They kind of did on one occasion iirc, but not like officially

The Chinese emperor wanted to send a diplomat to Rome but the Arabian middlemen told them it would take 2 years to get there.

They both knew about each other though

And they said "fuck that" and continued to trade through the middlemen.

Yeah

The Chinese called them the Da Chin.

Rome was like I'll get to that later

Da Qin iirc

But yeah

Fuckin Arabs

Sandniggers ruin everything.

And about Romans and assimilation - back in the antiquity and middle-ages it wasn't about being loyal to your ethnicity (beside few group like Jews), but rather to your overlord
Where Romans fucked up wasn't not forcing some kind of Roman identity upon conquered people
It was about letting the conquered people keep their social and military structures and their own military leaders
They were more loyal to their generals than to the state (though that was the thing everywhere in the SPQR even among the people of core provinces)

And the second thing kind of connected to this one is the wole citizenship thing, where only a small minority had Roman citizenship

Mhmm, the auxillaries were allowed to keep a lot of their own shit to cover what the Romans couldn't themselves.

Iirc the citizenship system was reformed later, but it was kind of too late and the reforms weren't radical enough

Yeah

That's what I'm talking about

The national identity wasn't this much of a problem, because these people often just didn't have one yet

Late Rome was hilarious in terms of how rich people flexed on people. They'd pay citizens and freedmen to follow them around.

And that was your job, to be a living clout point for this rich dude.

The most important thing is that Romans de facto let them create their own quasi-autonomous pseudo-states inside their empire

Depends on the time in Rome.

Of course

Early Empire that wasn't exactly the case. Provinces were governed by senators appointed by Augustus/the emperor but the emperor could personally govern a handful of provinces himself at his choosing.

Which was basically wherever his legions were stationed.

That gets outsourced a bit after Trajan iirc, where dudes in charge of a legion would govern on the emperor's behalf.

Basically as the senators in Rome lose their grip of control over provinces, they get less Roman.

Is how that slope slipped.

Early Empire wasn't as bad as the late one, but still, everything turned to shit even a bit earlier, during the decadence of the Republic
When the Republic was overturned by Ceasar it was quite obvious that without real and deep reforms it's all gonna get burnt down at some point

The military was everything in Rome, but shit really hit the fan after Marcy Mark and they go full insanity mode with it and all republican tradition gets thrown out of the window in favor of full military control, which at that point had been a corrupt racket for a fat minute.

Yeah slavery was a big one.

Rome struggled with slavery fuckin forever.

The absolute worst economic policy for any nation, way to fucking subvert your own people's economic independence.

Yep

Like great, nobody has any fucking money. That's exactly where we are now.

We outsourced all of our work to 3rd world slaves.

Yeah, imo what has really shown how fucked up the Roman state is was when Ceasar seized the power
It showed that the power wasn't lying in the hands of the goverment and the state but in the hands of whoever was controling the most of the military

And it brought blacks here

Thanks white people

Of course.

THANKS JEWS