What if Rome Never Fell?

[scy12]

Yep. But that wasn't the same thing. I agree, the Catholic Church is far more powerful than Rome ever was, but you can't claim it as the Roman Empire, anymore than I can claim the Orthodox Church as the Byzantine Empire.

Indeed but you will find there is a larger relation with the Orthodox Church and the Eastern Roman Empire rather than with the opposite example.

 

[Sharwood]

Indeed but you will find there is a larger relation with the Orthodox Church and the Eastern Roman Empire rather than with the opposite example.

I'm aware of the relationship, I'm saying you can't call them the same thing. There's a relationship between Russian culture and the Golden Horde, but you can't call Russia the golden Horde.

 

[aronnax]

Another What if Rome never fell thread.

Easy, it will still be overstrained in budget, the cities begin to crumble and its influence will start to retreat to maybe the Italian penisula and thing around. By then persecuted Christians would be free, and they will just people another of those cults that the Roman empire once posessed. Europes history will be filled with paganism and rough babaric tribes that begin to form a simple but stable states that with regulary kill each other.

 

[Dachs]

Easy, it will still be overstrained in budget, the cities begin to crumble and its influence will start to retreat to maybe the Italian penisula and thing around. By then persecuted Christians would be free, and they will just people another of those cults that the Roman empire once posessed. Europes history will be filled with paganism and rough babaric tribes that begin to form a simple but stable states that with regulary kill each other.

When exactly are you changing things around? Most of the speculation is about the later Empire.

 

[BCLG100]

It's happened before; Sassanids used Valerian as the Shahanshah's personal slave, and Decius was killed by the Goths at Forum Terebronii. Besides, Theodosius (sort of) beat the Goths into submission after that. And there was no major barbarian incursion (excluding the brief attack by Uldin's Huns and Goths, which was smashed) until the West was invaded twenty-five years later by Radagaisus.

And the constant attacks by Alaric which allthough they managed to defeat him 4, maybe more times, they consistently managed to let him slip away and not finish the job because following Adrianople a belief had set in that Romans were mortal after all, not only to their enemies but Romans themselves. In addition Decius was killed whilst on the defensive, allthough the Goths had taken the city from the Romans they were still attacking and look what happened when Theodosius was in charge, civil war.

But the men were lost in the East; the West doesn't become overstretched because the Eastern Empire loses soldiers. And it wasn't actually that many men; less than 30,000 for the Romans IIRC, and in an army of hundreds of thousands when they get a generation of peace to recover that's peanuts.

They've got an army of Hundreds of thousands defending a frontier that in a thousand+ years time would take millions of men to fight over. Alaric sacked Rome with 20,000 men so obviously 30,000 was a hell of a lot of men to lose.

1. The Romans always have used barbarian mercs as auxilia, even back in the time of the Republic; in addition, non-Roman troops, the alae, made up at least half of all Roman field armies in times going back to the Kings. 2. The Romans didn't actually make up their losses with mercenaries; I cite the Notitia Dignitatum, which instead refers to a transfer of forces from less threatened areas, like Egypt, to restore the field armies to full strength.

Yes so how in 410 the Romans completly left England/Britain around the same time of the sack of Rome itself, of course they'd consistently used mercaneries to do the fighting for them but Adrianople was not just about the loss of mercs, so many upper ranking Romans also lost their lives.

Military reforms did occur (a defeat is always the best way of doing that). And I'm pretty sure that a generation of peace between Adrianople and the next major attack qualifies as "time to regroup". Victory at Adrianople means that the Goths are better assimilated in the Balkans, and maybe less of a necessity to transfer troops from less threatened theaters. Whoop-dee-doo. They would still have got hit by the avalanche of barbarian tribes in the first few decades of the fifth century, and the fact that the East is sitting relatively pretty has no effect on the ability of the West to resist those invasions. Morale had nothing to do with it; this isn't the twentieth century, where Vietnam reverberates with the American public for decades. It's the fourth and fifth centuries, where most of the inhabitants of your empire don't hear anything about military victories or losses. Tactically, the Romans still had a massive advantage anyway, so long as they didn't do anything monumentally stupid. Radagaisus, with the largest invasion in the history of the Empire, got thrashed by Stilicho in northern Italy and chased out. So morale issues don't make any sense. It's the strategic problems of having to deal with the usual barbarians they know and love, except those barbarians have had the benefit of technological progress in the last few centuries, thus becoming very populous and better armed. Then the Huns start moving and kick off the avalanche.

Of course Morale is important, thats like arguing Thermopylae had no impact on Persian psyche following that victory. They might have been hit yeah but by that point they'd have had time to stablise themselves more so, civil war may not have happened and would obviously be sitting a lot prettier with 30,000 more men

What Great Schism? There were always differences between the Eastern and Western Churches long before 1054, and they had several mini-schisms over the intervening centuries. Generally, the Bishop/Patriarch/Pope in Rome had fights with not only the "orthodox" officials in Constantinople and Antioch, but also with the monophysites in Alexandria and Jerusalem. So it'd be an interesting balancing act.

The Great Schism following the collapse of government the church was the big guy in the west if this hadn't happened and the empire itself remained united the increasingly centralised state wouldn't have allowed the Church so much power. Yes there were other schisms and yes the Pope/patriachs whatever would have been sonstantly fighting but that perhaps would not have had such the impact it did if the Pope/Patriach realised they were subservant to someone else.

 

[pawpaw]

And the constant attacks by Alaric which allthough they managed to defeat him 4, maybe more times, they consistently managed to let him slip away and not finish the job because following Adrianople a belief had set in that Romans were mortal after all, not only to their enemies but Romans themselves. In addition Decius was killed whilst on the defensive, allthough the Goths had taken the city from the Romans they were still attacking and look what happened when Theodosius was in charge, civil war.

They've got an army of Hundreds of thousands defending a frontier that in a thousand+ years time would take millions of men to fight over. Alaric sacked Rome with 20,000 men so obviously 30,000 was a hell of a lot of men to lose.

Yes so how in 410 the Romans completly left England/Britain around the same time of the sack of Rome itself, of course they'd consistently used mercaneries to do the fighting for them but Adrianople was not just about the loss of mercs, so many upper ranking Romans also lost their lives.

Alaric was defeated in 397AD but escaped because the Eastern Emperor ordered Stilicho to leave Illyria where he had Alaric trapped. Stilicho claimed to be guradian to the eastern Court and there was great rivalary between the two courts. In 402AD Alaric was defeated at Pollentia & Verona and retreated out of Italy. In 407AD British commander Constantine revolted and took the British garrison to Gaul. In 409Ad Alaric begain his Rome campaign-after Radagaesos invasion of Italy and the alan, Vandal & Sueui invasion of Gaul. This was followed by Stilicho's murder. Point? Alaric's survival had little to due with the "Romans" being mortal but inter empire politics and threats on multiple fronts plus the fact that IF Valans hadn't lost his army it wouldn't of mattered--they were EASTERN troops, not western. With the political situation at the time they would of still not been available to the west.

Rome didn't remove troops from Britain in 410AD, they were already gone, they mearly refused calls for help saying there would be no more aid.

 

[Dachs]

And the constant attacks by Alaric which allthough they managed to defeat him 4, maybe more times, they consistently managed to let him slip away and not finish the job because following Adrianople a belief had set in that Romans were mortal after all, not only to their enemies but Romans themselves.

Alaric was after Radagaisus, save for the two times when Stilicho let him go in the late 390s. The first of those was because the Emperor ordered him away (political maneuvering; Arcadius didn't want the Western Emperor's lapdog to get any stronger) and the second of these was when Stilicho let him go in order to damage the Eastern Empire for revenge. Had nothing to do with an "invincibility complex being destroyed" until long after Adrianople, when Alaric sacked Rome, in 410.

They've got an army of Hundreds of thousands defending a frontier that in a thousand+ years time would take millions of men to fight over. Alaric sacked Rome with 20,000 men so obviously 30,000 was a hell of a lot of men to lose.

Comparing the Late Classical ratio of force to space to that of the medieval or later eras is, uh, wrong. And Alaric sacked Rome with 20,000 men because the Western Roman field army was mostly elsewhere and the frontier units had been damaged by Radagaisus' incursion...which was definitely NOT having to do with Adrianople, and which actually PROVES MY POINT, that Adrianople wasn't as bad as the fifth century incursions in precipitating the fall of the West.

Yes so how in 410 the Romans completly left England/Britain around the same time of the sack of Rome itself, of course they'd consistently used mercaneries to do the fighting for them but Adrianople was not just about the loss of mercs, so many upper ranking Romans also lost their lives.

Nah, this was mostly due to the Roman army in Britain leaving to fight a civil war in Gaul.

Of course Morale is important, thats like arguing Thermopylae had no impact on Persian psyche following that victory. They might have been hit yeah but by that point they'd have had time to stablise themselves more so, civil war may not have happened and would obviously be sitting a lot prettier with 30,000 more men

Morale is primarily important in a tactical context at this point in time, not a strategic or grand-strategic one, because the Roman Empire does not initiate a levee en masse or anything like that. The sensibilities of most of the lower ranking citizens do not matter in a military context. It was not due to lower morale that there was civil war; hell, there was civil war when Rome was undefeated too.

The Great Schism following the collapse of government the church was the big guy in the west if this hadn't happened and the empire itself remained united the increasingly centralised state wouldn't have allowed the Church so much power. Yes there were other schisms and yes the Pope/patriachs whatever would have been sonstantly fighting but that perhaps would not have had such the impact it did if the Pope/Patriach realised they were subservant to someone else.

I know what the Great Schism was, my implication was that it wouldn't have happened. And theological questions would still have been extremely important nevertheless - look at the Eastern Empire after the fall of the West, with the iconoclasm and monophysite episodes.

 

[Vietcong]

this is just one of those big If questions. u are puting to much speculation into this question.

instead of that, ask what if rome didnt fall in 476, and in one way or another continued to exist. to say it held on to all its land and expanded whould be a bit silly, at one point im sure local powers whould balance the romans out and weakend them.. i can see to day if rome never fell it being a relativly minor power now. but haveing losts of that symbolic power, much like the pope.

 

[BCLG100]

The Roman empire did continue to exist for ~1000 more years as the Byzantine empire in real history...

 

[warpus]

Don't forget the other barbarian nomads, such as the Seljuks.

BTW to whoever said that the Catholic Church is more powerful than the Roman Empire ever was, get off the crack.

 

[Sharwood]

Don't forget the other barbarian nomads, such as the Seljuks.

BTW to whoever said that the Catholic Church is more powerful than the Roman Empire ever was, get off the crack.

The Vatican holds a lot of power, in a vastly different way. I have no idea how one would go about quantifying it, but it's certainly comparable.