns employed Saxon and Gothic methods for settling their empire, forcing lesser tribes to work the fields and provide the Hunnic King with some of their produce as taxes (at the same time, most Huns engaged in free agriculture in their own parts of the land).

When the Huns were overthrown, tribes continued to work the lands on which they had settled and were offered protection by the local lord who could raise an army of the middle-class both to protect their tribes and defend the Reiks Germanic. Although they owed their loyalties to the Reiks, their strictest loyalty had become for their tribes since the common tribesmen were the source of their military and financial power, despite this peasantry usually getting the short stick.

By 496, the Confederacy of Germania had expanded by almost a hundred thousand square kilometers. Its primary means of growth was the settling of new tribes on its borders, whose chiefs would form some sort of relationship with the Reiks. Often, this relationship could be instigated by a short conflict. A prime example of this process was the arrival of the Avars from the east. Possibly connected to the Khanlig Chianbei, these nomads were led by their Khagan and began their relationship with the Confederacy by pillaging Saxon farms along the edges of its territory. Evidently, the Avars found something they wanted in the form of these estates and advanced farther into the Confederacy. By order of the Reiks, armies were mobilized from the various knoths knodais (megatribes) to repel the Avar horsemen.

Although the Germanic armies outnumbered the Avars at 90,000 men, they would be overrun by cavalry charges. After a third major battle, during which both sides were crippled, the Reiks sent a small force cobbled together from the peasantry. His move successfully intimidated the Avars into an agreement in which they would stay below one of the major local rivers and provide a measure of tribute for the Confederacy, in the form of horses that would be distributed among the Comites as a reward. Only a decade or two passed before the Avars settled into their appointed lands. Another three decades had to go by for them to be accepted into the Confederacy.

These Germanic farming estates spread south and west, reaching the Borysthenes around 509. Here the Confederacy began to trade with Taurica, a foederatus (vassal state) of the Roman Empire. For now, neither civilization would realize the existence or even influence of the other. For Rome, the German and Scythian tribes that had once inhabited Magna Germania were no longer a concern of their armies and the threat of invaders from the east had passed. For the Germans, they now lived far enough away from Rome that they would never need to worry about a legion again. As shortsighted as these attitudes were, the presence of the Confederacy did effectively block the migration of nomadic tribes from Asia, sparing Rome from new tribal enemies.

Caesar Scipio II (507-528)
During the reign of Darius, Lorus returned to Carthage to attend the naval staff college of the War Academy. In those three years, he nurtured a deep love for life at sea and for the engineering of ships. For this reason, he changed his cognomen to Scipio, to reflect his admiration of the Princeps Nautici who had a legendary reputation among naval officers.

Taxes
Scipio had no love for the peregrini (non-citizens or foreigners) living in his empire, showing particular distaste for how they would benefit from the Pax Romana despite contributing almost nothing to maintaining this peace. They paid a poll tax, known as the Tributum, and some fought as auxiliaries for the empire, but the burden of financing public services fell largely on the shoulders of the citizens. For this reason, Scipio raised the poll tax on non-citizens while removing it for patrician citizens, so that the nobility were no longer the only class of citizens paying a head tax in addition to their income and property taxes.

With the census determining how many people lived in peregrini households, unless those foreigners paid as a whole tribe, there was little difficulty in drawing as many taxes as possible from non-citizens. Scipio became the first emperor to use census data for the specific persecution of peregrini. Although he did not use violence, he ordered the Quaestores (financial magistrates) and the censitores (census-takers) to find valuable facilities or plots of land that were owned by non-citizens. These could be taken as "taxes" by the state with no way for the affected people to retaliate in a legal or military capacity. For now, this abuse of political institutions would be without consequence for the emperor.

A number of mining sites, mills, and farms were appropriated by the state under Scipio's program of exploiting the peregrini. In many cases, the robbed people were left to starve or be cared for by their communities. A great deal of riverside property was also taken by the government, providing good sites for watermills for Roman industries. Indeed, part of the motivation for these public thefts of property was to create more industrial sites in Central and Western Europe, within the older provinces.

Aside from abusing natives, Scipio raised taxes on luxuries, implementing a grape tax in Hispania and Italy as well as a tax on evaporation ponds for salt. These were profitable markets with a high demand, businesses that would not suffer a great deal from higher taxes. While Scipio's efforts had a positive effect on public revenues, he went a step further into enriching his purse by trimming the fat in the bureaucracy, performing a similar purge as his grandfather had during his reign.

With the additional revenue, Scipio raised the annual payment to parents for their children from 15 Dn to 25 Dn per child while lowering the maximum age for receiving this subsidy from 10 years to 5 years old. Altogether, spending on children subsidies for citizens fell by a tenth of the prior cost. Scipio reasoned that a higher upfront payment would be more motivating for citizens, even though the total reward was reduced. Sponsoring the children of citizens, Scipio believed that Romans would more easily "outbreed the foreigners in [their] land."

Public transportation
With a better distribution of national wealth during the last century, demand for leisure activities, such as travel to Greece, was rising. Patricians and most equestrians could afford the journey from Italy to Greece or some of the coloniae but most citizens did not have the luxury of paying traveling merchants for a ride in a carriage or ship. Even the wealthy faced a hefty price for a journey to somewhere as far away as Alexandria or Antioch. On top of these well-known issues, the Pontifex Maximus (Pope) complained to the emperor, as earlier popes had done unsuccessfully, that there were too many Christians who could not afford pilgrimage to the holy sites of Hierosolyma (Jerusalem).

Under the sum of these pressures, Scipio urged the Senate in 511 to make travel throughout the empire cheaper without simply throwing money at the problem (as he was devoting as much funding as possible to his own project). Their decision was to found the Collegium Itinerarium as a public guild offering transport for citizens along major routes. Starting with forty raeda (heavy carriages) driven by a battalion of coachmen (raedarius), the guild could offer trips from Rome to the ports in the foot of Italia. Whenever funds could be diverted, gradual extensions were made to the service, reaching every Italian urbs by 516.

Any journey taken through this service cost a citizen 2 Dn per day (wives and children were not counted for this cost but every adult male member of a group had to pay this fee). A single coach could carry as many as 15 people, each with a few kilograms of luggage, so the number of carriages on any given route varied. A question was added to the regular Census asking citizens where they had traveled since the last Census, providing data for the Collegium to use in allocating carriages along routes. For managing this system, the Senate appointed a magistrate known as the Praefectus Itinerarius. This office also assumed the duty of organizing the Tabularium, the vaults on the Collis Vaticanus where state maps were stored.

Two years later, the Collegium expanded into the province of Palestina, carrying people between one of the ports on the coast to the urbs of Hierosolyma and the vicus parvus of Βηθλεέμ (Bethlehem). Daily prices for this service were double what they were in Italy, except during the low periods between seasonal pilgrimages for both Christians and Jews.

The only gap remaining in a journey from Rome to Jerusalem was the voyage by sea. Scipio was pleased to allow more spending on liburnae (fast biremes) to ferry people between Italy and Palestine. Such a service would only further justify his shipbuilding program for the imperial navy. The ships went directly between Tarentum and Caesarea Palestinae for a price of 160 Dn per passenger (no exceptions). As with other non-military public vessels, these ships would offer their space to merchants whenever demand did not suffice to fill their holds. This flat fee was less than half of the cost that a merchant ship would have incurred and easily less than a quarter of the price that most ships would offer travelers for that voyage.

Of course, accomodations on the maritime voyages were not great. Usually this involved a bunk for each passenger and enough food to last until the destination. A wealthy family could pay for a slightly better sleeping situation but they would need to make special arrangements before leaving port to have access to good food. Under good conditions, the liburnian galleys could make about 150 km over the course of a day, as this was close to the best casual speed for those ships. When the service was expanded in 526 to reach Melita, passengers could arrive within a mere five days of leaving the port of Ostia. On the year of Scipio's death, another extension of the service connected Alexandria with Caesarea Palestinae. By this time, the Collegium Itinerarium was netting 3.2 million denarii each year in profits for the public purse.

Syrian earthquake
The empire was struck by tragedy in the form of an earthquake that hit Syria in 526. Around 220,000 people, mostly citizens, were killed in Antioch alone, with another 80,000 in smaller towns. Fires raged through the streets of the city, destroying many buildings that were still standing after the initial shock. Even the Cathedral of St. Andrew caved inward, killing the Archbishop as well as several thousand worshippers who were there for the Feast of Ascension on the fortieth day of Easter.

Relief came through the transport of food from public liburnae but many of the aforementioned deaths were still of the disease and starvation that ran rampant through Syria in the metaphorical wake of the earthquake. The Senate supported the province with millions of denarii in aid for the next two years but with no executive decision by the emperor to do something such as send a legion or a team of workers to help rebuild, Antioch remained largerly in ruins for two years. Scipio had no love for Syrians and was not moved enough to divert from his shipbuilding to actively assist the ailing province.

His adopted son had been deeply disturbed by the tragedy, openly expressing his grief to the people of Rome and even traveling to Syria himself to visit the poor with a cornucopia of food from redirected vessels of the Classis Annona. When he came to power in 528, this emperor massively increased relief spending, sending in the work force and architects necessary to rebuild the city of Antioch. His goal was to prepare preventative measures in the province in the event of another calamity. Unfortunately, the empire had few options for alleviating the damage of earthquakes. All that could be done was build mortar-free walls, lighter roofs, and shorter buildings. A dome similar to that of the Pantheon was used for the reconstruction of the Cathedral of St. Andrew. As an additional show of good faith, the new emperor extended citizenship in 531 to all free residents of Syria. Syria became the first province after Italy where the annual child subsidy was extended to parents caring for children of age 5 years or younger. There were only ~200,000 children in Syria for which this payment applied but this still amounted to a cost of 5 million Dn.

Renovation of the Navy
With his love for the sea, Scipio lamented that Rome had lost its naval power since its supposed heyday after the Punic Wars. Ships had not being restored or replaced since his namesake had attempted to reform the Roman navy. This other emperor's efforts had been hampered by insufficient funds, priority on isolating the Mare Internum, and disinterest from his successors in maintaining the expanded fleets. However, the organization instituted by this first Scipio were still in place.

The current Scipio spared no expense in his total renovation of the Classis Romanis. Types of warships built for the fleets would be updated to match "modern" designs and technology while procedures for maintaining the fleet would be enforced by laws that would ensure the Senate had to care for the navy, even if future emperors gave it no thought. Indeed, total control over the fleets of the empire was passed to the Senate, since the navy could not be used anyway to overthrow an emperor in Rome without dooming the entire city. The Senate held this control by its power to elect and dismiss the five Procuratores Navales that commanded the five high fleets. Their leader, the Procurator Admirabillis, would have magisterial power to authorize funds for the navy, up to a legal limit of 300 million Dn, unless opposed by the Senate. Of course, in placing control of the navy out of the hands of emperors, Scipio made sure to force the Senate to elect him as Admirabillis for the remainder of his reign.

Since different bodies of water faced different threats, Scipio tried to create appropriate fleets for each region when he began all of these renovations and reforms in 508. For the Mediterranean, Scipio commissioned over two hundred liburnae and four deceres to be split between the Grecis Occidentalis and the Grecis Orientalis. Vessels in the Mediterranean would continue to be assigned a military officer (decurio classiarius) who commanded a small division of marines, usually Roman citizens but not paid or armed to the same degree as legionaries. Remiges (rowers) would be peregrini hired from coastal towns, supervised by a rower who had risen to the rank of celeusta for the ship. Rowers were lightly armed to help repel boarding parties.

Every ship regardless of class was under the command of its navarchus (captain) and piloted by its gubernator (helmsman). Squadrons of ships would follow a captain of higher rank, known as the navarchus princeps, and were the next smallest group below a classis (fleet). The dux classiarius (commander) of a fleet was filled by navarchi who rose through the ranks but the Procurator Navalis who acted as their commanding officers were patrician magistrates appointed by the Senate. Since there were few legions stationed along the coast of the Mare Internum, the two internal high fleets had little interaction with the Legion, relying on their marines for the occassional battle with pirates.

A standard liburnian galley after the reforms had 38 rowers, 18 marines/seamen, three nautae (officers), three or four servants, a medicus (doctor), a proreta (lookout), and a chef for the galley's galley. These ships were different in style than earlier imperial liburnae, losing its ramming abilities and its resistance to enemy artillery in exchange for the speed of a classic liburna. The role of these ships was a fast attack vessel, designed for rapid pursuit or swift running of patrol routes. In the Mare Internum, liburnae would be kept in constant use, both for regular patrols and assistance of the postal service or grain fleet. Indeed, the classis annona africana remained the largest fleet of this part of the navy, at most times requiring over sixty ships.

Seas and rivers connected to the Oceanus Atlanticus were within the jurisdiction of the Grecis Britannicus. Among its duties was the patrol of rivers in Gaul and Germany but Rome was only recently starting to realize the importance of another job. With the frontier at the River Vistillus, ships needed to cross the uncharted straights around Cimbria (Denmark). Only in the last decade had enough ships crossed and sank in those waters for semi-reliable maps to be created. Travelers and soldiers passing the region reported a number of fishing villages in the area, regarded as Herulian or Jutian communities of little interest but also to be distrusted as their waters were heavily pirated. Adding to Roman discomfort with the region, a number of invaders had tried to reach or settle in Britannia over the last two centuries. Indeed, aside from patrolling the Rhine, the primary purpose of fleets in the north had been watching the Britannic coastline for Jutian or Herulian ships, giving the high fleet its name.

Nearly a hundred liburnae were built from navaliae (shipyards) in Britannia and Lugdunensis. These would be concentrated in the Oceanus Germanicus (North Sea), where they could continue to pursue potential invaders, while the Angustae Heruliae (Herulian Straits) would be patrolled mostly by heavier warships. As part of Scipio's reforms, the greatest warships of the fleet became the deceres ("tens"), floating fortresses that could perform the role of an inviolable platform for archers and artillery. These were slow ships but they were armored where necessary and armed to the teeth with the latest artillery.

A standard decareme after Scipio required 800 rowers, supervised by ten celeustae, arranged in two banks on each side but with five rowers per oar. Their strength was needed to provide any momentum in battle for these 200 tonne, 84 meter long double-hulled behemoths. For combat, a decareme held a compliment of 180 marines accompanied by an additional 46 ballistarii. The latter were tasked with maintaining the artillery pieces positioned both above and below deck, with some assistance from the marines when there was no risk of being boarded. The crowning jewel of some decareme was a siphon (hydraulic pump) for projecting hygron pyr (liquid fire) onto enemy ships. Although Scipio could only equip siphones on about a tenth of deceres across the fleet (concentrated in the east), even one ship with this weapon could turn the tide of a battle.

As an equally destructive compliment of weapons, there were two swivelling ballista mounted near the center of the decareme's main deck (a platform that extended between the double-hulls for added stability of the artillery). Each of these ballistae fired a 62 kg projectile designed to pierce straight through the deck of an enemy ship. Along the edges of the deck were fifteen polybolos on each side, for take out enemy crewmen before a boarding action. Indeed, these ships were designed for neither boarding nor ramming as a primary form of attack. A single decareme had enough ammunition to punch holes in dozens of smaller ships, sinking them before more intimate combat could be initiated.

Marines hired for service on a decareme were required to have some experience with a sword and to learn proficiency with either a bow or the handheld manuballista, a crossbow with sufficient range for sniping targets at nearly 500 meters. Even without the heavier artillery, a decareme could depopulate the main deck of an enemy ship before even entering range of its own weapons.

Below deck, above and between the rowers, were thoroughly secured heavy ballistae, with a capacity just below 43 kg. These artillery pieces were fixed inside the hulls, unable to aim or make even the slightest adjustment to direction. Engineers known personally by Scipio during his time at the Academia Bellica had shown him designs for a ballista that could deliver a larger tensile force and over a longer draw distance than contemporary siege engines - in other words, the release could travel nearly twice as fast as that of any other design so that the projectile would also be released with twice the initial speed. Similar ideas had been floating around the academy for the last thirty years but no magistrate or emperor had shown interest in the weapons, as no one could propose a feasible mobile version except for placement in ships.

Scipio hired a number of these engineers to work with shipwrights on a design that incorporated several of these lignaballistae. As a result of these efforts, a new decareme had four lignaballistae on each side, arranged for a wide spread in their lines of fire. Although the latest designs replaced a number of wooden components with stronger metal parts, the weapons were still rather sensitive and could be rendered inoperable by the shock of near miss with a heavy catapult, even with the extra armor around their firing ports. Nevertheless, when effective, these artillery pieces were equally as effective as their heavier counterparts above deck, propelling heavy stones deep into the hulls of enemy ships. Their secondary advantage over other ballistae, besides a greater projectile velocity, was a shorter reload time using a strong chain drive mechanism to draw stones from a nearby compartment, limiting each lignaballista to the number of stones installed in these compartments when docked.

Despite their size, decaremes had such large crew sizes that they could not store enough supplies for long journeys, limiting them to operating within a single day's journey from the port in which they were stationed. By contrast, a liburnian galley could spend several days at sea before needing to resupply as long as it did not bring its team of rowers.

About eleven deceres were commissioned by Scipio for the Classis Britannicus. This number is very little in comparison with the 45 deceres built in the Mare Rubricum and even the 17 deceres guarding the Mare Axeinum (Black Sea). Warships of their size were too large to form the backbone of the Roman navy; this place of honor was reserved for the quiqueres.

A Roman quinquereme built after Scipio had a crew of 300 rowers as did earlier designs but the internal superstructure had been reworked to reduce the weight and improve the speed. Able to reach about three-quarters of the speed of a liburna, quinqueres were designed in the new fleets for grappling enemy ships to reduce their mobility to the advantage of heavier deceremes and to board their decks when required. For this maneuver, a quinquereme had dozens of grappling hooks and a crew of 220 marines. Although there were no quinqueremes in the Mediterranean high fleets, the Classis Britannicus boasted 42 quiqueremes while there were 84 quiqueremes stationed in the Red Sea and another 31 along the coast of Anatolia with the Grecis Axeinis.

As the centerpiece for his navy, Scipio commissioned the construction of the second tessarakonteres ("forty") in human history. Larger than any other ship constructed during the classical era, the Navis Curulis floated at a length of 131 m and stood at a height of 21 m above the water line at its sternpost. In principle, the ship required 4,200 rowers and could hold an almost equal number of marines in its hold, some of whom would assist in sailing the ship. Although the ship would occasionally employ that many crewmen during the ship parades that Scipio was fond of holding, most of its life under Scipio was spent in Capri attached to a dock constructed specifically for holding the ship. There the Navis Curulis served as a pleasure ship for the emperor and his attendants, an extension to the large parties often held at his villa on the island.

When expansions to the new navy of Rome stopped in 528 CE with the death of Scipio, there were ~24,000 freeborn non-citizens working in liburnae, with another ~160,000 peregrini on other vessels, as well as ~32,000 citizens serving as marines on ships. This adds up to an unprecedented ~216,000 men taking part in the Classis Romanis.

National industry
Rome had an economy unlike any other at the time. Although production still got managed at a local level, the state regulated commerce through taxes and manufacturing contracts while certain regions specialized for producing certain goods before selling their products for their own necessities. Most industries throughout the empire were private but the state held a large slice of the pie in the newly colonized region of Magna Germania. Even as far back as the early Antonine dynasty, Rome produced more iron than the entire rest of the world, exceeding Chinese output by a factor of 16.

Roman cities were interconnected in a vast network of safe highways that encouraged trade and permitted a high degree of regional specialization. Through colonization, Germany had become the foremost producer of timber and wooden items within the empire. Some of its goods were used by colonists but their surplus flowed back to the other provinces and the capital, where the prices of carriages, in particular, and lumber, in general, fell dramatically. German mines got into the habit of shipping copper, tin, silver, and lead to other provinces as large ingots. These metal ingots would get used f or specific products  wherever they went, supplying a large volume of raw materials for industries in Italy and Gaul especially.

Nearly a quarter of the population of Magna Germania procured natural resources, perhaps in a mine or a lumbermill, while most other colonists worked the farms that sustained its population. As for most of its history, the empire placed a high value on the life of a farmer, encouraging many plebeians to immigrate to Germany where they could have their own land and for legionaries to prefer retirement in Germany where they were freely offered land by the Senate. In the entire region, there were only two urbes, with most communities forming as small mining towns or trading outposts. Extraction of mineral resources for the whole Imperium Romanum was at the following annual levels in the year 520... ...where (t) indicates metric tons or tonnes of a given metal.
 * Iron: ~175,000 t
 * Copper: ~35,000 t
 * Lead: ~150,000 t
 * Silver: ~430 t
 * Gold: ~22 t

Gold production had virtually doubled when Nubia was added to the empire while iron production had benefitted from the growth of iron mines and smithies in Noricum, as well as that province's population growth during the 4th and late 5th centuries. Lead and copper production now largely depended on Magna Germania, although mining sites elsewhere had grown in output over the last three centuries. Meanwhile, Britannia had become the largest producer of coal in the world, with an output exceeding most nations. British coal fuelled the hypocausts of Rome and the smithies of Noricum.

On a national level, the exploitation and processing of natural resources was facilitated by widespread access to watermills, in a manner that gave Rome a comparable economic output to some industrializing economies. Aqueducts tended to serve as a primitive system for power transmission while dams that raised water in aqueducts were functionally producing usable energy that could be accessed by watermills using the flow of aqueducts for power. Such industrial methods left Rome in a unique position for a pre-industrial economy, producing on a level many times greater than a population of its era would suggest.

Caesar Ulpius (528-537)
Ulpius, the adopted son of Scipio, truly cemented his name after the Syrian earthquake even though he was knownthroughout much of the empire before that calamity for providing welfare in the provinces. His journeys made him perhaps the only emperor since Marcus Aurelius who had a profound sense of the plight of the average pleb. Especially in the face of the wastefulness of his father, Ulpius resolved to relieve some of the suffering of the poor when he ascended to the curule throne.

His sincerity for helping the poor make it a tragic irony that he would be one of the few emperors to be assassinated in his prime. The involvement of the emperor in quelling a rebellion by the Greeks drove at least one nationalist to Rome for the purpose of killing the emperor as he greeted a crowd in the Basilica Julia. Greeks had conflicting and varied feelings about the murder of Caesar Ulpius, loved as the "fair giver of laws" but hated as "Flavius Draconus Ulpius Grecus", a cognomen maliciously given by sympathizers with the cause of Greek independence. Ultimately, his assassination would foster a greater national disdain for the Elarnassian ideology and convince many Greeks that supporting it would be dishonorable.

International trade
Ulpius lamented that Rome was not in control of its trade with foreign kingdoms. Merchants in Nubia and Arabia Petrae would merely travel to other regions such as China or India to exchange Roman goods or money for foreign commodities such as rare spices and silk. Although Rome produced silk in Egypt, Chinese silk was of a higher quality and still prized by the nobility. With the fall of the primary Roman trading partner in India around 375 CE, Roman merchants had gone on to trade with its successor, the Gupta Empire. Envoys sent to its Maharajra Chandragupta II in 407 showed Rome that India was now almost singly ruled by one emperor, who fielded an army grander than the entire Legion. Not to be outdone, the reigning Antonine who heard from the envoys a year later, invited representatives from the Gupta to Rome. Fortunately for her international reputation, Rome received the delegates under her next emperor, Maximius, who was both sane and a patron of the arts.

The Indian diplomats were shown an impressive spectacle in the Flavian Amphitheater and given a demonstration of Roman armaments such as the polybolos. While they expressed interest in taking some to show their emperor, Maximius would not oblige their request, especially after an advisor of his insisted on the folly of offering a "rival" state such a useful weapon. There was little direct contact between Rome and the Gupta Empire afterward. Each empire's merchants continued to trade but a Caesar would not correspond again with a Gupta.



While Ulpius did not change anything about Rome's relations with the Gupta, he did impose larger tariffs on goods returning to Rome through ports in Arabia Petrae and Nubia, particularly on Indian spices and Chinese silk.

Some merchants trading with the Gupta during the 5th and 6th centuries adopted the local numerals used for representing numbers, employing it for papers of their own transactions. This decimal notation proved far easier to manipulate when calculating commercial data and by 530, was catching on with Nubian as well as Petraean merchants. Being unaccustomed to the Indian style of writing, their numerals were similar but not entirely the same as those invented by the Gupta. For the time being, the replacement of Roman numerals with Indian numerals was not only a local practice but one limited entirely to the local merchants of Nubia and Arabia Petrae.

Meanwhile, Ulpius sent an emissary to the King of Aksum to foster more efficient trade between their people. He offered his funding for the construction of a grand highway connecting the capital of Aksum and the province of Nubia, on condition that Rome retain control over the trade route. King Germanas agreed to the offer, even permitting a Roman embassy in his capital. A guard of 60 Praetorians went with the two Roman legati (ambassadors) once the beautiful new structure, in the style of the Basilica Aemilia but enclosed by thick walls, was finished in 539. Similarly, the Via Aksana was completed in 536 as an 894 km four-lane highway following the Eastern Nile. The large number of trade caravans that came to use this route and the prodigious spending of the members of the Roman embassy in Aksum ensured that these connections would remain.

A similar embassy for Aksumite delegates was established in the city of Thebes, where the emperor retained a dignitatum aksanum to care for them. However, not only did this diplomatic legate ensure a pleasant experience for their delegates, he was also tasked with tailoring their experience in such a manner as to only reveal information at his discretion. For example, throughout the civil war in Greece, the Aksumites were left entirely unaware of the empire's extended period of weakness. This procedure is the precursor to an eventual foreign intelligence agency for the empire. For now, the office of the aksumite legate only served to maintain close relations with Aksum while still holding back information or "national secrets". This office had access to some of the best translators of the local dialects that the state could find. After the passing of the regional plague, the Aksumite delegates were moved to a more permanent residence in Alexandria.

In addition to reining in relations with Indians and Aksumites, Ulpius tightened his grip on the Bosporan towns of Taurica and sent a number of ambassadors to Persia to work toward a lasting peace between the two great powers. While the recent defeat against Caesar Draconus less than seventy years earlier was like a fresh memory for Persia, they had regrown in power since that time and were eager to avoid another costly war against the mighty Roman Legion.

In many ways, Ulpius was an idealist, believing that Roman civilization exceeded any other that existed on this Earth and that it had a duty to hold itself as an example of political virtues and to cooperate with other civilizations. His writings would not see wide dissemination anytime soon but they would have an influence on political philosophy centuries later.

Civil war in Greece
Tension had been mounting in Greece between the common people and the city of Rome. Poor and dishonorable decisions by emperors over the last century had soured their view of caesarean leadership while, ironically, the benefits of another emperor during that same time had strengthened the public sense of strength and pride as a Greek nation. Philosophers and other authors were constantly writing fondly about the supposed golden age of Greek civilization and the power of the (Macedonian Greek) empire of Alexander the Great, namely how he conquered the known world with only the resources of Greece. Some of the more ambitious Greeks were privately discussing - sometimes seriously, sometimes not - the possibility of regaining the ancient glory of their people and throwing off the yoke of Roman oppression.

In particular, the writings and actions of Elarnassus of Nicopolis had an inspiring effect on the Greeks. One of his followers, Doreanos of Ithaca, devoted thirty two years of his life after narrowly avoiding punishment in 498 when he participated in riots against the Roman execution of his mentor. During those years, he formed a close group of like-minded people, separatists such as himself. Leading a conspiracy against Rome was difficult in their time and progress was slow. For the most part, this involved frequent dinners and symposia (drinking parties) with wealthy members of Greek society, identifying those who would be sympathetic to their cause and provide financial support. Other efforts had these men spreading their propaganda in Greek cities, where the literate could be influenced directly and the rest could be more subtly swayed (for example, they would leave posters in relatively isolated locations that depicted a Greek uprising against legionaries).

Emperors and the Senate caught wind of these activities but no one paid it as much attention as they should, reserving their reaction to removal of these messages by town guards or the rare disposal of discovered dissidents.

Finally, in 532, the flood gates opened. The eastern provinces had begun to suffer a pandemic of an unfamiliar disease during the later quarter of Scipio's reign. Spreading from Petra and Nubian ports, nearly a thousand people were dying in those cities every day by the time Ulpius took the throne in Rome. Before the plague could reach Alexandria, news had arrived in time for the it to close its gates completely to land trade - a procedure that had existed ever since the Plague of Carthage almost reached the grain supply of Rome. Ports along the east coast of the Mediterranean were being shutdown by order of city senates but smaller villages could not be controlled in such a manner. Some ships made it to Greece around 531, spreading the plague to some of the islands of the Aegean Sea. There were even outbreaks in Athens, Pergamum, Sparta, and Corinthia.

Alexandria was maintained by diverting some of the grain supply of Africa Proconsularis while Italy was sustained by more costly transport of food from Hispania and Magna Germania. While Italy received priority, there were shortages and high prices in Alexandria, starving the poor to the point of rioting in the streets. Thousands would die in the starvation and violence that affected the city while the rest of the province withered away from plague. Meanwhile, Constantinople was also forced to shut down its ports to shipments from the east, forcing the city to rely on far less voluminous supplies of food from Dacia and Greece.

All of these events, starting from the quarantine of Alexandria, transpired over the course of three months in 532. Unrest in Greece from increased food prices and shortages, with supply going to Constantinople, and from public fear from the disease was taken advantage of by Doreanos and his separatists to incite open rebellion. Within two months, there was somewhere around 130,000 armed rebels spread throughout the Greek cities on both sides of the Aegean. Of course, news travels fast in Rome, although messengers were delayed a week in Aquileia by doctors enforcing a quarantine on couriers from the cursus publicus entering Italy (Roman quarantines were based on the belief that someone could not be ill if they could go eight days without showing symptoms of any virulent diseases).

Unable to engage in any kind of diplomacy with the risk of messengers returning with the plague, Ulpius was forced to offer full command of Roman armies to the legate of Dacia, Gnaeus Fabius Comptus, naming him Dux Generalissimus so that the military could operate without orders from Italy. Fabius brought nine legions with him to crush the Greek rebellion.

Here is where an event transpired which was highly anticipated by the separatists. By law, only Roman citizens could sign up for the Legion but nearly a third of citizens were Greek. For this reason, one fifth of all legionaries were Greek citizens and for simple geographic reasons, those stationed closest to Greece had the highest concentration. Out of the 57,600 legionaries and 14,400 sagittarii brought to fight the rebels, ~34,000 of the soldiers were Greeks. Furthermore, a similar proportion of centurions and three generals were also Greek. Two of the latter sympathized with the separation of their people from the empire. Starting from these commanders, two legions alongside a few thousand others turned on the rest as they prepared for battle with rebels who were staging near Thessalonica. Comptus had spoken with his generals before the battle, assuring himself however tenuously of their loyalty, so he was disappointed, but not entirely caught off-guard, by the fact that such treason came at their level of command rather than from the rank and file Greek legionaries.

Doreanos had been watching the approaching forces for signs of this betrayal and ordered his readied soldiers - of which about 80,000 had assembled there - to converge on the legionaries, attacking only the larger force. Sheer chaos followed.

On the mass of legionaries, there was only one actual front against the enemy, the southeast where Doreanos came with his militia. Generalissimus Fabius had situated himself near this line and drove his men into the oncoming wave of lightly-armored foes. The two legions holding this line were largely devoid of Greeks, from a discreet reshuffling of forces on the way to Greece, so they presented a united front to the rabble. Supported by similarly reliable artillerymen on adjacent hills, these legions lost little ground to the rebels, with Fabius only giving some ground as a tactic to fool his enemy into a more offensive position.

While Fabius held the sole frontline, his other generals fought along a blurred intersection of their five legions with the two led by the traitorous generals. With the advantage of loyal artillery and sagittarii, the former of which proved highly effective even against legionaries, the loyal generals managed to swing the battle in their favor. Noticing his odds, Doreanos called for a retreat of his forces, with the Greek legions following his lead. Fabius ordered his men not to pursue while they dealt with those legionaries who had betrayed them from within their own legions.

After his minor loss, Doreanos gathered his new forces with the rest of his conspirators in preparation to take Constantinople. With 9,000 legionaries and a more or less disorganized militia of 120,000 Greek rebels, Doreanos easily forced his way into the city using siege towers prepared before the battle. With his entry, riots over food shortages evolved into chaos in the streets, both from the disgruntled poor and those sympathetic to rebellion. Doreanos couldn't control the people - an attempt at calming rioters in the Augustaeum (main forum of Constantinople) was only met with a thrown rock before he could gain momentum. Restraining his legions from retaliating, Doreanos instead broke into the Aerarium (national treasury), holding the secure facility as his new center of operations as he tried to gain total control over the city. All of his troops had received strict orders not to loot shops and homes, instructions which generally were followed by the "occupying" forces.

On a July morning in 534, Generalissimus Fabius arrived outside Constantinople with his ten legions, seven of which were still operating at close to half strength from their pyrrhic victory at Thessalonica. Guards on the wall alerted Doreanos to the arrival of the Roman legions, having already sent word for a parlay as per his standing orders. His offer was simple: leave Greece and Western Anatolia to the Greeks, for peaceful cooperation, or face an "unending struggle for power [over Greece]". Knowing that any response would be used against him, Fabius nonetheless took the more elegant route of debating Doreanos' reasons for rebellion, professing the stability of Roman rule and the advantages of unity against "foreign" powers. This philosophical dispute continued for several hours as messages passed from one side to another.

Lamenting that no compromise could be reached, as perhaps the sole hope of creating a persistent Greek state, Doreanos told Fabius that he would not be allowed into the city and could decide for himself what to do. Unsurprisingly, Fabius read his troops for the siege which would begin late into the evening. Without adequate ranged weapons, the forces on the walls fell quickly to the advance of siege towers from the west (other engines would be rather ineffective against the thick Walls of Constantinople). This brought the fighting into the streets in the climax of the Bellum Civile Grecis.

Fabius marched his men through the roads in lines of cohorts marching in synchronization toward the Augustaeum, a tactic that would prevent the enemy from surprising and encircling individual groups as they dispersed through the streets. Opposing sides met just west of the Augustaeum, combat spilling into the main forum as Fabius slowly advanced. By midnight, Fabius had the Aerarium surrounded and the few remaining rebels were being rounded up in the streets or hiding in people's homes.

As a show of good faith, Fabius had ordered that no one be executed once the fight was won and that Doreanos be brought to him unharmed. His capture marked the turning point of the civil war but not the end. Other conspirators remained in Greece but support was waning as news reached the provinces that provinces afflicted with the plague would not be required to pay taxes (a group that included the whole of Greece as well as Bithynia, Asia, and Lycia). With another two legions brought into Greece to capture separatists, the civil war would come to a firm conclusion in 543 under the reign of the next emperor. Altogether, around 48,000 legionaries were killed on both sides of the civil war. Nearly triple that number of Greek rebels were killed as part of the militia. As for Doreanos, he lived under house arrest in Greater Germany, not getting to see his beloved home for the last fifteen years of his life - leaving him enough time to see his dream fail under the emperorship of the same man who, on the outskirts of a major city, had lectured him on freedom and the political games of men.

Ulpian Plague
Of course, as devastating as the civil war was to the military strength of the empire, the plague which had precipitated its onset was a different beast entirely. Alexandria had to be sustained on more remote sources of wheat than Egypt as the imperial breadbasket was on hold, allowing warehouses to fill with grain that would never be used. Although this would feed one carrier of the disease (viz. rats), humans were the main carriers so this had little effect on its persistence.

This wave of the disease lasted into the next decade but had subsided enough that Alexandria would cautiously reopen its gates in Winter of 541. Ten years of grain shortages had shrunk the population from emigration and starvation by about 210,000 people. Constantinople suffered the plague after the Greek armies spent a year behind its walls (part of the reason why the rebels were so weak in the face of Fabius' army) but with its extensive hygienic systems and access to hospitals, the Thracian capital only suffered ~75,000 deaths out of its population of 680,000 people.

Unfortunately, the rest of the eastern side of the empire and Greece were nowhere near as lucky. Almost ~25% of the population of provinces going clockwise from Dalmatia to Egypt fell to the plague over that one decade. Some places such as Egypt took a hit up to 40% of the population. Trade with Aksum and Persia ensured that the entire region suffered. In the empire, this meant a death toll approaching 9 million people, including a quarter of all Greeks, Egyptians, and Syrians. When the plague subsided, taxation in affected provinces did not restart until 543, leaving the empire with reduced revenues for much of the period. However, before the plague, annual revenues were exceeding a billion denarii, due to growing industries in Greater Germany, so the result was merely a return to more regular access to funds.

On the other hand, Ulpius spent hundreds of millions of denarii subsidizing what grain could arrive in cities such as Alexandria and Constantinople, ensuring that when it was available, people need not pay the entire inflated price from shortages. Rome also faced higher grain prices as it received its food from Germany but this was similarly subsidized by the government. For its part, Italy did not allow unrestricted contact with the rest of its empire until 544 and even then, hospitals were extremely cautious and continued to advise the entire population to avoid meeting anyone who seemed ill. There were small local outbreaks of the same disease in Italy as in the rest of the world over the next two centuries but these were no more worrisome than regular sickness.

Overall, the empire would take about a century to fully recover from the Ulpian Plague. Assisting this recovery was the emperor's gift of citizenship to Syrians in 531 and the entire freeborn population of Egypt in 536. With citizenship, came greater access to municipal stipends for public infrastructure, child subsidies for parents, and health care from free medical treatment in galenariae. As always, the mortality rate of citizens was substantially lower than that of non-citizens, facilitating their natural growth.

As a result, the state fell into moderate debt (~90% of regular revenue) even though virtually all extraneous funds went toward grain subsidies and expanded health as well as child services. In fact, the latter two rose by a combined annual cost of around 50 million denarii by Ulpius' death. Virtually no public works were built during the reign of Ulpius, leaving his name on very few buildings. Regardless, his name would forever be attached to one of the most famous documents in human history.

Corpus Juris Civilis
As an idealist, Caesar Ulpius lamented that the leges (statutes) of Roman law did not reflect its position at the forefront of human civilization. Laws to which judges and advocates refer in Roman courts of law have been enacted over the course of centuries, both before and after the reign of Octavian, the first emperor. Judges would adapt their judgements to the present situation of the empire, ignoring certain statutes by custom or their own opinion, but that left a great deal of legal authority in the hands of non-magistrates and made court cases rather inconsistent, one differing a great deal from another. Most cases were part of ius privatum (private law), matters to be handled in private courts presided over by judges licensed by a magistrate. Anything else would be directly presided over by a magistrate in a public court but, other than treason, these cases involved few sorts of criminal trials and mostly settled disputes within different layers of the Roman political system.

Worst of all its flaws, Roman law incorporated a number of inefficiencies, loopholes, and superstitious nonsense that could still be referenced in court, although cases relying on polytheistics customs for support were starting to be thrown out of court. In fact, the gradual disintegration of authority for the mos maiorum - in the face of some Christian values - was hurting the legal system. A less gradual shift to new laws that replace these mores (legal customs) was long overdue.

During his time in the imperial court of his father, Ulpius had worked with a jurist friend of his to collect a list of active statutes and customs used by judges. When he became emperor, Ulpius used his list to work with jurists to recodify all Roman laws. Their efforts had neared a final product when the bellum civile broke out in Greece. When he heard that dissatisfaction with the authority of Rome had motivated the leaders of the rebellion, Ulpius resolved to have his laws enacted in the Senate as soon as possible, in the hope that renewal of the law would weaken the moral foundation of the rebels.

Driven by these reasons, Ulpius spent the next three years discussing his code of laws in the Senate, devoting his time to convincing senators in the civilized way that they should support him. Citing ongoing unrest in Greece was a powerful argument in his favor but he also brought the Pope to argue his case and drummed up support with the people of the capital city. Senators were not particularly opposed to its content, generous as it was to them, but passing so many new laws was unusual and many senators were cautious about setting the precedent that Roman law could be changed so easily. In many ways, the debate in the Senate was one of the value of tradition against the advantages of progress, a long overdue conflict for Rome.

Once finally enacted in 535, the Corpus Iuris Civilis consisted of two parts - a codification of old laws that would be retained albeit with rewording or changes in content, the Codex Ulpianus, and new statutes written by Ulpius and his team of jurists, the Novella Constitutiones. As an overview, the codification of existing laws and customs included: As part of the codification of laws, Praetores in any given province would have the authority to promulgate new ius privatum by their own authority, unless opposed by a higher magistrate. These laws would only remain in force within his province and only for fifty years, after which period they would lose their legitimacy in the local private courts. Similarly, unique rulings of judges would remain authoritative for a hundred years. The writings of famous jurists would no longer be taken as a source of common law by courts. Jurists would need to work with a proper legislative body to have any proposed statutes legitimized.
 * Tort law and Inheritance law prevalent in the city of Rome became codified as national statutes.
 * Marriage laws first legislated under Augustus were retained, albeit with a more Christian language. Marriage would remain outlawed between patricians and any other class of society (especially foreigners).
 * Contracts were retained in their earlier form as written agreements in the form of question and answer that were to be orally repeated before a licensed judge (as a stipulatio) to become binding.
 * Manumission would remain in its recent regulated form with minimum age of 40 for the slave and 20 for the master. Strict procedures in place since Octavian were also kept.
 * Citizenship would continue to be reserved to dispensation by the state and to being born to a father who is a citizen (procuring citizenship for the mother if she was a peregrinus).
 * Property rights (ius commercium) for non-citizens were left equivalent to those of citizens. As before, the state reserved the right to procur land as either a tax or with proper compensation.
 * Patricians remained the only citizens with the rights to run for public offices (ius honorum).
 * Role of the paterfamilias was recodified, specifying that a father did not hold absolute authority in his family. A wife was allowed to divorce him and he could not sell or murder of his children (practices abolished since the time of Hadrianus). The patria potestas (powers of the father) was now held by whoever was the eldest male of the household, instead of going to all sons on the death of the previous paterfamilias. Marriage was now the time when paternal authority would go to a son.
 * Many laws written by the famous jurists Gaius, Paulus, and Marcian were codified as statutes. Any other statements of theirs that had once been cited as laws would no longer be authoritative.
 * Authority over the navy and the election of naval commanders stayed in the hands of the Senate. In general, the structures of the navy and army instituted respectively by the Scipios and Avitus were recodified with little modification.
 * Legislative authority was retained by the Senate although it would still be shared with select other sources (e.g. praetores). A senatus consultum would continue to be one way to promulgate a new statute.
 * Higher ranking magistrates could still speak in the Senate before lower ranking magistrates, with formalized ranks among senators determined by seniority and among magistrates by imperium (political authority).
 * Bureaucratic structure of the treasury went largely unchanged from its form under Faustilon.
 * Financial authority would be shared by the emperor and the Senate, with the former still having the final say. Removal of funds from the physical treasury (aerarium) would need to be authorized by at least one aedile, a minor magistrate appointed by the Magister Fiscalis (himself elected by the Senate).
 * As a modification of Agricola's legal reforms, there would now be only one Praetor for every province, instead of one for every major city. His authority would extend throughout all cities in the province.
 * Stricter limits were codified for the number of assistants that a magistrate could be given a public wage, with limits varying for each type magistrate and various types of assistant. As always, a magistrate can hire any number of assistants that he would pay out of his own pocket.
 * Provinces would remain distinguished as proconsular or imperial, with Armenia and Egypt holding a special position as imperial provinces governed by a member of the equestrian order rather than a Legatus Augustus.
 * Structure of Foederatae (federations of provinces) and their Consuls remained in place, except that now consuls would be elected by the Senate rather than appointed by the emperor.
 * Office of Censor remained in place except their numbers were increased to twelve and they were given new powers. Now, the Pope had unique authority to approve candidates running for censor.
 * Adoption was codified as the formal procedure for an emperor to select his successor, with stricter regulations on formally adopting a family member for the role. The bearer of this privilege became the Princeps Juventatis (First of the Young). His duties during the reign of his adopted father would be to drum up support from the people of the city of Rome, usually by presiding over games, working as a magistrate, serving as a general, or even simply going out often in public. When an emperor died, the princeps juventatis faced the real possibility of not being elected by the people so this stage in the life of a prospective emperor was perhaps most essential.
 * Status of Princeps Civitatis (First Citizen) and Princeps Senatus (First Senator) were recodified as formal offices in the Roman Empire. The latter would be conferred upon "election" of an emperor's successor by the Senate while the former would be received by election of the adopted successor by the people of the city of Rome.
 * Procedures for electing a new emperor in the Senate, when no successor had been adopted, were kept in place.
 * Necessary medical treatment at a galenaria (hospital) would still be guaranteed to any citizen for free. Stricter rules on what treatments count as "necessary" were added to the laws.
 * Immigration quotas for people moving into urbes stayed except fast procedures for the Senate to officially change these quotas for a specific city were created.
 * Magna Lex Urbana, as modified by Faustilon, stayed in full force.
 * Stricter use of the vexillum morbidum (a flag indicating a ship carried disease) would be enforced for ships traveling to any destination, instead of only for ships headed to Italy.
 * Legal status was largely unchanged. As before, every person was either of civis, peregrinus, or servus.
 * Citizens remained formally subdivided into civis privatus, magistratus, and miles. The first could be further split into the groups of male and female citizens, the latter of which lacked a select few rights of the former. Each magistrate and soldier had the status of civis publicus, a role he held in addition to his status as civis privatus.
 * Citizens retained exclusive rights to enlist in the Legion, still limiting peregrini to the Auxilia.
 * A citizen facing criminal charges in a public court (e.g. for treason) kept his right to take his case before the emperor but this could be deferred to a new highest court in the empire, should an emperor have no interest in juridical affairs.
 * Murder, bribery, usury, and adultery were cast in an even less favorable light, reflecting Christian values.
 * Treason remained a capital offense for citizens.
 * References to sorcery or magic were removed from all laws.
 * Obvious loopholes were fixed from laws and frequently abused laws were outright removed.

New statutes for ius publicum could only be promulgated in a formal assembly of the people, such as the Roman Senate. This regulation continued to disclude the emperor from direct legislation, the main obstacle Ulpius faced in passing his code of laws.

The Novella Constitutiones were often major divergences from previous Roman law - sometimes calling back to the Republic and other times creating entirely new rules. Some of the most significant new statutes included: Overall, Ulpius had only barely weakened the powers of the emperor. He still retained his potestas tribuna maior, allowing him to veto literally any decision of the Senate and to overrule the tribune of the plebs on most matters. However, Ulpius took emphasis off the imperial family. Although an emperor would wield great power during his reign, his decisions would be at the mercy of the people of Rome once he died, possibly even preventing his adopted successor from gaining power. However, a reigning emperor was entirely within his rights to publicly support his choice. For a popular emperor, such efforts to drum up the support of the people guaranteed the election of the princeps juventatis. When an emperor was unpopular, such an action might even reduce his chances of getting elected, making it harder to distance himself from the mistakes of his adopted father.
 * Formal assembly of the citizens of the city of Rome in the Comitia Centuriata was reinstituted. A magistrate bearing the tribuna potestas (tribunal powers) would have authority to call an "assembly of the people" to vote on a bill or to oppose the action of a magistrate or even the entire Senate. Regular assemblies would also occur for elections.
 * Formal assembly of the Censors, sacrosanct magistrates who maintained public morals, in the Comitia Censoria was instituted. These magistrates would privately assemble every Sunday in the Basilica Julia (closed to the public on that day) to discuss the moral state of the empire and its government, allowing them to reach a consensus on their decisions on how to exercise their unique power. With this reform, a majority of the censors needed to agree before a citizen would be stripped of his rank or citizenship (before this rule, any individual censor held this power).
 * Office of Tribunus Plebis got formally reinstated (previous emperors had only appointed one when they cared to have one). A new tribune of the plebs would be elected by the people of Rome every five years, in July, with no option for re-election. Any male member of the plebeian order, with no record of crimes, was a candidate for tribune.
 * Elections for members of the Senatus Romanus would be held each year to fill seats that had become empty. Anyone of the patrician order could run for Senator as long as he (1) had served at least one term as a Quaestor and (2) received permission from the reigning emperor.
 * While provincial quaestors were still appointed by the Magister Fiscalis, quaestors operating in Rome would be elected each year by the Senate. Any male member of the patrician order could run for quaestor as long as he (1) was 30 years old and (2) received permission from the reigning emperor. There would be only twelve of these imperial quaestors.
 * While provincial praetors were still appointed by the Roman Senate, two new restrictions were placed on candidates. Now a candidate for the appointment needed to (1) have served one term as governor of that province or (2) have five years of experience as a judge (for provinces without proconsular governors or without suitable former governors).
 * A formal poll of all free residents of a provincial capital became the new means by which a proconsular governor would be elected for a proconsular province. Anyone recognized by the Census as living within the province could come to the capital to vote. In this way, proconsular status was now a great privilege for the provinces.
 * Procedures were created for citizens to inform the tribune of the plebs of their dissatisfaction with a reigning emperor. This involved a formal request by the city senate of a provincial capital with proconsular status to its proconsul, asking for the permission of the tribune of the plebs to hold a public assembly to vote on approval of the emperor. Should a majority say they were dissatisfied, the tribune would be forced to take his evidence before  the  Comitia Censoria . Should this tribunal deem him unfit to rule, the emperor would be stripped of his powers and a new emperor would be elected by the Senate.
 * If the princeps juventatis loses his election, then the city would await the decision of the Senate. Should they also vote not to accept the chosen successor, then the princeps loses his right to the throne. As when an emperor has no successor, an election would be held in the Senate to appoint a new princeps, without deferral to the people of Rome. Otherwise, the princeps would differ to the tribune of the plebs who could choose to restart the process at popular election.
 * A period during which there was no emperor would be known as iustitium, in effect a state of emergency for the empire. No laws could be passed during a iustitium and no magistrate other than the emperor could be elected.
 * Every day of the year, a magistrate would publicly read one or more laws to the people in the Forum Romanum. This procedure was intended to keep the people informed of the laws that governed their empire.
 * A limit was placed on how heavily members of the plebeian order could be taxed on their income. There could not be a higher proportional tax rate on plebs than on patricians or equestrians. Furthermore, plebs would be permanently exempt from paying any form of head tax.
 * Bringing a legion into Italia would now be considered unlawful except with the authorization of the Senate. This would tend to be given for a lawful Triumph of a victorious general or for defense of Rome against an invading army.
 * Sanctity of the Pomerium was re-emphasized, after losing importance, but the region would have new boundaries. The region had no inherent sanctity in Christianity but the security of the empire did and this security was regarded as being intimately tied to the Pomerium. Military commanders would lose command of their armies and provincial governors would relinquish their offices on the moment they crossed into the Pomerium.

A number of the new constitutional statutes reflected political trends in the government of the Roman Empire. For example, the office of Censor had slowly become entwined with the Church and the holders of the office, who kept it for life, were now a very secluded group of magistrates. The public and even the Senate was starting to view them as Stoic sages, moral advisors to the Senate and Caesar. Their main power came from their authority on who was a citizen and who was not, as well as on the order of society to which each citizen belonged. Against the Senate, this allowed them to strip any specific senator of his rank when they deemed his behaviour in the Senate to be immoral but against an emperor, this would mean stripping the ranks of those magistrates that he appointed, blocking his every action. These were rarely used powers but the threat of them gave the censors unique authority in Rome. By creating the Comitia Censoria, Ulpius gave the censors greater privacy for their deliberations and codified the secluded behaviour they had adopted. Furthermore, he had extended their authority over the one citizen who had been outside their power, albeit only under specific circumstances.

In principle, these statutes could be changed later by the Senate or a future emperor could bully the Senate, with his military authority, into enacting laws that he desired. But this was no less possible now than for dictators or imperators to do the same during the Republic, an event that only occurred under extenuating circumstances. For now, the new laws were protected by love for the emperor that made them and, in time, they would acquire the force of tradition themselves. In practice, this code of laws was only an official recognition of a political reality wherein the Senate, with its bureaucracy, had slowly regained respect and power in Rome. It would take great upheaval to reverse this ongoing trend.

Ulpius made certain the populusque romanus knew that his code of laws granted them great powers - he would be  much loved by the majority of citizens, even senators, for this codification. Similarly, present and future popes would be ardent supporters of the Novella Constitutiones of Caesar Ulpius, advocating against the dissolution of any of its statutes.

Unfortunately, he would be assassinated in his prime, before he thought it necessary to adopt a successor. By his own statute, none of his children could assert themselves as his successor, leaving the decision to the Senate to elect a new emperor. Their choice was a newly elected consul and hero of the recent bellum civile - the former legate Gnaeus Fabius Comptus.

Supreme Court
One change to imperial laws that should be mentioned is a major addition to the judicial system. Before Ulpius, private courts in the provinces would be presided over by judges, licensed by a local praetor, and private courts in the city of Rome would have praetors as their judges. Specific types of litigation in Rome were presided over by a specific praetor, as they had been during the Republic, but other praetors were appointed in the provinces with more general authority there. Certain cases could be appealed to higher magistrates, ending when the case came before the emperor.

In principle, bringing a case before the emperor took it to the highest judicial authority in the empire. However, few emperors in the last two centuries have had any interest in law, dissuading citizens from this course of action. To restore the faith of the people in the judicial authority of Rome, Ulpius instituted a permanent office for presiding over the highest court in Rome. Elected by the Comitia Centuriata from a pool of candidates approved by the Comitia Censoria out of patrician jurists who applied, this office of Princeps Iudex (First Judge) would preside over the highest court of Roman law.

Ulpius had plans to construct a basilica (public building) for the court of the princeps iudex but there were never enough funds during his reign. For now, this Iudicium Maium (Greater Court) would be held on the Forum Romanum, in full view of the public. This practice would continue until a dedicated location would be build for the iudicium maium.

Maya Conglomerate
Kuhul Ajaw Ch'anqua had conquered the whole of Mesoamerica, comprising all the city-states within that region of the world. Although he died in 491, his successor, Kuhul Ajaw Ekchuahan, was in a prime position to develop the civil structure of this young kingdom.

Fortunately, Mayapan had left substantial written records on scrolls throughout his life regarding his future plans for the Tlahtocaque Maya (Maya Conglomerate). These were considered divine decrees by the Maya people and viewed with a sense of awe by Mayapan's descendants. Occasionally, a successor of his would enact one of these plans, though cautiously since they included complicated conditions for when their execution was optimal.

Mayapan predicted that as the Conglomerate increased in size, it would need a uniform procedure for handling litigation and civil security. His answer for these legal matters was uncomprimising. Those who were dangerous to the stability of the state would be dealt with in proportion to their crime. A murderer would be executed, a thief forced to repay the victim or be indentured in servitude till the debt was paid, and an adulterer revoked of the right to elope or own children. More draconian laws, like cutting off the hand of a thief, were considered by the Grand Council but rejected to stay closer to Mayapan's vision. Three judges were also appointed in every walled city. They would preside together over every legal case within their jurisdiction and their majority opinion would decide all matters of fact and law. These appointments were to be made by the Kuhul Ajaw.

Maya as well as Mesoamericans were subject to national laws but many were more restrictive for the latter. No non-Maya could travel outside their state and any that were discovered in a Maya city-state without the proper papers would be beaten then exported back to their homeland.

The care with which the government monitored the population is impressive given how few resources were devoted to the task. Every Maya citizen had to acquire his or her citizen papers from a public institution if they were to own property or work within any territory designated as a Maya state. There were not only advantages to living in a Maya states but also disadvantages to living within the Conglomerate as part of a non-Maya territory. Taxes were higher, tariffs were imposed on exporting to the Maya states and infrastructure was nowhere near as advanced. To be sure, the Mesoamerican cities were not in a poor condition but they lacked the high quality roads and aqueducts enjoyed by residents of the Maya city-states.

If there were not enough reasons to have gotten citizen papers after their release in 486, citizens were the only permitted patrons of the moneylending establishments set-up by the government in 497 CE. All public functions from providing papers, to moneylending, to taking census information were performed in a single type of building, the Public House. There weren't many of these in the Conglomerate but people did business with the government infrequently enough that there were as many as were needed.

Local public records were sealed in every Public House. When someone renewed their citizen papers, which was necessary every 260 days if citizenship was to be retained, they also declared their wealth, profession, home, family relations, and financial history. These records were periodically cross checked with actual financial records from the moneylenders, who would guard deposits of people's money. Since the Maya currency was a perishable cacao bean, this allowed someone to secure their wealth for long periods without investing in property, for which they might not have sufficient funds.

After 503, all public buildings, including Public Houses, inns, and government residences had to be build from stone, concrete or other non-flammable material. Cities along the borders of the Conglomerate, even when they were not Maya, had some of the first city walls constructed around their perimeters. This discouraged the tribals of the continent from raiding houses during the night.

Active defenses were limited to the volunteer army for most of the first century of the Conglomerate. In 509, Ekchuahan had artisans build the first Maya Fortress about a hundred kilometers north of Teotihuacan. This became one of hundreds of forts occupying strategic locations in the local geography and housing active military personnel. Training, resting and relaxing were the major activities of soldiers in these forts. While they were members of  the army, they would barely do these things outside the confines of those stone walls.

Extra
''Sometime around the 520's, schools became centers for scientific research on both new technologies and theoretical ideas. Though technological development in the Conglomerate would never again reach the levels it had under Mayapan I, they were still the fastest advancing nation in the world at the time. Agriculture was a major field of study there with many advances in fertilization technologies and crop organization methods being developed by 530. Collectivized farming was the most common type by 536, giving the Conglomerate the highest yield to farmer ratio of any nation in the world. Although this made it impossible for farmer families to advance economically, the social order system of the Maya made there virtually no resentment from them for this reason.''