360-395 CE (Superpowers)

''Adopted from Greece, Caesar Sapiens Augustus - born Faustilon in Ephesus - was a child prodigy, learning eleven of the imperial languages by age 16. Sapiens firmly believed that "incompetence is as universal for humanity as greed or ambition" and that checks were necessary to safeguard Rome from inept Caesars. He knew that regardless of how well he ran the empire, someone down the line won't know what they're doing.''

Ascension to power (360)
With confidence to match his intelligence, Sapiens executed financial reform on the hour of his inauguration. The entire Senate gathered at his side for the occassion, he informed them that under him the government would aim for a perfect balance of revenue and expenditure.

Balancing the national budget was no easy task but Sapiens had planned what he would do since he was named heir to Caesar Agricola in 351. One of Sapiens primary supporters, Gaius Rabirius Valius, was appointed the second quaestor of Rome, with the specific function of analyzing the logistics of government spending and taxing. One of the dining halls in the imperial residence was converted to a repository of tax records and public purchases starting from 349 CE. Organized by Rabirius, and ultimately by his successors, this vault of scrolls could be checked by an emperor in order to plan spending for the coming year.

Other senators were ordered to modify the mints of Rome to mint the 4.12 gram denarius with 95.2% silver purity and golden aureus with 8.45 grams of gold rather than the 8.00 grams used since Sulla. Sapiens saw that fed by rich supplies of Nubian gold, Rome could easily afford another revaluation of its currencies. Brass sestertii were to be replaced by a 2.50 gram silver sestertius of 74.8% silver purity and 23% brass.

Another close senator, Lucius Domitius Aquilla, was given his own rank of Proprinceps. Positions secondary to a Caesar have always been informal but proprinceps became the formal second-in-command for emperors. Responsibilities of the new office generally entailed assisting the emperor's decision-making and even making choices in his name, which the law allowed to be revoked should they displease the Caesar.

Finally, before the senators were dismissed after his coronation, Sapiens sent five of them on a journey to Nubia to spend over 80 million denarii on building a gold reserve for the empire in the Aerarium (Treasury).

Over 1,283 talents (41,440 kg) of gold were bought and shipped to Constantinople. Although one ship was lost outside a port in Crete, the empire now had a marvellously expanded store of value for its economy. Sapiens believed it was more prudent to hold the government's wealth in pure gold rather than currency, particularly since gold's value had reportedly risen about 30% since the 3rd century despite consistent deflation. The talents were forged into 125,995 libralea - 328.9 gram gold bars which could be used for large scale expenditure. This order concluded Sapiens first hour as emperor of Rome.

A month later, keeping in mind the need for future emperors to be well-advised on economics, Sapiens formed the Decemviri Oeconomicus. This advisory council of the top ten economists, as recognized by the Senate, had special authority to request any information from the government to fulfill their purpose of determining ideal courses of fiscal and monetary action. This includes when to limit spending, what different taxes should be, what should be taxed, where investment should be directed, what interest rates should be and all sorts of economic recommendations. Their reports could also be sold by an emperor for profit.

PENDING REWRITE
Before a month of his rule had even gone by, the Emperor knew he had one more thing that he had to attend to immediately. During his frequent voyages as a child and teenager to different places throughout the Empire, he noticed that not only were intercity roads not even remotely near their full capacity, or even that hundreds of large roads received virtually no use in a year, but what bothered him most was that many of the less important roads (i.e. ones which weren't the Via Appia) were in a state of disrepair, with other Emperors having only made temporary repairs to them.

This became a huge issue throughout his entire reign, something which he would be attending to all the way till the very end. Old roads would be completely cannibalized to build his new Imperial Road Network. Most of his new roads running right on top of, or at least near where the old major roads were, though they were a little bit thinner than their predecessors, they were more built up off the ground. They (the major ones) were made from small individual concrete blocks, arranged on top of thick gravel. This meant that repairs could be easily done by simply replacing blocks, while at the same time, there would be less decay then if the roads were made of concrete. Since the roads were half a foot above ground level, bulged almost unnoticeably in the middle and had what were basically channels running through the blocks, rain and snow would easily pass through them and have little effect on any future performance.

Smaller roads, that branched out to mining sites, small villages and minor towns, and were less than 500 km or so long, (deverticula) were made entirely out of gravel, requiring less effort to build, and even less to repair, whilst still being easily as effective as normal roads for the kind of use they would receive. Always, the most important were the large inter-provincial roads. Though their number was greatly decreased in this reform, all the ones that were obsoleted were still made into deverticula, as they still had some use as a convenience. Though Sapiens' changes would be completed in 393, only two years before the end of his reign, the changes had an enormous effect on the future of the Empire, reducing costs, and all-around streamlining the entire way in which Romans travelled their country.

Even if his road project was a massive undertaking, it was by no means the only thing which he would take care of during his reign. Establishing a infrastructural standard that all major cities, population above 40,000, had to meet, he made most of his spending bringing as many cities as he could up to date. He set standards for the amount of baths, galenariae, tonstrinae, wells and fountains per amount of people in the city, correctly believing that these had a positive benefit on the people's health. He also made it mandatory for every city to have one major Banca Publica, usually working through a guild specific to the province or region, like Bancani Britannici or Bancani Germanici. Finally, a number of churches per amount of people was also established, as well as a reformation for how the Diocese of the Roman Church would be organized. Establishing several rules such as the requirement of only one Cathedral per Diocese, and making it official that each one was presided over by a Cardinal.

A lot of this work wasn't even payed for by the government. All the emperor had to do was make it official that any cities not meeting this standard would lose their status as Urbs, and then the community would pay for many of the upgrades out of their own pockets.

Another major ministerial reform by Sapiens was the creation of 300 more positions in the Senate in 375 CE, positions which he immediately had sold to the upper class, however vetoing those who were willing to pay but he considered unfit to hold the position. He considered this change a necessity as he also converted several more imperial provinces into Senatorial ones. At this point, every province that did not have a border facing outside the Empire, other than Hibernia and Caledonia, were Senatorial Provinces.

Finally, Sapiens made many major expansions to five cities in particular: Rome, Correlia, Agricolopolis, Constantinopolis and Eblana (Dublin). Though the details of his upgrades are not of major importance, the final numbers on their populations are. These numbers are, respectively: 1,960,000; 400,000; 280,000; 1,050,000 and 110,000.

Military
The military side of Sapiens' rule was marked by a growing frequency of barbarian attacks on the border, comparable to the amount that was occurring during the reign of Marcus I. Most interestingly however, the first of these incursions was not on the Empire itself, but on its trading partner of the time, Sassanid Persia. What happened was that the Sarmatae and Alani in the Caucasus were still reeling from Constantine's purges and so when the Huns arrived in the region it was an easy route of movement for them.

Were it not for the Persians' growth in strength during their century of peace with Rome, they very well may have collapsed under the pressure from these mighty barbarians from the East. Even more luckily, Sapiens wished to improve relations with the nation's age old enemy and so sent a legion to aid the Sassanids in their defense. Finally expelling the Huns in 363, the crisis appeared to be over. Sadly, this was only the beginning.

Though the Emperor was smart, no one at the time could have anticipated what the presence of the Huns in Northwestern Asia would cause, and it could certainly not have been predicted that this would cause an influx of barbarians in Germania and Dacia, all fleeing from their rampaging foe. Still, as a precaution to the Huns perhaps coming west, the Senate pleaded to have the defenses in Germania upgraded with a second wall behind the first, which was to be itself, also repaired. Fitting it into his budget, Sapiens was able to have the new wall built over the period of 367 to 372 CE.

In 371 CE, a gradual build up of barbarians, mostly of unknown tribes, began to occur in Germania, just outside the walls that were almost finished construction. Finally arriving at the wall in 373, and numbering over 100,000 able men, with their families, they began to plea to the Romans on the other side to let them through. Were they not so thinly spread out along the border, this could very well have been interpreted as an attack, and a retaliation would have certainly devastated the lot. Fortunately for them, the garrisons knew better and so the news of this congregation was brought to the General of the Roman forces in Germania, Flavius Theodosius. Not in the mood for a war, he allowed them to settle in front of the wall, in communities that would be controlled by Roman overseers, in exchange for their protection by the legion, from their mysterious oppressor.

A year later, Theodosius was made aware of just exactly who they were fleeing from. It was the Huns. Immediately, he brought the news to the emperor, who quickly thought up several plans of action depending on the actual magnitude of the threat. Still, he put the Huns as a "potential threat of the highest order", ensuring public opinion would be behind him, no matter how great his retaliation would be.

Though an attack was made by the Moors of Africa in 372 over the same period, this was entirely unrelated.

To make matters worse, another threat appeared at the Dacian border in 376. An offshoot of the Goths, the Visigoths, had grown in power ever since their brothers fell from view. They were, for the most part, too far east to be of any consequence to the Romans and so little mention of them in history existed up until that year. Unlike the other barbarians, these Goths did not "plea" to the Romans to be let it, they forced their way in as well as they could. When their attacks on the wall over Dacia was a complete failure, resulting in over a quarter of their men being killed, their King Fritigernus ordered his armies to move west until they found somewhere that was undefended. Though many times his men lost control and attacked the wall, many of them dying in the process, they did eventually find an opening in 377. This was however exactly what the Roman defenses expected of an attacker, and they soon found themselves run down by the two legions stationed in Pannonia Inferior, their king captured, and their organizational abilities destroyed. Still, this was not the last that would be heard of the Visigoths.

Later, in 380, the Sarmatians had moved west to the Roman border and were using their great resources to get through it, no matter what the cost. Possessing siege weapons, they attacked the wall with an army of over 65,000 men. Though the garrisons were caught off guard by this, they still managed to wipe out two thirds of his army before the wall was completely overrun by the invaders. It was at this point that things got a little too hectic for the Romans. The Sarmatians called in several of their allies once they had breached the wall, swelling their ranks to an even great 84,000 warriors. Also, about two weeks beforehand, the Germanian tribes in front of the walls in the North were becoming restless from a food shortage caused by an accidental misallocation of resources. Only days before the Sarmatian attack, this unrest grew into a revolt which had them scrambling over the first wall by the time that the Dacian Wall was being destroyed.

Not panicking in the slightest, Theodosius, now Generalissimus by popular opinion of the army, opened the gates in Germania and had the three legions there massacre the tribes right between the two walls, exactly as was intended in the second's construction. Then, moving several auxilia over from the Anatolian Peninsula, he met the Sarmatians with an army of around 40,000 Roman legionaries and auxiliaries. At the Battle of Napoca in early 381, the Romans achieved a narrow victory after preventing the barbarians from circumventing them entirely and attacking the unprotected city itself. Though this would not be the last battle, the invaders were completely wiped out at a battle along the coast of the Black Sea, were their remaining soldiers were caught between the sea and the approaching Romans, a hopeless battle for them.

Though repairs were made to the wall, a wooden palisade was also built in front of it to ensure further protecting during an attack involving siege weapons. In the future, the Romans would be even more prepared.

Final Imperator Bonus
As rational a man as Caesar Sapiens was, he had an emotional side. When his wife died in 390 he was shaken to his core, never to be the same man. He would rarely leave the palace and excessive numbers of his duties were laid on his proprinceps, allowing the budget to fall into deficit after deficit for his last four years.

Senators began worrying when a fiscal bill came through which included several million denarii for a mausoleum outside Constantinople. The Sapien Mausoleum would become the resting place for Sapiens' descendants but for now the emperor's eyes were on his own death. On September 5, 395, neither his family nor his slaves had seen him all morning. Within an hour he was found in his bed, having died peacefully in the night. Sapiens' eldest natural son, Marcus Aurelius Sapiens, heir to the title of Caesar, became Caesar Aurelius the following week. The latest succession of emperors ended the long lasting tradition of adopting a suitable candidate for the job, as was done since Trajan was made Nerva's heir in 98 CE. By permitting his titles to pass on to a biological heir, Sapiens set a precedent that not only influenced his descendants to do the same but worried the Senate that Rome was descending into monarchy.

While many of their fears would be realized, and the state risked being a total autocracy at some points, this decision set in motion a series of events that would ultimately produce the fall of the Antonine dynasty and allow a new line of emperors - the third in Rome's history - to come to power.

On a far off continent, well beyond the confines of Europe or even Eurasia, a child was born to a moderately well-off family in the Maya city of Calak'mul. Named Qhich'en Ch'onle Mayapan by his parents, he would come to be regarded as perhaps the most intelligent man ever to live, shifting the geopolitical face of a continent.