Were the Italian city-states superior to the Roman Empire?

>>2574592
Not really. They did some great things, but they fell over the moment anything more than a stiff breeze happened
It probably would have been better if the pope wasn't such a pussy and let them unify

>>2574634
Why unify a bunch of people who want nothing to do with each other?

>>2574634
Are you stupid? Nothing good came out of the unification. It's what turned the peninsula into an irrelevant shithole today.

>>2574592
In what regard? Militarily, they're vastly inferior since they never produced great name generals/leaders like Caesar, Scipio and Augustus and with the exception of Venice, they kept being conquered by foreign powers. Contribution wise they were better since the Romans got most of their technology/progression from the Greeks. Not to mention Roman art sucked compared to Italian renaissance stuff.

Overall I'd say the Romans were better since they basically shaped western civilization in greater spades than the city states.

>>2574639
>a bunch of people who want nothing to do with each other

A decent amount of Italians wanted some kind of semi-unified Italy to resist foreign invasions- I know Dante, Machiavelli, and Cesare Borgia all wanted a stronger more unified Italy. They just couldn't agree on who should be in charge.

>>2574639
The popes didn't want them to unify around the Renaissance because they didn't want the papal state to be a subject to anyone else. There were attempts to subject large amounts of cities to the rule of one, but the pope usually asked other cities to step in and curb their growth

>>2574644
Just because one timeline was shit doesn't mean another would have been. Renaissance Italy was completely different than 1800's Italy. Italy united under a ruler who loved the arts (like all nobles back then) would have been a great place

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>>2574648
But muh condottieri, muh white armor, muh crusaders.

>>2574644
>8th strongest economy in the world today
>irrelevant shithole

It's really underplayed just how weak the Italian city states were, from being under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain to being client states of France. A United Italy was seen as an overall great thing for the Italians themselves as it allowed the country to hold their own and throw punches with the Great Powers of Europe, even defeating the Austrians/Austro-Hungarians during the Unification Wars and WWI.

A united Italy made the region able to speak for itself and enforce its own interests for the first time in thousands of years, it was the weakest of the Great Powers, but a Great Power nonetheless.

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>>2574702
Okay, but only if it was an union between just the Northern and Central Italian city-states. Terronia should be left out of it. You can't fix that shithole.

>>2574702
Also, the HRE didn't rule shit. It's states were pretty much independent by the 12th century.