纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 031亚历山大头像硬币(1)

I'm starting this week just over two thousand years ago, with the great empires of Europe and Asia

两千多年前，欧亚大陆出现了几大帝国：

empires whose legacies are still strongly felt in the world today-the Roman Empire in the West, the Empire of Ashoka in India, and the Han Dynasty in China.

西方的罗马帝国，印度的阿育王朝和中国的汉朝。直到今天，它们巨大的影响力仍未消亡。

In this age of great rulers, I'll be looking at how power is constructed and projected.

这些帝国的权力是如何构建完成并行使的呢？

Military might is just the beginning-you might say it's the easy part.

军事实力仅在帝国建立初期发挥作用，而武力征服通常也是最容易完成的一部分。

How does a ruler stamp his authority on the very minds of his subjects?

统治者如何才能把自己的权威烙印在臣民的头脑里？

As always, images are more effective than words, and the most effective of all images are those that we see so often that we hardly notice them.

在这方面，图像往往比文字有力得多。而最有效的图像便是货币上的，这是人们时常接触但又不会太注意的东西。

The ambitious ruler shapes the currency: the message is in the money.

野心勃勃的统治者铸造了钱币，将信息记载其上，就算本人早已离开人世，钱币上的信息却能长存。