A comparitive analysis of The Roman Empire and Han China

In Rome the same thing happened around the same time and the results were of course equally devastating especially devastating to the Western Roman Empire. The Romans didn't at first have problems with Christianity but then when the religion began to become large and Christians wouldn't recognize the Emperor as a God and would not participate in State holidays or events that honored other Gods. The aristocratic minority that dominated the politics in both Empires increasingly made found officials making decisions only to benefit themselves and not the Empire as a whole. Where as Christianity and Buddhism became popular in the times when these once great Empires were beginning to decline. The reforms were to no avail and the Han Empire collapsed in the second century A. Buddhism became popular largely through the efforts of missionaries like Fa Xian and Xuan Zang and from the support of some of the ruling elite. With the stop of conquest and the turn to defensive rather than offensive strategies both Empires found themselves unable to effectively defend their frontiers from the increasingly common barbarian raids. Government Positions in Rome were hereditary or restricted to the wealthy elite except in the cases of Military leaders who had their Legions to forcibly seize power. The worst corruption was in Rome, where more often then not the ruling Emperors were insane and Governor and Government positions were given out to the highest bidder or the person with the biggest army behind them. The Barbarians were creating havoc on the peasants and farmers who found that it was becoming increasingly hard to produce enough crops to feed themselves and their families not including the rest of the population.

Finally, both Empires had many religions like Daoism, Stoism, Estoics, and Confucianism, etc. We learned the many similarities and differences concerning the effects disease played on these empires, the reasons for decline, and the emergence of new religions. At first Christianity was just a minor religion in the Roman Empire, the Romans viewed them as another sect of Judaism.