(2) ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH / VATICAN CITY

The most enduring successor of the Roman Empire, indeed the one which can “actually trace its origin to the Roman era” and endures to the present day – inheriting the capitol, the pontifex and the imperial language of Latin, as well as many of the trappings and much of the mystique of the western empire.

It’s a successor in a somewhat unique sense. It was not a direct political successor or successor in terms of the military institutions of empire – as it lacked the latter other than those it could enlist from leaders or states owing it allegiance – but dare I say it, a spiritual successor.

I gave it away with that reference to leaders or states owing it allegiance – it was the surviving institution from the western empire most retaining allegiance, or cultural and moral authority or legitimacy, reinforced by its effective monopoly status as ‘international’ institution transcending tribes or kingdoms, reflected in the catholic part of its name, connoting universality

Indeed, it had started to eclipse the empire in moral authority even prior to the fall of the western empire, best demonstrated by Pope Leo I as imperial envoy to Attila the Hun to persuade him to turn back after his invasion Italy and not sack Rome, armed with little else other than moral authority – which by some miracle worked, with Attila withdrawing from Italy, never to return to the empire (and dying shortly afterwards, possibly from papal mojo).

For much of its history, the Church was somewhat broader than the present Roman Catholic Church, including as the Orthodox Church in the eastern empire – but ironically the Orthodox Church remained in the shadow of the eastern imperial government, while the Roman Catholic Church emerged as the shadow empire because of the very absence of any political state to rival it in reach after the fall of the western empire

Of course, the Church was able to convert (heh) its moral authority to claims for political succession of the Roman Empire, becoming effectively the ’empire-maker’ (or more precisely emperor-crowner) – not for itself, except in so far as it was able to secure control of Rome and other Italian territory as the Papal States, but for my next special mention.

On the subject of the Papal States, they too have endured to the present day, albeit very much in residual or substituted form as the state of Vatican City in its enclave within Rome, the smallest nation in the world.

The continuation of the empire in the Church tends to be one of bases for the argument that “the empire never ended” – albeit usually in a trippy way, as in the works of SF writer P.K. Dick.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD-TIER – WHAT ELSE?)

(1) ROMAN REPUBLIC (509 BC – 27 BC)

Some might argue for this as the real Roman Empire or true Pax Romana – the Roman Republic as imperial republic, a recurring political model with surprising frequency in Western history.

Certainly, when many people think of the Romans, they are thinking of the Romans of the Republic rather than the Romans of the Empire.

As I said for the eastern Roman Empire, there seem to be two recurring arguments among Roman history enthusiasts – whether one ranks the Roman Republic over the Roman Empire, and whether one ranks the Byzantine Empire over the Roman Empire.

While the Roman Republic predates the formal institutions of empire founded by Augustus, it essentially laid almost all the foundations for the subsequent empire, not least in its Mediterranean supremacy and imperial core territory. And perhaps even more so in the values or virtues, martial or otherwise, fostered by the Republic in its citizens and institutions – such that it might be (and has been) argued that the further one gets into its history, the more the Empire is running on fumes from the Republic.

The Republic also saw some of the most definitive events and figures of Roman history – not least Julius Caesar, who lent his name to the title of emperor and is perhaps the figure most identified with the Empire, although it was his heir Augustus who actually founded the empire in the wake of Caesar’s assassination. Like a good car salesman, Augustus just slapped the formal institutions of empire on the pretense of authority of the Republic or Senate, and said this baby can fit a millennium and a half in it.

Obviously, it is the one exception to my special mentions as successors to the Roman Empire – but not from the line of succession itself, except that for the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire claimed succession from it rather than the other way around.

And while we’re on the subject of line of succession, I can’t give special mention to the Roman Republic without a shout-out to the Republic’s legendary predecessor, the Roman Kingdom.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

But wait – there’s more Roman Empires!

As my usual rule, I have twenty special mentions for each top ten – and to my surprise, I was able to compile twenty special mentions for my Top 10 Roman Empires, as there was no shortage of claimants for succession to the Roman Empire. That is, there’s was shortage of polities or states claiming succession from the Roman Empire as a whole or from one of its western or eastern halves.

I might even have squeezed out some more – or at least a couple more, with the short-lived state of Dalmatia held by the surviving former emperor Julius Nepos until 480 AD, or the Despotate of the Morea holding out in revolt against the Ottomans until 1460.

“The continuation, succession, and revival of the Roman Empire is a running theme of the history of Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. It reflects the lasting memories of power and prestige associated with the Roman Empire. Several polities have claimed immediate continuity with the Roman Empire, using its name or a variation thereof as their own exclusive or non-exclusive self-description. As centuries went by and more political ruptures occurred, the idea of institutional continuity became increasingly debatable”.

As the above quote indicates, the claimants to the succession of the Roman Empire reflected in my special mentions become increasingly tenuous, to the point of metaphor at best and delusions of grandeur at worst. Indeed, perhaps more than most of my special mentions, these special mentions might be regarded as something of an iceberg meme – that is, my iceberg of the succession of the Roman Empire, starting with more straightforward entries towards at the outset of the iceberg above the surface and going on to wilder or more esoteric entries as we go beneath the surface to the bottom of the iceberg.

Not surprisingly then, my god-tier first special mention is something of an exception to the other claimants to succession from the Roman Empire, albeit still involving a line of succession with the empire, while my god-tier second special mention does involve a line of succession from the empire but in a unique sense.

My next top-tier three special mentions are for “the most enduring and significant claimants of continuation of the Roman Empire”.

My high-tier special mentions may not be as “enduring and significant” but at least could made their claims from a position of having control or possession of either Rome or Constantinople – or close enough for the purposes of the ranking.

And the balance of special mentions is where things get wild – as tends to be the case in my special mentions where I have some fun with the subject category and splash out with some wilder entries – hence their consistent wild-tier ratings.

(2) EASTERN ROMAN / BYZANTINE EMPIRE

(395-1453 AD)

Historians snubbed it as the Byzantine Empire, so as to avoid acknowledging it as the glorious continuation of the Roman Empire. It just stayed more to the east and called itself Greek after a certain point. But for convenience (as it’s shorter), I’ll keep using Byzantine rather than eastern Roman Empire.

There seems to be two recurring arguments among Roman history enthusiasts – whether one ranks the Roman Republic over the Roman Empire, and whether one ranks the Byzantine Empire over the Roman Empire. I’ll have a look at the former in my special mentions but there’s a solid argument to be made for ranking the Byzantine Empire over the classical Roman Empire.

Sure, the Byzantine Empire wasn’t as big as the Roman Empire. After its relatively brief glory days as half the former Roman Empire – or its briefer and even more glorious days when it took a damn good swing at reclaiming the western half under Emperor Justinian – it spent most of its time at about a quarter the Roman Empire. At best, that is – because it spent substantial amounts of time as not much more than its capital in Constantinople.

But for sheer endurance, it has to take the title from the Roman Empire, lasting for a millennium past the fall of the western half, including feats of rebounding from defeats that bordered on resurrection. More like Lazarus Empire, amirite?

And that endurance and those feats were achieved against a more formidable and seemingly eternal encirclement by enemies, from west and east, by land and sea – from which the Byzantines could rarely catch a break, except by soundly defeating one or more of those enemies, and usually not even then.

In the end however, the empire suffered one defeat too many – wounded, fatally as it turned out, from the Fourth Crusade that sacked Constantinople in 1204, although it resurrected itself even from that for two centuries. Alas, it simply lacked the scale of time or resources to see it through, particularly against a rising rival empire in its prime – the Ottoman Empire, which finally conquered Constantinople in 1453.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(3) WESTERN ROMAN EMPIRE

(395-476 AD)

That “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world”.

And now we come to the Roman empire proper with its formal division into de facto separate eastern and western empires in 395 AD (although they still saw themselves as the one empire) – with the latter pretty much falling stillborn from that division, somehow limping through the 81 years of its sorry existence until the barbarians clubbed it on the head and put it out of its misery.

We’re a long way from the Rome that made the Mediterranean their Mare Nostrum, along with making everything else part of their Pax Romana. Hell, Rome wasn’t even the capital of the western empire from 402 AD – that was Ravenna and historians should really call it the Ravennan empire rather than add insult to the injury to the western empire’s ignominious decline.

Indeed, there’s been a video meme to this effect – with Ryan Gosling’s sad sack of a beaten character from Blade Runner 2049 standing in for the western empire, in contrast to Ryan Gosling’s exuberant showboating Ken from the Barbie film standing in for the eastern empire.

Or for that matter, a meme of that heartfelt scene from Avengers: Endgame with Thor back from the future seeing his mother one last time in the past – Freya as the Roman empire in the 2nd century saying sadly to Thor as the Roman empire from the 5th century “The future has not been kind to you, has it?”

I exaggerate for rhetorical effect, but it’s not hard to see the eastern empire abandoning the western empire as a hopelessly lost cause or an act of cutthroat triage, much like the western empire then did with Britain.

And perhaps I exaggerate the plight of the western empire, but not by much. While I tend to see the western Roman empire as doomed with just too many things coming together against it – not least too many barbarians – it might have at least endured longer or better than it did, but for two of the worst emperors in Roman history, compounded by the length of their reigns somehow enduring for most of it, 60 years or so between them.

I am of course talking about Emperors Honorius and Valentinian III, although they might as well have been the same emperor, given how uncannily similar they were – with each of them betraying the loyal subordinate who was the one holding things together and stabbing that man in the back, Stilicho for Honorius and Aetius for Valentinian III (literally for the stabbing in the back part), each with one of the two notorious sacks of Rome following shortly afterwards, the Visigoths for Honorius and the Vandals for Valentinian III.

On the other hand, there was also Emperor Majorian reigning from 457 to 461 AD – the empire’s last best hope for someone like Aurelian two centuries earlier to pull it out of its spiral of doom, as Majorian defeated all of Rome’s enemies he fought even in that twilight of the empire, until he too was betrayed and assassinated. After that, it was all downhill into the Dark Age, until the last western emperor was deposed in 476 AD.

Yet for all that, it still is what I see as the Roman Empire proper, even if much diminished. And as I observed in my Top 10 Empires, I just have a particular interest in empires holding the line against all odds as they decline and fall. And let’s face it – even as a shadow of its former self, I still see it as being able to take any of the others below it in the top ten, hence the ranking.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(4) GALLIC EMPIRE

(260-274 AD)

The second of two breakaway states as the Roman Empire broke into three parts during the Crisis of the Third Century – in the western part of the Roman Empire as the Palmyrene Empire took over the eastern part.

The Gallic Empire – the name given to it by modern historiography – was established by a Roman commander (of German origin) Postumus in 260 in the wake of barbarian invasions of Gaul and instability in Rome. At its height it included Roman territories in Germania, Gaul, Britannia and Hispania.

There followed a series of contenders for it, resulting in and becoming more heated after Postumus’ assassination in 269, albeit with the ’empire’ losing much of its territory in the process (particularly Hispania) – before a certain restorer of the world, Emperor Aurelian, took all of it back at the Battle of Chalons in 274, because he was just that good.

In fairness to the Gallic Empire, they largely kept to themselves as a de facto separate state, not attempting to invade Italy or otherwise seize the central Roman administrative apparatus.

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(5) PALMYRENE EMPIRE
(270-273 AD)

And now we come to the biggest usurper states of all, during the Crisis of the Third Century when the Roman Empire split into three, with two breakaway empires at either end of it, west and east.

The Palmyrene empire was the more dangerous of the two, since it seized most of the wealthier eastern part of the empire, including the empire’s breadbasket in Egypt.

Ironically, the Palmyrene empire originated from the city of Palmyra (now in modern Syria) which while styling itself as a kingdom loyally defended the eastern borders of the Roman Empire from the Sassanid Persians, under its king Odaenathus, who defeated the Persians in 260 AD.

For his loyalty to and defense of the Roman Empire, he was rewarded with the position of Governor of the East, holding the highest political and military authority in the region, superseding that of the Roman provincial governors.

Unfortunately, he and his son were assassinated, so the Palmyrene kingdom now came under the control of its queen, widow of Odaenathus – one of those femme fatale figures to the empire that so alarmed Rome like Cleopatra before her, Zenobia.

Although it’s somewhat sad that Cleopatra eclipses Zenobia in popular imagination, since the shade of Cleopatra wishes she was Zenobia – Zenobia did what Cleopatra could only dream of doing, forge an eastern empire as a genuine rival to Rome.

Zenobia trod lightly at first, but her Palmyrene kingdom slowly transformed into the Palmyrene empire in open rebellion against the Roman Empire and conquering much of the latter’s eastern territory from 270 AD, although historians debate to what extent that rebellion was aimed at Palmyrene independence or more ambitiously at the imperial throne in Rome itself.

And she might have succeeded, certainly in the former and perhaps even the latter, had she not been opposed by the legendary restorer of the world himself, Emperor Aurelian, who made short work of her Palmyrene Empire in 272, as well as a brief revival of its rebellion under her successors in 273

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(6) BRITANNIC EMPIRE

(286-296 AD)

Arguably, the most dubious empire in this top ten – Wikipedia refuses to dignify it as such and calls it the Carausian revolt instead, but I have a soft spot for it, if only for the name history has given it on occasion as the Britannic Empire.

However, it’s more than the name. Although its founder, Roman naval commander Carausius did not claim succession from the Roman empire but only sought to usurp part of it for himself, that part did endure for ten years or so, which is pretty impressive even by the standards of some more substantial usurpers on this list.

Also, you have to admire his audacity, which at another time or in other circumstances might have paid off – foremost among those circumstances perhaps being that his loyalist Roman opponent was the glorious Constantius, father of the even more glorious Constantine the Great.

Carausius had risen through the ranks from humble origins and was appointed to naval command in Gaul, tasked to clear the English Channel of Frankish and Saxon pirates or raiders. Instead, he collaborated with them to enrich himself – or so he was accused of doing, being sentenced to death for it. In his most audacious move, he responded with the ultimate defence – declaring himself emperor over Britain and northern Gaul.

And he had substantial forces for his empire – his own fleet of course, augmented by new ships he had built. In addition, he not only had the three legions stationed in Britain, but a legion he had commandeered in Gaul, a number of foreign auxiliary units, a levy of Gaulish merchant ships, and barbarian mercenaries.

Given such forces, it might be said that he had reasonable prospects – particularly if he had confined himself to Britain, with its more defensible position combined with naval power. To me, his biggest mistake might have been biting off more than he could chew with northern Gaul as well – where his forces were readily defeated by those of Constantius in 293, which prompted his assassination by his subordinate Allectus, who fared no better when Constantius invaded and retook Britain itself.

It might also be said that Carausius was a man before his time – and after it, with the misfortunate timing of pulling his stunt at just the wrong time. Had he been around to pull this stunt during the Crisis of the Third Century, it might have paid off – and he might have pulled it off for good if he’d been around to do it when Emperor Honorius was prepared to abandon Britain altogether, with the end of Roman imperial rule traditionally dated to 410 AD.

There was just something about Britain that inspired Roman usurpers. Governor of Britain Clodius Albinus took his shot at usurping the imperial throne in the so-called Year of Five Emperors. Another imperial usurper, Magnus Maximus also raised the standard of revolt from Britain in the fourth century – and after elevating two disappointing usurpers, the Roman army in Britain chose one of its soldiers to be yet another claimant to the throne as Constantine III in 407 AD. He actually did reasonably well for a usurper, taking the legions from Britain and setting up shop in Gaul in such a way Emperor Honorius was forced to recognize him as co-emperor from 409 to 411, until Honorius had a competent general to take a swing at him.

RATING: 4 STARS****

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(7) DOMAIN OF SOISSONS

(457-486 AD)

In the fifth century, the western Roman Empire fell and all Gaul was conquered by German tribes. All? One small province of Romans remained, known to history as the Kingdom or Domain of Soissons.

Yes – it’s Asterix but replayed for real with a Roman province holding out in Gaul against the Germans. What can I say? I’m a romantic – and I have a soft spot for stories of lost legions, let alone whole holdout provinces.

The Domain of Soissons originated in 457 when the empire’s last best hope for a figure like Aurelian to pull it out of its doom, Emperor Majorian, appointed Aegitus as military commander or magister militum of Roman Gaul. Alas, the empires last best hope was not to be – as like Aurelian, Majorian was stabbed in the back, but unlike Aurelian, before he was able to save the empire.

Aegitus however kept a small part of that hope alive, as he and his son Syagrius maintained their rule in a remnant of Roman Gaul against the Visigoths and the Franks, even beyond the fall of the empire itself in 476, until finally defeated and conquered by the Franks in the Battle of Soissons in 486.

The Domain of Soissons even took a couple of shots at succeeding to the helm of the western Roman Empire – first, according to one writer, by threatening that empire with an invasion of Italy, and second, rejecting the rule of the barbarian king Odoacer in Italy by sending a messenger to the eastern Roman Emperor to claim the succession of the western Roman Empire for itself. Sadly but perhaps realistically, the eastern Roman emperor chose to offer legitimacy to Odoacer instead.

After that, the Domain of Soissons cut all ties with Italy and had no further recorded contact with the eastern Roman empire, although continuing to maintain that it was merely governing a Roman province.

Eterna Roma!

RATING: 4 STARS****

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