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Ancient China and ancient Rome offer interesting
comparisons of eastern and western cultures. At
their peaks, the Roman Empire and Han China each had about 5 million square
kilometers of land territory, a little more than half of that of the United
States. Each ruled about a quarter of the Earth’s population, but imagined
itself to reign over the whole world. The Chinese claimed yitong tianxia 一統天下, unity under heaven. The Romans claimed imperium orbis terrae, domination over the earth, which they expressed by placing the globe under
the foot of Goddess Roma or emperors. Besides their ambition, the Roman and
Chinese empires were similar in their agrarian but monetized economies, their
conservative and stratified societies, their piety and ancestral worship, and
their political autocracy. They also had profound differences. With its
plutocracy and professional peacetime war machine, Rome inclined toward “hard
power,” aptly symbolized by the Eagle, the supreme bird of prey. With its
ideological elites looking back at an ideal past and running an
indoctrination machine, China inclined toward “soft power”, aptly symbolized
by the Dragon, a mythical creature of power. The follower are some pictorial
comparisons of their cultures. Symbolisms of the Chinese Dragon and Roman Eagle Piety to the living and the dead |
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