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I am not really arguing that lax discipline was due to the actions of emperors specifically/only, and that other factors were not influential. What effect do you think the decision for various emperors in a relatively small timeframe to largely increase the reward of the legions, as a way to...

And to what extend it is related with other more long term factors such as stronger barbarians, or change of roman economy unrelated to actions of the Severans, or Plague of Cyprian, the rise of the Sassanids or other factors. Actions I am thinking about is Severus expansion of roman legions...

The neighboring eastern empire. Whether it's Persians, Sassanids, Arabs, then the Turks (when they became the eastern neighbors and started conquering terittory. If they did better against the turks, and the Mongols still were the phenomenon they became, they would also be big here. Edit...

I would give it to Aurelian for restoring the empire as first. Second is Augustus Augustus model probably resulted in less civil wars than if he wasn't there, but I see it as a mark against the man that he spent so much time killing other romans. His legacy was lucky in that his ambition and...

Actually that sounds interesting to read. Can you give that evidence?

I am personally more fascinated by crossbows. I wonder what improvements could they have made to their crossbows technology? Basically, I am looking at what modern crossbows can do and I wonder how much that technology could have been pushed in pre modern times.

I have been looking at many crossbow videos recently and what I was imagining/wondering is what kind of effective bows could have been developed and used if there was no gunpowder. So, there is the modern crossbow, what improvements that are related to the modern crossbow over the older...

There are regional variants of Greek already, with their own differences, dictionary, etc, such as Cypriot Greek. The way to increase this, to have a larger number of Greek speakers live in more places, this would increase regional variants. Multiple Greek states would reduce conformity into one...

The effectiveness of horse archers under the Mongols and the effectiveness of horse archers under the use of others wasn't the same. Of course the Mongols like everyone didn't use just one type of unit, even if they made heavy use of horse archers. Western Europeans didn't see horse archery as...

The Huns need more credit as a problem that in combination with other problems, made things worse for the Romans. Not only were they themselves a quite powerful and dangerous enemy, they caused such chaos, and movement of barbarians, and in addition to that the Romans came to grant favors to...

He was pretty bad, but not as bad as portrayed in popular culture because they took it a step beyond that. They put bath salts on someone who by all indications was mentally unwell. Basically the difference between super crazy (popular culture Caligula) and a more regular version of mental...

Romaness changed through the history of the empire. While an eastern dominated rome would be as unrecognisable to say republican roman empire generations as a black president would be to the original generations of the USA, it was the trajectory that the roman empire moved, with new Rome...

Probably a middle point between A and B. The sources we rely upon made many things up or exaggerated or changed, but it isn't a complete fabrication either.

Especially the financial costs. The question came to me in the context of reading this http://www.roman-emperors.org/phocas.htm and the challenges that Maurice faced.

Metaxas opposed the Greco Turkish war because he thought it was too risky and it wouldn't succeed. He was a dictator and there were aspects of fascist regimes he liked and emulated, but he was also a gifted general and a lot more risk averse than the likes of Hitler and Musolini. He wasn't an...

I think there is an underestimation of the changes in roman society before the end of the western roman empire, that makes picking that spot to show the end, as arbitrary in my view. This vision of things remaining roughly similar isn't exactly true. In random order: the rapid expansion of...

It's 1453. If you want to be pedantic, you could claim extremely early on, the roman empire changed from an empire of the Romans, as in Romans being the people of Rome or at least the important forces of the people of Rome (such as the army, those who were citizens, the elite,etc), to an...

I am not sure how to even calculate probability of dominance, but states from western Europe seem as more probable than others to discover the new world, and all advantages that come from that. They also have an advantage in being some distance with some buffer states between them, between the...

Nationalism is a bad word to describe what you mean. I reject that semantics and will say that nationalism already existed long before its supposed rise. Romans were nationalist as fuck and probably more nationalist about Rome than many modern people about their modern country. Their more...

How about more focus in the east and the north rather than recovering the western possessions? Like the following maps. Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to post my crusader kings 2 current game map. :D http://imgur.com/xzUwcFK http://imgur.com/hLXNNrZ