When thinking optimistically about humans we think of beings put in the world to thrive and flourish into the best person they hope to be. Human essence to people is basically who a person is. When examining the question, how are thinking about ruins and human essence related? We have to understand that ruins, is not just the remains of ancient buildings but that there’s also something symbolic and metaphorical about them especially when being juxtaposed to the human essence.

       Ruins, they not only represent and explicitly show you the falling of an empire and the society that once was. They also show us how ruins can represent the death of society and a metaphor for the actually human being. To really understand how ruins can shadow a human body you’d have  to closely examine the death of a human and the collapse of an empire. Like a human body, empires I believe were not meant to always last forever, like a human body they have a expiration date which might not be as obvious but still something foretelling since they were created by imperfect humans. Empires social and political structures will collapse just like a human’s organs will start to fail. When a person dies all that is left of them is their bones just like when a empire is destroyed all that is left of it is its ruins, the structures with the strongest support will last just like some bones that you see in museums. Now that the juxtaposition of human bones and ruins has been explained, human essence and how its relation to ruins go hand and hand can become simplified.

       The human essence of someone like stated before to me is relatively who someone is, and what they did with their life. When referring to ruins it is safe to say that they are the remains of what a human achieved and created, since empires were ruled by one supreme ruler and each one was different and varied by ruler, we truly get to see what kind of person a ruler was from their empire. Now we can see the relation between humans and empires because like people who are imperfect and always striving to become better, so are empires.

       Empires are human projects and are forged by imperfect people trying to create something that will outlast themselves. Human essence and ruins have a direct relationship because they both deal with what humans have left behind in this world, ruins are the literal object left behind human when they’re empires “die”.

       Finally tying together the main point of this blog, the relationship between human essence and ruins go hand in hand. The human essence is what a person leaves behind and a ruin is the remnants of a fallen society that was created by people. And the metaphorical aspect of this idea was that ruins shadow human bodies in their last moments because like humans empires collapse “die” and the natural process is similar to a empires because the structure that formed that being shut down. Which is important to recognize when answering the question how empires and human essence relate? Because like the human body ruins are made to eventually fall, and human essence is what people leave behind and in this case that is the ruins because those are buildings and structure of a society created by humans that fell apart.

       Analyzing the question “How far would you go?” with a Roman imperialist mentality, can’t be too hard, what did the ancient Romans not do for the empire? The Romans were so loyal to the empire they would be able and willing to kill loved ones in order to keep the Roman Empire powerful and strong. The mentality of putting the empire before yourself was the norm in the Roman society, and that’s why it was so successful. We see the true barbarism in Roman culture through the Roman soldier.

       Romans saw humans as part of this hierarchical society but also saw the men specifically as their own pawns to use in any military conquest the Empire sought necessary. The military is a key part of the Empire, because a strong military therefore meant you have a powerful Empire. Through the Roman soldier we see the power of the empire,their specialty in being not only loyal to the Empire but being extremely disciplined in their belief that defeat was never an option for Romans. With this mentality the Roman soldiers practiced decimation; where one in every 10 men would be beaten to death by essentially their friends, which was always performed, the soldiers never challenged their orders in killing a friend or even son. The manila imperia, a story about a famous Roman general who had his son executed for disobeying the rules is also a way to see how the discipline in the Roman Empire was unwavering in your obedience to the Empire even when it came to their own flesh and bones.

       In retrospect the brutality and discipline of the Roman Empire and its soldiers presumably never even thought of the question “How far will I go?’ but the question of “what can I do next for my Empire?”, in my perspective of how this society ran, I feel it could be comparable to a relatively more modern day Nazi Germany without the Nazi agenda of course since Romans didn’t really have a sense of racial biases. But getting to my point seeing how the two military powers distanced by time and cultures had “soldiers” with the same characteristic in attitude on what they could do for their “Empire” forgetting all simple morals of life and death/ right and wrong and replaced it with “what can I do next for my ‘Empire’?” is baffling to me. The two completely different “imperialistic” cultures all were lead by one supreme ruler and never questioned their authority or demands.

       The Roman Empire differs in the fact that their “Empire” was more successful than the Nazi regime in Germany because they didn’t simply want to conquer areas to rid the world of a culture but used the conquered people to add to their society while Nazi’s wanted to expand to rid the world of certain races and cultures. Ultimately this is important because it shows how though several hundred years have passed between us and the Romans and yet there still is that Roman solider in these new imperialistic societies that show up today.