The status of Rome vis-à-vis the Roman empire is analyzed. Fears that it might be replaced and the imperial capital would be transferred are reported from the first century BC onward. Foundation myths suggested that Rome originated in the East, in Troy, and it was suspected that the capital might move back to the East. These suspicions did not materialize for centuries but became reality under Constantine with the refoundation of Byzantium as Constantinople. The choice of Constantinople as (eastern) capital may not have been a matter of course from the start. Other cities seem to have been considered first, and it is not certain why it was chosen. Furthermore, there is no contemporary evidence that Constantine always conceived his new foundation as the eastern capital of the empire, or that he intended that it should replace Rome. Claims, made first by Christian authors, that Constantine’s city was conceived from the start as the new or second Rome and also as a purely Christian city cannot be confirmed. The city actually took time to develop into an imperial capital. The city became the undisputed centre of the late Roman empire only in the reign of Theodosius I.

The status of Rome vis-à-vis the Roman empire is analyzed. Fears that it might be replaced and the imperial capital would be transferred are reported from the first century BC onward. Foundation myths suggested that Rome originated in the East, in Troy, and it was suspected that the capital might move back to the East. These suspicions did not materialize for centuries but became reality under Constantine with the refoundation of Byzantium as Constantinople. The choice of Constantinople as (eastern) capital may not have been a matter of course from the start. Other cities seem to have been considered first, and it is not certain why it was chosen. Furthermore, there is no contemporary evidence that Constantine always conceived his new foundation as the eastern capital of the empire, or that he intended that it should replace Rome. Claims, made first by Christian authors, that Constantine’s city was conceived from the start as the new or second Rome and also as a purely Christian city cannot be confirmed. The city actually took time to develop into an imperial capital. The city became the undisputed centre of the late Roman empire only in the reign of Theodosius I.

The chapter sketches an approach to a great challenge of contemporary ancient history, namely, the history whereby state power was extended into the ancient countryside. It commences with consideration of the operations that produced Roman taxonomies of city-states and villages: far from a simple consequence of recognition, the statuses of city-state and village alike were ascribed. The chapter directs attention to the decades when Rome ceased to treat with regions via networks of bilateral alliances and instead instrumentalized select city-states to dominate territories and peoples that were henceforth deemed non-political. On this basis, the chapter challenges the interpretive truisms that Rome “governed through city-states” or that it relied on preexisting institutions. What we should seek to bring into view is the political economics of republican empire: the related forms of fiscal domination and monopolies over law-making and law-applying institutions that the democratically constituted oligarchies of the ancient city exercised over others on behalf of Rome.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book. It discusses the idea of kinship as a political concept within the specific context of modern civil war.