I'm so glad you have the time and inclination to type up these replies. 
- Edit 1
- Edit 1Before modification by Ghavrel at 08/04/2010 07:09:27 AM
I would make it not happen.
Rome doesn't resort to tactics which would result in their fall and the dark ages never happen. Europe doesn't go through the intellectual lull it did and religious dogma and irrationality isn't able to take over.
As a result, mankind is much further along today.
Rome doesn't resort to tactics which would result in their fall and the dark ages never happen. Europe doesn't go through the intellectual lull it did and religious dogma and irrationality isn't able to take over.
As a result, mankind is much further along today.
Didn't the Plauge happen several hundred years after the fall of Rome? Or am I just being an idiot and not quite getting what your saying?
In some cases, the same diseases were responsible for multiple instances of plague, and it's hard to accurately diagnose each of them hundreds or even thousands of years later. "Plague" killed Pericles and a host of others when Athens was besieged in the Peloponessian War; WHICH plague remains an open question.
I don't agree the Romes plague near the end is what killed it though; overextension and complacency during the Pax are more attractive candidates. Christian unity and the assimilation of so many "barbarian" German tribes kept Rome on life support and hid the decline for at least a century after its peak, but had the Empire been sustainable Constantinople would never have been founded.
The plague that came through Rome crippled its army, killing most of the young Roman soldiers. This eventually forced them to try and assimilate barbarian tribes and resort to the measures that kept it on life support.
Without the plague, Rome's population might have been strong enough to sustain Roman troops and a Roman identity, instead of seeding power to outsiders.
Of course, the reason Rome fell can be debated endlessly. I'm one of those that thinks it was the plague.
Either way, if Rome hadn't fallen like it did, I think we'd be better off by a lot today. But "Have Rome not fall like it did" doesn't sound like a very good reply
What are you talking about? This was how Rome thrived through its glory days: expansion, and delegation of military service. The amount of *actual* Romans from Latinum, and later even from the Italian peninsula serving in the provinces armies was negligible. The main principle of Roman military strategy was: conquer place A, take men and armies from place A and make them serve in place X, while having people from place X guarding place A. Then, after colonizing place A with people from place V, then conquer place B to give land to people from A...and continue in such a fashion to appease everyone. The heart of the empire, Rome, much like America, didn't really grasp the idea of warfare and the hardships that came with it, because the people living there were as far from the borders as possible.