How do you keep the Roman Empire alive for 1500 years?
Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2023 2:56 am
So the title says it all: How does one keep the Empire of Rome around for 1,500 years?
The snark answer is: "Just don't let if fall..."
My snark reply is: "Which fall of Rome are you referring to?"A case can be made that when Diocletian split the empire in two, into the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire, the original Roman Empire fell... or in 54 CE when Claudius was made emperor by the Praetorian Guard in a form of a military coup? Or when Rome had two emperors at one time? Or every time the legions picked the next emperor?
The trick is that we don't save the Roman empire from falling. We just do the same thing we did with the Chinese and Egyptian empires: Ignore the gaps in the record. The Chinese empire officially ended in 1912, but that ignores the time the Mongols ruled, or when the Qin dynasty's rule was ended way back when. And Egypt! That's an empire that was invaded and taken over a couple of times. Yet we speak of it as though it was a continuous empire. Heck, the last pharaoh, Cleopatra, was Greek, inheriting her position from the conquests of Alexander, and she claimed to be of the same divine line that was created thousands of years before her.
So, yeah, Romana Universa that is in the game, the new Roman Empire, based in Rome, is probably at best 200 to 300 hundred years old, and yet... and yet, claims to be the same empire founded by Spartacus Licinius Thracius in 71 CE... yes, that Spartacus.
Why Spartacus? Mainly because I want a different group involved in founding the empire. Yes, Gaius Julius Caesar was around, but at the time of Spartacus's War, he was a 30 year old priest, working on the fast track to a consular seat. As a former slave, Spartacus puts in a lot of slave reform in place, mostly to make it so that being a slave is easier to gain freedom. Hereditary slavery is abolished, children of a slave are automatically a freedmen. Land reform, Roman citizenship for all, and other reforms. Some of these reforms probably came from Caesar, and others were from Spartacus. (Yes, the crafty Caesar found a way to be an advisor to the new emperor. He's too good of a grand vizier to pass up.)
And I give this glorious empire maybe 200-300 years before it collapses. Or more correctly, has a soft fall that can be picked up by the new empire. There may have been three or four empires between the current empire and Spartacus's. Everyone of them claims to have lineage to the first empire, though the current empire looks nothing like what Spartacus founded. Slavery is on the way out, and with the advent of new technology from British Empire Earth, Nord, and UN Earth, it won't last long. It won't completely disappear, much like it hasn't in our world, but it won't be institutional, just illegal.
So thoughts?
The snark answer is: "Just don't let if fall..."
My snark reply is: "Which fall of Rome are you referring to?"A case can be made that when Diocletian split the empire in two, into the Eastern Roman Empire and the Western Roman Empire, the original Roman Empire fell... or in 54 CE when Claudius was made emperor by the Praetorian Guard in a form of a military coup? Or when Rome had two emperors at one time? Or every time the legions picked the next emperor?
The trick is that we don't save the Roman empire from falling. We just do the same thing we did with the Chinese and Egyptian empires: Ignore the gaps in the record. The Chinese empire officially ended in 1912, but that ignores the time the Mongols ruled, or when the Qin dynasty's rule was ended way back when. And Egypt! That's an empire that was invaded and taken over a couple of times. Yet we speak of it as though it was a continuous empire. Heck, the last pharaoh, Cleopatra, was Greek, inheriting her position from the conquests of Alexander, and she claimed to be of the same divine line that was created thousands of years before her.
So, yeah, Romana Universa that is in the game, the new Roman Empire, based in Rome, is probably at best 200 to 300 hundred years old, and yet... and yet, claims to be the same empire founded by Spartacus Licinius Thracius in 71 CE... yes, that Spartacus.
Why Spartacus? Mainly because I want a different group involved in founding the empire. Yes, Gaius Julius Caesar was around, but at the time of Spartacus's War, he was a 30 year old priest, working on the fast track to a consular seat. As a former slave, Spartacus puts in a lot of slave reform in place, mostly to make it so that being a slave is easier to gain freedom. Hereditary slavery is abolished, children of a slave are automatically a freedmen. Land reform, Roman citizenship for all, and other reforms. Some of these reforms probably came from Caesar, and others were from Spartacus. (Yes, the crafty Caesar found a way to be an advisor to the new emperor. He's too good of a grand vizier to pass up.)
And I give this glorious empire maybe 200-300 years before it collapses. Or more correctly, has a soft fall that can be picked up by the new empire. There may have been three or four empires between the current empire and Spartacus's. Everyone of them claims to have lineage to the first empire, though the current empire looks nothing like what Spartacus founded. Slavery is on the way out, and with the advent of new technology from British Empire Earth, Nord, and UN Earth, it won't last long. It won't completely disappear, much like it hasn't in our world, but it won't be institutional, just illegal.
So thoughts?