Out of curiosity, if the Roman Empire never collapsed and still existed to this day what would its military look like?
What kind of camo, guns, tanks, planes, ext...
>>30664240
Honestly, they would likely be very modern assuming they would maintain their rep as being on the front as a military force. The real question is what would their dress uniform look like, I for one vote for togas with ribbon racks.
If Rome never fell we would all be part of it. Rome ruled Britain after all.
ALL HAIL BRITANNIA
>>30664283
I would be super okay with this.
>>30664240
They would do some crazy stuff. When they weren't busy suffering from severe lead poisoning that came from their aqueducts or fucking their various slaves, the Romans did things that I cannot even begin to describe on this board.
They probably would stick with their imperial colors even to this day. I imagine their honor guard uniforms would be dope as fuck with the gold and red.
Camo would probably be forest or field style, because fuck trying to hide in the desert. Guns would probably move along as they had today.
This is a big what if question though... the Germanic peoples are the ones who MADE Europe what it is today. Without them, Latins and their kin would be the dominant group on the planet.
They would have all kinds of strange contraptions that would strike fear into the hearts of their enemies, while also inspiring the masses of Rome to do the impossible.
Their planes would probably drop salt out of them while they also bombed cities. Y'know... because Carthago delenda est
I'm honestly not sure tanks would exist. If Rome conquered and assimilated Germania and the paleo-vatniks to the north and east, the empire would be safe until the rise of Islam. Then they would attack as Hajjis do, but get slaughtered to a man by a bunch of pissed off centuries with spathas. Ireland and Scandinavia would be conquered and assimilated easily enough, and suddenly there are no external threats for another ~600 years. This gives the Romans time to build fleets and sail into the sunset in search of Atlantis. Without Amerigo Vespucci being a cockbag, the new continents are named North Atlantis and South Atlantis. Australia and Antarctica keep their names.
Since Romans don't have the Spaniard tendency to colonize dick first, we get a population of generic mixed European white folk as the sole inhabitants of the Western hemisphere and Australia.
By this point it's 1200 AD and the Mongol Chinese and the Indians are shitting bricks because every other major civilization is GONE, subsumed into mother Roma and replaced with Romans. The niggers are nogging about in the jungle as they are wont to do, eating dead bats and raping babies. This leads to the Mongols invading as usual but with a Pooinloo army attacking via what was once Persia at the same time.
Now you said the empire survives today, so that means they win those wars. For the sake of curry and waifu cartoons I'll assume that Japan, China, and India remain separate societies, but even more paranoid and xenophobic because they're surrounded by Rome and savages.
Given an existential threat like that and a thousand years to worry, China develops rockets and missiles, which Rome develops further. This leads to either a lot of dead folks if it's before either side.discovers fission, or a cold war if after.
Rome's very nature was to conquer and expand, so the remaining nations of Earth would be assimilated or genocided eventually if Rome was not to fall, even the jungle nigs.
Continued.
>>30664550
I mean, during the Punic Wars with Carthage they knew that the Carthaginians had a superior navy. Trying to fight them ship to ship in the way they were used to would only spell their demise.
They did know that their infantry would shit on Carthaginian soldiers though, so they did what they thought was natural: bring the land battles to the Carthaginians.
The corvus allowed them to perform the testudo during boarding actions... it also scared the daylights out of Carthaginian crews.
>>30664598
It's crazy
>>30664583
I would agree that the Roman Empire would be massive, and a Cold War state of affairs would exist today between it and the other major power: China. India would definitely stay out of it as best they could.
>>30664583
fun post to read
>>30664583
So now we have a one world government with a desperate need to expand and knowledge of rocketry. Romans IN SPAAAAAACE!
Given Rome's more relaxed attitudes towards loss of life, it takes them a mere century or two to colonize other planets, and with centuries of being unified as a species nobody even thinks of revolt. So now we have an entire solar system ruled by a Caesar and shepherded by the Pontifex Maximus. At this point we veer so far into speculative fiction that it becomes soft scifi or space fantasy. I choose to believe that we would encounter a planet of blue space elves and live sexily ever after.
probably like the nazis homie. roman influence was heavy on more than the uniforms imo
>>30664283
Wouldn't that still mean we would've revolted the same way we did to the Brits?
I'd imagine a gigantic, overwhelming presence in the Mediterranean with control of the Bosporus, strait of Suez, and the Strait of Gibralter.
>>30664713
We revolted because we expected freedom and didn't get it, and also due to influence from the natives who would have been exterminated or assimilated under Roman rule. The Iroquois in particular inspired part of our legal code.
If everyone on the planet is raised from birth to believe that Caesar and Pontifex are the living embodiment of Christ's will and heresy is punished 40k style, the odds of rebellion are low.
pic related
>>30664583
>>30664664
>Basically the entire world and potentially other worlds are Rome
Shieeeeeet
>>30664550
>When they weren't busy suffering from severe lead poisoning that came from their aqueducts
When will this meme die? They ran very hard water through their lead pipes. The resulting calcium and magnesium would mineralize and line the inside.
Im a total Romaboo but you guys are ridiculous. You do know the imperial legions you envision were already radically different by the time of its maximum splendor right?
To sustain itself, the empire changed, incorporated and adapted to more and more of the worl around them. The legions became lighter, with oval shields, long spathas and darts instead of javelins, lighter infantrymen trained to be quickly deployed against insurgencies and unrest along the massive reaches of the empire rather than large standing armies. They took this from the Germans to be able to fight more germans.
The roman auxiliary cavalry became a mainstay, core unit of armored cataphracts formed by the new emergent equite elites. They took this from the Parthians.
The Roman empire by the end of it's largest period was unrecognizable from a medieval army. If you project Rome into a future beyond the Goths you should look at the Byzantines. If you project Rome beyond Ottomans, you should look at the Germans, the Spanish, the French and Italians themselves. Rome didnt die a sudden death, it fizzled out, it dimmed and receded as a political and economical apparatus, but the people and the ideas were the same. The development of warfare among them would have been largely the same whether it remained or not due to the irreparable deficiencies of the system leading to strife, shortage and indecision.
Rome today would be like an EU that had been formed in 30BC, just as bloated, ridiculously inoperative and had a history of being broken and reformed every 50 years.
Literally a planetary (possibly interplanetary) Pax Romana, au WH40k. It would literally be WH40k but the Emperor is alive because there's a new one every time the old one dies, since it's hereditary. In fact, I believe 40k's Imperium of Man was actually based on Imperial Roman society. There is an emperor, the state is, for all practical intents and purposes, a theocratic totalitarian regime, and Hell, they even called the original Space Marine units "Legions." There's also the very similar wartime (read: literally never fucking stops) habits, like forming massive units from local populations and then training them in the ways of war, while also adapting and adopting anything useful from them when you can and learning from those they conquered, assimilated or destroyed, and fighting with massive numbers combined with superior tactics and technology against most enemies.
>>30665179
But that's wrong. The EU is only bloated and confusing because Hitler and Mussolini ruined dictatorship for everyone so they have to do it all sneaky like. Monarchs in half of Europe named themselves Caesar or the localized variation thereof for hundreds of years and gave themselves Roman trappings as a method of validation. Even in the US we have a Senate, not a Parliament, and Washington DC looks semi Roman with the columned buildings, enormous obelisk, and a cathedral.
Going back to my original point, tanks were a response to trench warfare, which would not exist if European identities had coalesced into Roman a millennium before the invention of machine guns and barbed wire. Nobody else ever had the inclination to fight that way.
>>30665203
The question is what happens in the period between settling the solar system and the development of galactic scale FTL drives and communication. Stagnation was fatal to Rome, but what do you do when every scrap of mass reachable by mankind is already part of Rome? Would there be another Numa to turn their focus to spiritual matters? Would the Church stage a Second Coming? Would people finally learn how to RTFM and STFU?
>>30664240
Technology would not be anywhere near what we have today. A global Rome would mean no world wars or cold war to push innovation through the ceiling.
That's the crazy thing about technology. There is no structured progression. There is nothing that says "country survives 500 years, time to start inventing guns.
It's not impossible to think that rome conquering the world could cancel out the situations/people that lead to guns or computers.
