Inventor wrote:
Pax Romana came from having the largest army, and using it to smash other states.
Carthage is an example, after killing the people, tearing down building and filling the harbors, they cut down every tree and sowed the fields with salt.
Numedia was almost as bad, They cut down the trees, Romans fought best in the open, built cities, and saw the rivers dry up within a hundred years. Numidia sold Rome more than a third of the grain and oil it ate, and when Caligula went broke, he could not pay, so he declared war. Seven years to invade, at great cost. Caluidus wanted to stop the war, but was told they coukld not pay their army. Killing them off was cheaper.
Rome pillaged, destroyed the economy and the people who could run it, and put in an occupation government to collect tribute on a percentage basis. Raban from Dune, is modeled on Roman rule. Squeeze them, squeeze them for every cent. Reduce them to slave labor in place, then farm the land to sand. The Harconnen are very Roman.
Roman Peace was the grave. Kill, enslave, loot, exploit, and they turned the land to desert, where before it was productive.
Of course Romans wrote about how they were helping the world while destorying everything.
The result, Dark Age for a thousand years, and still the lands did not recover. Arabs spread out of Arabia as the land now suited them. Weakened populations could not resist. Islam is a direct result of Roman rule.
All systems were broken by Rome, including their own. They fell when they ran out of places to loot.
Another reason for the fall was the Chinese silk they bought, and the Chinese only took gold and silver. All the hard money flowed back the silk road. Once Roman gold coins were common, they all vanished in trade.
Small silver, cut with lead and zinc, and bronze, copper and lead, are what remain. They also smelted silver in Rome, and pumped many tons of lead into the air. Their water works was lead, and the pottery glaze. Mental and economic decline came together, and weak food grown in overworked soils.
All pastorial people live long, as they move to pastures new, and fresh. Like the American west, it once was grassland, rich and supporting many species, then running too many cattle on open range reduced it to west Texas in 150 years. The Middle East was a green land, Rome made it a desert.
Rome was their own worst problem. The destruction of all other econimies will catch up with you. Dune again, war like desert people took over, looting on a smaller scale, and seeking camel pasture.
The action moves to China, India, to the north, and invaders like the Turks. All that was left of the Roman world was the Latin Church. Roman England fell the day Rome left, and started speaking Germanic.
Rome was a Military State based on loot and pillage, an organized crime empire.
The Romans themselves were working local politics with their writtings, and later the British view that they continued Greco Roman Culture, They did in the colonial era. Most of the rest is race based, how white people with ships and guns helped the world.
We are now at the stage where Rome taught everyone outside the empire how to fight, drive the Romans out, The borders fell till they were the city limits of Rome.
The Eastern Empire was a city, little else, and being an end of the silk road, was the Walmart of the time. When it fell to the Arabs the Turks came and changed things. The Silk Road remained open.
In the path of history, we have a large and expensive army, many government employees, a debased money, it was silver in my youth, now a quarter is over $10. Pennies are zinc.
Ibn Khaldun wrote in 1300 how all government before his time fell, and we are in the last stages. Debased money, bloated government, and issuing debt paper instead of paying our debts.
Worldwide the Dictators we put in to rule are falling. A few hundred fighters in Afganstan are holding off 100,000 of our troops. People beyond the borders have learned to fight back.
History is a lot of things.
To be sure, the Pax Romana was not all it was cracked up to be. It was essentially a totalitarian state fueled by a slave based economy. Among ancient Rome's misdeeds is the deporting of a vast percentage of the Jewish population, either resettling them in dangerous regions as the Rhineland, or enslaving them to build the Colosseum. Or how Julius Caesar had slaughtered and enslaved millions of Celts in Gaul - an act which today would be regarded as genocide. His troops even used rape as a weapon, laughing how they had taught Gallic women to "lay along the road." Or how Spartacus' gladiator and slave rebellion was in the end put down, and the thousands of survivors were crucified en mass.
Occasionally, native peoples got their licks in. The tribes of Germany, under the leadership of their gallant leader Arminius, had an uprising against the three legions stationed on their land in 9 A.D., and utterly annihilated them, permanently pushing back the Roman border beyond the Rhine. Or how the Persians had wiped out an invading Roman army in modern day Turkey, and the commanding general, Marcus Crassus (who had destroyed Spartacus' army) ended up having his severed head used as a stage prop in a play put on for the Persian king. sometimes, the good guys win some.
As a former history major with a four year degree, Roman period history had always been a favorite of mine. I have to admit, though, sometimes I find myself rooting for Rome's enemies.
-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer
19 May 2011, 2:24 am
