761-835 CE (Superpowers)

''The local neighborhood of Rome grew more crowded as Eastern Europe became more populous and civilized. No emperor of Rome had seen as large a number of kingdoms as presently existed during the entire eight centuries of the Principate. The influence of the other European kings complicated international politics, requiring more complex diplomacy from the Senate. As the strongest and most ancient civilization in the region, Rome was the object of both imitation and jealously. More importantly, its diplomats were in high demand from kings and caliphs, who knew the empire as much through local legends as through its own emissaries.''

Historical Statistics for 800 CE (1553 AUC)

Caesar Quirilus (761-782)
Caesar Quirilus came to the curule throne on the heels of the greatest war that Europe had witnessed in centuries. His adoptive father had outdone himself in setting the Germanic kingdoms at each other's throats and the chaos he wrought had run its course. Roman citizens were starting to become worried about the clash of kingdoms raging just beyond the limites (frontiers) of their empire and the time for peace had come. His allies, the Kingdom of Venetia and the Magnum Imperium Sarmatianum (Great Sarmatian Empire), were urged into a peace with the Kingdom of Lombardy and the Three Kingdoms of the Angles and the Andals, who were already crippled and embittered but not divided. With the Treaty of Constantinople (762) signed, Quirilus went on to rule an increasingly tumultuous empire before dying early of plague.

Mechanical devices
Pistorius Mica left behind a wealth of written works for Roman engineers, presenting hundreds of new mechanisms that could be copied in new machinery. Among these were the crown wheel escapement, various epicyclic gears, bevel gear, worm gear, belt drive, glass shard sandpaper, pendulum, torsion spring, scissor mechanism, and screw nail. Tools that Mica invented include the circular saw, belt sander, screw-cutting lathe,   screwdriver ,  brace and bit ,   scissor jack ,  crowbar , and churn drill. These tools and mechanisms created by Mica lifted the mechanical tradition of Roman engineers into the stratosphere. When someone from the Technaeum published a catalogue of mechanisms in 770, he enabled easy study and replication of these tools for new machines. Unfortunately, the sheer number of illustrations in the catalogue made it infeasible to print copies. Nevertheless, the Technaeum had about a dozen copies and by 780  nearly a hundred other copies were circulating elsewhere.

One of the most significant inventions in the wake of Mica's discoveries was the mobile field mill, a horse-drawn carriage that milled grain for feeding a moving army. Limited by animal power, the field mill functioned by a tilt hammer powered from the rotation of the wheels of the cart, milling grain even as an army traveled. After improvements on the design, the Legion relayed the designs to its fortresses along the Vallum Vistillum for assembly in preparation for excursions into the Germanic kingdoms. The main inspiration for this device was likely the carriage odometer that accompanied every legion to measure the distances they traveled outside the empire. These odometers had been used for centuries in mapping Europe, measuring roads for the milestones, and surveying construction sites with incredible precision.

For the navy, one engineer invented a dirigator (magnetic compass) that was suspended neither by rope nor on water. Instead, his compass needle was suspended by a pin to a board and this board was kept level, even on a boat, by a gimbal (a device in common use by mariners for keeping liquid vessels, such as inkwells, level even in rough waters). His compass was dry unlike a water suspended needle and could be read more accurately, using a windrose drawn onto the board behind the needle.

In  789, carpenters working on assembling  testudae  for the Legion invented the  scissor lift  for raising and lowering the assembly as they worked. These lifts derived from the scissor jack that Mica invented to assist in the repair of carriages. Like the jack, the height of this lift was varied using a metal screw turned by a large t-shaped bar. With Mica's screw-cutting lathe, blacksmiths in cities large enough to have a demand for screws could easily carve metal screws of various sizes, including for scissor jacks.

Of course, military engineers and crafstmen were not the only productive minds in the empire. A surgeon teaching at the academy in Corinthia invented the scissor forceps in 783, an improvement over the more cumbersome clamps used to stop bleeding before these arterial forceps were invented. Another surgeon adapted the water-powered circular saw to his practice as a bone cutter, replacing the commonplace handsaw in some of the larger galenariae (hospitals). High speeds were achieved using high pressure water pumps and a low gear ratio, letting the saw cut effortlessly through thick bone.

Around 765, the first rotary winnowing fan was developed for Italian estates owned by the middle class. These machines reduced the effort required to separate the wheat from the chaff after a harvest and introduced more mechanization into Roman agriculture, alongside the horse-drawn mechanical reaper, water-powered mill, and ceramic irrigation pipeline.

Northern raiders
Perhaps the most frightening series of events starting during the reign of Quirilus was the surge of raiders from Scandinavia. The Senate had accepted the existence of a massive peninsula north of the provinces of Magna Germania (Greater Germany) and knew that pirates tended to originate from its cold shores. Although Cimbria (Denmark) had been purged of costal villages by Caesar Tyrianus in the middle 7th century, the Danes, Jutes, and Teutons of Scandinavia were not similarly crushed. What they were was threatened and offended by the repeated destruction of their villages on the Scandinavian coastline near Cimbria. Persistent incursions by the Roman fleet spurred a hatred for the "men beyond the sea" and created a common cause for the small kingdoms of the great white north.

On their own, these forces helped unite kingdoms into larger collections of villages. By 760, only eight major kings ruled within the southern lands of Scandinavia [from OTL Oslo to Stockholm]. Along the northwestern coast, by contrast, nearly thirty kings governed small holdings of lands while the people of the far north lived in hunting and fishing tribes without much interaction with the men who farmed the lands near the fjords and on the islands along the northern coast. At this time, the northmen were facing drastic shortages of food, exacerbated by the denial of a large stretch (~350 km) of coast for fishing.

Men living north of the Herulian Straits went forth during these tumultuous times to raid the rumored lands of the Romans. The first such group landed in 772 in the province of Belgica, near the Lacus Flevo. Along the coast, the northmen found a small Roman villa owned by a wealthy patrician of the nearby colonia. His entire family and all his slaves were put to the sword, his wife and daughters left in a manner that suggested rape to the merchant who stumbled upon the remains of the man and his family villa. Everything of value was taken and his private granaries were emptied down to the last grain. The northern raiders would have been amazed at finding such a wealthy and undefended settlement so near the sea, since they spread tales of the vulnerability and extravagance of the Romans when they returned to their homes in Scandinavia.

Through this event, the Romans came to know the Boreanari (Northmen). News spread quickly throughout the empire of how northern pirates raided the home of an aristocratic citizen. Since none of the family was spared, Romans came to the conclusion that these northmen were so savage that they were even deaf to cries of being a Roman citizen (people of Rome believed that the claim "Civis Romanis sum" or "I am a Roman citizen" would force clemency from foreign attackers). However, the news aged by the end of the year, as most news of isolated events did in the face of gladiatorial games and imperial propaganda.

When several small villages in the north of Hibernia (Ireland) and east of Britannia were similarly sacked from 773 to 781, the majority of the empire was no more alarmed. Unbeknownst to the Senate, these raids were increasing in frequency and intensity as more northmen participated in these raids. By the time a party of 400 Boreanari sacked a colonia of 12,000 citizens in the province of Germania Inferior, there were more than ten raids each year and hundreds of men participated in each one.

The destruction of an entire municipium shocked the Roman world and its Senate. A colonia consisted solely of citizens with their slaves and could have multiple Christian temples. Losing a colonia the size of a small city was an affront to Rome and its Church, making her and her God seem weak and unable to protect Roman citizens. Meanwhile, everyone was talking about the northmen and the threat they posed to civilization. From its allies, the Senate learned that towns in the Kingdom of Kiev and in the Kingdom of Venetia were also suffering raids from light-skinned, blond, fur-clad warriors.

By the end of the year 782, the Generalissimus (most general commander of legions) had brought three legions to the coast of Germania Inferior, spreading his legionaries amongst the coastal cities. Similarly, the Senate deployed a third of the Mediterranean High Fleet in the seas north of Gaul, allowing the Britannic High Fleet to concentrate its forces in the Mare Suebicum. Despite these preparations, Rome had only begun to experience the damage that would be wrought by the surge of the northmen.

New metal
Throughout the early 8th century, miners in Germania Superior had found copper ores that would not be smelted normally, instead sickening the smiths who tried to extract the copper. For this reason, the place of its occurence gained a bad reputation, drawing the attention of geologists from the Lyceum. By 780, they had determined that the supposed copper ore was unlike any other ore known to the academy, meaning it must have contained some previously undiscovered arrangement of the seven elements.

Geologists faced the same problem refining the pseudo-copper ores into metal that had troubled the miners and smiths. The locals who originally discovered the ore shared their views on the matter - that the devil had corrupted the copper in their mines, leaving it in a poisonous and unusable form. For this reason, the geologists took to calling the new ore metallum diabola (devil's ore), despite not taking the people's stories at face value. Eventually, a white metal was smelted from the devil's ore.

Interest in the ore dwindled after a few years. The metal (nickel) became more commonly known as diablum (nickel) and got used for jewelry due to its similarity to silver and resistance to rust. Trade brought nickel necklaces and bracelets as far as Alexandria and Antioch, with merchants often ascribing them magical properties based on the stories of the locals who forged the jewelry. For the time being, nickel became an uncommon but recognized metal in the Roman world.

Caesar Paulus (782-827)
Julius Paulus came to power during a tumultuous time for Rome. Raiders were sailing down from the north to pillage coastal and river towns, forcing the Senate under his adoptive father to relocate ships to the Oceanus Germanicus (North Sea). Meanwhile, the aerarium stabulum (state treasury) was reaching a breaking point. After Ulpius and Fabius, emperors had been expected to continue rampant systems of paying child care and health care costs for Roman citizens, alongside substantial payments to provincial governors for the benefit of the provinces. Altogether, expenditure outside Rome required half a billion denarii in public funds to sustain - a real value of expenditure that exceeded the total income of most earlier administrations.

There was growing pressure from the Roman elite in the Senate to cut spending outside Italy but the prominent provincial faction of the Senate (including nearly 400 senatores who could not trace their lineage back to an ancient patrician family) dominated. This opposition can be best explained with reference to the political climate of Rome.

Roman politics
By the 8th century, the Senatus Romanus had become a battleground between two nominal factions of senators. Championing the good of the city of Rome and of the economy of Italy were the patricianes (men of the fatherland), a label appropriated by senators around 765 CE to emphasize their support of the capital. Their opponents in the Senate were foederales (those who favor the allies), a name they gave senators who sympathized with the good of the provinces at the expense of the state treasury. Neither faction was sanctioned or recognized by the state but the influences of their respective ideologies on senatorial voting was pronounced.

During the reigns of Quirilus and Paulus, the foederales held the dominant position. Both Caesars wanted support from the provinces above all else, especially with the memory of civil war in Greece having wedged itself firmly into the public consciousness. Despite the weakening of the imperial powers in the 6th century, a Caesar still held the ultimate authority in the Senate and the assemblies of the people, giving his position the greatest influence on fiscal and legislative votes.

In particular, the foederales were the source of the rising proportion of provincial stipends through the aediles provinciales, permitting a greater number of local cultural festivals and construction of monuments. For example, in 779, the city of Antioch finished replacing the old citadel on Mons Silpius with a 42 meter tall statue of the crucifixion of Christ, a Christian symbol that was visible throughout the entire city (notable for some unique additions to the image required to stabilize the painted bronze). Other large public works in the provinces were cathedrals, Christian monuments, monuments to emperors, and other symbolic monuments, such as the Golden Statue of Britannia - the personification of the island of Britannia - in the main forum of Londinium.

A major factor in the growing strength of the foederales was the enfranchisement of the coloniae (citizen settlements outside Italy) and of Greece. By 750, Italy retained only 540 out of 800 centuriae suffragiae (voting groups), giving citizens outside Italy a large influence on popular assemblies (especially since so few registered voters for each centuria could attend a given vote). Furthermore, most voters in Italy had families living in the colonies, keeping them attuned to life in the major provincial cities. By these tokens, senators with roots outside Rome were being disproportionally elected to the Senate and even Italian senators were shifting their policies in favor of citizens throughout the empire. When combined with the inclinations of the emperor, these developments would ensure continued growth in the influence of provincial interests.

Maya Conglomerate
With firmly held borders to the South and the North, the Mayans were able to concentrate the majority of their forces to the West coast of North Columbia. Like any of their other neighbors, the natives on the West Coast were incredibly primitive, utilizing wooden and stone weaponry and made up of villages of between 200 and 4,000 people. More than being no match for the Conglomerate Standing Army, they were extremely lucky to even kill a single Mayan soldier. Worse for them still, the Mayans had recently invented an artillery piece that used gunpowder to launch 200 fire arrows at once, with the design having been perfected since the time of its inception in 751. By 771, over 100 were in use by the Mayans, whilst a single volley from just one could wipe out an entire native army.

Unlike the Romans, the Mayans had no need to fortify their borders with walls, merely constructing a few forts at strategic positions sufficed to keep them safe from the nomadic tribes lurking outside. Not so great a problem was the tribes living inside their borders. Numbering at about seven million in a total population of 100 or so million, the natives posed no real threat to the Conglomerate as a whole due to their small numbers, lack of advanced technology and isolation from the central Mayan States. Still, they had very little incentive for revolution, as from their overseers they received education; health care; roads; water and food, all at far greater quality and in far greater quantities than they would ever have gotten before being conquered. Furthermore, once a village was part of the Conglomerate, and had paid their tribute in lives and materials to the Mayans, they only need continue paying taxes and they would be alright, having complete exemption from any further kidnappings for sacrificial ceremonies. There was one separatist group of natives, roughly named the People's Front of the Apache, but they did little more than plan attacks on the Mayan royal family, always failing miserably whenever an attempt was made.

The act of sacrifice had become almost a science to the Mayans. Every morning at the Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan a dog was sacrificed once the sun itself had broken past a certain point on the horizon. At midday, in the Pyramid of the Sun, the daily sacrifice was performed, based off of whichever day on the calendar it was. Furthermore, if there was a special occasion, such as the crowning of a new King or another victory over a tribe being announced, then a second sacrifice, usually of humans, was done. All in all, about 600 humans are sacrificed every year in Teotihuacan, with an additional 2,000 animal sacrifices or more performed over the same period. Other temples usually performed sacrifices to bless the inauguration of a new building or State governor.

Unlike many civilizations who sacrifice more when something goes wrong, the Mayans simply sacrifice to a different god for the same thing, believing that their sacrifices are enough as it is, and if a god is punishing them still, then surely another god will be more reasonable. This was just one of the many examples of the Mayans supreme arrogance in their belief of their own importance. Mayans and Mesoamericans were not allowed, by law, to marry or procreate with any of the native tribe members. Doing so would result in their mate and his or her entire immediate family being executed. Any children that resulted from such a union were executed in a special cleansing ceremony, by the Mayan parent themselves. Although by the standards of most civilizations this is tremendously barbaric, the Mayans believed that to not do so would be the worst barbarity of all.

In late 788 a new weapon was designed based on the Pyrobola (grenades) that were in heavy use by the military. These Pyrobola Insidiae were essentially 3 kilograms heavy devices with a perfectly flat surface at the top resembling ground. The intention of their use was to bury them in strategic locations so that only half-an-inch of soil was on top of them. When someone stepped directly on them it would move down a mechanism that set off a spark igniting the gunpowder within, blowing up like a fragmentation grenade. Though the kill radius was only about one meter, it was tremendously useful as a weapon of shock and awe, often dissuading an entire attack once one or two had gone off. As the shell was made of carefully crafted ceramics, one of these could remain in the ground for more than 20 years before the gradual seeping in of water rendered the gunpowder useless. In arid environments however, which the Mayans were now encountering to the east of their recent conquests, a land mine could remain fully functional for decades on end, finally becoming useless once the spark mechanism had rusted away.

By law, it was required that detailed records on any mine's location were kept at the nearest fort. Furthermore, all army bases had an up to date list that detailed all areas that may contain mines on the bases side of the empire.