Recent content by Agricola

The strength of christianity was the doctrine of salvation. The vast majority of the people these days had a very hard life and no chance to ascend in the roman society, or they simply failed already to do so. However, salvation offered the solution! Everything becomes better after your death...

Ancient ships trend to break their keel easily if heavy swell. Therefore they did not sail during winter and always tried to stay near to the coast. Especially in the Atlantic Ocean. No way a roman ship can survive a storm on the Atlantic. Only chance is, to reach land before the storm reaches...

Finally provinces were less important than the ability to manipulate the roman senate, the plebs urbana and the roman citizens in Italy; especially manipulating the clients of the other triumvirs. And Octavianus did an outstanding job at this "home front".

If the moslems stop in Egypt and never invade roman Africa, by whatever reasons, there is a chance, that the romans and the berbers cut a deal. Like they already did more than once. And looking from Carthago to Hispania et Sicilia (and beyond), history would be fully different. The end of the...

4 legions more at the Rhine river. Actually it had been 11 legions, before Claudius started his campain in Britain. Caligula already moved most of them to Germania. And emperor Claudius the gimp still needs a victory badly. What do you think he is doing with these 4 legions more at the Rhine...

Since Diokletian the undivded roman empire was ruled by a senior Augustus in the East and a junior Augustus in the west. In 476 the senior Augustus in Constantinople was Zeno. And his junior Augustus, who was enthroned by Zeno's precedessor, was Julius Nepos. Unfortunately Nepos' magister...

None of these approaches would work.

Depends of the timeframe. A lot of terms in this list are not classic latin and were invented centuries after the Fall of Rome.

Just call them Venedi, like Plinius and Tacitus did, and you got Venedia, because Venetia is aleady one of the 12 augustean regions in North-East Italy. Venedia is north of Sarmatia, south of Estia (aka Hestia, Aestia) and east of Germania ulterior, which is the most eastern german province up...

Of course not. But we should not forget the 300 years from 1500 to 1770. A lot was developed, which finally helped industrialization.

LOL, such channels are trivial from a roman point of view. Roman water engineering was not reached again until the 18th century when french and english engineers started to take care about these big sinkholes called Paris and London. And who says that the romans had no water-mill driven forges...

The mills are not that different. It is the water. ;) The romans were able to bring water to every place: where you need it, when you need it, and what volume you need. Way beyond of the imagination of a medieval engineer.

There are some articles about the population of the roman empire and its evolution. Sometimes mentioning and guessing slave population. But nothing special focussing on the evolution of slave-population. Not that I know of.

If tenancy became the main business model in agriculture, where 80% of the people worked, slavery must have decreased. Perhaps house slaves and state slaves were not impacted. But they got no numbers anyways. Also look at the late roman codices. For every law about slavery you got 10 laws about...

There is a theory that the portuguese already discovered Brazil a few years before Columbus, but kept it secret. Actually due to wind and flux, you cannot avoid to reach Brazil, if you sail regulary around Africa. It must happen.