alternatehistory.com

In the early Roman empire (say, before the fourth century), emperors could be from lots of places. Hadrian was Spanish, Septimus Severus was North African, and the cleanup crew after the 3rd century crisis consisted of Illyrians. I imagine if we looked hard enough we could find some Celtic contenders as well.

But later on, when the immigrant population involved a lot of Germans, some of whom graduated otherwise to the highest echelon of Roman society (e.g. Stilicho, Alaric, ...), somehow there seems to have been a new rule barring Germans from taking on the purple. When and how did this change occur? Did the Romans learn racism somewhere? It seems to me that this is one of the big causes of the fall of the western empire. I guess this sort of attitude is part of what led to the disastrous battle of Adrianople, right?

Given this, is there a likely POD that leads to social and political acceptance of Goths as being fully Roman, and hence the survival of the western Empire for a while?

I've been a lurker for a while, but this is my first post at AH; I apologize if I'm treading old ground, but I haven't seen anyone tackle quite this point yet.
Top