| May 29 |  |
Editor says, what if a force majeure transformed the Roman Crisis of the Third Century? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the August 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1453, following the resettlement of the Italian Peninsula the City of Nova Roma was officially reverted back to Byzantium, itself a Latinization of the original Greek name Byzantion.
Reversion of ByzantiumAlthough founded by Byzas from Megara in 657 B.C., events really began to take shape in 196 A.D. when the Roman General Septimus Severus occupied the city. After ascending to the throne, he rebuilt the city and it prospered once again. Meanwhile, developments in Western Europe were going in the other way. Roman Emperor Aurelian was about to launch a campaign to retake the Gallic Empire when an inexplicable darkening of the day sky began in Western Europe.
Over several years, the hours of daylight steadily reduced, and agriculture began to fail. Fortunately, Aurelian successfully organized a mass eastward decantment and when this was completed, Byzantium was designated the official capital of the Roman Empire. Centuries passed and despite efforts to preserve this territory as a Roman-Empire-in-the-East, it soon took on many of the attributes of an Eastern Roman Empire. Because the Italian Peninsula contained the resources that had sustained the elite, and more than that, the new capital was still imbued with a pervasive Greek influence that drove out the Roman homogeneity. By the time that Western Europe was inhabitable once again, the imperium was for all intents and purposes a Second Greek Empire. A future split between East and West Roman Empires seemed inevitable.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: Byzantium, Constantinople, Rome, Roman, Aurelian. Editor says, in reality this was the date that the city fell to the Ottoman Turks. In authoring this post, we have consulted with Scott Palter, Stan Brin and Jeff Provine, also repurposing content from Wikipedia.
~ So Italy was depopulated for a long time? Yes for centuries, I have made a small change in the article to make that clearer. Thanks.
~ Kind of like a "Day After Tomorrow" meets ancient Rome.
~ One thinks of the example of Palestine after the Romans expelled the Jews in the late first century C.E. and imagines the descendants of the refugees returning to reclaim the land "the gods had given them" (after they slaughtered the Etruscans).
~ But the Jewish refugees' descendants bought the land, starting in the late 19th century, and as recorded by James Joyce in Ulysses, when he has Leopold Bloom the Dublin Jew doing just that. What's more, the Jewish settlers were not motivated by religion so much as a reaction to anti-semitism, most notably the notorious Dreyfus Case.
~ The POD was supposed to have included meteor strikes or similar that essentially leveled the peninsula. Cities gone, population crash. What is left are a few Venice/Ravenna like coastal enclaves and some half barb shepard clans.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
