How do you think history would be different, had Julius Caesar died, and Marcus Aurelius was around during the time and rose to power in his place?

[cl656]

How do you think history would be different, had Julius Caesar died, and Marcus Aurelius was around during the time and rose to power instead?

[Lampros]

The republic would have died regardless; the question was who would replace Caesar as the strong man, and whether he could build an enduring structure the way Augustus did or not.

[magritte]

My suspicion is that without Caesar and Augustus or somebody similar, the Roman Republic would have had the same fate as Alexander the Great's empire.

[HeartOfTheBrave]

I agree with magritte. I think without those charismatic and "godlike" leaders, the Roman empire would've fallen apart.
Same for every empire... as soon as people think they can seize power they will do so.

[Panam]

Still would have fallen.
Augustus wasn't a "bad" Emperor.
Despite all the "Great" Emperors, Rome fell in the end anyway. Because all it takes is a lousy Emperor to bring everything crashing down. That's a problem you get frequently with the Roman Imperial system. Besides, wasn't Commodus the son of Marcus Aurelius? He was arguably the worst Emperor Rome ever had.

[BedlamBetty]

Julius Caesar did die, but I imagine you mean had he died at the age he dies in the game.
In that case, Rome would likely have stagnated and collapsed due to internal and external pressures.
Marcus Aurelius, had he been around, would not have risen to power in his place.

Marcus Aurelius is most definitely a creature of the Empire, not the Republic and in the Republic, Marcus Aurelius would have had very little power if any and that is disregarding the fact that he was born to an Italic family from Iberia. That in itself is not technically a "problem", other than the fact that Pompey held sway in Iberia and there is no reason to believe Pompey would have adopted a minor member of the house of Julii (yes, Marcus Aurelius is descended from Augustus and therefore descended from Caesar through Octavian's adoption), although there is a lot of evidence to believe Pompey would have held more power in Rome than he did historically, without Caesar there to counter him.

Few of Caesar's military accomplishments could have been achieved by any other man of the time and certainly not the conquest of Gaul, which the Senate would not have allowed, just as they didn't allow it for Caesar either, but he did it anyway and in being successful, forced the Senate to acknowledge it's "legitimacy".

Without Rome ruling over most of Europe and likely losing most of it's provinces far sooner than it did, the world would be a very different place. No France, no Holy Roman Empire, no Spain, no Christianity, no pope, no fractured Italian kingdom for most of the middle ages... Possibly no Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia, who knows how far the list goes since it's hard to even imagine how the hordes of goths, franks, vandals etc would have fared against the Gaulish tribes had they had centuries longer to develop culturally and militarily, and who knows if the Huns would even have had the impact they did without Rome as a prize to fight for, and no Eastern Roman Empire either, the huns may simply have conquered all of whatever Greece would have been in this hypothetical and left it at that (Rome in a much smaller state may well have been better able to defend it's borders from incursions which broke it's imperial bloated back in history and would certainly have been relying far less on mercenaries for it's defense in the first place)

[CRAGNAR]

Rome failed because it did not have a clear line of succession.

Because of this, civil wars erupted, everyone had their own legion vying for power, while at the same time the Germanic tribes, or Gauls were being fought, while Rome was also defending its large territories and food supplies in the east.

It's near impossible for most armies, regardless of what century they fought in, to successfully engage across multiple fronts over long periods of time. And if infighting occurs and is not resolved, it's pretty much game over.