Could the Roman Empire have survived to the present day?

Ok, why did the Germans call themselves the Holy Roman Empire? Is it because they were Catholic and was the most powerful?

Generally, the term has been used in various ways until the end of the Middle Ages.
When Charles the Great met Leo in 799 in Paderborn, they are thought to have agreed that the Frankian king became the (Roman) Emperor.
And that's really were all this started ...

While the first emperors just called themselves (or were called) Imperator Augustus, since Otto II the term Roman Emperor came in use.
Holy Roman Empire dates dates back to 1254, Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation first in the early 1500's.

Lead Poisoning
The Romans in the east started using lad to seal their amphorae of wine. Wine being acidic dissolved in the wine, and drink too much wine and you get a headache that won't go away.

The loss of intellectual capacity at about 500AD led to the conversion to Christianity and under the HRE, drank the body of their savior into 1000 years of dead poisoning and the dark ages.

The Arabs, at the time of the fall of Rome (thankfully) had some overdue books from the Alexandria Library, and kept a mere fraction of the knowledge of Greek and Rome and Egypt and Babylonia from the water heater. Fortunately those books included some of the works of Euclid and Archenemies. The Arabs along the way invented algebra and distillation until the west recovered from the excess of Religion and Aristotle (Romes overdue book from the library). By the time the west recovered from their religions excess the east fell into one one of their own. It was during this time the west ,with a little luck, stole the knowledge of the east (algebra and Euclid), added gunpowder and the discovery that distillation refined wine into whiskey, (an awesome combination).

Fortunately, distillation of alcohol acted like a lead filter and after the blackpowder smoke cleared the west had thrown off the shackles of Aristotelian logic and cheap (& leaded) wine--that is except for the church.

Like all things in fiction and fact though this whole string of connections that should be allayed by "this too will pass."

Rap

Thank for that Rap.

Quite a masterpiece in its own little way.

Interesting stuff, thanks. Was Leo, the pope?

Back to the topic, the Byzantine was no longer an empire after constantinople had been sacked and regained again.

The is an interesting alternative history short story, A Hero of the Empire, by Robert Silverberg in which both the East and West Roman Empires have survived and are still controlling the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the 7th century AD.

Yes. More here

Actually, the most definitive study of Rome is one of the oldest--The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by the British Historian Edward Gibbon. This massive study details the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as being mainly due to the triumph of religion( The Roman Catholic Church) and barbarianism( the invasion of Rome through many years by the invasion of Rome through many years by the largely German and French tribes.

But the Romans had been using lead for all sorts of uses such as amphorae, water pipes, etc ever since the republic. However much lead got into their systems it didn't stop them bulding the greatest empire of their time. So that can't have been the reason for its decline.

Water isn't acidic so lead from water pipes doesn't typically dissolve lead --and canning wasn't a known Roman technology. So the foodstuffs stored in Amphora were typically dry (milled grain). It was the synergetic combination of acidic wine and the lead in the seals that resulted in St Vitas dance.

Canning and lead poisoning is a known phenomena and is attributed to be the cause of the strange end of theFranklin Expedition

Rap

I think I know.

Julius Caesar was in his time, the most talented, innovative politican (of course, after him, some other Caesars surpassed him)--and one thing he learned the value of was how to use was the army to his benefit. He learned that if they were loyal to you, it enhanced your power with the people, and in tight situations they came in quite handy--and made you look good.

So, learning from Julius' repetoire, increasingly, Caesars developed close relationships with their military, and it's leaders. Of course, eventually, this led to schmoozing with them, making concessions for them---in effect, strengthening military leader's political power--and weakening their resolve to do the hard work they'd always done that had made them the feared fighting force they were.

So.

This perversion of roles--Caesars with their hats in their hands before increasingly powerful military leaders of Rome's armies soon led to the military guys wondering why they bothered with the middle man (Caesars), so the military guys replaced the Caesars.

This did not go well. They changed leaders very frequently. They weren't cut out for leadership of the Roman Empire. Rome's administration began to fail. The Empire was huge. It reached over to Hadrian's Wall in England--quite far-flung. Well, one thing that had strengthened Rome was the intense military presence they had at locations like Hadrian's Wall. When you approached a Roman border before, you knew it.

During this military reign, the orders to defend such positions became lax. Rome was no longer as feared, or respected. The military guys were enjoying their heyday.

The eventual seige by the Goths was quite a big deal. Symbolically. It signalled the utter humiliation of a former Empire.

edited for clarity--

Um, so that would be a no.

They had to move through evolutions of politics and make their fatal mistakes.

Hadrian's Wall was just 80 Roman miles long (about 72 British miles).

The Limes in Germany extended over more than 550 kilometers (= about 350 British miles).


When the Romans built a wall and series of forts between the natural defences of the Rhine and Danube, and constructed Hadrian's Wall between the Irish and North seas, this was for the first time, Europe was unified and confined within a fixed border.

The defences from the Black Sea to Egypt and along the northern flank of Africa were constructed later.

Interesting information.

When one has wine induced lead poisoning it tends to affect
Quintus Varuswhere are my Legions?

By the third century the legions were largely manned by recruits that were born in the outlying regions. The soldiers had lost their fealty to Rome.

Rap

Read your Titus Livius (known to the Angle-ish as Livy) and you will learn of the creation of the order of equites, or knights. The early history of Rome is characterized by the struggle between the order of plebs and the order of patres. In short (and this leaves out volumes of need to know information), the order of Patres (the "fathers," allegedly descended from the founding families, the class from which the Senators came) would expropriate almost all public lands (taken in the conquest of Rome's neighbors) and set up huge, slave-driven operations to produce basic commodities--wine, olive oil, pottery, cloth--known as latifundia. In the political struggles of the two classes, the people had won the right to elect tribunes (same origin as the word tribe--the tribe is the basic political unit of the early Roman state). Complaining that they were not paid while on service in the legions, and, for the second time, withdrawing from the city in a body, the order of Plebs won the right to be paid, and to elect military tribunes to afford them the same protection from abuse while on military service as the tribunes in the city provided them in the Forum. The Senators sought a way to co-opt the power of these "new men" and the creation of the order of equites was the answer. Raised to the dignity of knights, these ambitious men from the "lower" orders became the factors and agents of the patrician class in the commerce generated from the latifundia, and grew wealthy themselves. In his historical pot-boiler, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon goes on ad nauseum about the corruption of this order of society, and their seduction by mere wealth (quite a "holier-than-thou" attitude from an Englishman writing in the mid-eighteenth century).

Basically, this practice, and the increasing alienation from political life in the order of Patres resulting from the establishment of the principiate empire, left such commerce and the accumulation of wealth as the only pursuit for the most powerful elements of Roman society. But they were driving small holders and small craftsmen out of business. Dependent upon a consumer society for the generation of their wealth, their practices destroyed the consumers upon whom they might have relied, if they had employed wage earners rather than slaves. The continued but decelerating expansion of the empire assured a continuation of their markets for a few centuries, but the politico-economic basis of the empire in the west was corroded away from the time of Sulla onward, as slave-driven industry replaced small business, and as the society's most powerful class abandoned governing (at which they had been abyssmal failures) and took up sybaritic greed as a metier.

Ahhh - hibernation time is over. :wink:

GREAT!

The traditional western view of the Roman Empire tends to concentrate on the European half. There was also an eastern half. Basically the western empire was rural, agricultural and poor, with a small population. The eastern half was urban, industrial and wealthy with a large population. In the troubles of the 6th century the eastern half got tired of paying for the western half and cut it loose. As a result the eastern empire did very well for itself for at least another 500 years. It should also be kept in mind that there was an environmental crises in the 6th century. It was getting colder. The result, as in the 14th, century was pandemics as populations over reached food supply.

One of the most interesting historical phenomena (for me) is the spread of the plague in the 14th century. If you plot it chronologically and spatially at the end of the first two years you have the outline of the empire. Medieval western Europeans had, from our perspective, the odd notion that the empire still existed. If that map is any indicator, in terms of social networks, (trade etc) they were right.

I find it interesting that Setanta appears to place no blame on the Invasions of the Barbarians and the inner decay caused by the new proletariet- the Christians/ I am aware of Setanta's sterling reputation in things Historical but, I am afraid that I will accept the judgment of Gibbon's CLASSIC study.

I wonder if all the Historians at the University of Chicago( where I took some classes years ago) realize that Gibbon wrote a "pot boiler."

Whether or not they realized it, Gibbon was so distorted in his view by his Protestant ego, condemning in scurrilous terms the primitive christians, and overlaying his narrative with his moralizing tone, that he completely missed the economic implications of the ancient practices in the west. As Acq has pointed out, the older, more urbanized and sophisticated east survived nearly intact for a thousand years after the sack of Rome. When Alaric lead his Goths into Italy, Rome was already eclipsed, and the western administrative capital was in Ravenna, protected by its marshes. Alaric, as a Roman officer, was seeking for his people the compensation he believed was due them, and himself personally, under the existing system. He was opposed by the Majister Peditum, Stilcho, who was a German. A barbarian invasion? In the fifth century?--hardly. The Romans admitted under the old tried and true federations system, one "barbarian" tribe after the other. When Aetius defeated the Huns in France, he did so because the "barbarian" Franks agreed to an alliance on the federation system.

In case your U of C profs did not elucidate it for you, the federation system allowed tribes to settle in Roman territory, giving them one third of the land in an agreed upon area, on condition of providing military levies. It was used long before Alaric, and it was used long after. There is no doubt of the great value of Gibbon's sholarship. There should also be no doubt of the warped, moralizing view of the Protestant ascendancy which he brought to what he wrote.

For a thoroughly reliable outline of the "barbarian" invasions of the empire, i recommend the lecures of J. M. Barry, which have been collected in book form. Mr. Barry implies, without stating outright, that the federation system continue to work until the arrival of the Lombards, and the "caving in" of the administraiton in the west to their demand for two thirds of the land they wished to settle, and the recognition of the authority of their "King." (The Lombards, like all German tribes, truly had no King, but like most of them, they cobbled one together at need, which is what the Lombards did in negotiating with the empire.) Those "barbarians" did not cause the corruption and decay in the west which assured the death of Roman authority. The relative economic health of the empire in the east assured that it would survive, even the destruction of its main army and the emperor by the Bulgars. "Barbarians" in the form of Goths, Servs, Bulgars, Magyars and the Rus all "invaded" the eastern portion of the empire as well, but it did not "fall" because its economy and polity were healthy until well into the second millenium of this era.