Roman Empire
An empire started by the Romans that stretched from British Isles 44AD to Northern Africa 146 B.C., to Armenia 42 B.C.
Rome may be credited with creating the virtue of civic republicanism: that a citizen should give his life in battle or in work to the glory of the Republic.
Its greatest ruler was Caius Iulius Caesar Octavianus, or Augustus, although many others parallel his life in depth.
Rome contributed a great deal to the mythology of early Christianity. For example, the prophecy that "a savior would come out of Judea" was popular in the Roman Empire, so popular that the biographer Suetonious saw fit to include it in his De Vitae Caesarium. However, Suetonious identified the savior as Vespasian in his "Life of Vespasian," since Vespasian did, as it was said, "save the State."
The Roman Empire is known for its construction of Roads that stretched throughout the Empire and through other trade routes even connected as far as the Silk Road and China.
The causes of the decline of the Roman Empire are controversial. Many posit that immorality and homosexuality so weakened spirit of the Empire that it was unable to stand firm against the Barbarians. Certainly poets such as Catullus and Juvenal describe many unnatural practises that may well have contributed to the final collapse just four hundred years later.