An Empire Across Three Continents — Class 11 History

This theme studies the Roman Empire, which spanned Europe, North Africa and West Asia around the Mediterranean ("the heart of Rome's empire") between the birth of Christ and the early seventh century, with Iran (the Parthians and Sasanians) as its great rival across the Euphrates. Augustus founded the Principate in 27 BCE, and the three key "players" were the emperor, the aristocracy (Senate) and the paid professional army. The empire was a mosaic of cultures bound by a common government, using Latin in the west and Greek in the east, and was administered chiefly through cities. The chapter divides Roman history into the early empire (to the third century) and the late empire, separated by the third-century crisis when the Sasanians and Germanic tribes pressed the frontiers and emperors changed rapidly. It explores Roman society — the nuclear family, the relatively strong legal position of women, slavery and labour control — and economic expansion shown by amphorae trade in wheat, wine and olive oil. In late antiquity (4th–7th centuries) Constantine made Christianity the official religion and founded Constantinople; the western provinces fragmented into "post-Roman" Germanic kingdoms, while the rise of Islam after 632 transformed the eastern Roman and Sasanian worlds.