Religious and Political Power
The Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and Early Islam all have their own methods of
managing religious and political power. The Roman Empire started off as a monarchy.
They had a strong military, defeating the armies of Carthage. Politics slowly started to
become very unstable. Rome’s first code of law was called the Twelve Tables. These laws
were just to assure peace—to make things fair. These laws also regulated social life and
spread widely through the empire. Although these Roman laws were effective in
controlling what people did, there was no written list of what an individual’s rights were.
In 476 C.E., people from the north invaded and overturned the government, causing it to
become less active. The only effective governments at that time were local. The armies
were starting to rely on non-Romans to defend them. Some of the problems of the Roman
Empire’s political practices were that there were more wars than there should have been.
Also, the government was just simply unstable. The emperor Constantine tried to turn it
around though by adopting the religion of Christianity. Christianity proved to be one of the
largest religions in the world. Christianity emphasized the importance of organized church
and structure. Before Constantine, though, was Diocletian who tightened things up and
tried to improve the act of collecting taxes. He supported the idea of worshipping the
emperor like a god, which caused him to actually persecute Christians. After he was done
ruling, Constantine had different methods of control. He set up the city of Constantinople
