Strong religious activities are usually signs of social instability, because politicians/leaders/heroes could play with believers from different sides. In the far East when things did not go very well, there were things like 苍天已死 黄天当立 岁在甲子 天下大吉. Following was a period of 人才辈出 and many text book stories of 以少胜多.桃园三结义 不求同年同月同日生 但求同年同月同日死 十常侍/何进/袁绍/董卓 曹操/孙坚/孙策/孙权 王允/吕布/貂蝉 陶谦张绣公孙瓒,各据雄才占一方 白骨路于野,千里无鸡鸣 煮酒论英雄 千里走单骑/过五关斩六将 官渡之战 三顾茅庐/隆中对 新官上任三把火 携民渡江 血染征袍透甲红,当阳谁敢与争锋 长板桥前一声吼,喝断了桥梁水倒流 舌战群儒 群英会/赤壁之战 三气周瑜/赔了夫人又折兵 夜战马超 偃旗息鼓 五虎上将 水淹七军 走麦城 夜观天象 将星陨落 彝林之战/火烧连营 勿以恶小而为之/勿以善小而不为 七擒七纵 六出祁山 出师未捷身先死/鞠躬尽瘁,死而后已 扶不起的阿斗 蜀中无大将廖化做先锋 司马昭之心 三国归晋 The persecution of Christians continued on in Europe from one Roman Emperor to another. Some more strange things happened in Roman Empire when it came to reign of this emperor called Diocletian. Although still persecuting Christian like his predecessors, Diocletian beg to differ in some other aspects. He thought the Empire was too big to be governed by only one person, therefore he divided the Empire into East and West and made four Emperors to govern the country. The two senior emperors in the East and West Roman Empires were called Augustus and two apprentice emperors were called Cesar. In case anybody wonder where the title Tsar came from or how the name Cesar became a title for a governmental position, this was the part of a tradition when Cesar meant a position not a person. But the Tetrarchy, or the four emperor arrangement, did not work as Diocletian's original intended. His original intention was to avoid bloodbath between transfer of powers from one emperor to a next one. The main reason for dividing up the authority of the emperor was to make each title less powerful, since Diocletian thought less powerful the positions were, less desirable they would be for future seeker of the throne. But the strategy backfired, since now, there would be 4 emperors with 4 sets of ambitious heirs and pupils coveting the divided thrones, and each candidate thinking he could get one of the thrones and them work on merging more power into one. Even by taking a step back, each less powerful throne was still a throne nevertheless and could be attractive to many. After Diocletian, Roman Empire was divided into Western and Eastern Roman Empires, with each one calling itself the Roman Empire. And then Diocletian retired into his hometown somewhere in Croatia and became a vegetable farmer. Not long after, in light-year sense, Constantine The Great came along and took the throne through a serious of coupes and murders and quickly dragged himself into wars against other ambitious noblemen who wanted to depose him. Constantine favored the Eastern part of the Roman Empire and built himself a city with impregnable unusually thick war around it. This new capital of the East Roman Empire was called Constantinople, which was the capital of a true "thousand year empire". It was also rumored from time to time that the city housed three fourth of the treasure in the world. Constantine eventually stabilized his throne by fighting wars killing off all of his major adversaries. During one of the decisive wars, he told everybody that he dreamed of certain deity helping him to win the important pending battle. In his dream God asked Constantine to paint initials"K" and "R" on the soldier's armours in his army and he did. A couple of month later, Constantine revealed that God with Jesus Christ, or maybe "KRist". It was rumored that Constantine finally was baptised on his death bed. Similar to the political struggle called 罢黜百家独尊儒术 in China, Christianity became the state religion of Roman Empire and this incident was called "pact with Constantine" by Christians in the Western culture. Christians would like people to believe that Constantine signed a contract to give away sovereignty of all the Roman Empire to Jesus Christ, therefore Jesus was also called "king of kings" in English. Later, the sovereignty was expanded from Roman Empire to the entire world in the Medieval ages, therefore "church" and "state" were one entity that belonged to God with Catholic clergymen as executive senior managers, while kings and nobles as their middle level managers. Chinese society and philosophy sank into a state of apathy towards living and life in general, much like the Europe after World War I. 闻所闻而来见所见而去 竹林七贤 (吾以天地为宅舍,以屋室为衣裤,汝为何入我裤中? -- 中文古版"相对论") 桃花源记 草圣二王
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