Some refinements, after reading other ideas in this thread:
Split the work into several books: one targeting merchants and navigators, one targeting scholars and lawyers, one targeting priests, one targeting noble families, one targeting plebians, a secret one targeting the army, etc. (the details could vary depending on which targets are the most valuable) The books would reference each other (except the military one) as a marketing ploy.
The secret military book would be written in an alternate alphabet (simple replacement of letters with strange symbols as a low form of security), and include instructions on some military technology: crossbows, composite bows, stirrups, better steel, secret codes and how to break them, the tactical implications of the new technology, etc. - the goal is to allow the Roman Army to develop new technology and have the time to perfect it before knowledge of it becomes widespread (unlike the other books, divulging the content of this book to unroman ears would get punishment in the afterlife). This should help the army be more supportive of the new ideas introduced by the books in general, and thus of my eventual claim to the throne.
Antibiotics! Also, proper washing of hands by the doctors should be among the religious commandments; the book on medicine should include an explanation of microbes, sterilization and other useful concepts, and describe ways to experimentally test those theories.
The messages aiming to be broadcast to the foreign heathens could go along with Latin translations of those texts, as well as explanation of what valuable goods those people are likely to hold, and what they are likely to value, giving an incentive to merchants to try to reach India or even China.
The book aimed at the noble families could include well-written adaptations of the stories of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, etc. but cast in a distant semi-mythical past where the main characters are presented as ancestors of those noble families - that would boost the prestige of those families and have them as promoters of the new books as obviously divinely inspired.
The horse collar, of course!
Together, those should ensure some support support from the clergy, the army, the merchants and the noble families.
Do I have to take it over? Can I not just use my body of knowledge to churn out technology and Enlightened thought to (hopefully) allow humanity to skip a couple hundred years' worth of religious intolerance, and ignorance of rational thought?
A recent discussion post has compared the difficulty of an AI destroying modern human civilization to that of a modern human taking over the Roman Empire, with the implication that it is impossible.
The analogy has a few problems: first, modern humans don't have much greater raw intelligence than the Romans, only a bit more knowledge and tools; an AI would have a genuine intelligence advantage. Second, a high-tech civilization like ours offers many more ways for a genius to cause chaos than existed in classical Rome: it's more plausible that you can throw a few existing technologies together to create a superweapon than that Ptolemy could have done likewise, and there's no ancient Roman equivalent to hacking a nuclear launch system.
But taking over ancient Rome might serve as an interesting upper bound on the difficulty of an AI taking over modern civilization. And it's a theme of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality that rationalists should be able to come up with creative solutions to seemingly hard problems. So if Professor Quirrell offered it as an extra credit assignment, how would you take over Rome?
Here are the rules:
- You are thrown back in time to the year 1 AD. You can choose to arrive anywhere in the world, but your method of arrival cannot itself give an advantage (you can't appear in a flash of light in the middle of a religious ritual or anything).
- You do not start with Roman citizenship or any other legal record of your existence.
- You keep your original physical characteristics, including sex, height, and fitness. You will appear in period-appropriate dress of your choosing, and can't carry any artifacts with you. You may start with enough money to live a patrician lifestyle for a year.
- You are intellectually near-perfect. You know all human knowledge as of 2012. You speak fluent Latin (and all other languages of the day) and can orate as eloquently as Cicero or Demosthenes. You are a tactical genius of the order of Caesar and Napoleon. And you have infinite willpower and goal-directedness: aside from human necessities like sleep or food, you need never rest.
- You win if you either become Roman Emperor (and are acknowledged as such by most Romans), or if a state you control conquers the city of Rome. You lose if you die, of old age or otherwise, before completing either goal.