The Challenge
Make a map of a Roman province where there definitely shouldn't be one. Ultimately, what counts as "shouldn't" is up to the mapmaker (it could be a Roman Germania, it could be a Roman Olympus Mons), but it can be absurd.
The Restrictions
There are no restrictions on when your PoD or map may be set. Fantasy, sci-fi, and future maps are allowed, but blatantly implausible (ASB) maps are not (well, maybe a liiiittle blatantly implausible, at least for this contest )
If you're not sure whether your idea meets the criteria of this challenge, please feel free to PM me.
Please try to keep images posted in this thread a reasonable size - feel free to post a smaller version of your image and provide link to a full-size version if you want to.
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The entry period for this round shall end when the voting thread is posted on Sunday, August 7th.
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THIS THREAD IS FOR ENTRIES ONLY.
Any discussion must take place in the main thread. If you post anything other than a map entry (or a description accompanying a map entry) in this thread then you will be asked to delete the post. If you refuse to delete the post, post something that is clearly disruptive or malicious, or post spam then you may be disqualified from entering in this round of MotF and you may be reported to the board's moderators.
One of the lesser known Roman provinces was the short-lived province of Persia. After a catastrophic defeat for Persia in a pitched battle, the Persian king died and pretenders quickly started squabbling, giving the Romans a chance to annex the rest of Mesopotamia all the way to the sea. The province however was plagued by constant raids from pirates hiding somewhere in the complicated coast east of Bahrain (OTL UAE). As the Romans explored, they established a extremely lucrative naval trade route to India and beyond directly into it's port of Apphana which became the capital of the province. This route brought many exotic things and materials, that the Romans decided that the pirate threat must be extinguished permanently. A couple of legions made their way along the Arabian coast completely annihilating all the pirates who were not prepared for combat on land. The Romans wanted to hold this area and founded the cities of Singidunum Novum on Awal (Bahrein) and Achaemenium (to deliberately anger the Hellenized Seleucids) on the rocky Musandam penisula. However, as the Roman state started to be invaded by Germanic tribes, Persians and Arab tribes took over the area, however, tiny successor states of Singidunum Novum and Achaemenium would establish entire trade empires and survive well into the Middle Ages.
So here it is, Roman Taiwan and Roman Kyuushuu, respectively. Partly inspired by a certain documentary I watched about "Were the Soga clan Romans?".
Among other things in this timeline, during their navigation antics the Romans crash into Japan's party sometime before the Isshi Incident thus affecting the Taika Reforms and possibly the outcome of the intervention in the war on the Korean peninsula, or at least that was my intention... While Taiwan is effectively Roman land, Kyuushuu is to be considered closer to what the Dazaifu government was in the island around the same age. The map style is a bit eccentric, but I was dying to emulate the style of the Tabula Peutingeriana.
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The Crisis of the Third Century and the unexpected Age of Exploration
To say that the turmoil that hit the Roman Empire in the IIIrd century was a near-death experience is no exaggeration, but it surely also served as a wake up call for its people.
While Rome concentrated on bringing the usurpers in Gaul back to submission, they also regarded the situation in Palmyra perhaps too much lightly. No careful observation, let alone any action, was taken when the the unsuccessful skirmishes that, in a fit of hubris, the Palmyrene Empire engaged in the East with the Sassanids elicited at last an invasion by Persia. Not only Syria and Palestine fell, but soon the Persian armies flooded into Egypt and Anatolia in reprisal, coming to besiege Byzantium more than once.
Part of the lost territories were eventually regained over the centuries through countless battles, but the event drove home to the Romans that it was no longer time to rest on laurels and expect their old sources of their opulence for granted.
During the unrestful years of the Eastern Reconquest, Roman people desperately looked for alternate routes to Far East while they still could, after the old caravan routes were halted by bellicose Persians. It was not only a matter of luxury goods anymore, but also of basic sundries like wheat and grains, which started becoming scarce with the loss of Egypt.
The learned and scholars were fast in popularizing the ancient Greek stories of the African circumnavigation by Hanno the Navigator and Pharaoh Necho, and proposed them in their public speeches as a solution to the trade problem. Putting the best of Roman shipbuilding and geography to test, those merchants who could and dared to cross the Pillars of Heracles started honing their navigation skills, braving the currents to reach the ports of South India in search of goods for trade. Those daring enough ventured even farther east to try and reach Serica, the mythical land where silk came from.
While the protacted state of emergency back at home forced new forms of governorship and battle strategies to be tested in order to strengthen what remained of the Empire, the IVth and Vth centuries also came to be a small period of cultural renaissance thanks to the imports of new ideas brought along by extended explorations. As the old classical world was turned on this head, Rome also regained its peace at least, albeit still conscious that the were living on borrowed time.
The colony of Nova Sicilia
Even with the Persians partly expelled from the Levant, the naval trades with the Far East that began as a temporary last resort had now turned too intense to abruptly give up on, and so continued unabated, this time including more accessible waterways. While the imported teachings of Boddo and Confucius sparked a new, virulent interest in Gnosticism among Romans that pitted it against the Christians, it's also true that spices, new food and clothes came to Rome at a much cheaper price and in greater abundance than ever before.
A problem still remained, however. As warehouses that the Romans owned in India and Serica grew in size and storage to make up for the demand at home, they were also subjected to increasingly heavy tax levies by their sovereigns, which made commerce harder and harder as the merchants struggled to stay in the black. The solution for this was to found a port of call of their own, preferably in a place with no population and away from natural dangers.
The opportunity came when the first Romans heard of a seemingly deserted island about 100 miles off the coast of Serica, conveniently placed in the midst of two of their major commercial destinations. Hastily named Nova Sicilia after certain natural features, their settlements on the west side became the center of lively port towns and big stone houses for storage and conservation.
The colonization didn't come without troubles, however. As if struggling with diseases wasn't enough, natives met the newly arrived with hostility and subjected the Roman settlements with frequent raids. Although the much more primitive indigenous people were later vanquished to the montains, the coastal towns continued living their existence in a state of continous martial law. Huge stone walls and watchtowers had to be built in haste against the increasingly cunning incursions.
The Yamato, an ally up North
With the problem of natives settled, another issue still waited to be solved. Pirates off the coast of Asia had been frequently reported boarding or sinking Roman merchant ships, resulting in huge losses. Wisely enough, the Romans though twice before declaring war on countries which they knew little about, but it was sorely understood that they were alone in their solitary trade and needed an ally to defend themselves by proxy.
Luck visited them as a few patrol boats strayed off the course and were brough to a long voyage up north by the strong Oceanic currents. Once they returned, they told of a much more advanced people with which they might be able to form a reasonable alliance. The proposal was taken into consideration back in Rome, but for a long time it was never put in practice due to language differences.
It wasn't until the first years of the VIIth century that a Roman delegation came to the Yamato people seeking an official union of interests.
An agreement was achieved, not least because the Yamato too were embroiled in a similar situation and were seeking new forces to back up their side. Most surprisingly to them, Romans also learned that their Emperor was at the time looking to reform the structure of their then-crude government, so as to consolidate power back to his hands.
Jumping at the opportunity, Romans drove a hard bargain to get involved in internal politics and sway the country in their favor through cultural influence. The plan was to have him to abandon the project for a Serican-style government in favor of a Roman-style one, arguing that a more tiered bureaucratic structure would've satisfied his needs without upsetting the large clan rule. Eventually however it was tales of the technological wonders of the Roman world (of which a small part was brought with them in their colony of Nova Sicilia) that landed them a joint concession in their southermost island, as a show of confidence.
Military alliance aside, the status of the province of South Yamato was notably ambiguous, even between the two sides of the agreement.
While formally "donated" to the Romans colonizers to aid the natives in the developement of a new government system, waiting for it to be later approved and implemented in the remaining Yamato once time was ripe, in truth the Yamato emperor initially intended it as a trusteeship: by giving in to Romans' request, he believed he would be relieved of the trouble of running the less reachable (and more vulnerable) islands of the realm as well as staving off possible rebellions in there wishing to break off his central rule. He reasoned, after all, that the new Roman province would be virtually dependent on Yamato for all their needs and so it would be just a loyal client state of their own to burden with the most insidious matters.
Due of its excessive distance from the core of the Empire, it was necessarily ruled by two special proconsuls. One Roman, the other of course from Yamato (depending on internal intrigues, it was usually from the the gens Fucivara or the gens Soga, the first to act in favor of a Roman rule in the area), serving mainly as an interpeter/adviser and reporting on the developments to the Yamato emperor.
While a typical Asian architecture still flourished in the main island, new mixed settlements built according to the classic Roman city planning became prevalent here. Basilicas dedicated to local deities, as well as aqueducts and the characteristic keyhole-shaped mausoleums built in the style of the Pantheon, where local Yamato patricians wished to be interred after death, dotted the landscape. Latin alphabet for phonetic notations in bureacratic papers, as well as translated Latin literature also found their way among lay people in the closing days of the Roman rule.
In the late IXh century, the system of Germanic foederati that was keeping the homeland secure failed at last, and they finally pushed into Roman borders along with Turkic riders, making communication with Rome virtually impossible. As this happened, the local Roman government in East Asia, increasingly isolated from domestic matters, slowly assimilated with natives and declared self-rule, effectively following, in a twist of irony, the Yamato in all of their conquest campaigns against the kingdoms of the Cara peninsula, just on the other side of the sea. The ultimate collapse and demise would occur only in the XIIIth century as the Mongol Huns invaded South Yamato for a short period of time, after which the territories would be reclaimed and reabsorbed into Yamato by a now more centralized government. Nonetheless, the cultural and architectural heritage still lingers on to this day.
Fig.1
Particular of the Tabula Christoforiana, after the name of its donor. XIIth century replica of a VIIIth century original. Archives of the Vatican Museums.
In 1126 AUC, Flavius Claudius Iulianus Persicus Maximus, the Saint, advanced upon Central Europe once again and began a campaign againt the barbarian tribes between the Wesser and Oder.
During the reforms of Flavius Julius Valentianus, the Julian's adopted son and Caesar, this territory was transformed in the diocesis of Anglia, which depend of the Prefecture of Galia. The principal province is the province of Anglia, which capital city was Treva Augusta (OTL Hamburgo).
AUGUSTUS: D.N. FLAVIUS AURELIUS DALMATIUS, SEMPER FELIX CAESAR: D.N. JULIUS AURELIUS CONSTANTIO, SEMPER FELIX
PRAEFECTUS GALIA: Caius Junius Aeccianus, vir illustris
VICARIUS DIOCESIS ANGLIA: Flavius Valerius Ulfilius, vir spectabilis
PRAESIDES ANGLIA: Sextus Ennecurus Hispaliensis, vir clarissimus
