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.