What Makes an Empire? Military, Culture, and Heritage

The Common Elements of Empire

Empires throughout human history have been diverse and unique, but certain common elements make them recognizably imperial. The Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires all exercised hegemony over vast areas for long periods of time, relying on military might to maintain control. Their centers of political power were strong and centralized, not only allowing them to apportion resources effectively but also to communicate the unifying laws and principles that defined their rule. Moreover, these three empires often used both religious authority and cultural practices to legitimize their power and make it harder for subject peoples to challenge them — the ancestor worship of the Persians, the legends of divine origin among the Greeks, and shared gods across large parts of the Roman world all served this purpose.

Military, Centralization, and Ideology

While there are many other factors that separate or distinguish different empires from one another, a combination of military strength, strategic centralization, and ideological framework appears essential for any imperial formation. Yet, as Xuanzang shows in his ancient records and documents regarding his visit to India in 629 CE, there is more to empire than military power, strategy, and ideology. Culture must also be at the heart of empire — and it was certainly central to the Persian Empire (intensely nationalist), the Greek world (intensely democratic and philosophical), and Rome (intensely liberal). What Xuanzang reveals is that culture can manifest itself in innumerable ways, such as through heritage — like the preservation of the site where the Buddha received enlightenment in the Indian Empire, the record of epic battles in Homer's Iliad, or the record of epic foundations in Virgil's Aeneid.

Culture and Heritage as Imperial Foundations

Homer's Iliad begins with epic words: "Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles."¹ These words launch the listener into a world of epic warriors, where gods and goddesses vied with human beings for the outcome of destinies. It was recited by Greeks for centuries — a spoken history of their heritage — before finally being set down in writing. Likewise, Virgil's Aeneid begins with a similarly epic introduction, depicting how a Trojan warrior brought his "banished gods" to Italy, where he reinstituted the religious rites that the Greeks had destroyed in the Battle of Troy — rites that served as the foundation for the future Roman Empire.²

As Huili notes of his master Xuanzang during the latter's travels, wherever there is a great concentration of learning and a repository of heritage and knowledge, there lies the epicenter of empire. In India, he and Xuanzang witnessed firsthand the might of the Indian Empire, resting in the place where the Buddha had once dwelled: "Ten thousand monks always lived there, both hosts and guests. They studied Mahayana teachings and the doctrines of the eighteen schools, as well as worldly books such as the Vedas."³ There, in a nutshell, are the components of empire — in the cultural expressions that sing and work and labor together to create an idealized expression of greatness, one that is eventually communicated in political, military, and economic forms.

Culture, then, is not an ornament layered atop the structural features of empire; it is the animating force that gives those features meaning and durability. The Persian Empire's intense nationalism, the Greek world's philosophical democracy, and Rome's expansive civic religion were not incidental to those empires' power — they were constitutive of it. The same logic applies to the Indian subcontinent, where the preservation of sacred Buddhist sites and the living traditions of monastic scholarship formed the cultural bedrock upon which political authority rested.

Conclusion

What makes an empire is always the same — whether it arises in China, Persia, Greece, Rome, or India: it is the heritage and the ability of the people of the empire to embrace it, sing it, and make it live in an epic way. It is the embodiment of a land's pride in whatever it possesses — whether that is the story of the Buddha, the politics and philosophy of the Greeks, or the seeds of faith as expressed in Rome.

Homer. The Iliad. [University], 2007.

Huili. "A Biography of the Tripitaka Master." Considering the Evidence: Documents, 345.

Virgil. The Aeneid. Collector's Library, 2004.