WI The Gauls are united under Vercingetorix...and win against Julius Caesar's late Gallic War Campaign against them. Thus the Gauls control area extending to the north east, to the natural boundary of the Rhine.
WI The Gauls are united under Vercingetorix...and win against Julius Caesar's late Gallic War Campaign against them. Thus the Gauls control area extending to the north east, to the natural boundary of the Rhine.
So the Gauls have a couple of years of breathing space until the Romans send a bigger, more well trained expeditionary force to conquer or at least vassalize the Gauls.
What if Julius Caesar dies in the course of the battle? Civil war in Italy or a Crassus dictatorship?
So the Gauls have a couple of years of breathing space until the Romans send a bigger, more well trained expeditionary force to conquer or at least vassalize the Gauls.
Soap would never have been invented.
My bad. My train of thought was more along the lines of, soap would never have been passed to the Romans and popularized by them.What an odd comment, considering that Gauls and related groups had been using soap for some centuries.
Crassus was killed 53BC at Carrhae, so if Caesar cops it in Gaul shortly after, that leaves Pompey as "winner by default".
If he avenges (or tries to avenge) anyone, it's probably Crassus rather than Caesar. The east is where the best plunder is. So Gaul is probably forgotten about, certainly for a long time, and maybe forever, like Germany.
This may well result in Rome's border settling down a lot closer to the Mediterranean, with the big advances to Rhine and Danube never happening (though the frontier may advance a bit in Illyricum, and that enclave in the French Alps is probably absorbed at some point). OTOH, Egypt will still get annexed sooner or later, as it's too rich not to steal at some point, and the conquest of Asia Minor may proceed more rapidly. But when times get hard in the 3C, these European borders will be harder to defend against Barbarian attack than OTL's. The Western Empire may fall c250AD.
This could be interesting for the Christian Church. If the West falls pre-Constantine, it is far less identified with Rome, and there is probably no RCC as we know it. The Church makes its first gains by converting Barbarian kings, not Roman Emperors. Could be a very different Middle ages.