Roman America

[Faeelin]

Even if it turned out that the natives had things to offer to make the journey worthwhile (and that would have to be something impressive indeed - maybe the willingness to pay for steel or glass in gold, weight for weight) the following expeditions would take a long time to establish anything like a Roman beachhead.

Ship over a few settlers. What would be the problem?

Even by the lights of the 16th century the Americas were worlds away, and to an Ancient civilisation the Atlantic is practically outer space.

I dunno about this. There certainly wasn't as much trade with the Baltic and North sea as in the 16th century, but the Romans had no problem sending fleets across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon and Southern India, or reaching Britannia.

 

[Faeelin]

- No aggressive but poor warrior aristocracy like that of Castile or Aragon or even Portugal, ready to risk their lives on unlikely gambles. The Roman elite would serve in the military, but that was only part of a career that included civil offices as well. In any case, there were still barbarian lands closer to home that looked like better prospects for conquest than something all the way across the ocean.

"there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to statisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they sow desolation, and they call it peace.

Okay, so that's not quite accurate. But the Romans were certainly not adverse to easy, rich conquests.

- No shortage of gold or other precious metals - Rome controlled the entire Mediterranean basin by this time, and appears to have been well-supplied with precious metals. Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, on the other hand, was largely cut off from supplies of precious metals that were largely in Islamic countries, or that had their access routes blocked by Islamic countries. Hence, a huge motive to get their hand on any precious metals that they could, by war or trade.

Now this doesn't seem accurate at all. For one thing, Europe possessed the silver mines of Saxony and the Bohemian mines, which were very productive. Europe had a bit of a gold famine, I'll grant. But it wasn't the cause of their conquests.

And, of course, we're all familiar with the problems of debasing coinage the Romans had. Does more gold solve that? (I wish one of the boards economists would comment on that).

 

[Kit]

OK, I don't know much about the Roman period at all, but I do have some thoughts.

Firstly, I don't know what precise problems were caused by the debased coinage, or how the situation came about, but I would say that 'money' as a medium of exchange needs to be easily recognized, easily divisible, portable, hard to duplicate, and it must be a good storer of value. If the debased coins did that, then it didn't really matter whether they were pure gold or not. Of course you do have to take into account how people thought about the 'value' of the coins. If they thought they were worth less, then they were worth less.

Secondly, usually, in an industrial economy, if you vastly increase the money supply without increasing production then you end up with inflation. Now, the Romans didn't do a lot of industrial production - their economy was primarily agricultural and mercantile. A huge boost to the money supply might be expected to increase inflation...however, I don't think it would have, mostly because most people didn't operate in a 'money economy'.

Thirdly, there have been periods in history where the economy had a restricted money supply (due to the absence of enough gold) - and this hindered economic growth. When gold reserves were discovered, they had a positive effect on the economy. It allowed more goods to be exchanged and more...stuff...to happen and remember, in an economy, it's not the existance of assets that is important, it's the movement of assets that is crucial. Money allows that to happen, and if you have too little of it to go around then you're capping your growth. To be honest, I have no idea if this would have been the case with the Romans. I have no idea if their economy did have a poor money supply or if their needs were met with what gold they had.

Anyway...for someone who's been talking out of his ass...those are my thoughts.

 

[Hierophant]

Nobody commented on my little idea.

Well Im thinking the best idea is simply for Seneca and other suspected traitors to be sent on a probable suicide mission, survive and spread their ideas around the Carib.

 

[carlton_bach]

Ship over a few settlers. What would be the problem?

The problem is that shipping space costs money, and if you have money you are not going to travel across the Atlantic to a barbarian wilderness. It was hard enough getting 17th century Europeans to go, and they had a much longer tradition of ocean sailing and a much stronger economic incentive.

I dunno about this. There certainly wasn't as much trade with the Baltic and North sea as in the 16th century, but the Romans had no problem sending fleets across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon and Southern India, or reaching Britannia.

That's coastal sailing, or monsoon sailing. The Atlantic is not the Channel or the Baltic. It isn't a problem of ship technology strictly speakling, but of experience. Habituating a culture to sailing out of sight of lamd takes a developed understanding of astronomy and navigation and a long tradition of success.

 

[Faeelin]

Nobody commented on my little idea.

Well Im thinking the best idea is simply for Seneca and other suspected traitors to be sent on a probable suicide mission, survive and spread their ideas around the Carib.

That actually would be pretty interesting.


Hispaniola,

1492: Christobol Colon looks out across the horizon, to see ships approaching him.

They bear the letters SPQR.

Cortes finds himself facing steel and iron using warriors who have plenty of experience with crops, and while they might have trouble with smallpox, the presence of large mammals means that the Europeans are also vulnerable to diseases that would've developed in the New World....

 

[MrP]

Mm, intriguing. If Seneca remains in power over the group, would we see a Stoic philosophy-based society? Cool!

 

[Wozza]

Hispaniola,

1492: Christobol Colon looks out across the horizon, to see ships approaching him.

They bear the letters SPQR.

Cortes finds himself facing steel and iron using warriors who have plenty of experience with crops, and while they might have trouble with smallpox, the presence of large mammals means that the Europeans are also vulnerable to diseases that would've developed in the New World....[/QUOTE]

That is imaginative...
Are the Romans only in the Caribbean? Do mesoamerican civilizations survive?
What do the two cultures make of each other?
How "roman" would the romans be - they will have evolved as much as Roman Europe did?

 

[Molobo]

What would the Romans be able to teach the native people ? Obviously iron making and such, but what kind of knowledge could be upheld considering the poor infrastructure of the region.
I am thinking about some sailing technology, education, some medicine ?

I would look forward to sailor based island city states making sporadic contact with other civilizations in the region.
Obviously a certain boost in civilization in Americas would happen.But to what extent ?
Also the prospect of small Roman leadership over the natives rather then normal contact is more interesting. I would see the region cut off from Europe after's Seneca's death.Maybe some more family members could be brought in secret from Nero's regime, but after that/and Seneca's death/ perhaps the small colony remains isolated from its homeland.

 

[Wozza]

Logically the Romans would start up regular transatlantic sailing as they knew it could be done.
But it may be they would not - an Orphans in the Sky type situation, and the original voyage becomes myth

 

[MrP]

A nice little passage in Tacitus on the exile of Seneca and his presumed death - highlights Nero's fickleness as well as OTL. Although the world gets a shock centuries later, when they find out he survived. Mm, if he takes a library with him, we might get greater survival of classical texts

 

[Wendell]

What would the Romans be able to teach the native people ? Obviously iron making and such, but what kind of knowledge could be upheld considering the poor infrastructure of the region.
I am thinking about some sailing technology, education, some medicine ?

I would look forward to sailor based island city states making sporadic contact with other civilizations in the region.
Obviously a certain boost in civilization in Americas would happen.But to what extent ?
Also the prospect of small Roman leadership over the natives rather then normal contact is more interesting. I would see the region cut off from Europe after's Seneca's death.Maybe some more family members could be brought in secret from Nero's regime, but after that/and Seneca's death/ perhaps the small colony remains isolated from its homeland.

The language that would be spoken by the isolated "Atlantic" Romans would develop independent of those in Europe.

 

[carlton_bach]

The most important things the Romans could bring to Mesoamerica:

- metalworking

- old-world crops

- domesticated animals

- secular, quotidian literacy

- knowledge of the geograhy of Earth beyonds the familiar environment

- money

If these things make it across, no matter what happens to the Roman settlers afterwards, the Mesoamerica the Spanish find will be a very different place. Or the Mesoamerica that finds the Spanish?

 

[Wendell]

The most important things the Romans could bring to Mesoamerica:

- metalworking

- old-world crops

- domesticated animals

- secular, quotidian literacy

- knowledge of the geograhy of Earth beyonds the familiar environment

- money

If these things make it across, no matter what happens to the Roman settlers afterwards, the Mesoamerica the Spanish find will be a very different place. Or the Mesoamerica that finds the Spanish?

Or Mesoamerica finds China and the Indies.

 

[MrP]

Communications would be immensely simplified. Columbus' expedition need have but one educated man capable of speaking Latin. I don't suggest the Meso-Americans would retain it undiluted, but if the Romano-whatever culture stays strong, then classics of literature will remain, and there'll be a scholarly tradition there, too. But the important thing'd be that both sides would have Latin speakers. Communication's a doddle with a lingua franca that's lingua latina

 

[Wendell]

Communications would be immensely simplified. Columbus' expedition need have but one educated man capable of speaking Latin. I don't suggest the Meso-Americans would retain it undiluted, but if the Romano-whatever culture stays strong, then classics of literature will remain, and there'll be a scholarly tradition there, too. But the important thing'd be that both sides would have Latin speakers. Communication's a doddle with a lingua franca that's lingua latina

It would clearly be a Latin American culture

 

[Faeelin]

That's coastal sailing, or monsoon sailing. The Atlantic is not the Channel or the Baltic. It isn't a problem of ship technology strictly speakling, but of experience. Habituating a culture to sailing out of sight of lamd takes a developed understanding of astronomy and navigation and a long tradition of success.

Hmm. I think you're underestimating how difficult monsoon sailing was. It still required sailing out of sight of land for at least twenty days at a time.

 

[Battlecry]

I find it interesting that the speculation on this far western Roman empire is that Columbus eventually rediscovers them.

WI the Roman culture that this little band of Romans brings with them accelerates the development of Meso-America. Perhaps a new Roman Empire is not in the off-spring of this encounter but (due to the dark ages after the fall of Rome) technology in the Americas outpaces that of Europe. Perhaps this causes a more advanced American culture to search out and rediscover their lost motherland a hundred or so years before Columbus is born?

I don't think the idea of a return to Rome for Seneca (or anyone else on the expedition for that matter) would work too well just based on the sailing tech of the day. Perhaps the most likely scenario would be Nero simply banishing Seneca and some group to the lands of which he spoke, if he could find them.

 

[Tyr]

These double threads are blowing my mind...

 

[MrP]

Wendell, *Groan*

How about a loose confederation of coastal trading cities stretching up and down America? They need not even be allied with the Latino civ, but simply inspired by its maritime example. After a few hundred years one of them's going to be sending people back across the Atlantic, since they know there's something there. Perhaps a great deal more secretive re the Natives (Europeans) in their efforts, though.