It’d be interesting if you could off various people just to see how it works out, then switch things back again if they don’t work out. For instance, I wonder how world history would have played out if there had been no Catfish Chisel (as I prefer to call him.)
Instead of whacking Caesar Augustus, how about whacking Commodus sometime long before the death of Marcus Aurelius?
Polytheists such as the Romans, Macedonians, Huns, and Mongols were quite capable of bloodshed. When somebody else has stuff that you want, people of all religions are very good at rationalizing violence.
Oh, no. It’s happening again. I thought I was done with this phase. I didn’t even mean to be doing this in this thread. Must… resist… talking… endlessly… about… Romans. Oh, screw it. I can’t help myself.
Yeah, let’s whack [del]Joaquin Phoenix[/del] Commodus, and we’ll have an endless line of Cuddly Emperors. I’m with you. Commodus is where it all starts going wrong, after all. Then, boom, civil wars again, then the Third Century Crisis, and before you know it, we’re in Late Antiquity. And we all know what that is like, right?
But, you know, sooner or later *someone *would end up handing over power to a spoiled brat with no talent. You can’t keep killing off the useless sons, like, forever. It’s sort of a built-in problem with dynasties. That no one had a biological son to succeed him between Nerva and Marcus was just a fluke, it wasn’t like it was the plan. And, anyway, in other times *not *having a son to succeed you is what might lead to chaos, instead of the other way around.
Plus, I sort of feel like the Severans are getting treated like chopped liver in that discussion. See how I just sort of forgot about them in my summary up there? That’s because people do that. But after Commodus, there’s almost fifty years of them between the Year of the Five Emperors and the Year of Everything Really Going Tits Up, aka the Year of the Six Emperors. So, please pardon me while I have a strange interlude about the Severans. Sure, they’re not Cuddly Emperors, but are they *that *bad? Septimius Severus seems OK to me. Then, Caracalla, who is… well, fine, he’s a homicidal maniac, who kills his brother and all his brother’s friends, then goes and does all kinds of who-knows-what kind of crazy stuff in the East, and is bad enough that before long someone just stabs him to death, but still. I feel like he always gets worse press than he deserves.
Actually, at the risk of digressing something awful, I’ve been looking for a chance to mention this. It’s like whenever Caracalla does something, it has to be for some nefarious purpose, just because it’s Caracalla. That includes things that, if they had been done by, say, Trajan, would have been hailed as acts of great statesmanship. Caracalla builds a huge bath complex? Oh, it’s because he’s a megalomaniac! But I don’t see anyone complaining about the Baths of Trajan or the Baths of Diocletian. Emperors are *supposed *to build great public buildings! It’s fine. It’s not like it’s Nero’s Golden House or anything.
Also, and this is the big one, the Edict of Caracalla, which grants citizenship to all free men in the Empire. It’s a big moment in Roman history. If Trajan had done it, we would all be applauding. But it’s Caracalla, so what you hear is that, oh, it was just to increase the tax base. You see, there’s this property tax that citizens have to pay. So, it’s all nefarious, really. Which doesn’t even make any sense to me, frankly, since the Romans always had ways of fleecing non-citizen provincials. So, give the guy a break, I guess is what I’m saying. He doesn’t seem *all *bad.
Then there’s Elagabalus, who, in fairness, is a bit of a whack job, although also possibly misunderstood and just ahead of his time in some ways. And finally Alexander Severus, who seems like a nice chap who doesn’t deserve his sticky end.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Commodus. Sure, whack him, while Marcus can still find a different successor. But it’s not like things will be roses forever if you do, or like things were horrible forever because you didn’t. It seems a massive stretch to blame centuries of subsequent history on Commodus either way. “Commodus is the beginning of the end!” That’s what you hear. Well, I dunno. There’s a lot going on after Commodus that has faff all to do with him, I think.
The anal moderator made that so true.
How do we know we aren’t experiencing changed history already and the previous one was much worse?
Well actually, part of the success of that dynasty was that they didn’t hand over power to spoiled brat sons. Because they didn’t have any sons. Until Commodus.
Well, exactly. So the [del]Cuddly Emperors[/del] Antonines could have a meritocracy in practice, and adopt successors. As I said though, it was a fluke. Someone would have ended up having a spoiled brat son eventually. If not Marcus, then an emperor or two further down the line. So you can whack Commodus, but you’re just kicking the can down the road.
And you can’t just exclude sons from the succession, if and when they pop up. See Diocletian and the Tetrarchy for a later example of what happens if you do that (if, indeed, that was what Diocletian was doing with his Tetrarchy, intentionally or otherwise, it’s rarely 100% clear what Diocletian was thinking). Those twerps tend to behave in a sort of entitled way, is all I’m saying.
So, basically, all you can do is cross your fingers and hope that you get a good one. Or maybe tell your wife to cross her legs instead, and don’t have any. Unless *not *having sons will cause civil war. In that case, have them. Heck, maybe just don’t have monarchy. Unless you’re Augustus, obviously. In that case, have monarchy. Actually, maybe there’s no “one size fits all” solution for this sort of thing.
How about Alexander goes towards Rome instead the Egypt/Persia thing he did?
Funny you should mention that, as I was sort of about to.
Yeah, that’s one thing I’d do with my time machine, in the “just for shits and giggles” category. I’d bring a doctor and save Alexander’s life, tell him to go easy on the alcoholism and the picking up of potentially life-threatening injuries in battle, and then convince, bribe or otherwise persuade him to take an army in the direction of Italy. He’d whack into the Romans at around the time of the Samnite Wars.
A lot of people think that he’d eat the Romans for breakfast, and then go and snack on Carthage for lunch. Maybe, but I’m not so sure. I do know that Pyrrhus of Epirus is standing over there, waving his hand in the air, and looking like he has a thing or two he would like to say on the subject.
Heh. You should read Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee.
Nixon had pushed the 1957 Act as VP. JFK voted against it.
Don’t really need one IMHO :). Sheer inertia and lack of external threats at that point meant the only possible disaster was permanent fracturing from civil war. But there was inertia against that as well. It’s not like Antony would have permanently alienated Egypt if he also held Rome - at best it would have continued with the half-assed, but ultimately quite submissive client state status it had before. It had little capacity to re-establish itself independently in the face of the Roman military machine.
The Roman “empire” may have ended up being rather less impressive or centralized than the Augustan state and may have snuffed it earlier ( could be it eventually loses much of the east to the Sassanids in the 3rd century ), but I suspect it is just as likely would have lumbered along in some form or another for at least a few centuries. There was precious else to replace it with.
…and/or poison ;).
He likely didn’t need much or any prompting. Can’t remember the evidence, but I believe Peter Green or someone alluded to the Western Mediterranean being Alexander’s likely next target. Given the logistics of campaigning in the east and the treaty with Porus, it really was the only promising direction left.
Pyrrhus was born ~five years after Alexander’s “death” and he would have been, if anything, very likely a protege and major asset. He was Alexander’s second cousin after all and as an imperial generalissimo for an aging Alex rather than just a hand-to-mouth adventurer, his best points ( tactical wunderkind ) would have been emphasized and his worst ( mayfly-like political attention span ) mitigated. Might just have ended up the Belisarius of his day and a major pillar of the empire.
Pretty much any change, up to when you were conceived, will have the consequence of killing you. OK, a quick conversation with some random guy in Chad a day before you were conceived probably hasn’t had time to affect your parents, but the same nothing conversation a year before, almost certainly would.
If not Augustus, some other strong man would have come down and eventually established himself. One thing the late Republic did not lack was ambitious men.
Take the suggestion from one of the GURPS Alternate Earths books: send a printing press back to the middle east in the 9th Century. This sparks a scientific revolution centuries early. We get space ships by the 1600s!
That’s what I give Augustus credit for. Not that he built a big empire; lots of people have done that. But Augustus created a political institution that would last for fifteen centuries.
Another interesting possibility is if Alexander had convinced his army to follow him into India.
He might have found himself in for more of a challenge than he expected. Chandragupta Maurya was just beginning to rise to power at the time. He would become one of India’s foremost political and military leaders. Alexander could have found himself fighting one of the only generals of his era who was his equal.
I take it you mean beyond the Punjab? When he crossed, Jehlum, he was already into India.
Mauryan Empire covered about the same area as the Macedon. However, the Greeks did retake large swaths of the Indus Valley and Punjab after the Mauryan Empire broke up.
As a senator and early in his Presidency, he was not gung-ho for civil rights. By the time he died, he was, even when it was manifestly not in his political best interests. For better context: