Fourth Chotarian Empire
| History of Chotar | |
|---|---|
 This article is part of a series | |
| First Empire (c. 1600–1030 BCE) | |
| Dark Age (c. 1030–760 BCE) | |
| First Interdynastic (c. 1030–930 BCE) | |
| Ukmai Empire (c. 930–850 BCE) | |
| Second Empire (c. 930/760–359 BCE) | |
| City and Kingdom era (359–220 BCE) | |
| Third (Urumen) Empire (220–54 BCE) | |
| Third Interdynastic (54 BCE – 58 CE) | |
| Fourth Empire (58–324 CE) | |
| Equinox era (324–586) | |
| Fifth Empire (586–1052) | |
The Fourth Chotarian Empire unified Chotarian civilisation in southeastern Outer Joriscia between 58 and 324 CE. It was ruled from Hognād, located on the northern border of modern Lefdim, and encompassed the whole of the Joriscian Peninsula and the eastern fringes of Anabbah. The Empire was established by the Lacrean peasant leader Uzor I, who led a substantial revolt named the Lacrean Restoration that succeeded in overthrowing the remnants of Urumen rule in Old Chotar in 58 CE. Though initially drawing its strength from the countryside, the alliance behind Uzor comprised not only peasants, but also a substantial number of wealthy Lacrean aristocrats, who alongside a new stratum of nobility originating from among Uzor's military commanders would play an increasingly dominant role in the Fourth Empire. Governed initially by a structure of relatively independent governors appointed from this coalition, the Empire became steadily more decentralised, with the power of the Emperor marginalised in favour of an exclusive regional elite bound by ties of marriage and characterised by their increasingly extensive landholdings.
Though the Fourth Empire proved relatively coherent in the first century of its existence, with successive Emperors overseeing the destruction or co-option of the remaining Urumen princes and the reconquest of much of the Chotarian sphere, in the late 2nd and 3rd centuries the gradual decline in the power of the imperial throne at Hognād began to accelerate, alongside a corresponding growth in the autonomy of the empire's regional governors, who had virtually become the rulers of independent fiefdoms by the end of the century. These vassal governors, almost all hereditary by the 190s, collected taxes, raised armies, maintained autonomous courts, and, by the late 3rd century, even infringed on the Emperors' privilege of veneration as the manifest God on Arden. It was under the rule of these governors that full-fledged provincial temple-courts—previously anomalies where they had existed at all—came into being across the Empire, as the most important positions of the Ishtinist priesthood came to be dominated by scions of the same noble elite. In the countryside, the burdens laid upon the peasantry increased dramatically as land was gathered up by the aristocracy. The disintegration of imperial authority meant that the governors—and in some cases even subordinates of the governors and over-mighty local priests and landlords—were free to prosecute private disputes with another, though these did not escalate into all-out civil war until the final few decades of the Empire.
At the same time as its political significance diminished, however, the imperial court at Hognād itself played host to a flourishing artistic and intellectual culture, as the refinement of different forms of art and literature was pursued alongside the elaboration of the temple-court's liturgical ceremonial. This flowering of the arts, imitated to varying degrees of success at temple-courts across the empire, had a lasting effect on Chotarian culture and dominated the Chotarian imagination until well into the succeeding Equinox era. It was disenchantment with the cultural radiance of the Hognād era, coupled with a merciless revision of the historiography and political practices associated with it, that would give birth to the radical new forms of philosophy and political thought associated with Peribolasm in the 5th century. The Peribolasts, who would become the official ideologues of the Fifth Empire (586–1052), took the Fourth Empire as their bête noire, and their influence has done much to blacken the period's reputation in later historiography.
The dismantling of the Empire came about not immediately because of its decentralisation, but as a result of conflicts between the governors and the independent and increasingly Lacreanised cities of the Empire, which proved increasingly restive in the 3rd century. From 305 to 318, in the so-called War of the High Walls, a series of cities dotting the coast of Askam and eastern Isartia successfully resisted repeated attempts to bring them under the rule of the surrounding governors. The Appeal to the Great Temple made by an alliance of these cities in the year 320 triggered an ill-fated expedition from the capital at Hognād with the intent of restoring some degree of imperial control. The end result of this campaign, which met little success, was the renunciation of even formal rule from Hognād by a series of governors who proclaimed themselves Emperors in their own right in 323–6, inaugurating the arena of independent and increasingly militarised petty empires that was characteristic of the Equinox era. Though traditional Chotarian historiography gives us the year 324 for the fall of the Fourth Empire, the Court of Hognād in fact survived in a highly diminished form, even continuing to invest nominal governors and military commanders, until the year 480, when it was at last overthrown by the Court of Kozrat, beginning the age of the Chotarian Tetrarchy.
| Preceded by Third Interdynastic 54 BCE – 58 CE |
Chotarian history Fourth Empire 58–324 |
Succeeded by Equinox era 324–586 |