The Rise of the Reman Empire... *and* the Industrial Revolution under Emperor Nero

"The Rise of the Reman Empire... and the Industrial Revolution under Emperor Nero"

An alternate history farce by A. F. Spackman, based on a question by Isaac Asimov

"He called attention to the manner in which, according to legend, Rome had been founded. Romulus and Remus had watched for a portent in the morning. Remus had seen six eagles and Romulus twelve. It was Romulus who had the better of it and founded Rome.

"Throughout Roman history, there had been a superstition to the effect that each eagle represented a century. Had Remus built the city, it would have lasted six centuries according to the superstition--until 153 B.C. (600 A. U. C.) That was actually just about the time when Carthage had been finally destroyed by the victorious Romans. Could it have been that a Remus-founded Rome would have been defeated by Hannibal after the battle of Cannae and then have lingered on for another half-century before its final destruction at the hands of the Carthaginians?"

"...in Alexandria, there lived Hero or Heron, possibly the most ingenious inventor and engineer of ancient times..."

--Isaac Asimov, The Roman Empire

The most ingenious man in the city of Alexandria in the province of Egypt in the greater Reman Empire, was, according to common report, old Heron the engineer, a humble-born inventor with eccentric tendencies and a bristling black beard that had a talent for gathering dust and matting with honey cake. Lurid Alexandria was known as the den of iniquity across the Reman Empire, but if Heron suffered from any vices, a predisposition towards gluttony and a shortness of temper were foremost among them-nothing too shocking for an old man. He also enjoyed gathering historical and scientific scrolls from across the Reman Empire for his own private collection and reading them by candlelight in his atrium well past nightfall, which might have been a contributing factor to his failing eyesight.

The year was 822 A.U.C, 822 years after the founding of the city of Reme (75AD to you and me). And Heron the engineer didn’t know that the steam engine he had just sold to Emperor Vespasian was about to start an industrial revolution that would change the face of the Reman world. But, if the events prior to his own life had been any different, would it have happened? Heron would never know...

Heron unfurled a scroll written by the Emperor Claudius and began reading.

Legend had it that long ago, two brothers, Romulus and Remus, had vied to found great Reme. The brothers were the descendants of the warrior Aeneas, the only Trojan who had survived the fall of Troy-

"A ridiculous story." Heron burst out loud, almost dropping the scroll, but keeping it at the edge of his fingertips. "Impossible." He scoffed, then sat a moment. "But... entertaining," He admitted at last before continuing to read about the fantastic origins of Reme.

Left as infant foundlings beside the Tiber River, Romulus and Remus had been raised by wolves, and thereafter the greatest complement to any Reman soldier or politician was to be deemed a "wolf hound", as worthy an opponent as old Remus himself.

In Heron’s opinion, there seemed to have been few enough wolves in the legions when great Reme almost fell to the armies of Carthage, a prosperous Phoenician city in the warm plains of northern Africa. During the second Punic War fought between Reme and Carthage, Carthaginian armies returned to Europe in a march on Reme under the leadership of Hannibal the Conqueror, the latest in a long line of Carthaginian generals to, rather unoriginally, bear precisely that name. Of course, the brilliant general Hannibal Barca's reputation for savagery and unpredictabilty had preceded him to Reme, for who in his right mind would think to sail an army that included thirty-seven elephants to Spain, march them over the Pyrennes, past the Rhone and the Alps and all the way to Reme? At least, Heron didn’t see how any right-minded person would choose to march elephants across the peaks of the Alps, but then, Heron wasn’t and had never been a centurion or general. And so much the better, he thought.