"The Star Plunderer" presents a summary that we can supplement from information given elsewhere in the Technic History.
Reeves reflects that a military genius had united a score of planets inhabited by barbarians who had learned how to make spaceships and firearms. The Baldics include barbarized human colonies.
Argos says that the original Baldic conquerors were kings who built the League out of a hundred planets of savages who had learned to build spaceships and to use atomic weapons. They succeeded only because the Commonwealth was weak. Terra was sacked but the barbarians split into two hostile groups because the early rulers were dead and the sons were fighting over their inheritance. One group conquered the outer Solar planets and from there raids and loots the inner planets. Their society is decaying and determined Terran leadership - by Manuel - will drive them out. A slave will become the first Terran Emperor.
3 comments:
This is rather odd if the Roman Empire is taken as a model. Augustus didn't raise Rome up from powerless subjugation; he simply regularized (and extended) an empire under Roman control that already existed.
The alternative to Augustus (and his unusually long life, which was crucial) was something like what happened after Alexander the Great's death: various Roman warlords setting up regional states.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, but we should not expect future generations to exactly replicate the patter shown us by the earlier history of Rome. The existence of a really advanced technology in a FTL setting could hasten the process leading to the rise of the Terran Empire.
Also, during the agonies of the Crisis of the Third Century, the Roman Empire did split, for a time, into regional states ruled by rival Emperors. The Gallic Empire in the west (comprising Gaul and Britannia), the Palymyrene Empire in the east (parts of Asia Minor, Syria/Palestine, and Egypt), and the Roman Empire proper between them (Hispania, N Africa, Italy, and the Balkans).
A series of tough soldier Emperors, beginning with Claudius II, hammered the Empire back together. Claudius crushingly defeated the invading Goths and his successor Aurelian reunited the Empire, putting an end to the breakaway empires.
Ad astra! Sean
Corrections: I meant "patter" in my first paragraph to be "pattern." And "Palymyrene" in the second paragraph should be "Palmyrene."
Sean
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