Romans expanding southwards instead of northwards?

Brita

Brita

I'm not a specialist of Roman history but I've sometimes wonder if it would be plausible for Rome to have expanded into Africa rather than in Europe. Right now, I can see two possible PODs for this:
  • Caesar isn't assassinated and eventually officially acknowledges Caesarion, who succeeds his parents both in Rome and Egypt. I'm not sure how plausible it is, given Cleopatra's unpopularity. However, assuming Caesarion manages to become both dictator (or whatever else he'll call himself) of Rome and Pharaoh of Egypt, maybe we can see a Roman expansion into Africa rather than in Central/Northern Europe.
  • The exploration of the Nile under Nero's reign is more successful and ends up with the conquest of the Kingdom of Kush and the opening of trade routes with Aksum and maybe its subsequent conquest, leading to further exploration southwards into Azania and maybe even westwards into the Ubangi and/or Congo rivers basins.
In this case, what possible consequences could lasting Roman expansion into Africa have?
Could we see domestication of more native animal (zebra, elephants?) species and spreading of native vegetal (sorghum?) species into the Roman "empire"?
OTL zebras are known to have been trained to pull carriages in the 3rd century CE. Could they become domesticated ITTL and used the way horses were? Could African elephants (either forest or bush elephants) be used as beasts of burden (I'm thinking about the building of temples for instance).
Could the Romans adopt new gods/religious practices and customs?
 

Evil Crusader

Not really. The Romans did try their hand at some expedition southwards, but the areas proved neither particularly easy to conquer nor particularly useful from a resource standpoint. As for Axum, the Nile Cataracts are in the way and will hinder any attempt at moving a decently sized force southwards; as far as Rome cares, Axum can simply be left to its own devices because the barrier works both ways.
Any conquest would be likely short-lived, and kinda forgotten much like the irish tradeposts nowadays are.
 
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EasternRomanEmpire

Brita said:
I'm not a specialist of Roman history but I've sometimes wonder if it would be plausible for Rome to have expanded into Africa rather than in Europe. Right now, I can see two possible PODs for this:
  • Caesar isn't assassinated and eventually officially acknowledges Caesarion, who succeeds his parents both in Rome and Egypt. I'm not sure how plausible it is, given Cleopatra's unpopularity. However, assuming Caesarion manages to become both dictator (or whatever else he'll call himself) of Rome and Pharaoh of Egypt, maybe we can see a Roman expansion into Africa rather than in Central/Northern Europe.
  • The exploration of the Nile under Nero's reign is more successful and ends up with the conquest of the Kingdom of Kush and the opening of trade routes with Aksum and maybe its subsequent conquest, leading to further exploration southwards into Azania and maybe even westwards into the Ubangi and/or Congo rivers basins.
In this case, what possible consequences could lasting Roman expansion into Africa have?
Could we see domestication of more native animal (zebra, elephants?) species and spreading of native vegetal (sorghum?) species into the Roman "empire"?
OTL zebras are known to have been trained to pull carriages in the 3rd century CE. Could they become domesticated ITTL and used the way horses were? Could African elephants (either forest or bush elephants) be used as beasts of burden (I'm thinking about the building of temples for instance).
Could the Romans adopt new gods/religious practices and customs?
Click to expand...
It would be extremely unlikely for the Romans to expand in Sub-Saharan Africa as despite the Trans-Saharan trade the Romans would see no advantage in exploring massively what is after the desert, any Roman Emperor/General would much rather conquer some land in the North which would give him a lot of glory than some some distant land across the Sahara.
It's extremely unlikely any conquest would be successful as you would have the issues to transport a few legions over there and be able to supply them, also diseases would probably plague your army as the tropical climate isn't ideal for conquest.
 

Silver01

The only viable expansion route is Nubia and maybe Aksum if you can take over Nubia you can attack Aksum also use the red sea but the Romans tried to attack Nubia and failed to conquer it
 
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