I wonder if Pontus will be a long-term cultural bridge between India and the Mediterranean world, and whether Buddhism as well as Zoroastrianism might play a role in its development.
Dream of the Poison King: A History of the Pontic Empire
- Thread starter Nassirisimo
- Start date
When I started reading this I thought it would be another TL where some unknown power takes on Rome ,crushes it and then has centuries of peace and prosperity before collapsing .Reading it thought I have to say it is among the best TL I have ever read .
I do wonder though at the situation in Gaul .Without it I don`t see Rome having the cash to do anything .While it might serve as a buffer to tribes from northern Europe in a few centuries .I don`t see any benefit to Gaul being independent from Rome in the immediate future .
I do wonder though at the situation in Gaul .Without it I don`t see Rome having the cash to do anything .While it might serve as a buffer to tribes from northern Europe in a few centuries .I don`t see any benefit to Gaul being independent from Rome in the immediate future .
Regardless of the foreign religious influences, it seems to me that Zoroastrianism in this timeline will very likely not follow its trajectory in our own timeline.
The much more multiethnic Pontic empire will probably never be overly concerned with promoting a single religion since I don't see any one religious creed becoming predominant here - and since Iran isn't the center of the empire and Hellenism is still strong, state-backed Zoroastrianism is equally unlikely imo.
These are more or less the borders of the "Classical" Pontic Empire, or to put it a bit more clearly, the Pontic Empire in its golden age. Some satrapies are a bit more independent than others, and some (such as Greece) are mostly self-governing Polis rather than areas under the rule of a Satrap sent by the Pontic King.
At the top it's a more Persianate Empire, though the bureaucracy is just as Greek as it is Persian. The government really is a fusion of the Persian, Greek and Aramaic aspects of the Empire.
The Sassanids would indeed by very envious, as the Empire is essentially a combination of the borders of the ERE and their own state, though they may not by as impressed with the character of the Pontic Empire.
The Pontic kings at the time of Mithradates appeared to worship a God called Zeus Stratios, who appears to be some incarnation of Ahura Mazda. It's safe to assume that at least privately, the Pontic Kings are some form of Zoroastrians, though the Pontic government doesn't have a specific religion per se. The fact that the Sassanids aren't likely to rise will have big effects on what Zoroastrianism is in the future, not to mention that two of the three Abrahamic religions are butterflied from existence. From what I've managed to understand of Zoroastrianism as it was practiced in Pontus (if it can even be given the label) it was a much looser affair than under the Sassanids. Many temples had special status in the Kingdom, though this was not limited to those devoted to Ahura Mazda, and he was not the only god worshiped by Mithradates.
By the time of Arkathias, the Pontic kings are starting to become more strictly Zoroastrian, and although the other gods of their subjects are tolerated, the Pontic kings now separate themselves from the worship of these other gods in a way that their predecessors never did.
Well, one can now travel by land from modern India to modern Greece and only travel through two states, who happen to be at peace. Between this and the growth of trade (which actually happened to a fairly impressive extent in OTL, with trade between the Roman Empire and India worth millions of sesterces a year), there is bound to be a huge interchange of ideas. In ports such as Charax, you may see fusions between different religions and systems of thought spawn. From now on there's going to be more of an effect on India, so you can expect the first Indian update soon as things begin to diverge from OTL.
Well, the richest areas of the Roman Empire were the East, Hispania and Italia itself. Gaul was actually a fairly poor area of the Empire, so the loss of Gaul might not present much of a loss income-wise. The real question is whether or not the Romans and the Gauls can learn to live relatively peacefully. Certainly, the Gauls would like to get their hands on Roman luxuries such as wine, but there isn't much the Gauls can offer the Romans yet, especially now that tribal wars have been curbed. This may however be solved in the future...
Pretty much this. The Pontic Kings don't see it as their personal job to spread their religion, and this concept hasn't really emerged quite yet. That isn't to say that it won't in the future, though I think the chances of Pontus becoming the Sassanids-writ-large in regards to religion is unlikely.
Actually, I want to ask something:
How much of southern Gaul does Rome control, about all of otl Occtiania or just a strip on the coast? (how far up the Rhone is probably a good estimate)
How much of southern Gaul does Rome control, about all of otl Occtiania or just a strip on the coast? (how far up the Rhone is probably a good estimate)
A while back I wrote a long speculative bit on possible evolutions of religions in the Pontic Empire, which the author seemed to dismiss as "Whiggish."
I will admit this much--I do believe there are certain lines of evolution that will be broadly followed; that socioeconomic systems will tend to develop along lines and scales we are familiar with OTL for instance. And one of these is an observable evolution from what we might call folk religion, tending to be polytheistic forms we can broadly call "pagan," to what I am not too ashamed to call "higher" religions, with more centralized concepts of divinity and more universalist claims to truth. The Classical Greeks were already experiencing discontent and skepticism of their own mythologies as recorded by Hesiod and Homer before the expansion of the Athenian imperial ambitions followed by their realization under Alexander. The Romans appear to have substituted a body of legends about exemplary Republican figures from the now-mythic days of the overthrow of the monarchy and foundation of the Republic for the serious and passionate veneration of their nominal quasi-Olympian gods--I've read at least one book devoted to the premise that Roman Republican legends can actually be decyphered as new editions of the ancient Indo-European myths of the gods; then by the times we are now in ITTL the Republican legends in turn are eclipsed, the Romans turning back to a stylized and shallow veneration of ostensible gods, but as the history of the early Empire clearly shows, in a restless quest for a new religion that turned up many candidates before they settled on Christianity. Nowhere in developing, increasingly sophisticated trading nations and centralizing empires was the old folk paganism durable and satisfactory; I believe this speaks to the role that religion plays, as a framework for a world-view and carrier of social values. Society has changed from old tribal days and religion must change to fulfill new roles.
One might argue that in India for instance, the old religion soldiered on just fine. But from my studies of the sacred traditions of India I'd say that Hinduism as it evolved by Classical times was something different from the traditional pantheons of the Homeric era Greeks or the early Romans or the much later Norse and other northern Europeans. And part of that was a reaction to sharp challenges from rival schools that evolved in India, most notably Buddhism and Jainism. My professor in the aforementioned class was a Hindu and I don't know how strongly to take his suggestion that these rivals developed on the fringelands of India, in the far north, where peoples not fully assimilated into the Hindu mainstream had a "poor" or "limited" understanding of the more profound aspects of Vedic Hinduism, and thus came up with implicitly oversimplified or confused radical reductions of essential Hindu thought. Versus of course the countersuggestion that the more unitarian, universalist and radical aspects of Buddhism and Jainism reacted back on Hindu society, posing the Brahmanic castes challenges that led them to reformulate Hinduism along deeper lines. The upshot historically was that the radical sects emerging from the Himalayan foothills were ultimately driven out of the Indian mainland, up into the mountains where Buddhist and Jain border peoples held on, east into the non-Indian but influenced regions of Southeast Asia developed a syncretic balance between Vedic and Buddhist schools, and south to Sri Lanka. Then the Muslims came in leading later to yet other syncretic offshoots such as Sikhism.
I felt it strange to have my suggestion of a pan-Pontic school of more universalized Zoroasterism take hold and spread beyond its borders dismissed as "Whiggish" though in that it strikes me, from my perhaps overrigid position as someone who believes some kind of evolution of some kind of universalizing faith to be inevitable, that such a framework would be about as conservative as possible. Basically it would in fact parallel the evolution of Hinduism, forming a loose framework in which the concept of an ultimate center of divinity radiates through many diverse and changing manifestations, thereby largely defusing the whole political question of one set of local gods versus another. Arising from fundamentally Indo-European roots, I figured that with one branch cycling through a neo-Hellenizing filter (thus spreading into Greece itself and to an extent revitalizing the traditional paganism of the Greeks, by viewing the Olympians as manifestations of Ahura Mazda) it would be in a form that other more or less Indo-European peoples could adopt readily--Germans, Slavs, Celts, and the more obscure in OTL peoples living close by the northern and northwest borders of the Pontic empire itself. I suggested that even the Romans, cut off from direct contact with their OTL Eastern Med new agey gurus, might adopt a form of it and via their channel or by parallel mission work among the Celts and their neighbors to the north, spread over Europe.
As totalizing, universalist-claiming movements go though such a thing would be pretty mild; the question would be whether it would be philosophically deep enough to hold its own against say Buddhist missionaries. I suspect, that with the sort of philosophic energy that went into developing Christian theology among the Hellenic or Hellenized "Fathers of the Church" of OTL, it could indeed, especially if the present (in the story that is) contact between Pontus and India introduces Buddhist challenges at this formative stage.
Reading up on Zoroasterism as I did back then, it struck me that that movement and the resurgence of Vedic Hinduism had much in common. Ironically from what I learned longer ago, there is also some formal conflict built in; Indo-Europeans tend to have myths of two or more rival pantheons, one of which is demonized--the Norse against the Jotuns, the Greeks against the Titans. Well, in Hinduism as I studied it, notably by reading a version of the Ramayana, the "good" gods of Hindusim are the "Devas," rivaled by the anarchic and violent, selfish Ashuras, which the villainous Rakasha whom Rama struggles against are part of. In Zoroasterianism on the other hand the Ashuras are the good guys and the agents of the negation of proper order are clearly cognates of the Devas.
But with that role reversal set aside for a moment, both refined paganisms that assert a more central true God behind the angelic or demonic manifestations stand, in broad philosophy, for a conservative affirmation of the world order as it is. In Mazdaism, Ahura Mazda has formed Creation in order to refine the order; the struggle between duty and chaos is the process whereby creation is purged of its disorders and failures; it is therefore the duty of a good person to play their born role in society and fight for the right. In Hinduism also the playing out of the great game, or dance, of existence has its own momentum and necessity; the fulfillment of duty is the essence (such as i grasp it anyway) of the concept of dharma.
Both these conservative, social-order affirming schools had polar opposites form that emphasized rather the error and pain of natural creation and the need to withdraw from it--Manichaeism against the Mazdaists and Buddhism against Hinduism.
Thus if philosophizing Helleno-Mazdaists encounter Buddhist thought, they might either react strongly against it, or unwittingly incorporate deep paradoxes into their doctrines. Such deep paradoxes might actually strengthen the depth and breadth of appeal of a faith system emerging from the dipole of opposites of course!
Another tendency I thought might be interesting to explore is the interaction of Mazdaism with the Semitic religions, including of course Judaism. (By the time of the POD, New Temple Judaism was well under way and we are now dealing with pretty much the foundation of modern Judaism as we know it today, not with the Hebrew precursors, and the Hebrew tradition is now limited to the returnees to Judah plus some remnants to the side, the "Samaritans" and I suppose survivals in Edom and Moab, maybe--so it is Judaism, perhaps with a less Greco-Romanized spelling, we are seeing). I refrained from going there in great detail but I still think it is fertile ground to think about. Christianity looks to be pretty well butterflied to be sure--but i think that over the centuries, something pretty much equivalent to Islam is still very much in the cards!
Now that might single me out for a single-track of history Whig indeed I suppose, and perhaps our author Nassirismo saw me headed that way, in which case guilty as charged I suppose.
But the neo-Mazdaic stuff I think is a pretty big veer off of the track of OTL, and hardly Whiggish, unless one wants to argue that this tendency to seek a universal and "deeper" religion I observe in social development is an illusion formed by a particular perspective and the alleged trend is in fact in a place with Lowell's Martian canals, a mere projection of fanciful order on pure chaos.
I quite agree with the author's remarks that the Pontic regime would not, at this stage anyway, perceive any obligation to impose a single "true" religion on its subjects. But my belief is that the formation of a single religion regime is not in fact something that Emperors imposed on a whim, or even cooked up out of whole cloth as a shrewd tool of statecraft--rather, the constellation of societies within the regime developed a keen hunger for some such solution to paradoxes of meaning, and went shopping for new faiths to try on until they found, or had tailored, one that fit. The role of emperors in this process is more one of midwife than father.
So it does seem likely to me that while the Pontic state and court will not set out to manufacture a one-size fits all regime religion, that instead the interaction of levels of society will produce this thirst for one that the juxtaposition of strong Persian and Hellenistic influences will gratify with a reformulated Mazdaic frame for traditional paganisms the realm over, and the kings will over time adopt the role of protector of this vague generalized frame--which will more often than not be able to absorb most challenges without violent conflict. And that it will prove so useful and satisfactory to rival powers such as Rome that they too will absorb some version of it.
Thus forestalling the growth of something more radical, such as Christianity was OTL.
So now I'm not just a Whig, but Conservative Whig...
Better quit this then or I'll turn into Edmund Burke or Cato the Elder or something horrible like that.
I will admit this much--I do believe there are certain lines of evolution that will be broadly followed; that socioeconomic systems will tend to develop along lines and scales we are familiar with OTL for instance. And one of these is an observable evolution from what we might call folk religion, tending to be polytheistic forms we can broadly call "pagan," to what I am not too ashamed to call "higher" religions, with more centralized concepts of divinity and more universalist claims to truth. The Classical Greeks were already experiencing discontent and skepticism of their own mythologies as recorded by Hesiod and Homer before the expansion of the Athenian imperial ambitions followed by their realization under Alexander. The Romans appear to have substituted a body of legends about exemplary Republican figures from the now-mythic days of the overthrow of the monarchy and foundation of the Republic for the serious and passionate veneration of their nominal quasi-Olympian gods--I've read at least one book devoted to the premise that Roman Republican legends can actually be decyphered as new editions of the ancient Indo-European myths of the gods; then by the times we are now in ITTL the Republican legends in turn are eclipsed, the Romans turning back to a stylized and shallow veneration of ostensible gods, but as the history of the early Empire clearly shows, in a restless quest for a new religion that turned up many candidates before they settled on Christianity. Nowhere in developing, increasingly sophisticated trading nations and centralizing empires was the old folk paganism durable and satisfactory; I believe this speaks to the role that religion plays, as a framework for a world-view and carrier of social values. Society has changed from old tribal days and religion must change to fulfill new roles.
One might argue that in India for instance, the old religion soldiered on just fine. But from my studies of the sacred traditions of India I'd say that Hinduism as it evolved by Classical times was something different from the traditional pantheons of the Homeric era Greeks or the early Romans or the much later Norse and other northern Europeans. And part of that was a reaction to sharp challenges from rival schools that evolved in India, most notably Buddhism and Jainism. My professor in the aforementioned class was a Hindu and I don't know how strongly to take his suggestion that these rivals developed on the fringelands of India, in the far north, where peoples not fully assimilated into the Hindu mainstream had a "poor" or "limited" understanding of the more profound aspects of Vedic Hinduism, and thus came up with implicitly oversimplified or confused radical reductions of essential Hindu thought. Versus of course the countersuggestion that the more unitarian, universalist and radical aspects of Buddhism and Jainism reacted back on Hindu society, posing the Brahmanic castes challenges that led them to reformulate Hinduism along deeper lines. The upshot historically was that the radical sects emerging from the Himalayan foothills were ultimately driven out of the Indian mainland, up into the mountains where Buddhist and Jain border peoples held on, east into the non-Indian but influenced regions of Southeast Asia developed a syncretic balance between Vedic and Buddhist schools, and south to Sri Lanka. Then the Muslims came in leading later to yet other syncretic offshoots such as Sikhism.
I felt it strange to have my suggestion of a pan-Pontic school of more universalized Zoroasterism take hold and spread beyond its borders dismissed as "Whiggish" though in that it strikes me, from my perhaps overrigid position as someone who believes some kind of evolution of some kind of universalizing faith to be inevitable, that such a framework would be about as conservative as possible. Basically it would in fact parallel the evolution of Hinduism, forming a loose framework in which the concept of an ultimate center of divinity radiates through many diverse and changing manifestations, thereby largely defusing the whole political question of one set of local gods versus another. Arising from fundamentally Indo-European roots, I figured that with one branch cycling through a neo-Hellenizing filter (thus spreading into Greece itself and to an extent revitalizing the traditional paganism of the Greeks, by viewing the Olympians as manifestations of Ahura Mazda) it would be in a form that other more or less Indo-European peoples could adopt readily--Germans, Slavs, Celts, and the more obscure in OTL peoples living close by the northern and northwest borders of the Pontic empire itself. I suggested that even the Romans, cut off from direct contact with their OTL Eastern Med new agey gurus, might adopt a form of it and via their channel or by parallel mission work among the Celts and their neighbors to the north, spread over Europe.
As totalizing, universalist-claiming movements go though such a thing would be pretty mild; the question would be whether it would be philosophically deep enough to hold its own against say Buddhist missionaries. I suspect, that with the sort of philosophic energy that went into developing Christian theology among the Hellenic or Hellenized "Fathers of the Church" of OTL, it could indeed, especially if the present (in the story that is) contact between Pontus and India introduces Buddhist challenges at this formative stage.
Reading up on Zoroasterism as I did back then, it struck me that that movement and the resurgence of Vedic Hinduism had much in common. Ironically from what I learned longer ago, there is also some formal conflict built in; Indo-Europeans tend to have myths of two or more rival pantheons, one of which is demonized--the Norse against the Jotuns, the Greeks against the Titans. Well, in Hinduism as I studied it, notably by reading a version of the Ramayana, the "good" gods of Hindusim are the "Devas," rivaled by the anarchic and violent, selfish Ashuras, which the villainous Rakasha whom Rama struggles against are part of. In Zoroasterianism on the other hand the Ashuras are the good guys and the agents of the negation of proper order are clearly cognates of the Devas.
But with that role reversal set aside for a moment, both refined paganisms that assert a more central true God behind the angelic or demonic manifestations stand, in broad philosophy, for a conservative affirmation of the world order as it is. In Mazdaism, Ahura Mazda has formed Creation in order to refine the order; the struggle between duty and chaos is the process whereby creation is purged of its disorders and failures; it is therefore the duty of a good person to play their born role in society and fight for the right. In Hinduism also the playing out of the great game, or dance, of existence has its own momentum and necessity; the fulfillment of duty is the essence (such as i grasp it anyway
) of the concept of dharma. Both these conservative, social-order affirming schools had polar opposites form that emphasized rather the error and pain of natural creation and the need to withdraw from it--Manichaeism against the Mazdaists and Buddhism against Hinduism.
Thus if philosophizing Helleno-Mazdaists encounter Buddhist thought, they might either react strongly against it, or unwittingly incorporate deep paradoxes into their doctrines. Such deep paradoxes might actually strengthen the depth and breadth of appeal of a faith system emerging from the dipole of opposites of course!
Another tendency I thought might be interesting to explore is the interaction of Mazdaism with the Semitic religions, including of course Judaism. (By the time of the POD, New Temple Judaism was well under way and we are now dealing with pretty much the foundation of modern Judaism as we know it today, not with the Hebrew precursors, and the Hebrew tradition is now limited to the returnees to Judah plus some remnants to the side, the "Samaritans" and I suppose survivals in Edom and Moab, maybe--so it is Judaism, perhaps with a less Greco-Romanized spelling, we are seeing). I refrained from going there in great detail but I still think it is fertile ground to think about. Christianity looks to be pretty well butterflied to be sure--but i think that over the centuries, something pretty much equivalent to Islam is still very much in the cards!
Now that might single me out for a single-track of history Whig indeed I suppose, and perhaps our author Nassirismo saw me headed that way, in which case guilty as charged I suppose.
But the neo-Mazdaic stuff I think is a pretty big veer off of the track of OTL, and hardly Whiggish, unless one wants to argue that this tendency to seek a universal and "deeper" religion I observe in social development is an illusion formed by a particular perspective and the alleged trend is in fact in a place with Lowell's Martian canals, a mere projection of fanciful order on pure chaos.
I quite agree with the author's remarks that the Pontic regime would not, at this stage anyway, perceive any obligation to impose a single "true" religion on its subjects. But my belief is that the formation of a single religion regime is not in fact something that Emperors imposed on a whim, or even cooked up out of whole cloth as a shrewd tool of statecraft--rather, the constellation of societies within the regime developed a keen hunger for some such solution to paradoxes of meaning, and went shopping for new faiths to try on until they found, or had tailored, one that fit. The role of emperors in this process is more one of midwife than father.
So it does seem likely to me that while the Pontic state and court will not set out to manufacture a one-size fits all regime religion, that instead the interaction of levels of society will produce this thirst for one that the juxtaposition of strong Persian and Hellenistic influences will gratify with a reformulated Mazdaic frame for traditional paganisms the realm over, and the kings will over time adopt the role of protector of this vague generalized frame--which will more often than not be able to absorb most challenges without violent conflict. And that it will prove so useful and satisfactory to rival powers such as Rome that they too will absorb some version of it.
Thus forestalling the growth of something more radical, such as Christianity was OTL.
So now I'm not just a Whig, but Conservative Whig...
Better quit this then or I'll turn into Edmund Burke or Cato the Elder or something horrible like that.
Rome roughly controls a good portion of Modern Provence, but the control becomes more tenuous in the Alps, and on the other side of them, the Gauls are indisputably in control. Not quite a coastal strip, but not too far up the Rhone.
There's some pretty interesting arguments made here. I'll admit that aside from my knowledge of my own Islamic religion, none of my religious knowledge is really deep. In this respect, I feel like I should consult my theologian friend more, but alas due to a change in location this isn't as easy as it once was.A while back I wrote a long speculative bit on possible evolutions of religions in the Pontic Empire, which the author seemed to dismiss as "Whiggish."
I will admit this much--I do believe there are certain lines of evolution that will be broadly followed; that socioeconomic systems will tend to develop along lines and scales we are familiar with OTL for instance. And one of these is an observable evolution from what we might call folk religion, tending to be polytheistic forms we can broadly call "pagan," to what I am not too ashamed to call "higher" religions, with more centralized concepts of divinity and more universalist claims to truth. The Classical Greeks were already experiencing discontent and skepticism of their own mythologies as recorded by Hesiod and Homer before the expansion of the Athenian imperial ambitions followed by their realization under Alexander. The Romans appear to have substituted a body of legends about exemplary Republican figures from the now-mythic days of the overthrow of the monarchy and foundation of the Republic for the serious and passionate veneration of their nominal quasi-Olympian gods--I've read at least one book devoted to the premise that Roman Republican legends can actually be decyphered as new editions of the ancient Indo-European myths of the gods; then by the times we are now in ITTL the Republican legends in turn are eclipsed, the Romans turning back to a stylized and shallow veneration of ostensible gods, but as the history of the early Empire clearly shows, in a restless quest for a new religion that turned up many candidates before they settled on Christianity. Nowhere in developing, increasingly sophisticated trading nations and centralizing empires was the old folk paganism durable and satisfactory; I believe this speaks to the role that religion plays, as a framework for a world-view and carrier of social values. Society has changed from old tribal days and religion must change to fulfill new roles.
One might argue that in India for instance, the old religion soldiered on just fine. But from my studies of the sacred traditions of India I'd say that Hinduism as it evolved by Classical times was something different from the traditional pantheons of the Homeric era Greeks or the early Romans or the much later Norse and other northern Europeans. And part of that was a reaction to sharp challenges from rival schools that evolved in India, most notably Buddhism and Jainism. My professor in the aforementioned class was a Hindu and I don't know how strongly to take his suggestion that these rivals developed on the fringelands of India, in the far north, where peoples not fully assimilated into the Hindu mainstream had a "poor" or "limited" understanding of the more profound aspects of Vedic Hinduism, and thus came up with implicitly oversimplified or confused radical reductions of essential Hindu thought. Versus of course the countersuggestion that the more unitarian, universalist and radical aspects of Buddhism and Jainism reacted back on Hindu society, posing the Brahmanic castes challenges that led them to reformulate Hinduism along deeper lines. The upshot historically was that the radical sects emerging from the Himalayan foothills were ultimately driven out of the Indian mainland, up into the mountains where Buddhist and Jain border peoples held on, east into the non-Indian but influenced regions of Southeast Asia developed a syncretic balance between Vedic and Buddhist schools, and south to Sri Lanka. Then the Muslims came in leading later to yet other syncretic offshoots such as Sikhism.
I felt it strange to have my suggestion of a pan-Pontic school of more universalized Zoroasterism take hold and spread beyond its borders dismissed as "Whiggish" though in that it strikes me, from my perhaps overrigid position as someone who believes some kind of evolution of some kind of universalizing faith to be inevitable, that such a framework would be about as conservative as possible. Basically it would in fact parallel the evolution of Hinduism, forming a loose framework in which the concept of an ultimate center of divinity radiates through many diverse and changing manifestations, thereby largely defusing the whole political question of one set of local gods versus another. Arising from fundamentally Indo-European roots, I figured that with one branch cycling through a neo-Hellenizing filter (thus spreading into Greece itself and to an extent revitalizing the traditional paganism of the Greeks, by viewing the Olympians as manifestations of Ahura Mazda) it would be in a form that other more or less Indo-European peoples could adopt readily--Germans, Slavs, Celts, and the more obscure in OTL peoples living close by the northern and northwest borders of the Pontic empire itself. I suggested that even the Romans, cut off from direct contact with their OTL Eastern Med new agey gurus, might adopt a form of it and via their channel or by parallel mission work among the Celts and their neighbors to the north, spread over Europe.
As totalizing, universalist-claiming movements go though such a thing would be pretty mild; the question would be whether it would be philosophically deep enough to hold its own against say Buddhist missionaries. I suspect, that with the sort of philosophic energy that went into developing Christian theology among the Hellenic or Hellenized "Fathers of the Church" of OTL, it could indeed, especially if the present (in the story that is) contact between Pontus and India introduces Buddhist challenges at this formative stage.
Reading up on Zoroasterism as I did back then, it struck me that that movement and the resurgence of Vedic Hinduism had much in common. Ironically from what I learned longer ago, there is also some formal conflict built in; Indo-Europeans tend to have myths of two or more rival pantheons, one of which is demonized--the Norse against the Jotuns, the Greeks against the Titans. Well, in Hinduism as I studied it, notably by reading a version of the Ramayana, the "good" gods of Hindusim are the "Devas," rivaled by the anarchic and violent, selfish Ashuras, which the villainous Rakasha whom Rama struggles against are part of. In Zoroasterianism on the other hand the Ashuras are the good guys and the agents of the negation of proper order are clearly cognates of the Devas.
But with that role reversal set aside for a moment, both refined paganisms that assert a more central true God behind the angelic or demonic manifestations stand, in broad philosophy, for a conservative affirmation of the world order as it is. In Mazdaism, Ahura Mazda has formed Creation in order to refine the order; the struggle between duty and chaos is the process whereby creation is purged of its disorders and failures; it is therefore the duty of a good person to play their born role in society and fight for the right. In Hinduism also the playing out of the great game, or dance, of existence has its own momentum and necessity; the fulfillment of duty is the essence (such as i grasp it anyway
Both these conservative, social-order affirming schools had polar opposites form that emphasized rather the error and pain of natural creation and the need to withdraw from it--Manichaeism against the Mazdaists and Buddhism against Hinduism.
Thus if philosophizing Helleno-Mazdaists encounter Buddhist thought, they might either react strongly against it, or unwittingly incorporate deep paradoxes into their doctrines. Such deep paradoxes might actually strengthen the depth and breadth of appeal of a faith system emerging from the dipole of opposites of course!
Another tendency I thought might be interesting to explore is the interaction of Mazdaism with the Semitic religions, including of course Judaism. (By the time of the POD, New Temple Judaism was well under way and we are now dealing with pretty much the foundation of modern Judaism as we know it today, not with the Hebrew precursors, and the Hebrew tradition is now limited to the returnees to Judah plus some remnants to the side, the "Samaritans" and I suppose survivals in Edom and Moab, maybe--so it is Judaism, perhaps with a less Greco-Romanized spelling, we are seeing). I refrained from going there in great detail but I still think it is fertile ground to think about. Christianity looks to be pretty well butterflied to be sure--but i think that over the centuries, something pretty much equivalent to Islam is still very much in the cards!
Now that might single me out for a single-track of history Whig indeed I suppose, and perhaps our author Nassirismo saw me headed that way, in which case guilty as charged I suppose.
But the neo-Mazdaic stuff I think is a pretty big veer off of the track of OTL, and hardly Whiggish, unless one wants to argue that this tendency to seek a universal and "deeper" religion I observe in social development is an illusion formed by a particular perspective and the alleged trend is in fact in a place with Lowell's Martian canals, a mere projection of fanciful order on pure chaos.
I quite agree with the author's remarks that the Pontic regime would not, at this stage anyway, perceive any obligation to impose a single "true" religion on its subjects. But my belief is that the formation of a single religion regime is not in fact something that Emperors imposed on a whim, or even cooked up out of whole cloth as a shrewd tool of statecraft--rather, the constellation of societies within the regime developed a keen hunger for some such solution to paradoxes of meaning, and went shopping for new faiths to try on until they found, or had tailored, one that fit. The role of emperors in this process is more one of midwife than father.
So it does seem likely to me that while the Pontic state and court will not set out to manufacture a one-size fits all regime religion, that instead the interaction of levels of society will produce this thirst for one that the juxtaposition of strong Persian and Hellenistic influences will gratify with a reformulated Mazdaic frame for traditional paganisms the realm over, and the kings will over time adopt the role of protector of this vague generalized frame--which will more often than not be able to absorb most challenges without violent conflict. And that it will prove so useful and satisfactory to rival powers such as Rome that they too will absorb some version of it.
Thus forestalling the growth of something more radical, such as Christianity was OTL.
So now I'm not just a Whig, but Conservative Whig...
Better quit this then or I'll turn into Edmund Burke or Cato the Elder or something horrible like that.
I read Ian Morris' book two months back, and the argument concerning the emergence of what he termed "Axial Religion" was actually fairly convincing. He seemed to advocate the approach that as states such as Rome and China become more complex, this inspired the rise of more sophisticated religions. To a certain extent, I do buy into this. Note later Pontic Royal references to "The Great God". When I speak about toleration, it doesn't preclude a reform of the Zoroastrian Religion, merely that it may not take on the same attitudes toward other religions that Sassanian Persia did.
There is a vague idea I have for a new unseen of "Axial Religion" further on down the timeline. You sound very knowledgeable about the history of religion, so I don't suppose you would mind me PMing you about it? I'd love to do a lot of research on my own, but between wading through various aspects of Bahraini Bureaucracy as well as the demands of my job, I just don't have the time that I used to.
Lucio Papin; The Revolution of the 5th Century (Corduba: Hispania Publishing Corporation, 2201)
The Caesarian Revolution
Caesar’s peace treaty with the Pontic Empire incensed some of the more traditional factions in Rome. It was essentially a recognition of the state which had killed hundreds of thousands of Romans, including tens of thousands of civilians. This opened up Caesar to attacks from the aristocracy, who were increasingly nervous at Caesar’s growth in power. The fact that he had acted as the de facto ruler of Rome left figures such as Cato more convinced than ever that Caesar aimed to act as a king. As Caesar was on his way back from Greece, Cato delivered a fiery speech to the senate floor, denouncing Caesar as being similar in personality and ambition to the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus [1].
Caesar’s lieutenant in Rome, Marcus Antonius attempted to arrest Cato and other members of the anti-Caesarian faction following this speech, though most fled to the town of Massilia, the most significant settlement in Roman Gaul. Antonius did not follow them there, citing his mission by Caesar to govern Italy until his return. Nevertheless, his actions allowed Cato and Cicero to begin gathering an army to oppose Caesar, though without the support of important figures who sat on the fence between Caesar and the Optimates, this army was not comparable to the forces under Caesar’s command. Despite this, Antonius’ inaction when faced with the growing rebellion ensured that relations between him and Caesar were positively frosty upon Caesar’s return to Rome.
Contrary to expectations, Caesar did not lead his forces against Cato and the anti-Caesarians, preferring to delegate the task to his lieutenant, Lepidus. Later historians suggested that as he was going into old age, Caesar preferred to concentrate on domestic policy rather than focusing on war. Indeed, at the age of sixty-six, Caesar may well have been feeling the effects of his advanced age, as well as the possible epilepsy he suffered from. While Lepidus fought the last of Caesar’s opposition, Caesar got to the work of reordering the Roman State. Acting in the capacity of Dictator-for-Life, he introduced a raft of new reforms that mirrored those of Ariobarzanes in Pontus. In Italy, land would be redistributed from the owners of the Latifundia (who were in any case opposed to Caesar for the most part) to Caesar’s veterans and landless peasants. There was no program to return the newer citizens of Rome back to rural areas though.
The very political structure of the Republic itself was also altered. The Senate was still the primary instrument of government, though the number of Consuls was increased to three overall, each assigned to a different area. Africa, Italy and Hispania were all made into large administrative divisions, each ruled by a Consul. Under the new Roman constitution, the Consuls of Hispania and Africa were subservient to the Italian Consul. In addition to this, the term of the consulship was extended to three years. These changes were the biggest that had taken place since the removal of the Decembvirs many centuries ago.
Caesar in all likelihood was not aiming for the breakdown of the republic as his opponents charged, but rather recognition of realities. The boundaries of the Roman Republic had grown far too large for the existing system to work effectively. In order to reach the heights of success, citizens had started ruinous wars in Gaul and the East, which had left Italy as depopulated as it had been during the Second Punic War. Caesar therefore tried to impose a system that tried to focus the energy of the most successful citizens on good governance rather than foreign wars to gain glory and loot. And of course in this respect, he was incredibly successful. Rome had lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the wars of the fifth century. In the sixth century, Rome would lose less than twenty thousand. The population of Italy, Africa and Hispania all increased, and trade with the East began to pick up.
However, Caesar himself was unable to see all that his vision would eventually achieve; only three years after returning from Greece, he died after a particularly violent epileptic seizure. His death was met by public mourning. The mourning was led by Octavian, a close political ally and relative of Caesar, who had ingratiated himself with the great man once Marcus Antonius had fallen out of favour. That year also brought the first of the new consular elections, with Octavian gaining the great prize of the Italian Consulship, despite being only thirty two at the time. Lepidus gained Hispania with Africa going to Marcus Agrippa. Figures such as Brutus who supported the traditional Republic but who had not joined Cato resigned themselves to dominance by this triumvirate. With no ability to mount a serious military resistance to the Caesarian order, the Republic’s new constitution was stabilized.
The Caesarian constitution was supposed to bring back the notion of competition to higher offices, though in reality the late republican pattern of powerful men dominating the Republic continued through the Caesarian era. To say that Caesar’s ambitions were thwarted though is incorrect, and only looks at a small aspect of what the Caesarian system was trying to achieved. When taking into account the aforementioned prosperity of Rome, as well as the stability of the system when compared to the Republic following the murder of the Gracchi, Caesar’s system can safely be said to have achieved its most important aim of promoting prosperity and peace for the Roman state.
Caesar’s reforms of the Roman Republic were nothing short of transformative. Within the space of a few years, he had turned an unstable and warmongering power into a stable state on the road to prosperity. Mirroring the reforms of Ariobarzanes and Arkathias in Pontus, he turned the Roman Republic into a state capable of lasting much longer than a continuation of the old system would have done. Thus, the implementation of Caesar’s reforms can be seen as the end of the Revolution of the Fifth Century in the Western Mediterranean [2]. As Rome moved into a more stable system, it mirrored the rest of the Western Mediterranean which had moved from dysfunctional and factitious states into a few consolidated and stable states.
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[1] - Caesar never quite goes as far as wearing purple though.
[2] - The idea of a "Fifth Century Revolution" in TTL is big in historiography, largely thanks to Lucio Papin's work. The emergence of large and relatively centralised states in the greater Mediterranean is seen as a continental political trend.
guinazacity
Banned
So rome managed to stop depending on war? Caesar managed to reform the Republic? Good god, that's amazing.
Donald Reaver
Donor
Nice update, can we dream of a stable balance of power between the major powers in the Med area. Hard to see a long term stable form of government in Rome from past experience, but we will see.
Well, as long as the situation outside of Rome remains stable. However, whether or not Caesar's system can truly stand the test of time remains to be seen. Future problems aren't quite on the horizon yet, though they may be just hiding behind it.
Caesar is rather happy with it too. Not dying from a bloody assassination help's ones state of happiness.
Well, remember that the Principate as established by Augustus lasted until Domitian in our world. Whether or not Caesar's system will last quite as long remains to be seen, though it could be around for quite some time yet. The balance of power is an uneasy one, and whatever cooperation happens between private Pontic and Roman citizens, the Governments are never quite likely to be cordial with one another.
Well, Rome is a sort-of Republic by this point. Essentially the Late Republican system of a few dominant men is enshrined in the Roman constitution. In the absence of great conquests though, money and proven administrative ability is more important to the voters.Stable Roman Republic this should be interesting.
The Senate in Rome is still the only one, and theoretically controls the whole of the state, though its power outside Italy is limited, where the power lies with the Consuls. This part of the system might be changed sooner than others, as although some Africans and Hispanics have made their way into Rome thanks to Caesar, they are likely to be frustrated at the limited power they have concerning their own homelands.
The History Hour: Broadcasted 2539, Byzantion Information Conglomerate
So basically, across the Mediterranean and for quite some distance beyond it, the fifth century had been a time of chaos and disorganization. An alien observer would have been forgiven for guessing that either Rome would have collapsed or established hegemony over the whole of the Mediterranean basin. By the start of the fifth century she was the dominant power in the Mediterranean, and her armies had more or less proved to be unstoppable up to this point. With the destruction of Carthage and the downfall of the Diadochi kingdoms in the East, no power was really strong enough to challenge Rome. Of course, as we discussed, an unlikely challenger appeared in the form of the Pontic Kingdom under Mithradates, who rolled Rome’s conquests in the Eastern Mediterranean back and established itself as the primary empire in the Eastern Mediterranean.
For the time being, Pontic-Roman Wars weren’t a done deal, and the rest of the fifth century would be marked by clashes between the powers. However, there came a steady realisation among both that their efforts were best spent elsewhere. After being expelled from Gaul by Vercingetorix, Rome concentrated on expanding its control of Africa and Hispania. Pontus eventually expanded into the Iranian Plateau, though control there was weaker in comparison to other parts of the Empire. At the end of these conquests and wars in the fifth century, the Mediterranean is divided between two “High End” states, now surrounded by either high end states, or chiefdoms coming together to form low end states as in Gaul and Dacia.
As war between Rome and Pontus started to wind down, this meant that trade could start growing across the Mediterranean. Goods from China and India passed through the Pontic Empire on their way to Rome, and even to a small extent, to Gaul. And as you might imagine, this made Pontic middle men very rich. Tariffs on trade increased almost double in the first fifty years of the sixth century, and understandably this made the king even richer. Most of this money was ploughed into infrastructure, not to mention the beautification of the royal cities and their own palaces. The great roads that linked the Pontic Empire from the Adriatic to the deserts of Arachosia were built using the proceeds that came from this increased wealth, but there was more besides. Irrigation projects, aqueducts, and things like that [1].
And of course, this wasn’t just in Pontus. While places like Gaul or Dacia didn’t really see much in the way of this great building work, Rome certainly did. The regional centres of Utica and Tarraco were developed into cities worthy of the name, and as for Rome, Octavian himself declared that he turned the city from one of brick into one of marble. The population reached its peak at around 800,000, equal to Alexandria in the East, and this was thanks to the growth of grain farming in Roman Africa. By the midpoint of the sixth century, Rome had largely made up for the shortfall she lost from Egypt, and was secure in her ability to produce food for herself. This allowed trade between Rome and Pontus to be in luxury goods from further afield.
It was during the sixth century that this began to have an effect on the big sources of luxury goods, China and India. China was a state that dwarfed both Pontus and Rome, and it had a population of about 60 million or so at this point, give or take a few million. So we are talking about an enormous society. Most Chinese peasants didn’t experience any of the benefits that came with the growth of trade from China to the Mediterranean, though the coffers of the Han government certainly did well out of it. Some of the expeditions that the Han made into the Steppes were most probably funded in part from the proceeds of this growing trade, which meant that even beyond the Great Wall, the power of the Han Emperor could be felt. This was one of the major ways that the settling down of politics in the Mediterranean had effects on the other side of Eurasia [2].
In India, there was not a dominant state to take advantage of the increase in trade like there was in China. However, this did not mean that the effects of increasing trade links were not felt. The rise of sea-borne trade from Southern India meant that the Dravidian Kingdoms of the south now had more access to money than they did before. The Satavahana Dynasty benefited somewhat from this, but it was the previously backward kingdoms of the far-south of India where the most change was seen. In the space of decades, governments with bureaucracies and organized armies sprung up in a matter of decades. Dravidian literary epics comparing with the great Sanskrit Epics were written, and the influx of traders began to bring new ideas to these kingdoms, something that actually was missed in the Ganges Valley, which paradoxically started to become comparatively less connected to the rest of the world in comparison to the south of India [3].
Other areas of the world that did not count much before now started to come into the trade system of the Eastern World too. The newly unified Gaul, still hungry for wine and other luxuries from Italy hit on a not-so-new resource to barter with the Romans. Slaves. While some slaves were still Gallic, from the very limited regional conflicts or from the sale of criminals, Gallic chieftains now took up the practice of raiding across the Rhine and into Germania for slaves. Vercingetorix himself is said to have approved of the practice, noting that every Barbarian sold to the slave port of Massilia was one less Gaul. It appeared that the Gauls, now at least sort of unified, quickly adopted the kind of dismissive attitude towards foreigners that characterised the Greeks and the Romans. Britain was not a big source of slaves for Gaul for the time being though.
The increase in trade of course should not be compared to the later growth of globalization. The first definite record of a Pontic citizen we have visiting China is not until 595 AC, and Romans likely did not venture to China until the late seventh century! So we aren’t talking about a bourgeoning globalization when we discuss the growth of trade. We’re really talking about the very height of connectedness in the ancient age. The Sixth century is really the true start of this huge trade network but ultimately, the impact is limited on the majority of people. The average inhabitant of Alexandria or Arkathiakerta likely never saw Chinese silk or tasted Indian spices. The average inhabitant of China in India never saw Spanish silver or Baltic Amber.
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[1] - What would the Romans have done for us that Pontus didn't do anyway?
[2] - Big butterflies in China won't really be seen for centuries yet, though things won't look quite the same as OTL from this point forward. Expect China to start getting some attention.
[3] - Don't misunderstand this though, the Ganges is still very much the center of what we'd think of as Indian civilization. Despite the prosperity, the South is still sparsely populated compared to Northern India.
It's a weird but awesome world where the Pontic Empire feels more enduring than the Roman Empire.
Will these strengthening trade networks see a trade of ideas as well?
Will these strengthening trade networks see a trade of ideas as well?
So Carthage never really re-rises, and Utica takes its place?
ME LIKE IT! Utica had so much potential that didn't happen otl!
I think a detailed map of the Mediterranean and north Europe would be useful to understand the current situation at this time. Perhaps even the populations of the largest cities in each "country".
What do the Gaels have to say about their cousins the Gauls now? (by Gaels I mean all British and Irish Celts)
ME LIKE IT! Utica had so much potential that didn't happen otl!
I think a detailed map of the Mediterranean and north Europe would be useful to understand the current situation at this time. Perhaps even the populations of the largest cities in each "country"
.What do the Gaels have to say about their cousins the Gauls now? (by Gaels I mean all British and Irish Celts)
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And family name - don't forget family name. Clientage will be extremely important in this quasi-republic, and as Rome's empire solidifies, the patron-client networks will extend outward to the provinces as they were beginning to do by this time IOTL. Every provincial who has Roman citizenship, and even many who don't, will be plugged into the system through a particular senator, and some senatorial families' voting blocs will be enormous.
Speaking of which, did Caesar do anything to shift the balance of voting power away from the senators and toward the equestrians and, to a lesser extent, the second and third census classes? Given where his support came from, it would seem natural for him to give the middle classes a few extra voting centuries. Also, has he expanded the citizenship, and if so, how far?
Anyway, I'm not sure this system can last as long as the Principate, because an oligarchy based on competition between powerful families has a lot of built-in instability. But if the Principate could survive the Julio-Claudians and Domitian, then a reformed oligarchic system might last a century or two.