what if rome had never fallen?

[Craterus]

The fall of Rome was inevitable, with so many barbarians, and that their top priority, it was going to happen.

[Marcellus]

Plus Rome was stagnating, politically and militarily.Emperors were very insecure in their power, leading to the reduction in willingness to campaign. The legions were getting much smaller also, and the Empire was basically decaying.

[VAE VICTUS]

But What If I Hadnt Of Fallen?what If It Never Stagnated?

[mercian billman]

But What If I Hadnt Of Fallen?what If It Never Stagnated?

If Rome had never fallen or stagnated they probably would have the entire world by now and Space Legionares would be getting ready to land on Mars

Seriously though the number of possibilities is infinite, but I believe that the Roman empire would've found itself locked in a cold war with another growing civilization.

[AntiochusIII]

If Rome had never fallen or stagnated they probably would have the entire world by now and Space Legionares would be getting ready to land on Mars

Err... no. The glorious Earth Empire (the name "Roman" is obsolete long ago, traitor! Since the victorious battle of Madagascar where our mighty fleet crushed the last remnants of the Chinese resistance 5 centuries ago we dominated Earth completely) is already on its way to colonize Pluto with ten thousand colonists, the final frontier before the endless universe, where our empire will one day rule: supreme, unchallenged.

Now, seriously, Rome is, in a way, destined to stagnation. There had been too large a gap between the lives of the rich and the poor, too much corruption, and the slow stagnation of non-progress in many ways. The Roman world was "too stabilized" that it did not spun real progress in philosophy, technology, and other such achievements unlike a world of competition could. So our development as a whole may, in fact, be less than that.

[discovery1]

Rome probably would have ended up like china: Stagnent.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

If Rome never fell...we'd never hear of the Huns?

[Rodion Romanovich]

But What If I Hadnt Of Fallen?what If It Never Stagnated?

It would have required that Rome accepted the cultures and independence of all her neighbors at least 300-500 years before Odovacar took Rome for the Roman Empire to be able to survive, and/or carry out extensive replacement of her old values and ideologies, like the Byzantine Empire did (otherwise it had hardly lasted). They crushed the early rebels who were willing to negotiate and only fought for their own freedom and would accept a fair peace. That left Rome with only the rebels who didn't only fight for their freedom, but also for the destruction of Rome, the total elimination of every part of the empire.

Assuming a situation where Rome did carry out extensive enough reforms of it's ideologies to survive, I think Rome would have remained a backwards underdeveloped state. Rome was very conservative and never really invented anything, but stole most inventions from others. For example Rome never improved farming technology even though they knew how to do it, because it was cheaper and more according to their mentality and culture to hold slaves. So Rome would hardly have ended up using space legionaries or any modern technology unless the surrounding nations and tribes had invented it first. Imperial Rome is often the wet dream of any Imperalist, as history has shown many have wanted to become Rome, but their image of Rome is a refined one which hides the simple truth - that Rome was a bunch of people who begun by defending themselves, then ended up attacking first to defend themselves, and then ended up attacking first to please themselves, and thereby caused their own destruction. Unfortunately they got very powerful before they reached the state of attacking and oppressing, so they had quite a lot of power build up to consume by their oppressive folly, so the fall and ultimate total destruction of Rome took quite long time.

[Watchman]

Those what-ifs are pure fantasy anyway. Thus far in history there has not been a single empire that had not at some point gone and cracked up - the details of "why" vary, but internal decay, restless barbarians and/or a neighbor in a better condition tend to be heavily represented.

Anyway, as far as premodern empires go they all had a certain threshold point beyond which they simply could not muster the resources to expand further, if only for the simple fact that keeping hold of what they already had tied down so much. And after that happened, they nigh invariably started getting kind of lazy and corrupt and so on as all the social climbing and getting rich in essence had to be done at home, conquests now kind of being off the agenda.

Second of all, it was too hard to stop it. The world at that time was absolutely sick of Roman rule. Everyone hated them for the murderous things they did.

Huh ? That's total bunk. Most of the citizens had no particular issues with the Empire per se, but rather with the fact it was crumbling in the pressure of constant civil strife and all those barbarians pouring over the borders. Nobody particularly likes to have his home looted and burned by a civil war or a barbarian incursion after all. The barbarians, for their part, tended to be only too happy to fight under the Roman flag in return of for example land to settle on or plain pay; in any case they had way more pressing issues (namely the Migrations) than something silly like disliking Rome, which in one way or another was often their prime source of real wealth anyway.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Huh ? That's total bunk. Most of the citizens had no particular issues with the Empire per se, but rather with the fact it was crumbling in the pressure of constant civil strife and all those barbarians pouring over the borders. Nobody particularly likes to have his home looted and burned by a civil war or a barbarian incursion after all.

Sorry, by whole world, I meant barbarian tribes were all sick of Romans.

[Watchman]

Still bunk. The hairy buggers were chiefly interested in making a profit out of the Romans - by trade, raiding, mercenary service, tribute payments or whatever - and for example were about the single biggest source of recruits for the assorted potentates' comitatus troops (the main Roman mobile field units of the Late Antiquity period, although as a rule initially founded to protect the relevant bigwig from his enemies...). Made good service too. Heck, entire barbarian tribes would migrate quite long ways to the vicinity of the Roman border in search of get-rich opportunities, with the obvious destabilizing effects for the border regions. It was even worse in the Dacia-Pannonia-Bulgaria region, where the only thing of any value the barbarians had to offer the Romans was manpower - be it slaves or mercenaries. Neither extensive slaving operations nor large bumbers of would-be mercenaries are somehting that add to the general stability or well-being of any area...