WI: Rome fell earlier

Lets say Rome was never able to expand all that much and was ransacked by another city-state soon after it was founded. What would that mean for the world?
 

katchen

Banned
Lets say Rome was never able to expand all that much and was ransacked by another city-state soon after it was founded. What would that mean for the world?
it could mean that we study the rise and fall of the Etruscan or the Samnite or the Siracusan (Sicilian) or the Pontic Empire in school.
 
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-The base for today languages will be a mixture of Koine (vulgar Greek) and Qananim (punic).
-Since no slave empire, no christianity. Maybe a philosophical movement analogous to Eastern equivalents or with just the philosophical base of OTL christianity.
-Ship construction will be a little more advanced.
-Ring of settlements around continents will be the model of colonization instead ofcontinental penetration.

And much more things that I can imagine now...
 
Would Carthage be a dominant power or even a substitute for Rome? They already had Spain and North Africa and without a powerful Rome could go further North and East, right?
 
Carthage could be a dominant power, yes, but absolutely not a substitute for Rome. Rome and Carthage have totally different conceptions of what a society is and how rule it.

But yes, they will be dominant in west Mediterranean, and if they take Crete and Cyprus, in all Mediterranean sea.

Mediterranean sea will be a relatively peaceful place until the arrival of barbarians, then these peaceful Carthaginians merchants and Greeks scientists will want a military power to defend them... maybe the Mouseion of Alexandria will be destroyed during some barbarian assault.
 
Mediterranean sea will be a relatively peaceful place until the arrival of barbarians, then these peaceful Carthaginians merchants and Greeks scientists will want a military power to defend them... maybe the Mouseion of Alexandria will be destroyed during some barbarian assault.

I am curious whether the Barbarians, instead of going West, would go East into Thrace, Greece, and Pontus. Though to be fair Byzantium will probably be fortified in that eventuality and that rest of the East should be safe provided they don't use the Black Sea route. I wonder if the Germans might be enticed by a more successful Celtic and Spanish tribes and if checked by Byzantium go West into easier lands.
 
Would Carthage be a dominant power or even a substitute for Rome? They already had Spain and North Africa and without a powerful Rome could go further North and East, right?

There is no incentive for the Carthaginians to create a powerful land empire. They were concerned with money and controlling sea routes. They had no interest in inland land. They only took an interest in conquering more of Spain because they lost Sicily and needed to repay the Romans--plus Hamilcar needed to get away from Carthage...
 

katchen

Banned
There is no incentive for the Carthaginians to create a powerful land empire. They were concerned with money and controlling sea routes. They had no interest in inland land. They only took an interest in conquering more of Spain because they lost Sicily and needed to repay the Romans--plus Hamilcar needed to get away from Carthage...
Yes, and unlike the Romans, the Carthaginians trade routes extended all the way to West Africa---probably as far as Mt. Cameroun. When the Carthaginians were conquered by the Romans, they shut up about those trade routes and they lapsed.
So we might have seen an ecumene extending to the Gulf of Guinea and probably to the Baltic Sea a lot earlier. Those "barbarians" would not stay backward if traded with regularly. The Romans administered, traded and taxed on land but the Carthaginians traded by sea. And not just on the Mediteranean Sea either but along the Atlantic coasts of Europe and Africa.
So if what you are saying is true, Sly, while the Carthaginians won't be interested in inland Iberia or Gaul, they will be interested in harbours such as La Coruna Bay, Bilbao, the Gironde, the Loire, the Seine mouth, Cornwall (tin) Isle of Wight-Southampton, London -Straits of Dover-Calais, the mouth of the Rhine, the mouth of the Elbe and most definitely, the Skaggerak and Kattegat, for which they will fight the Jutes and the Heruli for control. Then trading posts at the mouth of the Oder, Vistula and Memel Lagoon, the Dvina and Kronstadt on the Gulf of Finland trading for amber and furs. And eventually, on the coast of Britannia on the Humber, the Firth of Forth, the Firth of Clyde, and the Avon on Bristol Bay, and on Hibernia at either Wexford or Cork Bay. That is the kind of empire that I expect that the Carthaginians will create--if they don't go even further and row the rivers of the North and East all the way to the Volga and Parthia via the Caspian. I wouldn't put it past them.
 
I imagine the meditterranean coast then to consist of citystates while the barbarian tribes in the vicinity like the gauls would be slightly more civilized than "further away" neighbours.

Perhaps one of the Hellenic Kingdoms might have attempted to form an empire or even a revival of the persian empire could have stretched westwards. That would force the Carthaginians to fight back more cohesively maybe even forming a kingdom. Meanwhile the etruscans might push north across the alps.

But would they form a state like the early roman republic?
 
I imagine the meditterranean coast then to consist of citystates while the barbarian tribes in the vicinity like the gauls would be slightly more civilized than "further away" neighbours.

Perhaps one of the Hellenic Kingdoms might have attempted to form an empire or even a revival of the persian empire could have stretched westwards. That would force the Carthaginians to fight back more cohesively maybe even forming a kingdom. Meanwhile the etruscans might push north across the alps.

But would they form a state like the early roman republic?

They kinda already did have a state like the republic. Save forseparating military officials from civil officials (unlike Rome, generals were elected separately), they had a much similar system--a council of 30 nobles and another of 104 serving as the Carthaginian equivalent of the Senate; they elected annually two suffets; and they had a citizen assembly for oversight, similar to the Roman Tribune assembly and tribunes of the plebs.

They did have 'kings' on and off before.


I think though people are underestimating the expansion of the Celts this might cause. With no powerful central italian state, the Celts mightmigrate further south from the Po Valley into more Etruscan held lands. Errnge did a good job of portraying how an early collapse of Rome could seriously benefit the Celts. Anyway, I think longterm the Etruscans are pretty screwed, or at least they wont be doing much expanding. Their influence used to expand further north to settlements such as Bononia, but were getting pushed back by the Celts. Here's a good map:

Etruscan_Map01_full.jpg


To give you a good idea about how the Etruscans were losing ground: Felsina the Etruscan name for Bononia, i.e. modern day Bologna. The Celts were seriously cutting into their sphere of influence already. Of course they also lost influence in Campania to a combination of the Samnites, Romans, and Greeks. They were definitely on the decline. Not impossible to have them soldier on, but to have them seriously push the Celts back...eh, I think that requires a POD before the Celts start pushing as far south as Felsina.


Of course on the flip side, its possible for Syracuse or a Pyrrhus or Alexander The Molossian like figure to establish some sort of coherent state in Magna Graecia and SIcily. , though that is difficult given the fierce independent mindedness of the Greek city states in the region.
 
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