I want to start this look at this anthology, All Roads lead to Rome, edited by Hank Davis and David Afsharirad, by looking at its description and seeing if the stories meet or exceed it.
Imperium Sine Fine
Step back in time and traverse the stars with classic stories that reimagine the grandeur of the Roman Empire—with a science fiction twist.
From the vastness of interstellar conquests to the intricate politics of alien worlds, these tales blend history and imagination, exploring what might have been if Rome had extended its reach beyond the cosmos.
Join us as we uncover the stories that blend the glory of the past with the possibilities of the future—where the empire never truly fell, but soared among the stars.
This description makes me think of things more along the lines of the Tour of the Merrimack series by R.M. Meluch, where you literally have Rome in space (or, Rome in Spaaaace!) tangling with Earth. So does the collection do that? Roman Empires among the Stars? Frankly, no. This collection does not have any Roman Empires in space. It has only one story that has Romans who are in space, and we’ll get to that one, shortly. Are there any stories where the empire never truly fell? Yes, we get one of those. Just the one. A couple of the stories are set in alternate Roman Empires (or worlds with Roman Empires) and one set in a world that is the Eastern Roman Empire with the serial numbers filed off in fantasy land. A couple…well, we’ll get to those.
So the anthology suffers not just from the up and down of any but the best anthologies in terms of story quality, but that the remit of the anthology as described is not met. Is it because there aren’t enough of these kinds of stories extant? In any event, if you are hoping for futuristic Romans in Space where the Empire never fell, you are getting none of that here.
All of these stories are reprints (classic stories) and you may have read one or more of them before or read works set in their ’verse. So what is here? Let’s dig in.
The anthology starts off with David Drake’s “Ranks of Bronze.” This is a classic story (later a novel) that you may have read before, and it’s an old idea. We see a Roman legion fighting aliens, using classic tactics and equipment…and we discover that the Romans are actually the remnants of Crassus’ legions lost after Carrhae. The legions were bought by aliens and now are used on alien planets as muscle where the aliens are not allowed by interplanetary treaty to use heavy weapons. The sting in the story is that after the action, we pull away and find out that this is actually a lost story that is/was being written during the Roman Empire itself by Horace. I know that Weber retconned this and made it a series of novels and novellas later where the idea was played straight, and the Romans were made functionally immortal for, um, reasons. But I’ve always had a fondness for this story. It kind of fits the remit in that we have Romans in space, but not Imperium Sine Fine. The Romans are janissaries, plain and simple.1
The next piece is “L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall: A Review in Verse” by Randall Garrett. The anthology explains they couldn’t physically fit the novella into the anthology (which in the age of ebooks makes me look askance) and so instead, we get a verse poem from Randall Garrett that recapitulates the novella. Frankly, while this is pleasant, this is a cheat for those who haven’t actually read the novella. It gives away the plot completely, so those who are concerned with spoilers will, after reading this, lose the joy of discovery of the novella entirely. This is, I feel, something you put into a collection that contains Lest Darkness Fall, *after* Lest Darkness Fall. It’s good verse, and fun and well written to my tin ear, but it is not only a poor substitute, but harmful to those who haven’t read it before.2
Next up, “Temporal Discontinuity” by David Weber is an idea I have seen before, but not quite in this vein. And again, it is a story that relies on Lest Darkness Fall and having read it in order to appreciate the story and truly get it. It turns out that Martin Padway has succeeded, and all too well. Now, time patrol agents from the future come to the past to stop what they think is a meddler in the correct history and to deal with him as harshly as befits someone altering history. They have no idea that their own timeline is already meddled with, thanks to Padway.3 So, now what’s a time cop to do? But is this Rome triumphant? No. Padway has concocted a functional Italo-Gothic Kingdom, not Rome at all. Rome (in the form of the Eastern Romans) is a *rival*.
The next story in the collection finally ticks almost all of the boxes of the collection’s promise, and that is “Via Roma” by Robert Silverberg. This is indeed part of his Roma Eterna cycle, which is a collection of stories set in a time frame of two millennia where Rome never fell. This story is late in that series, set in 2603 AUC (or, 1850 AD in our timeline), and revolves around a hinterland descendant of a line descended from an old Britannia King, Cymbelin Vetruvius Scapulanus. Cymberlin has been sent to the center of the world, Rome, on the behest of his father. We get a nickel tour of what Rome is like, 1900 years after Augustus.4 It’s a story that focuses on the conflict from a “country bumpkin” (however high in society) being confronted with the highest levels of Roman society, right on the eve of massive social change for them, and for the Empire in general. The story does a good job with Cymbelin being an utter fish out of water, and allows Silverberg to show off his world effectively.
“71” by David Brin is an Eric Flint 1632 story. What this has to do with Rome is in fact, tenuous. The story is a story within a story, as a contemporary (from the 17th century) author tries to write a 1632-like piece, with having the village of Milda (which was where Grantville got “dropped”) be sent backward in time, to Roman Judea. The story is the unnamed author arguing with another about what would happen if a bunch of 17th century Germans were dropped into 1st century AD Judea. The “Reveal” of who the author and his speaking companion are, are the “sting in the tail”. The keystone of the story is showing two famous authors from our own history and how the Grantsville event changed their writing careers. But what does it have to do with Rome and Imperium Sine Fine? Nothing. The story could have had the authors do any other time and place for the drop of the village and it would not be fundamentally changed. The village could have been dropped in Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, China, America…and the overall story would not change substantially. This story fails to make its case why it is in this anthology.
The next story, “Islands,” by the aforementioned Eric Flint, is not set in the aforementioned 1632 universe but rather a different universe of his, the Belisarius universe. In that alternate history/time travel ’verse, AIs from the future start meddling with history, one malevolent one empowering an expansive Indian empire in the 6th century CE, and another, more benevolent, coming back to help and support Count Belisarius of the Eastern Roman Empire to oppose the Indian Malwa. This story is set in that ’verse but only vaguely explains about Link (the AI supporting the Malwa) and doesn’t even mention the existence of AIM at all. So someone reading this story, unaware of the Belisarius ’verse, is going to get an incomplete view of what is really happening. The story centers around a recently blinded clerk, Calopodius, who revolutionizes war correspondence and reporting with his dispatches of the fight against the Malwa. Meantime, his young wife Anna, whom he has not seen since their marriage, makes her way across thousands of miles to join her husband. While she herself is not clear herself why she feels that she does it, she proves to be an innovator and bringer of change of her own on her progress.5
That is, in essence, the story. It’s a Rome doing better than in our own history, but with a far deadlier and more existential threat to its existence in the bargain. Rome and its Persian allies are fighting in what is today beyond the Indus river. But Imperium Sine Fine? … there is a hint in the story that Belisarius and his allies will win (since it mentions Calopodius being read for centuries after), but that’s it. It’s a well written story but I think it’s only really effective for readers of the series.
The next story is “Ave Atque Vale” by Sandra Miesel.6
Miesel’s story is set in the 8th century or so; we’re not given a date. It’s set in a simple thatch and wood Priory of St. Mary in Essex, England, and features Elfeda the infirmarian as the main character. As the healer of the Abbey she comes into contact with, for better word, a ghost of a Roman legionary, Gaius Aurelius Perennis, once signifer (standard-bearer) of the Ninth Legion Hispania in Britannia. By a series of coincidence and weird events, his head has been mistaken and taken for being a saint’s relic, since it has been unnaturally preserved in a bog. As a result, his ghost is bound to the head, and Elfeda alone can communicate with it. We get a buddy cop story as a result as Gaius wants Elfeda to bury his head and give him appropriate rites, so that he can go on to the afterlife. Elfeda refuses, because having a “real relic” is good for the business of the priory. She does make some efforts with the Abbess to try and get the rites done but the Abbess is not keen. And so Gaius persists. Their relationship slowly grows toward something like tenderness…until Viking raiders show up and kill Elfeda. By luck, her fall and death include the head and the right conditions for Gaius to be released also occur.
So the ending of this story annoyed me, but I will save that for a footnote for you to read or not.7 But, again, this story absolutely does not fit the Imperium Sine Fine mandate of the collection at all. A ghost of a Roman soldier at an abbey, three centuries after the legions left Britain, is about as tenuous a connection to Rome as you can get.
Next up is Harry Turtledove’s “A Difficult Undertaking.” This is set in his Videssos universe, although it does not have anything to do with Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and the Misplaced Legion. Videssos is an alternate fantasy world modeled very strongly on the Eastern Roman Empire in its politics and vague geography, except that magic works. The Misplaced Legion books have a Roman legion accidentally wind up there, and adventures ensue. Turtledove went on to write more novels and stories without the legion in various times and places set in this universe, borrowing from Eastern Roman history. This story is in that tradition and features a siege of a fortified castle on the borderlands.
The story is a battle of wits between the besiegers and those in the stronghold and gives a good flavor of what Turtledove does in these novels and stories. If you want a fantasy siege in a low magic (sword and not much sorcery [magic is dangerous in this world]) setting, this is for you. It’s well written, and I enjoyed it. There are some groan-worthy puns, but if you have read Turtledove’s work before, you probably should not be entirely surprised by that. But Imperium Sine Fine? Well, it’s Imperium in another universe but Videssos is hardly a superstrong nation; in fact, it skates along sometimes quite perilously. So it’s an alternate Rome, not an extension of Rome.8
The anchor story of this collection is “The Wandering Warriors” by Alan Smale and Rick Wilber, and while the previous story has humor in the form of wordplay, this is much more a straight-up comedy not to be taken seriously. And yet it has its issues all the same. The story takes place in 1946, the boys are home from the war. The story focuses on the titular The Wandering Warriors, a barnstorming baseball team who travel around the midwest and play pickup baseball games with local teams. When they decide to take a shortcut to Decatur, it turns out to be a long cut … since they are transported back in time to Ancient Rome.
And hilarity ensues, or at least that’s the plan of the story. The Wandering Warriors luckily have a Professor of Latin at their head so they can communicate with the Romans who find them. The Wandering Warriors soon, bus and all, wind up in Rome and the Wandering Warriors figure out what really is going on. It’s about 211 AD at the beginning of the joint reign of Carcalla and Geta, not that it is going to last. Caracalla is soon to kill his brother and plunge the Empire into a very nasty period. So, as it turns out their mother, one of the most formidable women in Roman Empire history, Julia Domna, used magic to arrange for the team to be transported in time. Her idea is that the power of sport, and baseball, will be enough to avert Caracalla’s bloodshed.
That is all well and good and humorous as an idea, as the Wandering Warriors start playing and teaching baseball to the Romans. So, when the Emperors arrive in Rome, the story gets sillier still, with Caracalla winding up on a team, and Geta joining the Warriors. Oh, and one other player joins the Warriors … Julia herself.
The story has some lively baseball and Romans action, as implausible as all this is. The ending of the story, however, was a little infuriating and the changes to history minimal, in the past, anyway.9 The actual story is subtly set in an alternate world to begin with, partially perhaps to explain why we have Julia Domna with magic in the first place.10 But as fun as it all is, it does break the plausibility meter. And once again, what does it have to do with Imperium Sine Fine? Absolutely and positively nothing. Rome is not substantially changed by the Warriors’ visit.
So I come to the end of the anthology. It’s not what the remit says. There are a couple of stories here that may be of interest, a couple of these leverage other universes to really appreciate them, and a couple of truly underwhelming choices. I may be a typical guy and thus think about the Roman Empire every day as is my right, but this anthology, for someone who has been thinking about Rome for over four decades, did not in the end satisfy me at all.
1 This idea is not a new one. Jerry Pournelle has a whole planet of slave soldiers taken from various points in history and plonked down on a planet with valuable resources. The protagonists are a mercenary group from the modern day, but one of the older slave soldier groups, now with a flourishing civilization, were from Rome. And yes, THAT puts me in mind of my review of Lords of Creation and the issues I had with that.
2 There has been debate on and offline and on podcasts about works that “stand on their own”. The Garrett piece does not stand on its own. Neither does the Weber.
3 “The Apotheosis of Martin Padway” by S.M. Stirling also takes the Time Travellers from Padway’s altered history approach but in a more hagiographic way. That story is in a collection, Lest Darkness Fall and Related Stories, which I feel that this collection wanted to be in some ways. Coincidentally, the Weber piece is also in that collection.
4 The story, since it is part of a cycle, does not do the classic Alternate History bit of explaining, obliquely or directly, what the jonbar point, the point of divergence, is. There are two points of divergence in the Rome Eterna ’verse: One, the Moses-led Exodus from Egypt never happened (thus no Christianity), and two, Varus didn’t get his legions slaughtered in the Teutoburg Forest. Thus, Rome winds up falling a somewhat Chinese Empire pattern of rises and falls, pieces of the Empire always going, trying to reunite it all, and on and on. Imperium Sine Fine indeed.
5 Not explained but AIM has provided Belisarius with a wealth of knowledge from the future. This is a story about actually putting that knowledge to *use* for good.
6 This story is the only story written by a woman in the entire collection. The collection is, sadly, a sausage-fest. The conceit that “men think about the Roman Empire every day” seems to have been taken to a fault here with this collection. It is also, with Islands, only one of two stories with a point of view female character.
7 Okay, so here we go. The entire thrust of this story is that Gaius wants to be buried and have the appropriate rites on him so he can go to his afterlife. And that happens *accidentally* at the end. But it is not that that annoys me. It is the last line of the story:
The flames of its passing blazed up to heaven’s stars, lofting a pair of spirits into Saint Michael’s bright-mailed arms.
So, Gaius doesn’t get his afterlife, instead he is going to go to the Christian heaven with Elfeda. This makes his entire hope and struggle for the entire story meaningless and makes this into an unwitting Christian conversion story. So, instead of Imperium Sine Fine, it is Christianity Sine Fine.
8 It’s been pointed out that The Misplaced Legion is in a way a time travel novel. The titular Legion dates from about 50 BCE. Videssos in terms of its politics resembles the Eastern Roman empire many hundreds of years later. So, the Misplaced Legion gets to “see the future”, just through a fantasy lens with magic.
9 So the ending of the story has the Warriors returned to their own time, but with Julia Domna in tow as well. It turns out in the changed history, Geta is exiled rather than killed, so Julia’s plan doesn’t quite work as planned. But what is more head scratching and infuriating is that Julia returns, and the upshot of the story at the end is that she is so good that she is going to be the first woman in the major leagues, because she is so inspiring to women. Which, given the history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (i.e. A League of Their Own) is a nice thought but completely erases the women of that league and their efforts. I do appreciate there is a subtle but real romance that develops between the Professor and Julia since both of them have mileage on at this point, but it’s not enough.
10 The history of the Wandering Warriors appears to be the same as ours until the Second World War. It starts early with a mention of the War with Japan ending (with a “superbomb”) and the armistice with Hitler. Also Russia appears to be in a civil war, and Germany and Britain have recently concluded peace, too. Again, as noted above, there is no advantage to these changes except to make this an alternate history from the get go. The world that the Warriors comes back to is not substantively changed from that except for Geta being banished instead of killed (and given the realpolitik of Empires, I really couldn’t buy that). I do think that Smale has a soft spot for Geta and he really does think this was an important jonbar point, since his Clash of Eagles series, where Rome does go on and on, and eventually to colonize North America, has as its point of divergence Geta winning out over Caracalla).
