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Quite right. Personally, I don't see anyone pulling off another Alexander. In fact, if it hadn't actually happened, Alexander's career would have looked like a massive Macedonian wank. The fact is, Mesopotamia is too far removed from the center of Roman power to ever really fall under direct...

You are totally going to see this in my TL, Belisarius Reigns. I won't spoil it all for you, but the concept is a Roman Empire surviving, with a POD during Justinian's day. Christianity becomes more unified, rather than more sectarian, and Axum (Ethiopia) becomes closely allied with the Roman...

The Battle of Babylon Tiberius knew the future of the Roman Empire hinged in the dusty fringes of ancient Babylon. Within that chaotic insanity, lay the final deliverance or failure of the world he knew, the world of his forefathers. He knew himself as he was, a product of the renaissance of...

The best POD for this is Maurice remaining on the throne for a longer period, either by eliminating Phocas or by not forcing the army to winter north of the Danube. Any point after this, the ERE is going to be screwed. Keep Phocas on the throne, and the Persians are still going to cause a lot...

The Final Phase The Thirty Years War had, by this time, been going on for two decades. Children had been born and raised who didn't know of a time when Rome had not been in a life or death struggle with Persia. Emperor Romulus had shifted the entire economy of the Empire to a war footing and...

I'm a little more busy than I'd like at the current moment, but I should be back to posting my regular updates later this week :).

Oddly, this could be better for Byzantium's long-term prospects. The capture of Constantinople created a situation where Michael VIII focused almost exclusively on the Western frontiers of the empire, and the Turks gained ground... a pattern that would continue until Western Asia Minor was lost...

This is the issue though. If we judge the Byzantine Empire (or even the Roman Empire) and compare it to modern nations then you would be quite correct, both would be terribly weak. But that's a false comparison. We have to compare the Empire to its contemporaries. Western Europe, pre-Crusades...

Not necessarily. It -could- be butterflied.. then again it's possible it might not be. Muhammad was born around 570, by traditional accounts, after all. So a POD at 602 doesn't make him go away or alter his upbringing in any way. Of course it might alter affairs enough that he doesn't found a...

Sure there was, yet it was still incestuous. A nice, settled military family might, for example, move into the bureaucracy with time. The reverse happened sometimes, too, where prominent families in the city would eventually branch out into military affairs. The Palaeologus are a great example...

Rofl. You may be right, but I think it actually does come from some sort of myth. Still, giggling uncontrollably at his fart might not endear one to Caesar.

I don't think the picture is quite that neat and simple. The civil service, as you put it, was not a sort of monolithic block. I look at it more like this, the Empire really had three branches of government, The Emperor, The Church and the Nobility/Bureaucracy (mostly one and the same really)...

Battle sites now color coded by nation. Red line in Roman Empire indicates approximate boundary of Western vs. Eastern control. Purple-Red line in Sassanid Empire indicates furthest advance of Ardeshir's revolt (and includes battle as a Sassanid victory, though... that's kind of misleading!)

Agreed ;). A Fart does not require ASB. As for where I'm going with this... I'm not entirely sure yet. There's some serious butterflies involved, however. I just had this sudden insight while watching the (totally inaccurate) 60's Cleopatra movie. She's acting all sexy and trying to seduce...

I agree that many points of departure can be found for the Byzantines... however, my argument is that the Byzantine system served as BOTH a negative force (in agreement with your outlook), which would periodically bring the Empire into serious trouble, but also served as a bizarre cultural and...

In a sense, yes. But you'll never see a strongly unified Roman Empire, such as existed prior to Diocletian's East/West split. There's simply too much history of a divided empire for that to overcome. Although it's possible you'll see some Emperors rule more than one section at a time, on...

This bureaucratic structure was a double-edged sword. You are right that it was quite top-heavy and often a source of serious problems in the Empire. However it also provided it with institutional memory going all the way back to the Roman period. Often times, Byzantine diplomacy was so...

591 - 600 The Long War In the Fall of 590, the citizens of Constantinople breathed a sigh of relief. The Avars were in full retreat, the Persians were destroyed and Tiberius had managed to re-secure western Asia Minor. Everyone expected the Sassanids to pack up for home and end the war...

Actually that's a reverse example. And Byzantium wasn't 'pitifully weak' until after 1204. Even in Manuel I's time, in the mid 1100's, Byzantium was regarded as the strongest state in Europe by far. Its fall in 1204 was a shock to pretty much everyone, including, I suspect, to the very Crusaders...

Peroz is, essentially, a madman. Still, a huge Roman/Sassanid war like this was pretty much inevitable. In OTL it happened because Chosroes II had the excuse of his patron, Maurice, being deposed. Here it happens because Peroz is flippin' nuts and has a personal grudge against Rome.