Avidius Cassius was Emperor? I thought he was only Caesar cool tho, interesting to see that Voltinius wasnt the only caesar to die on an Augusths seeing as Cerialis had 3.
Hadrian's Consolidation - reboot
- Thread starter Hecatee
- Start date
Hecatee
Donor
Well the timeskip was mostly what OTL is the severan dynasty and which here is considered to be the Antonine dynasty still even if fully by adoption : the name "Antoninus" is still given to every heir, showing the continuity, with Caesar signifying the imperial succession and Augustus the imperial title (with Princeps being the official adress).
As for the usurpation you may look back at that update : https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...olidation-reboot.388488/page-85#post-19127342
Yes, he did rule in the end, and yes being a Caesar does not prevent from early death, including stupid ones
Hecatee
Donor
I'm afraid that due that unforseen circumstances (in this case the fact my 98 years old grandad had to be hospitalized following a fall and a night spent on the cold floor of his garage, although I'm happy to say that the former Resistant and Déporté (deported to Nazi camps) is as well as can be expected at for his age and circumstances) I've not been able to write a post in time for today. In the meantime I'll answer any question you might have.
Ramontxo
Donor
An homage to your grandfather. I am sure one of the "strategic" decisions you had made in order to develop this thread is when (or if?) Is black powder going to arrive. With a lot of Natural Philosophers experimenting with minerals and their mutual relationships and how they influence each other you can easily find a pod to introduce it
Give ours best wishes to your grand dad!! Don't worry about the update
Hecatee
Donor
Actually I've for a long time done my best to prevent the apparition of gunpowder, that's one of the reasons chemistry was always underdevelopped when compared to other domains of science. Everyone goes for the Romans with guns, but I did not want to fall into the trope
Especially as the Romans had a better metalurgy (at least for bronze) than anyone in Europe until rather late into the Renaissance, thanks to their statue making, so pourring guns will be much easier and a faster process for them than it was OTL ... It won't take long after the invention of the gun to have mobile field artillery , especially given the tactics I've given the Romans : replace the carrobalistae with culverin type of light guns for battlefield support and enjoy the result... On the other hand the lack of real city to besiege and the focus on anti-personnel//anti cavalry usage might lead to earlier canister shots (Song artillery had them, in a way) but slower heavy artillery developpement. What I'm not sure of is wheter it would cause a rapid introduction of hand held weaponry : the archers' great strengh is their indirect fire capacity, which the Romans value a lot because it allows firing above the head of the contact infantry, something hand held guns don't provide... and given that the Romans are not using pike formations, that's an issue, I don't see them valuing the shock value of volley fire above the value of a pilum/plumbata + gladius combination. Maybe pistols for cavalry use rather than musket type ?
Derek Pullem
Donor
More likely to adopt grenades than handguns. Grenades plus gladius would suit roman tactics.
Honestly I wonder if the Romans could be reintroduced to pike formations if they start using large amounts of small handgonne type firearms or crossbows. I suppose you'd be limited to Phalanxes without at least some plate armor like the Swiss formations. Maybe even revive the Triarii but eqipped with pikes?
Part of me wonders how a traditional Macedonian Phalanx would hold up with better steel armor. I guess I just have a love of pikes, who can blame me.
Part of me wonders how a traditional Macedonian Phalanx would hold up with better steel armor. I guess I just have a love of pikes, who can blame me.
Why would Romans adopt a formation they had overcome in the past with traditional legionaries? That's a big reason they conquered Greece and Macedon in the first place.
That's a bit of an oversimplification (given, one the Romans themselves could very well be guilty in believing). The legion was a lot more flexible and a bit better at reacting to a flanking maneuver as well as fighting over less than favorable ground, I doubt phalanx armies could ever take Gaul for example.
But on a perfectly flat plain going head to head with a Phalanx is just nope. The best you can do is try and decimate their cavalry then encircle them. I mean to my knowledge the Romans were the only ones after the widespread dispersion of the Macedonian Phalanx to try and attack it head on.
So while I wouldn't recommend completely ousting the Legions just have something like the Triarri of the old Republic.
And it's not like the Legions didn't have their weaknesses, look at how much damage the Dacian falx did. I can't imagine those doing anything to pikes.
I do want to see Romans use gunpowder weapons and evolve their fighting style, a big part of the appeal of this timeline is seeing Rome mature technologically and socio-culturally after all.
However I have absolutely no problems with the discovery of gunpowder being delayed. In fact that has been a question on my mind lately. How likely is discovery of gunpowder anyway? It is just one chemical compound out of a myriad. Eventually some kind of explosive powder that can be used to propel projectiles will emerge as chemistry develops, but will it be gunpowder as we know it? How different chemically are black gunpowder and smokeless gunpowder anyway? I just don't know the answers to these questions, but it is an interesting one to ask. Was gunpowder always very likely to be discovered and used or was it a huge fluke?
However I have absolutely no problems with the discovery of gunpowder being delayed. In fact that has been a question on my mind lately. How likely is discovery of gunpowder anyway? It is just one chemical compound out of a myriad. Eventually some kind of explosive powder that can be used to propel projectiles will emerge as chemistry develops, but will it be gunpowder as we know it? How different chemically are black gunpowder and smokeless gunpowder anyway? I just don't know the answers to these questions, but it is an interesting one to ask. Was gunpowder always very likely to be discovered and used or was it a huge fluke?
Well both sulphure and saltpetre were used by alchemists and thought to have healing properties. Just add some charcoal and fiddle with the ratios and boom.
With all this chemical progress, someone and somewhere is bound, sooner or later, to discover gunpowder and we'd soon get this.
Honestly I think the Romans would have more to loose from widespread introduction of firearms. I'd guess if it did develop it would be in India or even China with the Romans only adopting it when its clear traditional Legion formations would get blundered by it and move onto something like a Tercio.
What's the status of Christianity and the Roman pantheon? Also, who is currently ruling Persia?
Hecatee
Donor
Christanity is a hunted and very marginal sect that can't even hide with the Jews given they were largely expelled from the Empire a century before, Christians being a collateral damage. Their is no vibrant network of Christians in every city of the Empire but small, isolated and more and more diverging groups of undereducated slaves and freedmen, the religion never really managed to transition to higher social classes.
The traditional religion still lives on, being seen by the elite as an opportunity for community moments and acts of philantropy (as it allows the rich to offer food and spectacles to the poors) but philosophical advances mean that the elites at least are more and more either theist or agnostic, with a fair amount going as far as atheism.
The much reduced Persia has finally managed to re-unite after being shattered for around half a century due to the combined effect of the Roman victories and the plague, a new dynasty called Sassanids has managed to come on top of the decades of intercine warfare.
Interesting. I'm curious to see how the Graeco-Roman pantheon will change over time with the advances in philosophy. Also, the Sassanids are in charge, interested to see if their as capable as in OTL. Eagerly awaiting the next update!
Luoyang Shi, Serica, May 247
Hecatee
Donor
Luoyang Shi, Serica, May 247
Manlius Torquatus Primus was resting in the garden of his house, or rather the garden of the official house of the representative of Rome to the Celestial Empire. Beside attending to many ceremonies, his role was to help the few merchants that came to the Empire all the way from Rome, or more usually either Aegyptus or Mesopotamia, and ensure that any message from one of the Emperors reached its counterpart across the world.
As part of his ceremonial status he had been granted the consular attributes, including the twelve lictors, and a guard of a century of legionaries, which were all living into the large compound one of his predecessor had been attributed.
The position was an exception amongst the pro-praetures, outside of the normal cursus honorum and pursued by few, but it was worth it in the eye of Torquatus, even during those troubled times. The Serican Han dynasty was, by all accounts, moribund when Rome had first made contact almost a century before, but had been re dynamised, helped by a very good minister called Cao Cao. Yet it was in many ways too late and ten years did not pass after the death of Cao Cao, who’d served three emperors, before the country fell into a civil war which had lasted for seven long years.
The fighting had happened far from the capital, but trade had been disrupted : silk had gone pricier, but had kept coming. Surprisingly in the eye of some, none of the contestant for the throne had tried to get the Romans to side with them, nor to bribe them with the secret of silk making. This, more than anything else, had demonstrated that for all of the respect shown to them, the Romans were still considered barbarians by the Sericans, a designation which in many ways the Romans thought applied to the Sericans, the worst case of Eastern absolutism ever seen, more evil in that respect than the Persian empire of old !
Torquatus was halfway through the second roll of Ovide’s Metamorphosis, who'se musing on exile sometime matched his mood, when a discrete cough disturbed his concentration. Raising his eyes, he saw his head lictor Marcus Aetius Pius standing at attention next to another man from his detachment. Nodding, Torquatus put his papyrus on the table next to him and took a cup of fresh fruit juice.
“Yes Aetius?” With excitation in his voice, the head lictor replied with an unexpected answer : “Your excellency, my colleague here has been able to finally answer the question of the origin of silks !”
The shock made the propraetor let his cup fall. The delicate light green ceramic broke on the tiled floor of the garden porch. He did however manage to utter “How ?”. It was the second lictor who answered : “Well your excellency, I did manage to strike a comfortable relationship with a young women I met at the market, and we have become intimate. Three days ago we struck a conversation about what we did not understand about each other’s worlds. While she was curious about my axe, and by that I mean my fasces and not my… hum... you see what I mean, I played with her silken gown and told her I could not understand how mankind could make such beautiful threads.
She laughed and told me it was because no man does it as it is the fruit of the labours of a caterpillar ! I told her I did not believe er so she went to her basket and took a mass of thread glued together, clearly the cocoon of some kind of caterpillar. She told me that in her youth she’d had to go collect them on a tree but that now she had to get them on the market and bring them to her mistress for cooking and threading…”
“Jupiter be blessed ! This is stupendous news ! Do you think your lady might want to come to Rome ?”
Manlius Torquatus Primus was resting in the garden of his house, or rather the garden of the official house of the representative of Rome to the Celestial Empire. Beside attending to many ceremonies, his role was to help the few merchants that came to the Empire all the way from Rome, or more usually either Aegyptus or Mesopotamia, and ensure that any message from one of the Emperors reached its counterpart across the world.
As part of his ceremonial status he had been granted the consular attributes, including the twelve lictors, and a guard of a century of legionaries, which were all living into the large compound one of his predecessor had been attributed.
The position was an exception amongst the pro-praetures, outside of the normal cursus honorum and pursued by few, but it was worth it in the eye of Torquatus, even during those troubled times. The Serican Han dynasty was, by all accounts, moribund when Rome had first made contact almost a century before, but had been re dynamised, helped by a very good minister called Cao Cao. Yet it was in many ways too late and ten years did not pass after the death of Cao Cao, who’d served three emperors, before the country fell into a civil war which had lasted for seven long years.
The fighting had happened far from the capital, but trade had been disrupted : silk had gone pricier, but had kept coming. Surprisingly in the eye of some, none of the contestant for the throne had tried to get the Romans to side with them, nor to bribe them with the secret of silk making. This, more than anything else, had demonstrated that for all of the respect shown to them, the Romans were still considered barbarians by the Sericans, a designation which in many ways the Romans thought applied to the Sericans, the worst case of Eastern absolutism ever seen, more evil in that respect than the Persian empire of old !
Torquatus was halfway through the second roll of Ovide’s Metamorphosis, who'se musing on exile sometime matched his mood, when a discrete cough disturbed his concentration. Raising his eyes, he saw his head lictor Marcus Aetius Pius standing at attention next to another man from his detachment. Nodding, Torquatus put his papyrus on the table next to him and took a cup of fresh fruit juice.
“Yes Aetius?” With excitation in his voice, the head lictor replied with an unexpected answer : “Your excellency, my colleague here has been able to finally answer the question of the origin of silks !”
The shock made the propraetor let his cup fall. The delicate light green ceramic broke on the tiled floor of the garden porch. He did however manage to utter “How ?”. It was the second lictor who answered : “Well your excellency, I did manage to strike a comfortable relationship with a young women I met at the market, and we have become intimate. Three days ago we struck a conversation about what we did not understand about each other’s worlds. While she was curious about my axe, and by that I mean my fasces and not my… hum... you see what I mean, I played with her silken gown and told her I could not understand how mankind could make such beautiful threads.
She laughed and told me it was because no man does it as it is the fruit of the labours of a caterpillar ! I told her I did not believe er so she went to her basket and took a mass of thread glued together, clearly the cocoon of some kind of caterpillar. She told me that in her youth she’d had to go collect them on a tree but that now she had to get them on the market and bring them to her mistress for cooking and threading…”
“Jupiter be blessed ! This is stupendous news ! Do you think your lady might want to come to Rome ?”