Optimates win the Roman civil war

Did all those officers and men fight for Pompey because they were loyal to the Senate - or because they were loyal to their illustrious general?
The generals and any higher level officers were just important senators, many of whom have not seen much military command in the first place-again, like with Sulla.

I suspect it was mostly the latter. And I can quite imagine a son or nephew of Pompey questioning why he and his soldiers should take orders from that bunch of greybeards in the Capitol
Why would Pompey's son think he's in a position to declare himself dictator and March on Rome? None of his sons led an army into battle until after his death, and Sextus Pompey at least would later set himself up as an ideological defender of the traditional republican government.

Because again-why would they abandon a system theyre the winners in? Pompey himself has no desire to get rid of the traditional system, his entire career is about getting to the top within that system. And of course he doesn't even control the only anti-Caesarian army.
 
Probably not. Not to say that the Romans would not love to annex Egypt but first, you have to consider that whoever is allowed to pull that off is going to have immense power and wealth-they will become, with a stroke, the most powerful person in Rome bar none. In Republican Rome nobody wants to let anyone else get that power, which is one of the reasons it never happened IOTL.

The other reason of course is Egypt may be particularly difficult to hold. The Romans would face a lot of resistance, something that was not the case after Cleopatra leveraged the kingdoms resources to try to help Antony. Augustus really encountered a perfect confluence of factors in his favor.

It's far better to just have the Ptolemy's as client states, which was indeed how the Roman Republic preferred to govern much of their Asian holdings-indirectly.

Oh, that was probably be a first I seen: Egypt surviving as an client state in the event of the defeat of Caesar and the Roman Republic lasting at least another generation.
 
Oh, that was probably be a first I seen: Egypt surviving as an client state in the event of the defeat of Caesar and the Roman Republic lasting at least another generation.

Whether Egypt survives or not is pure speculation, TBH. It might be that it stays a Roman client states for the next decades or even centuries. But it might also be that some ambitious general (the proconsul of Syria with his powerful army is a good choice) decides to end the Egyptian monarchy. He'll find some excuse, as Caesar did in Gaul, and send troops to take over the country. At this point, the Ptolemaic monarchy is quite weak, and won't put up much resistance.
 
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Well, Ptolemaic dynasty might go to extinction on some poin so there would be succession crisis if last Ptolemaic ruler can't name successor.
 
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