Roma Eterna

Robert Silverberg

2003

This is a collection of various short, and novella length, stories written across a decade or more. Some of the stories have been rewritten in order to better fit into the timeline presented in this book.

In these stories Rome, the Eternal City, remains the centre of its mighty empire. Never was it destroyed by barbarians from the North or religious fanatics from the sandy wastes of Arabia.

The main reason for Roma’s continuing existence is the lack of a centralising religion such as, say, Christianity, which does not exist in this book for the Jewish tribes did not escape from their Egyptian bondage. Silverberg’s prologue seems to see Egypt as an external country far distant from Rome’s concern, but it was one of (if not the) major grain baskets of Rome ever since it’s annexation by Julius Caesar.

We see Roma and it’s empire in its various ups and downs through fifteen hundred and twenty turbulent years. The empire went from monolithic whole to an Empire run jointly from Roma and Constantinople; to an empire run from Constantinople after the western Empire had fatally weakened itself in a campaign against the civilisations of the Americas; then back again to an empire ruled from an increasingly corrupt and dissolute Roma.

Eventually all traces of Roma’s imperial families were slaughtered in an attempt to restore Roma to its republican roots. While reading these stories, it is important to remember the dates of the stories are given Roma style that is from the Founding of the City, approximately 753 BC.

As usual, Robert Silverberg manages to keep things going at a rip roaring pace and as Roma’s powers spread, the societies he portrayed become ever stranger.

A highly recommended addition to the Alternate History canon.

---