I apologise if my answer above seemed as me lending virtue to the concept of “empire”. I wished to convey that “empire”, and the process by which is created (which is not rainbow and sunshine), was perceived differently at the time.
Truth be told, I would’ve like to bring in Friedrich Nietzsche and the “Genealogy of Morals” here, but this is a forum about IFs, so I would rather not cause Sudden Sleep Syndrome. Wrote a whole section about it, but a rare bout of wisdom manifested in me and convinced me against it.
Basically, back then people didn’t consider things such as massacres, wars and the like as “Evil”, but merely bad. Bad, because they negatively affected their lives. But that’s about it. No one would’ve have said that this-or-that Empire couldn’t exist because it engaged in wars and all the atrocites associated with it. The “Empire” wasn’t a morally negative concept. It wasn’t Good either. It just was. It was the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (pun intended).
A large problem with our historical sources is that they were written by only those who were capable of writing, and those were 99% of the time the nobility, aka Senators and the like. And what they wrote was not unbiased. On the contrary, since they were such prideful people, they didn’t like being disrepected, whatever that meant in their minds. Relevant for us.
For example, Caligula is widely believed to be a madman, a cruel person etc. But quite a few recent scholars argue that Caligula was no such things, and that he merely didn’t like the Senate and didn’t give them the proper respect they thought they deserved. And so, given that said Senators wrote the history passed down to us, they smeared him. We have clear precedence for Roman aristocrats making stuff up in their works if it benefits them or their liege — just ask Livy and Vergil where did they find out that the Romans are related to Trojans?
On the other hand of the spectrum, we have the “great” Eastern Roman Emperor Marcian (450-457). Our surviving sources of the period (nobles) give him praises like he was the reincarnation of Augustus. But, truth be told, he was rather…meh?. But he was loved by the Senate in Constantinople, because he was himself a Senator, and so gave them special attention during his reign — how can you not love someone who gets rid of some of your taxes?
History is written by the victors, it is said. In this case, no one can deny that for most of human history the victors were the rich. Result: history is written by the rich. Lesson: be nice to them, or they will write mean things about you.
That is indeed true. But it is also true that such prohibitions were, if they existed, not a majority held belief in Antiquity. I can think of a truly ancient ruler in Mesopotamia, Gudea of Lagash (21st century BCE), who possesed something approaching what we would describe as “Goodness” — he still went to war, but still an anomaly of the period. But for every Gudea there were ten Nebuchadnezzar ( 6th century BCE Babylonian Exile guy). Or ten Naram-Sin (23rd century BCE Akkadian Emperor). Great conquerors, both of them, and consequently great murderers.
Caesar boasted about killing a million Gauls and enslaving another million, and the people of Rome ate that stuff up like it was cereal. He even most likely inflated those numbers just because he knew people would’ve loved even bigger numbers.
And since the setting of this IF is greatly modelled in what we could describe as Late Antiquity, it is safe to assume that the values of that period are reflected in its setting and characters. Case in point: Julia. Already extensive discussions about her, so I will not elaborate. Too many words already for a post. (sorry)
