That phrase Jesus tells his disciples when being consulted for tax advice—"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s"?
That wasn’t just about what to do with your material goods, it was also a religious question.
Because the Romans had figured out and damn near perfected something the many empires before theirs weren’t nearly as successful at: how to ensure obeisance from your conquered subjects.
And while the guarantee of material gain for the people you crushed in war goes a long way, sooner or later they start wanting more. After all, you did kill their fathers, rape their mothers and pillage their homes.
It doesn’t matter if you then give them aqueducts, deep down they still want to see you die. The physical is easy, the spiritual and mental are much harder to conquer.
Unless...
After all the cruelty and punishment, you make them at least pay lip service to your gods. They have to bow to a statue as if it were the emperor himself. Because in a way, that’s what the statue was: Rome personified.
And he was just about everywhere you looked. Caesar’s statues were on practically every street corner. So citizens under Roman rule never forgot to whom they owed their safety, wealth, and even spiritual well-being.
Early Chinese Communists understood this implicitly, replacing the emperor and smashing the religious idols that once sat above the hearth in every home, then replacing them with portraits of Chairman Mao. To this day, old cadres are still placing lit cigarettes, like incense, between the fingers of Caesar Mao statues.
Old habits won’t go lightly, they must be replaced with new ones.
And a habit wherein everyone is always praising Rome as if it were a mantra and handing over tribute like a ritual gets into your subconscious whether you like it or not. It alters thought. Changes feelings. Even if the newly conquered don’t believe in it, their kids will.
The power of a man who can mobilize armies and make himself synonymous with an empire is intangible. Who can explain branding to the average semi-literate Pompeiian who barely understood how to make a subsistence living? But that’s what great empires have: great branding.
It’s real magic at work, and it’s powerful enough to hold an empire together for 500 years. Keep it limping along for 1000 more. Get people trying to bring it back long after it’s dead.
So don’t think words lack power, or that magic doesn’t exist.