Sociopolitical and Cultural progress if Roman Empire survives

An issue that has been often touched upon, but never discussed to my satisfaction, in similar threads, is what pace the social, political, cultural, scientific, and technological progress would take in a world where the Roman Empire as a political unity never collapses to the present and expands to include all of Europe and the Middle East at the very least. I especially yearn to see a discussion where neither unreasonably quick pace to Space Age, neither the utterly ridiculous idea that political disunity is necessary to prevent cultural stagnation is proffered.

To help frame the parameters of the discussion, I define the following PoDs:

Rome never suffers any serious defeat during its early expansion into Germania, so the momentum of its conquest in northern Europe under Augustus and later Emperors is never broken. During the 1st century Rome successfully conquers and assimilates Germania, Bohemia, Dacia, Cimbria, up to the Vistula-Carpathians-Dneister line. It also uses the additional resources from those gains to conquer and assimilate Britannia, Caledonia, Nubia, Armenia, and Mesopotamia.

By the early Second Century (120 CE), Rome has achieved this expansion, and turned Parthia, Bosphorus, and Western Sarmatia (up to the Dvina and Dnieper) into vassals.




During the Second Century, the Roman Empire expands its direct control to annex Western Sarmatia up to the Dvina-Dniester line, and entrenches its vassallization of Parthia. It may well or may not directly annex Parthia in the same period, or soon afterwards, but such annexation surely happens by the time Rome develops gunpowder at the very latest. The same achievement also marks the point by which Rome directly annexes the rest of Sarmatia up to the Volga river.

Technologically, conquest of Northern Europe and expanded access to India and China mean that by the second-third century CE, the Roman Empire has mastered and put into widespread use the following tehcnologies: heavy plough, three-field system, horse collar, papermaking, blast furnace & cast iron, seed drill, hand crank, crossbow, woodblock printing (mobile type is developed a century or two afterwards). These other technologies, which the Romans independently developed, have been also fully mastered: wheelbarrow, abacus, caliper, waterwheel & watermill, solid-treed saddle & stirrups, iron horseshoes. A cultural atmosphere never takes root in the empire that is conductive to long-term stagnation.

Politically, it is assumed that the Roman Empire by the third century at the latest develops such reforms that lessen the severity of occasional dynastic crises and civil wars enough that they never permanently fragment the Empire. It remains unified up to the present, suffering occasional Chinese-like cycles of temporary division and reunification, but the basic political, cultural and social structure of the existing system is never destroyed, or at least only suffers permenent diviison into a "Carolingian" WRE and a "Byzantine" ERE.

Possible means to achieve this include: the development of an empire-wide scholar secular professional bureaucracy to balance the power of the professional Army, the expansion of the Vigiles' power and numbers to be a counterweight to the Praetorian Guard (and viceversa), economic reforms to foster the rise of a plentiful urban propietary trading elite, reform of the Senate to become a representative body for the provincial landed and urban trading elites from throughout the Empire. These developments are not necessarily meant to be mutually exclusive, quite the contrary.

Religiously, the rise of Islam is completely butterflied away, and Christianity never reaches anything like a position of importance in the Roman Empire, at the very best it stays an obscure sect among many mystery cults in the cultural fringe of the Empire, if not dying out altogether. Zoroastrism is also suppressed when Parthia is annexed to the Empire, and eventually suffers the same fate as Christianity.

Expanded contact with India and China means that either Buddhism spreads and fuses with Stoicism and/or Epicureanism to become the dominant religion of the Empire, or Greco-Roman polytheism after a fusion with Celtic and Germanic religion, is revitalized by fusion with sophisticated Indian polytheism. Or alternatively the various polytheist traditions of the Roman Empire (mostly Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic, and Egyptian, with liberal seasoning of Slavic and Middle Eastern) are merged by the authorities into a universal belief system and hierarchy, while picking elements from Roman philosophies like Stoicism and/or Epicureanism, without a substantial Hinduist element. Or quite possibly a bit of both.

In other words, a China-like religious landscape develops in the Empire where several major religions coexist in the Empire and the average person subscribes to all: traditional Roman religion as an expression of civic patriotism, Buddhism/Stoicism or Buddhism/Epicureanism as a spiritual answer to major life events, Pan-European or European/Indian Polytheism as a spiritual answer to everyday concerns.

Economically, the Roman Empire uses the plentiful revenues and labor surplus from its conquests to renovate and expand the Suez canal, as well as to build an extensive canal system in Northern Europe that links the Rhine, Weser, Elbe, Oder, and Vistula and is later expanded to the Nemen, Dvina, and Dneiper. The same way, they link the Danube, Dneister, and Dneiper. Other canals link the Rhine with the Danube, the Elbe and the Oder with the Danube, and the Vistula with the Dneister. The canal system is also extended westward, too, linking the Rhine, Scheldt, Meuse, Seine, Loire, Rhone, Saone, and Garonne rivers.

You'd still need to address what route cultural change takes in this Roman world before you can say anything specific. Some considerations:

Without the rise in status of ecclesiastical and military fora, Roman legal culture is likely to persist unbroken. That means there is a reasonable chance a system of unitary procedure and law, with recognised authorities to provide legal opinion and formalised educational institutions for practitioners, could emerge. We see the beginnings of this in the late Empire at Berytus and Constantinople. A model for this would be the developed form of sharia jurisprudence in the middle ages, though here it is, of course, a given assumption that the law is changeable. Roman law is fiendishly complex and underpins a lot of what we consider 'Western' thinking.

The decreasing availability of slave labour will have economic knock-on effects, especially if (when?) the Romans open up the soils of Northern and Eastern Europe for intensive agriculture. My bet is on a system of strong property rights with lease and usufruct contracts governed in a very unequal manner. Basically, a form of serdom that does not extend to personal unfreedom at law, but circumscribes the possibilities of the tenants. Something like sharecropping or today's Indian 'village moneylender'.

An increasing legal divide between the upper and lower classes defined in clear and binding terms.

A much reduced role for 'custom', but a much bigger one for formal law variants (to the point of allowing a form of subsidiarity).

Increasingly complex financial instruments in banking, but very likely less involvement of what we would term a 'middle class' in long-distance trade. Possibly the emergence of trade and manufacturing as a basis for fortunes by capital owners rather than labour providers.

Slavery becoming a bisected institution, with 'house' slaves becoming trusted retainers who act as commercial agents, estate administrators and other vital functionaries, perform paramilitary functions, provide skilled labour and ultimately form a stratum of 'ministerial' upper class while 'chattel' slaves remain a labour reserve or luxury consumption good (ever more costly, but ultimately disposable).

Colonisation could open up early-ish if demand for slave labour increases for some reason or other.

I'm figuiring that any major colonization of the New World will be conducted by Rome and therefore the entire continents of North and South America will become Romanized, possibly the same being true of Africa, Australia and parts of Asia. If colonization happens the same as OTL with some native populations being killed off etc then I think you could end up with a very boring world with far fewer seperate cultural identities. You've already killed off Islam and therefore all the associated differences between Muslim regions and the West.
Traditional languages will also be eroded in favour of Latin and therefore Spanish, English and French will almost definately not arise.
I'm not into politics much but surely the idea of a Monarchy as we know it will also not come into being.
I think that this world would be a lot less interesting than our own.

I'd probably choose a POD where Augustus chose a more competent General than Varus to be the Imperial Legate of Germania. That one may be a safe bet to safeguard Rome's future. Mind you, the Germanics are thought to have been periodically migrating steadily through eastern Europe as early as 800 BCE, so tribes like the Bastarnae, whom lived north of the Carpathian Mountains, may remain out of reach for some time, and could probably provide sanctuary for Germans not content with Roman rule.

With the encroachment east onto the Sarmation Steppes and into Persia, I think Rome's focus on colonization will be eastward. One motivation for conquering Iran could be to "liberate" all those Greeks that had lived for centuries under Parthian rule. Another would be to control the western half of the Asian Silk Road trade. The most interesting part of the whole thing is that they could establish unbroken contact with China. Imagine, the forums and Agoras of the eastern provinces, if not Rome itself, were inundated with Chinese and Tocharian merchants, while the western settlements of China were visited or settled by thousands of Roman and Asian-Greek merchants. And I do appreciate the vision of Roman Colonae sprouting up on the Eurasian Steppe, around the Caspian Sea, and trailing into Central Asia. Mind you, the Sarmation frontier would probably be settled by private groups from within the Empire, while the bulk of the military would be aimed at conquering Persia.

The whole Graeco-Roman Polytheism, I think, has itself the potential to be the Hinduism of the western world. So I don't know that at this point, Hinduism was anymore sophisticated than Principate Era Roman Polytheism. Maybe the authorities of the Empire will officially merge all the provincial cults into a universal religious hierarchy. Of course, I don't protest at the idea of Indian ascetics in Rome. All cultures enrich one another.

MrA said:

I'm figuiring that any major colonization of the New World will be conducted by Rome and therefore the entire continents of North and South America will become Romanized, possibly the same being true of Africa, Australia and parts of Asia. If colonization happens the same as OTL with some native populations being killed off etc then I think you could end up with a very boring world with far fewer seperate cultural identities. You've already killed off Islam and therefore all the associated differences between Muslim regions and the West.
Traditional languages will also be eroded in favour of Latin and therefore Spanish, English and French will almost definately not arise.
I'm not into politics much but surely the idea of a Monarchy as we know it will also not come into being.
I think that this world would be a lot less interesting than our own.

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I belive that cultural identities "suppressed" in this timeline will be balanced by the ones suppressed in OTL, I can figure, given the roman approach to foregin cultures, that amerindian cultures will survive, adapting, integrating, even dominatin certain sectors of roman life as the greek one did.
And a whole lot of ancient roman traditions will evolve in inpredictable ways, giving birth to "new" ideas the have a distinct flavour of antiquity, we will see people visiting the ancient oracles in Delphos and Tenocticlan, Jaguar and eagle warriors riding the testuda(tanks) and urania(planes) of the legions, and philosofers and sages teaching in universities in Londinum and Alessandria.

Yes, but i'm imagining that over the centuries the seperate European identities we have in OTL will become less obvious, in the way that American states have seperate identities to each other, but in Europe we still see America as a singular entity with only one identity (only fluctuating with, say Texas and California)
Regarding natives: I agree that there will still be seperate cultures etc, however a blanket of Romanization will most likely fall across them all. Native Americans still have their own cultures in OTL but we don't think of them when someone mentions America.
Also I feel there will be less differences in the New World as a whole, think French Quebec, British Thirteen Colonies, Spanish Florida but with Roman Quebec, Roman Thirteen Colonies and Roman Florida. There will be much less distinct areas as you travel throughout the continent.

My point was that even without the creolization with germanic conquerors the roman Europe will give birth to definite national charachters anyways, Hiberia was alredy different from Gallia and said creolization will happen in reverse with all the nationes under roman aegis, even the ones absorbed during trans-oceanic colonialism (that will probably evovlve among the lines of european colonization)...

Latin would slowly evolve into Middle and Later Latin as Germanic languages are incorporated. Also with one European state it's quite likely that if someone accidentaly finds the Americas like the Vikinigs in OTL colonization would happen far earlier and more massively with Colonias and all that.

Personally, I like ericcams Rome timeline where Julius Caesar survives the assassination attempt and is able to conquer a lot of new territories for Rome, including Germania.

What he presents later in the timeline is that Rome does go through a series of Civil Wars, but none of them end up destroying the Empire. It becomes a situation like Imperial China, where Dynastys may rise and fall but the basic political, cultural and social structure of the existing system is simply adopted by the usurpers.

carlton_bach said:

You'd still need to address what route cultural change takes in this Roman world before you can say anything specific.

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Well, this is the whole point of the thread, isn't it ?

Without the rise in status of ecclesiastical and military fora, Roman legal culture is likely to persist unbroken. That means there is a reasonable chance a system of unitary procedure and law, with recognised authorities to provide legal opinion and formalised educational institutions for practitioners, could emerge. We see the beginnings of this in the late Empire at Berytus and Constantinople. A model for this would be the developed form of sharia jurisprudence in the middle ages, though here it is, of course, a given assumption that the law is changeable. Roman law is fiendishly complex and underpins a lot of what we consider 'Western' thinking.

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A point that immediately springs to mind about this is that such a scholastic systematization of law could and quite possibly would spill over in other fields, namely mathematics, medicine and biology, and natural science. This might quite easily mean the development of the university system a millennia in advance to OTL. The Hellenistic proto-scientific revolution is revitalized and given a rather strong shot. Without dogmatic monotheisms getting in the way, I would add.

The decreasing availability of slave labour will have economic knock-on effects, especially if (when?) the Romans open up the soils of Northern and Eastern Europe for intensive agriculture.

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No ifs, please. I specifically mentioned that the heavy plough, the three-field system, and the horse collar are invented relatively early in the Empire's history, precisely because of the need to develop the soils of Northern Europe, and by the 3rd Century CE are widespread throughout the Empire. In a few centuries, Northern Europe and, a bit later, Eastern Europe become as heavily settled and developed as OTL High/Late Middle Ages.

My bet is on a system of strong property rights with lease and usufruct contracts governed in a very unequal manner. Basically, a form of serdom that does not extend to personal unfreedom at law, but circumscribes the possibilities of the tenants. Something like sharecropping or today's Indian 'village moneylender'.

An increasing legal divide between the upper and lower classes defined in clear and binding terms.

Increasingly complex financial instruments in banking, but very likely less involvement of what we would term a 'middle class' in long-distance trade. Possibly the emergence of trade and manufacturing as a basis for fortunes by capital owners rather than labour providers.

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Hmm, one thing that leaves me rather perplexed is that you seem to assume that the decline of the slave labor system combined with relativeley steady-increasing economic prosperity would lead to increasingly sharp and rigid social polarization. Generally, the opposite occurs in the long term. I am especially skeptical about the creation of any "increasing legal divide between the upper and lower classes defined in clear and binding terms".

Otherwise, I think you make very good terms about slave labor being substituted by a sharecropping system, the emergence of a sophisticated trade, banking and manufacturing system. In other words, if I interpret your meaning correctly, you see the early emergence of OTL High-Late Middle Ages "commercial revolution". How early would this happen ITTL ?

Slavery becoming a bisected institution, with 'house' slaves becoming trusted retainers who act as commercial agents, estate administrators and other vital functionaries, perform paramilitary functions, provide skilled labour and ultimately form a stratum of 'ministerial' upper class while 'chattel' slaves remain a labour reserve or luxury consumption good (ever more costly, but ultimately disposable).

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How would this affect the legal status of slaves, and how much and how early would the relative impirtance of slave labor in economy and society decline ?

Bmao said:

Personally, I like ericcams Rome timeline where Julius Caesar survives the assassination attempt and is able to conquer a lot of new territories for Rome, including Germania.

What he presents later in the timeline is that Rome does go through a series of Civil Wars, but none of them end up destroying the Empire. It becomes a situation like Imperial China, where Dynastys may rise and fall but the basic political, cultural and social structure of the existing system is simply adopted by the usurpers.

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Yes, ericcam's excellent TL is a good example of the kind of TL this thread is all about. And a Dynastic Cycle very much like Imperial China is the political outcome I see as most probable for a surviving Roman Empire that controls all fo Europe and the Middle East. However, I structured the scenario so that it might be useful for a whole group of similar TL (even if some features would end up repeating) and not just any specific one. I just took care to define away some butterflies that would wreck or cripple the Empire.

Lysandros Aikiedes said:

I'd probably choose a POD where Augustus chose a more competent General than Varus to be the Imperial Legate of Germania. That one may be a safe bet to safeguard Rome's future.

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Yes, this would be a rather good and very plausible PoD. I did not specifically mention any such, in order to keep the discussion more broad in scope.

Mind you, the Germanics are thought to have been periodically migrating steadily through eastern Europe as early as 800 BCE, so tribes like the Bastarnae, whom lived north of the Carpathian Mountains, may remain out of reach for some time, and could probably provide sanctuary for Germans not content with Roman rule.

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Yes, however only for some time, since Rome steadily expansion in Sarmatia shall largely close that avenue relatively soon: the Dvina-Dneipr border is acheived by late 2nd Century. I dunno how many Germanics and Slavs would pursue their fortunes by migrating in Eastern Sarmatia.

With the encroachment east onto the Sarmation Steppes and into Persia, I think Rome's focus on colonization will be eastward. One motivation for conquering Iran could be to "liberate" all those Greeks that had lived for centuries under Parthian rule. Another would be to control the western half of the Asian Silk Road trade. The most interesting part of the whole thing is that they could establish unbroken contact with China. Imagine, the forums and Agoras of the eastern provinces, if not Rome itself, were inundated with Chinese and Tocharian merchants, while the western settlements of China were visited or settled by thousands of Roman and Asian-Greek merchants. And I do appreciate the vision of Roman Colonae sprouting up on the Eurasian Steppe, around the Caspian Sea, and trailing into Central Asia. Mind you, the Sarmation frontier would probably be settled by private groups from within the Empire, while the bulk of the military would be aimed at conquering Persia.

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Yes, exactly, although the Sarmation border would still need a very substantial amount of troops, to guard against Central Asian nomads.

Besides greater economic development and cultural-economic exchange, full contact between Rome and China is going to make both giants more global in outlook, I would expect. Rome is already quite expansionistic in outlook, TTL only gives them the means, but this is a rather large butterfly for Chinese culture, full awareness there is at least one Empire that matches thrm in any way.

The whole Graeco-Roman Polytheism, I think, has itself the potential to be the Hinduism of the western world. So I don't know that at this point, Hinduism was anymore sophisticated than Principate Era Roman Polytheism. Maybe the authorities of the Empire will officially merge all the provincial cults into a universal religious hierarchy. Of course, I don't protest at the idea of Indian ascetics in Rome. All cultures enrich one another.

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Yes, this is all very true. Such potential would exist. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of a merging of all main important aspects of European polytheisms with each other and with Hinduism, rather thean wholesale adoption of the latter. But I suppose you could achieve just a vital and successful poytheistic religion by homegrown unification and systematization of European polytheist traditions alone (and throwing liberal doses of Egyptian and Middle Eastern ones into the mix), muhc like it was done in your own TL, albeit by a non-Roman Empire (but the difference would be minor, except for the fact ITTL Celtic, Germanic, and Hellenic traditions are all merged into one). I was full aware of the comparison with your TL.

And I suppose such a Pan-European Polytheism could reach pretty much the same spiritual depth by merging with one or more of the Roman philosophical schools (Stocism or Epicureanism are the most likely candidates), in order to provide the educated elites with something more spiritually and philosophically fulfilling than the popular religion taht is good to be quite fulfilling for the masses. That is what I meant to be gained by merging with Hinduism, the way its tradition can be so many different and equally fulfilling things to different kinds of believers.

What sociopolitical and cultural progress?

The Roman Empire was, from the beginning, a slave-based agricultural economy where all the power was vested in a military dictatorship with theocratic leanings. What progress was made was made under an even more theocratic regime hundreds of years after any possible PoD that could have the Romans Empire looking like it does in that map. Even then, the military dictatorship continued through until the collapse of the whole system and the rise of a medieval monarchy. What power outside the hands of the Emperor there was was held by a class of hereditary nobility whose wealth and status was ensured by vast land holdings, worked by slaves for the benefit of a captive class of land-less consumers in the cities.

What middle class of independent farmers, craftsmen, traders, and proto-industrialists there were had to deal with a government often-times ambivalent to their problems and needs and sometimes downright hostile to their intentions and persons. Saving Roman society from the fate it succumbed to and getting 'progress' in the modern sense of the word would require a PoD as far back as the Gracchi, or even before then.

If you want to see progress in the ancient world, get China to snap out of her nearly reactionary conservatism. China was, in general, a society of free-holding farmers subject to no one but the Emperor, with an urban culture centered around crafts, goods production, and (internal) trade. The power structure was aimed at meritocracy and not the aristocracy of Rome. In fact, the sort of half-feudal arrangement that came to dominate the world of the Roman Empire was viewed as decay in ancient China, and actively fought against. It can be argued that the stability China enjoyed throughout the centuries was partially driven by these middle-class centric values on the part of the Imperial Chinese establishment.

Not that I have any complaints about trying to save the Roman Republic to achieve this sort of thing in the West, too. Partially or completely breaking the power of the Senate and Senatorial class over the Roman state would go a long way to rectifying the situation Rome grew to face in the 1st century and beyond.

General Zod said:

A point that immediately springs to mind about this is that such a scholastic systematization of law could and quite possibly would spill over in other fields, namely mathematics, medicine and biology, and natural science. This might quite easily mean the development of the university system a millennia in advance to OTL. The Hellenistic proto-scientific revolution is revitalized and given a rather strong shot. Without dogmatic monotheisms getting in the way, I would add.

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It's certainly possible, if rather optimistic. You would still have to overcome the problem of dividing intellectual pursuits and technical ones. But if natural sciences get an additional bit of status, that could help. Medicine is usually a good connecting point, but how do you get it into a legal faculty? For monotheistic theologians, the obvious nexus was contempolating creation. maybe for Roman legalists, the idea could be a better understanding of ius naturale?

No ifs, please. I specifically mentioned that the heavy plough, the three-field system, and the horse collar are invented relatively early in the Empire's history, precisely because of the need to develop the soils of Northern Europe, and by the 3rd Century CE are widespread throughout the Empire. In a few centuries, Northern Europe and, a bit later, Eastern Europe become as heavily settled and developed as OTL High/Late Middle Ages.

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What is the settlement pattern you had in mind here? Does it grow around extant native centres as locals adopt a prpofitable technology? Is it based on private land acquisition and development? State-run colonisation? THat would make for very different outcomes, I think.

Hmm, one thing that leaves me rather perplexed is that you seem to assume that the decline of the slave labor system combined with relativeley steady-increasing economic prosperity would lead to increasingly sharp and rigid social polarization. Generally, the opposite occurs in the long term. I am especially skeptical about the creation of any "increasing legal divide between the upper and lower classes defined in clear and binding terms".

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It seems to be the way that Roman society went OTL, and far too early to view it as a response to crisis. Basically, a prospering Empire and a depoliticised society seem to have encouraged the upper classes to be protective of their status. In Roman society, the wealthy and influential were required to expend considerable sums on various public duties. They were rewarded with political powers. It would be unusual for them not to try to use these powers to their owen advantage. Roman law does not allow for an aristocracy, but it does allow for social stratification. In the course of creating the Romania, geographic location and Roman citizenship would come to mean less and less and wealth more and more. I can't see how you are going to stop this development. After all, the system allows for upward mobility in plenty of places.

Otherwise, I think you make very good terms about slave labor being substituted by a sharecropping system, the emergence of a sophisticated trade, banking and manufacturing system. In other words, if I interpret your meaning correctly, you see the early emergence of OTL High-Late Middle Ages "commercial revolution". How early would this happen ITTL ?

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The commercial revolution is what I am least certain about. Roman finance was sophisticated, but there is no guarantee that it will come up with the instruments that powered the Islamic and medieval European systems. Assum,ingit does, there is nothing to stop it from starting in the second or third century. Technically, it could have started even before the rise of Rome (possibly even better). The infrastructure was in place and more and more modern historians are putting together the pieces and realise that the Roman trade network was incredibly sophisticated and ranged from Indian precious stones and Chinese silk to rooftiles.

The sharecropping and property ownership idea, BTW, will mean that commercial patterns will look different. Traders can now buy real estate and landowners turn their estates into investtment capital. If you can get Roman law to allow limited liability and full legal personage, you could make joint stock companies happen. Joint stock investment in land melioration... sounds like a respectable thing to do for the traditional upper classes.

How would this affect the legal status of slaves, and how much and how early would the relative impirtance of slave labor in economy and society decline ?

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The decline and change in status is OTL. It's already more or less reality by the 1st century AD. Extend it through the provinces and you could have a situation where you replace the medieval system of apprenticeship, kinship and retainership with property relationships. Roman businesspeople often used slaves and freedmen as agents because they could trust them. The typical career structure would look something like this: A houseborn slave (verna) shows promise in youth and 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 pown, though they are still bound to them by legal ties (may not compete with them or act against their interests). Many former owners will provide seerd capital for their freedmen. That way, the structure can be perpetuated and a system of competitive struggle coexist with traditional family structures and hereditary elites. The good thing is that all of this is OTL, just writ large.

If Rome can survive the crises that destroyed it then serious cultural change is certain, it would have to happen in light of the recent threat to the state. Most probably the state would organise and harness existing economic and cultural trends for it's own ends.

Great Thread!
Interests I have here involve the "science" and "technology" aspects.

The thread flow here seems to have established the emergence of "Greek proto-science". Thread flow suggests a spilling-over from bureaucratic and academic areas into mathematics and what would be "natural philosophy". There's a suggestion that "natural" philosophy is separating from esoteric philosophy here as OTL, but the big question is "why?" This happened OTL really only in the renaissance, IIRC. In Asian cultures there was never a "division" in science and "alchemy" until modern times, with Chinese Medicine to this day as much Chi and Zodiac as pharmacology and anatomy.

I could really see ATL Roman philosophy similarly merged with persistent metaphysical beliefs leading to interesting possibilities. Thread flow suggests some rise of an empirical world view (though this is far from guaranteed in any society) which would probably require some sort of rational view of the world as fixed and understandable and require "getting past" persistent Aristotelian cosmology (if OTL is any indication). There needs to be some reason for this break from tradition, which may be difficult in a canonical traditional religious environment where the universe is run by any unfathomable numbers of flighty, unpredictable gods and demiurges. Perhaps if "Canonical Polytheism" developed along the lines of, say, Vodou, which has a belief in a fixed universe with a fixed destiny that (here's the kicker) can be rewritten by pressing the spirits to your aims. Maybe here the Fate's book can be changed by intervention, but the "fixed law of the universe" constrains the methods and results. In the long run the view of an empirical cosmology evolves allowing for a measurable, manipulable universe.

Of course technology is another thing entirely and much a product of society. In this unitary bureaucratic state we might see (yet another) China allegory where technology is the purview of the central government. However, the persistent "property rights" merchant class offers some interesting prospects on a decentralized economy, which means private technological explorations could be possible. The latter spurs continual change while the former tends towards bursts of investment/development and occasional reversions as per China.

On the one hand (central) we could see technology developing rather slowly and centrally with big "works" projects and military projects as the focus. The "Suez Canal" and other hydrology projects suggest this course. On the other hand a decentralized "private sector" would see small inventions that cut costs or bring profits. On the gripping hand some blend of the two seems probable here, perhaps in competition. We might even see the rise of "company" economies as per OTL Britain and Netherlands and later corporate America which would have the "advantages" of large capital availability, large labor force, and freedom of direction, but would result in a social stratification and a "consumer-commercial" outlook as OTL of "we build it and make you want to buy it" (and perhaps planned obsolescence) rather than an organic growth. This could mean quite an entrenched "military industrial complex" analog with large "private" companies entwined with the government bureaucracy. Seems IMO to dovetail well with the Roman "patron" system and the above merchant-property owner economy.

Industrial Revolution. This is tricky. You have the basis for an agricultural revolution with the resultant population growth (workers available). You have the seeds for a potential financial revolution (assuming the bureaucracy doesn't entrench itself). With an empirical or quasi-empirical world view there's a belief that the world can be affected by men. Eventually we could assume, even in the "Centralized technology" scenario, that someone creates an engine more usable than Hero's. The big question is what happens with it. It might amount to nothing more than a curiosity unless there is a set need for it. OTL the necessity to pump water from the ever-deepening mines found use for the early steam pistons. ATL this is quite possible as well, particularly as you now have a large, populous empire with an ever-growing need for metals and (since I imagine deforestation will be a real problem) a growing need for coal. This could bump up the date for steam-piston development as the mines will be depleted faster than OTL. And IIRC there was a Roman OTL who sketched a conceptual piston, so the idea could certainly arrive in ATL.

Of course just having the engine isn't enough for "revolution". Assuming you now have population, economic spurs, and available technology you could (particularly in the "Company" economy) have a sudden need for mass production of goods, hence an Industrial Revolution as per OTL (factories, textile mils, etc.). This being Rome, however, I could more easily see steam power being he purview of the government and military. Perhaps the development of railroads (a likely offshoot from "mine steamer" development) or steam propulsion in ships (very possible in an empire based around an inland sea). In the latter steam may develop more slowly and will remain mostly a toy for the government.

The Press: this is another question that depends a lot on the society and governance. You mentioned the Printing Press among the technologies. Who uses them? A centralized system, particularly one with an emperor not fond of private ideas, would suggest printing remains monopolized or at least strictly controlled by the central bureaucracy. Private use and "underground" use will be a dangerous game. I highly doubt we'd see the sheer "press in every town" as Europe saw OTL as the central authority certainly doesn't wish to see anti-government fliers. At least in the poly-religious environment there'd be little incentive to suppress religious texts. Of course disseminated press equals quicker spread of ideas equals faster technological growth.

Together here, I'm seeing a society where public and large "corporate" private institutions coexist and at times blur together. I see information being controlled and censored, but "approved" learning quickly disseminating through the University system and "private" organizations, with a constant irritant of small underground press organizing opposition groups. Technology will grow, possibly in spurts, and be the purview of the "military-industrial complex". Perhaps eventually factories for consumer goods will appear, but I see transportation infrastructure first. I do not necessarily foresee "private automobiles" and other consumer technologies being a major sector here, instead such contraptions belonging to the military and perhaps the toys of the rich. I do not foresee much effort in information technology except in military applications until far into post-industrial society. I do foresee development of weapons technology at a brisk pace, particularly with "private" organizations developing new "toys" to sell to the Empire (as per OTL's US military contractors).

In all, a weird polyglot blend of "Chinese" bureaucratic monopoly and "European" company-capitalism arises where some sectors of technology develop faster than OTL (Civil Engineering, "Military" steam power, etc.) while others develop more slowly or hardly at all (factories, consumer goods, IT).

Just my 0.25 Denari...

In a world where the Roman Empire survives intact, I was wondering about such franchises like the Orient Express, and just how extensive it would be, in a world with a slightly earlier industrial revolution, and more land area living under a singular political authority. Just a thought.

General Zod said:

An issue that has been often touched upon, but never discussed to my satisfaction, in similar threads, is what pace the social, political, cultural, scientific, and technological progress would take in a world where the Roman Empire as a political unity never collapses to the present and expands to include all of Europe and the Middle East at the very least. I especially yearn to see a discussion where neither unreasonably quick pace to Space Age, neither the utterly ridiculous idea that political disunity is necessary to prevent cultural stagnation is proffered.

Click to expand...

The Roman Empire doesn change the way it functions for centuries. Technological Advance seems oddly minimal or limited (they had civil works - the capacity to build even Piston Pumps to evacuate flooded mines, Huge Floating Barges, and an assortment of Technologies that kept the status quo). Their attempt to take Archmidies from Syracuse seems a genuine atttempt to create change in a Dead-end Civilization - only to have it snatched away by some "soldier" who thought the Roman civilization to Die to change and anything that might change that reality had to be eliminated.

Smells like Temporal Interference to me...

Weirs and Dams on the Tigris, Euphrates allowing irrigation canals and subterranean Aqueducts to farm in the desert. Water Wheel Pumping Stations to Raise it to the Surface and Supply the Local City Aqueduct allows Cities to grow. These are ideal locations for the Exploitation of Oil and Gas emerging from fissures - Oil Lamps using Petroleum Oil.

The Roman economy may have stalled, but it did so at a high level so that wasn't a drawback. Technology in Roman times wasn't so much skills as the ability to pay for them, thus the centralised, cash, town economy of Rome could pay for roads, aqueducts and watermills but the land rich cash poor Germanic tribes couldn't, despite farm productivity being similar I'd imagine.

I believe the hardest thing to do in any Roman Empire survives timeline, is to figure out how to stop the process of feudalization...I think the only way that can be done is either bring back the Republic or have a string of competent Emperors who decide to take the assyrian apporach and Assimalate the hell out of the roaming tribes along the Empire's borders. With a Process of true Romanization and Inclusion(Allowing more people to seat at the Roman table) would be the best way to keep the empire intact