As many of you no doubt are aware, the Romans had primitive steam engines going back to the first century BC. However, they never really made anything of them. So here's my alternate history idea:

1. The early church condemns slavery far more stridently than She historically did.

2. For this reason, Christians are persecuted more harshly than historically.

3. Thus, when St. Constantine finally adopts Christianity, paganism is stronger than historically, and it remains so for some time.

4. When Christianity comes to dominate the empire, slavery is outlawed.

5. Deprived of a key source of chief labor, the Romans are forced to innovate. They improve on Hero's aeropile and the Industrial Revolution begins in the 4th Century AD.

That's about as far as I've gotten definitively, but I have visions of a steampunk Rome seriously curbstomping some barbarians. Thoughts?

Wow! That sounds like a pretty fascinating idea, Sam! Are you contemplating writing a novel based on this, or are you just mulling over the idea?

It sounds pretty original, as well, I think.

I'm just playing with it at the moment, but if it grows enough I'll probably write something in this timeline.

Roman steampunk is a cool idea, and it sounds like you've set it up pretty well.

I've actually read the same idea that Rome was on the verge of the industrial revolution in an economics/history book called "Ancient Rome and How it Affects You Today" (by Maybury I think). Very cool concept, and I hope you pursue it!

I've drawn up a tentative timeline that goes to 500 AD. It definitely needs more fleshing out, and I'm still debating whether it needs more butterflies.


111 AD: Vespasian of Milan writes Against Bondage, arguing forcefully for the Christian ethical case against slavery. By 151, the majority of Christian bishops are strongly encouraging new converts and longtime believers to manumit all their slaves, and many more radical Christians publicly preach of the evils of Roman slavery.

164 AD: Marcus Aurelius, accusing the Christians of sedition for their anti-slavery activism, initiates an empire-wide systematic persecution of Christians, which continues on-and-off throughout the reign of the succeeding emperors up to Constantine the Great.

312 AD: Constantine the Great, about to go to battle against Maxentius, receives a vision of the Labarum, with the words underneath: In Hoc Signo Vinces. After winning the battle, he joins the Church as a catechumen, in which state, unfortunately, he will remain until he is near death.

313 AD: Emperor Constantine issues the Edict of Milan, formally putting an end to persecution of Christians within the Roman Empire.

314-391 AD: Religious tensions between Christians and pagans grow rapidly, culminating in the banning of the pagan cults by the ambitious Emperor Theodosius in 391.

402 AD: Although many militant pagans remain in the Empire, their military might has, for the moment, been stopped. Theodosius, finally feeling safe to do so, issues a decree ordering the manumission of any Christian slave, or of any heathen slave who accepts baptism. Needless to say, most slaves are freed.

412 AD: Theodosius’s second successor in the East, also called Theodosius, and his first successor in the West, Honorius, promulgate a law putting a final end to slavery in the empire.

420 AD: Marcus of Ravenna first puts Hero of Alexandria’s aeropile to productive use, using a modified version to move a cart without the aid of a horse.

440 AD: The first factory is built.

ca. 500 AD: The Industrial Revolution is in full swing. Automobiles are rare but not unknown. Trains move through the streets of Rome. Mass-production is common, and factory laborers are mostly former slaves.

EDIT: This timeline fails to explain the salvation of Rome from her historical fall and ends up having the Industrial Revolution after the city should be in barbarian hands. Stay tuned for an updated and less historically ignorant timeline.

That idea sounds fascinating! I would definitely read a book like that.

This is a fascinating topic for me; I've heard about this---how ancient Rome could have developed "advanced technology" but chose not to---in several places before. In particular, I read about inventors being killed and their workshops razed if they invented---or looked to be about to invent---anything that would reduce the empire's need for labor or devalue its currency.

But your proposed "point of divergence" doesn't address what I think was the real cause of that: not the slave-holding (since while the lot of "field slaves" was likely comparable to the worst situations in the American South, "house slaves" were another matter entirely, often being considered as much a part of the family as the children), but the vast population (which might actually include the field slaves; I'm not sure) depending on the Emperor for jobs as well as for "bread and circuses." While in the long run industrialization may lead to fuller employment, that's by no means obvious before-hand.


... with the attendant dangers of "rice Christians," people who become nominal Christians because of the personal benefit attached to it, but have no incentive to live a Christian life.


It's good that you've put the start of industrialization after the end of slavery, since were it the other way around there would be strong pressure against emancipation: in the United States, I've read, slavery looked like it was on its death-bed ... until the invention of the cotton gin made it economical on a large scale again.


From what I've read, the fall of the Roman Empire was due more to internal causes than the "proximal cause" of a barbarian army; if the longer-term causes were addressed, history would go much differently.

(L. Sprague de Camp takes a rather later point of divergence, and a modern American classics professor finding himself there as his cause for divergence, in Lest Darkness Fall, but you should probably be at least familiar with it. And perhaps the Belisarius series too.)

Another question to consider would be how an industrialization would effect society prior to the Renaissance. Western civilization was fairly well prepared, in terms of social advancement, to handle the effects and implications of industrialization. For example, The Wealth of Nations helped to inspire the idea of the assembly line, using (interestingly) the classical liberal social theory (which we would call Libertarianism these days). Clearly such social theories don't exist in the Roman Era, because they are missing 1,000 plus years of Christian and classical thinking on the subjects of natural law, derivation of governmental authority, etc. At this point you haven't even had Machiavelli to justify despotism.

Basically, in terms of civics and worldviews, the Romans will be drawing on unexplored implications of Christianity, and either combining it with or rejecting it in favor of classic Greek thinking, which can't really handle all of the economic and social changes industrialization will bring.

You might consider abandoning the slavery element altogether, so that you can have the advent of industrialization occur earlier, and use it to deal with some of the internal causes, including insufficient infrastructure to support the huge size of the Roman Empire. Railroads certainly help address the problem, by allowing Rome to quickly move both troops and, more importantly, food and equipment to where they are need. Also, the city of Rome itself would be able to support its massive population (which mostly didn't produce their own food, hence a number of economic problems) by bringing in food from a much wider area than is possible without rails.

This probably isn't enough to stop the Roman Empire from splitting and reorganizing in Constantinople, but it could make the empire out of Constantinople significantly healthier and increase its survival by a good century at the least, if you can deal with some of the other issues. Constantinople might not be curb stomping Gauls and Celts like Rome, but it could easily expand its territory in North Africa and Asia, and would also deal with the Turks before they ever became a real threat to the new Empire, which would completely change the picture in Gaul (Spain) and North Africa, leaving Constantinople in charge of the entire Mediterranean for a much longer period of time.