AHC: Roman Republic Revival

It's kinda impossible at the height of the empire. The amount of land for possible government ruled by the mob is just to big. Ancient Republics only function when the state doesn't have vast swats of territory. Even if someone where to create a republic in Rome the capital, several generals would oppose that and try
To seize the throne.
 
Wait, so the republic was an actual democracy? I was under the impression that the Senate was basically a body of nobles.
 
Wait, so the republic was an actual democracy? I was under the impression that the Senate was basically a body of nobles.

It was no such thing. Of course, 'nobles' doesn't describe it very well, eitzher, but it was an assembly of the privileged and powerful.

The problem, with the OP is that we first need to define what we mean by 'Republic'. It would certainly be possible for the Roman state to revert to sdomething like the post-Sullan form of government at some point in the first century AD, with the privileged classes actually competing for meaningful power. I don't think that would last long because civil war between Roman generals always tended to be awfully hard on everyone not a general. But it would be doable. A pre-Sullan system of traditional checks and balances - probably not so much.

To the Romans themselves, of course, the question doesn't arise. They always lived in a res publica - Augustus and Valerian were both addressed as saviours of the Republic in their time. There was no transition to imperium, imperium was something you had, not something you were. You could have constitutional changes, of course, but the state did not stop being res publica because of trivial stuff like that.
 
Wait, so the republic was an actual democracy? I was under the impression that the Senate was basically a body of nobles.

Mob for me means the rich, literate and powerful. The commoners of the ancient Roman Republic didn't really have a say in how things where governed.
 
Post-Sullan sounds a lot like what I'm going for. How long is not long? A decade, two decades, a century?
 
To the Romans themselves, of course, the question doesn't arise. They always lived in a res publica - Augustus and Valerian were both addressed as saviours of the Republic in their time. There was no transition to imperium, imperium was something you had, not something you were. You could have constitutional changes, of course, but the state did not stop being res publica because of trivial stuff like that.

Indeed, they took the office Princeps.

I think the Republic is even de jure toast by the time Dominus is declared.
 
It's kinda impossible at the height of the empire. The amount of land for possible government ruled by the mob is just to big. Ancient Republics only function when the state doesn't have vast swats of territory. Even if someone where to create a republic in Rome the capital, several generals would oppose that and try
To seize the throne.

The republic wasn't doomed to extinction, at least not for those reasons.

Though to the OP, reviving it at the height of the empire just isn't going to happen. The latest point is probably the assassination of Caligula.
 
Post-Sullan sounds a lot like what I'm going for. How long is not long? A decade, two decades, a century?

If you want the post-Sullan republic to survive that is not hard at all (not indefinitely but definitely for at least another generation or two and then of course you could make it survive longer in any given TL). The idea that the republic was just doomed to fail in the decades after Sulla was shown by Gruen in "The Last Generation of The Roman Republic" to be faulty and misguided. Even up until the very last weeks before Caesar crossed the Rubicon that crisis at least could have been easily averted.
 

Sulemain

Banned
I actually wrote an essay about the relationship between the Roman Army and State and my main argument was in order for the Republic to survive, they had to make the Army loyal to the state rather then it's generals. Once that loyalty went away, restoring the Republic would be near impossible.
 
The republic wasn't doomed to extinction, at least not for those reasons.

Though to the OP, reviving it at the height of the empire just isn't going to happen. The latest point is probably the assassination of Caligula.

Yes I was just stating some of the reason that I could think of without going for a book. We could fill a book why the Roman Republic fell an not be done. Personally the ending years of the Republic is one the most interesting part of Roman History.:)

Post Caligula was the best time for a Republican move. But where there any people powerful enough and had that goal in mind?
 
Yes I was just stating some of the reason that I could think of without going for a book. We could fill a book why the Roman Republic fell an not be done. Personally the ending years of the Republic is one the most interesting part of Roman History.:)

Two books already cover the opposing viewpoints sufficiently actually: Gruen's The Last Generation of The Roman Republic, and Syme's The Roman Revolution.

I would put the end of the republic as the second most interesting part of Roman history, the fall of the WRE being the first.
 
Two books already cover the opposing viewpoints sufficiently actually: Gruen's The Last Generation of The Roman Republic, and Syme's The Roman Revolution.

I would put the end of the republic as the second most interesting part of Roman history, the fall of the WRE being the first.

Between the two book which would in your opinions as the most interesting? I may buy one or both this Christmas.

I like to see the end of west as the closing of first saga of the Roman Empire. With numerous tragic and unique individuals, like a great show made by Shakespeare. I like the ending years of the republic due to the political intrigue and how one guy pretty much scrapped a centuries old tradition without having the population linch him.
 
Greens is in my opinion the most compelling and more exhaustively researched. As it is practically a response to syme it covers his argument (without actually directly mentioning that) and refutes it bit by bit. It can get a little dry at times though as He really does cover every detail (as does syme) . I never got to finish reading either of them though as Ii couldn't renew them from the library, but I read what I though were the most important chapters of each.
 
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