Gaius Octavius (later known as Augustus) at age of approximately 17 was able to convince his mother to let him join his great uncle Julius in Hispania. He impressed Julius so much that upon return to Rome Julius updated his will to make Octavius his primary beneficiary.

Julius' murder two years later on 15 March 44BC resulted in Octavian traveling to Rome to claim his inheritance, winning the loyalty of much of the army in the ensuing chaos, defeating and executing a number of heavy hitters including Mark Antony, Cleopatra, and Caesarion (Julius' son with Cleopatra), and eventually becoming the first Roman Emperor.

Some 80 or so years prior to Caesar's assassination, a consul fomented a mob to kill a Tribune (G. Gracchus) who was pushing hard for land reforms. Historians often cite this as laying the foundation for the Roman revolution because it normalized violence as a political tool. It was followed by proscriptions and the Catilinarian conspiracy in 63 BCE.

What if Octavius never traveled to Hispania? Caesar may well have still adopted his nephew in order to make him his beneficiary. What would have happened if there were no Octavius? Possibly Marcus Antonius would have consolidated power.

Would we have no transistors today if Shockley hadn't worked at Bell Labs?

I guess my viewpoint strongly biases me towards seeing continuity and underlying processes. For every tipping point, there was a pre-existing process; for every process an event you can treat as a "handle".

What's your take on Catiline? I have just enough classical education to be a little dangerous, but my understanding is that he's sort of seen as a would-be Julius Caesar who showed up at the wrong time; Cicero was horrified by them both, but his conservative faction eventually lost so much power in the Senate that Caesar succeeded where Catiline failed.

I can see that. Both Caesar and Catiline sought power through extra-constitutional means. Caesar surely took notes (and Cicero thought Caesar even secretly supported Catiline). They were all in the senate together under Cicero's consulship, after all.

They were all hyper-ambitious patricians. The conservatives (optimates -- the best) regarded the populares (the faction Caesar aligned himself with) as people willing to threaten the order of the state by pandering to the masses. This is what Catiline did, and Caesar too. This was the basic threat that the Gracchi brothers appeared to present in agitating for land reform and something that underscored Caesar's political agenda (he had to find land for his loyal veterans).

I agree with your main point here but anyone who thinks violence as a political tool needed normalizing should not be listened to.

They're saying violence being normalized was a necessary step for the foundation of the empire. There's no moral judgment there, saying they should not be listened to would not change what happened.

This assumes he wouldn't impress Cesar later on a different occasion or that it was the first time he was trying to convince his mother to let him go.

Yes, I agree. However, life is short, and you have to take advantage of every opportunity you can to impress someone like Julius Caesar. There's no guarantee that you'll have another opportunity to spend time with such a busy and powerful man, even if he is your great uncle.

I just want to go in a small tangent here, but I imagine that if Cesar knew he was going to die and had to adopt someone to continue his rule, he probably wouldn't pick his sickly nephew with no experience, no matter how bright he might be. So I think it's very likely that Cesar put him in his will since he is a blood relative and didn't really expected to die soon anyways, but didn't mean to have him as his sole heir forever.

That's a good point. Did Julius not have a mental disorder which caused him to lack fear? It's a good for Octavian that he got close to his great uncle while he could.

I've wondered if this isn't a "just so" story told by Octavius. Caesar just may not have had a lot of good choices, so posthumously adopted Octavius and made him his beneficiary, in which case it could have happened regardless of the trip (though it might be hard to make that case stick).

Petrov saves the day by doing nothing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...

There also Vasily Arkhipov. He was deputy commander of K-19. And then submarine B-59 during the Cuban missile crisis. Where he cast the only vote not to fire a nuclear armed torpedo at the US ships dropping depth charges on them.

The decision of Alexander Kerensky and the Russian Provisional Government to repeatedly delay the Russian Constituency Elections seems to have provided critical time for the Bolsheviks to consolidate support especially under the worsening domestic situation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1917_Russian_Constituent_Ass...

I will reply to myself. The cold winter of 1658 froze the Great Belt, and allowed Swedish troups to march over the ice from Jutland to Zealand. This led to Swedish victory over Denmark and the Treaty of Roskilde. This ceded significant territory to Sweden, much of which is Swedish to this day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_Across_the_Belts

Hardly world-changing, in the grand scheme of things (and I say that as a Swede).

Maybe how Louis XVI got caught while trying to flee France. He bought a drink with a coin and got recognized because his face was on it.

Had he not been executed and been able to rally a friendly monarchy, I dont know if the revolution would have taken the same route.

> What are other examples of when the course of history have balanced on a knife's edge?

I suspect that almost all of history does balance on a knife's edge. How far back in history that edge exists, relative to the event is the real question.

There is probably a point in every civilization where it's rise would be anything but inevitable. You don't need very many of these events in ancient history before the chain of causality for everything that came after it would be seriously altered.

I think differently. For example, if Newton would have perished as a child due to an unfortunate accident, the physics he discovered would have been discovered by someone else. It was just a matter of time. But geopolitical events can turn out very differently due to random flukes, such as the outcome of a battle.

Perhaps you mean Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz?

We have to admit that the dy/dx notation has proven more useful than f'(x), as we all saw in our first semester of calculus.

Yes, for example.

I would say that individual 'inflection points' might be incredibly rare. IE: maybe only 1 notable event out of 10,000 is like this. But something like this would only have to play out once or twice far back in history before the world we see today would be very different.

Humans were down to 10,000 units at some time.

Maybe some leader consolidated power and convinced the tribe to embark in a journey to move somewhere else where water was more plentiful and food too, we can only imagine that ...had his attempt at convincing the tribe been unsuccesful we would not be here today!

Or maybe the opposite, which is also true...somebody level headed convinced the tribe not to embark in such a journey...to stay, because with so few units it was not the time to make experiments or gambles

Sir Francis Drake raid on the Spanish Armada in 1588 [1]

Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, defeating the Confederate charge at Little Round Top in the battle of Gettysburg is arguably the key turning point of the US Civil War - the entire war and subsequent history could easily have turned out entirely differently without Chamberlain's successful order of the 'right wheel forward' maneuver bayonet attack when the 20th Maine was out of ammunition, which held a key ridge in a pivotal battle. [2]

Those are merely the first two that come to mind.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Armada

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Round_Top

> Sometimes the small details make all the difference.

That being said, "revolution devouring its own children" is a pretty much hard rule with very few exceptions.

It may be so, but the difference can be if the leaders remain in charge or not. Compare Robespierre with Stalin. I think they are similar in many ways, but while the French revolution "ate" Robespierre, Stalin got away and could continue the terror for decades.

One might argue that Stalin was the one doing the eating. His role in the revolution and it's immediate aftermath was relatively limited however after taking power by the late 1930's he had purged pretty all influential bolsheviks who joined the party prior to 1917.

Good point.

IIRC, just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong for the Spanish armada. Some nice weather or good health of the originally slated commander might have possibly prevented the British Empire.

A few years later Napoleon almost broke the Allied line at Waterloo. According to the Duke of Wellington it was "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life." If Napoleon had succeeded we would be living in a very different world.

Or if Ney had sent forward some light cavalry to reconnoiter the crossroads at Quatre Bras at some point in the morning, he'd have seen that Wellington was not waiting there on the reverse slope. Had he seized the crossroads, he could've totally changed the circumstances that led to the battle at Waterloo.

Yeah talk about misfortune. I once read an account of a Ragusan merchant ship that was pressed into the Armada. Imagine being a run-of-the-mill Ragusan sailor one day, then, several hellish months later, trying desperately to navigate the Irish coast on a leaky galley just to survive and get home.

Democracy as an idea and form of government was almost extinguished from history by the Persians.

When Emperor Xerxes II invaded Greece to avenge the Greeks beating his father Darius it looked really bad. After the Persians put a pretty bad hurting on the allied Greek navy, the Athenian Admiral Themistocles lured the huge, but slow Persian navy into a bloodbath where Greek Triremes dominated their Persian enemies at the Battle of Salamis.

Meanwhile, a small contingent of infantry led by the famous King Leonidas and 300 volunteer Spartans (along with roughly 10,000 Thebans and Thespians) held off the brunt of the Persian infantry and cavalry. After these two battles, the majority of the Persians left Greece and thus ended the Greco-Persian war.

Democracy lived because of valor and cunning of a small group of very brave men.

The type of democracy practised in Athens was pretty widespread amongst various city-states (including non Greek ones like Rome, which arguable had a form of "democracy" much closer to the modern one because in Athens most public officials were chosen by lot) it's just due to a variety of reasons very few written records from cities other than Athens survived.

Also you mixed up the battles, Greeks lost the battle of Thermopylae (the one in which the 300 Spartans fought) pretty decisively as a result the Persians invaded Attica and sacked and razed Athens to the ground (most of the population was evacuated to nearby islands). The decisive battle after which the Persian were mostly expelled from mainland Greece was Plataea (during which at least 70 thousand Greeks (including 10 000 hoplites from Sparta) faced a Persian army similar in size.

Besides Sparta itself was anything but a Democracy so I can't imagine they were fight to protect it. And the also defeated Athens and their allies in the Peloponnesian War a few decades later (in large part due to Persian financial support).

Also the two ancient Greek philosophers who had the most influence on the development of western political philosophy were of Plato & Aristotle (who both were very critical of democracy).

> The type of democracy practised in Athens was pretty widespread amongst various city-states (including non Greek ones like Rome, which arguable had a form of "democracy" much closer to the modern one because in Athens most public officials were chosen by lot) it's just due to a variety of reasons very few written records from cities other than Athens survived.

From wikipedia: "The concepts (and name) of democracy and constitution as a form of government originated in ancient Athens circa 508 B.C." Rome was a representative republic starting in 509 B.C. their ideas absolutely helped democracy become a thing, but it was ultimately invented by Athens.

> Also you mixed up the battles, Greeks lost the battle of Thermopylae (the one in which the 300 Spartans fought) pretty decisively as a result the Persians invaded Attica and sacked and razed Athens to the ground (most of the population was evacuated to nearby islands). The decisive battle after which the Persian were mostly expelled from mainland Greece was Plataea (during which at least 70 thousand Greeks (including 10 000 hoplites from Sparta) faced a Persian army similar in size.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I said they held off the brunt of the Persian infantry and cavalry, which they absolutely and historically did do, for three days with a fraction of the men. You are correct that they decisively lost the battle, but I also said that the majority of the Persians left Greece after this. Again, historically, after the spanking the Persian navy took at the Battle of Salamis, and three days of heavy fighting and casualties at the battle of Thermoplaye, Emperor Xerxes retreated to Asia with much of his army, leaving Mardonius to complete the conquest of Greece. It was almost a year later that the battle of Plataea happened, but the majority of the Persian forces left with Xerxes. Mardonius tried to convince Xerxes to continue after the defeat at Salamis, but his heart was no longer in it.

> Besides Sparta itself was anything but a Democracy so I can't imagine they were fight to protect it. And the also defeated Athens and their allies in the Peloponnesian War a few decades later (in large part due to Persian financial support).

Yes, I'm aware. Sparta forced the tyrant Hippias out of Athens, who ultimately fled to Persia. Realizing that a democracy was bad for Sparta, they attempted to recall him and reinstate him back as the tyrant of Athens. I believe it was the Corinthians and some of their allies who forced Hippias back into exile. Having tasted democracy, they were not keen on going back to a tyranny. Athens even told Persia no, they would not accept Hippias and that was what ultimately lead to the Ionian revolt and Darius's first Persian campaign into greece, whee.

I might be a bit off here as I've not read Landmark Thucydides since the beginning of covid (I have a hardcopy). What did I get wrong? Besides Athens inventing democracy, I think we're mostly in agreement.

Democracy in Greece was ended by the greeks themselves. Monarchy was the rule from Alexandrian times through to the fall of the Byzantine empire.

I buy the argument that modern representative democracy is descended from Germanic practices. Germanic warriors 'electing' their leader -> landed men having representation through a house of lords or parliament -> modern suffrage movemetns. See the origins of the Icelandic or British parliaments. But nearly any society based on a widespread warrior class was in some way democratic, from Rome to the Mongols.

One of my favorites is Alexander at the Battle of Granicus

Here is the relevant passage from Plutarch:

Many rushed upon Alexander, for he was conspicuous by his buckler and by his helmet's crest, on either side of which was fixed a plume of wonderful size and p267 whiteness. But although a javelin pierced the joint of his breastplate, he was not wounded; 6738 and when Rhoesaces and Spithridates, two Persian commanders, made at him together, he avoided the one, and smote Rhoesaces, who wore a breastplate, with his spear; and when this weapon snapped in two with the blow, he took to his sword. 9 Then, while he was thus engaged with Rhoesaces, Spithridates rode up from one side, raised himself up on his horse, and with all his might came down with a barbarian battle-axe upon Alexander's head. 10 Alexander's crest was broken off, together with one of its plumes, and his helmet could barely and with difficulty resist the blow, so that the edge of the battle-axe touched the topmost hair of his head. 11 But while Spithridates was raising his arm again for another stroke, Cleitus, "Black Cleitus," got the start of him and ran him through the body with his spear. At the same time Rhoesaces also fell, smitten by Alexander's sword.

Alexander almost was killed by a battle axe. This was at the Battle of Granicus when he was facing a provincial Persian army. If Alexander had died that day, he would not have conquered the Persian Empire. Greek culture would not have spread nearly as wide as it did. It would have profoundly affected both the development of the East and West.

How reliable is this narrative, though? Alexander was highly revered by many, so these kinds of heroic stories would naturally be attributed to him. And Plutarch isn't always known to be super reliable.

(That said, I don't necessarily fully doubt the story, either. He certainly seemed to like putting himself in dangerous positions.)

The Second Defenestration in Prague, May 23, 1618. Three people of the catholic church were thrown out a window and dropped 17 meters below on a pile of manure, all the survived, one with head trauma.

What followed was the 30 Year War, a topic that I know is sadly a but underdeveloped in US/UK history class, since the US didn't exist then and the UK didn't really do anything on account of it's own internal problems at the time.

The 30 Year War was pivotal for religious rights in Europe as well as one of the most devastating wars in history (up to 40% of the population perished either in war, famine or plagues). Another big point was that as a result of this war, german cities and the rest of europe experienced a big uplift in trade. Especially France, Spain, Netherland and England got a huge boost to their ship trade, which I would argue at minimum indirectly lead to financing the expeditions that discovered the Americas.

Sadly it is a rather complex topic that many historians still fight over, since in most cases if you open history books about it, you see a map of the HRE + Europe with about 2 million arrows labelled "attacks" or "leads to" or "defends" or "defeats".

There were a number of points during the Cold War (that we know of) including but not limited to the Cuban Missile Crisis when things could have escalated.

If Georg Elser (or someone else), would have succeeded in assassinating Hitler.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Elser

Maybe, but the underlying reasons for WW2 still existed (and indeed it had started by that time). Would Goering or Himmler have taken over and done things differently? Perhaps the allies would have sued for peace, perhaps the invasion of France would wait until the smoke cleared and a new leader is in place, with the same army and increased internal pressures. Would that new leader invade the Soviet union before pacifying the UK. Would a delay in invading France have led to FDR not standing in 1940? There's all sorts of posibilities, but it doesn't feel as major a change as some other fateful decisions - the broad strokes wouldn't have changed.

An intriguing possibility is that the execution backfires because the Nazi leadership had a war to inspire the public so they didn't really need Hitler, and could make much smarter decisions in his absence, and so the Nazis actually win the war (or at least achieve a settlement in a much smaller war which leaves them still in power). But I guess it's also possible the leading Nazis fight each other like rats in a sack over who takes over, who was to blame for the assassination, what military action to pursue next and why were they going to war alongside the hated communists against everyone else in Europe in the first place, and the whole thing falls apart very quickly.

"Nazi leadership had a war to inspire the public so they didn't really need Hitler, and could make much smarter decisions in his absence, and so the Nazis actually win the war "

Since fanatism and not smartness were the desired traits in the Nazis, I doubt they would have made more smart decisions - rather infighting with the national conservative part of the Wehrmacht and society taking over. (thanking the nazis for the plain power base they build them and getting rid of democracy and then kicking them out, like they planned from the beginning and reinstall a king)

Well, we will never know, but I think it is very likely to have had a huge impact. All sorts of outcomes are possible, from internal Nazi power struggles, leading to more moderate forces taking over and making peace with the west and later in a new alliance against russia, or simply consolidating Nazi germany as a mid european superpower between soviets and the western alliance.

One of the tropes in discussing time travel is whether you would go back and assassinate Hitler.

I would have gone back and made sure he made it into art school.