Greco-Roman Peoples React To Modern World

Neither do I, especially since the islands are an order of magnitude easier to take over and occupy than post-WW2 Germany, militarily speaking. Mostly, I was thinking—or, perhaps, somewhat overthinking—the PR aspect of forced modernization, even if the twin processes of “de-Hellenization” and “de-Romanization” are technically in the cards.

That’s one of the reasons why I posited some answers uptimers would give to likely questions the downtimers would ask, such as “Who will do the heavy lifting?”. To which they’d essentially reply, “Free, reasonably paid workers and modern technology that’ll boost efficiency.”, though the latter may be obsolete or otherwise downgraded by our standards, since uptimers won’t trust Greco-Roman communities with that technology just yet. Maybe in a generation or two, I’d say, specifically when the bulk of the political class is made up of Post-ISOT Greeks and Romans who grew up with twenty-first century values.



Downtimers resisting is a laughable proposition, yes. As I said above, I was thinking more of the PR side of uptimer occupation and modernization efforts, especially given the extra shock and wariness that’d come with seeing jets or helicopters patrolling the skies every now and then. When strange people with equally strange values--and even stranger technology at their beck and call—show up out of the blue and tell you to drop everything after introducing themselves, that’s not exactly a good look.

That being the case, I’d hope for uptimer authorities to calmly explain why they’ve been doing things the wrong way and what the twenty-first century has to offer them, though they’ll no doubt have to use force and displays of power in equal measure. Which may be inevitable, but I’d imagine there’s a “sweet spot” that’d minimize the lingering fear and resentment among the population, if we can help it.



Regularly patrolling the Ionian Sea seems fair, both for reasons I described and ones you mentioned that I forgot about (which is to say, a potential disease exchange). Maybe you’d have uptimer maritime forces who accept swimming refugees dressed head-to-toe in body armor as they help them aboard, before leading them to in-ship medical facilities to be checked and vaccinated? Ordinarily, convincing them the latter is safe would be a tough sell to people regularly bombarded by plagues (since the jab gives you a controlled dose of such bugs), but considering how the initial parameters make modern knowledge widely accessible (though you’d still have to correct a flurry of rumors and misconceptions), I’d think they’d have some idea of what to expect. Especially if uptimer governments air televised broadcasts that explicitly tell escapees what to do when they contact patrolling crews, much to the ire of downtimer authorities and reactionaries of much lower station.

I’m not sure I understand why downtimers’ racial makeup plays a role in who’d take control, however. I’d think that Greece and Italy would take their respective islands, even though the EU is likely to get involved and bring its tangled and inelegant latticework of laws with it, as you’ve said. Which may galvanize a new wave of anti-globalist objections both within and outside of the Twin Islands, due to a) Greece and Italy hotly contending that this is their problem to handle and b) Greco-Romans balking at the idea of uptimers even more removed from them than their distant descendants being their new judge and jury for the next ten, twenty, or thirty-plus years. Which I wouldn’t necessarily like if I were in their sandals either, though the backwards state of where they live means that something has to change.

Thinking a bit more about my initial comments on lots of slaves giving thanks to Marx and Lenin, I suppose it’s less likely they’d become that desperate than I feared, assuming uptimers free them and subdue their masters as quickly as you’ve said. However, I also suspect a workers’ state without rich, demanding masters who lord over them--and after their original communities have been bloodily conquered, striped of their people, and shipped off to a faraway land where they become little more than walking, talking commodities to be bought and sold--would prove dangerously alluring, and not just for Helots who might as well be the Russian serfs of the ancient world. Even if most of them are smart enough to realize that the dominant Marxist-Leninist movements of yesteryear simply replaced one master with another who blew smoke up the people's ass, I still think many of them would look more to Leon Trotsky as an inspiration than Joseph Stalin, even though the former was himself a brutal bastard who advocated his own brand of constant bloodletting. Syndicalism would also take off among disenchanted slave communities, I imagine.

Unfortunately for them, uptimer authorities and mainstream Greco-Romans alike would much rather that classically liberal or social-democratic governments be installed that still abolish indentured servitude and offer meaningful protections to the downtrodden, but without infringing on (legitimate) private property and overall economic success. I need not comment on fascism, which may fascinate a handful of authoritarian downtimers who still come to despise Mussolini and Hitler for different reasons than we’d like, but really has no chance, per its atrocious record still being in living memory.