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Sorry, but I'm not super interested in arguing about this, because you seem pretty convinced that the modern "systems and trends" approach is the only correct answer. > I consider setting up empire-wide infrastructure to be something that largely happens due to socioeconomic forces and the environmental conditions of the empire, not something that 1 guy decides to do alone Yes, well, that's not how history actually happened. I suggest reading more about Augustus the individual and the decisions he made. A different person would have made different decisions – which yes, would have reverberated down to the common man in "Ohio", especially if his formerly peaceful locale is now a warzone or if his children are drafted into the military. Augustus laid the bureaucratic and financial foundation for the Empire and without him, there's no guarantee that the Roman Empire actually exists. So again, no, the empire would not "have been led by someone slightly different and perhaps had slightly different borders." It may have splintered into eastern and western divisions sooner, been overrun by barbarians more quickly, or fractured into the pieces held by the various factions. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/905/reforms-of-augustus... This exact same scenario has happened many times WRT Muhammad, Napoleon, Constantine, George Washington, et cetera et cetera. The idea that individuals are just interchangeable cogs is just a 20th century cultural trope, not an accurate reading of history. |
None of what you just said directly addresses what I intended to communicate. Nobody is suggesting that people don't make any decisions. Nobody is suggesting that literally everything would have happened exactly the same if different people were involved.
What I am suggesting: there are a number of characteristics which are required to become a US president right now. Those characteristics drastically skew the probability of certain decisions being made versus if a person were picked at random. Furthermore, if by statistical anomaly someone did make drastically different decisions, there are several correction mechanisms that would prevent the effects from reaching too far... see Julius Caesar for example. But he's even an exception that proves the rule, as his ascent to power was only possible once the republic was in a certain state of decay.
So yes, Augustus made many decision that changed the course of history. However so did many other people, and just like the binomial distribution of catching stoplights green or red causes trip times to be normally distributed as the number of stoplights goes to infinity, decisions which bolster or hinder macroeconomic factors cause them to be normally distributed as the number of decisions and decisionmakers goes to infinity.