jalidi on 10 April 2013
Got to this thread quite late, but I think I would've said Augustus Caesar.
Without him, there's no Western civilization as we know it, since he's the one who miraculously patched together a collapsing Roman Republic into the foundation of a state which existed in some form thereafter for nearly 1500 years. Long enough to profoundly affect language, laws, and customs for over a billion people living today, though in those days they had a third of the world's population living within Roman territory.
The Empire provided the medium through which something like Christianity could propagate, at first secretly, but then openly after the ascension of Constantine. Without a roman empire to crucify Jesus, we don't even have a cross.
