Steampunk Rome

What would a setting where the Romans decided to actually develop their flashy steam powered trinkets into proper steam engines be like?

Would the Roman Empire have survived into the modern age?

No steel good enough to make engines or large scale industrial equipment.

Not even the greatest feats of engineering can withstand cultural decadence.

They would have been fine if they hadn't started giving the plebs everything for free. That's what fucked them over really.

Giving the plebs everything for free was not the disease, it was a symptom.

>Would the Roman Empire have survived into the modern age
>Implying it hasn't

Speculative user, if Rome had developed proper steel and industry

Rome would have basically turned into 'Murrica

false.

They had a whole lot of problems that just throwing steampunk machines everywhere wouldn't solve. The likely result would just be steampunk Medieval Age, with steampunk Charlemagne and steampunk Byzantines and steampunk Muslims.

>Major world superpower
>getting all up in the business of every other nation
>Allied with the Judaic peoples
>Currently in the process of immigrating itself to death
>"Stabilizing" other nations to take their resources

If they have steam power that means they can move armies around quickly. That means that they can expand further, deal with rebellions quicker and the communication loop is reduced.

>Steampunk
Ugh.

>What would a setting where the Romans decided to actually develop their flashy steam powered trinkets into proper steam engines be like?
Not much different. Rome already had a massive technological edge over everyone except the Persians, and said Persians would almost certainly be able to copy Roman tech. Remember that from Phalanx to Maniple to Legion, the Romans always copied their enemies or adapted to the needs of their time, marching into battle with Spanish swords and Gallic chainmail using Greek tactics. Any who wishes to stand against Rome needs to adapt just as quickly.

>Would the Roman Empire have survived into the modern age?
No. The technological gap would not have changed the deep, underlying root problems that caused the decay of the West Roman Empire specifically (it became a moneysink because all money was made in the East, the split between Christians and Pagans tore it apart whereas the East was more uniformly Christian [though split into different sects], low birth rates, abolition of conscription, extending citizenship to Peregrines, borderhopping pisshair illegals who refused to adapt to the local culture, learn the local language and respect local customs).

Perhaps the Eastern Roman Empire would cling on a bit longer, but it'd be nothing more than a modern day Greater Greece with a lot more pomp and circumstance.

EVERYONE tries to copy Rome, mate. America isn't Rome, it's just incredibly pretentious.

>be Rome
>occupy Judaic peoples so hard you mint a coin celebrating your brutal crushing of one of their rebellions, distribute widely across Mediterranean to rub it the fuck in

>be America
>best Ally
>constantly throw money from bloated defense budget at them they must use to buy out guns at discount rates that amounts to both a payoff and free weapons

Yeah, super comparable there, \pol\ster.

You need to fix the real problem.
Which is of course slavery. Not in the PC sense, just that it was destroying the economical push for developing the steam shit that was already known.
Hence, the real WHAT IF is what if Spartacus had won, freeing all the slaves?
After something like that the necessities of properly employing, feeding etc for masses of non-slaves would have pushed for technological advancements.
After that, even something apparently trivial as rudimental bicycles would have guaranteed the new, massive biker-legions the power to spread and maintain a large empire.
But of course, the civil unrest due to the inclusion of such slave masses would have brought instability anyway. Th remote provinces would have defended against centralized power by building castles, fortified pyramids and shit. This would have triggered explosives research,
But mind my words: this would have meant no Middle-age and a more unified Europe, probably with only one language, but this would have reduced the advantages that Europe used after XV century and slowed the competition between nations. Basically, you could look at Chinese history and bring it in Europe. I think that all things considered we would live in a society and tech age not very different from our own. Probably without USA tho, but with some kind of united Indian nations in the Americas. A more balanced world that is.

>Hence, the real WHAT IF is what if Spartacus had won, freeing all the slaves?

That was not Spartacus main goal and he would have had no issues with idea of slavery.

>Rome builds Steam Tanks in 0 AD
>Crushes Persia, China with advanced tech
>The tech spreads across the world

>Some time passes, lets say 200 years

>Tech diffuses to all of Europe and Asia - even parts of Africa. Roman prefects established in conquered regions ruled over by Rex's
>Eventually, due to being a continent spanning empire a thousand years before the telephone or telegraph the local leaders gain a *lot* of autonomy, it is effectively impossible for the Emperor in Rome to establish order and rule in the Korean prefect.
>Nothing is stopping the far-off prefects from going to war with each other or consolidating land through marriage

>200 more years later

>By the time of Muhammad the Arabian Hordes are armed with steam rifles, steam tanks and a army of ten thousand. They face disorganized and infighting prefects.

>1000 years later

>Constantinople falls to the Turkish hordes, armed with mustard gas to get over the iron walls.

>Would the Roman Empire have survived into the modern age?
Well depends how nasty a fuck tonne of slaves with nothing to do can be.

That assumes muhammad would actually get any traction

Reminder that Muhammed created Islam not for the Arabs, but to bond Judaism and Christianity in one faith.

If the Romans successfully crush Christianity, Muhammed would have no reason to create Islam, and would just be an Arab proselyted into Judaism.

DECHRISTIANIZE!

It'd have to have a lot of very good cultural and plausible reasons. The Roman empire did have the knowledge and examples to bring massive pre-industrial labor saving devices into existence - and had done so in some small cases primarily in spanish holdings. I''m talking about the devices that allowed food storage and population to explode, to greatly increase forge sizes and the amount of forced air and thus heat they could produce, and formed the basis of technical gearing proliferation - the motherfucking waterwheel.

Hell, it was even in Rome itself during one siege (though this was after the fall) that to increase their food stores, makeshift water-borne grist mills were floated in the river where it was discovered and proliferated that undershot waterwheels are more efficient around bridges (as the pylons would restrict the water flow so you'd have a greater volume moving somewhat faster than the surrounding area of water). That led to centuries of bridges being optimal milling territory and a double taxation bonus for feudal lords as they get to collect bridge tolls and have the most profitable mills.

However, these were unlikely to have ever seen much adoption during the actual empire, which is why for a long time waterwheels remained in spain or on a handful of villas largely as show pieces - because the Romans had no need for labor saving devices when so much of their economy was built on abundant and cheap slaves. There was also an anti-developmental touch to their engineers - as great as their achievements were, very few actually understood what they were doing. It was engineering by tradition and adhering to what they knew worked with very little deviation (which is why bridge building technology stagnated for a long time) - by and large it wasn't until monkly orders developed as learning centers that mathematics started to be applied to architecture rather than simply being an experienced trade skill (which is why arch design expand later).

And the monks did roughly the same thing by keeping all that information inhouse until the Renaissance #woke up the nobility to the value of knowledge.

They'd need to not have so many slaves.

There's no point building labour-saving devices if you don't care about saving labour.

>horrible plague decimates the population
>slave economy completely collapses
>greek engineers say "gee, if we put up some steam machines, we could do X!"

>What would a setting where the Romans decided to actually develop their flashy steam powered trinkets into proper steam engines be like?

They would have to survive an assualt from a 19th century Empire for long enough for them to copy everything that Empire has to offer. Prussia would be a good pick here, as they're mostly located outside of the Empire's confines.

It's how they got all of their other technology after all.

Empire, not Republic

If the slave economy collapses, the whole of the Roman Empire goes with it. That means no stable trade routes, meaning no stable supply of materials, meaning no reliable way for technological innovations to proliferate.

That means those Greek engineers aren't going to be inventing any new-fangled machinery. They're going to be building siege engines and castles for every petty warlord in the suddenly-anarchic Greek peninsula.

They would have had to discover the sardinian coal-mine, then invented all the infrastructure you need to run a coal mine .

Funnily enough, the Romans were pretty fast to repurpose the funds the hellenistic kingdoms invested into universities and technology for booze and elections.

So Rome being gone would probably mean that they'd start investing again.

Why would they have done that? Slaves don't incentivize technical revolution.

>Why would they have done that?
Viagra was intended to be a heart medicine, cola was originally intended to cure indigestion and minoxidil was created to cure ulcers. All three failed in their original applications, all three found different applications for which they're widely used today. Happy accidents are a thing.

Slavery was still a thing in the US, but we still innovated enough to make things like mechanical reapers and the cotton gin.

Sometimes innovations make slaves even more productive.