"'This is an age in history such as has often occurred before when the enforced peace of Caesarism is the only solution.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Star Plunderer" IN Anderson, The Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), pp. 325-362 AT p. 356.
"'It'll be an empire in fact...and therefore it should be an empire in name...It'll be even more of a symbol now than it was in its own age.'" (ibid.)
Argos recognizes that to keep the conquered inferior would make the empire unstable:
"'All races must be equal...I think I'll borrow a leaf from the old Romans. All worthy individuals, of any race, can become terrestrial citizens. It'll be a stabilizing factor.'" (p. 360)
Flandry's period is grounded in Argos who grounded himself in old Rome.
Larry Niven and Jerry Pourmelle's Second Empire of Man follows the First Empire which had followed the CoDominium of the United States and the Soviet Union. The Imperial Great Seal shows a crown, spaceship, eagle, sickle and hammer. (Mote, p. 6) Two Imperial battleships are called MacArthur and Lenin. We have a strong sense of shared past history as we read about MacArthur and Lenin exploring the Mote System.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And, I would argue that Manuel Argos founded and built a better and more solid state than did Augustus. After all, Manuel's Empire, least during the Argolid and Wang dynasties, seem to have been free of the repeated coups and usurpations which troubled Rome not so long after Augustus died. And that this stability lasted for more than four centuries under Manuel I's descendants.
By deliberately making the state he founded be monarchical (rather than dressing it up in the discredited rags of the failed Republic, as did Augustus) Manuel Argos avoided the Terran Empire suffering from dangerous strains. As Manuel said: "It'll be an empire in fact...therefore it should be an empire in name."
Sean
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