AHC: Rome Killed in the Cradle

This challenge is to create a plausible scenario where Rome is destroyed in the middle of its rise. The POD must be before the Punic Wars.
 
This challenge is to create a plausible scenario where Rome is destroyed in the middle of its rise. The POD must be before the Punic Wars.

A more successful ( = longer living) Alexander the Great, expanding his new empire west, now that he's reached his eastern limit, might do the trick....
 
Easy. The sack of Rome by Brennus and the senones in 399 succeeds completely. Rome is destroyed, leading Romans evacuate to veii...and 2400 years later a timeline called the weighted scales is created, on what if the Romans survived the sack.
 
There's also the POD of the Battle of Caudine Forks, by having the samnites slaughter the trapped Roman army instead of letting them go. Rome weakens and Pyrrhus swallows up everything. :D
 
Easy. The sack of Rome by Brennus and the senones in 399 succeeds completely. Rome is destroyed, leading Romans evacuate to veii...and 2400 years later a timeline called the weighted scales is created, on what if the Romans survived the sack.
Oh, I could see criticism of that TL.

"There's no way all that could come from one ass-backwards city! Forget AH Wank, this is AH Bukkake!"
 
What if the Tarquinian conspiracy succeeds? With opponents banished or killed, the republic either disappears or is delayed for long enough to let other powers entrench themselves in the area.
 
Oh, I could see criticism of that TL.

"There's no way all that could come from one ass-backwards city! Forget AH Wank, this is AH Bukkake!"

Yup. Sometimes people seem to forget that a lot of OTL is...well seemingly ASB.


What if the Tarquinian conspiracy succeeds? With opponents banished or killed, the republic either disappears or is delayed for long enough to let other powers entrench themselves in the area.
You should take any specific events during the Kingdom era with a grain of salt. Anyway, since it was likely based on some real event, it could definitely work. Any pre-sack POD, since Rome didn't have the Servian Walls until post sack, can succeed in destroying Rome without much trouble.
 

Alkahest

Banned
Slydessertfox, what do you think made Rome different from all other Italian cities around that same time? It does seem a bit ASB that Rome would rise and expand in the way that it did, but from what little I know of history all apparent ASBs are the result of insufficient knowledge on my part.
 
The Weighted Scales is about ancient Europe where Rome doesn't rise to power. However the Greeks and Celts do very well in place.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
There were many peoples throughout history that had it in them to do great things.

Sufficiently analyze the political, military, and social situation of high medieval Eurasia, and I'm sure one could come to the conclusion that a unified nomadic power could steamroll the whole thing.
An army of the best archers on earth who have a near symbiotic relationship with horses and are such experts at living off the land that they throw logistics out the window? It's practically obvious that such a force would decimate the clumsy, small, and stagnating armies of the rest of the world given unified leadership, a good tactician, and the motivation to do so. Not to mention being led by history's most supreme badass.

The Romans were the same sort of thing. After the decimation of the primitive greek-style army by Brennus, the Romans adapted and created the familiar versatile block formations, multifaceted tactics, and experience-rather-than-birth unit divisions that were so different from everything else at the time. These armies could best any other force in the Mediterranean world not led by a tactical god (ahem, Hannibal), and the only weakness was a particularly bad commander being in charge, or fighting a heavy cavalry force of the Persian type, which didn't really exist in Europe.

The Romans were politically versatile, stemming from their famously proud and unruly nature. They were, after all, probably the descendants of thieves, pirates, vagrants, and other criminals whom the rest of the world didn't want. These types of people settling a city are bound to do something interesting. This also means that they were the kind of people who had an inherent resourcefulness, hence the Romans' tendency to adopt good ideas from the peoples they encountered, which is a trait shared by the Mongols. Not only did they not play by the rules of "civilized" war at the time, but they could also beat everyone else at their own game, using their own ideas in new ways.
 

Alkahest

Banned
The Romans were politically versatile, stemming from their famously proud and unruly nature. They were, after all, probably the descendants of thieves, pirates, vagrants, and other criminals whom the rest of the world didn't want. These types of people settling a city are bound to do something interesting.
So I assume Australians will conquer the world, then?
 

Dorozhand

Banned
So I assume Australians will conquer the world, then?

They have the unruliness, resourcefulness, and versatility, but they don't have a will to conquer anybody, owing to the fact that they don't live in the age of multinational land empires which the Romans and Mongols inhabited, and the geopolitical situation of the modern day does not play to their advantage, unlike the Romans and Mongols, for whom much of the world was practically asking for it.
 
Slydessertfox, what do you think made Rome different from all other Italian cities around that same time? It does seem a bit ASB that Rome would rise and expand in the way that it did, but from what little I know of history all apparent ASBs are the result of insufficient knowledge on my part.

Well some would say their soldier-farming culture, but they really weren't any more warlike than their Latin neighbors, or for that matter, the other Italian peoples (except, possibly the Etruscans). It involve a lot of luck and good leadership I think, at least to gain control of the Latin cities. For most of their early history, they were subjects of the Etruscans and there is evidence that on an occasion or two (Lars Porsena comes to mind) that Rome was occupied by a foreign army.

Anyway, once the Romans subjugated the Latins, their main strength was their manpower. IIRC, Latium was the most populous area in Italy (aside from perhaps Etruria, though I'm not sure). They could simply just outlast their opponents, and after the Latin War in the 340's-330's, unlike their loosely confederated opponents (such as the Samnites and Etruscans), the Latins were united firmly as one central state under the hegemony of Rome.

EDIT: Also, their ability to adapt the ways of warfare from others was a huge strength.
 
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