AHC: Roman Republic Resorted

Your challenge if you choose to accept it is too, post second triumvirate or sometime before the collapse of the Western Empire, have the Roman Republic restored to a stable state with political rights roughly equivalent to the post-Sulla era. (Roughly 80 B.C).

Elcheapodeca said:

Your challenge if you choose to accept it is too, post second triumvirate or sometime before the collapse of the Western Empire, have the Roman Republic restored to a stable state with political rights roughly equivalent to the post-Sulla era. (Roughly 80 B.C).

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Well, in my Amalingian Empire timeline, the Romans begin to reassert themselves using the moribound, but still present, vestiges of the Republic as part of a Gothic Empire. But that Roman Republic is a) not independent (even if it would love to be) and b) after the fall of the Empire.

John Fredrick Parker said:

Does "post second triumvirate" mean following the Battle of Actium, or following its formation?

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Following it's formation.

It's going to be hard.
See the principate was hugely more popular than the republic, even for the ancient historians.

You had talks about it IOTL (or rather to launch a damnatio memoriae on Julio-Claudians), after Caligula's death, but it was only from a minority and not followed.
Monarchical principle simply looked more democratic (the word is used regularly), more virtuous (and compatible with the roman stoicism) and critically more stable.

You'd need particularly and cartoonishly incompetent emperors succeeding each other, making the situation worse than during the late republic to have it considered.
And I'm not saying just emperors that choose to humiliate Senate and piss on the momified roman elites, but as well to crush heavily the people (something that rarely happened, both for political and ideological reason).

If Augustus was to fail big time, given that even Teutoburg and the political scandals during his mandate weren't enough you have an idea of how "big time" it should be, then maybe. Afterwards, the system proven it could work, and that it worked well.

Augustus dies in 23 BC might be a start. You still have strong support for republicanism in the aristocracy and of course there are a few people around who can remember the days before the second triumvirate, though they aren't many. A succession struggle between Agrippa and Marcellus might help as well. I thin Augustus living so long is what sealed the republic's fate.

see also
AHC: Have the Roman Republic Last
JoshuaTheRoman

AHC: Save the Roman Republic
Elcheapodeca

Yet Another 'Save the Roman Republic' Thread
DominusNovus

I'm sure there's more, the search I tried only went back a couple of years.


Basically, once you started having successful generals able to take over the state, it becomes really difficult to keep that from happening again.

At minimum, you'd need to
1) provide governmental support for retired soldiers, as opposed to generals providing their own soldiers with loot and land. How you do that is tricky. How can you possibly convince soldiers that the loot they gain is due to the beneficient State, not to the general that conquered new territory and provided the opportunities for loot. Basically, you might have to severely clamp down on Roman expansion, so there aren't many opportunities to gain that loot.
2) probably fix the tax-farming/exploitation of the provinces. If governors appointed to Asia, for instance, can reasonably expect to squeeze enough money out of their province to be able to buy massive power in Rome, it's going to severely impact viability of the Republic.
3) There's a huge amount of reform that needs to happen. An Emperor, ruling by decree, is equally authoritarian over all the Empire (in principle). A (somewhat vague) democracy where the only voters are in the City of Rome is guaranteed to increase the us-versus-them mentality of everyone who's supposedly equally 'Roman'.

These are minimal requirements. How to get any of them, is very difficult. How to get all, I have no clue.

Your statements theoretically make sense. But in fact they are a total contradiction with the reality of the roman republic.

There was no government in the roman republic. There was no such thing as a permanent administration with civil servants. The government was the annual magistrates, under the control of the Assembly of nobles called the Senate and with the votes of the People's assemblies.

What you are describing as a solution is in fact what you intend to avoid. You''re describing the augustan solution which needed the stability of a long lasting ruler.

Some of it can be done-I presume it is possible for the senate to establish a reserve fund specifically for paying soldiers for example.

The reserve fund was in fact land assignations. And the Senate hated it. In Rome, you need to be a magistrate to propose a bill. And in the roman mentality, the magistrate who passed a law took credit personnally for it. The problem has its source in roman ancient mentality.

Save the republic?

You may be able to momentarily when Caligula is assassinated. The Praetorian Guard's original goal was to kill off all of the Julio-Claudians, failing to do so once Claudius was seen hiding behind a curtain. If he dies, it gives the Republic a chance to come back, although another general or politician would probably try to become Emperor.

Matteo said:

The reserve fund was in fact land assignations. And the Senate hated it. In Rome, you need to be a magistrate to propose a bill. And in the roman mentality, the magistrate who passed a law took credit personnally for it. The problem has its source in roman ancient mentality.

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I'm thinking something more like what AUgustus established-a fund specifically designed to pay troops, rather than him having to pay them directly out of his own pockets which he had been doing up until then. I'm not sure why the Roman senate couldn't do this-it actually seems exactly like one of those half measures they would normally adopt to avoid doing land reform.

ByzantineMan said:

You may be able to momentarily when Caligula is assassinated. The Praetorian Guard's original goal was to kill off all of the Julio-Claudians, failing to do so once Claudius was seen hiding behind a curtain. If he dies, it gives the Republic a chance to come back, although another general or politician would probably try to become Emperor.

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That wasn't the guard's goal-it would be against their own interests-they very much wanted an emperor because without one they would surely be disbanded because they wouldn't be needed. Rather, that was the goal of the senatorial conspirators.

Matteo said:

Your statements theoretically make sense. But in fact they are a total contradiction with the reality of the roman republic.

There was no government in the roman republic. There was no such thing as a permanent administration with civil servants. The government was the annual magistrates, under the control of the Assembly of nobles called the Senate and with the votes of the People's assemblies.

What you are describing as a solution is in fact what you intend to avoid. You''re describing the augustan solution which needed the stability of a long lasting ruler.

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This. The Roman Republic didn't fail because of a group of very successful Generals upended a somewhat stable polity. Ancient Rome was a mess, especially in its Republican period. That's why you had people like Sulla and Caesar taking power, and other disastrous periods. Rome during its late Republican period can best be described as "military anarchy" - there was little semblance of actual permanence aside from the power of the Legion.

You'd need a radically, radically different Republic in order for it to survive, as well as a much weaker military or stronger emphasis on civic virtue. And for that you'd need a much earlier PoD.