Unlike transient ancient empires (such as the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians) that dissolved when their rulers or armies failed, Rome created an automated, self-perpetuating legal and administrative operating system. The system’s creators designed it to outlive their own deaths, but Rome’s collapse as well. This opening article traces what we call the Imperial Delusion that is wrapped up in the Roman operating system. During this journey we will see that the system’s effects are felt from Judea to the streets of Paris. And, as we trace its trail through the Visigoth mountain kings and the Vichy Regime to modern Paris, we find a stark contrast between the state’s extractive “Machine” under Caesar Augustus and the counter-reality of the Incarnation.
I. The Architecture of the Machine: The De-Naturalization of Reality
The “Machine” operates as a detached cage mapping and standardizing creation for extraction. Roman law was its brain. The effect of this Roman version of law was to replace physical reality with an artificial architecture. The end result was to legally detach identity from nature and the soil by means of fictio legis (legal fiction). In this article, legal historian Yan Thomas details the process.
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