Q: @curtdoolittle: “What should sulla have done differently to stabilize the Rom

Q: @curtdoolittle: “What should sulla have done differently to stabilize the Roman republic after becoming dictator?”

Ok. You’re gonna ask me one of the hard questions of history before I’ve finished my coffee? And on a Saturday Morning? ;). You’re a cruel, cruel man Blake Anderson. 😉

I have a working session in twenty minutes I need to prepare for. But This is a smart question and one worth answering.

The simple answer in advance, just to get you thinking, is that the population of Rome vs scale and costs of administrating the empire, and the slow speed of information across it, offset by the (low) productivity of the empire (the entire world), meant that Rome needed to be that big for safety, but lacked the economy to remain that big, because settlement of trade routes (domestication of an empire), invites more primitive people out of more primitive reasons, who envy the wealth of those whose resources are invested in increasingly fragile commercial relations and less able to resist them, and unable to unite to conquer them.

Overexpansion.

Similar to the West today. Much more detail though, that can answer your question.

So the underlying question is ‘what to do about it’?

Curt. 😉

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