Modern scholars help Julius Caesar

[Otto Kretschmer]

In 49 BC after crossing the Rubicon Caesar is given a group of modern scholars who are to help him modernize Rome. He hires them with enthusiasm and excitement.

300 scholars all aged 25, all university graduates in various disciplines.

How would you break down those 300? Every one of them can bring a backpack worth of goods.

All gain ability to speak perfect Latin upon ISOT
miletus12 Zyobot

My take?

Humanists won't help much. Let's limit their number to 30 - 10 historians, 10 sociologists, 10 political.scientists.

Let's divide the remaining 270 into three parts

- 90 hard scientists (mathematicians, physicists, engineers)
- 90 biological scientists (chemists, biologists, geologists)
- 90 doctors and agronomists

Each of them later takes 8-12 disciples from among the most gifted youth of Rome and tutors them.

[Otto Kretschmer]

stevep he has already hired them with excitement

[razor007]

The Roman Republic is going to be much bigger, more populated and a lot more stable/prosperous. Julius lives a lot longer as well.

Transforming from slave-based to free-market economy allows Rome to keep the exploding population healthy and wealthy

Aksum Ethiopia benefits greatly as well since they are a close trade partnet of Rome. The Romans conquer Persia and Germania.

Both India and China will benefit as well

[belushitd]

Geologists are under biological scientists?

Might want to go with some vets as well. One of the things that would help Rome in a great manner would be to be able to transition their agriculture from mostly slave based to more animal based. Get some people who know how to grown food in the muscle powered era to teach the Romans better ways to farm. Crop rotation, plowing parallel to the slope, stuff like that. And some of the backpacks should be full of high yield seeds that are self fertilizing. None of this Monsanto "have to buy the seeds from us each year" crap.

Once they are able to get their crop yields increased, they'll be able to do two things.... First is that they will have a huge excess excess of food. Like something like 10 to 20 times the yield. They might even be able to supply themselves with their native production, rather than importing huge quantities from Egypt. This will allow them to break less ground, and spend less time and effort on feeding themselves. Second is that they can take that time and effort that is not being spent on feeding themselves and use it to advance technologically.

Use the information and people sent to the past to educate the people, prevent plagues and other diseases, hell, just the idea of vaccinating people with cowpox would lessen the smallpox death toll immensely.

Have some of the other the backpacks filled with books detailing lots of information. The Bessemer process would be quite helpful for producing quality steel in large quantities. A book on Sanitation would be key as well. Basic electrical theory, like how to build/wind a generator kind of thing.

All the various basic building blocks of modern civilization. And a history book or two, specifically talking about natural disasters like earthquakes to be aware of and to take steps ahead of time to mitigate the effects. Preventing the death of all the people of Pompeii would be an interesting effect of that.

Belushi TD

[razor007]

Reminds me of Helen Dale's Kingdom of the Wicked and Peter Rhodan's Arturo Sandus series