Information Required For Alternate History Book

[Augustus Victorius Aquilla]

I am in the proccess of writing an alternate history book where Caesar does not die (he heeds spurrina's warnings and lays a trap for the plotters) and therefore Rome does not collapse and continues on for another 2000 years. I require well thought out information predicting the continuation of the timeline. I dont want to make it appear that I will just take all the answers and thought of others and leave everyone hanging. I will be present and contributing to the discussion regularly. Also this WILL be turned into a book I already have a few chapters semi-reading to go and I have recently applied for submition detail from Asimov's science-fiction magazine so I can see how they like it.

 

So far what I have planed out proceeds as follows:

 

Caesar conquers dacia and parthia, then goes on to conquer the land east of lebennon and eastern India. However he dies shortly after the last battle from an epelleptic attack and Octavain is named his heir. Octavian who was left running affairs in Dacia and Parthia heads to rome and sets himself up as the next emporer (about 34 b.c.). Antonius is left running india, parthia, and dacia and is content with all the power and wealth he has gained, so he doesn't start a civil war with Octavian. Also roads left from the roman army provide a very good and safe trade route to the spices of india and the silks of china. As a note I think the library of alexandria way burned during the civil war between Octavian and Antonius if so this would not happen.

 

I need extra information more detailed information on what would happen as well during the same time as above. As well as the following points:

 

Would Octaivian rename himself Augustus?

 

Would Tutenburg still happen, and if it does not what are the military implications for Rome with 3 extra legions? As well, would Germania be absorbed into the empire?

 

With a good trade route to china technologies would be traded such as the crossbow (which im not sure the romans had until later), paper, and the knowledge of sulfer and saltpeter (which the chinese experimented with as far back as the 2nd century B.C.). As a note sulfur and saltpeter would catch fire but would not explode unless mixed with charcoal which was not realized by the chinese until the 8th century A.D.

 

The Romans were (to my knowledge and for the most part) practical but not theoretical thinkers, while they might not of experimented with sulfur and saltpeter and invented gunpowder before the chinese they most likely would have created some use for it (like guns and cannons) way before the chinese.

 

What if Rome kept conquering and conquered the rest of India? Alexander the Greats troops were stoped by the monsoons. Would roman legions braved the weather and jungles? Would they have incorperated elephants into the legion? Whould they press on into thailand, vietnam, malaysia, and possibly reach australia? (with boats of course). What if they decided to conquer china? korea? japan? explore the pacific a little and find the philipennes? How you rome deal with Gehngis kahn and the Golden horde?

 

To deal with the horde rome would probably need to develop new strategies as Gehngis would only fight the legions on his own terms which meant dividing them up, and then you end a with a tutenburg. Also I dought rome would press on past mongolia as then you get into siberia, and they probaly would have treaded it like scottland: nothing worth conquering.

 

What if rome allied with china rather than conquering it? how would a romo-chinese alliance interact with the world.

 

Back in Europe would the romans go into scotland and conquer the scotts? or would they build a wall again? Would they conquer ireland? How would they deal with the viking invasion? would it incourage them to go and conquer sacandinavia? After Roman conquers germany (if it does) where next? poland? Eastern Europe? would they be turned back by the Russain cold like so many other conquers?

 

What of africa? While they would probably leave the safarri, desert, and jungle alone, what (and when) do they do when they discover the the diamonds and gold?

 

Now to expand their economy a few changes I beleive have to be made: Unifying the western (latin speaking) and eastern (greak speaking) sections of the empire (make them all latin speaking), i also think a good way of doing this is through a cannal system (like they had in england during the industrial revolution). They romans certaintly had the engineering skills.

 

The government needed to put incentives on trading I belive most of teh gernment's wealth came from taxes, more trading would bring in more income as well as spread ideas.

 

Slavery also needed to be reduced. Slaves did have protection laws during the last part of the empire, but while this kept the costs of replacing slaves I believe adam smith found that slaves are more expensive to maintain than another paid workforce, in addition this would also bring construction jobs. Romans could not do without slavery altogether but I think it should be limited to frontier lands where there is alot of construction that needs to be done (and sometimes in a hurry).

 

Also lets say Rome has succsefully conquered All of Europe, most of Asia, some of africa and australia. How would the government control all this? The persian empire had a good system that could deliver a message from one border to the other in 2 to 3 days but this is ridiculous! It would probably take 2 months or more to get a message from Rome to Austrailia. Tax collection would be a pain as well. I think the main problem with Romes expansion lays in the government. After all it was problems with the government that caused it to collapse in the first place.

 

Ok lets keep going. The vikings found america by hopping from scotland to iceland to greenland to cannada. Romans could use this technique but they would have to change their ships dramatically. They were designed for the relativly calm waters of the mediterranian sea not the north atlantic ocean (indeed Caesar had this problem the first time he went to brittian he didn't know about tides and all his ships were swept away).

 

What would the romans do when they discovered cannada? how would they interact with the native americans? would they have similar problems as they french and english? would they have developed gunpowder weapons at this point in time? How would the romans interact with the aztecs? they Maya? and the Incans? Once they've conquered the world what do they do?

 

How does the army adapt to using gunpowder weapons and possibly being on the opposite side of the barrel? will they continue to experiment with gunpowder to make it more powerful and end up with smokeless powder (which wasn't discovered until the 1800s)?

 

I read an artical in popular mechanics that the parthian had developed a primitive battery (thye didn't have the slightest clue what it was and it was a device to store vinegar i think) is their a chance that the romans would have discovered a use for it at a later date or would they have simply forgoten it and developed a new one when the technology rolled around?

 

How would roman forts have developed? would the turn into the medieval age fortresses of would they have become smaller when they developed gunpowder weapons because no one could get to the walls before being shot down?

 

Would the roman legionaries develop trench warfare?

 

If rome survived their industrial revolution would have most likley occured in the 1200s what happens then?

What happens when they discover the radio? locomotion the automobile, flight? machine guns? space flight? computers? the internet?, the stock exchange? genetic engineering?

 

These seem to be enough questions for now. Again I dont want to make it appear that I will just take all the answers and thought of others and leave everyone hanging. I will be present and contributing to the discussion regularly. Also this WILL be turned into a book I already have a few chapters semi-reading to go and I have recently applied for submition detail from Asimov's science-fiction magazine so I can see how they like it.

 

P.S. Please dont ask for copies of the chapters as I'd rather not have pecies of the book floating around in cyberspace. If I ever wish to post a chapter or two here I will let you know.

 

Thanks

[Primus Pilus]

Would Octaivian rename himself Augustus?

 

 

He didn't rename himself Augustus arbitrarily. It was a lengthy consolidation of political power that may or may not have occured in your alternate concept. It's truely difficult to answer historical conjecture based completely on fictional events... but I will try. If the death of Caesar is followed by peaceful continuation of the government (which I find impossible) as you describe, I don't see the reason for Octavian to completely usurp total power and to legitimize his singular rule through the use of various titles. Perhaps he does, perhaps he doesn't, I simply don't know.

 

Would Tutenburg still happen, and if it does not what are the military implications for Rome with 3 extra legions? As well, would Germania be absorbed into the empire?

 

 

Every event in history has a cause and effect. It may or may not happen, but if the legions are busy expanding east to India (another impossibility I believe) than they probably would not have been fighting a large second front war along the Rhine and Danube. Who's to say what the Germanics may have done on their own accord however. A massive invasion force sent east may have given them just the odds they need to turn the tables.

 

The Romans were (to my knowledge and for the most part) practical but not theoretical thinkers, while they might not of experimented with sulfur and saltpeter and invented gunpowder before the chinese...

 

 

As you already implied... the Romans were not as known for innovation as they were for improvement. If the technology existed the Romans almost always made it better, but gunpowder was still in its infancy. They may have discovered something by accident (ie. adding coal to iron to make steel) but I doubt they would've done so any quicker than the Chinese did.

 

 

Back in Europe would the romans go into scotland and conquer the scotts? or would they build a wall again? Would they conquer ireland? How would they deal with the viking invasion? would it incourage them to go and conquer sacandinavia? After Roman conquers germany (if it does) where next? poland? Eastern Europe? would they be turned back by the Russain cold like so many other conquers?

 

 

They tried to conquer Scotland on a few occassions. They found it untenable. Most of this is completely impractible. They didn't do it in history for many reasons, from manpower, resources, logistics, political environment, and of course enemy resistance.

 

That's about all I can handle for the time being

[Augustus Victorius Aquilla]

If the death of Caesar is followed by peaceful continuation of the government (which I find impossible)

 

 

I wouldn't find it that impossible, the way the story is set up Caesar has 10 years to gather allies in the senate, remover opposing senators and consolidate his power in rome. Even though he was on a campaing at the time (which if he doesn't counquer India would give him 5 years or so in Rome, maybe he would retire?), I believe Caesar would have had enough support in rome both from the senators and the people. Even more so considering he had the plotting senators proscribed. So when Caesar kicks his bucket and Octavian is announced his heir, their is no political opposition to a Emperor. Which I geuss would leave him as Octaivian and not Augustus. However, there still remains the question of Antonious who as in history wasn't very happy about Caesar making Octavian his heir. So to Solve that problem I decided to set Antonius up as Govener of Parthia and Dacia (perhaps India, I'll get there). This would also be good, as the Romans would need a good commander to keep the territories under control. Would this work? Would this postion be suitable for Antonius?

 

Every event in history has a cause and effect. It may or may not happen, but if the legions are busy expanding east to India (another impossibility I believe) than they probably would not have been fighting a large second front war along the Rhine and Danube. Who's to say what the Germanics may have done on their own accord however. A massive invasion force sent east may have given them just the odds they need to turn the tables.

 

 

Good point. First I the romans at this point (if Caesar presses on east past lebenon) wouldn't press all the way into india. I imagine that they would get stoped by the monsoons and Jungle like alexander, they would simply conquer the most eastern part, and the legions would remain to keep the area under control. With the legions there, like you pointed out would not have had 3 legions by the danube and rhine. So it would lead to conclusion that they would have kept on peacful trading terms with the germans. If my history is right, I believe that the reason the germans attacked the romans is that the romans would try to conquer the germans. With no legions nearby this fear would no longer be present and they wouldn't have had the opertunity to attack the legions anyway(not to self: Duh!) As for the Germans attacking rome on their own, I don't think they would have, they had no reason to attack with out the threat of being conquered.

 

They tried to conquer Scotland on a few occassions. They found it untenable. Most of this is completely impractible. They didn't do it in history for many reasons, from manpower, resources, logistics, political environment, and of course enemy resistance.

 

 

Sorry I should have pointed out that this question and a few other questions are not on a particular timeline (timescale whatever) a more refined question would be: Would they ever have conquered scotland and if so when? Certaintly not in the few hundred years after Caesar died especialy if they were busy conquering asia. Would they do it once they had gunpowder? Tanks?. The same questions go for the other places in europe that rome didn't conquer. Ireland, poland, western russia.

 

It's truely difficult to answer historical conjecture based completely on fictional events...

 

 

I realise this which is why I needed help from this forum. However I figured if we treated certain fictional events as fact, and extrapolated on that. In that case future readers should view the following events as fact and imagined they had actually happened in history:

 

Caesar doesn't die and has the plotting senetors proscribed (this includes Cicero)

Caesar conquers Dacia and Parthia.

Caesar Dies in 34 B.C.

 

The imediate question that need to be answered are:

 

How long does it take Caesar to conquer Dacia and Parthia (I say 4-6 years).

Does Caesar press on into India?

When Caesar Dies what happens with Octavian and Antonius? (I would prefer a way in which there is no civil war but it could still happen).

 

Once those questions are answered and the events set into stone (for the story) we can move on.

[Favonius Cornelius]

I don't mean to crush your rush or anything, but you DO know this theme has been done a million times right?

[Augustus Victorius Aquilla]

Everything has been done a million times. No matter what story you read it is inevitably based on some other story with just some variation. Alien Invasion, Fantasy stories, Wild West stories, Sci-fi stories etc. Therefore it is extremly difficult to create a "new" story, which I am not trying to do. In my opinion the only succseful attempts at writting a "new" story is tolkien's Lord of the Rings, or C.S. lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. Even then both those stories have drawn heavily on previous stories (a.k.a mythology).

[Lacertus]

Caesar doesn't die and has the plotting senetors proscribed (this includes Cicero)

Caesar conquers Dacia and Parthia.

Caesar Dies in 34 B.C.

 

The imediate question that need to be answered are:

 

How long does it take Caesar to conquer Dacia and Parthia (I say 4-6 years).

Does Caesar press on into India?

When Caesar Dies what happens with Octavian and Antonius? (I would prefer a way in which there is no civil war but it could still happen).

 

 

My easy thoughts.

Dacia and Parthia were the Caesar

[Augustus Victorius Aquilla]

Your comment about parthia being only in Caesars dreams is interesting, I have read that Caesar was vain and power driven and thought that he would shurly go for another triumph. He was also assasinated 3 days (give or take) before he left for dacia, and Octavian was waiting for him in Appollonia. I can understand where your opinion is comming from but I don't think it quite fits in with what Caesar had planned and his vanity. Would he simply give up his plans after he was announced king in all territories outside Italy? I wouldn't think so.

[Zeke]

What I am wondering is why you put Antonious in charge of Parthia and Dacia.........there thousands of miles apart. How would Anotnoious run those provinces effectivally??? And everything else sounds preety cool except for the details about the invasion of Australia which is way to far fletched!

And the Vikings....I don't think the vikings would have ever started to exist. If Rome was the domniante power...and its Empire spread all the way to Vietnam then it would probably push so far into Germany that the Germanic Barbarians would never had time to spawn in the first place. And if Rome is powerful then trade with China would be very intrecet...and China would have been so powerful that the Mongols would have never become a threat.

 

But its your story..I am just giving you some comman sense here. If I were you I would stop at Vietnam.......Australia is way to out there. The Empire can't govern an island halfway arcoss the wolrd in that point in history.

 

Zeke

[Ursus]

My totally contrived answer:

 

Caesar conquers Dacia as one last great military hurrah. But an increasingly old and increasingly weary Caesar soon thereafter settles down to start consolidating a political legacy.

 

He falls increasingly under the shadow of Cleopatra. Caesar begins moving the center of the Empire to the east, possibly even into Alexandria, so he can be closer to Cleopatra. In the Hellenistic east Caesar is surrounded by greater wealth and a more defensible position than Rome. The Hellenistic East also permits Caesar to rule as a god-king on earth, and the Roman Empire rapidly starts to become an Oriental autocracy.

 

Caesar dies eventually, whether of natural causes or a mysterious internal assassination. Octavian, his heir apparent, is also found mysteriously dead shortly thereafter, and Caesar's will naming Octavian as his successor is lost to history. Cleopatra soon becomes the power in the East, either through her son with Caesar or else through the proxy of Antony. Cleopatra reigns as Isis on earth.

 

The conservative element back in Rome starts to grumble and there is civil war. The West is simply starved into submission because Cleopatra and her court control Egypt's vital grain supplies. A weakened West falls prey to Germanic hordes who can smell blood. Rome is sacked, the Western provinces become Germanic feifdoms, and the nascent Greco-Roman urban culture in the West is largely forgotton as everything becomes Germanic.

 

The Alexandrian Empire in the East survives and prospers, though it fights countless border wars with Parthia on its eastern flank and Germanic raids on its Western flank. It also experiences a social revolution when Christianity begins to sweep the world, though this Christianity is somewhat different from the more legalistic branch that developed in the Roman west in the alternative universe. Whether or not Mohammed and the Arabs still rise is anyone's guess.

[Augustus Victorius Aquilla]

Thank you Ursus these are the types of answers I'm looking for well thought out and realistic. The only problem is that in your conjecture rome falls, which pretty much destroys the book right there. I will have to give much thought to your answer. One question I have is why and by whom was Octavian assasinated. To my knowledge no one thought much of Octavian and no one suspected that he would be Caesar's heir. Every one thought it would be Antonius, in fact I think Cleopatra even cheated on Caesar with Antonius so she could still have power when Rome changed hands.

 

Zeke your comments are good as well. When I detailed the expasion of Rome into the east it wasn't set on a time scale. The romans may not have even discovered malaysia until the 13th century when they may or might not have had steam powered ships. THe general idea was that the Romans at some point in time would find and would conquer far parts of the world. And the one of the goals of this topic was to decide when. Also I pointed out in my first post that one of the major problems in Rome's expansion was communication barriers. The Persians had a system that could deliver a message from one border to the opposite one in 2-3 days. But even using that method communication going from rome to austraila would take 2 months. Your point that I see may or may not work is about the vikings not existing. Because most of the legions would be in the east, the germans would either take the opurtunity to attack and gain land and would most likely continued to exist, they may have conquered gaul as well. If they didn't, then rome would have culturally dominated the germans (mostly through trade) and they would have been absorbed into the empire (in which case like you said the vikings would not exists).

 

Alright so China becomes powerful through trade with rome, what next, does Rome try to culturaly dominate china and absorb it into the empire or does china resist. Also if china is powerful, does it try and conquer mongolia?

 

In writing this I have decided to use most of your answer Ursus. Caesar would conquer both Dacia and Parthia (I dont think Dacia is just enough for Caesar. The one of the reasons he was to be made king, which would have happened the day he died, was because it was prophocised that parthia could only be conquered by a king). Caesar settles down after his triumph in Alexandria with Cleopatra, and Octavian gets a posstion in Rome. Alexadria becomes a second capital to the roman empire and manages the east, while Rome manages the west. When Caesar dies and Octavian is announced his heir, a shock to the world. What would happen now? I think it would be another civil war just like in history.

[meninwhite]

So Egyptian Religion is spread into the Roman Empire and they learn of a Giant Island Known as Japan and Cleopatra and Anthony visit the Japan and wants to trade with it and learn of Buddhism,but Cleopatra has plans to create temples of Ra and slowly Conquer Japan but Japan resist succsefuly and defeats Roman-Egyptian Legions.

[Segestan]

The continuing life of Julius Caesar beyond March 15th 44 BC would not have kept the Roman State or culture from collapsing. Caesar was 58 years old at his murder , and his enemies where not only old the foes in the Empire , but also many young men who had come onto the political stage , sought their own Fates , Fortunes and Personal Glories. Julius Caesar