| 1031-1066 (278-313 AD) (L'Uniona Homanus) | 1066-1205 (313-452 AD) (L'Uniona Homanus) | Religious Revolution during the Peace of the Twelfth Century (L'Uniona Homanus) |
The Man from the Apennines.[]
Henricus was born in the Apennines and as soon as he was old enough he joined the Roman Military. Not long after it was found that he had a proficiency for fighting and for leading into battle. He rose through the ranks quickly. He never knew his father and the apparent well treatment he had with the current Emperor Jacobus and later Decius suggested to some malcontents that he was the son of Jacobus. It is quite possible that he was just liked by these Emperors but that is nothing more than speculation. Henricus led armies into Moesia in the fight against Ethiopia and built strategic bases in this province. Henricus managed to live through the plague that killed Decius and was well known by the Senators though he was not what would appear to be what Emperor's are
A bust of the Emperor Henricus at the time of his election.
made of. His genealogy was in question but everything else made him a good choice. Henricus had a great respect for the Senate, or so he presented, and expressed that the Senatorial Provinces ought be able to be more independently governed and the Emperor should not interfere with such governance except when necessary. Some Senators simply wanted to give him a seat in the Senate and look for other Generals to fill the empty throne but the majority chose him as the next Emperor of Rome as the first order of business when the Senate felt it safe enough to return from their homes.
Among the conditions of his birth were his single parent household, since whomever his father was, was not in his life. Henricus grew to be a rather talented military general but his accomplishments fell short of the previous Emperors. He was able easily to make friends with Senators and Generals alike and, for the most part, wherever he went he was met with hospitality. The recession of the plague left a serious question in the medical and scientific scholars who would begin to refill the Universities. What was the cause of plague?
The Expansion of Hygiene[]
Among the advancements in medicine that came in these years, including vaccination, was the growth of the idea of bathing. The people of the Parthian Provinces had been bathing quite often since they inherited a mastery of irrigation and hydrodynamics from their neighbors to the West. Unlike the people of Europe, especially the newer territories to the North, where bathing for the purpose of cleanliness was not common for the very rich, the Parthians bathed at most twice a week. The Parthian death rate, despite the fact that the first deaths were reported in the Far East parts of those provinces, was the lowest of any provinces in the Empire. The Aegyptians experimented with exposing people similar environments and, depending on their status of bathing, recording results. The findings were conclusive but not very recognized in the years of recovery.
Henricus, having respect but not much personal knowledge of the sciences, brought into vogue the practice of bathing almost daily. This began to define the wealthy of Rome and the people who were moving up in the world wanted to emulate them. That being said, provinces like Suebia, Scandinavia, and Prussia which had a contempt for the industry of Rome, despite its benefits, and saw this practice as feminine, snobbish, and unbecoming of the common man. The wealthy in these provinces who were, despite public opinion, adopted this custom as well as others of Rome. Slowly this became more accessible to the people of the country to bathe so frequently. Among these inventions was indoor plumbing which could bring water to any person’s bathtub as well as the expansion of the use of porcelain. Specifically hand washing would become not only a practice for hygiene but also of ritual. Before entering any public space the people would wash their hands from a fountain with the god Neptune above it or in a freeze on the wall behind the faucet. This, like bathing would expand to the homes of people and became customary among people who wished to show their civility.
The People of Ethiopia also had this practice for much longer than the Empire to which they now belonged. Among another invention of the Ethiopians was the compaction and burning of garbage from the people. This would spread into Aegypt but would be better perfected as it rose northwards.
The Act of Civilization of 1070 (317 AD) and the Senate Election of 1071 (318 AD)[]
Despite the popularity which the practice of voting had gained over recent years, few people were actually able to vote. Even in Francia, which was the most radical in its enfranchisement of people guaranteeing universal male suffrage as part of their Province’s Constitution, many people were not able to reach the areas of voting and votes for the Senators of Francia remained with certain communities. The Emperor Henricus did not approve of this policy. He admired the people of Francia for their determination to freedom and their practice did spread to some cities bordering them. The most effected of these was Britannia and Germania, whereas Italia, Greccia, and Hispania held on to many of the old ways. The call for freedom came answered in the year 1070 (317 AD) with an act that would change the future of Rome. The Act of Civilization granted citizenship to all people of Rome who were not held as slaves and who were born in a Province at least four generations after the generation that was grown when that province was conquered. This was to assure that the people of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as those of Scandinavia, Prussia, Suebia, and Sarmatia (European Russia) whose dissatisfaction with the Roman culture was not a secret but was also tolerated by the wealth they brought. The democracy of the other parts of the Empire would not reach these provinces until many years later. The positive effects of this Act was that the Western and Southern European, North African, Parthian, and Eastern Mediterranean Provinces, the most advanced provinces, were now able to elect, in full, the representatives of the People. This idea brought back memories and interest the people had of the Constitution of Emperor Carolus many years ago. The regrowth in the philosophy of government in these most literate provinces. The people who would write these books were in many ways inspired by the Act that gave them the rights of a citizen. The name of the People and the Citizen became interchangeable in the context of Rome and Henricus gained great fame from these people. The enfranchisement made such a feeling of pride among the people of Rome that the old system and old gentrified class was removed from power in favor of these new people who were able to govern their province according to the new ideas being born in this time. The election that followed in the next year would bring in many more new Senators, chiefly from the North African Provinces who were well allied with the famously progressive province of Francia. The new Senators moved many philosophies from the new authors, called ‘enlightened’ by these Senators, into the legislation of the Senatorial Provinces.
The First Enlightenment 1076 (323 AD)[]
Bacarius Mentelus[]
Bacarius was born in the year 1036 (283 AD) in the town of Carthage in the Province of Mauretania. The philosopher spent his early adult years in the movement to create a republican style of government, like that of Rome, in Mauretania with Carthage, being by far the largest city after recovering from the Punic Wars centuries ago, as the capital. This resulted in the first Parliament, from the Latin for ‘to speak’ as the legislature was designed as a debate centered organization for the governance of Mauretania, to be held in the city of Carthage a new concept in the region which held long lines of aristocracies that despite their weakening over the years managed to keep power as well as learn to share it with people rising in social class.
Bacarius Mentelus
The First Parliament of Mauretania was held in 1061 when Bacarius was at the age of twenty five, he wrote the Charter of the Province of Mauretania which declared the equality of people, the supremacy of the people, and many of the rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution of Francia. The Parliament was managed in a bicameral system with the individual tribes and cities that had come to populate the Province and make it wealthy having proportional representatives in the Lower House and with each District of Mauretania having two representatives each. Districts were very large and so there were very few members of the Upper House. The Populations of the Cities however were dense and many had to have many representatives in order to satisfy their demands, which were necessary in order for Bacarius to pursue his ideals.
Bacarius almost immediately after leaving the Universities of Carthage and visiting the great libraries of Alexandria, Byzantium, and Rome as well as an influential year in the young province of Francia published a seminal treatise on the Law and Order of a civilized people. Unlike many other scholars at the time which simply restated the theses of earlier or established philosophers, Bacarius made many new and innovative contributions in his work. Among these were contributions to crime, justice, law, punishment, governance, and the future of the Empire. The inspiration he drew from the Province of Francia as well as the Constitution of Carolus and the Cambissima of Ignacius were essential in understanding the meaning of his book. It was published little before the outbreak of plague in the Empire and many were distracted from the rampant death and mayhem to notice this power grab he had made for himself. This idea of doing what is necessary to achieve larger goals, including taking advantage of disaster and perhaps even orchestrating it yourself, would also be an, unintended, legacy of Mauretania.
The city of Carthage before the great expansion of Bacarius
Bacarius as the President of the Parliament of Mauretania was the highest political authority of the province below the Emperor and the Senate of Rome. The new Emperor embarked on a new program, many of which were derived from projects being pursued elsewhere in the Empire. The first of these was the growth of railroads and investments in the Universities like those of the Cities of Thaenae, Carthage and Tripoli. The diversification of Energy in the province led to the first major discovery of oil outside of what was Parthia. Bacarius also increased research in engineering and agriculture, Mauretania being mostly desert after you leave the borders of the Mediterranean Sea. The first of these came with the production of mass hydraulics, which with the surplus of immigrants ready for labor that were coming from the Deserts of Africa were easy to supply with labor, made Mauretania the third most industrialized Province in the Empire in less than a decade until the time of the Act of Civilization. This fantastic rise in such an amazing amount of time made Bacarius famous as well as his works
A painting of the Bacarian River (aka The First Great Mauretanian Canal)
which were quickly printed to the jealous Provinces and the methods moved to create a resounding interest in the study of Law and Justice.
Of Bacarius’s contributions were the concept of eliminating capital punishment as ineffective. Another was organizing punishments into ranges of length in prison, where in these ranges the punishment should be would be determined by a jury of one’s peers. These peers would not be the aristocrats judging their friends but regular people judging a case based on evidence presented to them. This equality in criminal justice created a large interchange of ideas between the Francians and the Mauritanians, more so than between any other two provinces from such different backgrounds. In the beginnings of this work were basic questions of how there is a right and necessity to punish crime in a country, this questioning of basic principles was not known in other provinces where they simply were accepted. Questioning everything soo became popular and spread widely.
Mauritania before its expansion in red, after expansion in orange and the cities of Thaenae, Carthage, and Tripoli
Bacarius was not only a philosopher as we have shown he was also a politician. the grain exports from Mauretania before his reforms were greatly beneficial to the province and made the basis of the wealth of their treasury. The industrialization the followed increased this more so and to demonstrate the supremacy of his province, Bacarius wanted to extend his Province and well as sole the desertification problem that was plaguing them. The First Great Canal of Mauretania was built from the Mediterranean into the Desertum Africanum and the people who were immigrating to the increasingly prominent city were encouraged to build cities on the canal which they would also help build and operate. The territory around this canal which sprawled out from the original into smaller canals would become part of Mauretania proper and support their growing population. The program began in 1079 (326 AD) and was completed in 1086 (333 AD) and was called one of the newest wonders of the world. It supported not only trade and irrigation but also colonies, education, the expansion of interest in the hydraulic technologies that were used to build it and the idea that a province can be great through direction.
Carolus Claudius Guerinus[]
Carolus Claudius was, unlike Bacarius in Mauretania, never involved in the affairs of the Province he lived in much more than voting. However, his ideas on the organization of the state were to be profound in the Empire. Born next to the great city of Rome in Italia, Carolus Claudius was a smart child from his earliest years. His family moved to Rome in order to find a better life and were more than accepted into the middle class on the city with seven hills, though it had expanded past these original seven. Rome in its metropolitanism and splendor was happy to see Carolus Claudius enter a room, especially when in his own villas on the coasts outside the city. The use of new methods of building made the villa more splendid, put together, hospitable and fortified than had been previously done.
Carolus Claudius Guerinus
Carolus Claudius did soon become a hermit like person who resented the political elites who had expected so much from him. The taxes in the city were not low as most of the people there had risen to a middle class than could afford them. Carolus began to look at the government of Italia and of the Empire as a whole. Among his observations were corruption, inefficiency, conservation of outdated models, and a rigid system of rules that were adverse to the advancement he saw as necessary and inevitable in this large empire. Though the relation between the recent Emperors and the Senate had been very close and amiable, Carolus Claudius often spoke of a threat by the Emperor to dominate the whole government of their world. This threat would start most of his works, often with discussions of the tragedies of Nero and other despotic Emperors and the fear that they could return. Carolus Claudius’s works often incorporated praise for the Constitution of Carolus made more than a century ago, but the mechanisms for protecting the future of the Empire were not addressed in this document as it could not foresee the growth and change that would occur.
The main subject of the treatise on government by Carolus Claudius, the first of which anyway, concerned the organization of the state, or rather how it ought to be organized. The powers of the government were described into three main bodies which have been hitherto been combined in almost every part of the Empire. They were the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative most of whom were embodied mainly by the Emperor of Rome. The Executive was named for the executor of the laws from the legislative branch. The Emperor was described as the highest executive of the laws which came from the Senate, the highest legislature. The Judicial however was a mix of the other two branches. The Senators and the Emperor could give the rulings and pardons to any place where they went and would not be contested by any court established in that land. Combined with the ideals of jurisprudence set with Bacarius which Carolus Claudius admired as a contemporary the idea of a Supreme Court alongside the Senate and the Emperor was first posited at these revolutionary times.
Carolus Claudius died without seeing his philosophy reach fruition but Carolus Claudius’s position on the organization of Government was adopted by the Governors of Italia, Noricum, Raetia, and Dalmatia. The separation of powers and the system of checks and balances became a common practice among the people around Italia but was resisted by some provinces where tyrants and the wealthy remained in comfortable power. Chiefly in Corsica, Sardinia et Balerica, which were governed by the same governor as one province, as well as Hispania, Lusitania, and Baetica on the Iberian Peninsula. The second treatise on government that would follow the first would concern the importance of Liberty and of Property in the Empire, but it was not as widely received as the first of his work
Johannus Anistius[]
The study of property rights, liberty, and other rights in general would continue under the study and publishing of Johannus Antistius, a Greccian, and rumored to be the descendant of Aristotle. Born in the time when Bacarius and Carolus Claudius were at their most popular, Johannus grew a fondness for the essays and treatises on government that he could find, including many as ancient as Plato. Johannus was born to a rather middle class family in Greccia, not particularly wealthy but was able to afford any books he wanted. Carolus Claudius was his favorite and he was one of the few outside the academic circles, and people who collected books simply for the show of having them, who read and kept the Second work of Carolus Claudius as described above. The book was, in Johannus’s opinion, better than his first treatise and ought to have proceeded it. “How can a government of the people come from a people without rights?”-Johannus Antistius On The Rights of a Free People published 1099 (346 AD)
This concern with rights led to the first discussions of the rights of the people, what they are, why they exists, and where they come from. The ability of a human being to understand that they are better off having rights than not having them was the first reason given for why people, all people, have inalienable rights. The rights which had been claimed by people of noble birth or of certain lineages were put in the coffin of history with this treatise. The concept of universal rights began to be the topic of the Senators of Rome. The collection of these rights would not be done and would not be complete in the lifetime of Johannus and would be a staple of the politics of the Empire for decades to come.
The already established rights from the Constitution of Carolus which had been governing the Empire for approaching two centuries were the right to life, the right to property, and the right to liberty. These set the perimeters for the definition of the three major sorts of crimes: murder, theft and any bodily harm such as assault and rape. The premise of these rights was not contested but further defining of them was needed. The Rights of Women were the first of the major debates among the legislators of the Senate and among academics. The Province of Francia had already emancipated women and the practices was spreading to the Northern Provinces remarkably faster than in the Mediterranean ones. This was likely due to the fact that the culture of these Germanic and developing provinces treated women with equal respect and responsibility even before the arrival of the Romans. In the southern Provinces the only place where women could find freedom was in Mauretania which was following the model of Francia and encouraging women to participate in government and procreate so as to populate the cities and gain laborers for the projects their government was intent upon performing.
Johannus Anistius
Johannus had much to say about the enfranchisement of Women in the world and was known to praise the Francians for their advancement and the Mauritanians for their ambition. Not only women, but slaves were called to freedom by Johannus though many provinces ignored these sentiments. Slavery was a large part of the building projects done in these provinces especially Mauretania. Next in the discussion of Rights was the self-determination right of ethnic groups to come together. Johannus used the Duchies of Saxonia, Lombardia, and Vandalia as examples of how ethnic majorities when given the ability to group together and to participate in government would civilize themselves as a natural reaction. In the areas that were populated by the Goths, Bulgars, and Slavs in the newer provinces tensions grew, but not to the point of warfare. The Cimbri formed the Cimbrian Duchy informally and without the approval of the Governor of Scandinavia in Sigtuna (Stockholm) or the Emperor in Rome. The Jutes who had moved to the other cities on the Mare Suebicum in Prussia and Germania formed an alliance with Cimbria and drove out the other ethnic groups of Angles and Saxons in the year 1095 (342 AD) which went without reaction by the Emperor. The Governors of Scandinavia, Germania, Prussia, and Suebia recognized the Duchy of Cimbria on the Jutland Peninsula and some surrounding islands. The Jutes gained political power in Prussia in these years and the trade practices of these groups became increasingly intertwined. The event went unnoticed outside of the northern provinces and was seen only as the establishment of a new Duchy in Scandinavia.
The publicity that was gained from Johannus attention to the issue led to the establishment of the County of Anglia was made in Britannia, on the densely forested part of the Province nearest to Hibernia, which was still developing, and the Saxons returned to Saxonia in Germania where the Cimbrian Saxonian Border grew to be tensely guarded. Public opinion moved against the Cimbri and the Jutes as many of the Angles or Saxons who could not escape drowned in the seas. Henricus, who was barely aware of the affairs of the North became a target in the newspapers and the authority he developed began to weaken. The Roman People began to notice how the army they had spent so much money upon was not being used even in the face of these atrocities. The Emperor began to fall out of favor despite the growth of the literate and the intelligent across the Empire and demand that things in the media not be ignored. The communication abilities that had been growing recently should have rendered the Empire more connected but left it in the uncivilized areas even more distant.
The Nigerian War[]
As described above, the Emperor Henricus lost much of his prestige in the events that led to the establishments of the Duchy of Cimbria and the County of Anglia. The most common response by an Emperor would be to lead the country on to a military campaign, usually with the treasury of the Empire filling with the spoils of war. The closes nations which could be conquered were the Maurya Empire in India on the far side of the Empire and the Nigerian Empire in Africa on the edge of the Great Desert. Nigeria was the obvious choice as it was both easier to reach and had more wealth in the form of mines to the knowledge of the Romans.
The Campaign began with the landing of Roman soldiers into the ports in Lusitania, Francia, Aquitania, Britannia, and Tingitana to move to fight the Nigerians in a surge of troops to overwhelm them. The First Surge was led into the Niger River and captured many key trading cities but the mercenaries hired by the wealthy Nigerians were able to push many of the Romans into the cities and sometimes back into the River. The campaign which was meant to last no more than seven months led to a prolonged war that took as much as five years. The eventual winning of the Romans was not met with applause to the chagrin of Henricus. The Nigerians who had in many cities collapsed their gold mines conducted terrorist and guerrilla warfare tactics during the Roman occupation. The supplies of Gold would not be retrieved for decades to come and were sometimes thought so costly, not only in money but in lives and dignity, that some wanted to abandon the endeavour. Despite the resistance of the people many schools and hospitals and industrial areas began to be produced in Nigeria. The attacks that were made by terrorists led not only to the deaths of occupiers and Romans but of many native Nigerians who were looking for an education or a career. The sadness of Nigeria came to follow a general distaste for the Emperor Henricus and plots of assassination were rumored throughout the Empire.
Some groups around the Nigerians who had looked to them for protection as well as for food and supplies began to migrate from the borders of Nigeria. The Bantu Migration that took place scattered tribes throughout the continent and away from Rome, whose atrocities became legendary. One such establishment was around The Ladonian Lake (Lake Chad) and the establishment of the Ladonian Kingdom, which because of their servile and cooperative stance at their formation, was allowed to exist as a Roman Client state. Henricus began to gain some favor among the people but on a trip to the city of Byzantium in 1058 (305 AD) for the 125th anniversary of the conquest of Crimea and the death of Marcus Aurelius was met by an attempt at assassination by a local member of a Bulgar tribe looking to take advantage of the situation. At this time many of the collapsed mines were opened and the terrorism rate dropped slightly.
Henricus survived and the perpetrator was killed by the Emperor himself at the attempt and this granted him much more celebrity in the Empire. The terrorist acts dropped significantly thereafter and the popularity of Henricus rose greatly in the years at the start of the Twelfth Century. Nigerians were still of little respect in the Empire until then and were mostly sources for slavery. The Ladonian Kingdom was recognized as an independent province and the migrations of the Bantu tribes continued.
The Peace of the Twelfth Century 1100-1205 (347-452 AD)[]
The death of the Emperor Henricus in the year 1114 (361 AD) was followed by a succession of his son, Cornelius 1114-1130 (361-377 AD) and then Cornelius's brother Carinus 1131-1160 (378-407 AD) and then following a brief interregnum period of two years was succeeded by a prominent Italian governor named Constantinus who ruled until his death in 1187 (434 AD) whereupon his son Constantinus II ruled until the end of this period.
No major war occurred during this time but of the seven provinces that used to be part of parthia, three had become Senatorial Provinces, Carmenia, Chrasmia, Elegabatia, and Pasargida as well as the provinces of Germania, Galatia, Lycia, Cilicia, and Cappadocia and the Assyraian and Babylonian provinces. These were the major political changes in the Empire.
In technology the light bulb was increasingly improved but was in many ways abandoned for being so difficult. Education, Transportation, Communication, Commerce, Military, and Civilization overall continued to improve in these peaceful times for the Roman Empire. The sexual scandals of the above described emperors were the most major political concerns at this time. Without any nearby enemies the economy continued to grow. WIth the expansion of the amount of land and food of the Empire the population also rose. This increase in labor led to many more projects in the Empire and many new rivers and canals were built as well as buildings, universities, and not to mention a limitless number of businesses and infrastructure projects.
The Roman Empire during the Peace of the Twelfth Century.
Carinus started the first group of European Highway systems to connect the roads of the major cities in the Empire. These years went by without much attention to scientific discovery but much research and investment in the hopes that a marvel would soon arrive from the academies. These peaceful times for Rome were met with similarly violent times in many other parts of the world. From the norther plains of Asia, to the Americas, to India, to China and even the islands of the pacific. Here the story of the Human Union splits into many others.
The differences between the people of the North, the People of Africa, The People of Western Europe, The People of Parthia and the Near East, and the People of Eastern Europe were able to under the hegemony and luck of having a succession of rather strong Emperors remain together in a system that, though electing from families at this time, was even if only ostensibly elected by the Senate and this paved the way for civilization and the longest period of peace, overall, as yet seen in Human History. The Growth of Science and Technology in Rome as well as of wealth and the standard of living led to the greatest situation for even the poorest of people.
"From the shores of the Mare Adriaticus, to the Britannicus, Arabius, Africanus, and Caspianus. From the Atlas Mountains in North Africa to the Oil fields of Chrasmia and Elegabatia. From the Nile to the Vistulus and from the Desertum Africanus to the Campus Asius [Open fields of Asia] the world is looking to the future without dread and horror but with hope and dignity." -From the Ascension speech of Carinus to the Senate in 1131 (378 AD).
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| 1031-1066 (278-313 AD) (L'Uniona Homanus) | 1066-1205 (313-452 AD) (L'Uniona Homanus) | Religious Revolution during the Peace of the Twelfth Century (L'Uniona Homanus) |