Prelude
  • May 13, 400 A.D.
    Near modern-day Virginia Beach

    It had been almost two months since he had felt the wonderful solid ground beneath his feet. The journey on the magnificent Roman galleys and dromons had been long and hard; almost 900 people had died of sickness or drowning along the way. A powerful Roman legate had gathered thousands of the brightest minds he could find across the empire to cross the great ocean with him, having promised lands, riches, and a return to the peak of the Roman Empire far away from the disaster that the western empire had become.

    At 5,200 legionaries and at full strength, the man (who was known as Xavian Ornellius) had brought not only his entire legion with him, but countless scholars, writers, monks, priests, carpenters, engineers, inventors, scientists, botanists, biologists, historians, geographers, politicians, archaeologists, doctors, poets, musicians, blacksmiths, sailors, fishermen, and farmers. This massive group had amounted to around 12,000 people and they had pooled their funds to "rent" a huge fleet of dromons, galleys, and any other ship they could find, crowding these scholars and craftsmen inside with promises of abundant new opportunities.

    As the Western Roman Empire continued to spiral downhill, many were persuaded by Xavian Ornellius, the commander of the legion, to take this bold journey with him, as he had believed that the Earth was round as it had a circumference calculated by Eratosthenes. Yes, the journey was hard. Yes, there was a massive risk that everyone on board the fleet had taken when they came with their families in search of a place to start fresh and right the wrongs of the past. However, as he looked upon his growing settlement of many, many small houses with dirt roads connecting them, he could not help thinking that he had made the right decision.

    He gazed out across his city-state, which still officially claimed to be a domain of the Western Roman Empire. This could not be further from the truth; Ornellius had sent a few galleys and a dromon back across the ocean several times, but none of them made it back. As far as he knew, God had done terrible things to Europe and had spared his fleet as the last Romans left on the planet. This idea was promulgated by most of the settlers.

    He gazed out across his town, watching as stone bricks recently carved out of a new nearby stone quarry were layed down to build the town well. He saw the bricks, logs, and clay being laid out across the town to build new schools, academies, houses, hospitals, barracks, fences, walls, a town hall, and a silo. Pigs, sheep, cattle, chickens, dogs, horses, and countless other animals from the Old World were now being unloaded from their ships and led into new pastures and pens on the outskirts of the town, while fruits, nuts, and vegetables were now being planted in small backyard gardens at every house.

    A man known as "the beekeeper" had even brought a hive of European honeybees along for the voyage. He chuckled, thinking of how the other people on his ship had dreaded coming to the deck because his hive was there. The beekeeper had said that the bees were gentle and would be of use in pollunating their crops, but Xavian Ornellius did not think much of it.

    He took the entire scene in, nodding in approval at his blossoming settlement. Indeed, he thought, this will be the beginning of a great empire.

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    Note: So the basic premise is that a large group of talented people and soldiers, the best Roman society has to offer, travel across the Atlantic Ocean in 400 A.D. and establish a small colony that looks similar to Jamestown or Plymouth. This is not a full timeline (yet) and in this thread I just want to explore the history of this new society over the next few centuries. They will not have any European contact whatsoever until 1492 (this can also be delayed to 1513), but I may try to explore some interesting ideas later on concerning Viking activity in Canada and possibly Maine that will inevitably happen in the 10th and 11th centuries. The small town I'm having them start with is just temporary and I will probably have a better-planned, more advanced Roman-looking city be built near modern-day Norfolk later on. The Americo-Roman legion has changed their uniform back to the lorica segmentata, by the way. Anyone who wants to post small little excerpts about the history, folklore, music, clothing, food, tactics, technology, cities, or government of this new colony are free to do so since this is just a brainstorm. I would love to hear thoughts from others about this. Thanks!
     
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    Emperors of the Ornellian Dynasty
  • "Emperors of the Ornellian Dynasty" by Ralph L. Palmer, ©2017 Perfection Learning

    After the initial colony was established in America, the Romans (or the Americo-Romans as modern scholars often refer to them as in these early years) steadily expanded throughout the modern-day states of Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. After sending ships over and over again over the next few years back to Europe to establish contact and with all of these voyages ending in disaster, the self-proclaimed Governor of the colony made himself Emperor Xavian I in 409 A.D. Some scholars debate whether or not it was the last of these voyages, which saw his youngest son die, that convinced him that the cause of re-establishing ties with the Old World was a lost one. Nevertheless, the myth that the Old World had been completely overrun by beasts and demons was held as common belief thereafter, discouraging any and all future attempts at making contact with Rome. And so, the American Empire (or the Imperium Americae) was established in 409 A.D. and Xavian I established the Ornellian Dynasty, which would last until 516 A.D. when the last dynast, Giannis II, was killed in a Native American slave revolt. These are the following Emperors that reigned during this period:

    [409-418] Xavian I
    Born in 356 A.D. to a poor family in Southern Gaul, Xavian Ornellius enlisted in the Roman Army at a young age and quickly rose throughout the ranks of the Empire's military. He served in a few minor political positions, but his main accomplishments started to begin when he became the leader of the Colonial Society in Rome. Throughout the 390s, he signed up hundreds of families to join a potential voyage with him, handpicking people for their intelligence or knowledge in certain fields in an attempt to create a new society of intellectuals. He led these people as well as his own legion to form the new colony in the year 400. In the 18 years that he reigned as de-facto and then de-jure leader of the colony, he built a complex sewage system, roads system, and built a system of reservoirs, aqueducts, and canals, developing the land in modern-day Virginia and settling it thoroughly. He was the founder of the great city of Olbasus (OTL Norfolk) and led the Americo-Romans to victory in several wars against the natives, the most notable of them being the Powhatan War of 401-402. Despite his generally good reputation, he also instigated several genocides on the indigenous population and started a system of chattel slavery for all Native Americans he conquered.

    [418-445] Coriolanus I
    Many historians claim that Coriolanus I, also known as Imperator Caesar Coriolanus Ornellius Augustus, was the first Roman child born in America in 400 as the son of Xavian I. He studied at several prestigious universities in Olbasus during his youth, excelling in the fields of architecture, geography, history, economics, and political science. He became Emperor when he was just 18, and many citizens had mixed feelings for him. On one hand, he tried to make people worship him as a god and he unsuccessfully tried to make a patrician upper class emerge. Both plots were foiled by the citizens, who launched several uprisings that were eventually quelled. On the other hand, Imperator Coriolanus expanded the empire as far as Georgia in the South and Connecticut in the North, founding great cities such as Nova Gades (OTL New York), Carolinapolis (OTL Charleston), Narssasus (OTL Richmond), Portis Lemanis (OTL Atlantic City), Philadelphia, Croton (OTL Wilmington), Baltimorum (OTL Baltimore), and Frutex (OTL Savannah).


    [445-457] Coriolanus II
    Born in 422 to Coriolanus I, Coriolanus II was always interested in the military as a child. He ascended to the throne at the age of 23, and before that he had spent five years in the Imperial American Army. In the twelve years that he reigned, he encouraged the people to have more children, settled people throughout the country by building farms, towns, and better infrastructure, and he conquered the coast of the OTL 13 colonies from Georgia to Maine. His reign was marked by several wars, including one unsuccessful one waged against the Iroquois Confederacy that halted American expansion inland. He is credited with founding the cities of Trimountaine (OTL Boston), Augusta (OTL Augusta, Maine), Juliomagnus (OTL Greensboro), Salodurum (OTL Charlotte), and for creating a quick an efficient postal system similar to the Pony Express of OTL.


    [457-476] Coriolanus III
    Coriolanus III was born as the younger son of Coriolanus I in 425. He succeeded his childless brother, and his reign was marked with the creation of an appointed Imperial Advisory Board to help him make decisions. He also reformed the way his Empire was governed, creating 14 provinces (OTL 13 colonies and Maine) and dividing them into small districts (with boundaries corresponding to OTL counties). Each District was required to have one town in it, causing an influx of people from the big cities into the countryside and diversifying the economy. He renovated many of the new small towns and the preexisting major cities, building new highways and infrastructure as well as ordering dozens of new dromons, galleys, and triremes to be constructed to replace the aging Imperial American Navy that was consistent of the remnants of the fleet that crossed the ocean in 400 A.D. He was succeeded by his son Giannis.


    [476-499] Giannis I
    Imperator Caesar Giannis Ornellius Augustus was born in 454 to Coriolanus III and his first cousin Caelia. During his reign, the non-slave population reached 250,000 people around the year 499, and he oversaw the creation of the public school system, where schools were built in every town for children ages 5-18 to attend mandatorily for free. Using what knowledge they had of medicine, the Imperial Advisory Board also got him to build hospitals everywhere while universities and colleges were also given funding. Police and fire departments among other public services were also created, and an efficient tax collection system was implemented. Giannis I was rumored to have invented the popular Americo-Roman sport "baseball," and he build giant colosseums in his cities for gladiator fights and chariot races.

    [499-516]
    Giannis II
    Giannis II continued his father's work, leading to high quality of life in his Empire. He fought and lost wars with the Creek and the Cherokee, who had purchased Roman shields and made thick uniforms from pelts. He subsequently shut down travel and trade with the Natives, although he permitted items like blankets to be sold to them so that horrible diseases could be spread. He made his mistake when he fell madly in love with a Wampanoag women and married her, almost starting a rebellion in doing so. When he died, the half-native crossbreed Prince Algonius claimed the title of Emperor, causing a brief but destructive civil war that saw the Ornellian Dynasty come to an abrupt end. When the "Halfblood War" came to a close, scientist and polymath Nusitarius I was voted into the office of Emperor in a rare democratic referendum.

    Today, the House of Ornellius is known as the dynasty that shaped future events and laid the groundwork for the later wars of Manifest Destiny, also helping to create a unique "American" cultural identity in the form of music, literature, cooking, dress, slang, and common ideas.


    (Note: I will be going deeper into this period later, I just wanted to give an overview. Feel free to comment or ask questions, I will answer them when I can.)
     
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