Chapter 3: The Roman Emperor of Zuihou (I)

The glory of Caesar,

Roman heritage.

The golden trade route,

Burning heavenly fire.

God's walls,

The orthodoxy of Christ.

The two-headed eagle,

A thousand-year-old empire.

However, all of this is going to be destroyed in the end!

If someone wants to ask, among the many ancient civilizations in the history of Shijie, which one is enough to compete with the great Chinese civilization, or even surpass it...... Then it seems that only the ancient Roman civilization, which has lasted for more than 2,000 years, can be selected without shame.

Roman civilization and Chinese civilization happened to be located at the east and west ends of the Eurasian continent respectively, and in the Qin and Han dynasties, when the "Central Empire" was initially laid in the East, the ancient Roman Empire also stood up as the sole hegemon of the Mediterranean.

At their peak, the two empires were similar in terms of territory and population, and their cultural achievements were different.

However, unlike the historical evolution of the Chinese dynastic cycle, the Roman Empire, although there was no shortage of regime changes, was in a more competitive and complex international environment - therefore, the Romans first expanded their territory from a small to a large land, expanding from a city on the banks of the Tiber River to three continents in Europe, Asia and Africa, turning the Mediterranean Sea into their own inland lake; Then it gradually declined and shrunk from large to small, losing Western Europe, North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and only the corner of Constantinople remained in Zuihou. (Note)

In short, the history of the Roman Empire. It is a magnificent and thrilling history, but also a history of conquest and enslavement, war and destruction. Its birth, development, prosperity and decay seem to be in perfect line with the natural law of "natural selection, survival of the fittest".

It is now 1451 AD, the third year of the accession of the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine XI.

At this moment, 753 years before the legendary "wolf child" Romulus founded the city of Rome. It has been more than 2,200 years. It was only two years before the final fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD and the fall of the Roman Empire......

The bell that heralded the final destruction of ancient Roman civilization. Already ringing over Constantinople.

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After driving everyone out of his dormitory, Constantine XI suddenly felt much cleaner around him.

The Emperor Bixia, who had completed his spiritual transformation, was sitting alone at an old desk. Flip through a variety of materials and brochures.

At the moment, his mind seemed to be a little drowsy, which was the after-effect of yesterday's insistence on riding out of the house to meet the Venetian trade envoys after suffering from a high fever - it was precisely because of this that Constantine XI fell into a coma near the docks, allowing the soul and memory of another shijie to take advantage of the void and succeed in taking possession of everything from him.

However, no matter how mutated the soul is. At this moment, Constantine XI was still the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire.

However, the throne of Constantinople meant not only power, glory and purple robes, but also endless disasters and dangers.

Especially when Constantine XI ascended the throne, the situation of this empire was already sad to the point of tears. In the opinion of this traverser. Even Emperor Chongzhen, who traveled to the end of the Ming Dynasty, was much stronger than Emperor Constantine XI today.

In any case, at least the net worth inherited by Emperor Chongzhen when he ascended the throne was definitely a hundred times more generous than that of Constantine XI.

-- The Eastern Roman Empire in 1451 A.D. had almost decayed to the point of despair.

Westerners have clouds: glory belongs to Greece, greatness belongs to Rome.

The territory of the ancient Roman Empire at its peak. It was once so vast and boundless, from the scorching sun of North Africa to the humid and foggy Britain, from the pyramids on the banks of the Nile to the Black Forest on the banks of the Rhine, from the snow-capped Alps to the red tide of the Red Sea...... To get from one end of the Roman Empire to the other, even along the well-maintained and orderly Via Empire, it would take at least half a year.

However, when the prosperity of the past is withering, the pace of history slowly moves to the fifteenth century after the birth of Jesus; When the purple robes and golden eagle scepters of the Roman Empire reached Constantine XI, what legacy was left of this great thousand-year-old empire?

In the eyes of Constantine XI, his empire could only be described in three words: a mess!

- Except for a few out-of-reach scattered enclaves and a dilapidated and decaying Constantinople, there were basically no bargaining chips left.

To make matters worse, the haze of destruction has risen outside the ancient city walls, and is about to swallow up the last remaining legacy of the Roman Empire!

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Note: Just as there is no continent on Earth called Latin America, there has never been a state in the history of mankind that called itself the Byzantine Empire. Although this successor to Roman civilization, later known as the Byzantine Empire, stood proudly in the southeast of Europe for thousands of years. However, when the state still existed, both the subjects of the Byzantine Empire and the people of other countries awe-inspired to refer to it as the Roman Empire, or at least the Eastern Roman Empire. Even the enemies of the Byzantine Empire merely derogated them to "Greeks".

- Until the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the subjects of the Byzantine Empire called themselves Romans, considering themselves God's chosen people and successors to the Roman Empire. And "Greeks" were to the Byzantines, what "Shina" were to the Chinese, which was a difficult curse to listen to at the time.

In the long history of the empire for 11 centuries, the "Byzantine Empire" never became the official or unofficial name of the country, and its subjects never referred to themselves as "Byzantines", until the 17th century, the "Eastern Roman Empire" was the official name of the empire. As for the origin of the term Byzantine Empire, it is entirely a claim coined by later European historians in order to distinguish the eastern half of the ancient Roman Empire from the Eastern Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, and hundreds of years after the fall of the Byzantine Empire - so if someone really travels back to the European Middle Ages and mentions the Byzantine Empire to others, then the Europeans of the Middle Ages will say that there has never been such a country in this Shijie......)