Chapter 826

After becoming the supreme ruler, you can't do whatever you want, so the attraction must be reduced a lot.

In all countries in the world, only a few supreme rulers can do whatever they want. That is based on the premise that all violent institutions belong to the supreme ruler. People who master force naturally have the right to do whatever they want.

Although Augustus in Rome is armed, such as those legions, not all legions are loyal to Augustus, and each family has its own private army. It's the same that one side holds a knife and the other side is paralyzed. If you want to do it, you'll wait for it to die. Naturally, scruples will arise.

Many countries, as long as they have enough financial resources, can form a family private army. The ruler can easily destroy one or two families who master the family private army, but once they start, it will inevitably cause panic and make many families who master the private army unite. At that time, even if the ruler wins, he can't get too much, and if he loses, he will be overturned.

The cost of doing something is too high. It has become a rational choice to do it without doing it, which constitutes a political balance. When the rulers can't bully and don't want the country to be chaotic, they usually have to learn to compromise.

"So for a long time, each family has its own expansion direction?" Wang Meng is very curious about the rise of Rome. He has asked many questions and talked about the most critical places: "Caesar, Sula, Krasu... They laid the foundation of the great Qin Dynasty?"

"Publius Cornelius sippia was a sage." Marcus Maka said that this man was a famous general of Rome in the war with Carthage: "the key war for our rise is to defeat Carthage and eventually destroy Carthage."

In short, if Carthage is not destroyed, it will always be a stumbling block to the expansion of Rome. If Carthage is not solved first, the rise of Rome will be impossible, and there will be nothing like Caesar and others. Rome will always be a regional power trapped in the Italian peninsula.

"You're talking about the law of Roman expansion." Marus Utansis said very seriously, "we all have our own responsibility, that is, to open up more land for Rome and obtain more slaves with our swords."

"We're doing it now." Cai Mian thought of the Indochina Peninsula and said in a low voice, "now all families are doing the same thing."

Wang Meng knows that although the situation is similar, there are fundamental differences.

As the ruler of the Han Dynasty, Liu Yan encouraged families to go out and find their own interests. Families with financial resources and ability in the South set up thousands of armed personnel to go to the Indochina Peninsula for fun. Families in the north can go to the western regions or grasslands, but even if they have financial resources, they can't recruit personnel indefinitely. There are strict quantitative restrictions on armed personnel, Even the armed forces formed belong to the sequence of the state according to the law, and are not the real family private army.

Rome is different. The family private army is the of the family. Each family recruits and selects people to form a private army, provides weapons and equipment, various food and drinks, and pays military salaries. The object of soldiers' oath of allegiance is also the family or someone in the family. There is even a case where the state does not have enough money to pay the Legion. The commander in charge of the army pays the Legion out of his own pocket. The soldiers holding the commander's salary will consciously change the object of loyalty. Even if the Legion still maintains the national title, it has actually become the private arm of the commander.

"So we're having a civil war." Marcus Marca said with a wry smile, "there are more than 20 legions in Constantinople, but actually more than half of them only have a serial number."

To put it plainly, if the head of the army is still loyal to Constantius, the Legion will naturally fight for Constantius. When the head of the army doesn't want to fight for Constantius, the direct neutrality of the army is the best result. Perhaps as the head of the army turns to be loyal to the enemy of Constantius, the Legion will certainly attack Constantius without hesitation.

By the way, there is no such saying as military pay in Zhuxia. In fact, ordinary soldiers don't have military pay at all. They can only get salary when their position reaches a certain level. Soldiers can only rely on capture or whether the state rewards them if they want to get rich. However, when soldiers join the army, they actually get benefits. For example, land is equivalent to a buyout.

"What we envy most is that you don't need to pay soldiers." Marus Utansis is really envious, maybe complaining, that is to say: "the utansis family is a great burden just to pay military expenses every year. Two years ago, our family could maintain three legions, and now even one Legion can't be maintained."

It seems that the trade from Rome to the Gupta Dynasty is really profitable. Can it maintain the utansis family to keep three legions?

Wang Meng and others have known about it, such as Marcus Maka's family has a large area of land, but they don't have their own Legion. At most, they maintain the family armed force of 200 people. Even if there are few families in Rome that can form three legions, we can understand how dissatisfied the utansis family should be with the Han state.

"They intimidate each other with force and have been maintaining a fragile balance." Wang Meng waited until there were no Romans around before he said, "compared with us, Rome needs the enemy more."

"Yes." Cai Mian fell into thinking and pondered for a little while before saying, "they pay attention to blood, but they don't pay attention to blood, but they don't block the road to progress."

No one can say clearly whether the system of Zhuxia is good or that of any country or nation. In fact, people create rules no matter what system it is.

In Zhuxia, whether in the ancient period when there was a private army in the family or in the stage when there was no private army in the family, with the rules formed for a long time, opposing the son of heaven is both against the state, especially after the Han Dynasty became our family and world, the authority of the son of heaven has been greatly strengthened.

The country is the property of the emperor's family, and anyone except the emperor has become a domestic slave. But if the emperor really treats like a slave, the results will be different. If the emperor wants to be Hello, I am good and everyone is good, it will be safe. But once the emperor really doesn't treat people as people, there must be trouble. The most serious thing is to be overturned.

The emperor of Zhuxia, as long as his subjects don't want to rebel, the emperor has always been constrained only by morality. Theoretically, no one can restrain the emperor.

In the Western Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu came up with a set of heaven man induction in order to further restrain the son of heaven. However, Liu Che was not a person who could be restrained. Naturally, the Confucianism who held high the banner of unification and shouted revenge was supported and valued, but Dong Zhongshu, who proposed heaven man induction, was not reused all his life.

In terms of political power, in fact, the Prime Minister of the first Han Dynasty was used to restrict the existence of the emperor. The problem is that the emperor felt very bad. For example, Liu Che repeatedly suppressed the power of the prime minister. Later, the prime minister became a decoration, resulting in an absolute power imbalance. The benefit is that he has not solved the Xiongnu, otherwise the country really doesn't know which direction he will run into.

At present, in the Han state, Liu Yanli is of course the supreme existence. It should be said that he is in a very special period. He has mastered both force and divine power without any constraints.

The results have shown that the whole country can make any action with Liu Yan's will. Even if countless people feel that the war should be stopped to recover the country from the collapse after the war, as long as Liu Yan feels that he still needs to continue to expand abroad, the military expedition will not stop.

Mastering absolute power is a wise ruler who can let go and make the country strong and powerful. However, not all rulers who have mastered absolute power will do the right thing, so the ruler will suffer from decision-making mistakes again and again. For example, people can't stand that ruler, and things will happen, The country became a beacon, and then the ruler became the king of the subjugation.

As they talked and walked, they crossed the market area of the wharf and entered a residential area.

I don't know whether Rome doesn't have the habit of planning the city, or the officials here neglect their duties. The market is not the most chaotic place. There is no order in any place, both people and buildings.

The buildings in the residential area are in a mess. As a result, there are no straight roads at all, and even many places have to go through alleys, but the alleys are blocked. If you don't want to detour, you can only move things in the way.

"This will be a nightmare for invading troops." Dou'a has been disorganized: "there are messy alleys everywhere, and things are placed indiscriminately. It is difficult to recognize the road in the chaotic buildings. Any house needs to be competed. If you meet the determined garrison, you have to pay a great price."

The Romans actually had a good set of urban planning. The city of Rome was built quite magnificently, but the problem was that it was divided into high-level, medium-level, low-level and lowest level areas. The high-grade area is naturally inhabited by great nobles. It plans buildings and various facilities in the form of manor, and there must be wide roads and corridors. Medium is a small manor. The land occupation and various facilities are inferior to high-grade manors. Low level houses are very ordinary houses, which will not look good, and most of the channels will be lanes and roadways. The lowest level area looks like where they are now.

The only thing that Chinese people can't stand most is that the air is full of the smell of excrement and urine. If they are not careful, they can step on Baba in the alley, and even some people will spill excrement and urine without looking at anyone below.

"This is a city of shit and urine." Cai Mian had long surrounded his mouth and nose with a cloth towel: "if only the sanitation of the city was better, the Persians would be more civilized than the Romans."

People subconsciously looked at the muddy road. Many people vomited at a glance. It was all filthy at a glance.

In any city in the Han Dynasty, you can't see such a situation here anyway. It's not that there is no shit in the corner alley. It's not so terrible. Then, the residents' excrement is collected at fixed points, so it will not be thrown into the streets indiscriminately. The city will never be full of the smell of excrement and urine.

After a period of time, they finally arrived at a road paved with slate. The key is that the slate road is full of footprints and soil. It's really not clean. It's better that they don't have to step on those dirty mud.

The stone road leads to the temple of the goddess of wisdom. After walking through a residential area, you can see a large square and some very thick and towering columns, which support the roof of the building.

There were fountain and several erected statues in the square. If the Romans had not driven away in advance, it would have been crowded with people who came to relax.

The temple is located on a high platform. If you want to go to the temple from the square, you need to go up three steps. There are two statues on the left and right sides of the main gate channel. One is a female Knight riding in an assault posture, and the other is standing and holding a stone mold.

"Athena can dress up as a soldier and spread wisdom with books."

Marus After the introduction of utansis, many people were stunned. It turned out that the two statues were different postures of the same God.

"Athens has always been one of the largest cities in Greece, and the local people are believers of Athena." Marcus Makabi made an invitation gesture and continued to introduce as he walked: "Athens is a city with a long history, a resident population of about 100000, and its commerce is also very developed."

Just now, when people were shuttling through the alley, they had seen many manual workshops, making everything. Indeed, they could see that the business atmosphere was very high.

"There are more cities with 100000 people than Constantinople." Marus Utansis added: "she has always been the most populous city in Greece."

Cai Mian was very interested in the population distribution under Roman rule, so he kept asking questions.

According to the Romans themselves, Rome was once the most prosperous place. The permanent resident population was once close to 300000, but now there are only more than 100000. Within the territory of Rome, there are few cities with a permanent resident population of more than 100000 people. Most of them can have this scale only along the coast. There are fewer places where they can be called cities, and the vast majority of people live in towns or villages.

"Constantinople has only been the capital for 27 years. Before that, it was a very ordinary city." Marus Utansis would have said something like this. He came from Marcus Maka learned that Han has at least three cities with a population of more than one million: "we have been working hard to build it and will become a prosperous city."

Now, Wang Meng and others have at least learned that the Romans have a large territory, but there are few big cities. The Romans are distributed and the population is not excessively concentrated.