Varus Victis
- Thread starter Hades
- Start date
We'll see a more aggressive Roman expansion into Germania. It was Varus defeat that prompted Augustus to set the Empire's border at the Rhine With Arminius defeated, the only remaining significant tribe is the Macromanni in Bohemia under King Marbod. And if I remember correctly, there be gold in them thar hills. A potential source of great wealth for the Romans.
General Zod
Banned
The momentum under Augustus to conquer and Romanize Germania just as Caesar did for Gallia never dies out, rather it gets affirmed under following Emperors. During the First Century, Rome assimilates Germania, Bohemia and Dacia. It eventually settles the border of the Empire on the much shorter and rather more easily defended Vistula-Carpathians-Dniester line.
Romanized Germania has massive butterflies on the future of the Empire and Europe. For once, the Empire gets addtional resources from the assmiliated provinces and frees up more from the much shorter border. During the early second century wars with Parthia, Rome has the resources to assimilate at least Armenia and Mesopotamia for good, and bring the border on the Zagros mountains, and a gradual assmiliation of Persia itself during the second century is not unreasonable. Most likely Rome also expands to its other natural borders by conquering Nubia up to the Ethiopian plateau, Hibernia, and Caledonia.
The assimilation of the Germanic barbarians means that independent unassimilated barbarians in Europe now lack the manpower necessary to stage major invasions of the Empire and cause its permanent breakout in nation-states. Periodic massive breakouts from Central Asian nomads, Huns and Mongols, remain a serious threat, but the only one.
The Roman Empire still has some major defects of its socio-political structure to iron out if it has to survive, but a major concause of its demise has turned into substantial additional strength. You see the balkanization of Europe butterflied away, at the very worst the Roman Empire could splinter into a "Carolingian" WRE, a "Byzantine" ERE, and maybe a "Persian" third if Parthia was wholly conquered.
Your PoD sees at the very least this kind of Roman Empire to emerge by 80-120 CE:
Actually I think that's a fairly reasonable map. I'm just not sure I buy Nubia, or at least that much of Nubia... the distances are vast. On the other hand, there aren't really any external threats to control except possibly Axum, or, less likely, Saba/Himyar... someone who knows more can comment on this.
Now Armenia and Mesopotamia, I buy (especially if you can avoid the Jewish revolts and the Kitos War). This is much more defensible for Rome, because the Zagros mountains, despite being "home turf", are not ideal terrain for the Parthian missile cav strength, certainly less so than flat Syria/Mesopotamia.
Absorbing Parthia, well... distances, as with Nubia, are one problem. Earlier development of an Eastern Capital, perhaps; and rather than Byzantium, it might be Antioch, Jerusalem, or even Ctesiphon. But what are your borders, the Indus and the Jaxartes? It's a stretch, and the Huns and Turks are going to be a problem.
Within Europe. Other than Scandinavia, this is the end of the Teutons. But other peoples (Slavs?/Balts?/Finns?), under pressure from and direction of invading Asiatic nomads, will still push eastwards. But this is a much more defensible border. Rome might hold on.
I'd say, Rome does much better keeping the shorter and more defensible Zagros border with successive Persian dynasties. With that line and your borders in Europe, Rome has much greater prospects of long-term survival.
Now Armenia and Mesopotamia, I buy (especially if you can avoid the Jewish revolts and the Kitos War). This is much more defensible for Rome, because the Zagros mountains, despite being "home turf", are not ideal terrain for the Parthian missile cav strength, certainly less so than flat Syria/Mesopotamia.
Absorbing Parthia, well... distances, as with Nubia, are one problem. Earlier development of an Eastern Capital, perhaps; and rather than Byzantium, it might be Antioch, Jerusalem, or even Ctesiphon. But what are your borders, the Indus and the Jaxartes? It's a stretch, and the Huns and Turks are going to be a problem.
Within Europe. Other than Scandinavia, this is the end of the Teutons. But other peoples (Slavs?/Balts?/Finns?), under pressure from and direction of invading Asiatic nomads, will still push eastwards. But this is a much more defensible border. Rome might hold on.
I'd say, Rome does much better keeping the shorter and more defensible Zagros border with successive Persian dynasties. With that line and your borders in Europe, Rome has much greater prospects of long-term survival.
I'd say that even with that map Persia is more likely to become a vassal of Rome rather than a province. Direct annexation will likely overstretch Rome so they will likely go for vassalization.
Nikephoros
Banned
You are all missing a few key points.
Unlike Gaul, Germania wasn't developed enough for the Romans to want to control it. Also, the Rhine was chosen as a frontier because the Romans could get their from the Med using a few rivers and only a short portage. The Oder and the Elbe were also too rough for Rome to use. Rome supplied her frontier armies by river.
Also, with the establishment of an Emperor, conquest no longer was enough to gain power, so conquest fell by the wayside. Teutoberger also wasn't decisive.
Unlike Gaul, Germania wasn't developed enough for the Romans to want to control it. Also, the Rhine was chosen as a frontier because the Romans could get their from the Med using a few rivers and only a short portage. The Oder and the Elbe were also too rough for Rome to use. Rome supplied her frontier armies by river.
Also, with the establishment of an Emperor, conquest no longer was enough to gain power, so conquest fell by the wayside. Teutoberger also wasn't decisive.
Under the Imperial system conquest was dangerous to the reigning Emperor because he couldn't allow a subordinate to win to great a victory, and thereby create a threat, and if he led the conquest then he had to be away from the capital and risk his reputation and life. Plus, all the current borders were pretty defensible, and there wasn't anything worth conquering east of the Rhine, north of the Danube.
Now, if some kind of invention were to become widely used that would create a larger, settled population across Northern Europe, then the Roman Empire could end up expanding into Germania. For instance the heavy plough, which would have produced greater populations, and thus greater trade and tax potential, across Northern Europe.
This discussion looked at the possibility of an earlier invention of the heavy plough.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=106369
General Zod
Banned
Some points:
- As it concerns the settlement of Northern Europe, I am in complete agreement with the point made by MC. I would only add that IMO the Roman conquest of Germania would cause the development of the heavy plough and the three-field system in relatively short order (some decades). For an in-depth analysis of the effects of this innovation, see the thread quoted by MC. But the main effect would be that Romanized Celtic-Germanic Northern Europe would in some centuries become as heavily populated as IOTL High Middle Ages, with the related increase in military levies, trade, and taxes for the Empire.
- In all likelihood, these additional resources allow the Empire to withstand any pressure from Slavs/Balts/Finns quite easily. Occasional major waves of Central Asian nomads might still be a significant military threat for this Roman Empire, but at the very worst they would cause a temporary dynastic crisis, or the breakup of the Empire in WRE/ERE halves, not the permanent political fragmentation of the Romasphere. With the Romanization of the Teutons, independent barbarians utterly lack the demographic basis to create the permanent Balkanization of Europe.
- As it concerns the distances involved in the maintainance of a frontier in Nubia and on the Vistula-Carpathians-Dniester line, I would point out that an Empire with these borders and the related development of Northern Europe, not to mention typical Roman engineering genius, easily could and likely would engage in the expansion of the Suez canal, and the creation of a set of linked canals in Northern Europe.
The Rhine, Weser, Elbe, Oder, and Vistula can be easily linked by a canal system, and they can also easily extend it to the Nemen, Dvina, and Dneiper, if they expand the Empire to the Dvina-Dneiper line. The same way, they can link the Danube, Dneister, and Dneiper. Linking the Rhine and the Danube is only slightly more difficult, you need to cross mountains to change watershed. They ought to develop the summit level canal, but Ancient China did in 4th Century BCE, so it's wholly doable. The Elbe and/or the Oder can be linked with the Danube, and/or or the Vistula with the Dneister. Combined with their excellent road system, and coastal navigation, this would settle their transportation needs over most of Europe. The canal system may be extended westward, too, linking the Rhine with the Scheldt, Meuse, Seine, Loire, Rhone, Saone, and Garonne rivers.
This canal system could and would solve any significant difficulties for the Empire to guarantee military supplies and troop movements, as well as extensive trade, with the border provinces in Nubia and Eastern Europe, in combination with the excellent Roman road system.
Moreover, the Suez canal, and the sea routes through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf it opens up, would indirectly but significantly reduce the (over)extension problems in maintaining Roman provinces in Parthia.
- Last but not least, the Vistula-Carpathians-Dneister line and the Zagros Mountains are optimal borders for the Roman Empire in the 1st-3rd centuries. However, these would not be the final, maximum borders of the Empire.
It is most likely that these borders would prevent the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 3rd-5th Centuries (even if the Empire would need to exploit this breathing space to evolve some effective solutions to the serious defects of its socio-political framework in order to ensure its truly long-term survival). If the Empire holds together, the Dark Ages are butterflied away and in a few centuries Rome would evolve its technology to High Middle Ages levels, both from homegrown development and from unbroken cultural exchange with India and China.
An Empire with these borders, a fully developed Northern Europe, and High Middle Ages technology could easily sustain the expansion to absorb Parthia and Sarmatia, bringing the border to the Dvina-Dnieper (and later the Volga) line, in the NorthEast, and the Indus and the Jaxartes, in the SouthEast. Sustainable absorption of India wiuld probably require mastery of Renaissance technology.
- As it concerns the settlement of Northern Europe, I am in complete agreement with the point made by MC. I would only add that IMO the Roman conquest of Germania would cause the development of the heavy plough and the three-field system in relatively short order (some decades). For an in-depth analysis of the effects of this innovation, see the thread quoted by MC. But the main effect would be that Romanized Celtic-Germanic Northern Europe would in some centuries become as heavily populated as IOTL High Middle Ages, with the related increase in military levies, trade, and taxes for the Empire.
- In all likelihood, these additional resources allow the Empire to withstand any pressure from Slavs/Balts/Finns quite easily. Occasional major waves of Central Asian nomads might still be a significant military threat for this Roman Empire, but at the very worst they would cause a temporary dynastic crisis, or the breakup of the Empire in WRE/ERE halves, not the permanent political fragmentation of the Romasphere. With the Romanization of the Teutons, independent barbarians utterly lack the demographic basis to create the permanent Balkanization of Europe.
- As it concerns the distances involved in the maintainance of a frontier in Nubia and on the Vistula-Carpathians-Dniester line, I would point out that an Empire with these borders and the related development of Northern Europe, not to mention typical Roman engineering genius, easily could and likely would engage in the expansion of the Suez canal, and the creation of a set of linked canals in Northern Europe.
The Rhine, Weser, Elbe, Oder, and Vistula can be easily linked by a canal system, and they can also easily extend it to the Nemen, Dvina, and Dneiper, if they expand the Empire to the Dvina-Dneiper line. The same way, they can link the Danube, Dneister, and Dneiper. Linking the Rhine and the Danube is only slightly more difficult, you need to cross mountains to change watershed. They ought to develop the summit level canal, but Ancient China did in 4th Century BCE, so it's wholly doable. The Elbe and/or the Oder can be linked with the Danube, and/or or the Vistula with the Dneister. Combined with their excellent road system, and coastal navigation, this would settle their transportation needs over most of Europe. The canal system may be extended westward, too, linking the Rhine with the Scheldt, Meuse, Seine, Loire, Rhone, Saone, and Garonne rivers.
This canal system could and would solve any significant difficulties for the Empire to guarantee military supplies and troop movements, as well as extensive trade, with the border provinces in Nubia and Eastern Europe, in combination with the excellent Roman road system.
Moreover, the Suez canal, and the sea routes through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf it opens up, would indirectly but significantly reduce the (over)extension problems in maintaining Roman provinces in Parthia.
- Last but not least, the Vistula-Carpathians-Dneister line and the Zagros Mountains are optimal borders for the Roman Empire in the 1st-3rd centuries. However, these would not be the final, maximum borders of the Empire.
It is most likely that these borders would prevent the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 3rd-5th Centuries (even if the Empire would need to exploit this breathing space to evolve some effective solutions to the serious defects of its socio-political framework in order to ensure its truly long-term survival). If the Empire holds together, the Dark Ages are butterflied away and in a few centuries Rome would evolve its technology to High Middle Ages levels, both from homegrown development and from unbroken cultural exchange with India and China.
An Empire with these borders, a fully developed Northern Europe, and High Middle Ages technology could easily sustain the expansion to absorb Parthia and Sarmatia, bringing the border to the Dvina-Dnieper (and later the Volga) line, in the NorthEast, and the Indus and the Jaxartes, in the SouthEast. Sustainable absorption of India wiuld probably require mastery of Renaissance technology.
Last edited:
Agree with GZ's comments. I beginning to think that the only way to really save the Roman Empire from eventual break-up is not to figure out how to start a Commercial Revolution, or some progressive political innovation, but rather create a stifling professional bureaucracy, one that regularizes succession and tightly, centrally controls the Empire. Basically, make Rome into China West.
On whether the Emperors opposed conquest as a matter of policy:
there's something to that, but you have to remember that conquest also legitimated an Emperor's rule.
Note that the Roman Empire is still going to experience the demographic disaster that beset it in our OTL Dominate period and onward (probably due to disease), but the Germans are also going to be affected in this TL and the Empire is going to be fundamentally stronger. The slavs aren't going to be as affected, so you probably still get slav migrations, but these migrations probably won't be wars of conquests. You are probably also going to get some pressure from Scandinavia (the population explosion will probably happen at the same time as in OTL, for the same reasons), but by then the population of the Empire will be somewhat recovered and should be able to resist better. The Empire will have the wealth to adopt Scandinavian naval construction techniques to build a baltic fleet.
This Empire's main problem is going to be internal political cohesion, which is something that OTL Empire never really solved. Expect more and bloodier civil wars.
there's something to that, but you have to remember that conquest also legitimated an Emperor's rule.
Note that the Roman Empire is still going to experience the demographic disaster that beset it in our OTL Dominate period and onward (probably due to disease), but the Germans are also going to be affected in this TL and the Empire is going to be fundamentally stronger. The slavs aren't going to be as affected, so you probably still get slav migrations, but these migrations probably won't be wars of conquests. You are probably also going to get some pressure from Scandinavia (the population explosion will probably happen at the same time as in OTL, for the same reasons), but by then the population of the Empire will be somewhat recovered and should be able to resist better. The Empire will have the wealth to adopt Scandinavian naval construction techniques to build a baltic fleet.
This Empire's main problem is going to be internal political cohesion, which is something that OTL Empire never really solved. Expect more and bloodier civil wars.
General Mung Beans
Banned
If Germania gets conquered then the Romans might expand even more because they can now recruit German soldiers who are vigorous for war.
General Zod
Banned
I agree that some combination of Commercial Revolution, political restructuring to grant central representation to local landed and urban trading elites (i.e. transforming the Senate into an Empire-wide proto-Parliament) and developing professional bureaucracy to balance military power would be necessary to truly stabilize the Empire in the long term. These development are not necessarily mutually exclusive, however. Rather, it's quite probably true that a combination of Commercial Revolution and professional bureaucracy is the optimal way to neutralize any serious centrifugal tendencies in Roman society. The urban trading elite would balance the landed elite, and the professional bureaucracy would balances the professional army, with the Senate giving some central representation to all those interests, allowing the Emperors to be the effective executive function. Rather than China West, a pre-industrial German or Japanese Empire.
If the Empire avoids economic-political collapse, and expands to include the Teutonic space, in all evidence the severity of the demographic collapse due to disease is largely reduced. E.g. if the Roman urban society, and its high degrees of cleanliness and personal hygiene are maintained throughout Europe and the Middle East, any plagues would greately lessened in severity.
I am totally incapable to discern which factor would cause the Slavs or the Norse to be much less affected by any plagues that would seriously affect the Roman Empire.
This is an euphemism. A surviving Roman Empire with these borders and High Middle Age technology would easily make mincemeats of raiding Slavs/Hungarians/Norse with its highly trained and organized Legions. Time to glut the slave markets with the sorry surviving prisoners of war, and expand the borders to assimilate the lands of the pesky barbarians (Scandinavia is probably of marginal utility even to an Empire with Middle Age or Renaissance tech, but the Baltic and Ukraine would be of great value if properly settled and developed).
Indeed. Yet another piece of tech lore that the Empire greedily assimilates from neighboring cultures, in addition to the stuff they would get from Persia, India. China. Cultural hybridization: the great Roman talent.
Yes, to a degree. See my point above. However, I rather disagree that this Empire would have bloodier civil wars. This Empire would only need to concentrate the vast majority of its legions on the shorter Russian and Iranian borders. That shall make for shorter and less devastating civil wars, since the legions shall be more able to immedately agree on a charismatic and popular general as a unitary "military" candidate for the throne, or to settle their differences quickly by negotiations or battle, as opposed to the various major military concentrations on different borders setting up different pretenders. As the only other power centers that can make an Emperor are the Senate and the Pretorians (and being in the same city, any divergence between them would be settled within hours or days, one way or the other), this makes for dynastic crises with 2/3 contenders only ("Roman", "Russian border", and "Iranian border") hence less destructive to the Empire.
Last edited:
General Zod
Banned
Rather subject to butterflies but IMO this PoD greately lessens the fortunes of Christianity in the Roman Empire even under the most friendly scenario. It may be argued that a very great amount of Christianity's success in those critical ealry centuries was due to the Church providing a rather effective welfare network (and psychological confort) to the urban population (to the rural Europeans, Christianity was rather brutally imposed from the top down through the conversion of the elites, the peasants were perfectly confortable and happy with their Paganism) during the massive social turmoil of the Empire's collapse in the 3rd-5th centuries. Butterfly the collapse away, the Church's appeal is severely lessened. In the most favorable plausible scenario, Christianity stays yet another obscure sect in the panoply of mystery religions that crowded the spiritual landscape of the early Empire, alongside the followers of Mithras, Isis, Cybele, Apollonius etc. In the less favorable plausible scenario, it gradually dies out. Anyway, the fortunes of Middle Eastern monotheisms would be greately lessened anyway in this scenario: Islam is necessarily butterflied away entirely (either Mohammed picks another calling or early Islam becomes yet another minor native uprising or barbarian raid which Roman legons crush swiftly and efficiently), Judaism stays the weird concern of a loony despised minority, and Zoroastrism is either the despised national religion of a cowed vassal state, obviously unfit for adoption or the creed of a conquered people, on the road to extinction.
However, it is plain that Roman religion, while excellent as an expression of patriotic-civic feeling, was just as totally unsatisfactory to fulfill spiritual needs as the Confucianism it most resembled, and Hellenic polytheism, while fulfilling to the masses, had grown somewhat too unsophisticated fro the educated elites. Inevitable fusion and hybridization between Hellenic, Egyptian, Celtic, and Germanic polytheism would revitalize it to a degree, but in order to become a truly long-term success, Roman religion would need something more.
IMO the most likely development is adoption of, or hybridization with, one or more Eastern (i.e. Indian) religion, once Rome conquers Parthia and sets regular major contacts with India and China. Either adoption of Buddhism, or hybridization between European (Hellenic-Celtic-Germanic) and Indian Polytheism, or both. IMO pure Buddhism would conflict somewhat with parts of core Roman culture, but hybrid Euro-Indian polytheism would work fine, regrouping the various branches of Indo-European religion back together after millennia, and Hinduism giving European polytheism that spiritual sophistication that it needed to outcompete Middle Eastern monotheism and mystery religions in the minds of the educated elites.
Or maybe you would see the simultaneous adoption of various non-mutually-hostile religions to fulfill different spiritual needs, just like in East Asia: traditional Roman religion to express patriotic-civic feeling (like Confucianism), Buddhism to give confort about major life crises and the afterlife, Euro-Indian polytheism to give confrot and guidance in everyday activities and events (like religious Taoism and Shinto).
Anything that reduces bloodthirsty and intolerant Abrahamic monotheisms to rather obscure footnotes of history is a great blessing to mankind IMNSHO, however.
Yet another boon of the Roman Empire's expansion and survival, besides greately accelerated technological development and political unity from skipping the Dark Ages and Balkanization in Western Eurasia.
I think the structure of the Roman Church would provide an excellent basis on which to build the bureaucracy that is needed to stabilize the Empire. If the Empire converts to Christianity as per OTL (the 3rd century crisis isn't butterflied away- the POD just makes the Roman Empire big enough that doesn't go into a death spiral after the 3rd century) then the Church offers the kind of social control that the Senate once offered during the Early Empire.
Basically, the Church is going to want stability, and with centralized control of hundreds of bishops across the whole of the Empire, a good relationship with the Church is going to become the important relationship that the Emperor can have. Think of the Church as offering the Western equivalent of the 'Mandate of Heaven' for the Emperor.
Basically, the Church is going to want stability, and with centralized control of hundreds of bishops across the whole of the Empire, a good relationship with the Church is going to become the important relationship that the Emperor can have. Think of the Church as offering the Western equivalent of the 'Mandate of Heaven' for the Emperor.
GZ & MC
Would overall agree with the General, although admit his ideas are probably a best case scenario. However fear that with a bureaucratic/religious set up similar to China you might well get a similar cultural result with the control necessary to minimise civil wars and homologise culture tending to stifle technological and social developments. Would agree that removing the dominance of Abrahamic believes would considerably reduce religious and racial intolerance. However suspect that without that and the political division it helped to generate and maintain we may not have, or have markedly delayed modern society.
That's why I think MC is wrong that the church would provide a good basis for the bureaucracy for the empire. Unless it was far, far less doctrinaire it would still be far too fissile and divisive for the empire. Historically the conflicts between the various sects and groups were used by regional groups for their own aims and in turn provided a means for expanding their own power. In the process however regional divisions were made much deeper and far more difficult to bridge.
Steve
Would overall agree with the General, although admit his ideas are probably a best case scenario. However fear that with a bureaucratic/religious set up similar to China you might well get a similar cultural result with the control necessary to minimise civil wars and homologise culture tending to stifle technological and social developments. Would agree that removing the dominance of Abrahamic believes would considerably reduce religious and racial intolerance. However suspect that without that and the political division it helped to generate and maintain we may not have, or have markedly delayed modern society.
That's why I think MC is wrong that the church would provide a good basis for the bureaucracy for the empire. Unless it was far, far less doctrinaire it would still be far too fissile and divisive for the empire. Historically the conflicts between the various sects and groups were used by regional groups for their own aims and in turn provided a means for expanding their own power. In the process however regional divisions were made much deeper and far more difficult to bridge.
Steve
General Zod
Banned
Yes. A rather plausible one, however. I suppose that giving focus to best-case scenarioes comes with being a strong optimist and focusing interest on the PoDs which produce the outcomes I fancy.
To use an euphemism, I happen to find the argument that political division was necessary to create modern society terribly farfetched. Imperial China steadily procedeed up to Renaissance levels of development, and froze technologically at the very last step before Industrial Revolution. It seems much more like the effect of a low-probability butterfly rather than of a hard sociological law.
I agree with pretty much all of the other remarks from you, otherwise.
The Romans put a third (1/3) of the population of Gaul to the sword during the 7 year course of the Gallic Wars. The pagan, open-minded, Romans. The excesses of Nero were done in a pagan, open-minded Rome. Have the Abrahamic religions done bad things? Sure. But so have all the other religions. In fact, people even do bad things based on no religious context at all (ethnic cleansings during '90s). People do bad things to each other. Most of the Roman Empire's worse excesses were done under pagan Consuls, proconsuls and Emperors. I think its rather ridiculous to pin the blame for atrocities committed after the adoption of Christianity on Christianity.
Does the religious unity demonstrated at the Nicean Council mean anything? Was there religious dissession? Sure. But the Nicean Creed remains the basic tenet of both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthdox Churches. I think that this group tends to ignore the ability of both the Eastern and Western branches of Christiandom to maintain theological and political unity, and the importance of that support in the survival of both the European West and the Byzantine Empire.
I'm arguing this based on the performace of the European West and the Byzantine Empire. The Persian Empire and Byzantine Empire fought for generations, but the Byzantine Empire survived and the Persian Empire fell. Did the Christian Church have something to do with that? I would argue it did. The internal cohesion and legitimacy leant to Byzantine regimes through the support of the Church was important in the Empire's ability to bounce back, even after catastrophic defeats.
In the European West, the Church provided political stability in an age where the Germanic tribes had laid waste to the Western Empire. It served as a replacement for the fallen Western Empire, and its monasteries served to maintain literacy and protect some of ancient Rome's intellectual legacy.
If the POD doesn't butterfly away the 3rd Century Crisis then I don't see how one could avoid the logical next step, which is that the Roman Empire would respond to the 3rd Century Crisis in exactly the same way- by turning to the Christian Church.
Anyway, I don't mean to start any kind of flame war, but could the importance of the Christian Church in Roman and European political history please be acknowledged?
General Zod
Banned
Sorry, but here you are making an improper comparison IMO. The repression Rome employed the quell national resistance in Gaul had very little to do with religious uniformity, it was a pure war of conquest. The deeds of Nero had precisely zero to do with religious issues. It is a pretty much clear fact of history that Abrahamic monotheisms have a rather worse record as it concerns fueling of violence and intolerance directly or indirectly related to religious issues, than any other religion.
Hmm, I think nobody is contesting these specific point. I think that MC's argument (and I would tend to agree) was that while the Church did these things, other social agents, quite possibly neither related to Christianity nor even to religion in general, could have played the same role, quite possibly better, without burdening the Roman Empire or Europe with the baggage of violence and intolerance that Abrahamic monotheisms provenly bring.
I would agree, but only to a point. The victory of the CC was not entirely due to the 3rd Century Crisis alone, but to the whole death spiral process of the Roman Empire in the 3rd-5th Centuries. If the Empire still suffers some kind of crisis in the 3rd Century, but decisively recovers afterwards, the takeover of the Christian Church might still be easily prevented. Even more so if the PoD does not butterfly away the 3rd Century Crisis entirely, but still diminishres it severity significantly.
Granted. Being important does not mean being optimal nor indispensable nor irreplaceable, however. A secular professional bureaucracy and/or a thriving Commercial Revolution urban trading class could have done for a sturdy surviving Roman Empire everything the Church bureaucracy did, with far less baggage.