Successor State + Carthage 'What If?' Question

[icydawgfish]

I'm going to slim this down as it appears to have expanded beyond my intentions.

1. By the start date, was there any possibility of either the Ptolemies, the Maks, or the Seleucids gaining the thrones of the other two and reforming Alexander's empire. If so, what would they key points have been.

2. Could Carthage have won the first Punic War, and if so, how would this have affected Rome's fate and Carthage's expansionist policy.

[Cute Wolf]

If any of these "alternate History" happned, we will never be here. Maybe we are now living in age without internet, because there was no Roman empire, no Barbarian Invasion, no Medieval Kingdoms, no Industrial Revolution, and most of us are still peasants live under the yoke of tyrant Emperors..

[Watchman]

That's... quite a stretch. Especially as the Migrations had preciously little to do with whether the Roman Empire existed or not, save that it now happened to occupy the western ass-end of Eurasia where the domino effect pushed a fair few groups into.

[Subotan]

All the Romance languages would probably have been replaced with variants of Punic, save Romanian, which would probably be a variant of Dacian/Magyar/Slavic.
More importantly, would Christianity have arisen? It's debatable as to whether the Carthaginians would have crucified Jesus (If we presume he existed of course), or even if they would have reached Judea. Also, Christianity may not have taken off in the same way that it did with the Romans, and considering Islam is a direct reaction to the deviation of Christianity from Jewish monotheism, in that the Trinity was designed to appeal to Roman Pagans, we would probably all be sacrificing babies OR praying to Ahura Mazda every Sunday.

[Hax]

1. By the start date, was there any possibility of either the Ptolemies, the Maks, or the Seleucids gaining the thrones of the other two and reforming Alexander's empire. If so, what would they key points have been.

1) I don't think the Ptolemies could have done such a thing. They were constantly plagued with rebellions in Egypt and were thus unable to subjugate other lands.

Makedonia is another question, and I'm unsure on that.

I think that the Seleucid Empire may just have been able to do such a thing. Magnesia was a turning point here. If Antiochos III was able to defeat the Romans at Magnesia, he would have most likely subjugated Hellas afterwards. Then, should he have died (and Antiochus IV would come to the throne), he would have subjugated Egypt, there was nobody to draw any funny circles around him and then they would have been very, very close to reconquering Alexandros' realm.

Maybe abou can tell you more.

[Subotan]

I think the other big "what if" question was if Hero of Alexandria's steam engine, or "Aeolipile", had been noticed, and it's practicality been put into practice 1700 years before the Industrial Revolution. The difference in human history it would have made makes my mouth water; a steam powered Roman Empire...
But of course, as Cambyses said, these are merely diversions from real history, but bloody interesting diversions at that.

[||Lz3||]

Another, what if Alexander hadn't died so young?

[Tellos Athenaios]

It would not have been very likely. People seem to forget that the concept of 'machine-made, mass produced goods/ware' predates the Industrial Revolution and that the major factors which propelled what became known as the "Industrial revolution" do not seem to have been in existance way back then. I mean both the [British] Agricultural and the Scientific Revolution and their direct consequences.

[Subotan]

Unless the steam engine accelerated by the development of those concepts, and the wealth of Egypt could easily have fuelled such developments. Coupled with Archimede's steam-powered gun, a steampunk Romani Empire wouldn't have been impossible, and might have repelled the German migrations...
Yum. It makes me hungry thinking about it.

[Watchman]

The usual period solution to a demand to increase production seems to have been to throw more workers at it, though. Easy access to lots of slaves (or just cheap labour) tends to do that.

Plus, there's the question of fuel. Teh energy issue. Steam engine is worth its weight in scrap metal if you don't have something to burn in it, in practice meaning wood and coal. Neither of which the Mediterranean region was all that blessed with, AFAIK...
Have fun making primitive steam power cost-efficient (which is something of an absolute precondition for it becoming a factor in the economy rather than mere curiosity) in that situation. Heck, I doubt if period metallurgy was up to the task either - do recall that by the time Europeans started dabbling in proto-industrial production techniques around the Late Middle Ages or so (using water power), they had some rather massively more advanced metalworking know-how to "build the tools to build the tools" with.

[artavazd]

If any of these "alternate History" happned, we will never be here. Maybe we are now living in age without internet, because there was no Roman empire, no Barbarian Invasion, no Medieval Kingdoms, no Industrial Revolution, and most of us are still peasants live under the yoke of tyrant Emperors..

What makes you think that is not the case today? Titles and roles have changed, but the few still rule the many.

[KozaK13]

If the hellenistic world was united, probably by the Seleucids if things had went Atiochus III and IV's ways, then there may well have been a much earlier industrial revolution or atleast a boom in scientific thought..eg. Archimedes would not have been killed, no christianity to get in the way of general learning and science, no islamic conquests as no little known merchant would have fused jewish and christian teachings with some of his own ideas to make a religion in an arabian back water.

Remember Zalmoxis was compared to Moses and Zoroaster by greeks so there may have been a world religion worshipping Zalmoxis as the idea of an immortal soul would be a catchy one and ofc the worship of other gods in dacia probably would have died out leading to a monotheistic religion. The Romans wouldn't have wiped out the Dacians and prevented the spread of zalmoxism as they would probably not be able to challenge a united hellenistic empire.

All my own conjecture ofc.

[Marcus Ulpius]

There are some theories saying that civilizations (and here we're starting to discuss "what ifs" of classical civilization) are like living organisms. They are born, they grow and expand, creating the new world order. Then they get older and settle down, trying to protect what they have. After that there's a period of decline when they can't protect themselves and are consumed either militarily or by assimilation by younger, more active civilization.

According to those theories, the decline of the classical world was inevitable.