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The age of empires

The beginning of the Common Era was an age of empires. Four great empires – the Roman, Parthian/Persian, Kushan, and Han – spanned mid-latitude Eurasia and northern Africa. To their north, the nomadic empire of the Xiongnu was disintegrating under Han pressure, but that of the Huns had not yet arrived.

The age of empires

Ancient peoples at either end of Eurasia had notions of “the world,” the Chinese tianxia, Roman orbis terrarum, and Greek oikumenē. The Chinese and Roman Empires each imagined itself covering the whole world. The Romans claimed imperium orbis terrae, domination over the earth, which they expressed by placing the globe under the foot or on the palm of the statues of Goddess Roma or emperors. The Chinese claimed yitong tianxia 一統天下, unity under heaven. As soon as Qin united China, it standardized laws, local government institutions, coinage, weight, measure, even the gauge of carriages, so that vehicles ran in the same ruts all across the empire.

Left: The Goddess Roma. (Museum of Roman Civilization, Rome.) Below: porphyry relief of co-emperors Diocletian and Maximian embracing. (The Vatican, Rome).

Bronze measure (Shaanxi Provincial History Museum) and weight, (Museum of the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shihuangdi) inscribed with imperial edicts for the standardization of all measures and weights in united China.

Timeline of the Roman and early Chinese empires in historical context
The Mediterranean	BCE	中國 China
Destruction of the citadel of Mycenae	c. 1150
	c. 1066 – 771	西周 West Zhou dynasty
Phoenician and Greek colonization	c. 775 – c. 650
	771 – 256	東周 East Zhou dynasty
	771	秦立國 State of Qin invested
Traditional date of the foundation of Rome	753
	722 - 481	春秋 Spring and Autumn period
King Servius Tullius of Rome	c 579 – 543
	c. 566 – 486	釋迦 Siddhartha (Buddha, in India)
	551 - 479	孔丘 Confucius
Foundation of the Roman Republic	509
Wars between Persia and the Greeks	490 - 449
Socrates	470 - 399
	453 - 221	戰國 Warring-state period
Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta	431 - 404
	359	商鞅變法 Qin started political reform
Latin League dissolved; Rome controlled central Italy	338
Alexander the Great	336 - 323
First Punic War between Rome and Carthage	264 - 241
	221 – 206	秦朝 Qin dynasty, beginning of imperial China
Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage	218 - 202
	206 -202	楚漢相爭 Civil war between Chu and Han
	202 – 1 CE	西漢 Western Han dynasty
	200	單于立 Maodun became Chanyu of Xiongnu
Rome sacked Corinth and Carthage	148 - 146
	138	始營西域 China began westward expansion
Roman civil wars	49 - 27
Augustus as princeps	27 – 14 CE
	c 2	佛學東漸 Buddhism entered China
Jesus	1 – 30
	1 - 22	新朝 Xin Dynasty
	22 - 220	東漢 Eastern Han dynasty
	220 – 280	三國 Civil wars: three kingdoms
Sassanians (Persians) overthrew Parthia	226
Military anarchy in Roman Empire	235 - 284
	265 - 316	西晉 Western Jin dynasty
	316	洛陽淪陷 Fall of Luoyang
	316 - 589	東晉南北朝 China divided in North and South
Foundation of Constantinople	324
Sack of Rome by Alaric the Visigoth	410
End of the Western Roman Empire	476
Mohammed	571 - 632
	589 - 618	隋朝 China reunited under Sui dynasty
	618 - 907	唐朝 Tang dynasty
Muslim spread to Egypt, Syria, and Iran	633 - 655
Fall of Constantinople, end of the Byzantium Empire	1453
The Mediterranean	CE	China

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