How Roman Empire was different from Iranian empire? Mention the role of the three main players in the political history of Roman Empire.

The political history of the Roman Empire

1. The Roman Empire was a mosaic of territoriesand cultures that were chiefly bound together by a common system ofgovernment. All those wholived in the empire were subjects of a single ruler, the emperor, but they followed various cultures, religions, languages and races.
2. Many languages were spoken in the empire, but for thepurposes of administration Latin and Greek were the most widely used,indeed the only official
3. Augustus was the first emperor who established monarchy in 27 He was also called the ‘Principate’. Although Augustus was the sole ruler andthe only real source of authority, the fiction was kept alive that he wasonly the ‘leading citizen’ (Princepsin Latin), not the absoluteruler. This was done out of respect for the Senate.
4. Senate was the body which hadcontrolled Rome earlier, in the days when it was a Republic. TheSenate had existed in Rome for centuries, and had been and remaineda body representing the aristocracy, that is, the wealthiest families of Roman and later Italian descent mainly landowners.
5. Next to the emperor and the Senate, the other key institution ofimperial rule was the army. Romans had a paidprofessional army where soldiers had to put in a minimum of 25 yearsof service. The army was the largest single organised bodyin the empire with 600,000 soldiers in the fourth century. The soldiers would constantlyagitate for better wages and service conditions. These agitations often took the form of mutinies.
6. The emperor, the aristocracyand the army were the three main ‘players’in the political history of the empire. Thesuccess of individual emperors dependedon their control of the army, and when thearmies were divided, the result usually was civil war. Except for one notorious year (69 CE), when four emperorsmounted the throne in quick succession, the first two centuries werefree from civil war.
7. External warfare was also much less common in the first twocenturies. The empire inherited by Tiberius from Augustus was alreadyso vast that further expansion was felt to be unnecessary.The only majorcampaign of expansion in the early empire was Trajan’s fruitlessoccupation of territory across the Euphrates, in the years 113-17 CEabandoned by his successors.
8. The Roman Empire had two types of territories. They were ‘dependent’kingdoms and provincial territory. The Near East was full of dependent kingdoms but they disappeared and swallowedup by Rome. These kingdoms were exceedinglywealthy, for example Herod’s kingdom yielded 5.4million denarii per year, equal to over 125,000 kg of gold per year.
9. A city in the Roman Empirewasan urban centre with its own magistrates, city council and a ‘territory’containing villages which were under its jurisdiction. Thus one citycould not be in the territory of another city, but villages almost alwayswere. Villages could be upgraded to the status of cities, and vice versa,usually as a mark of imperial favour. One crucialadvantage of living in a city was essential commodities were better providedfor during food shortages and even famines than the countryside.
10. Public baths were a striking feature ofRoman urban life and urbanpopulations also enjoyed a much higherlevel of entertainment. For example, onecalendar tells us that spectacula(shows)filled no less than 176 days of the year!