Hadrian's Consolidation - reboot

[Hecatee]

Lixus, Atlantic coast of Mauretania, April 260

The five ships were bustling with activity, soon to leave the last large port of the Empire before the unknown of the African coast. Each carried a century of infantry, a hundred sailors and fifty officers and scholars, all ready for an expedition that had been decided as a prestige operation by the young emperor Gaius Aurelius Augustus, the 20 years old youth that had inherited the throne at the death of Marcus Iulius Philippus some two years before.

The ships and their crews were veterans of the Indian Ocean trade routes and known to be sturdy and able to resist the open seas’ difficult conditions. For this exploration trip their large holds had little trading goods, mainly jewels made with glass pearls, which were a hit in the trade of the Indian ocean and amongst the popular classes of the empire, and small bronze statues cast on the cheap by iberian workshops, also sure to be good bargaining goods.

But more than those items it was food and water aplenty, kept in great gallic wooden casks, that was carried : they did not know where and when they would be able to replenish them, given all existing knowledge about the coast.

Had a Roman from two centuries before looked at the ships he would have been amazed and surprised to learn the ships were Roman. In fact many had been amazed to see them during their long, slow, parade-like transfert from Alexandria to the Atlantic port of Lixus.

The Emperor had wanted to be seen by his citizens and had gone to Alexandria to board the fleet, which had been equipped with sails dyed purple. They had then sailed to Antiocheia, Cyprus, some cities of the southern Asia Minor coast, Athens, Crete, Syracusae, Cartago, Sardigna, Arelate and then cities of the Hispanian coast, the Emperor leaving the fleet in Betica for his land trip back to Rome.

Everywhere shipbuilders and traders had come to see the famous Indian Sea traders and their curious high sea design, huge ships 25 feet long (37m), with their round shape, their high freeboards, their three high masts, their stern rudder… They certainly made for an interesting sight, especially in western ports not used to see the gigantic grain ships of the Alexandrian fleet !

At sea too they surprised by having two sails on each mast, one of top of the other, the rare supparum of earlier times being replaced by a full sized sail. While they sailed best with the wind coming midway between side and rear, they were of course able to sail against the wind if need be for although their keel was not very deep they did have two leeboards that could be retracted in shallow waters but provided stability in high sea.

The ships had also the possibility to be rowed, making them a bit like a giant version of the greek akatos type of fast luxury trader ships. Indeed temporary benches could be set up on the deck and portholes opened for large oars that could help get into a river’s mouth or move slowly in case of a lack of wind : this was always a good opportunity for the soldiers to keep their arm strength !

The masts were also equipped with attachment points which gave the possibility to set up large canva tents to protect the crew and passengers from the sun, very useful in the hot Indian Ocean seas, but the canvas could also serve to quickly make replacement sails in case of need, similar to how the oars could be turned into emergency yards in case of trouble.

The expedition was commanded by a former praetor, Aulus Aelius Carbo, an homo novus first of his family to enter the senate after his father had gained a fortune in sea trade. He had been deemed the senator most experienced in sea travels, having done an Indian Ocean trip in his youth and having numerous contacts in the naval world.

This explained why his five ships were captained by equestrians with a lot of naval experience too, who had each taken some of their best men from their private fleets so as to maximise the expedition’s chance.

The imperial staff had also looked at troops that had experience of at sea transport for the security of the expedition and had chosen a cohors quingenaria, the Xth Batavian cohors, to be part of the trip : five of its six centuries had been detached from their duty near the northern shore of the empire, where they often worked with the classis germanica, for this mission.

What the soldiers did not know was that a bunch of new recruits had already been slated to replace them, in case they disappeared in the vastness of the sea… The Empire was not about to cause a hole in her defenses if it could prevent it...

A tuba suddenly gave a signal : it was time to leave Lixus for the unknowns of the coast of Africa…


(For those who want to visualize the ships, look at a cross between a Dutch fluyt and a xebec with pivoting side panels acting as leeboards as is more often associated with river/coastal ships but can also sail in deeper seas. I went this way because there is no gun artillery, no history of piracy/warface dictating the medieval inherited fore and aft castles. But in comparison with fluyt and xebec our ship is much longer and somewhat larger because it benefits from the experience of the Alexandrian shipwrights who built 40+m long grain ships such as the exceptional Isis. Naval construction does not have to re-learn all that was lost in our OTL dark ages and can go straight to ships of small galleon size of the XV/XVIth century : Colombus ships are about 1/3rd smaller than those five ships, but with numerous other differences of style ! ).

 

[Hecatee]

Maktaris, Africa Proconsularis, July 260

I was born from a poor family and to a father of meagre means

who had neither municipal wealth nor his own house.

From these beginnings by birth, I lived by cultivating the soil.

Never was there any rest for me or my land.

When each year produced the ripening crops, then

I was the first harvester out to cut the stalks

When our sickle-bearing band of men marched out to the fields,

whether to seek the nomad plains of Cirta or those of Jupiter.

Before everyone else, I was the first harvester into the fields,

leaving the land behind my back thick with sheaves.

I reaped twelve harvests beneath the raging fire of the sun.

Then I rose from field-hand and became a foreman.

For eleven years I led the bands of harvesters,

and my gang cut the fields of Numidia.

This work and life was good to a man of small means.

It made me the owner of a house and provided a farm

The house itself does not lack for any luxuries.

And now what I spent so much time doing in my youth

Separating the grain from the chaff, turning it into flour

All this I have machines to do in my stead.

And my life has reaped a harvest of honours:

I was registered in the ranks of the town’s senators.

Chosen by them, I too sat in the council's holy chamber.

From being a poor peasant, I even rose to be the pagus magistrate and censor.

I fathered, and lived to see my sons and my dear grandsons,

And to see them prosper in their own right and become my equals in the council

I have passed the bright years of my life as I have deserved,

years that no savage tongue can harm with blame.

Learn, mortals, to live a life free of wrongdoing.

He deserved to die thus, he who lived a life free of deceit.

--

This is an actual inscription found in Maktaris, Tunisia, to which I did add 4 lines and 3 words, the original is now at the Louvres in Paris

 

[Hecatee]

Epilogue
Novaroma, Ultramaris, 21 April 1247

The day was a day of celebration. Tensions with the ultramarine empire were not forgotten, but today the vestiges of the Roman Empire’s presence in the ultramarine territories celebrated the two thousand years of the mother city, Rome.

Of course the Emperor, nowadays a mostly ceremonial position elected every ten years by the Senate from its ranks, was in Rome and those who wanted could see the parade to the Capitolium on their wall sized teleides or even see it on their virtual presence sets, but most novaromans had decided to crowd alongside the large avenue of the new world that bisected the city centre in order to enjoy the show.

The reenactors came first, two thousand men split in twenty groups, one for each century of Rome’s history : the bronze age warriors, the republican legionaries who had crushed the Greeks and the Carthaginians, the proud soldiers of Marius and Caesar, the stolid professionals of the age of Augustus, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, those of the later era of the so-called caretaker emperors, those who had fought the nordic wars and those who had to protect the empire from the steppe hordes around the thirteenth century of Rome, the conqueror of the ultramarine lands and those who had fought against their later independence…

The last group was made of a hundred current foot soldiers with their modern armors eerily reminiscing of the early imperial style, complete with the energy shield and the energy hastae heavy infantry weapons whose shape was reminiscent of the spears of old. Of course they were accompanied by five time their numbers of military servi, the semi-autonomous pseudo-infantry machines that had taken the place of man on the battlefield, a clear display that Rome’s power was not to be trifled with : at least five time as many men and servi were manning the defensive positions of the island’s shore.

Then came the vehicules, troop transports and mobile artillery and combat chariots equipped with both energy and projectile weapons while overhead five turmae of drones flew low and slow, unlike their usual flight parameters… Together with the rest of the legion deployed in the area they guaranteed that the ultramarine would not attempt a new assault on the island that had been known as Paumanok when the first Romans had come to settle it.

Above each parading group the augmented reality lenses everyone wore showed more informations about each era, how the borders of the empire had fluctuated, although to be fair the core borders had been mostly stable for a millenium. Of course there had been the conquests of Hibernia and that of the lands north of the famous britannian wall during the era of the caretaker emperors, and the move east of the germanian limes as a way to counteract the mobility of the steppe tribes during the large wars against a number of leaders whose name was still taught in school despite the fact that they had been no real threat on the battlefield except for the number of men they commanded, an advantage greatly diminished when the Romans fought from prepared positions, helped by the then new individual firearms that had come into mass service.

Similarly images showed the conquest of the ultramarine region, with first the gallic fishermen in their steamships arriving along the northern coast of the area, the foundation of the first temporary settlements on the outlying islands, then the arrival of large groups of colonists protected by the army who had founded the main cities on the continental coast and then in the interior, mainly following the rivers.

The local tribes had been greatly diminished by plagues brought by the newcomers, and the colonization had been very easy. The best sanitation and draining techniques from the Empire had been used to quickly tame malarian lands, and explorers had set about mapping this new land. Soon they had discovered the empires of the south, with their strange names… Mayas, Zapothecs, the great city state of Theotihuacan, and then, on the other side of the southern ultramarine, the Moches and Nazcas…

The middle islands group had also been explored, and its fitness for cultivating spices and sugar recognized. At the time slavery, which had been in decline in the Empire’s centre due to the increasing role of machinery, got a temporary reprieve : the natives that did not die from illnesses were often used in the latifundia the settlers created. However that would only last for about fifty years before the drying up of the supply of slaves and the increased mechanization made the practice of slavery in those plantations unprofitable. What few slaves remained became household slaves and then, when Constantine “The Great Emancipator” made his great edict of Mediolanum, became free men of peregrine status like their brothers in misery from Europe.

The evolution had been rather the same in Africa, although it must be said that the ultramarine territories were much more densely populated than the dark continent thanks to the much better climate and easier colonization. Of course places such as Africa Meridionalis thrived with large latifundia bringing lots of money to their owners, but most of Africa’s jungles were left to their barbarian inhabitants who slowly evolved in contact with the white men from the sea.

This network of colonies had been held by massive fleets of steam, and later naphta, propelled ships that meant that Rome could react quickly to any development : even Africa Meridionalis was only 20 days steaming from Italia, and the middle islands of Ultramaris were but a dozen days away from the gallic coast.

The invention around that time of wireless communication meant that information could reach Rome in a matter of hours, instead of the weeks it would have taken originally. In this context the rebellion of mainland Ultramarina had been something of a shock. The lack of real threat on the continent meant that few military forces were there to stop the rebellion as it appeared, and the same lack of military forces meant that the civilians of the area had more individual weapons to protect themselves from nature’s threats : they had thus been able to quickly gather lot of armed men that had overwhelmed or simply converted military units to their views.

Using the rail and river networks, they had spread in all directions and by the time an imperial legion had landed in Nova Roma it had been too late : the mainland was de-facto independent from east to west coast and from the cold meridional lands to the river in the desert that marked the limit of the old tributary native empires of middle Ultramaris in the south. Those had been prompt to join the rebellion, providing it with a lot of gold, to ensure their own independence from Rome. Geography meant that neither Rome nor its vassals further south could intervene in time to prevent this move.

Yet while all in Rome knew the cause was lost, they were not ready to abandon the islands alongside the coast. They knew that piracy could become a threat to Rome, and that the islands could either produce luxury goods of become good bases against any ultramarine fleet. Urgently fitting a number of merchant ships with guns, the Empire had enforced a blockade, razed and burned to the ground a few coastal towns that could become bases for a future ultramarine fleet, seized or sunk any ultramarine ship that could be found, and then sent representative to the provisional government of the so called Republic of Ultramarine.

The peace conditions had been harsh, with only a few ports being allowed to receive more than fishing ships of a small size, and an interdiction to build any ships larger than a given size, with no military ships whatsoever being authorized.

Knowing there was nothing they could do and surprised to come out of the war with their head on and their independence, the founding father of the new nation agreed to the conditions and signed a treaty that would mostly hold for five centuries, despite some later events in periods of troubles on the mainland where warlords attempted to attack the remaining roman territories, in particular the long island on which Nova Roma was built and which explained the major military presence on the island.

The Ultramarine would know lots of turbulences through the centuries, never evolving to the stability the Empire has enjoyed : a number of civil wars, some temporary secessions, coups and counter coups all feature prominently in the history of that gigantic nation, but in the end the deep railroad and river network meant that any breakup was temporary.

While a military powerless nation, the Ultramarine republic is one of the major economic powers of the world but the limitations on shipbuilding seriously hamper its exportation capacities, although the birth of aviation did somewhat alleviate the problem with the large cargo airships of the Ultramarine a common sight all over the world.

Amongst the other historical informations on display on the augmented reality “floats” were numerous other mentions of the maritime strength of the Empire, the technological advance of Rome meaning that it had been able to simply break any attempt at a fleet by any nation except the Serican empire, which saw no need for a fleet given that the Romans did all the necessary work to bring the world to Serica.

This maritime domination had allowed the foundation of a number of colonies on islands near larger shores, all becoming beacons of civilization to the locals and the main trading ports of the world. Through them steam engines flooded the world as did many other ideas that transformed the way of living of millions. To gain access to these riches the locals would often sell raw materials that got transformed in the Empire.

Sometime Rome would also decide to capture a land for its riches, the most notable case being the invasion of Arabia all the way to the sea once the importance of naphta was fully understood. The campaign was swift and not much native resistance was experienced thanks to a liberal use of the then new explosive and fragmentum shells which caused horrendous losses to the natives’ cavalry, the construction of rail lines then crashing a large part of the ancient economic order by making camels almost useless, breaking the power of the elites.

But the fact that Rome would thus grasp the orbis mundis and hold firm to it would not mean that all would be peaceful in the Empire, although the floats of the parade would not mention such issues… A number of great crisis had been suffered, such as the coinage and trade issues in the tenth century, when many gold mines went dry at the same time as the collapse of Serica into anarchy damaged the eastern trade, causing unrest in the Empire and the beginning of a period of tensions between the Senate and the Equestrian order which ended up with the Senatorial status becoming a personal status and no longer the mark of a class, everyone owning above one million sestertii becoming a senator and all the old restrictions that came with the old status being suppressed so that senators could engage in trade. To the shock of many old senators, hundreds of equestrians possessed the required amount of money and were interested in using their newfound power to change the world.

In this in this era that Roman law would be formally written into large corpus by theme, and the Senate reorganized to have permanent committees working on each of these corpus to propose changes to the general assembly. The committees were the constitution (in charge of the state’s organization, including taxes), army, crime, trade, foreign affairs and infrastructure committees and they remain to the present day.

The Emperor kept its role as incarnation of the state, head of the official religion, arbiter of debates, with the right to introduce new laws and to block any that he deemed unwise, and remained as supreme judiciary appeal level as well as commander in chief of the armies, although it would slowly evolve. For instance the military role would become more ceremonial during the steppe tribes’ wars when emperor Probus was captured and held hostage for five years before a daring raid finally managed to save him.

Similarly he would lose his judiciary role (except a right to grant pardon) following a crisis in which public opinion discovered that he’d been bribed, the information being disseminated far and wide by the then new paper press.

Nowadays the Emperor is mainly the figurehead of the state, head of the official cult, the one who signs laws (without being able to refuse them) and treaties with foreign nations, and lead great events such as the bimillenium of the Empire.

Another big crisis during the transition phase between the era of fossil fuels and the so called new energies had been the environnement damages caused in many areas by the search for raw ressources. We now know that the Empire caused a lot of pollution observable in artic cores as early as the 9th century while some area were almost turned into deserts by deforestation. Here however old roman laws helped as they were still enacted centuries after they had been taken for completely different reasons : the hadrianic legislations on forests protection for instance, taken for the construction of wooden rowing ships, meant that there was an administration that made sure deforested areas were planted anew. By the twelfth century the Senate had taken a number of laws on pollution, to limit the consequences of industry. This probably prevented some catastrophes…

When asked about what explains this incredible survival of Rome, historians usually say that three elements played a major rôle. Firstly the new rules on succession inaugurated by Hadrian which had helped provide the Empire with a lot of very good emperors and had remained unchanged and unchallenged for three centuries before the death of Heliconus and his two heirs to a plague caused a constitutional crisis that led to the election of the Emperor by the Senate from its own ranks for a period of ten years that could not be prolonged.

The second major element, even more important, was the birth of the experimental era. The shift in mentality the new philosophy best expressed by Claudius Ptolemy had been a major event in the history of humanity that led to the third major factor, the incredible advances in communication speed : not only did it allow the Empire to react much more quickly to events but it did accelerate the speed at which knowledge was diffused.

Some argue that the creation of the corps of engineer (as it is now known) was as important as the previous three factors because it played a rôle in dissemination of knowledge, in the introduction of new technologies simultaneously all over the empire, but also in giving new outlets for the equestrian class, making it richer and much more powerful. But all agree, nothing would have been possible without Hadrian’s consolidation.