How would you change history?

[Decius]

Dude, that photo had some serious mulletude. You may be on to something there..add a cart full of CDs of 70s and 80s rock, and a solar powered CD player, and all those nasty fate-deciding tyrants would be too busy rocking out to do anything, and history would pan out the way any number of alternate history (my favorite) authors speculate that it might.

OK, here's something I thought of belatedly after my last post...meet up with Heron of Alexandria, give him translated copies of books on engineering principles, steam engines, mechanical devices within classical manufacturing capability like cranes, windmills, horse collars, metallurgy and such...and 6 or 7 large chests of gold to pay for it all. Tell him he was on the right track, he just needed more money and impetus. Then go back home and see what kind of industrial revolution he'd brought about.

Slaves were the machines and industrial power in those days. While individually cheap, you needed lots and lots of them for any large task. A machine might take more money initially to build prototypes and perfect, but you'd only need a few in proportion to slaves. With economic power concentrated in the hands of those who could afford a few machines but not thousands of slaves, I wonder how the patrician/equestrian orders would hold up....and whether slavery would be implode a thousand years earlier.

244 AD: the emperor of roman earth wipes out all mankind by pushing the wrong button on his desk. actually he just wanted to order new attic helmets and zebra-print tunics for his 289 legions at amazon.rome . blame Aetius Helvius Merula, the founder of the roman industrial revolution.