AHC: Make Rome prevail but with less power

[Hipster Stalin]

I mean, a survival of the Roman Empire, but a lot smaller in area and power. POD before the final division of the Roman Empire in East and West. Roman culture must survive too, and an overseas empire in the 1600s-1900s as France or England could also be accepted

 

[Deleted member 97083]

Byzantium?

 

[Alex Zetsu]

Byzantium?

He said Roman culture must survive, this nixes the real life "Eastern culture shift" Byzantium. It should be noted, only the Byz thought they were Roman, the English, Hapsburgs, the Castilians, the moors, and the Hungairans thought otherwise and had various names for them like... Byzantines.

 

[Deleted member 97083]

He said Roman culture must survive, this nixes the real life "Eastern culture shift" Byzantium. It should be noted, only the Byz thought they were Roman, the English, Hapsburgs, the Castilians, the moors, and the Hungairans thought otherwise and had various names for them like... Byzantines.

Roman culture was Latin and Greek culture combined. Lose one half and it still survives, just in a modified form. The Byzantines did the best they could to preserve the Roman parts of their culture, and ancient texts and titles and ideas. When Turkey removed Arabic and Persian words from their vocabulary and switched to the Latin alphabet, did they stop being Turkish?

Also Muslims called the Byzantine Empire "Rum" for centuries.

 

[The Undead Martyr]

Africa is held, or retaken from the vandals. The West recovers, eventually reclaiming Spain. The Western empire, based out of its core if Italy, spain, and Africa periodically controls Provence and Illyria but loses Gaul entirely to the Franks and Burgundians.

Italian and Spanish are even OTL the closest to Latin, TTL the evolution is viewwed more like Chinese due to political continuity.

 

[JoshuaTheRoman]

Perhaps Rome never recovers from the Crisis of the Third Century, and accepts the existence of the Gallic and Palmyrene Empires. They will definitely have to abandon most of Greece and Anatolia if you want them to survive as long as you said in order to establish colonies. Since Egypt is no longer available as a reliable food source, Rome would most likely starve, or at the least, most of the population would move into the countryside.

With a surviving centralized government and buffered from Germanic influence to the North, (Middle Empire) Roman culture could easily remain intact for centuries. Of course Latin would evolve, but I don't see it evolving to the extent it did OTL with the Romance languages.