Constantine built the city from a backwater small town,did he not?You already have the tech,all you need is the imagination,money and determination to do it.
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Dream of the Poison King: A History of the Pontic Empire
- Thread starter Nassirisimo
- Start date
Indeed, it is already a mighty-fine looking Empire.Ah Pontic Empire you're a beauty you are
Indeed, though it may be one that takes a different course to OTL without the fortuitous events that happened early in his career. He already has an impressive reputation in Rome though.
Well, all I will say in this regard is that it's still well within the capability of the Romans to do well in Gaul, and with expansion to the East shut off for the time being, Gaul will be an area in which many Romans seek fame and fortune. However, Rome was not always guaranteed to conquer Gaul in OTL, and nor will it be in this timeline. Whatever happens in Gaul though, rest assured that it will be most interesting.
Link please?
This looks quite interesting actually. I always appreciate a good classical TL.
At the moment, the largest city in the Empire is probably Smyrna, followed by Ephesus and Corinth. None have a population greater than a hundred thousand though, so there's plenty of room for a megacity to grow. Mithradates is alright having his capital on the Asian shore of the Aegean, though this will likely be different for his successors. Urbanization is at something of a low point at the moment, due to the wars and other disruptions that have marked the past hundred years or so, and if the Pontic Empire is lasting, it is likely that cities will grow once again, as will the population as a whole. The population of Asia Minor grew by more than a million between 14 CE and 164 CE so it is entirely possible for the area to become more prosperous as time goes on.darthfanta,
Byzantium WOULD be a great spot for a capital except for one problem, its an obvious spot to siege, and the teck doesn't exist at this point in time to make the iotl Constantinople defenses. plus, at this point the cities of classical Greece are still famous and important, the best choice for a capital would be somewhere in the Anatolian highlands, probably Nicomedia or Nicaea or Peragamon, which seems to be the author's choice. by the time otl Constantinople was founded Athens, Sparta (mistras), Corinth, and Ephesus were small towns, Thessaloniki was BY FAR the largest city of Greece itself (but small now, as it was only founded like 50 years ago)
other thoughts,
i can see the failure of Rome to dominate the east means a much more Latinized west in Gaul, Hispania, the Maghreb, and maybe even trans-Rhine Germany. obviously Rome will collapse eventually but as long as there isn't a total screw (as in otl), western Europe could become ttl china. The Pontic empire (i'm assuming that they eventually end up with borders at the end of cyrenea and eprius, pretty much otl ere, but i'm not saying it HAS to happen this way. this is not my timeline after all) would look more like the classical roman empire in the way that it would be impossible to replace the Semitic and other Afro-asitac cultures of the Levant and Egypt (same applies to Persia and Mesopotamia, if they end up conquering them too, but i find that unlikely). So in that case we would have a Greek block (dominate, obviously), a Syrian (i'm including Hebrews/Jews in this one, even though at this point they spoke mostly Aramaic) block, and an Egyptian block (and the Persian and Mesopotamian blocks if they are conquered). I wonder how long they could keep it together.
the end of Dalmatia/the beginning of eprius is probably going to become more fortified than the trenches in ww1 though
thanks and good bacon,
Swagmiester
Nothing lasts forever, but Roman culture will be more influential later on in this TL for various reasons (I have broad swathes of macro-history thought out up to OTL's 1000 CE). The Roman state will not stay as it is, but there will be a sense of "Roman" identity that lasts up to TTL's 2015 CE, though there will be more on this later. In this sense I guess Rome will have a longer-lasting effect than Pontus. Pontus isn't going to be "Pontusizing" inhabitants of its Empire, though there will be big shifts in culture and identity away from what we know in OTL. The Middle East certainly won't resemble what it does today, but nor will much of the rest of the world. It's not going to be totally alien, though there won't really be much in the world that feels like it's OTL counterpart.
There had been a lot of impressive fortifications beforehand, and the Romans were excellent engineers, but I'm still not quite sure how feasible double walls would be at this point.
It was a fairly common thing for a conquering ruler to build a capital from a small town-village that had existed before. Tigranes of Armenia, Mithradates' contemporary, built a city called Tigranokerta, but it was destroyed by Lucullus if I remember rightly. I will say that Byzantium will prosper in the Pontic Empire, though it is not likely to be the capital. Nevertheless, it's going to be a hugely important city in TTL's history and possibly present, so it will get it's fair share of love.
They were relatively lucky, in that they were for the most part merely forced out rather than massacred wholesale. They're not getting back into Greece any time soon, but Romans will not stay West of the Adriatic forever.
Hafsa Ibn Salman; Last Gasp of the Ancients: The Rise and Fall of the Pontic Empire (Aden Publishing Corporation, 2541)
A Brief Moment of Peace
With peace in the West secured for the moment, Mithradates made his way back to Asia Minor, the core of his Empire. Although Greece and Western Asia Minor had been the site of a war, only Greece had been devastated. Pontus’ army had managed to be less disruptive than one would think. As a result, aside from the Asian Vespers, there had not been a lot of casualties among the civilian population. This, alongside his hard-fought war of liberation, served to endear the population of Asia Minor to Mithradates.
However, when peace with Rome was won, questions now turned to how Mithradates would govern his new Empire. In Pontus itself, power was very much in the hands of Mithradates personally, as well as to the Persian aristocracy. Cities such as Sinope and Trapzon had little in the way of self-government, though already some cities in Asia Minor and Greece had been granted some measure of self-government. It was in the years of 448 to 453 that the administration of the Pontic Empire began to move away from an ad-hoc arrangement into something resembling the administration of the Classical Pontic Empire. However, renewed war would ensure that Mithradates’ reforms would be limited, and the importance of these years in shaping the later Empire should not be overstated.
Greece presented the most pressing problem for Mithradates. In terms of population, around two hundred thousand Greeks had lost their lives in the war with Rome, but this still left a population of about three million, about a quarter of the whole population of the Empire. Although the Greeks of Greece itself were far from a majority in the Empire, they made up for this in terms of disruptiveness. Although many Greeks were happy that they had been liberated, they did not intend to trade the rule of Rome for that of Pontus. On the flip side, Mithradates had sacrificed great amounts of treasure and soldiers in the cause of Greek freedom, and would not have been pleased to have the Greeks say “Thank you, now please get out of here”.
Reportedly, it was one of Mithradates’ most trusted advisors; Metrodoros of Scepsis who thought suggested the solution. He advocated that in most of Greece (less urbanized areas such as Thessaly, Macedonia and Epiros aside), administrative responsibility should be given to the Polis, which would be tied to Pontus in a permanent alliance. In exchange for a high level of autonomy, a small amount of treasure would be sent to the Pontic king, who would also be allowed to control tariffs and trade in Greece. For Mithradates, this meant that Greece would be the loosest part of his Empire. However, high on victory and eager to see his good name carried forward, he granted Greece, and many Greek cities in the Empire (with the exception of those in Pontus proper) these concessions.
There was also the question of what to do with non-urban areas in the Empire. The Empire was by now too large to be directly administered by the Pontic King. While Pontus had been small, Mithradates had been able to keep a tight grip on things. Now controlling an Empire of twelve million people and approximately 932,000 km squared, he needed a way to delegate authority and administration in the Empire. Thankfully, a system had already been pioneered by his Achaemenid ancestors, that of Satrapies.
Mithradates did not use the Persian system exactly though. Satraps were in charge of the tax collection, law enforcement and maintained roads and other infrastructure, as their forbearers had. The Satraps were able to keep around 40% of the tax they collected in order to ensure that the roads and law were maintained in the lands they governed, though this did not leave them with a great amount of power. They were forbidden from maintaining more than five thousand men at arms, and would be inspected to ensure that this was true. They would receive no money from Polis within their Satrapies, with that money instead going to the Pontic King. Most of the fortresses in their land were held by commanders answerable to the king rather than the Satrap. In addition to this, a Satrap could serve for no more than ten years at a time.
It was with this system that Mithradates ensured that none of the Satraps could build up a powerful enough base to challenge the authority of the king. The first Satraps themselves tended to be a mixed group. Both Greeks and Persians were appointed as the first Satraps, which promoted Mithradates’ own credentials as a second Alexander, bringing together Greeks and Persians in a single Empire. In Greek eyes, he now looked like the most effective Diadochi king in centuries, though this was probably true because his other subjects saw him hailing from the legitimate line of kings that Alexander had overthrown.
Had Mithradates died at this point, he would have almost certainly found a prominent place in the history books. However, subsequent events would turn his legacy from that of the liberator king into simply, “The Great”. The East had been a quiet front for Mithradates for a long time. Even after the flow of subsidies from Parthia had stopped, the Pontic and Parthian kingdoms had been respectful neighbours, and had continued to co-operate in a number of areas. However, after the death of Mithradates II of Parthia, the situation had deteriorated.
There had been a number of civil wars in Parthia within the past decade, usually following the death or usurpation of a king. Sandarouk took the throne in 449, but the throne he inherited was a weakened one, and the Parthian king had now been reduced to the first among equals of the Parthian lords. This created an enormous power vacuum in areas adjacent to Parthia. Tigranes of Armenia, an erstwhile Parthian client took advantage of the situation to take part of Media. In 451, he provocatively conquered the remnants of the Seleucid Empire, though Sandarouk was too weak to stop this flagrant disregard of the balance of power.
Mithradates too was made nervous by Tigranes’ newfound power. A Tigranes who built up an Empire in the East could well make common cause with Rome to destroy the Empire Mithradates had built. It was with this in mind that Mithradates turned on his one-time allies, the pirates of Cilicia. The conquest was a hard one, owing to the excellent defences of the pirates, and took a whole year for the huge Pontic army to undertake. This also eliminated the last area that stood between Armenian and Pontic control. Mithradates’ embassy warned Tigranes that expansionist action would be met with likewise action from Pontus.
However, this warning did not appear to faze Tigranes. Sandarouk of Parthia was killed by a bodyguard during a hunt in the spring of 453. Who arranged this is unknown, though the effects were momentous. Parthia once again descended into squabbling, with each magnate trying to advance his candidate to the throne. It might have ended like the other Parthian Civil Wars, had it not been for the actions of Tigranes of Armenia. However, Tigranes decides to take the step that would lead to the “Parthian Wars”, and declared that he was the best candidate to rule Parthia.
This was astonishing news for Mithradates. He had expected something like a move into the Hasmonean kingdom, or the seizing of more territory in Media. Instead, Tigranes had more or less declared his intention rule an Empire as large as Mithradates’. This was something that could not be tolerated by Mithradates, who initially sent an envoy to ward Tigranes off from this course of action. However, Tigranes would not be dissuaded, and Mithradates went with the alternative plan. He would launch his own candidacy for the Parthian throne.
Unless something like the Arabic cultural takeover happens, most of the middle east is going to probably speak (a modern form of) Aramaic, right? it already was becoming the common language there about this time i think. kinda ironic that the language (otl, b/c he will be butterflied) that Jesus spoke was the language of the Assyrians.
Did the Arabs not originally inhabit Yemen? Then who the hell were the Sabeans?
Two kings, a kingless kingdom and a Civil War. Sounds like the worst sitcom of all time!
These are seriously awesome. I wonder what other bits of artwork you have up your sleeves. Keep 'em coming if at all possible.
Indeed. I really like the artwork.Beautiful!
The reasons for Rome's lack of intervention will be explored very soon indeed. Basically, internal and external conflicts in Rome mean that Pontus' Western flank is secure for the time being. However, you haven't heard the last of Roman-Pontic conflict.
Well, the Sabeans were Arab in the sense that they were Arabian and probably looked a lot like the Yemenis of today, but there were a number of differences between them and what we would think of as Arabs now. Sabeans spoke a South Semitic language more closely related to the endangered local languages spoken in Yemen today. The Arabs of Hijaz will still have a lot of push factors later on, but as there will be no Islam, there will be no driving force to unite them and enable them to conquer much of the world. Thus, although they will still play a fairly significant part in history, they will be nowhere near as influential as they are in our own world.
Most of the Middle East will not be speaking Arabic. Aramaic had been something of a lingua franca for centuries by this point, even much of the administration of the Achaemenid Empire was done in Aramaic. As far as I know, it was supplanting Akkadian in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and thus it's dominance probably lasted for a thousand years. Without a revolution similar to that of the Islamic conquests, it's conceivable for its dominance to continue.
Inspired by the success of the Atilla the Hun Show, no doubt.
"Last gasp of the ancients": certainly sounds as if the Pontic empire won't actually last that long, influential as it might be.
Great pictures, Grouchio. Now I imagine Tigranes always making sure he's sitting in a really high chair or standing on an elevation, so he can look down his nose at people like that...
Bruce
Well, the Pontic Empire won't be lasting long compared to several OTL entities. Certainly not as long as the Roman Empire did in our TL. That being said, the title of the book isn't just because of the longevity (or lack thereof) of the Pontic Empire, but also about the kind of set up that replaces it. I more or less have the general outline of Pontic history worked out until its fall, so I can assure you and the other readers that it will be a very interesting ride.
Lucio Papin; The Revolution of the 5th Century (Corduba: Hispania Publishing Corporation, 2201)
The Dawn of the First Roman Civil War
The Optimate opponents of Sertorius and Cinna were quick to take advantage of this. Although those such as Pompey who had gone on campaign were less quick to criticise Sertorius, there were plenty of established as well as up and coming Optimates who saw Sertorius’ ceasefire as a betrayal of Rome [1]. It was now that the attempt at reconciliation of the two factions started to deteriorate. After a particularly fiery speech by a young politician named Marcus Tullius Cicero, a riot had broken out in Rome which was only suppressed by another armed mob.
Acts of violence started to become more and more common, though large outbursts were limited. After an attempted assassination against Cinna, all hell seemed to break loose. Supporters of Cinna and Sertorius attacked partisans of the Optimates, who fought back. The riots were only quelled when both the leaders of the Populares and Optimates appealed for calm. Nevertheless, the two years of “The Unrest” as it was later known did much to weaken the reconciliation that had taken place beforehand. This was when Rome’s power was challenged once again from the outside. In 453, Bocchus II of Mauretania, a kingdom previously allied against Jurgurtha, decided that he could copy the example of Mithradates and conquer Roman Africa.
Sertorius attempted to run for the consulship once again, but was defeated by the Optimate faction, with Marcus Crassus being chosen to head the army to defeat Bocchus. This was a shock for the Populares, who had been assured of their position since the defeat of Sulla almost ten years earlier. If Sertorius was insulted by this defeat, Cinna was mortified, and began the preparations for a coup-d'état which would see the Optimates side-lined. However, even though Cinna managed to bring Sertorius on side, he had underestimated how much resentment there was for the Populares faction after the ceasefire with Mithradates.
When the mob of the Populares appeared in the Senate house to “encourage” the senators to repudiate the results of the election, they were set upon by Optimates, as well as those who still believed in the institutions of the Roman people. Much blood was shed, but Cinna, Sertorius and the other Populares were more or less chased out of the city, but they would not be gone for long. Sertorius hastily raised an army, and set about the unthinkable. He would march on Rome with his army. Rome of course was little prepared for this, and the city was conquered by Sertorius. Although there was no rampage by the army, an atmosphere of fear began to hang over the city, as some Optimates disappeared from the scene.
While purging their enemies in the city, Sertorius and Cinna prepared for the inevitable return of Crassus. They hoped to find support from peoples such as the Samnites, though their support among the other Italians was limited. Nevertheless, they were able to gather a sizable force, sufficient for the purposes of defending Italy. Or so they thought. Crassus and his army returned in short order from North Africa, landing in Sicily and briefly confirming the allegiance of the island. They then crossed the Straits of Messana into Italy proper.
The speed of this took the Populares by surprise. Nevertheless, Sertorius intended to make a stand in Campania. The two armies stood face to face and in the spring of 454, Roman arms clashed in the first of the great Roman civil wars. Although casualties were high on both sides, the forces of Marcus Crassus emerged triumphant, in part due to the efforts of Pompey, a man known in equal measure for his military skill and disregard for proper protocol. While Sertorius and the other prominent Populares fled to Hispania to lick their wounds, Crassus and the Optimates marched triumphantly into Rome.
What followed were rather violent purges of those Romans who refused to repute Cinna and Sertorius. Although only a few hundred died, the spectacle of violence seen in Rome arguably had an effect of legitimising later violence [2]. Despite this, things were looking up for the Optimates. With Sertorius’ military reputation ruined after the Eastern debacle and his loss to Crassus, the Optimates appeared to have the most talented men, particularly in the forms of Pompey and Lucullus, two lieutenants of Crassus. There was also little resistance to Crassus taking the role of dictator, though it was generally understood that Crassus would step down once the threat from the Populares was extinguished.
As 454 came to a close, most Romans thought that the civil war would be over fairly soon. After all, Sertorius had shown that he was not capable of standing up to Crassus or his allies in combat, and he was known widely as the best man among the Populares. However, he and Cinna had not been resting on their laurels while in Hispania, and instead recruited Spaniards into the army, and built up support among many of the tribal chieftains in Hispania. Although Crassus and the Optimates held Rome, the First Roman Civil War had only just begun.
******
[1] - The Populares will struggle to shake off this image as cowardly sell outs, but eventually there will be an oddly familiar man who will bury this image.
[2] - Despite this, violence is nowhere near as normalised as it was in Rome in OTL. At this point in Roman history, they were having to deal with Servile wars (which are brewing in TTL) as well as the aftermath of the conscriptions and Sulla's dictatorship, which makes TTL's struggles look tame by comparison.
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Ah the roman civil wars, Fitting for their political system being weird at the best of times.
maybe narrisimo can make this event scarred in the minds of the roman people so that the population wont tolerate civil wars in the future?
maybe narrisimo can make this event scarred in the minds of the roman people so that the population wont tolerate civil wars in the future?
So, what happened in Africa? Did he beat Bocchus? never engage him? engage in a few inconclusive skirmishes before leaving?
Are these mystical tattoos that give the person extra power?
(Also, are Bochhus's elite shock troops called Moenods?
)So it's Sertorius vs. Crassus for control of Rome, while Numidia looks to become the next Carthage...this is becoming quite interesting.
I believe you mean Populares here.
So right now Pontus has about equal power to Roman Republic? And similar territory, maybe slightly lesser.