Description
罗马共和国由百余个贵族家族（patricians）统治，这种寡头政治在罗马弱小时颇具凝聚力，使其先后击败迦太基与希腊，称霸地中海。然而帝国扩张后，寡头体制带来腐败、不平等与无休止的内战——从苏拉到尤利乌斯·凯撒，再到奥古斯都，均未能建立真正的中央官僚体系。君士坦丁最终决定将首都迁至君士坦丁堡，试图重塑罗马文明，为教会帝国的兴起奠定基础。本课是学期末四节核心课程的背景铺垫，带你理解罗马体制崩溃如何催生了教会权力的崛起。
The Roman Republic thrived as an oligarchy of patrician families while Rome was small and cohesive, enabling it to defeat Carthage and Greece and dominate the Mediterranean. As an empire, however, this structure bred corruption, inequality, and endless civil wars—from Sulla through Julius Caesar to Augustus—none of whom could build a true centralized bureaucracy. Constantine's move of the capital to Constantinople was a bold attempt to reinvent Rome from the ground up. This lecture sets the essential background for understanding how the Church stepped into the power vacuum left by Rome's structural collapse.