If you were writing Dante's Inferno, who are the three people in the center of the 9th circle?

[BlindTiresias]

61. jesus christ stop watching 300

Last edited Sat Nov 15, 2014, 05:37 PM - Edit history (1)

The Persian model was a kind of federalism, the satraps were autonomous or semi-autonomous states and were far from slaves. Part of the non-military reasons the Persians did not do well against more rigidly organized powers (Makedon) is they had difficulty organizing a cohesive force and a unified political will against a legit dictator, which was Alexander the Great and the military he inherited from another legit dictator, his father Philip II. If anything, the Persian satrap system and the Roman republic were more similar than different, so your use of the Roman Empire as somehow being of some Persian pattern is truly bizarre.

As far as a Roman industrial revolution, pure fantasy. The devices developed in the Hellenistic period were toys and some more sophisticated technologies did emerge in the 3rd century of the Roman Empire but they were still underpowered and lacked the metallurgy, economy, or infrastructure to use them in an industrial manner. You are engaging in what I like to call the Sid Meier fallacy, which is when one treats historical technological development like a tech tree building up to modern, Western industrial society. It doesn't work that way.