Notitia Dignitatum

The Notitia Dignitatum (Latin for "The List of Offices") is a unique document of the late Roman Empire. One of the very few surviving documents of Roman government, it details the administrative organization of the Eastern and Western Empires, listing several thousand offices from the imperial court down to the provincial level, diplomatic missions and army units. It is usually considered to be up to date for the Western Roman Empire in the 420s and for the Eastern or Byzantine Empire in the 390s. However, no absolute date is given in the text itself and omissions complicate deriving an absolute date from its content.

Copies of the manuscript

There are several extant 15th and 16th-century copies (plus a color-illuminated 1542 version). All the known and extant copies of this late Roman document are derived, either directly or indirectly, from Codex Spirensis, a codex known to have existed in the library of the cathedral chapter at Speyer in 1542 but which was lost before 1672 and cannot now be located. That book contained a collection of documents (of which the Notitia was the last and largest document, occupying 164 pages) that brought together several previous documents of which one was of the 9th century. The heraldry in illuminated manuscripts of Notitia is thought to copy or imitate no other examples than those from the lost Codex Spirensis.

Total war

Total war is warfare that includes any and all civilian-associated resources and infrastructure as legitimate military targets, and typically involves the use of weapons and tactics that result in significant civilian or other non-combatant casualties, whether collateral damage or not. American-English Dictionary defines "total war" as "war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded." The term can also be applied when the war effort requires significant sacrifices by most of the friendly civilian population.

In the mid-19th century, scholars identified "total war" as a separate class of warfare. In a total war, to an extent inapplicable to less total conflicts, the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants diminishes and even sometimes vanishes entirely as opposing sides can consider nearly every human resource, even that of non-combatants, as nevertheless part of the war effort.

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire (Latin: Imperium Rōmānum; Classical Latin: [ɪmˈpɛ.ri.ũː roːˈmaː.nũː] Ancient and Medieval Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, tr. Basileia tōn Rhōmaiōn) was the post-Roman Republic period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterized by government headed by emperors and large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, Africa and Asia. The extended city of Rome was the largest city in the world c. 100 BC – c. 400 AD, with Constantinople (New Rome) becoming the largest around 500 AD, and the Empire's populace grew to an estimated 50 to 90 million inhabitants (roughly 20% of the world's population at the time). The 500-year-old republic which preceded it was severely destabilized in a series of civil wars and political conflict, during which Julius Caesar was appointed as perpetual dictator and then assassinated in 44 BC. Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesar's adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavian's power was now unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power and the new title Augustus, effectively marking the end of the Roman Republic.

War Music

War Music may refer to:

See also

Rome: Total War

Rome: Total War is a PC strategy game developed by The Creative Assembly and released on 12 April 2004 by Activision. The Mac OS X version of the game was released on 5 February 2010 by Feral Interactive. The game is the third title in The Creative Assembly's Total War series.

The game's main campaign is set during the rule of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire (270 BC – AD 14), with the player assuming control of one of three Roman families; other factions are playable once they have been unlocked. Gameplay consists of real-time tactical battles framed within a turn-based strategic campaign, taking place across Europe, North Africa and the Near East. On the large strategic scale, players spend each turn managing diplomacy, developing infrastructure, moving armies, and managing the population's growth and public order through taxes and gladiatorial games, among other tasks. On the smaller scale, real-time battles against enemy armies take place within or between cities, with the player commanding forces that can contain thousands of individual soldiers.