What if Julius Caesar had not been murdered?

[archteryx]

After doing lengthly studies on Julius Caesar, I still wonder how the world in Rome during his time would have ended up, and how our world now would have been affected if he had never been murdered. Would Rome have not fallen? Any thoughts?

[Minimalist]

Gaius Julius Caesar was born in 100 BC which meant he was 56 at the time of his death, well advanced for those times. In addition, he was planning another campaign to avenge the defeat of Crassus at Carrhae by the Parthians (Persians). So, even without an assassin's blade it must be assumed that he was coming to the end of one of the great careers in all history.

Logically, the same forces which conspired to murder him would have still been present a few years later. I submit that your scenario would simply have resulted in the Civil War taking place a bit later. The Senate would still have resented Caesar's naming of Octavian as his 'successor.' Further, Octavian and Mark Antony could never have been reconciled without the presence of Caesar to hold them in check.

My guess is that roughly the same thing would have happened somewhat later and with probably the same outcome.

All of this had nothing to do with the Fall of Rome which was for reasons which had nothing to do with the founding of the Empire.

[Frank Harrist]

I gotta agree with Bob on this. JC had done about all the damage he was gonna do by the time he was assassinated. I think the senate just panicked when he declared himself emperor and a god. Killing him was more punishment than anything else. "We'll show him he isn't a god!" Not that it made much difference as the emperors who followed him were worse than he ever was, at least some of them. BTW, Bob is the man when it comes to Roman stuff. He amazes me with the stuff he knows about Rome. I kinda studied it in passing so I'm no authority. I usually have an opinion though!

[Barracuda]

Perhaps another question to ask along this line....

Attilla's army was posed to sack Rome, indeed, all of Europe, when he died.

The custom of the day required the leaders of the army to then return to Mongolia to see a new leader named. They never returned.

What if Attilla had lived a fews more years?

[Minimalist]

The Roman Republic had been on life support for quite some time prior to Caesar coming along. The reasons for this are complex but to put it in a nutshell they were victims of their own success.

After battling to emerge from the pack as the dominant power in Italy they engaged in a series of wars with Carthage which, when the Second Punic War ended in 202 BC left Rome as the pre-dominant power in the Western Mediterranean. What they did not know at the time was that they were the pre-dominant power in the known world, for a lot of reasons. Over the next 50 years the Romans conquered Greece and Macedon which were but shells of their former glory and power. In 147 BC they sacked and burned Corinth which is generally regarded as the end of Greek independence.

However, the vast amount of wealth which flowed into Italy had the effect of de-stabilizing the Roman peasantry which provided the army. Roman citizens were divided into classes and each class had certain expectations for providing types of equipment and to present themselves for the legio (levy) by which a certain number of them were chosen by lot for service in that year's army. As the elites got richer from overseas conquests another Roman tradition entered into the picture. Senators were barred from business activities EXCEPT being landowners. As a result they began buying up the small farms and creating vast estates for themselves (latifundia). The displaced small farmers took their payments and moved into the city where they a) became part of the Roman mob and b) constituted a free-born, citizenry with a deep sense of entitlement.

Gradually impoverished, the Roman middle class could no longer meet the wealth requirements for the various classes of soldier (velite, hastati, principes, triarii, equites) and it became harder and harder to meet the manpower requirements. Finally, in 105 BC they suffered a serious defeat at the hands of two German tribes and were unable to replenish their losses.

In this crisis, Gaius Marius, reformed the Roman army and did away with the citizen militia. He enrolled members of the urban poor for 20 years with the promise of land and pensions at the end. With this force of professionals he defeated the Germans but had set the stage for the later rise of Sulla, Pompey and Caesar. I keep an eye on this situation because in the early 1970's we did away with a citizen army and went to professionals. Time will tell how this will work out.

[Frank Harrist]

Perhaps another question to ask along this line....

Attilla's army was posed to sack Rome, indeed, all of Europe, when he died.

The custom of the day required the leaders of the army to then return to Mongolia to see a new leader named. They never returned.

What if Attilla had lived a fews more years?

Now that woulda been a whole different kettle of fish. We'd all be drinking fermented milk with our horse-kebobs. Short, stout, dark, and bow-legged.

[Minimalist]

LOL.

Well, as a guy I used to work with always said, "if if's and but's were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry christmas."

It's an interesting scenario but the Romans, under Flavius Aetius, and their Visigoth allies had defeated Attila at Chalons-sur-Marne a couple of years earlier. Even thought the Romans were having dynastic problems they may have been able to cobble together a coalition to face Attila again but even if not, the Western Roman Empire had only twenty years to live. It is unlikely that Attila would have been able to subdue all of the various barbarian tribes in whatever would have remained of his life span. Things would have probably worked out pretty much as they did.

[Tech]

JC wouldnt have made a difference , but , if the roman empire hadnt fallen then the world would probably be far more advanced than it is today .
A simple example would be that it took western civilization 1800 years before they had the same level of plumbing heating and sewer systems that the romans used.

[Minimalist]

Right you are, tech.


In 100AD a Roman citizen could begin a journey at Damascus and travel the entire way on paved roads, complete with inn's and guarded by police, using a single 'passport' and a single currency and end his journey at the Rhine River on the coast of the North Sea.

The Western world has still not managed to recover that level of political stability.

[Guest]

In 100AD a Roman citizen could begin a journey at Damascus and travel the entire way on paved roads, complete with inn's and guarded by police, using a single 'passport' and a single currency and end his journey at the Rhine River on the coast of the North Sea.
The Western world has still not managed to recover that level of political stability.

Why would anyone travel eastwards the long way, when a voyage across the Mediterranean would have shaved weeks, if not months, off the journey?
As for 'political stability', that was only maintained by armed force. And they still never managed to fully conquer Britain; the native tribes in Wales, Scotland and Ireland played them at their own game by retreating into hill fastnesses the Romans couldn't hope to control. When the US or other countries try to do similar now, they're written off as 'warmongers'. Why was it different 2000 years ago?
Roman towns, and Rome particularly, were economic vacuum cleaners; all the produce from the empire and surrounding countryside was sucked into them and consumed. They produced nothing themselves.

[Minimalist]

The point is that one "could" make such a journey under those conditions. Besides, sea travel had dangers which even the Romans could not control as evidenced by the number of wrecks found in the Med.

As far as Scotland goes there was a point beyond which even the Romans did not see a value of conquering land. They never bothered to push into the Sahara, either. Hadrian's wall, which was less a fortification than a border fence, enabled trade and dissuaded any sort of raiding force. They did push beyond it for a time but it appears that it simply wasn't worth the effort.

As far as Roman rule is concerned, while it is true that they behaved in many of the same ways as other conquerors they also brought roads, law, stability, engineering and peace to much of their empire. This is attested by the infrequency of serious revolts by conquered territories which had been pacified. One in Britain (which pushes the 'pacification' concept since it was only some 30 years later) , two in Palestine, and those, frankly, were caused by the particularly boorish behavior of Roman officials, including in the case of Palestine, the emperor himself.
When the Romans departed Britain in 410 your anscestors were sorry to see them go and the barbarians who were breaking down the eastern borders were not doing so because they wanted to destroy the empire but because they wanted to be part of it.

[Guest]

It's debatable that the Romans didn't see Scotland, Ireland or Wales as not being worth the effort. They had a gold mine at Dolgellau in Wales, and surely would have pressed further if hadn't been for the fact that the Welsh tribes forced them to confine fort building to the heads of valleys.
As for Scotland, they went as far as sailing round Shetland, so they must have been aware of the potential of such a huge landscape. A legionary fortress was constructed at Inchtuthil in Angus, with another at Ardoch in Perthshire. Between them lay the Gask Ridge fortified trading zone, and a fort at Perth. A road running all the way from the Antonine Wall in Falkirk connected them all. That's not usually the waste of resources you expect when something isn't worth the effort, especially by ancient standards.
There was also a revolt in Scotland by the Maeatae tribe in the 200s, which resulted in a punitive campaign being launched; there are also written accounts of Celtic tribes from beyond the Antonine Wall launching sea raids against Hadrian's Wall, so it's not true that the Iceni revolt was the only one. It just happens to be the best known!
There is no evidence that the Romans even tried to conquer Ireland, but we don't know why. Perhaps it was too much of a leap into the unknown for them?

[Minimalist]

The Roman Army followed Roman merchants in many cases. They would have known exactly what was there (Ireland) and there certainly would have been trading and other commercial contacts between Britain and Ireland probably going back centuries.

Hadrian made a conscious decision to cease further Roman expansion and abandoned Mesopotamia which had been overrun by his predecessor, Trajan. It may have been a mistake if you believe in the doctrine that a state which stops expanding begins to contract, but it is what he did.

Besides, the Romans had acheived the Napoleonic ideal of the Continental system. They controlled all trade with the empire and it is clear that towns sprang up at the forts along Hadrian's wall to engage in commerce with the Caledonians. There were no other powers for the Scots, Welsh or Irish to trade with. The Romans had cornered the market. As long as they perceived no threat to the peace of the empire from those places there would have been no incentive to undertake a costly campaign.

[Guest]

But they perceived enough of a threat from the Caledonians to dismantle their military structure north of Carlise and retreat back behind Hadrian's Wall.
As for the Caledonians having no-one else to trade with, why wouldn't they have continued to trade between themselves, and with Ireland? I don't accept the argument that trade with the Romans was the be-all and end-all, or they would have forcibly conquered Scotland, Wales and Ireland without pausing for thought.
The Celts practised client kingship, so there was a need for wars both to harvest new 'subjects' and to reward your loyal warriors with conspicuous consumption. Between that and trading with allied tribes/kingdoms, they might not have needed to bother trading with the Romans.

[Minimalist]

That's one explanation. Another would be that the real military threat to the empire was diametrically opposite, on the Syrian-Parthian frontier. It made little sense to try to build up the Antonine Wall just to gain a shorter line to defend when Hadrian's Wall was already there and complete. The resurgent Parthians were a distinct threat as opposed to some Scottish tribes which were a hypothetical problem.