Empires, the symbol of power and the definite sign of greatness was something that people in societies like the Romans believed was divine and the want of the Gods. But like people, empires have a lifeline and eventually cease to exist only in the form of ruins. Ruins are the bones left of an empire after that society falls in whichever way it did so, when looking at them from a historical point of view ruins can be a symbol for the inevitability of empires and a reminder of death. In this blog I want to talk about how ruins in paintings can be associated to memento mori and how they represent the inevitability of empires which relates to the concept of time coming in full circle to relate back to empires. It’s important to recognize the relationship each concept has with the other because it helps us get a better understanding of society and the way human essence is important to humans.

       The first concepts we can connect in the circle is ruins in the form of memento mori in paintings. Memento mori in paintings is usually an object or objects used to remind viewers of the inevitability of death. It usually also places an emphasis on the emptiness of the world so we can focus on what is next after life. To me this basically sums up what a physical ruin can stand for. Ruins are the remains of societies and structures left by the passing of humans and their man made social constructs and structures. Ruins make people who view them think of what happened to the thousands of people who walked through those empires, and where did they go? Ruins in paintings represent those deaths of the citizens of those empire and the death of the structures and social construct the rulers created. Ruins are like bones left behind and memento mori is shown through bones, tombstones, and mirrors so the two concepts coincide.

       Then these two concepts of ruins showing memento mori help weave in the concept of the inevitability of empires being ruined. Since memento mori is the reminder of the inevitability of death which is what ruins depict, and ruins come from empires! So if we work backwards to connect these things together we can see how because ruins are reminders of death and the death of a society (memento mori), we have to now what are ruins which were empires. This also helps us bring in the concept of time, because the inevitability of ruins shows the passing of time. Essentially I’m trying to say that when empires are created they are inevitably going to fall which ties into memento mori and ruins because they are what empires become death, they remind us of death and the passing of time is shown throughout all of it. In painting we can also visualize time in ruins when painters paint things like vines and new life formed where old life used to inhabitat, which shows the grand cycle of life where in the death of one thing can come life of another like nature and plants.

       In the end all of this information that I shoved in your brain is important because it shows how society acknowledges the fact that things in this world aren’t meant to last forever. With the reminder of death with memento mori humans focus on what’s next (human essence) they try to build things like empires as a way to have something to outlast them when they die and the cycle of empires to ruins to new beginnings goes in circle.

       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.