A different result at Actium

[Jman]

OK, here's a short TL with an ancient POD. Let me know what you think.

POD: 31 BC Octavian's fleet is destroyed by a storm just before the Battle of Actium.

31-26 BC: The Third Civil War continues. In OTL, Marc Antony's army suffered huge desertions after the crushing defeat at Actium. In TTL, no such things happen, and Antony has some military successes in the East against Octavian, while Octavian was master of the west. In OTL the Republic had been roughly split in just this way for the two men to administer, after Lepidus was expelled from the Triumvirate. Antony's alliance with Cleopatra put Egypt's forces and resources at his command.

26 BC: The Senate demands and end to the war, largely because the people of the Republic (read: the mob) demand it. Having suffered through three civil wars (Ceasar vs. Pompey, the Second Triumvirate vs. the Conspirators and now Octavian vs. Antony) Rome is weary of war. Octavian agrees becuase he cannot hope to raise more armies without the senate's backing, and Antony agrees becuase he sees that in the long term he will probably lose.

The Roman Republic is divided into the Eastern and Western halves. The West is ruled by Octavian, now a Princeps (meaning First Citizen, but Dictator in Perpetuus in practice) in conjunction with the Senate. It is still a Republic.

The East is ruled by Antony, who takes the name Imperator (Commander) due to the negative connotations of "Rex". The Eastern Roman Republic is a staunch ally of Cleopatra's Egypt due to the romantic relationship between the Egyptian queen and Antony, and is a nominal ally of the West. Its capital is the startegic city of Byzantium. (Note: It may seem odd that the East would not simply annex Egypt. However, Cleopatra's main political goal was to keep the Ptolemeic dynasty in control of a sovereign Egypt, and therefore she prevented any attempts by Antony to unite the two states. She knew that any such event would put Egypt in a weaker position as a province of the Eastern Empire.)

18 BC-10 BC: Princeps Octavian and Imperator Antony both engage in wars of conquest to boost their reputations and fill their treasuries. octavian conquers Illyria and parts of northern Spain and the Alps, while Antony expands deeper into Anatolia, north into Thrace, and aids Egypt in conquering the rebellious province of Judea.

8 BC- Marc Antony dies. The alliance between Egypt and Eastern Rome continues but is weakened significantly. Antony's son, Marcus Antonius Antyllus, takes the throne and with his Egyptian half-brother Ceasarion, who has been running the day-to-day affairs of Egypt in his mother's name for a long time, leads a joint Roman-Egyptian army to do battle with their common enemy Parthia.

3 AD- Octavian makes Princeps a hereditary position and effectively establishes the Western Roman Empire by naming his stepson Tiberius Claudius as heir. The Senate bestows Octavian the title of Augustus, "the Wise".

6 AD- A greatly battered Romano-Egyptian army emerges out of the desert of arabia after failing to conquer any part of Parthia. Parthian tactics and the use of both horse-archers and heavily-armored cataphracts infilicted a crushing defeat on the allies, who had appearantly not learned the lessons of the Battle of Carrhae. Thus, the Parthian menace remained in the east, which was enough to unite the Eastern Romans and Ptolemies in alliance for years to come, despite any disputes the two states might have.

14 AD- Augustus dies and Tiberius takes the throne of the Western Roman Empire. In TTL he now rules only about half of what he did in OTL, and has two powerful rivals in the East. Mediterranean history is foreve altered.

That's it so far. Comments?

 

[Communist Wizard]

Ancient? That's not ancient!
I like the timeline, though. Looks like history will be drastically changed...

 

[Jman]

Well, it's pretty ancient. Thanks, though.

 

[Iñaki]

It seems a plaussible and interesting TL.

Some questions:

I suppose that Antony has annexed Thrace in the process instead of maintaining it as vassal-client state?

As I have seen in the map Armenia has disappeared completely, in OTL in the period mentioned by you 31BC-14AD Armenia or was an independent state or a roman vassal-client state, so it is clear that the parthians not only has winned a defensive war, in fact they have conquered Armenia or remains as a vassal state of Parthia as in OTL was the case for example of Adiabene, Atropatene, Osroene and Caracene?

 

[Jman]

Thanks for the feedback

Yes, Antony annexes Thrace directly:

Antony expands deeper into Anatolia, north into Thrace

As for Armenia, yes, it gets annexed to Parthia. While the bulk of the Romano-Egyptian army is chasing a smaller but more mobile Parthian force around the desert, Parthia sends another army up to take the ill-defended client state.

 

[Wendell]

Could this split allow for the survival of some incarnation of Roman Empire(s) longer?

 

[Don_Giorgio]

I think that Octavian might be tempted somewhere in his reign to attack Egypt...

 

[Jman]

the future of this TL

I don't want to turn this into a major project right now, but here are some thoughts on how I see this history progressing.

-First off, I envision a three-way stalemate in the Mediterranean. Here's why: wheat. Egypt is a huge producer of the stuff, and so is OTL southern Ukraine, which has to trade through (Eastern Roman) Byzantium. So, if the West attacks either the East or Egypt, they get a big source of food cut off. Not that they can't find other sources, but there's also the fact that attacking one of these states will draw the other into war. Attacking Egypt or the East wouldn't be like conquering some little barbarian state, it would be a long, treasury-depleting war. Augustus simply can't afford this in his reign, and probably few of his successors would want to be known as the man who restarted the Roman Civil Wars. Then again, not all Roman emporers showed good judgement. Egypt and the East probably won't fight eachother, as the common enemy Parthia keeps them united, lest they provide an opportunity for the Parthians to attack.

-Both Roman empires will expand, as this was a must under the Roman system. Western Rome will definitely invade Britian and probably Germania, which might be difficult to pacify, to say the least. The east can take Dacia, which is rich in gold and close by, or retake Armenia. Eventually they might even defeat Parthia...maybe.

-Eastern Rome will be Hellenized, both through its association with Ptolemeic Egypt and on its own. Greek will begin to eclipse Latin as the working language of the government. Religion will do interesting things. East Rome will probably adopt some gods from its ally Egypt, and there might be a major divergence in the eastern and western pantheons: one Greco-Egyptian and one defiantly Western Roman.

-Christianity might not evolve, certainly not in its present form. The trend within Judeism to expect a Messiah largely became connected to the Judean independece movements: the Savior was both religious and political. The Jews chafed under the Roman religious system, which allowed for the worship of any chosen gods, if the Cult of the Emporer was honored. This was no problem for polytheists who could just add the Emporer as another god, but the monotheistic Jews do not like this. A Judea ruled by Egypt wouldn't have this problem and possibly would not resent the occupation by neighboring, culturally-similar Egypt as much as they did the OTL Romans. So, possibly Messiah-ism doesn't arise as a trend at all, and Jesus lives peacefully as a carpenter. In any case He probably won't be crucified in TTL.

-Finally, the Roman Empires might last longer, possibly much longer, than OTL. One of the main reasons the Empire fell was that it was over-extended, with huge and badly-defended borders. Cutting that territory in half from the very beginning of the Empire might help. Also, healthy competition might prevent some of the corruption and decadence that in OTL helped bring Rome down. Finally, without Christianity the religious-strife factor would be minimized. So, both Romes stand a good chance of surviving the Hunnic invasion and resultant displacements of people. After that all bets are off.

Thoughts?

 

[orion900]

Western and Eastern Roman would need to work out some kind of Formal Leader replacement plan, this was one of main reasons for the fall of Western Roman and the decline in the Byzantine Empire, no direct policy on Leadership process, organization, not the old Republic Public Relations, which didn't bear any real policial power in this TTL.

Very interesting Timeline...

Orion

 

[Nicomacheus]

I agree. Interesting premise. I always wonder at the potential future of ancient world TLs that end up with balance of power situations in the Med. It has the potential to support state-formation far sooner than OTL.

I also agree that grain supply will be a major issue for the Western Roman Empire. I'm not sure how they'd deal with it, but I wonder if they might try to rationalize the productive capacity of the land they have. Perhaps advances like steel plows that OTL emerged during the middle ages, might emerge in the Western Empire as Augustus and his successors try to become more self-sufficient. This might also alleviate some of the social ills of the Republic.

I would also expect the Principate to take a far different tack as to imperial rule than Antony's Imperium. Antony will be revilled as an Eastern Despot in league with foreigners (Cleopatra), so Octavian may be better off keeping more the apparattus of the Republic. This is very similar to OTL, but I wonder if it might lead someone to attempt to reform the senatorial system and republican offices to create a genuine imperial republic. It's hard to say, since Octavian and his heirs can easily take the informal approach they took OTL.

The question of survival is how the earlier split will affect the ability of both sides to cope with assimilating Barbarians. Varrus' defeat will probably be greatly changed TTL, though there's no guarantee something similar doesn't happen. Arguably, the Roman Army never really recovered to its pre-Varus strength OTL, when one uses relative figures (i.e. the army never regains its strength relative to the population and wealth of Rome). Furthermore, IIRC, it was the inability of either empire to truly assimilate barbarian nomads that begins the dynamics of Rome's fall. Whether the split alters this dynamic is highly uncertain, since it first depends on political and social developments directly after the split.

 

[Iñaki]

Originally posted by Nichomacheus
I also agree that grain supply will be a major issue for the Western Roman Empire. I'm not sure how they'd deal with it, but I wonder if they might try to rationalize the productive capacity of the land they have. Perhaps advances like steel plows that OTL emerged during the middle ages, might emerge in the Western Empire as Augustus and his successors try to become more self-sufficient. This might also alleviate some of the social ills of the Republic.

Well it would not be difficult, in OTL in the first century AD Africa province produced 2/3 of the suplies of cereals to Rome, also Hispania, principally the province of Baetica produced cereals and exported to Rome.

I think that although Egypt was important, more important was the control of Africa respect to the grain supply, Africa with Baetica are sufficient to maintain the population of Rome good feeded.

 

[Dutchie]

And even if not, perhaps with less government supplied gain flowing in, more of the Populace has to get back to work and grow their own food. It wasn't that Italy couldn't feed itself, it's that the senate had been buying votes with free food for so long that the government needed a large, single-source supply to get the foodstuffs from. If Princeps Ocatvian used the opportunity to reduce and eventually cut the supply of free grain to the people, he'd save himself a lot of money - and make a lot of Romans productive again. Might also make for a cleaner, healthier capital city, as people leave for farm fields.

Though it would mean wresting the land from the Senators' control.... they'd need to be compensated.

 

[Michael B]

The East is ruled by Antony, who takes the name Imperator (Commander) due to the negative connotations of "Rex". The Eastern Roman Republic is a staunch ally of Cleopatra's Egypt due to the romantic relationship between the Egyptian queen and Antony, and is a nominal ally of the West. Its capital is the startegic city of Byzantium.

Antony is unlightly to chose Byzantium when he could select Antioch which is both larger (in fact at time the third largest city in the Classical world) and nearer the centre of his domain.

18 BC-10 BC: Princeps Octavian and Imperator Antony both engage in wars of conquest to boost their reputations and fill their treasuries. octavian conquers Illyria and parts of northern Spain and the Alps, while Antony expands deeper into Anatolia, north into Thrace, and aids Egypt in conquering the rebellious province of Judea.

Judea was in fact a stanch ally of Antony's. It can only be seen as rebellious in that Herod did not want Cleopatra to take it over.

6 AD- A greatly battered Romano-Egyptian army emerges out of the desert of arabia after failing to conquer any part of Parthia. Parthian tactics and the use of both horse-archers and heavily-armored cataphracts infilicted a crushing defeat on the allies, who had appearantly not learned the lessons of the Battle of Carrhae. Thus, the Parthian menace remained in the east, which was enough to unite the Eastern Romans and Ptolemies in alliance for years to come, despite any disputes the two states might have.

I see no reason why any Roman commander would be a big enough muppet to have copied Crassus. In fact later commanders on OTL used to go via Armenia on their way to sack the Parthian capital. Serious conquest of the Parthians, I agree could be a no. Regularly beat them up, yes.