149-529: Kirk Mitchell (born 1950) is an American author who is known for his time travel , alternate history , historical fiction , and adventure fiction novels. Mitchell has also created several novelizations of movies. Earlier in his career, Mitchell worked as a law enforcement officer. The Germanicus trilogy is a collection of books following the adventures of Roman Emperor Germanicus Julius Agricola Aztecus Caesar in an alternate universe where Rome never fell. This article about an American science fiction writer
298-405: A priestly role . He could not marry a woman from a senatorial family, nor achieve legitimate senatorial rank himself, but during the early Empire, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, so much so that Hadrian limited their participation by law. The rise of successful freedmen—through political influence or wealth—is a characteristic of early Imperial society. The prosperity of
447-420: A statistical law, so decreasing entropy and non-increasing entropy are not impossible, just improbable. Additionally, entropy statistically increases in systems which are isolated, so non-isolated systems, such as an object, that interact with the outside world, can become less worn and decrease in entropy, and it's possible for an object whose world-line forms a closed loop to be always in the same condition in
596-530: A character skipping forward in time. In Hindu mythology, the Vishnu Purana mentions the story of King Raivata Kakudmi , who travels to heaven to meet the creator Brahma and is surprised to learn when he returns to Earth that many ages have passed. The Buddhist Pāli Canon mentions the relativity of time. The Payasi Sutta tells of one of the Buddha 's chief disciples, Kumara Kassapa , who explains to
745-644: A cylinder is infinitely long and spins fast enough about its long axis, then a spaceship flying around the cylinder on a spiral path could travel back in time (or forward, depending on the direction of its spiral). However, the density and speed required is so great that ordinary matter is not strong enough to construct it. Physicist Ronald Mallett is attempting to recreate the conditions of a rotating black hole with ring lasers, in order to bend spacetime and allow for time travel. A more fundamental objection to time travel schemes based on rotating cylinders or cosmic strings has been put forward by Stephen Hawking, who proved
894-471: A definitive judgment on the issue without a theory of quantum gravity to join quantum mechanics and general relativity into a completely unified theory. The theory of general relativity describes the universe under a system of field equations that determine the metric , or distance function, of spacetime. There exist exact solutions to these equations that include closed time-like curves , which are world lines that intersect themselves; some point in
1043-501: A different universe than the one they came from; it's been argued that since the traveler arrives in a different universe's history and not their own history, this is not "genuine" time travel. The accepted many-worlds interpretation suggests that all possible quantum events can occur in mutually exclusive histories. However, some variations allow different universes to interact. This concept is most often used in science-fiction, but some physicists such as David Deutsch have suggested that
1192-563: A faction that opposed his concentration of power. This faction was driven from Rome and defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC by Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son Octavian . Antony and Octavian divided the Roman world between them, but this did not last long. Octavian's forces defeated those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. In 27 BC the Senate gave him
1341-420: A few milliseconds compared to another body is not feasible with current technology. As for backward time travel, it is possible to find solutions in general relativity that allow for it, such as a rotating black hole . Traveling to an arbitrary point in spacetime has very limited support in theoretical physics , and is usually connected only with quantum mechanics or wormholes . Some ancient myths depict
1490-425: A fifth of the population and played a major role in the economy. Slavery was a complex institution that supported traditional Roman social structures as well as contributing economic utility. In urban settings, slaves might be professionals such as teachers, physicians, chefs, and accountants; the majority of slaves provided trained or unskilled labour. Agriculture and industry, such as milling and mining, relied on
1639-640: A fine for a crime for which an humilior might receive a scourging . Execution, which was an infrequent legal penalty for free men under the Republic, could be quick and relatively painless for honestiores , while humiliores might suffer the kinds of torturous death previously reserved for slaves, such as crucifixion and condemnation to the beasts . In the early Empire, those who converted to Christianity could lose their standing as honestiores , especially if they declined to fulfil religious responsibilities, and thus became subject to punishments that created
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#17327870275241788-452: A finite cylinder might produce closed timelike curves if the rotation rate were fast enough, he did not prove this. But Hawking points out that because of his theorem, "it can't be done with positive energy density everywhere! I can prove that to build a finite time machine, you need negative energy." This result comes from Hawking's 1992 paper on the chronology protection conjecture , which Hawking states as "The laws of physics do not allow
1937-425: A freedman were born free, with full rights of citizenship. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed active political freedom ( libertas ), including the right to vote. His former master became his patron ( patronus ): the two continued to have customary and legal obligations to each other. A freedman was not entitled to hold public office or the highest state priesthoods, but could play
2086-629: A high-achieving group of freedmen is attested by inscriptions throughout the Empire . The Latin word ordo (plural ordines ) is translated variously and inexactly into English as "class, order, rank". One purpose of the Roman census was to determine the ordo to which an individual belonged. Two of the highest ordines in Rome were the senatorial and equestrian. Outside Rome, cities or colonies were led by decurions , also known as curiales . "Senator"
2235-571: A higher social class. Most of the emperors were bilingual but had a preference for Latin in the public sphere for political reasons, a "rule" that first started during the Punic Wars . Different emperors up until Justinian would attempt to require the use of Latin in various sections of the administration but there is no evidence that a linguistic imperialism existed during the early Empire. After all freeborn inhabitants were universally enfranchised in 212 , many Roman citizens would have lacked
2384-401: A household or workplace, a hierarchy of slaves might exist, with one slave acting as the master of others. Talented slaves might accumulate a large enough peculium to justify their freedom, or be manumitted for services rendered. Manumission had become frequent enough that in 2 BC a law ( Lex Fufia Caninia ) limited the number of slaves an owner was allowed to free in his will. Following
2533-472: A knowledge of Latin. The wide use of Koine Greek was what enabled the spread of Christianity and reflects its role as the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during the time of the Empire. Following Diocletian's reforms in the 3rd century CE, there was a decline in the knowledge of Greek in the west. Spoken Latin later fragmented into the incipient romance languages in the 7th century CE following
2682-438: A large gravity well such as a black hole . A time machine that utilizes this principle might be, for instance, a spherical shell with a diameter of five meters and the mass of Jupiter . A person at its center will travel forward in time at a rate four times slower than that of distant observers. Squeezing the mass of a large planet into such a small structure is not expected to be within humanity's technological capabilities in
2831-459: A man as an equestrian. The census of 28 BC uncovered large numbers of men who qualified, and in 14 AD, a thousand equestrians were registered at Cádiz and Padua alone. Equestrians rose through a military career track ( tres militiae ) to become highly placed prefects and procurators within the Imperial administration. The rise of provincial men to the senatorial and equestrian orders
2980-503: A man picking fruit from a fully mature carob tree. Asked whether he had planted it, the man replied that he had not, but that his grandfather had planted it for him. In Christian tradition, there is a similar, story of "the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus ", which recounts a group of early Christians who hid in a cave circa 250 AD, to escape the persecution of Christians during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius . They fell into
3129-560: A married woman could have sex only with her husband, but a married man did not commit adultery if he had sex with a prostitute or person of marginalized status. Childbearing was encouraged: a woman who had given birth to three children was granted symbolic honours and greater legal freedom (the ius trium liberorum ). At the time of Augustus, as many as 35% of the people in Roman Italy were slaves, making Rome one of five historical "slave societies" in which slaves constituted at least
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#17327870275243278-441: A miracle-working sage of the 1st century BC, who was a historical character to whom various myths were attached. While traveling one day, Honi saw a man planting a carob tree and asked him about it. The man explained that the tree would take 70 years to bear fruit, and that he was planting it not for himself but for the generations to follow him. Later that day, Honi sat down to rest but fell asleep for 70 years; when he awoke, he saw
3427-414: A mole between his shoulders and was older than he was. Time travel themes in science fiction and the media can be grouped into three categories: immutable timeline; mutable timeline; and alternate histories, as in the interacting- many-worlds interpretation . The non-scientific term 'timeline' is often used to refer to all physical events in history, so that where events are changed, the time traveler
3576-415: A pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3 ft (0.91 m) apart, using a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling . Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of." However, other physicists say that this phenomenon does not allow information to be transmitted faster than light. Aephraim M. Steinberg , a quantum optics expert at
3725-459: A region of spacetime that is warped a certain way, and hence time travelers would not be able to travel back to earlier regions in spacetime, before this region existed. Stephen Hawking stated that this would explain why the world has not already been overrun by "tourists from the future". Several experiments have been carried out to try to entice future humans, who might invent time travel technology, to come back and demonstrate it to people of
3874-454: A scientific basis for the possibility of backward time travel in certain unusual scenarios, although arguments from semiclassical gravity suggest that when quantum effects are incorporated into general relativity, these loopholes may be closed. These semiclassical arguments led Stephen Hawking to formulate the chronology protection conjecture , suggesting that the fundamental laws of nature prevent time travel, but physicists cannot come to
4023-427: A sense of "Romanness". Roman society had multiple, overlapping social hierarchies . The civil war preceding Augustus caused upheaval, but did not effect an immediate redistribution of wealth and social power. From the perspective of the lower classes, a peak was merely added to the social pyramid. Personal relationships— patronage , friendship ( amicitia ), family , marriage —continued to influence politics. By
4172-403: A signal, some form of classical communication must also be used. The no-communication theorem also gives a general proof that quantum entanglement cannot be used to transmit information faster than classical signals. A variation of Hugh Everett 's many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics provides a resolution to the grandfather paradox that involves the time traveler arriving in
4321-513: A slave's rapist had to be prosecuted by the owner for property damage under the Aquilian Law . Slaves had no right to the form of legal marriage called conubium , but their unions were sometimes recognized. Technically, a slave could not own property, but a slave who conducted business might be given access to an individual fund ( peculium ) that he could use, depending on the degree of trust and co-operation between owner and slave. Within
4470-501: A sleep and woke some 200 years later during the reign of Theodosius II , to discover that the Empire had become Christian. This Christian story is recounted by Islam and appears in a Sura of the Quran , Sura Al-Kahf . The version recalls a group of young monotheists escaping from persecution within a cave and emerging hundreds of years later. This narrative describes divine protection and time suspension. Another similar story in
4619-410: A small amount of proper time passes for them, while a large amount of proper time passes elsewhere. This can be achieved by traveling at relativistic speeds or through the effects of gravity . For two identical clocks moving relative to each other without accelerating, each clock measures the other to be ticking slower. This is possible due to the relativity of simultaneity . However, the symmetry
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4768-499: A symmetric polygon could still act as a time machine, although he concludes that this is more likely a flaw in classical quantum gravity theory rather than proof that causality violation is possible. Another approach involves a dense spinning cylinder usually referred to as a Tipler cylinder , a GR solution discovered by Willem Jacob van Stockum in 1936 and Kornel Lanczos in 1924, but not recognized as allowing closed timelike curves until an analysis by Frank Tipler in 1974. If
4917-470: A theorem showing that according to general relativity it is impossible to build a time machine of a special type (a "time machine with the compactly generated Cauchy horizon") in a region where the weak energy condition is satisfied, meaning that the region contains no matter with negative energy density ( exotic matter ). Solutions such as Tipler's assume cylinders of infinite length, which are easier to analyze mathematically, and although Tipler suggested that
5066-557: A time traveler should end up in a different history than the one he started from. On the other hand, Stephen Hawking has argued that even if the MWI is correct, we should expect each time traveler to experience a single self-consistent history, so that time travelers remain within their own world rather than traveling to a different one. The physicist Allen Everett argued that Deutsch's approach "involves modifying fundamental principles of quantum mechanics; it certainly goes beyond simply adopting
5215-427: A traversable wormhole would require the existence of a substance with negative energy , often referred to as " exotic matter ". More technically, the wormhole spacetime requires a distribution of energy that violates various energy conditions , such as the null energy condition along with the weak, strong, and dominant energy conditions. However, it is known that quantum effects can lead to small measurable violations of
5364-416: A vacuum. His experiment involved slow light as well as passing light through a vacuum. He generated two single photons , passing one through rubidium atoms that had been cooled with a laser (thus slowing the light) and passing one through a vacuum. Both times, apparently, the precursors preceded the photons' main bodies, and the precursor traveled at c in a vacuum. According to Du, this implies that there
5513-478: A wormhole with such an induced clock difference could not be brought together without inducing quantum field and gravitational effects that would either make the wormhole collapse or the two mouths repel each other. Because of this, the two mouths could not be brought close enough for causality violation to take place. However, in a 1997 paper, Visser hypothesized that a complex " Roman ring " (named after Tom Roman) configuration of an N number of wormholes arranged in
5662-454: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Time travel Time travel is the hypothetical activity of traveling into the past or future . Time travel is a concept in philosophy and fiction , particularly science fiction . In fiction , time travel is typically achieved through the use of a device known as a time machine . The idea of a time machine was popularized by H. G. Wells 's 1895 novel The Time Machine . It
5811-545: Is an aspect of social mobility in the early Empire. Roman aristocracy was based on competition, and unlike later European nobility , a Roman family could not maintain its position merely through hereditary succession or having title to lands. Admission to the higher ordines brought distinction and privileges, but also responsibilities. In antiquity, a city depended on its leading citizens to fund public works, events, and services ( munera ). Maintaining one's rank required massive personal expenditures. Decurions were so vital for
5960-452: Is broken if one clock accelerates, allowing for less proper time to pass for one clock than the other. The twin paradox describes this: one twin remains on Earth, while the other undergoes acceleration to relativistic speed as they travel into space, turn around, and travel back to Earth; the traveling twin ages less than the twin who stayed on Earth, because of the time dilation experienced during their acceleration. General relativity treats
6109-449: Is described as creating a new timeline. Early science fiction stories feature characters who sleep for years and awaken in a changed society, or are transported to the past through supernatural means. Among them L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fût jamais ( The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One , 1770) by Louis-Sébastien Mercier , Rip Van Winkle (1819) by Washington Irving , Looking Backward (1888) by Edward Bellamy , and When
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6258-454: Is disputed. Presentism is a school of philosophy that holds that the future and the past exist only as changes that occurred or will occur to the present, and they have no real existence of their own. In this view, time travel is impossible because there is no future or past to travel to. Keller and Nelson have argued that even if past and future objects do not exist, there can still be definite truths about past and future events, and thus it
6407-501: Is highly unlikely to be possible. Any theory that would allow time travel would introduce potential problems of causality . The classic example of a problem involving causality is the " grandfather paradox ," which postulates travelling to the past and intervening in the conception of one's ancestors (causing the death of an ancestor before conception being frequently cited). Some physicists, such as Novikov and Deutsch, suggested that these sorts of temporal paradoxes can be avoided through
6556-447: Is impossible for the time traveler to "change" history in any way. The time traveler's actions may be the cause of events in their own past though, which leads to the potential for circular causation , sometimes called a predestination paradox, ontological paradox, or bootstrap paradox. The term bootstrap paradox was popularized by Robert A. Heinlein 's story " By His Bootstraps ". The Novikov self-consistency principle proposes that
6705-516: Is no possibility of light traveling faster than c and, thus, no possibility of violating causality. Many have argued that the absence of time travelers from the future demonstrates that such technology will never be developed, suggesting that it is impossible. This is analogous to the Fermi paradox related to the absence of evidence of extraterrestrial life. As the absence of extraterrestrial visitors does not categorically prove they do not exist, so
6854-429: Is observed when one correlates measurements of idler photons to the corresponding signal photons. However, since interference can be observed only after the idler photons are measured and they are correlated with the signal photons, there is no way for experimenters to tell what choice will be made in advance just by looking at the signal photons, only by gathering classical information from the entire system; thus causality
7003-434: Is possible that a future truth about a time traveler deciding to travel back to the present date could explain the time traveler's actual appearance in the present; these views are contested by some authors. A common objection to the idea of traveling back in time is put forth in the grandfather paradox or the argument of auto-infanticide. If one were able to go back in time, inconsistencies and contradictions would ensue if
7152-488: Is preserved. The experiment of Lijun Wang might also show causality violation since it made it possible to send packages of waves through a bulb of caesium gas in such a way that the package appeared to exit the bulb 62 nanoseconds before its entry, but a wave package is not a single well-defined object but rather a sum of multiple waves of different frequencies (see Fourier analysis ), and the package can appear to move faster than light or even backward in time even if none of
7301-524: Is received before it is sent, in all reference frames. The signal could be said to have moved backward in time. This hypothetical scenario is sometimes referred to as a tachyonic antitelephone . Quantum-mechanical phenomena such as quantum teleportation , the EPR paradox , or quantum entanglement might appear to create a mechanism that allows for faster-than-light (FTL) communication or time travel, and in fact some interpretations of quantum mechanics such as
7450-473: Is still being researched. Wormholes are a hypothetical warped spacetime permitted by the Einstein field equations of general relativity. A proposed time-travel machine using a traversable wormhole would hypothetically work in the following way: One end of the wormhole is accelerated to some significant fraction of the speed of light, perhaps with some advanced propulsion system , and then brought back to
7599-408: Is uncertain whether time travel to the past would be physically possible. Such travel, if at all feasible, may give rise to questions of causality . Forward time travel, outside the usual sense of the perception of time , is an extensively observed phenomenon and is well understood within the framework of special relativity and general relativity . However, making one body advance or delay more than
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#17327870275247748-601: The Bohm interpretation presume that some information is being exchanged between particles instantaneously in order to maintain correlations between particles. This effect was referred to as " spooky action at a distance " by Einstein. Nevertheless, the fact that causality is preserved in quantum mechanics is a rigorous result in modern quantum field theories , and therefore modern theories do not allow for time travel or FTL communication . In any specific instance where FTL has been claimed, more detailed analysis has proven that to get
7897-475: The Dominate . The emperor was the ultimate authority in policy- and decision-making, but in the early Principate, he was expected to be accessible and deal personally with official business and petitions. A bureaucracy formed around him only gradually. The Julio-Claudian emperors relied on an informal body of advisors that included not only senators and equestrians, but trusted slaves and freedmen. After Nero,
8046-764: The Greek East and Latin West . Constantine the Great ( r. 306–337 ), the first Christian emperor , moved the imperial seat from Rome to Byzantium in 330, and renamed it Constantinople . The Migration Period , involving large invasions by Germanic peoples and by the Huns of Attila , led to the decline of the Western Roman Empire . With the fall of Ravenna to the Germanic Herulians and
8195-586: The Nile Valley in Egypt. The empire completely circled the Mediterranean ... referred to by its conquerors as mare nostrum —'our sea'. Trajan's successor Hadrian adopted a policy of maintaining rather than expanding the empire. Borders ( fines ) were marked, and the frontiers ( limites ) patrolled. The most heavily fortified borders were the most unstable. Hadrian's Wall , which separated
8344-457: The Novikov self-consistency principle or a variation of the many-worlds interpretation with interacting worlds. Time travel to the past is theoretically possible in certain general relativity spacetime geometries that permit traveling faster than the speed of light , such as cosmic strings , traversable wormholes , and Alcubierre drives . The theory of general relativity does suggest
8493-482: The Republic , and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian 's assumption of effective sole rule in 27 BC. The western empire collapsed in 476 AD, but the eastern empire lasted until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. By 100 BC, Rome had expanded its rule to most of the Mediterranean and beyond. However, it was severely destabilised by civil wars and political conflicts , which culminated in
8642-645: The Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the language of the East. The Empire's adoption of Christianity resulted in the formation of medieval Christendom . Roman and Greek art had a profound impact on the Italian Renaissance . Rome's architectural tradition served as the basis for Romanesque , Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture , influencing Islamic architecture . The rediscovery of classical science and technology (which formed
8791-596: The Servile Wars of the Republic, legislation under Augustus and his successors shows a driving concern for controlling the threat of rebellions through limiting the size of work groups, and for hunting down fugitive slaves. Over time slaves gained increased legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. A bill of sale might contain a clause stipulating that the slave could not be employed for prostitution, as prostitutes in ancient Rome were often slaves. The burgeoning trade in eunuchs in
8940-523: The University of Toronto , Canada, uses the analogy of a train traveling from Chicago to New York, but dropping off train cars at each station along the way, so that the center of the train moves forward at each stop; in this way, the speed of the center of the train exceeds the speed of any of the individual cars. Shengwang Du claims in a peer-reviewed journal to have observed single photons' precursors , saying that they travel no faster than c in
9089-569: The deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 by Odoacer , the Western Empire finally collapsed. The Eastern Roman Empire survived for another millennium with Constantinople as its sole capital, until the city's fall in 1453. Due to the Empire's extent and endurance, its institutions and culture had a lasting influence on the development of language , religion , art , architecture , literature , philosophy , law , and forms of government across its territories. Latin evolved into
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#17327870275249238-652: The victory of Octavian over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, and the subsequent conquest of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt. In 27 BC, the Roman Senate granted Octavian overarching military power ( imperium ) and the new title of Augustus , marking his accession as the first Roman emperor . The vast Roman territories were organized into senatorial provinces, governed by proconsuls who were appointed by lot annually, and imperial provinces, which belonged to
9387-633: The "World of the Ancients" ( Qin dynasty ) to retrieve a magical bell and then travels forward to the "World of the Future" ( Song dynasty ) to find an emperor who has been exiled in time. However, the time travel is taking place inside an illusory dream world created by the villain to distract and entrap him. Samuel Madden 's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733) is a series of letters from British ambassadors in 1997 and 1998 to diplomats in
9536-450: The 3rd century, the Empire underwent a 49-year crisis that threatened its existence due to civil war, plagues and barbarian invasions . The Gallic and Palmyrene empires broke away from the state and a series of short-lived emperors led the Empire, which was later reunified under Aurelian ( r. 270–275 ). The civil wars ended with the victory of Diocletian ( r. 284–305 ), who set up two different imperial courts in
9685-621: The 600-member body by appointment. A senator's son belonged to the ordo senatorius , but he had to qualify on his own merits for admission to the Senate. A senator could be removed for violating moral standards. In the time of Nero, senators were still primarily from Italy , with some from the Iberian peninsula and southern France; men from the Greek-speaking provinces of the East began to be added under Vespasian. The first senator from
9834-400: The 6th and 7th centuries with the disintegration of the complex Imperial economy. Laws pertaining to slavery were "extremely intricate". Slaves were considered property and had no legal personhood . They could be subjected to forms of corporal punishment not normally exercised on citizens, sexual exploitation , torture, and summary execution . A slave could not as a matter of law be raped;
9983-457: The Augustan programme to restore traditional morality and social order, moral legislation attempted to regulate conduct as a means of promoting " family values ". Adultery was criminalized, and defined broadly as an illicit sex act ( stuprum ) between a male citizen and a married woman, or between a married woman and any man other than her husband. That is, a double standard was in place:
10132-524: The Empire was engulfed by the Crisis of the Third Century , a period of invasions , civil strife , economic disorder , and plague . In defining historical epochs , this crisis sometimes marks the transition from Classical to Late Antiquity . Aurelian ( r. 270–275 ) stabilised the empire militarily and Diocletian reorganised and restored much of it in 285. Diocletian's reign brought
10281-757: The Islamic tradition is of Uzair (usually identified with the Biblical Ezra ) whose grief at the Destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was so great that God took his soul and brought him back to life after Jerusalem was reconstructed. He rode on his revived donkey and entered his native place. But the people did not recognize him, nor did his household, except the maid, who was now an old blind woman. He prayed to God to cure her blindness and she could see again. He meets his son who recognized him by
10430-580: The MWI". Everett also argues that even if Deutsch's approach is correct, it would imply that any macroscopic object composed of multiple particles would be split apart when traveling back in time through a wormhole, with different particles emerging in different worlds. Certain experiments carried out give the impression of reversed causality , but fail to show it under closer examination. The delayed-choice quantum eraser experiment performed by Marlan Scully involves pairs of entangled photons that are divided into "signal photons" and "idler photons", with
10579-494: The Mediterranean, Italy maintained a special status which made it domina provinciarum ("ruler of the provinces"), and – especially in relation to the first centuries of imperial stability – rectrix mundi ("governor of the world") and omnium terrarum parens ("parent of all lands"). The 200 years that began with Augustus's rule is traditionally regarded as the Pax Romana ("Roman Peace"). The cohesion of
10728-612: The Middle East. The Latin phrase imperium sine fine ("empire without end" ) expressed the ideology that neither time nor space limited the Empire. In Virgil 's Aeneid , limitless empire is said to be granted to the Romans by Jupiter . This claim of universal dominion was renewed when the Empire came under Christian rule in the 4th century. In addition to annexing large regions, the Romans directly altered their geography, for example cutting down entire forests . Roman expansion
10877-454: The Rhine and Danube. Roman jurists also show a concern for local languages such as Punic , Gaulish , and Aramaic in assuring the correct understanding of laws and oaths. In Africa , Libyco-Berber and Punic were used in inscriptions into the 2nd century. In Syria , Palmyrene soldiers used their dialect of Aramaic for inscriptions, an exception to the rule that Latin was the language of
11026-448: The Roman world from what was perceived as an ever-present barbarian threat, is the primary surviving monument of this effort. Latin and Greek were the main languages of the Empire, but the Empire was deliberately multilingual. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill says "The main desire of the Roman government was to make itself understood". At the start of the Empire, knowledge of Greek was useful to pass as educated nobility and knowledge of Latin
11175-535: The Sleeper Awakes (1899) by H. G. Wells. Prolonged sleep is used as a means of time travel in these stories. The date of the earliest work about backwards time travel is uncertain. The Chinese novel A Supplement to the Journey to the West ( c. 1640 ) by Dong Yue features magical mirrors and jade gateways that connect various points in time. The protagonist Sun Wukong travels back in time to
11324-422: The absence of time travelers fails to prove time travel is physically impossible; it might be that time travel is physically possible but is never developed or is cautiously used. Carl Sagan once suggested the possibility that time travelers could be here but are disguising their existence or are not recognized as time travelers. Some versions of general relativity suggest that time travel might only be possible in
11473-449: The account of his achievements ( Res Gestae ) prominently featured the geographical cataloguing of the Empire. Geography alongside meticulous written records were central concerns of Roman Imperial administration . The Empire reached its largest expanse under Trajan ( r. 98–117 ), encompassing 5 million km . The traditional population estimate of 55–60 million inhabitants accounted for between one-sixth and one-fourth of
11622-399: The appearance of closed timelike curves." When a signal is sent from one location and received at another location, then as long as the signal is moving at the speed of light or slower, the mathematics of simultaneity in the theory of relativity show that all reference frames agree that the transmission-event happened before the reception-event. When the signal travels faster than light, it
11771-607: The basis for Islamic science ) in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution . Many modern legal systems, such as the Napoleonic Code , descend from Roman law. Rome's republican institutions have influenced the Italian city-state republics of the medieval period, the early United States , and modern democratic republics . Rome had begun expanding shortly after
11920-411: The case that backward time travel could be possible but that it would be impossible to actually change the past in any way, an idea similar to the proposed Novikov self-consistency principle in physics. According to the philosophical theory of compossibility , what can happen, for example in the context of time travel, must be weighed against the context of everything relating to the situation. If
12069-516: The causal future of the world line is also in its causal past, a situation that can be described as time travel. Such a solution was first proposed by Kurt Gödel , a solution known as the Gödel metric , but his (and others') solution requires the universe to have physical characteristics that it does not appear to have, such as rotation and lack of Hubble expansion . Whether general relativity forbids closed time-like curves for all realistic conditions
12218-418: The collapse of the Empire's west. The dominance of Latin and Greek among the literate elite obscure the continuity of other spoken languages within the Empire. Latin, referred to in its spoken form as Vulgar Latin , gradually replaced Celtic and Italic languages . References to interpreters indicate the continuing use of local languages, particularly in Egypt with Coptic , and in military settings along
12367-482: The conditions of martyrdom . The three major elements of the Imperial state were the central government, the military, and the provincial government. The military established control of a territory through war, but after a city or people was brought under treaty, the mission turned to policing: protecting Roman citizens, agricultural fields, and religious sites. The Romans lacked sufficient manpower or resources to rule through force alone. Cooperation with local elites
12516-539: The deceased emperor's deification. The dominance of the emperor was based on the consolidation of powers from several republican offices. The emperor made himself the central religious authority as pontifex maximus , and centralized the right to declare war, ratify treaties, and negotiate with foreign leaders. While these functions were clearly defined during the Principate , the emperor's powers over time became less constitutional and more monarchical, culminating in
12665-501: The descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron", a comment which has led some historians, notably Edward Gibbon , to take Commodus' reign as the beginning of the Empire's decline . In 212, during the reign of Caracalla , Roman citizenship was granted to all freeborn inhabitants of the empire. The Severan dynasty was tumultuous; an emperor's reign was ended routinely by his murder or execution and, following its collapse,
12814-472: The easternmost province, Cappadocia , was admitted under Marcus Aurelius. By the Severan dynasty (193–235), Italians made up less than half the Senate. During the 3rd century, domicile at Rome became impractical, and inscriptions attest to senators who were active in politics and munificence in their homeland ( patria ). Senators were the traditional governing class who rose through the cursus honorum ,
12963-484: The effects of acceleration and the effects of gravity as equivalent , and shows that time dilation also occurs in gravity wells , with a clock deeper in the well ticking more slowly; this effect is taken into account when calibrating the clocks on the satellites of the Global Positioning System , and it could lead to significant differences in rates of aging for observers at different distances from
13112-457: The emperor but were governed by legates . The first two centuries of the Empire saw a period of unprecedented stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana ( lit. ' Roman Peace ' ). Rome reached its greatest territorial extent under Trajan ( r. 98–117 AD ), but a period of increasing trouble and decline began under Commodus ( r. 180–192 ). In
13261-481: The empire was furthered by a degree of social stability and economic prosperity that Rome had never before experienced. Uprisings in the provinces were infrequent and put down "mercilessly and swiftly". The success of Augustus in establishing principles of dynastic succession was limited by his outliving a number of talented potential heirs. The Julio-Claudian dynasty lasted for four more emperors— Tiberius , Caligula , Claudius , and Nero —before it yielded in 69 AD to
13410-462: The empire's most concerted effort against the perceived threat of Christianity , the " Great Persecution ". Diocletian divided the empire into four regions, each ruled by a separate tetrarch . Confident that he fixed the disorder plaguing Rome, he abdicated along with his co-emperor, but the Tetrarchy collapsed shortly after . Order was eventually restored by Constantine the Great , who became
13559-506: The empire. This legal egalitarianism required a far-reaching revision of existing laws that distinguished between citizens and non-citizens. Freeborn Roman women were considered citizens, but did not vote, hold political office, or serve in the military. A mother's citizen status determined that of her children, as indicated by the phrase ex duobus civibus Romanis natos ("children born of two Roman citizens"). A Roman woman kept her own family name ( nomen ) for life. Children most often took
13708-631: The end of the Western Roman Empire in 476, when Romulus Augustulus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer . Odoacer ended the Western Empire by declaring Zeno sole emperor and placing himself as Zeno's nominal subordinate. In reality, Italy was ruled by Odoacer alone. The Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire by later historians, continued until the reign of Constantine XI Palaiologos ,
13857-504: The exploitation of slaves. Outside Italy, slaves were on average an estimated 10 to 20% of the population, sparse in Roman Egypt but more concentrated in some Greek areas. Expanding Roman ownership of arable land and industries affected preexisting practices of slavery in the provinces. Although slavery has often been regarded as waning in the 3rd and 4th centuries, it remained an integral part of Roman society until gradually ceasing in
14006-430: The famous and easy-to-replicate observation of atmospheric muon decay . The theory of relativity states that the speed of light is invariant for all observers in any frame of reference ; that is, it is always the same. Time dilation is a direct consequence of the invariance of the speed of light. Time dilation may be regarded in a limited sense as "time travel into the future": a person may use time dilation so that
14155-457: The father's name, with some exceptions. Women could own property, enter contracts, and engage in business. Inscriptions throughout the Empire honour women as benefactors in funding public works, an indication they could hold considerable fortunes. The archaic manus marriage in which the woman was subject to her husband's authority was largely abandoned by the Imperial era, and a married woman retained ownership of any property she brought into
14304-473: The film Somewhere in Time as an example of such an ontological paradox, where a watch is given to a person, and 60 years later the same watch is brought back in time and given to the same character. Ross states that entropy of the watch will increase, and the watch carried back in time will be more worn with each repetition of its history. The second law of thermodynamics is understood by modern physicists to be
14453-640: The first emperor to convert to Christianity , and who established Constantinople as the new capital of the Eastern Empire. During the decades of the Constantinian and Valentinian dynasties, the empire was divided along an east–west axis, with dual power centres in Constantinople and Rome. Julian , who under the influence of his adviser Mardonius attempted to restore Classical Roman and Hellenistic religion , only briefly interrupted
14602-489: The first story to feature an alternate history created as a result of time travel. One of the first stories to feature time travel by means of a machine is " The Clock that Went Backward " by Edward Page Mitchell , which appeared in the New York Sun in 1881. However, the mechanism borders on fantasy. An unusual clock, when wound, runs backwards and transports people nearby back in time. The author does not explain
14751-471: The first time-machine story, but I'm not sure that a clock quite counts". H. G. Wells ' The Time Machine (1895) popularized the concept of time travel by mechanical means. Some theories, most notably special and general relativity , suggest that suitable geometries of spacetime or specific types of motion in space might allow time travel into the past and future if these geometries or motions were possible. In technical papers, physicists discuss
14900-549: The first to toy with the rich idea of time-travel in the form of an artifact sent backward from the future to be discovered in the present". In the science fiction anthology Far Boundaries (1951), editor August Derleth claims that an early short story about time travel is An Anachronism; or, Missing One's Coach , written for the Dublin Literary Magazine by an anonymous author in the June 1838 issue . While
15049-533: The founding of the Roman Republic in the 6th century BC, though not outside the Italian Peninsula until the 3rd century BC. Thus, it was an "empire" (a great power) long before it had an emperor. The Republic was not a nation-state in the modern sense, but a network of self-ruled towns (with varying degrees of independence from the Senate ) and provinces administered by military commanders. It
15198-456: The functioning of cities that in the later Empire, as the ranks of the town councils became depleted, those who had risen to the Senate were encouraged to return to their hometowns, in an effort to sustain civic life. In the later Empire, the dignitas ("worth, esteem") that attended on senatorial or equestrian rank was refined further with titles such as vir illustris ("illustrious man"). The appellation clarissimus (Greek lamprotatos )
15347-692: The historian Christopher Kelly described it: Then the empire stretched from Hadrian's Wall in drizzle-soaked northern England to the sun-baked banks of the Euphrates in Syria; from the great Rhine – Danube river system, which snaked across the fertile, flat lands of Europe from the Low Countries to the Black Sea , to the rich plains of the North African coast and the luxuriant gash of
15496-503: The honorary title imperator (commander); this is the origin of the word emperor , since this title was always bestowed to the early emperors. Rome suffered a long series of internal conflicts, conspiracies, and civil wars from the late second century BC (see Crisis of the Roman Republic ) while greatly extending its power beyond Italy. In 44 BC Julius Caesar was briefly perpetual dictator before being assassinated by
15645-432: The idea of absolute time , while his contemporary Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz maintained that time is only a relation between events and it cannot be expressed independently. The latter approach eventually gave rise to the spacetime of relativity . Many philosophers have argued that relativity implies eternalism , the idea that the past and future exist in a real sense, not only as changes that occurred or will occur to
15794-521: The last Roman emperor. He died in battle in 1453 against Mehmed II and his Ottoman forces during the siege of Constantinople . Mehmed II adopted the title of caesar in an attempt to claim a connection to the former Empire. His claim was soon recognized by the Patriarchate of Constantinople , but not by most European monarchs. The Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, with contiguous territories throughout Europe, North Africa, and
15943-592: The late 1st century prompted legislation that prohibited the castration of a slave against his will "for lust or gain". Roman slavery was not based on race . Generally, slaves in Italy were indigenous Italians, with a minority of foreigners (including both slaves and freedmen) estimated at 5% of the total in the capital at its peak, where their number was largest. Foreign slaves had higher mortality and lower birth rates than natives, and were sometimes even subjected to mass expulsions. The average recorded age at death for
16092-411: The local laws of physics in a region of spacetime containing time travelers cannot be any different from the local laws of physics in any other region of spacetime. The philosopher Kelley L. Ross argues in "Time Travel Paradoxes" that in a scenario involving a physical object whose world-line or history forms a closed loop in time there can be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics . Ross uses
16241-486: The marriage. Technically she remained under her father's legal authority, even though she moved into her husband's home, but when her father died she became legally emancipated. This arrangement was a factor in the degree of independence Roman women enjoyed compared to many other cultures up to the modern period: although she had to answer to her father in legal matters, she was free of his direct scrutiny in daily life, and her husband had no legal power over her. Although it
16390-416: The members of the three higher "orders", along with certain military officers. The granting of universal citizenship in 212 seems to have increased the competitive urge among the upper classes to have their superiority affirmed, particularly within the justice system. Sentencing depended on the judgment of the presiding official as to the relative "worth" ( dignitas ) of the defendant: an honestior could pay
16539-730: The military. The last reference to Gaulish was between 560 and 575. The emergent Gallo-Romance languages would then be shaped by Gaulish. Proto-Basque or Aquitanian evolved with Latin loan words to modern Basque . The Thracian language , as were several now-extinct languages in Anatolia, are attested in Imperial-era inscriptions. The Empire was remarkably multicultural, with "astonishing cohesive capacity" to create shared identity while encompassing diverse peoples. Public monuments and communal spaces open to all—such as forums , amphitheatres , racetracks and baths —helped foster
16688-671: The narrator waits under a tree for a coach to take him out of Newcastle upon Tyne , he is transported back in time over a thousand years. He encounters the Venerable Bede in a monastery and explains to him the developments of the coming centuries. However, the story never makes it clear whether these events are real or a dream. Another early work about time travel is The Forebears of Kalimeros: Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon by Alexander Veltman published in 1836. Charles Dickens 's A Christmas Carol (1843) has early depictions of mystical time travel in both directions, as
16837-416: The near future. With current technologies, it is only possible to cause a human traveler to age less than companions on Earth by a few milliseconds after a few hundred days of space travel. Philosophers have discussed the philosophy of space and time since at least the time of ancient Greece ; for example, Parmenides presented the view that time is an illusion. Centuries later, Isaac Newton supported
16986-467: The null energy condition, and many physicists believe that the required negative energy may actually be possible due to the Casimir effect in quantum physics. Although early calculations suggested that a very large amount of negative energy would be required, later calculations showed that the amount of negative energy can be made arbitrarily small. In 1993, Matt Visser argued that the two mouths of
17135-410: The origin or properties of the clock. Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau 's El Anacronópete (1887) may have been the first story to feature a vessel engineered to travel through time. Andrew Sawyer has commented that the story "does seem to be the first literary description of a time machine noted so far", adding that "Edward Page Mitchell's story The Clock That Went Backward (1881) is usually described as
17284-407: The outside. One significant limitation of such a time machine is that it is only possible to go as far back in time as the initial creation of the machine; in essence, it is more of a path through time than it is a device that itself moves through time, and it would not allow the technology itself to be moved backward in time. According to current theories on the nature of wormholes, construction of
17433-431: The past is a certain way, it's not possible for it to be any other way. What can happen when a time traveler visits the past is limited to what did happen, in order to prevent logical contradictions. The Novikov self-consistency principle , named after Igor Dmitrievich Novikov , states that any actions taken by a time traveler or by an object that travels back in time were part of history all along, and therefore it
17582-459: The past, conveying the political and religious conditions of the future. Because the narrator receives these letters from his guardian angel , Paul Alkon suggests in his book Origins of Futuristic Fiction that "the first time-traveler in English literature is a guardian angel". Madden does not explain how the angel obtains these documents, but Alkon asserts that Madden "deserves recognition as
17731-485: The point of origin. Alternatively, another way is to take one entrance of the wormhole and move it to within the gravitational field of an object that has higher gravity than the other entrance, and then return it to a position near the other entrance. For both these methods, time dilation causes the end of the wormhole that has been moved to have aged less, or become "younger", than the stationary end as seen by an external observer; however, time connects differently through
17880-412: The political career track, but equestrians often possessed greater wealth and political power. Membership in the equestrian order was based on property; in Rome's early days, equites or knights had been distinguished by their ability to serve as mounted warriors, but cavalry service was a separate function in the Empire. A census valuation of 400,000 sesterces and three generations of free birth qualified
18029-507: The poor were other sources. Vernae , by contrast, were "homegrown" slaves born to female slaves within the household, estate or farm. Although they had no special legal status, an owner who mistreated or failed to care for his vernae faced social disapproval, as they were considered part of the family household and in some cases might actually be the children of free males in the family. Rome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become citizens; any future children of
18178-444: The possibility of closed timelike curves , which are world lines that form closed loops in spacetime, allowing objects to return to their own past. There are known to be solutions to the equations of general relativity that describe spacetimes which contain closed timelike curves, such as Gödel spacetime , but the physical plausibility of these solutions is uncertain. Many in the scientific community believe that backward time travel
18327-534: The possibility of generating a positive result demonstrating the existence of time travel, but have failed so far—no time travelers are known to have attended either event. Some versions of the many-worlds interpretation can be used to suggest that future humans have traveled back in time, but have traveled back to the meeting time and place in a parallel universe . There is a great deal of observable evidence for time dilation in special relativity and gravitational time dilation in general relativity, for example in
18476-555: The present time. Events such as Perth's Destination Day , MIT 's Time Traveler Convention and Stephen Hawking's Reception For Time Travellers heavily publicized permanent "advertisements" of a meeting time and place for future time travelers to meet. In 1982, a group in Baltimore , Maryland , identifying itself as the Krononauts, hosted an event of this type welcoming visitors from the future. These experiments only stood
18625-437: The present. Philosopher of science Dean Rickles disagrees with some qualifications, but notes that "the consensus among philosophers seems to be that special and general relativity are incompatible with presentism". Some philosophers view time as a dimension equal to spatial dimensions, that future events are "already there" in the same sense different places exist, and that there is no objective flow of time; however, this view
18774-463: The protagonist is transported to the prehistoric past by the magic of a "lame demon" (a French pun on Boitard's name), where he encounters a Plesiosaur and an apelike ancestor and is able to interact with ancient creatures. Edward Everett Hale 's "Hands Off" (1881) tells the story of an unnamed being, possibly the soul of a person who has recently died, who interferes with ancient Egyptian history by preventing Joseph 's enslavement. This may have been
18923-481: The protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, is transported to Christmases past and future. Other stories employ the same template, where a character naturally goes to sleep, and upon waking up finds themself in a different time. A clearer example of backward time travel is found in the 1861 book Paris avant les hommes ( Paris before Men ) by the French botanist and geologist Pierre Boitard , published posthumously. In this story,
19072-493: The pure waves in the sum do so. This effect cannot be used to send any matter, energy, or information faster than light, so this experiment is understood not to violate causality either. The physicists Günter Nimtz and Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz , claim to have violated Einstein's theory of relativity by transmitting photons faster than the speed of light. They say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons traveled "instantaneously" between
19221-423: The same point of its history. In 2005, Daniel Greenberger and Karl Svozil proposed that quantum theory gives a model for time travel where the past must be self-consistent. Roman Empire The Roman Empire was the era of Roman civilisation lasting from 27 BC to 476 AD. Rome ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Romans conquered most of this during
19370-479: The signal photons emerging from one of two locations and their position later measured as in the double-slit experiment . Depending on how the idler photon is measured, the experimenter can either learn which of the two locations the signal photon emerged from or "erase" that information. Even though the signal photons can be measured before the choice has been made about the idler photons, the choice seems to retroactively determine whether or not an interference pattern
19519-629: The skeptic Payasi that time in the Heavens passes differently than on Earth. The Japanese tale of " Urashima Tarō ", first described in the Manyoshu , tells of a young fisherman named Urashima-no-ko ( 浦嶋子 ) who visits an undersea palace. After three days, he returns home to his village and finds himself 300 years in the future, where he has been forgotten, his house is in ruins, and his family has died. One story in Judaism concerns Honi HaMe'agel ,
19668-528: The slaves of the city of Rome was seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females). During the period of republican expansionism when slavery had become pervasive, war captives were a main source of slaves. The range of ethnicities among slaves to some extent reflected that of the armies Rome defeated in war, and the conquest of Greece brought a number of highly skilled and educated slaves. Slaves were also traded in markets and sometimes sold by pirates . Infant abandonment and self-enslavement among
19817-529: The strife-torn Year of the Four Emperors , from which Vespasian emerged as the victor. Vespasian became the founder of the brief Flavian dynasty , followed by the Nerva–Antonine dynasty which produced the " Five Good Emperors ": Nerva , Trajan , Hadrian , Antoninus Pius , and Marcus Aurelius . In the view of contemporary Greek historian Cassius Dio , the accession of Commodus in 180 marked
19966-461: The succession of Christian emperors. Theodosius I , the last emperor to rule over both East and West, died in 395 after making Christianity the state religion . The Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate in the early 5th century. The Romans fought off all invaders, most famously Attila , but the empire had assimilated so many Germanic peoples of dubious loyalty to Rome that the empire started to dismember itself. Most chronologies place
20115-562: The time of Nero , however, it was not unusual to find a former slave who was richer than a freeborn citizen, or an equestrian who exercised greater power than a senator. The blurring of the Republic's more rigid hierarchies led to increased social mobility , both upward and downward, to a greater extent than all other well-documented ancient societies. Women, freedmen, and slaves had opportunities to profit and exercise influence in ways previously less available to them. Social life, particularly for those whose personal resources were limited,
20264-457: The time traveler were to change anything; there is a contradiction if the past becomes different from the way it is . The paradox is commonly described with a person who travels to the past and kills their own grandfather, prevents the existence of their father or mother, and therefore their own existence. Philosophers question whether these paradoxes prove time travel impossible. Some philosophers answer these paradoxes by arguing that it might be
20413-466: The title Augustus ("venerated") and made him princeps ("foremost") with proconsular imperium , thus beginning the Principate , the first epoch of Roman imperial history. Although the republic stood in name, Augustus had all meaningful authority. During his 40-year rule, a new constitutional order emerged so that, upon his death, Tiberius would succeed him as the new de facto monarch. As Roman provinces were being established throughout
20562-411: The world's total population and made it the most populous unified political entity in the West until the mid-19th century. Recent demographic studies have argued for a population peak from 70 million to more than 100 million . Each of the three largest cities in the Empire – Rome, Alexandria , and Antioch – was almost twice the size of any European city at the beginning of the 17th century. As
20711-416: The wormhole than outside it, so that synchronized clocks at either end of the wormhole will always remain synchronized as seen by an observer passing through the wormhole, no matter how the two ends move around. This means that an observer entering the "younger" end would exit the "older" end at a time when it was the same age as the "younger" end, effectively going back in time as seen by an observer from
20860-442: Was a point of pride to be a "one-man woman" ( univira ) who had married only once, there was little stigma attached to divorce , nor to speedy remarriage after being widowed or divorced. Girls had equal inheritance rights with boys if their father died without leaving a will. A mother's right to own and dispose of property, including setting the terms of her will, gave her enormous influence over her sons into adulthood. As part of
21009-475: Was further defined by their citizenship. Most citizens held limited rights (such as the ius Latinum , "Latin right"), but were entitled to legal protections and privileges not enjoyed by non-citizens. Free people not considered citizens, but living within the Roman world, were peregrini , non-Romans. In 212, the Constitutio Antoniniana extended citizenship to all freeborn inhabitants of
21158-466: Was further fostered by a proliferation of voluntary associations and confraternities ( collegia and sodalitates ): professional and trade guilds, veterans' groups, religious sodalities, drinking and dining clubs, performing troupes, and burial societies . According to the jurist Gaius , the essential distinction in the Roman " law of persons " was that all humans were either free ( liberi ) or slaves ( servi ). The legal status of free persons
21307-405: Was governed by annually elected magistrates ( Roman consuls above all) in conjunction with the Senate. The 1st century BC was a time of political and military upheaval, which ultimately led to rule by emperors. The consuls' military power rested in the Roman legal concept of imperium , meaning "command" (typically in a military sense). Occasionally, successful consuls or generals were given
21456-548: Was mostly accomplished under the Republic , though parts of northern Europe were conquered in the 1st century, when Roman control in Europe, Africa, and Asia was strengthened. Under Augustus , a "global map of the known world" was displayed for the first time in public at Rome, coinciding with the creation of the most comprehensive political geography that survives from antiquity, the Geography of Strabo . When Augustus died,
21605-671: Was necessary to maintain order, collect information, and extract revenue. The Romans often exploited internal political divisions. Communities with demonstrated loyalty to Rome retained their own laws, could collect their own taxes locally, and in exceptional cases were exempt from Roman taxation. Legal privileges and relative independence incentivized compliance. Roman government was thus limited , but efficient in its use of available resources. The Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with divinely sanctioned authority ( auctoritas ). The rite of apotheosis (also called consecratio ) signified
21754-416: Was never a legal requirement for Latin in the Empire, but it represented a certain status. High standards of Latin, Latinitas , started with the advent of Latin literature. Due to the flexible language policy of the Empire, a natural competition of language emerged that spurred Latinitas , to defend Latin against the stronger cultural influence of Greek. Over time Latin usage was used to project power and
21903-426: Was not itself an elected office in ancient Rome; an individual gained admission to the Senate after he had been elected to and served at least one term as an executive magistrate . A senator also had to meet a minimum property requirement of 1 million sestertii . Not all men who qualified for the ordo senatorius chose to take a Senate seat, which required legal domicile at Rome. Emperors often filled vacancies in
22052-447: Was used to designate the dignitas of certain senators and their immediate family, including women. "Grades" of equestrian status proliferated. As the republican principle of citizens' equality under the law faded, the symbolic and social privileges of the upper classes led to an informal division of Roman society into those who had acquired greater honours ( honestiores ) and humbler folk ( humiliores ). In general, honestiores were
22201-476: Was useful for a career in the military, government, or law. Bilingual inscriptions indicate the everyday interpenetration of the two languages. Latin and Greek's mutual linguistic and cultural influence is a complex topic. Latin words incorporated into Greek were very common by the early imperial era, especially for military, administration, and trade and commerce matters. Greek grammar, literature, poetry and philosophy shaped Latin language and culture. There
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