Discuss : Creating a 'Third Rome'

So whilst we've all heard the phrase Third Rome in reference to the fall of Constantinople as the Second, and Rome as the first, I figure a fair definition would be that these "Romes" define a great period in the Roman Empire.

1) Latin-Speaking dominated Empire centred on Italia
2) Greek-Speaking dominated Empire centred on Anatolia/Greece
3) ???

I'm curious as to what hypothetical great next Roman Period could be if could take the wheel with any PoD you choose. It doesn't need to be in traditionally Roman territory (heck, the Byzantine Empire proves that you don't NEED to rule Rome to consider yourself Roman). It doesn't need to follow the same religion (Pagan to Orthodox Christianity isn't exactly continuity). The only important criteria are

1) They consider themselves Roman
2) They are a major regional/world power.
 
Hmm....Tunisia and in turn Roman North Africa was the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, (Called the granary of the empire for a reason.) and also was a place for artisan production, trade, and the African Red Slip.

It is possible to make North Africa into a third Rome, with Alexandria being that city along side the first Rome, and Constantinople. Be they Pagan or Orthodox Christianity I am not sure. (But I like Pagan Romans a whole lot better and you could have Christianity be weaken and not be made the official religion of the Empire.)
 
I wonder if a sort of 'Iberia-Morocco' type country could do this, with Tangiers and the Straits of Gibraltar being the 'New Rome' and a gateway to the maritime trade across the Atlantic in a period of different American colonisation?
 
So whilst we've all heard the phrase Third Rome in reference to the fall of Constantinople as the Second, and Rome as the first, I figure a fair definition would be that these "Romes" define a great period in the Roman Empire.

1) Latin-Speaking dominated Empire centred on Italia
2) Greek-Speaking dominated Empire centred on Anatolia/Greece
3) ???

I'm curious as to what hypothetical great next Roman Period could be if could take the wheel with any PoD you choose. It doesn't need to be in traditionally Roman territory (heck, the Byzantine Empire proves that you don't NEED to rule Rome to consider yourself Roman). It doesn't need to follow the same religion (Pagan to Orthodox Christianity isn't exactly continuity). The only important criteria are

1) They consider themselves Roman
2) They are a major regional/world power.

What about a Frankish state that people can refer to as a Roman successor state without giggling?
 
So whilst we've all heard the phrase Third Rome in reference to the fall of Constantinople as the Second, and Rome as the first, I figure a fair definition would be that these "Romes" define a great period in the Roman Empire.

1) Latin-Speaking dominated Empire centred on Italia
2) Greek-Speaking dominated Empire centred on Anatolia/Greece
3) ???

I'm curious as to what hypothetical great next Roman Period could be if could take the wheel with any PoD you choose. It doesn't need to be in traditionally Roman territory (heck, the Byzantine Empire proves that you don't NEED to rule Rome to consider yourself Roman). It doesn't need to follow the same religion (Pagan to Orthodox Christianity isn't exactly continuity). The only important criteria are

1) They consider themselves Roman
2) They are a major regional/world power.

I mean, this is basically Russia.
 
Does the Catholic Church hierarchy not count? If not, its probably not hard to get them to claim to be the heirs of (christian) Rome.

Russia already is this in many ways, but I guess it technically doesn't fall into the category you want, which is a truely Roman state, not another state claiming to be Rome (though that arguably discounts Byzantium, not that anyone on this site would ever say that.)

Maybe the best bet is a Romano-Gaulish state based out of France, where the Franks are repelled? Paris* could be the third, northern, Rome.
 
How about four Romes?
A rump WRE, the ERE, a proper HRE(Northern Roman Empire?) and an Alexandrian or Carthaginian Rome(Southern Roman Empire?)

Now THAT could be a whole lot of fun.

The Southern Roman Empire could even still have Pagan faiths if Christianity failed to reach it, or they was more resistance to the spread of Christianity.

Does the Catholic Church hierarchy not count? If not, its probably not hard to get them to claim to be the heirs of (christian) Rome.

Russia already is this in many ways, but I guess it technically doesn't fall into the category you want, which is a truely Roman state, not another state claiming to be Rome (though that arguably discounts Byzantium, not that anyone on this site would ever say that.)

Maybe the best bet is a Romano-Gaulish state based out of France, where the Franks are repelled? Paris* could be the third, northern, Rome.

Rump Western Roman Empire could be base in France as a Romano-Gaulish state.
 
Now THAT could be a whole lot of fun.

The Southern Roman Empire could even still have Pagan faiths if Christianity failed to reach it, or they was more resistance to the spread of Christianity.



Rump Western Roman Empire could be base in France as a Romano-Gaulish state.

But wasn't Roman North Africa the heart of Roman Christianity for a while before they converted?

I feel like the rump WRE can't own Rome (or most of Italy), because its capital would be there. Maybe Italy falls to invaders, and a local of Gaul declares himself the new emperor, with some legitimacy from the church required. A more successful and later Postumus and Gallic Empire.
 
But wasn't Roman North Africa the heart of Roman Christianity for a while before they converted?

I feel like the rump WRE can't own Rome (or most of Italy), because its capital would be there. Maybe Italy falls to invaders, and a local of Gaul declares himself the new emperor, with some legitimacy from the church required. A more successful and later Postumus and Gallic Empire.

Really? Hmm, I did read that ancient religion of Egypt put up surprisingly little resistance to the spread of Christianity. I just like the Pagan faiths over Christianity in the ancient world, and like to keep them strong and in power while messing up/pushing out Christianity.

Balaur said a true Holy Roman Empire can be the one to control the original Rome.
 
Really? Hmm, I did read that ancient religion of Egypt put up surprisingly little resistance to the spread of Christianity. I just like the Pagan faiths over Christianity in the ancient world, and like to keep them strong and in power while messing up/pushing out Christianity.

Balaur said a true Holy Roman Empire can be the one to control the original Rome.

I feel like if Rome is in the hands of anyone who has any sort of legitimacy to being Rome, than all the others fall aside. How can they claim to be the "real Rome" when someone just as legitimate took the city itself?

Also if I remember the parts around Carthage and whatnot were a bed of Christianity, long before it took hold in the European holdings. Lots of farmers and the like. Realistically there is no saving Roman paganism, because Paganism seems to be intrinsically less stable (unless you are Hinduism). Outside of Hinduism (which was organized) there are next to no examples (on a large scale) of paganism surviving the introduction of an organized, in most cases monotheistic, religion.
 
My pet Third Rome is a Syracuse based naval power that has a mercantile economy and controls large chunks of coastal Principate sites. This however is perhaps too closely tied to the second Rome.

Other potential cray ideas that use ginormous butterfly nets:
1. Caesar lives and beats Parthians to get chunk of Mesopotamia, this is followed up by seizing the entire province +chunks of Persia in the next couple of centuries. Then, if migrations knock out the Empire in Europe and North Africa, we'd be left with an Anatolian-Egyptian-Syrian-Mespotamian-Persian ensemble that answers to the Kaisar of Rum in Seleukia. Basically Persian Roman Empire.
2. An "Islamic" Roman Empire (say Persia does not fall and the Caliphs style themselves as Roman Emperors) is not too implausible.
3. A Roman North Africa that holds on while Anatolia falls, with the last survivors clinging on in Septum/Gibraltar before crossing the ocean to make a new Imperium in the New World.
4. Usual drivel about Palaiologids finding the New World and actually making it there.
5. More realistically, a long surviving Byzantine Empire that has/had a bunch of colonies. Lets say there are issues with internal Imperial politics and they pseudo-peacefully fall apart into constituent states that do not claim to be Roman. Then a random colony/former colony declares itself to be Roman Empire.
 
As a note, the Ottomans claimed the title 'Caesar of Rome', and Russia historically did consider itself the third Rome. The Holy Roman Emperor got the title to fill the vacancy left when the throne in Constantinople was held by a woman, and Roman law remained important throughout the Mediterranean cultural sphere; the immense legitimacy and prestige of the Roman empire wasn't just gathering dust after 1453.
 
Rump Western Roman Empire could be base in France as a Romano-Gaulish state.
You'd need a radically different situation in late Roman Gaul, then.
By the Vth century, the various Gallo-Roman territories still not under the direct control of various Barbarian foedi (which doesn't mean at the latest that they couldn't be under their influence*) were mostly made of aristocratic and urban patchwork, without clear base to support that they were more de facto alliances under the very technical imperial authority (at least since Majorian and Avitus) than states.
Eventually, they were even more easily swallowed up by foedi not only because of their divisions and relatively* lower military capacity, but because their power was based on their aristocratic prestige and you had a lot of their family network and clientele already servicing barbarian kings (such as the Syagrius "Solon", in the Burgondian court)

While Syagrius, son of Aegidius, recieved a special historiographic treatment which had as prime function to "fill" the map; you had no unified Gallo-Roman entity in the course of the Vth. It balanced between obedience to Roman authority and servicing Barbarian foedi, and with the collapse of the former, there wasn't much viable alternative.
Furthermore, opposing Barbarian foedi and Gallo-Roman structures is a bit moot : Barbarian kingdoms in Gaul ended up being Gallo-Roman states in pretty much most of their institution (with a Babarian influence, itself more or less romanized if not artificial) would it be only because they were acknowledged by Roman authority, integrated Roman institutions but as well integrated the aformentioned Gallo-Roman families (Aviti, Syagrii, Desideri-Salvii, etc.) into the regional and realm management.

For everyone concerned, Childeric and Clovis did represented a valid representent of the Roman imperium in Gaul.

*It seems that Gallo-Roman aristocracy usually had a tendency to support either Goths or Burgondians in the mid Vth
** Various Gallo-Roman or Hispano-Roman nobles ended up servicing military Barbarian kings, hence the "relatively"


The Holy Roman Emperor got the title to fill the vacancy left when the throne in Constantinople was held by a woman
I think you're confusing two things there.
Carolingian dynasty did claimed the imperial title, but not the Roman imperial title as generally understood : in the quasi-totality of Carolingian texts, indeed, they used the titles of "August Emperor"* as they were more interested on claiming rulership over Christiendom as, as you said, it was seemingly broken in Constantinople.
Romanus or Romanorum, however is systematically tied to the people of Rome, and their representend the pontiff.

The Carolingian (and Ottonian up to its last phase) Empire could be considered "of Romans" only in the way that it had been acknowledged by the people of Rome, meaning the pope. Going trough contemporary texts, this is the only explanation and ideological base to the title one could find. Every other narrative about "being crowned roman Emperor" have NO historical base whatsoever.

It doesn't mean that Carolingians (and Ottonians) didn't acknowledged at the latest there was a Roman influence or a translatio imperii, but the matter for them was the use of roman imperial feature (mostly Late Imperial features) was motivated much less as a desire to consider themselves Romans, than to consider themselves kings or emperors in the like of Davidic or Constantinian rulership (as hinted by the decoration of Aachen's palace).

What we used to call HRE (which is to be distinguished from Carolingia, which is as different from HRE than it was from ERE), eventually went much more into the way you describe (especially with Otton II), altough more on a really superficial and non-systematical way than Russia eventually did, as the name "Roman Empire" which at first pretty much followed the line of Carolingian titulature ("August Emperor [of the Empire of the Romans]") for similar reasons, went to its way to rival the Byzantine Empire.

But that's a rather distinct evolution which didn't appeared at first : Charlemagne itself kept using the prestigious titles of "King of Franks and Lombards" way after his imperial coronation (on the golden solidi, for instance, while they were prime prestigious assets) and the imperial title wasn't that supposed to survive his death for what matter the Ordino Imperii of 806.

*You had as well a very short use of the seemingly long and a bit weird title of "August Emperor ruling over the Roman Empire" by Charlemagne.
 
My pet Third Rome is a Syracuse based naval power that has a mercantile economy and controls large chunks of coastal Principate sites. This however is perhaps too closely tied to the second Rome.
Wouldn't Palermo be a better fit? AFAIK, by the middle ages Palermo had eclipsed Syracuse in terms of size and prestige.
 
Wouldn't Palermo be a better fit? AFAIK, by the middle ages Palermo had eclipsed Syracuse in terms of size and prestige.
I'm not sure it would have been the case before the Xth century, hence why Constans II planned to move the imperial siege and court to Syracuse in the mid VIIIth century, or why Syracuse remained a key strategical point for what matter Sicily up to the XIIIth.
AFAIU, Syracuse's decline owes more to Late Medieval and Modern era's events.
 
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