278-314 CE (Superpowers)

Emperor Benedictus was one of the most ambitious Good Emperor, making many attempts throughout his reign to magnify the glory of his Empire as greatly as possible. Attempting this through both military and civil methods, he achieved great successes in this goal, transforming Europe into the most civilized area on the planet. Though they would still trail the Asian civilizations in technology, the power of the Roman State would come to exceed that of all others.

Civil Events
Starting on an odd note, Benedictus first made a complete reform of the Roman postal service, hoping to make it the most advanced of its kind in all of Eurasia. This was based on the rather sound belief that information was power and a good spread of information in any empire would always be a huge advantage. Now, instead of one man making the entire journey, the courier and his horse would be switched at every stationes, instead of having merely the horse get changed. To achieve this, the entire system was standardized, differentiating it from the militia-like way in which the old service functioned. This meant that those who were making the deliveries were men with the dedicated job of delivery, being paid by the Emperor, and the Emperor alone.

As a means of paying for this vastly expansive change, private citizens were allowed to now use the service, in the form of having a special permit that any citizen could buy from the government every month and that would allow them unlimited ability to send mail and for an extra fee, packages. To improve efficiency, two forms of transport by land and sea would be used, the cursus velox, for government messages required to be delivered rapidly, and the cursus clabularis, a slower but more stable delivery system for regular use by the government and private consumers. The vehicles of transport for the velox were cisium (or fast two-wheeled carriages) and small sailing ships, whilst those for the clabularis were large ox driven raeda and the hitching of rides on trading vessels. At its very fastest, a message could be delivered over land at a rate of over 100 km per day, with even more impressive speeds provided by sea travel. This allowed the Emperor and governors to be able to be aware of any events within, at the very most, 10 days of its occurrence.