Best way to prevent the "Fall" of the Roman Empire.

Which POD is the best?

  • Have a competent Emperor succeed Marcus Aurelius

    Votes: 28 28.3%
  • Prevent the rise of the Sassanid monarchy

    Votes: 6 6.1%
  • Have Aurelian keep the throne for longer

    Votes: 2 2.0%
  • Avoid Diocletian's divisions of Empire

    Votes: 4 4.0%
  • Stop Constantine's conversion

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • Avoid the foundation of Constantinople

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Prevent the Huns "pushing" the Goths etc west.

    Votes: 17 17.2%
  • Victory at Adrianople

    Votes: 4 4.0%
  • Theodosius the Great survives longer

    Votes: 1 1.0%
  • The Vandals and Alans are unable to cross the Rhine

    Votes: 3 3.0%
  • No Sack of Rome

    Votes: 3 3.0%
  • No Fall of Carthage

    Votes: 4 4.0%
  • The expedition of 468 is a success.

    Votes: 2 2.0%
  • Justinian gives Belisarius more resources

    Votes: 2 2.0%
  • No Justinianic Plague

    Votes: 11 11.1%
  • Mohammed is never born

    Votes: 10 10.1%
  • Maurice is never overthrown

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Victory at Yarmuk

    Votes: 1 1.0%

  • Total voters
    99

Eurofed

Banned
My whole opinion about these PoDs is that none of them is a guarantee or even especially likely to ensure the long-term survival of the Roman Empire as it commonly meant, i.e. keeping the 2nd century extension and socio-economic development.

You need a pre-3rd Century PoD that ensures far better borders (at the very least, Germania-Bohemia-Dacia to the Vistula-Carpathians-Dniester, Mesopotamia, and Arabia if not Persia itself absolutely need to be conquered and assimilated centuries before they become a major military threat) AND cures some of its socio-political flaws, such as the army pulling coups and the drop of an hat and the landowners going manorial when the state goes into trouble. A good PoD would be Caesar surviving or Ottavian getting lucky at Teutoburg and having Agrippa and his sons as successors.
 
Need a Better Constitution On The List

None of the things you've listed will do it. I have a book of maps that shows Rome growing continuously until a century or two after Augustus and then shrinking, on and off, until it becomes a single city, Constantinople, and the Ottomans do it in.

Absolute monarchy is ablso how Napoleon I did so well in Europe - he was up, especially on land, against a ton of opposing countries whose armies' leaders had gotten their positions by birth or King-buddy-dom, and were largely mediocre. Absolute monarchy is also corrupt and uninnovative.

I tend to think Rome needs at least one check and balance, like, say, the Senate that Rome started with under King Romulus, staying powerful instead of just being show. My favorite PODs are if Marius had fixed his amendment that allowed warlordism, or if some more liberal conqueror of late Rome had won and not been so uselessly power-greedy.
 
None of the things you've listed will do it. I have a book of maps that shows Rome growing continuously until a century or two after Augustus and then shrinking, on and off, until it becomes a single city, Constantinople, and the Ottomans do it in.

Absolute monarchy is ablso how Napoleon I did so well in Europe - he was up, especially on land, against a ton of opposing countries whose armies' leaders had gotten their positions by birth or King-buddy-dom, and were largely mediocre. Absolute monarchy is also corrupt and uninnovative.

I tend to think Rome needs at least one check and balance, like, say, the Senate that Rome started with under King Romulus, staying powerful instead of just being show. My favorite PODs are if Marius had fixed his amendment that allowed warlordism, or if some more liberal conqueror of late Rome had won and not been so uselessly power-greedy.

But the reason the Republic's constitution fell apart was because it was just as corrupt and self-serving institution as the Empire. What you need is actual social reform. When a very, very large chunk of the population is unemployed, living off of free grain in the urban centers, your state is never going to be as powerful as it was when the majority of the population were free farmers living off the land and their own produce.

Keeping Rome from 'falling' requires going all the way back to the Gracchi.
 
But the reason the Republic's constitution fell apart was because it was just as corrupt and self-serving institution as the Empire. What you need is actual social reform. When a very, very large chunk of the population is unemployed, living off of free grain in the urban centers, your state is never going to be as powerful as it was when the majority of the population were free farmers living off the land and their own produce.

Keeping Rome from 'falling' requires going all the way back to the Gracchi.

Still, would even a POD like this be of any use? It took the Romans nearly a thousand years after the death of the Gracchi to establish something vaguelly similar to what they had suggested, but smallholder farmers were eventually established as the core of the economy in the Byzantine period. Yet the Empire continued to fall into civil war fairly reguarly, due to the exact same causes as the civil wars of the late Republic; ambition for power and influence. I don't really see how settling free farmers can save the Republic from itself, save from neutering the power of the urban mob of Rome herself somewhat.
 
Still, would even a POD like this be of any use? It took the Romans nearly a thousand years after the death of the Gracchi to establish something vaguelly similar to what they had suggested, but smallholder farmers were eventually established as the core of the economy in the Byzantine period. Yet the Empire continued to fall into civil war fairly reguarly, due to the exact same causes as the civil wars of the late Republic; ambition for power and influence. I don't really see how settling free farmers can save the Republic from itself, save from neutering the power of the urban mob of Rome herself somewhat.

Because the Late Republic/Empire wasn't wracked by civil war because people were ambitious. People are always ambitious. They still need the MEANS to put that ambition to use. The late Republic suffered civil war after civil war because of the importance of the commanding general in paying the soldiers of the Legions. Since the Senate was pretty much cut out of the loop on that front that made the generals and not the state the main focus of army loyalty.

However, if the majority of Roman soldiers are again un-paid levies from the country-side, instead of professional soldiers from the cities, that problem goes away. The generals no longer have this massive leverage over the men and the Senate. Without that leverage the state remains the sole source of legitimacy, instead of the army becoming a secondary source in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE.
 
Which of these PODs do you think is the best to avoid the total transformation of the Roman world, and ensure the continuity of a Mediterranean centred single Imperial state well beyond the year 650. Poll because I'm bored. Please discuss.

Having a single state for so long is rather dubiously likely, given that China has split up on multiple occasions. A better POD would be to have a true restoration of the Western Empire, in accordance with how the Tang resurrected the Chinese Empire. The biggest issue would be to find a POD that avoids the Romans having to face threats on two frontiers. Handling the Germans and the Persians stretched Roman capacities to their limits, as a single Augustus could only do so much. And when things went to two Emperors, which existed as early as Marcus Aurelius, the doom of a single Mediterranean civilization is assured.
 
The western Empire was sort of brought back in the form of Charlemagne, but this is nothing like when China undergoes a warring states period and is reunified.
 
...er...

Jaded_Railman wrote:
When a very, very large chunk of the population is unemployed, living off of free grain in the urban centers, your state is never going to be as powerful as it was when the majority of the population were free farmers living off the land and their own produce.
Farming's always been a bad way to make money; economics hates it. That's because, on the one hand, you're making a product without added value, and on the other hand, it's unreliable. Somebody will come along and make more money turning your pork into a higher-value, higher-costing hot dog. Somebody else will do still better by selling your hot dogs conveniently close to people. You do best of all on high-skill tasks like law, or engineering, or medicine, or business.

That's why the Union was much better-equipped than the Confederates in the ACW, even though the Confederacy was mostly selling a staple crop, as good as you get, really. Rebels dreamed of taking Union supply trains and being well-fed and well-shod for once.

The UK's whomping, dole-fed unemployment is a whole 7/10 of a percent higher than ours. The long dole line, then, would seem to only be long because it's the gummint servicing it ;-). No doubt the dole's why THEIR empire collapsed - oh, wait, it was because a ruling coalition 'fessed up that imperialism was wrong .
 
Jaded_Railman wrote:
Farming's always been a bad way to make money; economics hates it. That's because, on the one hand, you're making a product without added value, and on the other hand, it's unreliable. Somebody will come along and make more money turning your pork into a higher-value, higher-costing hot dog. Somebody else will do still better by selling your hot dogs conveniently close to people. You do best of all on high-skill tasks like law, or engineering, or medicine, or business.

That's why the Union was much better-equipped than the Confederates in the ACW, even though the Confederacy was mostly selling a staple crop, as good as you get, really. Rebels dreamed of taking Union supply trains and being well-fed and well-shod for once.

The UK's whomping, dole-fed unemployment is a whole 7/10 of a percent higher than ours. The long dole line, then, would seem to only be long because it's the gummint servicing it ;-). No doubt the dole's why THEIR empire collapsed - oh, wait, it was because a ruling coalition 'fessed up that imperialism was wrong .

What are you even arguing here? None of it has anything to do with my point that, considering the two alternatives of having a large, un-productive urban proletariat or having a large, productive rural yeomanry, the latter will lead to a more successful state. I said nothing about the Union and the Confederacy or the UK's dole.
 
What are you even arguing here? None of it has anything to do with my point that, considering the two alternatives of having a large, un-productive urban proletariat or having a large, productive rural yeomanry, the latter will lead to a more successful state. I said nothing about the Union and the Confederacy or the UK's dole.
I rather thought the connection'd be obvious - I was explaining WHY your model of urban un-productiveness was wrong. Us city critters mostly create notably more economic value per hour. Feel free to reread my last comment for an explanation.

The supporting examples were in there to show how this stuff works in the real world and show it wasn't just from my rear. If you don't need those examples, and'll simply believe everything I say, well, that's fine with me, too ;-). Or, if you must believe in your free farmers' superiority no matter what the long, sad facts on the ground say, then there's no point in this conversation.
 
I rather thought the connection'd be obvious - I was explaining WHY your model of urban un-productiveness was wrong. Us city critters mostly create notably more economic value per hour. Feel free to reread my last comment for an explanation.

The supporting examples were in there to show how this stuff works in the real world and show it wasn't just from my rear. If you don't need those examples, and'll simply believe everything I say, well, that's fine with me, too ;-). Or, if you must believe in your free farmers' superiority no matter what the long, sad facts on the ground say, then there's no point in this conversation.

I'm saying your argument is irrelevant because you're talking about the modern world where cities are major centers of manufacturing and information production. Roman cities were a bit different. The urban proletariat I'm talking about was unemployed, that is, totally unproductive.

You're mistaking my argument for a political polemic when I really am just talking about history. Rome wasn't going anywhere as long as a significant portion of its population took part in no productive activity.
 
The urban proletariat I'm talking about was unemployed, that is, totally unproductive.
Where do you get that idea from?

Who knew Caesar's armies and Roman swordmakers and taverna owners were unemployed?
 
Where do you get that idea from? Who knew Caesar's armies and Roman swordmakers and taverna owners were unemployed?

Indeed. The notion the urban plebs were totally unproductive is erroneous. During Republican times, the proletarii, or "Head count" were named this because it was held that they had nothing to offer the state but their themselves. Gaius Marius rectified this problem by opening up legionary recruitment to the proletarii, but also created a new one in that the new soldiers were dependant on their generals, and not on the state for the pay and land grants.

Regardless, the entire point is moot due to the fact that by early imperial times, only one third of the legionaries were Italian, and by the time of Hadrian, only one tenth. The imperial reforms of Augustus completely changed the structure of the army, so that naming the methods of Republican Roman army recruitment as the cause for the demise of the Empire is hardly accurate.
 
Carthaginians nicer to Hannibal and they kick their butts back into being a provincial Latin backwater to later be conquered by Gaul ;)
 
Carthaginians like Hannibal a whole lot more and help him kick their butts back to being just another provincial Latin backwater which is later conquered by Gaul and/or colonized by Greece. :rolleyes:
 
Personally, I think the issue with Rome was that during the Punic Wars, it completely destroyed her only early competeter, leading to a feeling that Roman military power was invincible, and indirectly created many of the other issues which plagued the late republic. Thus if Cathage is allowed to last for longer (perhaps the 5th, 6th or 7th Punic War?) it creates a much slower growth for the Empire which then charcterises itself with the conquest of an area (say, Germania) then wits till that is firmly secure before the next conquest. A few defeats also ends the idea that the 'pure' Roman Army is invincible, leading to a situation where outside settlers are welcomed into the Empire for their military skills, but a otherwise Romanised. This makes the Rhine frontier much more manageable, or can allow a more ready acceptance of Roman Rule in Germania.
 
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