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[ChairmanPoo]

roman republic >>>>>>>> roman empire

(shots fired)

*Roman Empire teaches everyone Latin and Greek

Denorik ez, ingeles.

[Loud Whispers]

Zero tariffs, but they did have a land tax, and later on a fairly primitive income tax.

THIS DISTINCTION IS IRRELEVANT, I SAID TARIFFS AND YOU CLARIFY ME BY SAYING TARIFFS

THE ROMAN EMPIRE WOULD GIVE YOU A PROMOTION

During its expansion, much of Rome's income came from pillaging, sometimes to the point where taxes were unnecessary. This is kinda hard to do in the modern world.

DURING ITS EXPANSION

EXPANSION IS FINISHED

HAVE MORE PROMOTION

Ironically, the end came alongside decentralised taxation and more powerful nobles/bourgeois.

YOU CLAIM TO KNOW THE END?

HAVE MORE PROMOTIONS, YOU ARE NOW CHIEF HARUSPEX

You'll be pontifex maximus at this rate. Also seriously you are so bold and brazen as to claim the singular cause of the fall of Rome? I daresay you are soon to be Emperor.

*EDIT
I shall not even recommend further promotion for such horrendous anachronisms, absolutely plebian

[Arx]

During its expansion, much of Rome's income came from pillaging, sometimes to the point where taxes were unnecessary. This is kinda hard to do in the modern world.

Not if you try hard enough.

[Calidovi]

much of Rome's income came from pillaging

Not just most; Rome was entirely dependent on a pillaging income as well as slave labor. Most major invasions was just a product of being broke, and soldiers with money are soldiers that can spend within your empire.

[Teneb]

much of Rome's income came from pillaging

Not just most; Rome was entirely dependent on a pillaging income as well as slave labor. Most major invasions was just a product of being broke, and soldiers with money are soldiers that can spend within your empire.

Partially. Rome made a ton of dosh in agriculture. The dependence on raiding came from the fact that people sent to war couldn't tend to their farms, which made them broke. Those farms were then bought by people with already huge farms (and who didn't go to war) further driving rural plebs to the cities and into poverty. So off they went to war again, except this time they were on the lookout for loot.

[Loud Whispers]

Is everyone forgetting the ridonkulus commerce the Romans got up to? You guys make them sound like the Huns, not the Romans. Water-powered great mills transporting Alexandrian grain to be milled and sold, the invention of bankers, bookkeepers and sophisticated law court for mercantile troubleshooting, fish from throughout the Meditteranean salted from Iberian mines, vast sums of lead, tin and silver brought south from England whilst Greek oil, wine moved through the Aegean to the river Tiber, the sheer volume of Greco-Roman glasswork that enabled this vast trade, the bulk movement of slaves, iron, wood, dye all over the place - Gallic gold mines and marble quarries do an economy make! Romans did not get to enjoy the sight of thin silks without trade even with Empires as far east as the Qin without good reason, their engineers made major breakthroughs in mineral extraction that whose results we would not see again until the industrial revolution.

Partially. Rome made a ton of dosh in agriculture. The dependence on raiding came from the fact that people sent to war couldn't tend to their farms, which made them broke. Those farms were then bought by people with already huge farms (and who didn't go to war) further driving rural plebs to the cities and into poverty. So off they went to war again, except this time they were on the lookout for loot.

It was mostly slaves doing the farming and the Roman army was an army of professionals, not drafted farmers - they even marched off to war complete with pensions funded by the Roman state, itself kept balanced through shit like inheritence taxes or primitive sales tax. Or they just got land in the colonies or nicked land off the aristocrats, who promptly began grumbling about the bloody populists nicking their shit (not like they're going to argue with veterans though). Only so much Carthage you can delenda before you must build infrastructure to continue goods extraction or else bust

Also on an unrelated note I love reading letters from Roman soldiers stationed in Britain, complaining about how they miss Gaul, how they dream of again tasting Italian wine, and how they are in dire need of new socks to be sent by their family to their province given the dastardly damp weather :p

"My brother Veldeius, I'm pretty shocked that you haven't written to me for ages. Have you heard anything from the folks?"

"Do say hello to Virilis the vet and ask him if you can get one of our pals to bring me the pair of shears that he promised me after I paid him. Hope everything is going well. Goodbye."

"The British are unprotected by armour. There are lots of cavalry. They don't use swords nor do these dreadful British people mount their horses to throw javelins at us."

"To Lucius. The real reason for my letter is to hope that you're in good health."

"By the way, a friend has sent me 50 oysters from the Thames estuary on the north coast of Kent."

"Vittius Adiutor eagle-bearer of the Second Augustan Legion to Cassius Saecularis, his little brother, very many greetings."

"Hello there. Hope all's well. I'm in top form - and I hope you are, even though you've been so bloody lazy and haven't sent me a single letter."

"Oh how I want you to come to my birthday party - you'll make the day so much more enjoyable. I so hope you can make it. Goodbye, sister, my dearest soul."

Born too late to share rashers with homesick legionaries
Born just in time to share rashers with homesick euros
Born too early to share rashers with homesick ayyylmaos

"Masculus to Cerialis his king, greetings. Please, my lord, give instructions on what you want us to do tomorrow. Are we all to return with the standard, or just half of us?...(missing lines)...most fortunate and be well-disposed towards me. My fellow soldiers have no beer. Please order some to be sent."

I feel an abstract feel

[scriver]

Is everyone forgetting the ridonkulus commerce the Romans got up to? You guys make them sound like the Huns, not the Romans.

Huns or Romans, it makes little difference to the people they put to the sword and whose houses they burn. Pax Mongolia is as good as Pax Romana, and either one was only establish after slaughtering and enslaving everyone who stood in the way.

[Loud Whispers]

Huns or Romans, it makes little difference to the people they put to the sword and whose houses they burn. Pax Mongolia is as good as Pax Romana, and either one was only establish after slaughtering and enslaving everyone who stood in the way.

Oh now you've gone and well done it :P

When you conquer an area and enslave its people, they are capable of working for you in extracting further resources, and in time will fruitfully multiply into good Romans/more slaves. When you kill everyone you can't really make a mountain of skulls work for you, as cool as that may be. Dacia and Carthage were rather wasteful, but were also fortunately exceptions to the rule - I especially like shrewdness in which the Romans rather cleverly wiped out the previous loyalties of their auxiliaries by forbidding them to serve in their native lands and by forcing them to take in replacements from their assigned province, thereby over time diluting their tribal structure into one that is heavy invested towards serving and being rewarded by Rome / is not even of their previous tribe anymore.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Do the conquered people look happy? No, of course not. Their husbands and fathers have probably just been put to the sword and they're probably being relocated to a Roman town. Over time though those little kids will become the stalwart backbone of the Empire, enjoying in the fruits and growing weary in the travails of their Empire. One need only look at how many of the legionaires write for permission from their centurions to go home - home to Gaul
Seems fitting that the descendants of the conquered become conquerors

[redwallzyl]

I do sometimes wonder what would have happened if the Roman empire never split and never fell.

probably continued to evolve over time into something completely different as they were want to do. although from a population demographic standpoint they were probably doomed to be overrun eventually. what with decline population due to disease causing declining tax and recruits and rising populations of outside nations and tribes putting pressure on them. though if it wasn't for those bastards in the fourth crusade the ERE would probably still be around in some form.

[Sergarr]

Is everyone forgetting the ridonkulus commerce the Romans got up to? You guys make them sound like the Huns, not the Romans. Water-powered great mills transporting Alexandrian grain to be milled and sold, the invention of bankers, bookkeepers and sophisticated law court for mercantile troubleshooting, fish from throughout the Meditteranean salted from Iberian mines, vast sums of lead, tin and silver brought south from England whilst Greek oil, wine moved through the Aegean to the river Tiber, the sheer volume of Greco-Roman glasswork that enabled this vast trade, the bulk movement of slaves, iron, wood, dye all over the place - Gallic gold mines and marble quarries do an economy make! Romans did not get to enjoy the sight of thin silks without trade even with Empires as far east as the Qin without good reason, their engineers made major breakthroughs in mineral extraction that whose results we would not see again until the industrial revolution.

All of the stuff you've listed was stolen by force of Roman arms from their proper owners and the Roman Empire fell because its military has stagnated to the point of being unable to continue forcing all the other people to send them the goods (also because Romans were hilariously racist against everyone who wasn't Roman and backstabbed honest barbarians who wanted to serve Rome at every fucking opportunity, which definitely contributed to military stagnation), also Roman engineers were noobs who couldn't even design a decent castle/water supply system to save their lives.

It was mostly slaves doing the farming and the Roman army was an army of professionals, not drafted farmers

Well, if we're talking about Roman Empire, it actually was basically "drafted farmers", more or less. It was a standing army, meaning that 90% of the time the supposed soldiers were busy plowing the fields, with a suit of armour lying somewhere in the shed. Needless to say, the quality of these legions was basically militia-like, unlike ones of Roman Republic.

Roman Republic >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Roman Empire

I mean how else can you explain the pitiful end that the Roman Empires (both Western and Eastern) have met?

I do sometimes wonder what would have happened if the Roman empire never split and never fell.

It would've got conquered by Muslims, because Romans, of Imperial variety, were actually very, very shitty at fighting. Medieval Europeans were light-years ahead of Romans in terms of doctrine and technology.

[redwallzyl]

the roman republic was basically a corrupt oligarchy of aristocrats. not really a vary effective governing body.

[hector13]

the roman republic was basically a corrupt oligarchy of aristocrats. not really a vary effective governing body.

Not much different from what we've got now, then.

[TD1]

Et tu, Trump-ei?

[chaoticag]

I do sometimes wonder what would have happened if the Roman empire never split and never fell.

Answering this is a bit tricky, because you can either have Never Split, or have Never Fell. As for the never split part, Rome was just Too Damn Big to be governed by one emperor. If you lived on the eastern fringes of the government, the fastest you can expect a message to reach Constantinople and back would have been 6 weeks, while the average time would have been closer to 10 weeks. And Constantinople is a world away from Rome, which was not the political center of the western wing of the roman empire. That center was more to the top of Italy and changed from Emperor to Emperor. The second reason there were two emperors was that this wasn't your Caesar's Rome anymore. Caesar could depend on the heart of the roman empire to be Rome, where the senators were and therefore where the political capital was. This political power shifted more towards generals and other Oligarchs within the Empire, so you can imagine if official business took a shitload of time to get from one end of the empire to the other, then keeping all those folks appeased through gift giving and honors would have been even harder. So yeah, Rome would have fallen apart sooner likely if it hadn't split, unless they did something silly like invent and implement a semaphore system.

As for never falling, Rome didn't fall until the 16th century. If you mean, well, what about the Western Roman Empire, since that's where all the Latin speakers were, at that point Latin was quite... weird, and only really "properly" spoken among the upper class, though that list of upper class was expanding in terms of also including people from Gaul. Most common people spoke something closer to Romance, while the proper Latin of the time was basically you giving a speech all the time as the rules were based off of how famous orators spoke. Well, we can keep talking about the West at least. If that wing of the Roman empire didn't fall to a clusterfuck of an usurper and issues with their germanic and hunnic neighbors... I dunno, it might have still fallen in time anyway. If it doesn't fall until the beginning of the Renaissance though, Christianity might not have had as many Schisms as it did, given both Emperors kinda occupied a psudo-god emperor position still, and a favorite saying was that it was no coincidence that Jesus was around when Augustus was Emperor. By extension, there might not have been an Islam, but we're looking at some very muddy forecasts from that point of view.

However you cut it though, the empire was just too big and unable to really deal with how big it was.

[Loud Whispers]

All of the stuff you've listed was stolen by force of Roman arms from their proper owners and the Roman Empire fell because its military has stagnated to the point of being unable to continue forcing all the other people to send them the goods (also because Romans were hilariously racist against everyone who wasn't Roman and backstabbed honest barbarians who wanted to serve Rome at every fucking opportunity, which definitely contributed to military stagnation), also Roman engineers were noobs who couldn't even design a decent castle/water supply system to save their lives.

Ah yes, everyone recalls when Rome invaded China. It wasn't stolen from themselves, they were the proper owners as soon as they killed the previous owners and deigned to begin administrating over the conquered lands, and it was not simply requisitioned for free; the movement of so much goods and the logistics involved would create the entire continental trade of europe from the sea and the roads that would continue until the Roman Empire was so weak from a multitude of causes - great plagues spread by the trade the Empire fostered for example quickly put a spell to most trade (more trade = death, self sufficiency = survival, but self-sufficiency also means no dependency upon Rome) and so Rome lost a massive source of potential income for itself - leading to further collapse of trade as vandals begin pillaging Rome's lands and pirates take to the seas, further disrupting trade. Leaping off of decades of devastating civil wars, uprisings and the powerful and aggressive Sassanid Empire (paying them for peace only to have the Persians invade anyways lel) the decline was a great fucking mess :D
Also lol das raycis, it's funny how ITT people have said Rome fell because they tried assimilating barbarians but at the same time that was successful and tolerant but at the same time they were racist and it wasn't ~o.o~

Roman engineers were noobs who couldn't even design a decent castle/water supply system to save their lives.

Their aqueducts and waterways were so juicy some are still used to supply water to urban centres today Sergarr, BIDF pls
Roman Engineers didn't need to construct Fortresses as appeared in the Medieval era, because siege warfare had not progressed to that point yet - they were fortified logistical centres for allowing armies to remain on continual campaign or as a base to allow mobile patrols throughout the land. It's notable that even at Hadrian's wall, the Roman troops there were not static on the wall, using it to control the flow of people and military patrols. Most permanent ones were often more akin to fortified towns, even fit with their own fortified docks. A great many of Europe's towns and cities can trace their origins and foundings back to Roman camps, with roads connecting them, stores for food and wares, marketplaces and housing for soldiers, auxiliaries and civilians, and juicy waterways. Certainly when it comes to Fortification they wrote the book on it and set the foundation stones. Built by rivers or built by good sites for wells, or built with aqueducts in mind, tl;dr is ur rong
Though it would be pretty neat if the Romans had managed to surmount the whole well-diggers dying of oxygen deprivation thing

Well, if we're talking about Roman Empire, it actually was basically "drafted farmers", more or less. It was a standing army, meaning that 90% of the time the supposed soldiers were busy plowing the fields, with a suit of armour lying somewhere in the shed. Needless to say, the quality of these legions was basically militia-like, unlike ones of Roman Republic.

You've got that the wrong way around, the Roman Republic drew its military from levies of drafted farmers, and its standing army had the addendum that no conscripted citizen would have to serve more than 6 years in a Roman colony, the Roman Army would become a professional standing army made up of volunteers who served minimum terms of 25 years (or death) in the Roman Empire's time, having soldiery be their profession.
Needless to say, the quality of the Roman army after the Augustan reforms was far superior to the Republic, overcoming the deficiencies the Republic's military had. Even auxiliaries moved towards being a volunteer-force of natives, given citizenship at the end of their terms.

Roman Empire >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Roman Republic
I mean how else can you explain the pitiful end that the Roman Empires (both Western and Eastern) have met?

For the Western, it's a long list. For the Eastern, resources constantly had to be diverted against invaders on all fronts, poor use of mercenaries, its great leaders often getting assassinated e.t.c.
They were defending against the Persian Empire, then the greatest military power on the planet - then the Rashidun Caliphate, then the greatest military power on the planet - then the Abbasid Caliphate, then the greatest military power on the planet - then the Seljuk banter brigade arrived and started taking over Anatolia and the Middle East - then the Crusaders arrived, yet when they succeeded instead of returning Byzantine lands just became their own independent Principality and created more Byzantine rivals and so on

Also somewhere along the line they had devastating football bants, only theirs was chariot bants
Fuck the blues, it's all about the greens

It would've got conquered by Muslims, because Romans, of Imperial variety, were actually very, very shitty at fighting. Medieval Europeans were light-years ahead of Romans in terms of doctrine and technology.

Medieval Europeans literally being hundreds of years ahead of the Romans might've helped

I mean contemporary Europeans are literally millennia more advanced than the Romans, we're also millennia in their future lol

All the Romans would've had to do is present a strong-enough face to the Persians at the Tigris and not fuck up by losing all their Forts, allowing them to keep a tighter grip on their client-chiefs. Assuming their military was still too fucked to risk facing the Arab army, get gud, defend the Levant and wait for everyone else to starve to death/go home
It's a pretty big what-if though, so assuming Sassanids and Romans fight as normal and cause each other enough harm without either conquering each other, maybe it'd end up with a tri-polar world with a Caliphate stretching from North Africa to the Persian mountains, everything West of that Rome and East of that Persia
And then anything could happen from there, like surprise invasion from Mongols

In other news, Russians and environmental protection