THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The Roman Empire is the phase of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and the Mediterranean. The Roman Empire succeeded the 500-year-old Roman Republic (510 BC – 1st century BC), which had been weakened by the civil wars of the Late Republic, and continued as the Byzantine Empire until 1453.[4] Several dates are commonly proposed to mark the transition from Republic to Empire, including the date of Julius Caesar's appointment as perpetual dictator (44 BC), the victory of Caesar's heir Octavian at the Battle of Actium (September 2, 31 BC), and the Roman Senate's granting to Octavian the honorific Augustus. (January 16, 27 BC).[5]
The Latin term Imperium Romanum (Roman Empire), probably the best-known Latin expression where the word imperium denotes a territory, indicates the part of the world under Roman rule. Most of the people living there called themselves Romans[citation needed], and lived under Roman law. Roman expansion began in the days of the Republic, but reached its zenith under Emperor Trajan. At this territorial peak, the Roman Empire controlled approximately 5,900,000 km² (2,300,000 sq mi) of land surface. Because of the Empire's vast extent and long endurance, Roman influence upon the language, religion, architecture, philosophy, law and government of nations around the world lasts to this day.
The end of the Roman Empire is sometimes placed at 4 September 476 AD, when the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustus, was deposed and not replaced. Before this date, however, the Empire had been divided into Western and Eastern halves, Emperor Diocletian, who retired in 305, having been the last sole Emperor of an undivided Empire. The Western Roman Empire declined and fell apart (see Decline of the Roman Empire) in the course of the 5th century. The Eastern Roman Empire, known largely today as the Byzantine Empire, preserved Greco-Roman legal and cultural traditions along with Hellenic and Orthodox Christian elements for another millennium, until its eventual collapse with the conquest of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1453.

The Empire contributed many things to the world, such as a calendar with leap years, the institutions of Christianity and aspects of modern neo-classicistic and Byzantine architecture. The extensive system of roads that was constructed by the Roman Army lasts to this day. Because of this network of roads, the time necessary to travel between destinations in Europe did not decrease until the 19th century, when steam power was invented.
The Roman Empire also contributed its form of government, which influences various constitutions including those of most European countries and many former European colonies. In the United States, for example, the framers of the Constitution remarked, in creating the Presidency, that they wanted to inaugurate an "Augustan Age". The modern world also inherited legal thinking from Roman law, codified in Late Antiquity. Governing a vast territory, the Romans developed the science of public administration to an extent never before conceived nor necessary, creating an extensive civil service and formalized methods of tax collection. The western world today derives its intellectual history from the Greeks, but it derives its methods of living, ruling and governing from those of the Romans.