The year is 393 AD. Your name is Flavius Honorius Augustus...

The year is 393 AD. Your name is Flavius Honorius Augustus. You are now the Ruler of an empire on the verge of catastrophe. What do?

I’m 9, I don’t have time for that, there’s more important stuff to do, like play

Kill myself and let Stilicho take control

honestly, there's slim chance of saving the empire

we need three things. the first is better tax collection, which should be enforced by the state, not privates (easier said than done, that measure alone is enough to have the entire empire rebel)

secondly, we need to rectify the borders, i'd give all of the easter adriatic coast to some barbarian force, in order to create a buffer state for the comming invasions, make the borders the rhine (which is a good natural border) and the alps. to the south. I'd also completely abandon britania. leave it to the saxons, and create a trade aliance

Infrastructure and growth would need to improve in order to feed the empire, i'd bet in the gaulish western provicenses and africa for food production.

military is next on the list (all of this is mostly a lifetime effort, and borderline impossible)

Become a cute trap buttslut and prostitute myself to Odoacer.

Good luck giving up provinces. The patricians will cut your throat in your sleep if you took away as much as a square metre off their land.

Launch an overnight purge and become a despot. It's the only way you can take executive control and not have to worry about self-interested patricians and nobles

Hit puberty

/thread

cont., way past three things

we also need to revise the law system. 1000 years of a law system based on jurisprudence will fuck up any legal system, i'd hire the 10 best lawyers and have them create a civil law corpus

now the military. i'd stop the hiring of all mercenaries, and disband them. i'd make military service mandatory, with little to no pay besides food. all armies would need to be centralized, and there should be no private armies, being that the officials are apointed by the senate.

the migratory hords will be the first problem, the visigoths, vandals, ostrogoths, suevians and allans will pose a threat early on. i would use the buffer states to the north to use fabian tactics, and then ambush them in either the rhine river crossing (all bridges should be demolished, borders closed), the alps, or the mediterranean coast. to do this, most of our man power should be focused on the border.

i know i'm missing a lot of things, and i have no idea how many lifetimes of pure, uncorrupted civil management it would take.

in all seriousness, i don't know if there is a man who ever lived or will live that could've saved the roman empire in 393 a.D.

lets be honest, that + the tax collection (which most patricians avoided harder than the plague) would me the most hated emperor in the world

the hero they needed, not the one they wanted

>in all seriousness, i don't know if there is a man who ever lived or will live that could've saved the roman empire in 393 a.D.
Stilicho was holding it together


An Aurelian or Majorian tier emperor might be able

>i don't know if there is a man who ever lived or will live that could've saved the roman empire

You called?

>i'd stop the hiring of all mercenaries
What fucking mercenaries. Where does this idea that the Late Roman Army had some massive abundance of mercenaries come from.

guys, he tried his best and failed... you're kind of proving my point.

Something like this

>Soldiers! Pompey, and the Senate, have formally declared that Gaius Julius Caesar is an enemy of Rome! They have declared that I am a criminal. They have declared, in the fact, that all of you, ALSO, are criminals! Tribune's veto was not exercised! People's Tribune, Mark Anthony, and fifty men of the XIII were assaulted by a thousand head of Pompeian scum. A Tribune, of the Plebs, assaulted on the steps of the Senate house! Can you imagine a more terrible sacrilege!? Our beloved Republic is in the hands of madmen! This is a dark day, and I stand in a fork in the road - I can abide the law and surrender my arms to the Senate, and watch the Republic fall to tyranny and chaos, or, I can go home, with my sword in my hand, and run those maniacs TO THE TARPEIAN ROCK!

He didn’t fail though, he was executed while doing his thing because of rumors
Every time he and Alaric met in battle, Stilicho won, he massacred the invading Ostrogoths and was pretty successful in defending Italy. It was intrigue what did him in

i'm not saying he never had sucess. he tried to stop the fall, and was sucessfull at some points. but in the end, he failed, for the same reason even the most OG governor or civil servant would

because being a better tax collector, or being a more efficient and less corrupt civil servant, will make you extremelly prone to rebelion from either the rich or the poor

if the outsiders didn't kill a good emperor like that, the patricians and the commoners would surelly either kill him or make him abandon power. it's a rigged system in a downwards spiral

>i'd make military service mandatory, with little to no pay besides food. all armies would need to be centralized, and there should be no private armies, being that the officials are apointed by the senate
it's like you want to be assassinated

It would be great if they all agreed to take a pay cut, Rome could afford more soldiers and improve its chances, however that's not going to happen.

Also foederati like the Franks were essentially cheap soldiery and they were loyal right up until Odoacer took Italy. Their successors even laid claim to the title of Western Roman Emperor.

Slowly step down from Imperial affairs and make the position of Emperor a religious, cultural and symbolic figure for the lands of the WRE. I would aim to usurp the religious position of Pope and make it a hereditary position for my family. The role of Magister militum will be my Shogun, a role that is open to whoever controls Italy.

I will transform the Empire in to a decentralised meme state that recognises me at the head of our Church and Emperor but puts the task of government and military affairs in the hands of whichever Kingdom can control the others. Hopefully in the distant future one of my more ambitious descendants can make the position of Emperor more than a figurehead and reign in the various vassal kings.


Just thought I'd try a different hypothetical idea to everyone else.

precocious aren't you

fpbp

Put as much gold in a boat as I can and sail east. Let the Germs and patricians fight over this joke of an empire.

>set Rome on fire

fuck you Germans you get nothing cunts

>giving up Illyria

Fuck off nigger cunt, why in God's name would you give up a province that provides most of your manpower besides Gaul?

purge the patrician class, hire a mercenary bodyguard, hire a team of lawyers to rationalize the law, let stilicho handle military matters, and start a draconian crack down on corruption to begin steps to reform the economy. even if i get assassinated i can rest easy knowing that i did better than that chicken-fucking inbred that was the real honorius.

>giving up land
you'd be dead on the first night, there are two things you dont dirctly fuck with if you want to stay alive as emperor for more than a couple hours: military pay and territorial integrity.