In it political sense, ‘absolutism’ is a theory of legislative authority. It holds that the ruler, usually the king, has exclusive legal authority, and consequently that the laws of state are nothing other than expressions of his will (see voluntarism).

Late antiquity in European history refers to the period from the late third century to the mid seventh century AD. This was the period marked by the collapse of the Western Roman empire.

• Transportation helped the export and the import of the goods because of the development of the wheel and sail.
• Goods produced and exported from Mesopotamia included pottery, things made from leather, jewelry, carvings of ivory, etc. Some of the agricultural goods included oils and grains.
• The imported goods included Egyptian old, pearls and ivory from India, silver from Australia, copper from Arabia, and tin from Persia.

Tigris

The Tigris and Euphrates rivers of ancient Mesopotamia were the most important trade routes.

Mesopotamia encompasses the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both of which have their headwaters in the Taurus Mountains. Both rivers are fed by numerous tributaries, and the entire river system drains a vast mountainous region.

• Mesopotamian civilization was based on definite plan. 
• Cities and towns are develop when an economy develops in spheres other than food production that it becomes an advantage for people to cluster in towns.
• Urban economies comprise besides food production, trade, manufactures and services.
•  There is social organisation in place
• Helpful for the city manufacturers.
• The division of labour is a mark of urban life.

In ancient Rome, provinces were generally governed by politicians of senatorial rank, usually former consuls. A later exception was the province of Egypt, incorporated by Augustus. After the death of Cleopatra it was ruled by a governor of equestrian rank only, perhaps as a discouragement to senatorial ambition as Egypt was considered Augustus’s personal property, following the tradition of earlier, hellenistic kings.

The territory of people who were defeated in war might be brought under various forms of treaty, in some cases entailing complete subjection. The formal annexation of a territory created a “province” in the modern sense of an administrative unit that was geographically defined. Republican provinces were administered in one-year term by the consuls and praetors who had held office the previous year.

Rome started expanding beyond Italy during the First Punic War. The first permanent provinces to be annexed were Sicily in 241 BC and Sardinia in 237 BC. Military expansionism kept increasing the number of these administrative provinces, until there were no longer enough qualified individuals to fill the posts.
The terms of provincial governors often had to be extended for multiple years, and on occasion the Senate awarded imperium even to private citizens, most notably Pompey The Great. Prorogation undermined the republican constitutional principle of annual elected magistracies, and the amassing of disproportionate wealth and military power by a few men through their provincial commands was a major factor in the transition from a republic to imperial autocracy.

Saint Augustine (354-430) was bishop of the North African city of Hippo from 396 and a towering figure in the intellectual history of the Church.
Bishops were the most important religious figures in a Christian community, and often very powerful.

During the ancient civilization the Roman society was divided mainly among three classes :

(i) The Particians or the Rich.

(ii) The Plebeians or the Common People.

(iii) The Slaves.

In Rome, the slaves were employed in agriculture, mining, road construction, workshops and on ships. They were brutally exploited and as a result of it, many used to become crippled in the very young age.

• A practice of slave ownership in the United States that aimed to encourage the reproduction of slaves in order to increase a slaveholder’s property and wealth.
• Slave breeding involved coerced sexual relations between male and female slaves, as well as sexual relations between a master and his female slaves, with the intention of producing slave children.

Transhumance is a type of pastoralism or nomadism, a seasonal movement of livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions (vertical transhumance), it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and lower valleys in winter. The action or practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle, typically to lowlands in winter and highlands in summer.

The Roman Empire had two types of territories – dependent kingdoms and provincial territory. The Near East was full of dependent kingdoms but they disappeared and were swallowed up by Rome. These kingdoms were exceedingly wealthy, for example Herod’s kingdom yielded 5.4million <i>denarii </i>per year, equal to over 125,000 kg of gold per year.

Transhumance is a type of pastoralism or nomadism, a seasonal movement of livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures.

Army: This was another key institution of imperial rule, and its position came after the emperor and the Senate. The Romans maintained a paid professional army. The soldiers had to put in a minimum of 25 years of service. The army was the largest single organized body in the empire. Its strength had become 600,000 by the fourth century. The army had the power to determine the fate of the emperors. The success of the emperor depended on his control of the army.

69 BCE was a tumultuous year. Four emperors mounted the throne in quick succession in that year. Other than that, the first two centuries were free from civil war and were relatively stable. Succession to the throne was based on family ascent. A natural or adopted heir could be made the next emperor. Even the army strongly followed this practice.

Augustan Age is considered to be the most peaceful period of the Roman Empire. So, armed conflicts for expansion of the territory were rare. Gradual extension of Roman direct rule was more common. It was accomplished by absorbing a whole series of ‘dependent’ kingdoms into Roman provincial territory.

The Roman Empire can be broadly divided into two phase, viz. ‘Early Empire’ and ‘Late Empire’. The period from 27 BCE to the main part of the third century CE is called the early empire. The period after that is called the late empire. Unlike the Iranian Empire, the Roman Empire was much more diverse in terms of territories and cultures. People of this Empire spoke many languages. But Latin and Greek were the most widely used language for the purpose of administration. The upper classes in the east spoke Greek, while those in the west spoke Latin

Women in Roman society were not given much power. Men played an important role in the politics and trades in Roman society but still there were time when women influenced the political process. The lives of woman in Roman society varied greatly on the basis of their position in the society. The Romans believed that all women should be under the control of male guardian like the father,husband or a male relative. Women in Roman times discriminated against and subjugated to abuse poets such as Horace and Juvenal. There were condition on the women in the Roman society that no women should possess more than half an ounce of gold,wear a dyed dress in a variety of colour or ride down in horse drawn carriage.

(i) The first Mesopotamian tablets, written around 3200 BCE, contained picture-like signs and numbers. These were about 5,000 lists of oxen, fish, bread loaves, etc. - lists of goods that were brought into or distributed from the temples of Uruk, a city in the south.
(ii) Mesopotamians wrote on tablets of clay. A scribe would wet clay and pat it into a size he could hold comfortably in one hand. He would carefully smoothen its surfaces.
(iii) Once the surface dried, signs could not be pressed onto a tablet : so each transaction, however minor, required a separate written tablet.

Public baths were a striking feature of Roman urban life (when one Iranian ruler tried to introduce then into Iran, he encountered the wrath of the clergy there! Water was a sacred element and to use it for public bathing may have seemed a desecration to them), and urban populations also enjoyed a much higher level of entertainment.

For example, one calendar tells us that spectacular (shows) filled no less than 176 days of the year!

Roman Empire:

1. Roman empire extended from Spain to Syria along the Mediterranean.
2. It had more of a diverse population in looking into its geographical expanse . It was characterised by many cultures but had common government with single ruler/emperor.
3. Greek and latin languages were used for adminstrative purposes.

Iranian empire:
 

1. It controlled major part of the  Caspian sea, large parts of Afghanistan and eastern Arabia.
2. The Parthians and Sasanians dynasties,ruled over the people of Iran. It was not as diverse as the Roman empire.
3. People spoke Persain language.