Quote from: Cylonophile;387625I think I saw this on the putrid purple once, but what if the spartacus slave revolt succeeded and the slaves rose up and took rome?

Suppose that a few things had gone differently for spartacus: The huns had not ran off on their own, got massacred and weakened spartacus' forces the way they did in history and that the people he'd payed to ship from from the mainland to Sicily hadn't betrayed him?

His forced occupy Sicily and hold off the romans, and realizing he'll never know peace while the empire lives,  launches a guerrilla war against the empire using the 1/3 of the population that were slaves.

In the end the empire is taken over by the uprising since the slaves were the ones doing the real work and when they revolted the empire couldn't live without the working masses, so it has to basically come to terms, free the slaves and then what happens?

Maybe without slavery rome instead develops a middle class/working class economy, maybe things like labor saving devices come into vogue and even hero's steam engines gets a second look instead of just being a toy.

Maybe the end of slavery in rome heralds a kind of industrial revolution as there's a need for labor that can't be filled by slaves anymore. Could have interesting possibilities.

I like the idea of something forcibly ending slavery in rome, with the slaves either becoming free men who must be paid fair wages or leaving rome en masse and the resultant labor shortage forcing rome's best minds into a technological revolution or some sort that meant a lot of those old greek ideas like the steam engine and various automata got a more intense review and maybe developed into something, so maybe we could have "steampunk" rome.

Not very plausible.

For starters, there weren't as many slaves in Rome at that point as you might imagine. Secondly, far from all slaves would have chosen to side with Spartacus (not just out of fear of failure, but for many other reasons including ethnic and class issues).
Third, the things that went wrong in Spartacus' rebellion went wrong for a REASON.  Spartacus is given far too much credit in the popular mindset.

Finally, there were guys who tried to act as pirate-kings out of sicily not too long afterwards by one of Pompey's sons, who had much better qualifications to do so; and later by the triumvirate-third-wheel Lepidus too. Both of them got their asses handed to them, eventually, so I really doubt that Spartacus would have done better in Sicily.

RPGPundit

Quote from: FrankTrollman;387649But if the capital of the Empire had moved to Egypt or Carthage? The Empire would be plenty recognizable. Moving the capital to Asia made things positively Byzantine, but they were still Roman. North Africa was part of a fairly well contiguous Greco-Roman culture at the time, and moving the capital of the empire to any of the major cities there would have kept things contiguous culturally.

-Frank

You ignored what I actually said. I didn't say that a Rome ruled from Egypt would not look very Roman, that statement would not necessarily have to be true (though it goes a little bit part-and-parcel with my actual point).
What I actually said was that a Rome ruled by Antony and Cleopatra would not look very Roman.
If you see what the two (allegedly) wanted to create, it would have seemed more like Egypt (or in fact Parthia) than Rome!

RPGPundit

Quote from: Werekoala;387650Instead of Spartacus defeating Rome, what if he'd never tried? Instead of listening to those in this army who wanted to sack Rome, he headed over the Alps as planned? Maybe set up a new state in the far north or something like that.

There isn't any hard evidence as such that he was ever planning to "sack Rome". That seems to have mostly been a product of panic among the senators in Rome at that time, but actual events don't seem to bear it out.

In fact, there's no actual consensus as to what the fuck he was thinking; which is why I say that history tends to overemphasize Spartacus' "genius".  It seems like at one point, he wanted to just get the fuck out of Rome; then later, he changed his mind and wanted to wander around Italy for a while in some mindless destruction, and eventually his plan seemed to be to go to Sicily to become a pirate king.

Also, at no point EVER is there any indication that Spartacus wanted to free all the slaves or end the institutions of slavery.  That is a completely post-event relatively modern invention.

RPGpundit

Quote from: Cylonophile;387883I think rome would have followed, seeking to reclaim it's property and to prove to the slaves there was no escape or freedom. Spartacus might have realized that the only freedom for slaves in rome meant overturning the empire.

Again, there is NO evidence that Spartacus gave a shit about "freedom for slaves in rome".  He gave a fuck about his personal freedom, getting the fuck out of rome, and getting ahold of some kind of personal power, but he was not a goddamned universal liberator, much less a motherfucking marxist revolutionary 2000 years ahead of his time!

RPGpundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;388175There isn't any hard evidence as such that he was ever planning to "sack Rome". That seems to have mostly been a product of panic among the senators in Rome at that time, but actual events don't seem to bear it out.

In fact, there's no actual consensus as to what the fuck he was thinking; which is why I say that history tends to overemphasize Spartacus' "genius".  It seems like at one point, he wanted to just get the fuck out of Rome; then later, he changed his mind and wanted to wander around Italy for a while in some mindless destruction, and eventually his plan seemed to be to go to Sicily to become a pirate king.

Also, at no point EVER is there any indication that Spartacus wanted to free all the slaves or end the institutions of slavery.  That is a completely post-event relatively modern invention.

Well, yeah, I never said any of that. I said what if he HADN'T LISTENED to those in his group that wanted to turn around? His original plan was to leave Italy altogether. He let his "advisors" sway his decision, headed back into Italy proper, and was defeated.

I also never said he wanted to free all the slaves - I agree that it was likely not his intent at all. Truthfully, I think at best he was a "reluctant liberator" who ended up at the head of a beast he couldn't control.

So, what do you think about what I actually said? If they had made their way over the Alps? Would they have just dissipated at that point, been slaughtered by barbarians... what?

Yes, unquestionably if they had successfully made it past the alps, they would all have split up and gone separate ways.

RPGpundit

The whole Anthony & Cleopatra ruling longer thing - came from my post about that possible point of divergence timeline. If you guys look around you'll notice I started a seperate thread dedicated to that ide.

 The the thread is called : [IW] Johnson's Rome....


- Ed C.

Meh, some good responses to my idea, here's some good counterpoints:

Mass revolt of slaves who destroy a couple legions then escape over the alps, across the sea, whatever. Roman senate realizes such can't be allowed to happen as it might give other slaves ideas, so they organize an expedition to track down every last escaped slave and bring them back dead or alive, and to crush any barbarians who might take them in as a warning not to give sanctuary to escaped roman slaves.

The escaped slaves realize as long as rome exists as a slave empire they'll never be free or safe, so determine to end rome's days of slavery. Whether or not spartacus himself is interested, they use his name as part of the movement and develop guerrilla warfare tactics to force rome to abandon slavery.

It could still work, and the idea of a rome that was forced out of slavery and had to develop more technology to offset the loss of cheap slave labor has potential.

It could still be the "Spartacus revolt" even if spratacus was dead or had ceased to be interested after escaping over the alps.

SHORT version of what Pundit said:

Kirk Douglas, Dalton Tumbo, and Stanley Kubrick got it wrong.


Fun movie, but not historically accurate



- Ed C.

TBH, I'm kind of bored with the classical Roman era (Punic Wars through the Five Good Emperors) b/c it seems like most ancient world games end up doing that period. I'd also want to stay away from "You're all soldiers" because that's also a little too common for historical games, I find.

What I've been interested in doing for some time is running a "dark" fantasy game set either in, or in a fantasy world very similar to, the late Roman empire - somewhere in between the Diocletian reforms and Justinian's invasion of the peninsula. I think that period has a lot of chaos and weirdness in it already, and would be an extremely fertile source of adventure ideas.