WI:New Laws For Rome

I mean no disrespect when I say that I've found a new phrase to use... :D

http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/RamTat.html Nothing more than people who use phrases like this: "If the Mongol yoke has influenced the Russian development, it is very indirectly. 1. In separating Russia from the West, in making her a political dependency of Asia, it perpetuated in the country that Byzantine half civilization whose inferiority to European civilization became daily more obvious."

This isn't the place to go into a rant on just how full of crap that is, but...sufficient to say, that's where that phrase belongs. :D
 
One thing that is probably important - not immediately but the sooner the better - is something where the Roman economy in the west develops more. I'm not sure how, but that would become a problem as Italy faded relative to the other areas in the empire.

I don't know if that is possible unless you sustain a commercial evolution that feeds investment in agriculture. Much as the Roman economy was complex and deep, it was still truly pre-modern given the absolute primacy agriculture and direct agricultural derivatives had in any degree of economic output or individual well-being.

It may help though if provinces are more self-administering in that there is a greater variety of commercial choices, and chances for legal developments advancing extended concepts in property, finance, and contracting.

How might more autonomous provinces handle law, anyways? Are we assuming that they copy-paste the Roman Republican system entirely, with the governor placed at the head as an appointed 'Emperor'? That would mean each province having popular assemblies. Even at this time, the Senate didn't actually create law of its own authority, it issued 'recommendations' that were ratified by a popular assembly, or enacted according to the power of decree of an existing official--like a consul, praetor, etc.

Personally, I'd consider it more interesting (and more helpful) if each province developed largely independently on actual constitutional structure. We know there will be a 'Senate' and the province's appointed governor will maintain the highest executive power, but each province could easily take a unique path to fill in the gaps. When Augustus or a successor has such a law regarding the provincial administration enacted, we could well see individual governors at the time exercising a very outsized influence on the process and precedent of each province's constitutional structure.

That depends though on the legal independence of the provinces, and their abilities to administer local courts and decisions thereof.

And outside Italy, no matter how widely Roman citizenship is spread, Romanness tends to be something on top of existing identities rather than transforming say, Egyptians into being fully Romanized - its more, one is a Roman because one is part of the empire, but that's it. Remove the empire and the sense of being Roman fades.

I don't think that's entirely fair, the upper classes in the West lost the Empire and made accommodations with the Germanic kingdoms now ruling them, but even then they lamented the uncultured environment and challenge of being isolated from "Romanness". Then you have weird stuff like the Romano-British, Domain of Soissons, etc. What it meant to be Roman also certainly had changed greatly from the time of Augustus, so it's not entirely an apples-to-apples comparison.

In the end though, Romanization seems deeper than a mere layering of identity, though doubtless that's how it began. How else could the Greeks have ended up adopting the mantle and titles of their conquerors to the point that being Roman was something natural and inherent to anyone "Greek" anyway? Or how Constantinople finally fell while still under the banner of SPQR.
 
I don't know if that is possible unless you sustain a commercial evolution that feeds investment in agriculture. Much as the Roman economy was complex and deep, it was still truly pre-modern given the absolute primacy agriculture and direct agricultural derivatives had in any degree of economic output or individual well-being.

This is true. But its not like the East was ISOTed from the future. A West that develops more the way the East did isn't technologically impossible.

It may help though if provinces are more self-administering in that there is a greater variety of commercial choices, and chances for legal developments advancing extended concepts in property, finance, and contracting.

How might more autonomous provinces handle law, anyways? Are we assuming that they copy-paste the Roman Republican system entirely, with the governor placed at the head as an appointed 'Emperor'? That would mean each province having popular assemblies. Even at this time, the Senate didn't actually create law of its own authority, it issued 'recommendations' that were ratified by a popular assembly, or enacted according to the power of decree of an existing official--like a consul, praetor, etc.

Personally, I'd consider it more interesting (and more helpful) if each province developed largely independently on actual constitutional structure. We know there will be a 'Senate' and the province's appointed governor will maintain the highest executive power, but each province could easily take a unique path to fill in the gaps. When Augustus or a successor has such a law regarding the provincial administration enacted, we could well see individual governors at the time exercising a very outsized influence on the process and precedent of each province's constitutional structure.

That depends though on the legal independence of the provinces, and their abilities to administer local courts and decisions thereof.
Something worth looking into. I don't know enough on the WRE/Classic Roman era to add anything to that, though.

I don't think that's entirely fair, the upper classes in the West lost the Empire and made accommodations with the Germanic kingdoms now ruling them, but even then they lamented the uncultured environment and challenge of being isolated from "Romanness". Then you have weird stuff like the Romano-British, Domain of Soissons, etc. What it meant to be Roman also certainly had changed greatly from the time of Augustus, so it's not entirely an apples-to-apples comparison.
Its not so much intending to be fair or unfair as that those kingdoms defined the identity of the West far more than Rome - we don't see the people of Gaul (more below) regarding themselves as Romans under foreign rule, we see them mostly merging with the "foreigners" until we get France (to use the term a bit prematurely).

Looking at Gaul on the whole. There's not a rebellion against foreign conquerors so much as accommodating to the Germanic peoples having the guns ("having the swords" doesn't have the same ring to it).

In the end though, Romanization seems deeper than a mere layering of identity, though doubtless that's how it began. How else could the Greeks have ended up adopting the mantle and titles of their conquerors to the point that being Roman was something natural and inherent to anyone "Greek" anyway? Or how Constantinople finally fell while still under the banner of SPQR.
Well, I think its telling that areas outside the Empire tended to become...nonRoman. The Greeks remained as Romans until 1204/1453, because they remained part of the Roman Empire long enough for that to mean something. But in say, Gaul? Once the empire is gone (including the Domain of Soissons), there isn't all that much a sense of being Romans for most of the inhabitants. The elite might still cling to it for a while, but it fades out.
 
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