Roma Aeterna

[eurofed]

Successful Rome is a popular and iconic AH scenario, and one of my most preferred ones. What follows is my best attempt to develop it in a TL where the Roman Empire overcomes all causes of its decline, absorbs the entire northwestern portion of the Old World, and grows as strong and dynamic as our Europe. Because of writer’s block I’ve been unable to develop it for the second millennium CE or non-Roman events, although I have a general idea of what happens.

Roma Aeterna (v. 1.5).

8th Saeculum AUC – 18th Saeculum AUC (1st Century AD - 10th Century AD)

8th - 9th Saeculum AUC (1st Century AD): the Roman Empire gradually conquers Germania Magna, Bohemia, Dacia, Nubia, and Britannia. In Northern Europe, only Scandinavia, Caledonia, Hibernia, and the great Sarmatian plain remain outside Rome’s control. In early-mid 1st Century CE, the Romans get a long string of victories in Germania, annexing it up to the Elbe. A victorious war spurred by a Nubian invasion grants control of Nubia as well. This builds a momentum during the middle and late span of the century that leads to the annexation of Bohemia, Dacia, and Germania Magna up to the Vistula-Carpathians-Dniester line. The assimilation of Germania Magna and Dacia repeats the pattern of Gallia and Hispania in the previous centuries: there are a few crushed rebellion attempts and some decades of unrest, then those areas gradually pacify down into long-term development and the onset of Romanization. The conquest of Britannia occurs at the turn of the century, as the new Northern provinces are settling down, and follows the same basic pattern as well. The Roman leaders spurn the conquest of Cimbria, Caledonia, and Hibernia, deeming those lands of little overall value for the effort. Defensive fortifications are built at the borders of Cimbria and Caledonia, and at the Vistula-Dniester line to protect Roman Britannia and Germania-Dacia.

The borders of the Empire are established at the Vistula-Carpathians-Dniester line in Eastern Europe, and at the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile in Africa. Romanization of Northern Europe starts in earnest as its conquest and the urge to make good use of all that new and underexploited land spur the discovery of various technological improvements (the heavy plough, the three-field system, and the horse collar) that allow extensive development of Northern Europe. Control of amber and iron sources in the Germanic provinces benefits Rome economically as well. Over the next two centuries, the Roman road system is expanded across Northern Europe to reach the Eastern border. The historical sequence of Roman macro-engineering projects begins with the digging of the Corinth Canal.

9th - 10th Saeculum AUC (2nd Century AD): the ongoing pacification and settlement of Germania Magna, Dacia, and Britannia is reducing the military burden in the North (also thanks to the new, much shorter Eastern border) and allows to recruit sizable numbers of new Germanic auxiliaries. This enables a new round of expansion for the Roman Empire as a major campaign against Parthia is prepared.

Despite various difficulties, the legions freed up from the shortened borders in Europe, and the expanded size of the Auxiliary corps, allow Rome to deal Parthia a decisive defeat in a series of campaigns. The peace treaty with the Parthian Empire turns Armenia, Mesopotamia, Media, and Elam into Roman provinces and makes the rest of Parthia an unofficial Roman client state (even if it keeps formal independence), bound to keep a good neighbor policy with the Roman Empire. The new Roman border in the Middle East is set at the Persian deserts, where the empire builds defensive fortifications. Some rebellions of the Jewish community also occur in Judea, Cyprus, Alexandria, and Cyrene during this period, but are contained and suppressed without excessive trouble, thanks to the extra manpower. Other minor campaigns extend the borders of Roman Nubia to the Sudd swamp and the outskirts of the Ethiopian Highlands. Extensive development of Northern Europe is ongoing with the settlement of Romanized natives, discharged veterans, and colonists from other parts of the empire in the new provinces. The new agricultural technologies cause a strong increase of agricultural yield, tax revenues, and population throughout the area.

Driven by conquests in the Middle East and inspired by the success of the Corinth Canal, the Roman state undergoes the renovation and expansion of the Canal of the Pharaohs waterway that existed since Ancient Egypt. Over time, it proves fundamental to allow Rome efficient communication between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, and to improve trade and cultural exchanges with India and China. Once its maintenance eventually proves burdensome due to the silting problem, the Romans dig the Suez Canal to replace it. The success of the project (which causes the lock to be developed) also later provides inspiration for the creation of the European canal system. Conquest of Mesopotamia and western Persia causes the Romans to become aware of qanat technology and its usefulness to provide a reliable supply of water for human settlements and irrigation in hot, arid, and semi-arid climates. Over the next few centuries they master and improve on the technology and spread its use in all suitable areas across the empire. The Romans gradually expand their road network across Nubia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Media, and Elam.

News from Parthia about a mighty and sophisticated civilization in the Far East spurs Rome to send a flotilla of triremes and liberunes to seek contact with China. The voyage is nothing short of epic, and lasts a little more than a year, as the fleet reaches India, resupplies, and follows the coast of Southeast Asia up to China and back. But the rewards are huge, as the Roman explorers make official diplomatic contact with Han China, whose dignitaries are impressed by the powerful strangers coming from the Far West. In a few years, regular diplomatic contacts and trade deals are established across Central Asia by land and by sea routes across India and Southeast Asia. Both civilizations greatly benefit from the strong trade links and groundbreaking cultural and technological exchanges that gradually follow.

It is a time of significant technological progress for the main Eurasian civilizations: various important discoveries are first adopted and gradually mastered and spread through the Roman Empire over the next two centuries from improved contacts with India and China (papermaking, blast furnace & cast iron, seed drill, hand crank, crossbow, and woodblock printing) or independent development (wheelbarrow, abacus, caliper, waterwheel & watermill, solid-treed saddle & stirrups, iron horseshoes, and cranes). On its side, China gains knowledge of concrete, glassware, reverse-overshot type waterwheels, balistas, onagers, plumbing, and screw presses.

10th - 11th Saeculum AUC (3rd Century AD): this is a time of major crisis for Rome as a row of civil wars, climactic changes, plagues, and foreign invasions strike the empire. A political change in Parthia, with the takeover of a ruling elite (the Sassanid dynasty) hostile to Roman influence, causes it to break away from Roman control and turn aggressive. Under the impact of the civil wars, the Roman Empire breaks down in several warring breakaway states, while Sassanid invaders overrun Media, Elam, and Mesopotamia, and make inroads into Armenia and Syria. However, the territorial and economic expansion and the technological improvements of the last two centuries prevent the crisis from causing the irreversible economic and social damage that the empire would have suffered in their absence. By the end of the century, the political unity of Rome and its Eastern borders are gradually re-established as the various fragments of the Empire get consolidated in two halves and re-unified, while the Sassanids are eventually pushed back beyond the Persian deserts.

At the start of the century, Roman citizenship is granted to all free subjects of the Empire.

The crisis causes a resurgence of political and philosophic debate in the Roman elites, which often takes stoic and republican leanings. Although this movement is nowhere strong enough to drive a regime change back to a republican system, its ideas help foster the political, social, economic, and religious reforms that take place in Rome during the next few centuries. They most notably include the creation of an organic constitutional system, the re-establishment of a power balance between the Emperor and the Senate, the systematization of the polytheistic consensus, and the changes in the Imperial cult.

In the aftermath of the crisis, several extensive reforms are established and gradually entrenched over the following two centuries, to deal with the issues revealed by the crisis:

- A professional scholar bureaucracy is created, broadly based on a modified version of the Chinese model (fairly well-known thanks to regular contacts with the Far East) combined with Roman ideas derived from the administrative arm of the military. It helps improve the overall efficiency of the state and balance the influence of the professional military and its military administrative arm. The two branches of the civil service, and more broadly the army and the bureaucracy, share responsibilities with varying degrees of authority in different areas of the Empire, and often exchange personnel, especially with the military branch "retiring" in the civilian service through a preferential recruitment channel.

- A new specialized military corps in Italy (the Legio I Italica) is created to be a counterweight for the Praetorian Guard (and vice-versa).

- A system of strong property rights with lease and usufruct contracts for land development akin to sharecropping is created. Reform of land ownership combines the recognition of private ownership and the rewarding of cultivators with a harvest share commensurate with their efforts. A tax reform lifts restrictions to finance and commerce and establishes property titles as the assessment basis. This encourages the wealthy elites away from absentee landholding and in intensive development of agriculture and related pursuits like pottery and brick-making, mining, quarrying, and forestry. Over time this also gradually encourages investment in trade and industry as a “secondary” source of income, such as factory tanneries, textile manufacture, pottery workshops and such as part of the landed estate, and trade as part of the sales and raw materials purchasing channels.

- The army is restructured to create a mobile force, and provisions are strengthened to grant veterans substantial land grants by the state in the provinces when they discharge, both in the less developed areas of the Empire and from the vast estates expropriated because of the civil wars.

- With the extension of the citizenship, the recruitment pool of the Auxiliares has been largely drying up, so they are reformed to become a militia-reserve corps. It is manned by veteran legionaries who ended their regular military service combined with local cohorts that are recruited as militias and law enforcement corps in the non-militarized provinces or amongst trusted allies and mercenary forces from beyond the border in frontier provinces. They support enlisted legionaries by training recruits, policing rear areas, garrisoning forts and other rear-echelon duties. They form the backbone of a second-tier defensive system and law-enforcement network that spans the empire performing duties as city watchmen and highway patrol against banditry. Existing forms of local law enforcement and control, either military (stationarii, beneficiarii, vigiles) or local (paraphylakes, diogmitai, iuventutes, doryphoroi) are gradually incorporated in this system. In emergency situations, the veteran troops in the Auxiliares may be recalled into active service in the legions.

- To compensate veterans for the extended service, legionaries are given full rights of conubium - full legal marriage - with their women and legitimacy for their children.

- With the extension of citizenship, the existing system of consultative provincial assemblies and legations to the central government is strengthened and extended throughout the empire. Each province has meetings of representatives of the ruling classes of the province at a significant cultic centre where issues get discussed, loyal proclamations issued, petitions presented, and ceremonies held. The provincial assembly (or local cities if they get the assembly's permission, especially if legations from competing cities would present their cases against each other) regularly sends a legation of highly qualified, influential, and smart men to Rome to present the Emperor with a proclamation of loyalty on every session and uses the opportunity to send their petitions and grievances along. They usually meet annually or at longer but regular intervals, sometimes coinciding with sacred games.

The legation (not necessarily its individual members, as they often rotate on a regular basis to avoid excessively long absences from home) stays in Rome more or less permanently and only returns to report to the next assembly. Over time this grows into an informal but effective representation of the provinces, which eventually gets formalized with their admission in the Senate’s ranks. The new professional civil service, and its preferential recruitment of the “retired” upper echelons of the army, also provides many new members to the Senate. So it evolves to improve its representative character of the various Roman elites across the Empire and strengthen the ties between them and the Imperial government.

- A series of groundbreaking laws provide a formal codifying of the Imperial succession (the ruling Emperor nominates his successor with the Senate’s assent) and lays the basis for a rough but effective power-sharing agreement between the Emperor and the Senate. The Emperor manages military affairs and administration of the state, and may make regulations and minor laws by decree, but all legislation that affects taxation, the functioning of the Roman state, or the rights of Roman citizens in a major way needs the consent of the Senate.

- A policy is established of significant limitations for the amount of troops a single general may command, and of swapping generals around on a regular basis between various areas of the empire, barring emergencies or special authorization of the Emperor. While this somewhat harms effectiveness, it significantly reduces the risk of revolts. As a rule, other military reforms, technological improvements, and good care for troop training, arms, and generalship largely make up for the loss in command effectiveness.

11th – 12th Saeculum AUC (4th Century AD): A recovering Roman Empire begins a new cycle of expansion and significant technological progress. It reaps the benefits from the reforms, two centuries of Romanization of Northern Europe, as well as some technological advances that substantially improve the quality of Roman cavalry and archery, spurred by the ongoing conflicts with the Sassanid Empire. A series of military campaigns lead to the conquest and gradual pacification of Arabia, Caledonia, and Hibernia. The conflict with Persia intermittently continues to a result indecisive but favorable to the Romans. They subjugate the Persian coast up to the Hormuz strait, entrench their control with several new fortified outposts, and consolidate the Persian deserts line in the rest of the border.

Roman performance in the recurrent border conflicts with the Sassanid enemy is significantly increasing, due to gradual improvement of their cavalry and archery. Northern Europe is becoming more and more populous and economically developed, and coming close to Western Europe in character, while the latter is getting akin to the Mediterranean lands in importance as an heartland of the Empire. By now, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Media, and Elam are more or less as Roman in character as Syria or Egypt. In East Africa, the Kingdom of Aksum is steadily growing in power and becoming the region's dominant polity, due to the wealth provided by the trade between Rome and the Asian civilizations passing by.

The successful example of the Suez Canal pushes various Emperors to undergo a vast program of canal construction in Northern Europe. Over the next two centuries an extensive canal system is built and gradually extended to link the Rhine, Scheldt, Meuse, Seine, Loire, Rhone, Saone, and Garonne rivers in Gallia, and the Rhine, Weser, Elbe, Oder, and Vistula rivers in Germania. Other canals are also built in Germania and Dacia to link the Rhine with the Danube (as Roman engineers master the technique of summit level canals), the Elbe and the Oder with the Danube, and the Vistula with the Dniester. The Roman road network gets gradually extended into Arabia.

Several technological innovations are introduced in this period and gradually spread in the Empire over the next two centuries, including mobile type printing, artesian wells, grindstones, horizontal loom, distillation, wine press, soap, water hammer, arched saddle, longbow, and spurs.

Renewed confidence of the Roman people in their society and influence of neo-Stoic thinking results into the strong revitalization and harmonization of European polytheism: the various polytheistic religions that exist within the Empire (Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Semitic, Egyptian, etc.) are merged into an inclusive syncretistic “Romanist” system and pantheon, which borrows strong pantheistic and monistic elements from Roman philosophy (especially Stoicism and Epicureanism), Buddhism, and Hinduism. It develops the doctrine that an universal immanent divine force exists, which creates fate and natural law, and the various gods are self-aware universal archetypal expressions of natural law, who wear different faces and names in different cultures, and may partially affect (but not entirely abrogate) fate and natural law in their respective fields of responsibility.

Greco-Roman and Middle Eastern mystery cults and monotheistic religions (such as Christianity, Mithraism, and Zoroastrianism) start to lose influence and popularity or are gradually absorbed into Romanism. The Imperial cult gradually shifts its focus from deification of the Emperor to veneration of Roma, the personification of the Roman Empire, although it remains a common expression of allegiance and reverence for the Roman state.

A system of unitary procedure and law is developed with recognized authorities to provide legal opinion and formalized educational institutions for practitioners.

Legal reforms create increasingly complex financial instruments in trade, banking and investment, including limited liability and full legal personage, and different legal systems for slavery. 'House' slaves are provided with an extended set of legal rights and become trusted retainers who act as commercial agents, estate administrators, and other vital functionaries, perform paramilitary functions, provide skilled labor and ultimately form a stratum of 'ministerial' upper class. ‘Chattel' slaves become a labor reserve or luxury consumption good (ever more costly and of diminishing importance, but ultimately disposable) or a profitable way of dealing with criminals and defeated rebels or enemies.

A toned-down and largely nominal form of temporary "house slavery" is developed to provide apprenticeship. A house-born slave (verna) who shows promise in youth is trained, either in-house or by being lent or sold to someone who has use for him (trade in gifted children is brisk). Once he has the required skills (as an accountant, merchant, administrator, physician, artisan or whatever), he works for the profit of his owner. These people only change hands rarely, and if they do it is for large sums. Traditionally, after ten to fifteen years of service (in comfortable quarters and nice conditions, with some informal pay), they are granted their freedom and continue to work for their masters, now for pay. Some may strike out on their own, though they are still bound to them by legal ties (may not compete with them or act against their interests). Many former owners provide seed capital for their freedmen. Many free-born but poor children join a modified form of this system by temporary slavery contracts that provide legally-enforceable guarantees of liberation after a fixed term of service and of personal freedom for the temporary “apprentice slave”.

[eurofed]

12th – 13th Saeculum AUC (5th Century AD): Various groups of Central Asian nomads unify in a vast confederation and make a massive breakout in Eastern Europe, overrunning and devastating its border provinces and making inroads as far as Gallia and Italy. The effort to contain the nomad invaders absorbs the empire’s energies for the rest of the century, and forces it to shelve any plans for an all-out effort to conquer the Sassanid Empire. However, by now Rome has the internal stability and military resources to reduce the nomad breakout to a huge, very taxing, decades-long but manageable security problem, instead of an insurmountable existential threat. The improved cavalry and archery developed in the Persian wars allow the legions, who have maintained their excellent infantry quality, to be an effective match for nomad breakouts. Eventually the Roman legions defeat and repel the invaders, using combined arms tactics for heavy cavalry and archers. The conflict leads to Roman annexation of the Bosporus kingdom and a strip of territory in Eastern Europe up to the Neman-Horyn-Southern Bug line.

Rome undergoes the construction of an extensive fortification system on the new Eastern border (the “Great Limes”) which effectively becomes an equivalent of China's Great Wall. To be accurate, this is but the first version of the Great Limes. In the following centuries, as the Empire gradually expands eastward in the steppes, the Romans build new fortification systems on the current borders, typically using some river system as basis. The old limes typically gets at least partially dismantled to enable free movement of trade and troops and allow an extension of the road and canal system. However portions of it may be often kept as a secondary defense system if the primary one gets breached.

In the aftermath of the nomads’ onslaught, Eastern Europe experiences a few sizable demographic changes: several Germanic and Slavic peoples are pushed in Sarmatia to mingle with Baltic, Finnish, and Iranian tribes, while several others are allowed to settle in the empire on the Romans’ terms to help (re)populate the old and new border provinces. Romanization and development of Arabia proceeds apace. Hostilities with Persia cool down for a while as that empire is also suffering a major series of attacks by steppe nomads on its northern border. Aksum invades Nubia and Arabia, and makes inroads in Egypt. The Aksumite invaders are eventually pushed back when the nomad onslaught cools down and Rome can redeploy more forces to Africa. In the aftermath of the conflict Rome annexes the northern coast of Axum, re-establishes the rest of the border on the western outskirts of the Ethiopian Highlands, and consolidates it with new fortifications. The Romans however are too exhausted to seriously contemplate a total conquest of Aksum.

The Romanist religion spreads to become the faith of the majority of the Roman Empire's population in the West and the plurality in the East. A kind of informal religious leadership for Romanism is gradually established both as a subset of the civil service and a body of scholars that combine expertise in classical literature (especially as relevant to mythology), law, philosophy, and religious ritual. Gradually the body of lore expected from Romanist scholars grows to include logic, mathematics, and empirical expertise in medicine and natural philosophy as well. Romanist scholars undergo a vast effort to organize an extensive corpus of Greco-Roman literature and philosophy relevant to Romanism, and to integrate it with the compiled oral literature from other traditions within the empire, such as the Celtic, Germanic, and Slavic cultures. Mystery cults largely fall in obscurity as the vast majority of their following is absorbed by Romanism.

Middle Eastern monotheistic and dualistic religions (Christianity, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism) steadily keep losing influence, following, and sympathies within the Empire, as many Roman citizens come to see such “alien” religions as a distasteful, unwholesome, and troublesome expression of disloyalty to Roman culture. The Emperors and the Senate heavily tax and heap legal penalties on followers of religions who refuse to give allegiance to Rome and the Emperor in Romanist ceremonies.

The Roman authorities create a system of state-supported charities, initially to care for the victims of the nomad invasion, but later expanded across the empire as the basis of the Roman philanthropic system. It helps lessen social unrest and reduce the appeal of the Christian community’s welfare system.

Spurred by ongoing population growth in the Roman Empire, the "Roman Agricultural Revolution" takes off. Roman traders and explorers travel across most of the Old World, and establish an early global economy across most of Asia, vast portions of Africa, and all of Europe. Their trade networks extending from the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Indian Ocean and China Sea in the east. The global economy established by Roman traders across the Old World enables the diffusion of many crops and farming techniques among different parts of the Roman world, as well as the adaptation of crops and techniques from and to regions beyond the Roman world. Hundreds of new crops are diffused throughout Roman lands as a result of the Roman Agricultural Revolution. They include rye, sugar cane, rice, citrus fruit, apricots, bananas, coconut palms, cotton, aubergines, saffron, lemons, sour oranges, eggplants, limes, almonds, figs, sorghum, mangos, artichokes, spinach, carrots, hard wheat, colocasia, plantains, and watermelons.

The Romans start developing a scientific approach to agriculture based on three major elements: sophisticated systems of crop rotation, where land is cropped four or more times in a two-year period; highly developed irrigation techniques, using machines such as norias, water mills, water raising machines, dams and reservoirs, which allow to greatly expand the exploitable land area; and the introduction of a large variety of crops which are studied and catalogued according to the season, type of land and amount of water they require. Roman travelers successfully smuggle silkworm eggs into the Roman Empire, which leads to the establishment of an indigenous Roman silk industry.

Technological progress continues, with the diffusion of many numerous innovative industrial uses of water mills, early industrial uses of tidal power, wind power, and fossil fuels such as petroleum, and the earliest large factory complexes. A variety of industrial mills are invented in the Roman world, including fulling mills, gristmills, hullers, paper mills, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills, sugar mills, tide mills, and windmills. Roman engineers also invent crankshafts, connecting rods, and water turbines, first employ gears in mills and water-raising machines, and pioneer the use of dams as a source of water power, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines.

Rural slavery changes as well as a result of the economic and legal changes: unfree latifundia rural laborers become more akin to serfs than chattel slaves. They are granted more personal rights, but their freedom of movement is still restricted. They live in estate enclosed villages, forming a network of sub-communities, that are managed by a freedman steward. He worked his way to his position and lives in a bigger house than his former kind, who either live in huts or in slave-barracks. Records are kept on slave families, individuals, and their relations and they are sometimes moved around the estate, or traded to other estates, to prevent inbreeding. Every now and then, children from the slave families may be collected by servants of the landlord to become either new household staff, or perform seasonal work on the lord’s villa/manor. Gifted or surplus children may be sold on through the market system, and enter the urban household slavery system, where they are given to professionals as slave-apprentices, or given as rewards to the landlord's social clients. Slaves from beyond the empire serve alongside condemned criminals in dangerous or exhausting occupations, such as mining, quarrying, civil engineering, the most lethal forms of gladiator games, or forced prostitution.

Educational institutions for legal practitioners begin to transform under the influence of Romanist scholarship into a full-fledged higher education system as they provide education into other subjects. Their curriculum grows to include law, medicine, philosophy, Romanist classics, mathematics, grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, accounting, architecture/engineering, and natural philosophy.

13th – 14th Century AUC (6th Century AD): A renewed major effort by Rome to conquer the Sassanid Empire hits the latter in a moment of serious weakness due to an ongoing civil war caused by dynastic strife. This leads to Roman conquest and annexation of eastern Persia and Khorasan. The region however remains a hotbed of rebellion and strife due to its Zoroastrian character, increasingly hostile attitude of Roman culture to Middle Eastern monotheist religions, and frequent raids and invasions of steppe nomad and Iranian peoples from Central Asia. Roman intolerance to monotheism also leads to a renewed row of Jewish rebellions that the Legions quash. The Empire also faces and successfully repels the encroachment in southern Sarmatia of another steppe nomad confederation. Roman legions are able to use the military tactics they have mastered in the previous century to very good effect. The new nomad threat increases the interest of the Imperial government to develop the Sarmatian border provinces as a strong frontier bulwark. A recurring series of border clashes with Aksum entrenches the border on the northern and western outskirts of the Ethiopian Highlands.

As it happened with Aksum, border contact with Rome fosters demographic, cultural, economic, and technological development in the Norse of Scandinavia and the various peoples of Sarmatia, as well as their political progression from the tribal level to increasingly bigger and more organized polities.

The Empire engages in a major effort is started to connect the border territories in western Sarmatia to the Roman road and canal system and foster their settlement. The canal system is gradually expanded to link with the Neman, Horyn-Prypiat, and Southern Bug rivers. After several centuries of settlement and development, Northern Europe has essentially reached the level of Western Europe in population and economic development, and in combination both areas make for a second heartland of the empire that matches the Mediterranean lands in importance. By now, Arabia is more or less as Roman in character as Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Media. Plague hits again the Empire, stopping Roman expansion in Asia as ambitious plans for an invasion of India are shelved. The plague heightens interest for medicine and natural philosophy in Roman culture.

Many industries are generated due to the Roman Agricultural Revolution, including the earliest industries for agribusiness, astronomical instruments, ceramics, chemicals, distillation technologies, clocks, glass, mechanical hydro-powered and wind-powered machinery, matting, mosaics, pulp and paper industry, perfumery, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, rope-making, shipping, shipbuilding, silk, sugar, textiles, weapons, and the mining of minerals such as sulfur, ammonia, lead and iron. The first large factory complexes are built for many of these industries. The Roman domestic water system is improved, with the development of a widespread network of sewers, public baths, drinking fountains, piped drinking water supplies, and widespread private and public toilet and bathing facilities in all cities.

Two types of economic systems are developing in parallel in the Roman world. Command economy and politically-driven investment by the government bureaucracy and military, most prominent in newly-acquired and far-off provinces, prompts agricultural development and colonization of under-exploited lands, typically combining the settlement of veterans and colonists in state colonies and in individual land grants, and cares for building and extension of the road network, the canal network in Europe, and the irrigation system in the Middle East, as well as the establishment of an extensive postal system. At the same time, the first market economy and earliest forms of merchant capitalism, most prominent in the Mediterranean provinces, but also briskly expanding to Britannia, Gallia, Hispania, and Germania, take root. A vigorous monetary economy is created on the basis of the expanding levels of circulation of a stable high-value currency (the denarius). Its effects include market-driven agricultural development with the spread of advice, education, and free seeds, introduction of high value crops or animals to areas where they were previously unknown, development of an extensive international trade network, and widespread manufacturing.

Innovative new business techniques and forms of business organization are introduced by economists, merchants and traders during this time. Such innovations include the earliest trading companies, big businesses, contracts, bills of exchange, long-distance international trade, the first forms of limited partnerships, issuing of insurance, and the earliest forms of credit, debt, profit, loss, capital, capital accumulation, circulating capital, capital expenditure, revenue, cheques, promissory notes, trusts and charitable trusts, startup companies, savings accounts, transactional accounts, pawning, loaning, exchange rates, bankers, money changers, ledgers, deposits, assignments, the double-entry bookkeeping system, and lawsuits.

As an effect of economic, legal, and technological changes, slavery undergoes a gradual decline and marginalization process in Roman society as the agricultural sector becomes increasingly reliant on tenant farmers and urban economy on free laborers, artisans, and craftsmen. Unfree labor mostly tends to survive as a combination of various systems: evolution of rural slavery into serfdom, in the areas where tenant farming does not become prevalent; temporary indenture or apprenticeship for the training of skilled labor; and chattel slavery as a form of punishment and exploitation of convicted criminals and defeated enemies and rebels. The latter is typically prevalent in dangerous and exhausting occupations such as the mines, quarries, public works, or forced prostitution. This process may sometimes be significantly slowed or even temporarily reversed when events such as military victories, conquest of new territories, and repression of rebellions cause a temporary increase of availability of new slaves, but it always reasserts in the end.

Technological progress steadily continues in the Roman world: new technologies that spread in the Empire include buttons, mirrors, rat traps, spectacles, spinning wheels, magnets, compass, counterweight trebuchets, astrolabes, rib vault, coffee, hang glider, hard soap, shampoo, nitric acid, alembic, valve, reciprocating, combination lock, quilting, pointed arch, and surgical catgut.

The formalized higher education system spreads throughout the Roman Empire and takes the shape of an informal “university” system as they develop an effective accreditation system through letters of commendation. Teachers write those for promising students, and one collects a series of them from a number of senior philosophers, doctors, architects, jurists, or other kinds of experts until one is effectively recognized as an established scholar. This gets official support by Imperial authority as the letters of commendation become a preferential title of merit for civil service recruitment and getting appointments in some branches of the military. Certain branches of the civil service are accredited as the senior ranks of the commendation system (e.g. as jurisconsults of imperial authority or archiatroi). The students of the great institutions where the most accredited masters cluster become the academic elite, while the majority of accredited scholars walk out of provincial schools with letters of commendation detailing what they learned and from who.

The development of the “university” system, supported by Romanist culture, spurs a heightened empiric interest into logic, mathematics, natural philosophy, and medicine: notable scientific advances in the second half of the first millennium include the first definitions of the scientific method, development of a decimal place value number system and the zero, systematization of arithmetic and algebra, solution of linear and quadratic equations, and those polynomials of higher degree that could be reduced to quadratics through substitution, first developments in differential calculus, the theory of impetus, first integrated systematization of mechanics, optics and hydrodynamics, development of chemistry, rediscovery of atomism, advances in trigonometry with the definition of the trigonometric functions, advances in surgery with the standardization of surgical instruments, development of a mathematical scale to quantify the strength of drugs, a system that would allow a doctor to determine in advance the most critical days of a patient's illness, introduction of systematic experimentation and quantification into the study of physiology, discovery of the contagious nature of infectious diseases, introduction of quarantine to limit the spread of contagious diseases, and development of experimental medicine and clinical trials.

So far, the dominant method of indentifying Roman years was to name the consuls that held office that year (during the Republic) or using the regnal year of the Emperor (during the Empire). Now Romanist scholars standardize the Ab Urbe Condita (AUC) dating system, which numbers years since the founding of Rome, traditionally dated to 753 BC. Endorsement by the Imperial government popularizes the use of the epoch and spreads its use throughout the Roman Empire, leading to its widespread acceptance. Romanist scholars also standardize the duration of a saeculum (length of time conventionally held roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a person, used by Roman historians to periodize chronicles and track major events) to a century.

Monotheistic religions have been marginalized to a tiny fringe by Romanism in the West, and reduced to a minority in the Middle East, except eastern Persia and Khorasan. The Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian communities stage several riots and uprisings against the unfair tax burden and legal penalties that these minorities suffer. The Emperors and the Senate retaliate by harsh military repression and enforcing even more penalties in the form of unfavorable property and inheritance codes for these religious minorities. This further accelerates the sharp decline of monotheism across the Middle East. Zoroastrianism only remains widespread in the Khorasan region due to its recent conquest by Rome. The Jew community also remains significant due to its close-knit community support system, but it is increasingly marginalized and alienated from Roman society.

Increased trade and cultural exchanges with India due to conquest of the Sassanid Empire allow an expanded diffusion of Hinduism and Buddhism to Rome, where they are welcomed much more favorably than Middle Eastern monotheism due to their perceived affinities with Romanism. Over time, Hinduism is mostly subsumed in Romanism, while Buddhism remains distinct.

14th – 15th Saeculum AUC (7th Century AD): The Roman Empire gradually recovers from the effects of the plague. However, a nasty dynastic crisis evolves in a political one, and eventually causes a civil war and the breakdown of the Roman Empire in several warring fragments. A combination of rebellion and invasion in eastern Persia allows the region to break away from Roman control. By the end of the century, clashes between the various breakaway Roman states lead to their consolidation into a Western Roman Empire and an Eastern Roman Empire. This reflects the West-East division that tends to surface within the Roman polity in times of strife, and is a analogue to the North-South division that is likely to occur during similar periods in Imperial China. A parallel period of internecine strife in the Aksumite Empire however grants Rome some peace on its southern border.

The Norse peoples of Scandinavia begin their 'Viking Age' of raids, trade, warfare, exploration, and settlement. For Rome the most noticeable effect is the appearance of a new threat: the Norsemen, so far deemed not really worth the effort of conquest by the Roman ruling elite, start to seriously harass the Roman world with frequent raids on towns laying on the coasts and along the rivers of Europe. As a rule, however, the Romans are able to prevent any permanent conquest or large-scale settlement (on the invaders' terms, anyway) of their territory by Viking raiders.

Things are different in Sarmatia, where Scandinavian ('Varangian') adventurers, traders, pirates, and settlers penetrate the region in depth and in sizable numbers through the Dnieper and Volga trade routes. They end up considerably influencing and accelerating ongoing growth into one civilization of the mélange of Germanic, Slavic, Finnish, Baltic, Turkic, and Iranian peoples that inhabit the northern woodlands and southern plains of Sarmatia. Thanks to Varangian influence and demographic changes in the region during the 5th-6th centuries, the prevailing ethnic-linguistic character of the nascent Gothic polity becomes a Germanic one, with a secondary Slavic influence.

Renewed uprisings by Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians are quelled by the Romans with large-scale brutal repression, enslavement, and deportation. This effectively wipes out these communities as a recognizable element in the Roman population. Survivors are mostly expelled beyond the borders of the empire. Only the breakaway status of eastern Persia allows Zoroastrianism to keep a foothold in this region. Religious dissidence otherwise dies out in the Roman Empire: even the surviving elements of the Manichean community convert to Romanism or Buddhism or flee to escape the unfavorable Roman tax and property regime. Division of the Roman Empire does not stop persecution of monotheists since it is one issue pretty much all factions can agree upon.

By the end of this century Romanism has become the faith of the vast majority of the population in the Roman Empire. However, Buddhism continues its diffusion in the Roman world, as civil strife drives many people to doubt the values of Romanism and seek a different source of spiritual solace. Its growth gets much more tolerance than monotheism, since it is mostly perceived as not hostile and dangerous to Roman civilization.

Notable technological developments of this period include the hourglass, mechanical clocks, dry compass, cross-staff, mariner's astrolabe, stern-mounted rudder, arch bridge, steel crossbow, and oil paint. Chinese alchemists discover gunpowder.

Despite the very good quality that the Roman road and canal system has achieved, the vast extension of the Empire and the huge amount of trade between its different areas and with the Asian civilizations spur the interest of the army, civil service, and private traders for ways to make sea and land transport and communication more reliable and efficient.

[eurofed]

15th – 16th Saeculum AUC (8th Century AD): The Roman Empire reunifies after several decades of division when the WRE conquers the ERE in a series of military clashes. The reunified empire engages in a major drive to improve the security of its external borders; breakaway eastern Persia and Norse raiders become the first targets. Roman forces invade and overrun eastern Persia and the Khorasan region, then stage a thorough effort to stomp out resistance to Roman rule and Zoroastrian religious dissidence in the area once and for all. Rebels are dealt with large-scale brutal repression, enslavement, and deportation, while the Zoroastrian community gets burdened with the harsh legal penalties and taxation regime Roman law deals to monotheists.

Naval raids by the Norse remain a serious security problem for Rome during this period, forcing the WRE, and later the reunified Roman Empire, to expand the size of the military and deploy several legions in the threatened areas. Fortunately for Rome, the end of the reunification wars allow them to redeploy a sizable portion of their existing forces for coastal and river defense. This defensive engagement yields fruit and contains the Norse problem to a good degree, significantly improving the security of vulnerable areas and repelling raiders in multiple instances. Yet it remains a costly and suboptimal response, and this fuels the effort to improve the power, efficiency, and quality of the Roman navy. It also generates an increased appreciation in the Roman elites for the strategic importance of Scandinavia and the Baltic region.

One consequence of this process is the evolution of Roman naval power into a tool that can match and surpass the Norse. Another effect is the construction of the Eider Canal, which is later replaced by the Kiel Canal. Yet another effect of the reunification wars and foreign conflicts is an heightened interest of Roman elites for logistic and communication efficiency issues, given the vast size of the Roman Empire and the scale of its military, administrative, and trade concerns. The Roman road and canal system already does a lot to improve them for many areas of the Empire in comparison to other civilizations of similar technological level. However, there are many areas of the Roman Empire that cannot be efficiently reached by the road-canal system, and Roman seafaring capabilities are perceived as suboptimal for the task; so the Imperial government and Roman trading elites seek for better solutions.

On one hand, this spurs interest in developing more efficient seafaring technologies. The Romans have been gradually and significantly improving their naval capabilities during the last few centuries, especially as it concerns the reliability of sea trade exchanges with India and China. Now this results in a concerted effort to improve the quality of Roman shipbuilding and navigation, in order to develop a truly ocean-worthy navy and merchant fleet. On the other hand, efforts to improve the quality of communications for military and administrative purposes result in the proposal of a comprehensive post-rider network service to operate on a regular schedule throughout the Empire. The expenses to establish such a service are heavy, so the issue is hotly debated in the Imperial bureaucracy and the Senate. Eventually, the expense issue is surmounted when representatives of the trading elites in the Senate propose, and the Imperial bureaucracy accepts, to fund the system through a new tax in exchange for opening the service to private correspondence and business messages. All the while, various Roman scholars and engineers make an effort to develop a reliable optical telegraph system, on the basis of the available, but less efficient, hydraulic telegraph.

The ongoing growth of Gothic civilization in Sarmatia sees the emergence of various organized Germanic and Slavic principalities and their eventual consolidation in the Gothic empire. Aksum suffers a period of decline, resulting in fragmentation of its empire.

In the aftermath of division and reunification of the Roman state, some important political reforms are enacted. The Senate’s membership is reformed to make it fully representative of the various elements of the Roman ruling elites such as wealthy landowners, urban trading elites, and the upper echelons of the army and the civil service from all areas of the Empire. A systematic codification of the various basic laws that regulate the functioning of the Roman state is enacted and formalized as Rome’s “Great Law”, effectively a constitution. In the case that established Imperial succession breaks down, the revised succession law mandates that the new Emperor gets chosen by the Imperial government and the Senate. The army and the civil service are required to swear fealty to the Emperor, the Senate, and the Great Law, and their training emphasizes loyalty to all three institutions.

To deal with the issues of long, troublesome absences from home, Senatorial representation of provincial elites remains organized in legation cliques of like-minded allies from each area rather than on an individual level, and presence in Rome often rotates between members of the legation on a fairly regular basis. This fosters the development of recognizable semi-organized political factions in the Senate.

The reunification of the Roman Empire fosters a revitalization of the Romanist faith after the spiritual crisis caused by the civil wars. This allows Romanism to remain the 'national' faith of Rome and the majority religion of its population. However by now Buddhism has spread across Roman territory, and got entrenched in a sizable minority of the Empire's population. The two religions face each other in an uneasy relationship, although Imperial authorities mostly avoid taking any radical action against Buddhists. Zoroastrianism and by extension Middle Eastern monotheism loses the final existential challenge to its relevance in Rome as it suffers harsh persecution by the Imperial government in eastern Persia.

Roman mastery of early thermal weapons, most notably including the so-called ‘Roman Fire’, helps them get the upper hand in the ongoing conflict with Norse raiders. The Roman navy uses the incendiary weapon to great effect in naval battles against the Norse.

16th – 17th Saeculum AUC (9th Century AD): Resistance to Roman rule in eastern Persia and Khorasan dies out and Romanization of the region gets underway in earnest with extensive immigration of settlers from other areas of the Empire and assimilation of pacified natives. Control of Khorasan and projection of influence in Central Asia looks profitable for Rome since it allows full control of the Silk Road network of trade routes west of China and India. It is also a strategic headache since the region remains vulnerable to encroachment of steppe nomads, the Chinese, and the Indians. Rome, China, and India have experienced extensive trade and cultural exchanges and diplomatic contacts since the beginning of the Common Era, but now the three civilizations come close to sharing a land border, although with the interference of steppe nomad empires and tribal confederations.

The steadily improving quality of the Roman navy allows the empire to gain a decisive upper hand in the conflict with the Norse raiders. The Romans make several major punitive raids of their own in Scandinavia, and eventually escalate them to a full-fledged invasion and conquest bid. Jutland, the Danish islands, Gotaland, Svealand, and southern and western Norway are ruthlessly subjugated by Roman legions and turned into provinces. Despite the limited value of Scandinavia, benefits for the Empire from its conquest include end of the Norse threat, full control of the Baltic trade routes, and expanded strategic projection in the North Atlantic which ultimately paves the way to discovery and colonization of the Americas.

Roman conquest of Scandinavia causes a disruption of trade routes running through Gothic territory, while the growing wealth, organization, and resources for export of Gothia attract the expansionist attention of the ever-ambitious Romans. This triggers the first row of the Roman-Gothic wars. The conflict gets complicated by a new breakout of steppe nomads that give serious trouble to both empires. In the end Rome pushes back the nomads and annexes western Gothia and the Baltic lands up to the Daugava-Dnieper line. Territorial expansion and renewed conflict with steppe nomads drive the Romans to build a second version of the Great Limes fortification system on the Daugava-Dnieper line. As usual, the Romans combine pacification and settlement of new territories with expansion of their road, canal, and postal systems across the conquered lands to the new river border.

Besides Central Asia and Gothia, the renewed expansionist drive of the Roman Empire also manifests in the Horn of Africa. Political division weakens Axum and invites a successful Roman invasion. The Roman legions defeat the Axumites and gradually conquer the Ethiopian highlands and northern Somalia. Conquest of the Horn of Africa yields Rome new fertile land and resources, as well as complete control of the Red Sea trade route.

The Roman postal service gradually spreads across the empire, and Roman scholars and engineers eventually develop a sufficiently efficient and reliable optical telegraph system. In the following two centuries, the postal service adopts and gradually spreads it across the empire, greatly improving the speed and efficiency of communication of its service. In combination with improved naval technology and the Roman road and canal system, it adequately solves most logistical and communication issues of the Roman state despite its vast size.

Other important Roman technological achievements in this period include the wine press, artesian well, thread-wheel crane, stationary harbor crane, compound crank, vertical windmill, watermark, forest glass, liquor, segmental arch bridge, and chimney. Most importantly, Rome adopts the Hindu positional decimal numeral system, and masters a few other mathematical discoveries, such as negative numbers, thanks to exchanges with India. Despite some initial resistance by traditionalists, the Hindu numeral system soon proves its decisive superiority in commercial bookkeeping, conversion of weights and measures, the calculation of interests, money-changing, and numerous other applications. This leads to its relatively quick adoption by Roman trading elites, the Imperial government, and eventually the literate strata of Roman society at large.

First gunpowder weapons, including fire arrows (rocket arrows) and fire lances (a predecessor of the hand cannon), and fireworks are developed and put to extensive use in China. Roman soldiers in Central Asia and travelers in China soon notice their existence and spread the innovation in the Roman Empire, where it spurs a second wave of experimentation.

After a few clashes between supporters of Romanism and Buddhists, and half-effective attempts by Roman authorities to suppress Buddhism, the two faiths eventually settle down to coexist as the mainstream religions of the Roman Empire; as a matter of fact, many Roman citizens start to pay homage to both, seeing them as non conflicting, and sometimes even complementary. Ongoing discrimination and persecution of Zoroastrianism by Roman authorities in eastern Persia and Khorasan leads to its effective disappearance as a major religion in Rome. By extension, this spells the near extinction of Middle Eastern monotheism in the Roman Empire, since only a few minor remnants survive underground or hidden in remote locations.

In the aftermath of conquest of Scandinavia, the Romans start to explore the North Atlantic and discover Thule (OTL Iceland), later renamed Thule Minor, where a colony of Norse refugees has recently settled.

17th – 18th Saeculum AUC (10th Century AD): The area of Central Asia between the Iranian plateau, the Jaxartes River, Xiyu, and the Indus Valley becomes a contested region between Rome, China, the western Indian states, and the steppe nomads. As a rule, the Romans are successful enough to claim prevalent influence in the region, subdue local peoples, push the Indians back to the Indus, and conquer the Indus Valley and the Sindh. However they fail to completely dislodge the encroachment of the Chinese and the steppe nomads or make further inroads into India. Despite this regional conflict, trade between Rome, China, and the rest of India continues to flow, as abundant and profitable as ever, by sea and by land as well during lulls in the conflict. The sedentary Eurasian empires notice a pattern of rising power and aggressiveness of the steppe nomads.

The portions of Scandinavia with a significant population and newly-acquired western Gothia get pacified under Roman rule and their Romanization begins in earnest. This success and lingering antagonism with Gothia motivate the Romans to conquer and colonize Livonia and southwestern Finland. Resulting tensions between the Romans and the Goths unleash a new conflict between the two empires. It ends in a draw favorable to the Romans, which entrenches the Dnieper border and extends it northward on the Narva River basin. Defeat against the Romans, rising aggressiveness of steppe nomads, and dynastic conflicts throw the Gothic empire into disarray, causing its fragmentation.

The Romans accomplish pacification of the Ethiopian Highlands under their rule, and engage in assimilation of the region in their empire. Although the Red Sea is a Roman lake, control of the Horn of Africa makes them aspire to more efficient land communications between Egypt and Ethiopia and greater ease of navigation along the Nile. Over the centuries the Romans have engaged in various hydraulic projects in Egypt and Nubia to improve the irrigation system and change it from the traditional basin irrigation to perennial irrigation whereby farmland could by irrigated throughout the year.

They now supplement it with a canal to bypass the Nile cataracts and improve transport and communication between Egypt and Ethiopia, and a second canal to bypass the Sudd swamps and carry the White Nile's waters directly to the main channel of the river. Despite terrible logistic difficulties, both canals are completed in the following two centuries. The Sudd canal eventually enables the Romans to bypass the swamps and penetrate deep into East Africa, discovering the sources of the Nile. More importantly, it causes a vast decrease in evaporation of Nile’s water, which becomes available to be delivered downstream to Egypt and Nubia for use in agriculture.

With achievement of truly ocean-worthy naval technology enabling a global reach, printing press, and gunpowder, Rome transitions into its Renaissance stage of development. Roman Age of Discovery begins with exploration of the North Atlantic and the coasts of Africa. Atlantic travels lead the Romans to discover Thule Major (OTL Greenland) and the North American coast in Labrador. Further exploration of the coast of North America soon drives Roman explorers to realize they found a new continent, and to acknowledge its vast size, resources, and potential for settlement. The news soon pushes the Roman elites to revise their vision of the world and throws them into colonialist enthusiasm. The Imperial government and various private agents start to make plans and preparations for a thorough exploration and extensive colonization of the New World.

Two-pronged exploration of the coasts of Africa from Mauretania and Ethiopia eventually allows circumnavigation of the continent. Although they deem North Africa a very important part of their empire, the Romans find West and Central Africa of limited interest. The area looks inhospitable to the Romans and difficult to penetrate due to the presence of the Sahara desert as well as deadly tropical diseases and harsh climate in the forested zones. They deem it of low value for conquest and colonization, and better suited for trade exchanges with and indirect influence on the West African kingdoms through the Sahara trade routes and coastal trading outposts. However this realization does motivate the Roman Empire to engage in a concerted effort to penetrate deep into the Sahara and drive the nomadic tribes of the region into submission or quiescence. In comparison, East Africa and Southern Africa look much more promising and valuable for colonization and settlement purposes, and hence attract more expansionist Roman interest, like the Americas. Last but not least, the Romans establish their first permanent trading outposts in the Indian subcontinent, exploiting its political division.

Notable technological improvements of this period include linear perspective, double shell domes, dry docks, screw pump, cranked reels, geared hand mill, carpenter's braces; however the by far most important invention is the printing press. Its rapid and wide diffusion causes various substantial changes in Roman society, including vast improvement of the capacity to circulate information and ideas and store knowledge. It is a very important step towards the popularization of knowledge; within a few decades, the entire Romanist canon has been reprinted and widely promulgated throughout the Roman world. Now that more people have access to knowledge both new and old, more people can discuss these works. The wider availability of printed materials leads to a drastic rise in literacy rate throughout the Roman Empire, breaking the monopoly of the literate elite on education and learning and bolstering the emerging middle class.

The printing press fosters the establishment of a community of scientists who can easily communicate their discoveries through the establishment of widely disseminated scholarly journals, helping to bring on the scientific revolution. Increased public interest in knowledge leads to a vast expansion of the Roman university system, which prompts Imperial authorities to enact a systematic reorganization of its accreditation system. The civil service and the postal service gain substantial improvements in efficiency. The printed word also reinforces the importance of Latin and Greek as a dual Pan-Roman lingua franca, accelerating the decline of pre-Roman languages. It also helps to unify and standardize their spelling and syntax, in effect decreasing their regional variability. The relatively unrestricted circulation of information and (revolutionary) ideas threatens the power of political and religious authorities, but also improves their control and cohesion across the empire.

Extensive use of fire arrows and fire lances is adopted in the Roman army. China and Rome near-simultaneously develop and start using rockets, hand cannons (the first true firearm), cannons, and bombs. The Romans also start using fireworks for entertainment and experimenting with drilling and blasting in mining, quarrying, and civil engineering. Thanks to colonization of Ethiopia, the Romans discover the energizing effect of the coffee plant. They greatly appreciate the stimulant properties of the coffee brew and its use quickly spreads across the empire.

[eurofed]

Writer’s block unfortunately prevents me from covering events concerning non-Roman history or the second millennium in any real detail, although I have a definite broad idea (with a few nagging uncertainties, such as about the final borders of Rome outside its western Eurasian core) of what happens. However I was able to create a description of how modern Rome looks like, at a time (several centuries earlier than OTL) when it achieved a technological level largely similar to 2010s OTL developed world. It is a few decades ahead in a few fields (e.g. space, energy, biological sciences) thanks to greater investments, available resources, and brainpower as well as less ethical constraints in experimentation than OTL. You may think of it as the ‘distant finale’ ending of the TL.

A few issues, such the size and structure of modern Roman army, are sheer, wild, and quite possibly utterly inadequate guesswork on the author’s part with much uncertainty since there is simply no adequate OTL counterpart to rely upon. Modern Rome utterly dwarfs all OTL industrialized superpowers, it controls one-third to one-half of world population and at least half, quite possibly rather more, of global economy, depending on which options one picks for its final borders.

Modern Rome gradually evolved into a industrialized power that combines aspects of democracy and authoritarianism. Loyal and law-abiding Roman citizens more or less enjoy the same civil and political rights liberal democracies are accustomed to and rule of law is a cherished concept. The security services however have vast powers to investigate and punish treason, espionage, and disloyalty to the empire. Convicted felons and people disloyal to the Empire have little or no human rights and are punished swiftly, efficiently, and harshly. Political dissenters are tolerated as long as their ideas are recognized as something that would not be harmful to the state.

The Senate is a mostly elected body that includes representatives of Imperial citizens and the various areas of the Empire, plus high-ranking members of wealthy elites, trade unions and professional guilds, military, and civil service. Most Senators are elected by universal suffrage to represent Imperial citizens at large and their provinces of residence; the rest are chosen by their peers or appointed by the Emperor to represent various branches of society. A few have a seat for life by reason of previous public service - such as retired Emperors - or outstanding civic achievements. The assent of the Senate is necessary to approve legislation, taxation, international treaties, and the budget. It also approves the Emperor's choices for members of the government and the highest echelons of the army and civil service. Provinces of the Empire enjoy devolution autonomy with representative bodies that work much like the Senate on a regional basis. The Emperor appoints provincial governors subject to the Senate's approval.

The Emperor has strong executive powers, can veto legislation, commands the army and the civil service, can convoke the Senate and lay legislation before it, grants pardons, and has limited authority to legislate by decree. His immediate subordinates include the Ministers, the Provincial Governors, and the Praetors. The Ministries do much of the day-to-day running of the Empire, ensuring that it continues to function smoothly. The Treasury, headed by the Imperial Treasurer, is responsible for regulation of credit and banking throughout the Empire, for collection of taxes and fees, for payment of Imperial debts and obligations, for issuance of new Imperial debt when necessary, for loaning Imperial funds to corporations and individuals when necessary, and for forecasting future economic trends. The Judiciary, headed by the Imperial Justicar, is responsible for the system of Imperial courts and magistrates, and, in cooperation with the Praetorian Guard, for law enforcement throughout the Empire. It is also responsible for reviewing Imperial laws and regulations and recommending and implementing any necessary changes to them.

The Defense, headed by the Imperial Defender, is responsible for maintaining, staffing, and supplying military units and bases throughout the Empire, and for researching and developing new weapons and equipment and ensuring that the military’s equipment and training are kept up to proper standards. The Defense does not concern itself with military operations or deployments; those are the province of the Emperor and his Praetors. The Structoria, headed by the Imperial Structor, is responsible for designing, building, maintaining, and regulating the use of public works throughout the Empire. It also staffs, equips, and supplies the organizations responsible for performing any necessary labor on those public works.

The Diplomatica, headed by the Imperial Spokesman, is charged with maintaining friendly relations with foreign states, including the posting of ambassadors and other envoys and the maintenance of embassies and other facilities in those polities, the drafting and presentation to the Emperor of treaties and other agreements between the Empire and those polities, the regulation of travel between the Empire and those polities, and, in cooperation with the Praetorian Guard, the collection and distribution of information on those polities. The Diplomatica also has the function of dissemination of information concerning Imperial activities to the Imperial public, and, in cooperation with the Praetorian Guard, the collection and distribution of information on the Imperial public to government entities.

The Provisoria, headed the Imperial Provisor, is responsible for regulating the flow of goods and services throughout the Empire, and with supplying the Imperial government with goods and services. It also has charge of disaster relief, welfare, and foreign aid, in cooperation with the military and the Diplomatica. The Censoria, headed by the Imperial Censor, is concerned with the regulation of printed media, radio, telephones, television, and the Web throughout the Empire.

The Praetorian Guard, headed by its Commander, provides security for the Imperial family, senior officials, Imperial Ministries, the Imperial Palace, and embassies and other facilities in foreign states. It also investigates serious crimes in the empire and assists in the apprehension of suspects when required. The Guard also maintains networks of agents both in the Empire and without to supply the Imperial government with information on persons and activities of interest.

The Praetors control all military forces in a region: land, sea, and air. Each disposes his forces as he sees fit, subject only to the Emperor’s command and approval. The Provincial Governors supervise the activities of Imperial government in their respective regions, ensuring that each region contributes its fair share to and receives its due from the Empire. They are also empowered to regulate traffic between their citizens and neighboring polities in accordance with Imperial laws and regulations. The Emperor’s successor, the Ministers, the Provincial Governors, and the Praetors constitute the Imperial Council.

Nominally an Emperor rules for life, and monarchs that remain sufficiently healthy, energetic, successful, and popular throughout their reign frequently do so without any real difficulty. On the other hand, Emperors that are burdened by age or infirmity, tire out of the burden of rule, or have grown too unpopular or unsuccessful just as often choose to abdicate. They usually prefer to retire as influential Senators rather than risk being removed from office by the assent of the Imperial Council or a supermajority of the Senate as the Roman constitution allows.

The Emperor nominates his successor subject to approval of the Senate and the Imperial Council. Alternatively succession can be approved by the Imperial Council and ratified by plebiscite. Emperors may use one method or the other depending on political circumstances and personal preference. The heir usually is a member of the Roman elites with an outstanding public-service career that enjoys the Emperor's favour, less frequently a relative or protégé of the Emperor. A sufficiently talented and competent member of the Emperor's family or close circle that has proved his worth in the political, military, administrative, or business fields would be accepted as a successor without any serious difficulty. On the other hand, Roman culture dislikes and distrusts nepotism and cronyism in Imperial government as a potential source of misrule and instability.

An attempt to impose a seemingly weak, incompetent, or untested relative or protégé as successor would usually fail and be a major blow to the Emperor's prestige and legitimacy. The Roman constitution allows the Emperor and the Senate to provide for the case of inability of the heir apparent to succeed. In the case the line of succession broke down entirely, the new Emperor would be nominated by the Imperial Council and approved by the Senate or by plebiscite, or elected by the Senate and approved by plebiscite if the Imperial Council is unable to function.

Over time, Roman society largely mastered the trick of managing Imperial succession and if necessary replacing an unfit ruler by policymaking and constitutional means rather than civil war and military anarchy. Constitutionalism became a cherished concept. In broad political terms, the Roman Empire is ruled by a power-sharing compromise between the Emperor, the wealthy elites, the army, the civil service, political factions, and organized pressure groups such as business interests, professional guilds, and trade unions.

Its most serious domestic issues are economic inequality and socio-political tensions between upper and lower classes. However they are not of such severity as to destabilize the empire in normal conditions, thanks to availability of sufficient consumerist prosperity and welfare state protection for the masses, the vast arsenal of repression tools Roman elites may use to quash revolutionary dissent, and the loathing of Roman society for civil disorder. Moreover, the wealthy elites aren’t free to repress reformist dissenters that play within the rules.

In practice Imperial Rome is an oligarchy, with the vast majority of power in the hands of the upper classes. The lower classes have a limited say in government. This is not to say they have no power; by virtue of their sheer numbers they have influence. It is a foolish official indeed who rides roughshod over the commoners; the inevitable backlash is guaranteed to bring unwanted attention from his superiors, with dire effects on his career. Furthermore Imperial laws very carefully delineate the rights and duties of all citizens; woe to the individual who transgresses. The lower classes do have a common means of redress; if they believe they have been injured they can lodge a complaint with the local magistrate, who will consider it in due time. Most such complaints are resolved promptly and fairly.

[eurofed]

Modern Roman culture values useful service to society, the pursue of happiness in prosperity, stoicism in adversity, unity and strength of the state, individual success in a stable society, freedom and diversity in law and order, meritocracy, industriousness, militarism, imperialism, useful innovations, and traditions that stood the test of time. Romans consider an ideal member of their civilization to be a perfect blend of martial and intellectual prowess. If in doubt, it is advisable to err on the side of the martial, or at least knowledge with practical application, for those who take too philosophical or artistic a path risk being branded as weak and a burden to society. Even so, a cultured Roman is expected to be able to appreciate art, music, and poetry, and to converse knowledgeably on a range of subjects from politics and history to science and engineering. Romans are also expected to have strong wills, strong stomachs, and to have their nerves steeled for battle or adversity. A level-headed and practical approach is regarded almost as highly as courage or education; the Roman mind excels in tackling practical problems in order to solve them and pursuing theoretical knowledge to understand and control the world.

The language of modern Rome is a “Roman” hybrid of Latin and Greek based on Latin script, much the same way English arose from a fusion of Old English and Norman French. Historically there was a cultural divide between Latin West and Greek East; in modern times, however, public education ensured pretty much all Imperial citizens spoke both languages, so the difference grew meaningless. Widespread bilingualism and influence of mass media eventually caused Latin and Greek to merge into an Imperial mixed language. For the same reasons, geographical divergence of Roman is contained to the level of recognizable but minor variations in different regions. Other languages of regional importance were historically spoken in the lands of the Empire but are largely extinct or used by tiny minorities in modern times, and only keep academic relevance. Roman language includes many borrowings from other historical and living languages.

Over time, pressure of industrialization and a wish to keep social peace led to development of a welfare system as the evolution of a long-standing tradition of state charities and private patronage system. Much the same way Roman society gradually marginalized and abolished slavery outside of its criminal justice system, achieved equal rights and social status for women, and developed general acceptance of sexual freedom and reproductive rights for both sexes. However Roman culture celebrates masculine traits, albeit tempered by teamwork, discipline, and responsibility, does not suffer them to be threatened, and scorns feminine traits outside of a few important but specific fields such as childrearing, nurturing of the sick, romantic relationships, and heterosexual sex.

So it came to accept social equality of women by developing a ‘Spartan’ or ‘Amazonian’ ideal that women can and should be as tough, resourceful, and assertive as men and so deserve equal rights and status. It loathes the notion that men or society at large should be allowed to become too gentle, empathic, or sensitive. The ideal Roman woman should be girly when in exclusive female company or in the fields where feminine traits are valued, and a tomboy in all other situations. Therefore women (and everyone else, really) are expected to deal with bullying or unwelcome sexual or seductive behaviour that do not involve violence, coercion, or gross abuse of authority with their own resources without bothering society for protection.

Rape by physical force, coercion, or abuse of authority however is acknowledged as a most serious crime and rapists that are caught may look forward to many years of harsh penal labor if they are lucky. There is general acceptance of sexual freedom for both genders. Respectable Romans are expected to seek pleasure and happiness but show discretion, clear-mindedness, and self-discipline in matters of sex and appetites and bear the consequences of their behaviour stoically. Widespread use of adoption for Imperial succession, to secure an offspring in case of infertility, and to form alliances between families led Roman culture to deemphasize the importance of legitimacy.

There is plenty of tolerance for homosexual behaviour; Roman culture mostly seems to ignore the notion of exclusive sexual orientation and treats bisexuality as the expected norm. However effeminacy is quite a serious taboo in Roman society, so there is very strong prejudice against males that are effeminate, show too much preference for passive homosexual behavior, or indulge in cross-dressing. For similar reasons there would be very little tolerance for an hypothetical radical feminist critique of Roman society. Within these boundaries, Romans are entirely accepting of homosexual behaviour and women's equality. Due to social preference for bisexuality and responsible hedonism, Roman art and popular culture do include a lot of sexual objectification of attractive people but do so in roughly equal amounts and intensity for both genders. As a rule, Romans have little interest or patience for ascetism or prudery that exceed their own notions of propriety.

Slavery has been abolished with the exception of convicted felons for the duration of their sentence. All slaves in the Empire are property of the state that may rent them to privates. If they escape execution, enslaved convicts may be sent to forced labour in dangerous and back-breaking occupations or forced prostitution in state brothels, used for medical experimentation or in the most lethal forms of the gladiator games, drafted in penal units of the army, or otherwise ruthlessly exploited by society to make up for their crimes as circumstances dictate.

Imperial justice is swift and severe. As a rule, murder, treason, espionage, and wartime desertion carry the death penalty. Manslaughter, rape, robbery, disloyalty to the empire, and peacetime desertion are punished by enslavement for a period of between ten years to life. Crimes of lesser severity are punishable by either fines or a set number of watches of hard labor or community service. Mitigating and aggravating circumstances apply; recidivism carries sharply increased sentences, up to and including life enslavement or execution. The principle of restitution applies; a person convicted of inflicting harm to another’s property is expected to make it good, plus pay for the cost of his trial. In the Empire incarceration is not a punishment. Jails exist, but they are only used to hold those undergoing questioning or those awaiting trial.

Enslaved criminals have to hope to survive their sentence without permanent disability or get a pardon, which is frequently granted to meritorious convicts. On the other hand, recidivist or unreformed felons may often be worked to death by penal labour or executed right away. Suicide is usually accepted as a way to atone even the most heinous crimes and failures. Romans also frequently use it or state-assisted euthanasia as an approved way to escape incurable infirmity or intolerable adversity. Children born with serious disabilities are seen as an intolerable burden to themselves, their families, and society. Widespread use of prenatal testing and abortion ensures most foetuses with important disabilities and genetic diseases are identified and eliminated before term, and the rest is usually euthanized.

Imperial Rome has “Romanism” as its majority religion and national faith. It is a religion broadly similar to Hinduism that combines a synthesis of Indo-European and Near-Eastern polytheist religions with strong pantheistic and monist elements borrowed from Stoicism, Epicureanism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. There are also sizable minorities that are adherents of Buddhism, embrace secular humanism, or less frequently practice other South Asian or East Asian religions; they enjoy full tolerance. On the other hand, Rome has a legacy of overwhelming prejudice against Middle Eastern monotheist religions. In the past it came to regard them as destructive threats to its security when they became a rallying focus for violent social or proto-nationalist unrest. This includes Christianity that historically embraced militancy with riots, uprisings, and sectarian violence in the face of persecution. Rome toiled long and hard but was eventually successful in the effort to destroy Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism within its territory and expel their remnants beyond its borders.

Pretty much the same way, Rome also wiped out those religions and cultural practices it met in its colonial expansion and perceived as harmful, barbaric, and an affront to civilization, such as the Amerindian and African cultures that practiced human sacrifice or genital mutilation. As a persistent rule throughout its history, Rome does show full tolerance of those cultures and religions it perceives as valuable or at least harmless. It zealously and efficiently strives to repress and destroy the ones that are deemed a threat to society. The latter was the fate of various new religious movements and cults that historically arose in Roman territory, were deemed too troublesome or dangerous, and ruthlessly suppressed.

Modern Romans in abstract have a very negative opinion of aggressive monotheism and religious fundamentalism but in practice concern and animosity faded over time to a distant page of Roman history since they are essentially perceived as an extinct or negligible threat in the modern world. Hypothetically speaking, however, a revival of, and confrontation with, militant fundamentalism would likely give new life to dormant Roman prejudice. If the Empire were to be threatened by something like religious terrorism, one may expect the Romans to do their best to kill or enslave anyone within their reach that looks like a supporter or sympathizer. The Romans would also likely perceive a fundamentalist state with important conventional military resources or worse WMD capability as an existential threat, especially if it had the means to threaten Roman territory or interests.

Modern Roman society keeps its traditional strong appetite for violent sports. However nowadays most gladiators are highly-paid, respectable, and admired professional athletes; there is also a minority of convicted felons that try to survive the most lethal variants of the games and hopefully earn a pardon. Modern gladiatorial games mostly include human vs. human fights or various kinds of dangerous stunts; overuse of mega-fauna in human vs. beast fights in the past put several species in endangered status, leading to severe limitations to their use. Nowadays all 'wild' animals that are still used in gladiatorial games are expressly bred in captivity or in the wild in controlled conditions, sometimes with the help of artificial insemination.

Bloody fights to the death have all but disappeared except in the case of convict vs. convict matches. There are still occasional fights with real weapons and bloodshed in professional matches, but deaths are rare. Most gladiators are expensively trained professionals and quite valuable, so defeated fighters are never killed and all are trained to disable rather than kill. Most gladiatorial combat is fought with heavy armor and blunted melee weapons or alternatively martial arts, either in individual matches or team bouts; last man or side standing wins. Also common are team bouts resembling full contact capture-the-flag. Injuries are common and an accepted part of the sport. The big exception to lack of lethality is convict fights, which are treated as an entertaining form of execution and risking one's life in exchange for a chance at earning a pardon.

[eurofed]

Imperial Rome has a mixed-economy model that combines a well-developed capitalist market system with a sizable degree of state intervention in the fields of infrastructure, health and welfare, transportation, energy, education, and research. It has kept its traditional appetite and talent for impressive architecture and ambitious engineering projects. Notable examples include the Suez Canal, the Kiel Canal, the Corinth Canal, the Zuiderzee Works and Delta Works in the Netherlands, the Aswan Dam and a canal to bypass it and the Nile cataracts, the Jonglei Canal to divert water through the vast Sudd wetlands and deliver more water downstream to Nubia and Egypt for use in agriculture, the Southeastern Anatolia Project, and an extensive canal system that links the major rivers of Europe from France to Russia and the Med with the North Sea and the Baltic.

The Romans have successfully pursued the Sahara Sea project to flood the endorheic basins in the Sahara, such as the Chott el Djerid and the Qattara Depression, with waters from the Med. This created salt lakes in the substantial areas of the Sahara which lie below sea level, bringing humid air, rain, and agriculture deep in the desert. Continuously flowing water once inflow and evaporation were balanced out allows abundant generation of hydroelectricity. The Romans have extensively and efficiently developed water resources in their empire for hydroelectric, water supply, and irrigation purposes. A system of several large-scale hydro projects and many more minor ones provides hydropower for urban areas and water for irrigation in the arid regions of the Empire. An extensive network of desalination facilities in coastal areas further helps deal with water needs in the arid regions of the Empire.

Modern Rome kept its traditional passion for an efficient transport system. Supersonic airliners travel across continents and oceans in mere hours, but are mainly reserved for long-distance passenger traffic of the wealthy and powerful and important government officials. Subsonic jet airliners, railroads, and ships deal with shorter distances or carry most passengers and valuable cargoes. A well-developed railroad system that makes wide use of maglev technology crisscrosses Roman territories and is supplemented by an extensive network of airports, ports in coastal areas, and canals to connect navigable rivers. The vast size of the Empire and emergent environmental problems strongly discouraged use of motor vehicles except for military purposes and the wealthy elites. The Roman army however is highly motorized and mechanized and electric cars became an acceptable alternative to public transport.

Widespread global industrialization and developed-world affluence in most of the world caused environmental damage and climate change to manifest earlier and become more severe than OTL. Rome and the other great powers mostly reacted to the threat with massive investments into renewable energy, nuclear power, energy efficiency, recycling, public transport, and electric cars. The Romans have tapped pretty much all available hydropower in their territory and made extensive use of other renewable energy sources where they get available, such as solar power in areas with worthwhile solar irradiation. Strong investment in nuclear power also allowed Rome to generate a great deal of its electricity with fission, thanks to development and wide use of fairly-safe breeder reactors.

Eager pursuit of a combination of renewable energy sources and nuclear power allowed Rome to largely wean its economy away from fossil fuels; however its energy needs are so great (especially with upcoming space colonization) the Romans keep eagerly pursuing fusion power as a more radical solution; experimental magnetic confinement reactors show a lot of promise but their commercial use is estimated to be one decade away at least.

The space race between the superpowers started for prestige reasons but soon took a life of its own and appears headed to continue at a brisk pace for the foreseeable future, for various reasons. These include sheer appeal and vast potential of space colonization, the technological windfalls it appears to provide, and the iron grip it took on popular imagination, establishing a solid base of political support. Development of nuclear pulse propulsion became the technological foundation of exploration and colonization of the Solar System by drastically cutting travel times and allowing much greater payloads in comparison to chemically powered missions.

Landmark achievements in the last few decades include manned missions to Mars, the asteroid belt, the Jovian moons, and the moons of Saturn as well as manned flybys of Mercury and the upper atmosphere of Venus. Rome and the other superpowers have built several space stations in Earth orbit and in the Lagrange points as well as several bases on the Moon; more recently they also established their first few bases on Mars and in the asteroid belt. The superpowers have started to make somewhat detailed plans for large-scale colonization of the Inner Solar System in the coming decades, as well as more speculative but serious drafts about starting the terraforming of Mars and Venus within the current century. Roman culture in particular answered enthusiastically to the challenge and promises of space colonization and is just itching for a chance to lead mankind to the stars.

Another technological field which promises changes and advances of great import for mankind is biotechnologies. Genetically-engineered lower organisms have provided several important improvements in fields such the food supply, the availability of new drugs and materials, and control of pollution; human biotechnologies however remain the field of greatest interest. Cloning of humans has been achieved as well as xeno-transplantation, and both have allowed to greatly increase the availability of organ transplants, reducing reliance on organ harvesting from executed criminals and victims of accidents. However, both sources remain controversial - as well as time and resource intensive - techniques, the former out of ethical concerns and the latter because of a few cases of new viruses crossing over to humans. Fortunately, techniques for human tissue and organ regeneration also made been several substantial progresses, with the first somewhat successful human experiments - as well as some side effects - occurring in the last decade.

Drug research has been progressing in leaps and bounds, providing relevant bonuses in several fields, such as extensive manipulation of metabolism, fairly effective hibernation, improved healing and limited regrowth, and a few significant progresses at the ever-popular goal of life extension. Drugs however are but one of the several fields of anti-aging research where significant progress is being made. Embryonic selection and to a lesser degree germ-line genetic engineering are coming close to the point where many single-gene genetic disorders and even a few major contributor genes for multi-factorial and polygenic ones can be uprooted from the human genome. This shall provide a more permanent - barring the occasional new harmful mutation - and less brutal remedy to genetic disorders than eugenic abortion, which has been the standard approach to the problem in the last few decades. Just like life extension and regeneration techniques, this is an application of biotechnologies which has very strong popular support throughout the industrialized world, notwithstanding the various mistakes that have surfaced along the way.

Eugenic gamete selection and germ-line genetic engineering to breed people with superhuman capabilities is another field which reaps great popular fascination and interest from government and business interests for military and workforce applications. This has proved to be quite a complex field, and the technology is still in its infancy. However it has already been proved possible to select and enhance various desirable traits in the germ-line. Substantial improvements have become possible in several traits such as stamina, speed, dexterity/coordination, strength, healing, immune system, regeneration, metabolism optimization, general intelligence, memory, and sensory capabilities. In most cases, the results are impressive, but within human norms. In other cases, improvements such as resistance to certain poisons, regeneration, and adding additional cone pigments to the retina, are outside human norms, typically because the relevant genes are taken from non-human organisms.

Roman military has a size and assets befitting a militarist superpower with global force-projection capabilities. It has kept its proud tradition of high quality, flexibility, efficiency, and capability for innovation since Ancient times. The Imperial Roman Army, as it is formally known, is a long-service force of about two million troops; paramilitary forces include the Praetorian Guard gendarmerie, the auxiliary militia, and the reserve force for an approximate total of four millions. Military service is nominally compulsory by law; however conscription in Rome is never enforced due to large numbers of volunteers from the Empire’s population. The majority of troops are enlisted for a single term of five years with the option of reenlistment; the officers and NCOs serve for twenty years. Roman soldiers are well trained, well equipped, well paid, and well educated; morale and prestige are excellent as a rule.

Combat troops are organized into cohorts (roughly battalion-sized) or centuries (roughly company-sized) units. Legions (roughly brigade-size units) are formed for particular roles from an appropriate selection of cohorts and centuries; there is no such thing as a standard legion. There are over fifty different types of cohorts and nearly one hundred different types of independent centuries; even then they tend to acquire non-standard organizations and equipment in response to the needs of the moment, so no two are exactly alike. Units are regularly rotated between assignments in different regions; this was historically done to encourage them to feel loyalty to the Emperor and the Empire as a whole rather than local commanders or population, but such concerns are largely obsolete in modern Rome. Nowadays rotation is mostly pursued to make units familiar with various kinds of different terrain and strategic circumstances. Rome has a sizable nuclear and chemical weapons arsenal with nuclear triad capability for deterrence purposes, but prefers to rely on conventional weapons superiority. Biological weapons are deemed too unsafe and unreliable for use.

Given its attitudes, modern Rome has no problems accepting homosexuals in the army and women in combat. As a matter of fact, the legions support both same-sex and opposite-sex couples within the ranks (if they don't become a threat to discipline) as a boost to morale and cohesion. The Roman army tries to keep couples in the same unit (or at least the same post) and lets them share a room if they are deployed together.

Roman society has developed a brutally honest and fairly social-Darwinist view of international relations and human culture. Imperialism is deemed the natural state of things between human communities and a way for civilization to evolve. The Romans only understand sovereignty and self-governance as something a successful culture may earn by its strength and accomplishments rather than any kind of inborn right of peoples. They give no importance whatsoever to race or ethnicity for determination of identity or a person’s worth; they assume national consciousness normally arises from allegiance to a successful civic and imperial ideal.

Romans have a strong sense of exceptionalism and cultural superiority and are usually rather proud of their civilization. They tend to regard it as imperfect – there is always room for improvement – but in practice close to mankind’s best hope and greatest achievement in most regards. However they are usually ready to acknowledge other cultures as equals if they have similar accomplishments to their own, and anyone as a worthy Roman if they buy into the concept of Roman civilization. They are quite eager to borrow and adapt useful or interesting ideas from any source, rarely too proud to imitate or innovate if it seems convenient, and just as determined to suppress cultural features they perceive as too harmful, impractical, or backward. In Roman minds, they have created not an ideal society, but a practical one, more capable of tackling the problems of the real word than most.

Rome shares a fairly solid acknowledgment with the other superpowers of diplomatic immunity, the rights of prisoners-of-war, and a broad analogue of the Hague Conventions out of practicality. On the other hand, they have a notable lack of any equivalent of the Geneva Conventions for protection of civilians. They deem theoretically acceptable to target the civilian population in war as long as it serves a recognizable military interest and does not create an unacceptable risk of escalation or a destructive cycle of reprisals. In practice, however, the latter kind of concern often means a fairly good degree of restraint is employed in a confrontation with an enemy of similar strength. Romans think the state has a right and a duty to use whatever means necessary and practical to maintain order. So pretty much anything goes as it concerns the punishment and suppression of rebels, insurgents, traitors, spies, and convicted felons. They lack any real equivalent of the notion of human rights. They have a fairly developed and cherished idea of civil and political rights and the rule of law, which may act as a worthwhile replacement.