imperial family should rule forever.
Gender Relationships
Both empires subordinated women to men at all stages of life, and both drew analogies between hierarchies
and loyalties in a well-run family and those in a well-run empire. Both empires used marriages as means of
confirming political alliances with foreign powers. Both periodically felt that excessive concern with sexual
relationships was distracting energy away from the demands of sustaining the empire and instituted strict
codes of sexual morality. In China, far more than in Rome, women of the imperial family played an important
role in politics behind the scenes, particularly in terms of determining succession. One woman, the Empress
Wu (r. 690-705), took the throne herself.
The Significance of Imperial Armies
In both empires, the army was crucial in creating and sustaining the political structure in the face of domestic
and foreign enemies. The Roman Empire as established and ruled by generals, as were the Qin, Han, Sui, and
Tang dynasties in China the empires were periodically threatened and usurped by rebel generals asserting
their own authority. The cost of the armies, especially on distant, unprofitable expeditions, often bankrupted
the government and encouraged its subjects to evade taxes and military service and even to rise in revolt.
The Deployment of Armies of Colonization
Both empires used colonies of soldier-colonizers to garrison and develop rp remote areas while simultaneously
providing compensation and retirement benefits for the troops.
Overextension
Both empires suffered their greatest challenges in, confronting simultaneously the strains of overextension
and the subsequent internal revolts that triggered by the costs. In Rome these dual problems, along with the
Barbarian invasions, finally precipitated the end of the empire in the west. In China they led to the loss of the
Mandate of Heaven and the downfall of dynasties. The external battles against Qin-Jurchen border tribes, for
example, combined with the revolt of the Yellow Turbans brought down the later Han; the loss of the distant
Battle of the Talas River, combined with the internal revolt of An Lushan, sapped Tang power.
Public Works Projects
Throughout their empire the Romans built roads, aqueducts, public monumental structures, administrative/military towns, and the great capital cities of Rome and Constantinople. The Chinese built the Great
Wall, the Grand Canal, systems of transportation by road and water, public monumental structures,
administrative/military towns throughout the empire, and several successive capitals, especially Chang' an
and Luoyang.
The Concentration of wealth
In both empires, the benefits of imperial wealth tended to flow toward the center, to the elites in the capital
cities. The capitals grew to unprecedented size. Both Chang'an and Rome housed more than one million
people.
.Policies For and Against Individual Mobility
