1139-1195 CE (Superpowers)

This era saw two major events in world history. First, the start of the Roman Colonial Period, something which has influenced world events greatly even up to the present time, and secondly, the birth of one of the most fearsome individuals in all of human history, Ghenghis Khan. His time was still to come though, and his uniting of the tribes was not complete until another 11 years later.

=Emperor Magnus I (1139-1175)= Third son of Emperor Columbus, Tertius Aegranus Magnus was the emperor whose job it was to fulfill his father's dream of seeing the new world. He has the distinction of not only being an emperor with a further reaching control than any other before him, but he is also the first to set foot on New World soil, something which few OTL rulers did in the early colonial age.

Civil Events
On December 1142 General Marcus Kris Valerius set off with his expedition of the 3 largest galleons ever built to colonize the New World continent of Columbia in the name of the Empire. After a eight week voyage going into February of 1143, land was finally sighted by the crew of Kris' ship and the fleet immediately went forward so they could rest after the long journey. Once they'd recuperated and sampled some of the local vegetation, as well as restocked their citrus supplies, two of the ships went off in either direction to better assess their new location. The one which went westward found out that their was a large bay which would be the perfect spot for the colony. Once the ship headed east returned, having sailed around the entire coastline, they reported that this was only a small island, which Kris dubbed Hispaniola, after his homeland. So it was that one ship went to begin the establishment of the city dubbed Colona whilst the other two returned home to report the new to the Senate and People of Rome.

The two vessels came into the port at Ollisipo, Lusitania to a parade of hundreds of thousands of members of the rich and the locals, who knew of their arrival from a small messenger boat sent before they'd reached land. Emperor Magnus was present as well as personally conferred to the two ship captains and the crew an olive crown, usually given to winners of sporting events. As well, each member of the crew, as well as the others in the New World were given 2000 Dn for their brave efforts, something which they would receive upon returning to the New World with another wave of colonists. This was only the tip of the iceberg as when the news of their success had spread, making the headlines on the newspaper, Kris and his two captains became some of the most famous celebrities in the Empire.

Meanwhile, affairs in the colony were going rather well, though there certainly was their fair share of difficulties. The five crew members who were suffering from scurvy, despite their citrus rations, were now down to only two and paranoia over what diseases might lie in the forests around them abounded. In their first year though, they managed to built enough housing for more than 100 people and even a rudimentary town hall for public meetings. Under the supervision of their two urban planners, the settlement they were building was meant to follow strict Roman customs, with the only difference being the large use of wood over stone. A Forum area was built in front of the Town Hall and plans were made to lay the foundation for a Cathedral and hospital there.

Rather disturbingly, in late-1144 their priest, eventually Saint Almanus, went missing and only a week later they found his body near a tree littered with arrows. Though they mourned the loss of the man who had helped them through their difficult voyage, General Kris rallied everyone to worry about the new problem at hand, the others. Now that they knew that there were other humans here, and that they were armed, the Romans decided that they needed some kind of defense for their town. A wooden palisade was built around Colona's planned area with several watchtowers along its length for archers to spot and kill anyone who approached. That same year, a single galleon, sent a year after the other two ships had returned, brought renewed supplies and materials for the colonists. Even more fortunately, they brought an opportunity. Kris demanded that they return to the Empire and ask for several polybolum and trained Legionaries to be brought on the next trip, and also to take the news that they were surrounded by hostile natives and they had killed their priest.

After the galleon had left, another tragedy struck. As it was the month of August a hurricane, something never before seen on this scale by the Romans, came and passed almost right through the settlement. Despite damage from the flooding, and the death, or at least disappearance, of three more people, the town was mostly intact. Finally, in late-1146, the first large wave of colonists arrived, bringing all the requested supplies and news from the Pope that their priest was in the process of being canonized. Furthermore, one of the galleons was loaded with marble with which they were expected to begin the construction of the cathedral, awaiting more resources to be brought so that it could be completed.

With a force of 30 soldiers to defend them, the colonists could now be a lot less cautious about venturing outside the walls, making restocking food supplies a lot easier, as well as providing the possibility of beginning cement production. By the end of the year, the city borders had been expanded, there was housing for over a thousand people and already the seventh wave of colonists was arriving. Over the next three years more than sixty waves came onto the shores there, with about three ships lost at sea, and the newly dubbed Cathedral of St. Almanus was completed. The city's population had swollen to about 20,000 people and already a port was in the process of being built, from stone, that could better service the arriving ships. Trade with the new city was booming, and commodities like marble, lamp oil and wine were in very high demand by the government of the city.

It was here in Colona at this time that Kris' brother, a known trader from Londinium, came to the city and established the Columbian Transport Guild. Whilst initially a small company only owning about 10 galleons, the Emperor in 1170 offered it enormous amounts of funding so that it could hold the burden of managing colonial travel from now on. Though his grandson later lost the company to Greek traders, the CTG remains the single largest transporter of goods and people between the Old and New Worlds.

This hand-off occurred between the years of 1169 and 1170 when the Emperor made his visit to the city, which by that time had a population that almost reached 200,000. Along with the Emperor for the first few months was most of the College of Cardinals, there to ceremoniously dedicate the Cathedral to its patron saint. Magnus had also come to settle the issue of government for the colonies, one which he believed would become more important as they grew. He eventually decided that they should be run the same way every other province was, since excluding them too much might later lead to rebellion. Kris kept his position as Viceroy of Columbia and a Senator who had been brought along with the entourage was appointed representative of that Regio. Other issues that were settled were the commemoration of Kris' statue in the forum and the appointment of a Bishop for this diocese.

Back in Europe, scientists in Parisium had created glass covered copper wires whose efficiency levels and energy loss were not too far away from OTL wires in the 60's, and these were being made by 1156 CE. Changes like this continued to advanced the electrical industry, bringing down costs and spreading its use. Nevertheless, only a small part of society actually used it, and very few thought too highly of the technologies future.

Military Events
The expense of all these expeditions to the New World were quite high, even for the government of Rome, and in 1154 the Empire had its first deficit since the Civil War. In order to maintain the status of the new government, Magnus needed to find an alternative source of income. Taking a page from Tiberius III in the VIIth Century, Magnus decided to send raiding parties to the Arab-Turkish Kingdom to his East. Relations with the nascent state had never been very good and so this was a popular enough idea in both the Senate and Congress. The plan was enacted to great success in 1157, with more than 1 billion Dn in loot having been brought back to Rome.

Surprisingly, as the generals sent on the raids noticed, the Seljuk Turks were hardly able to put up a fight against the Roman weaponry, and they had trouble organizing their forces to stop an attack. So it seemed at least, they had gone very far in domesticating themselves after getting used to a relaxed lifestyle. Hitting on an idea, in 1158 Magnus decided to send just 2 Legions to conquer himself some Muslim territory, namely, their land along the Red Sea coast. This would forever remove the risk of another attack like their Jihad several centuries ago, and would give the Romans an even better foothold on the Silk Trade.

Within two years they had captured the capital at Mecca and two more Legion were brought in to start setting up fortifications over the newly made borders. Just a year later the Romans reached the end of the Arabian Peninsula and they by 1161 they owned a long and thin strip of Turkish land, holding some of their richest cities.

To add further to his gains, Magnus sent another 2 Legions to conquer the lands of the Somali, up to the Horn of Africa, so that by 1167, the Red Sea was completely enclosed by the Roman Empire, as they had done to the Mediterranean a millennium ago. Meanwhile, the fleeing Turkish government had to move its capital to Bagdad, the second largest Turkish city at the time. In 1168 though, the Caliph managed to negotiate a deal with the Romans to allow safe passage to the Islamic Holy Cities for any pilgrims wishing to visit. The Roman controlled part of the peninsula never actually became a province, and very few citizens moved to live there, as the government and media highly discouraged it. It was a purely military state, with a Dux (General) acting as Governor, and no Regio or Senators were established to function there.

=Emperor Sextus Severus (1175-1195)= As the sixth son of Columbus, Sextus was already quite old when his brother finally died in 1175'. He had grown wise in his observances of his brother's achievements and failures though, and was a rightful and just ruler whilst he was in power. Most importantly however, Sextus was the Emperor who established in written form the Constitution of Rome, the highest legally binding document in the Empire, even to this day.

Civil and Military Events
Sextus' predecessor had great plans for the city of Colona, and strangely enough, these plans involved replacing it entirely. He had figured that the first city on the new continent would inherently be inefficient, since its design and construction would place emphasis on getting things up and running as quickly as possible, rather than on long term issues. So, there were plans to build "THE" colonial city once Colona was prosperous enough to aid in its construction. Already, many of the natives were subjugated to the Romans, though neither knew each others languages, and a steady source of marble and stone on the island was discovered. In 1177, the site for the city of New Rome was established just a few hundred kilometers up the coastline from Colona.

The land where New Rome would stand was finished being renovated by 1181 and the following year, the first stone of the city was laid down. Within two years a Cathedral, Provincial Palace, hospital, Academy for Biology, and many of the roads were completed, but still no inhabitants were allowed into the city. After another three years, the city wall was finished and housing for more than 50,000 people was ready. Finally, in November 1186, the first inhabitants of Nova Roma moved into the city. As expansion continued in both cities over the rest of Severus' reign, by 1195 the combined colonial population of the Empire was at 500,000 people.

Elsewhere, in the Electrical Academy in Parisium, a team of scientists in 1182 finally accomplished the long sought after goal of Roman engineers, a device which could generate electrical energy through non-chemical means, in effect, an electrical generator. Discovered accidentally after a fourth attempt to try reversing different properties of a motor, the scientists realized that what they had built was creating a current. After several theorists released their worked on determining how it worked, several rudimentary theories were published in the early 1190's though non-could resolve why the generator worked, only that it did. Unfortunately, without knowledge of how it functioned, nothing could be improved upon in the design and so the device's only use was in research by scientists trying to figure out how it worked. Before practical production and application could begin, the Empire needed the theories behind it. The device was simply too far ahead of its time.

In the political world, something equally as interesting was occurring, the Emperor and the Senate were discussing the existing Roman Law and how that had remained virtually unchanged even after the taking of power of Aegranus. The Populares and the Emperor both believed that something absolutely needed to be done about this, whilst many of the Optimates were staunchly opposed to a change in the laws. Deciding to bring the vote up to Congress, it was eventually passed in 1187, whilst the Senate had exactly 5 years to make their changes to the law, and then the matter would be closed.

This became the brainchild of Sextus Severus and he ended up spending a great deal of his twilight years fine tuning these laws. What was created was a code which took all the constitutiones, imperial pronouncements of the law, together, improved the legal language used in them and codified the entire thing into the Constitution (that's the Latin word), a single unified collection of documents which summarized the most important pieces of Roman Law. If anything is to be considered the most important part of the Constitution, it is that all the laws therein were, and still are, completely unchangeable except by extensive legal and political procedure. The documents offered certain unalienable rights to Roman Citizens, which had not been made apparent enough in the Validian Codex of the 500's, the last major rewriting of Roman law.

As well, the Constitution organized many aspects of law which had been heavily debated for centuries, often completely ruining entire cases. For one, the court system was now organized more by class, ensuring that crimes committed by Patricians, which formerly almost never went through, could now actually be won by the claimant. This class-oriented system ensured that someone's judge would always be of the same Social Order as they were, Plebs were from then on judged by a Plebeian Judge, and so on. Furthermore, the Constitution required that permanent courts of law be present in every major city, finally bringing an end to the "spontaneous courts" that were used since Ancient Roman times. Though initially provincial palaces were used for the official courts, dedicated buildings were started to be built in places other than Rome (where the only Standing Court, the Judicia Imperia existed. A new position was also created, the Minister of the Tribunal, whose job it was to ensure that the Constitution was followed and that all citizens received equal justice. This position was now one of the most powerful in the Empire, completely exempt from the Emperor, as it was elected by the Senate, and able to pass legislation, with the only other government body able to do that being Congress.