I just finished building my time machine and i’m gonna take some smallpox vaccine, antibiotics and a hundred AK-47’s with a couple a million rounds of ammo. I want the empire to expand farther and survive. I’m set to arrive in the year 180 AD.
Assuming I can speak latin well enough to at least communicate, how would I get to meet the emperor? I don't think I would have much luck just walking up to the city gates and asking the nearest praetorian to see the emperor. So, how would I do it? Was there any procedure for a common person to see the emperor?
You cannot imagine the narrow-mindedness & provincalism of the ancient world.
As a non-Roman, you would be regarded as a mere barbarian, & would not be admitted to the Emperor’s prescence under any circumstances.
In addition, you could be enslaved by any Roman citizen who could grab you off the street. Legally.
You end your life in a tin mine in Brittanium. Too bad. Game over.
With threads closed because small issues of copyright issues and descrambeling cable tv - I can’t imagine what the mods will do with a thread on changing spacetime.
expanding the empire IMHO will hansten it’s colapse due to lack of high speed communications.
As for actually seeing the emperor - I would say take over a small city near rome w/ modern weapons. when they send a messenger tell them that you want to join the empire and add your weapons to their arsonal if you can speak to ceaser (or whoever)
Bosda, could you elaborate? What sort of identification was used for citizens? What if I claimed I was a citizen from Spain or Gaul? What If I had a modern tailor make some expensive looking clothes and whatever other acoutrements a wealthy citizen would have. Even if I didnt look(or sound) like I fit in, I have a hard time believing I would just be grabbed off the street.
For most of Rome’s existance, people from Spain or Gaul were not citizens. They were subject peoples, & looked down on as hopeless inferiors. Only people born inside Rome itself were Romans.
A standard of biogoty & predjuice was practiced that allowed human beings to kill one another for sport in the Arena.
And slavery was universal. There were no middle classes, just the fabulously wealthy, the dirt poor, & slaves.
You don’t fit in.
So it’s chains for you.
As for Roman ID, it was a form of iron ring, combined with a detailed knowlwedge of Roman law, religion & tradition.
That depends on whther you are speaking of the Roman Empire of the 1st century, the Pax Romana, or Late Antiquity. Also I think you confuse Rome with Greece. The Romans did host emissaries from as far as China, India, and fairly deep in Africa. The Romans only enslaved peoples they knew something about. They weren’t about to provoke the wrath of mysterious strangers.
Slavers were not a government-sponsered industry. They were private businessmen, & had little intrest in whether or not their trade effected a government 10,000 miles away.
If they saw a chance for profit, ie-a passing stranger, they’d grab it/him.
And after all, why would they care about a mysterous stranger? Modern telecommunication did not exist. Not even a 18th century-style postal service existed. So how would a stranger’s homeland ever learn about the enslavement, much less object?
And there’s a big difference between an ambassador with an entourage & a lone smart-monkey with a bunch of wild claims & hairbrained schemes trying to pester the Emperor.
And even if Quintas gets in , he may wish he hadn’t!
So i’ve invented a time machine and I cant even meet the emperor? bummer. Suppose I approached the soldier’s guarding the city gates and said the latin equivalent of ‘hey hows it goin’?
Would they talk to me? Draw their swords? I dont imagine everyday people were all that different back then. They would have to be curious about this mysterious stranger. I also imagine that although they may look down on me, a polite greeting from a stranger would elicit a polite response. no?
I suppose if all else failed, a demonstration of my AK-47 would quickly earn me some respect .
Sorcery was illegal in Rome, so I figure all you’d earn was a swift death.
But yeah, ordinary people would talk to you.
Instead of approaching the Emperor, try starting a religious cult. Rome pretty much allowed you to worship as you wished, so passing yourself off as “enlightened” would net you a crowd. And creating a few “miracles” with a flashlight or matches would net you a big audience!
Why would he have me skinned alive? Yes Roman Entertainment was cruel and barbaric by modern standards, but I don’t think they were psychopaths who longed to murder every stranger they met.
Yes, but there were also good emperors. Imagine someone from 2000 years from now speculating on, say mid 20th century life, and coming to the conclusion that since boxing was a popular sport, a time traveler to that period would be punched in the face by the first person he met. Ridiculous.
“The Mammoth Book of Tasteless Lists” describes Commodus as “arguably the most psychotic and murderous of all the Roman leaders. … He collected all the dwarfs, cripples and freaks he could find in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Colosseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat-cleavers.”
Really, do you have any idea what you’re talking about? Yes, the classical world was by our standards frequently a brutal place. No, I wouldn’t really want to be the guy to try and gain a personal audience with, say, Caligula.
However, with the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire, there were in fact plenty of citizens from outside of the city of Rome. Saul of Tarsus, AKA Paul, a Hellenized Jew from Asia Minor (modern Turkey) turned Christian Apostle, was a Roman citizen, and was able to claim the legal privileges thereof. (See Acts, chapter 16 or chapter 22.) Or see this map of birthplaces of Roman Emperors.
Nor were non-citizens simply rounded up and sold into slavery on sight. People in the Greco-Roman world might be enslaved for debt, or because their home city or tribe was defeated in war. If your people rebelled against Rome, and you managed to survive, you might well be sold into slavery. But not just because you were a non-citizen walking around loose.
The Roman state dominated the entire Mediterranean basin for the better part of a millennium. The Roman Empire in the West survived Nero and Caligula by about 400 years, and continued on as the Byzantine Empire in the East for another 1,000 years after that. In fact, the Roman Empire’s greatest period of prosperity and peace came after Nero fiddled and Caligula made his horse consul and so on. Even at their best the Romans were a ruthless lot, but they didn’t unite the entire Mediterranean basin and large areas of Northern Europe for five centuries by allowing Roman citizens to enslave anybody from outside the city limits on a whim.
You find a place and time when Caesar is going to be alone – preferably some days before the Ides of March. You appear suddenly to Caesar, and say “Hail, Caesar! I am a wizard. What may I tell you about nature and the world? I have learning beyond even your greatest sages. For behold! My knowledge comes from an oracle called the Straight Dope Message Board!”
If’n you do anything exceptional: show them a flashlight, fly a paper airplane, draw a map of Europe, you’ll attract the attention of powerful and educated people nearly right away. Of course ya don’t want to do anything that scares people or reminds them of sorcery. Or of Donald Rumsfield.
Well, since you’re using time travel, and obviously have enough resources, why bother with trying to go through “official channels” to meet the emperor? Just take a jet pack, and fly into the emperor’s villa. (Make sure to wear body armor) With a voice changer and a megaphone, you can just claim you’re either a god, or an emissary from the gods, sent to help Rome to glory.
Or your could use a similar technique mentioned on this site, under the section “Gigantic Death-Ray projector.” And I quote:
…You know, something like that.
By the by, which Emperors would be the most level-headed ones to try and deal with? Hadrian wasn’t too bad, as I recall.
Ranchoth
…And I just remembered, Harry Turtledove’s book Household Gods featured…
…a (sort of) time traveling character who was able to get an audience with Marcus Aurelius. I can’t remember how exactly the character went about it, though. But Turtledove IS a historian, so I imagine he came up with semi-plausible explanation on how she did it.
