Rome Goes West

[Diogenes]

What would have happened if Rome had put more pressure on the western German and Celtic Tribes than they did on Greece? Would the Roman way of thinking made German, Gaelic, Celtic, and Spaniard nations when it broke apart? Would it stay together?

 

[EvolvedSaurian]

What would have happened if Rome had put more pressure on the western German and Celtic Tribes than they did on Greece? Would the Roman way of thinking made German, Gaelic, Celtic, and Spaniard nations when it broke apart? Would it stay together?

Dude...

Okay, first off, Susano will kill you if he catches you using German instead of Germanic before... 945, I wanna say, but I forget.

Second off, Gaels are and were Celts. Third off, Spaniards were largely of a mixed Celtiberian culture. So there's a good bit of redundancy there.

Fourth, I'm not really sure how much more pressure would be plausible. Ireland and Caledonia were worthless from a Roman point of view. Entirely unsuitable for Mediterranean agriculture, no booty worth subduing every single tribe, no enslavable population to speak of. Most of those also apply to Germania, but with more people, and people after them and so on...

The attempts OTL, pressing Brittania's border northward and the disaster with Varus, well, they just weren't seen as rewarding enough to be worth the cost.

 

[Thermopylae]

Indeed one wonders if the conquests of the western provinces would have been possible without a strong foothold in Africa and Asia first...

 

[Dutchie]

The only further West the Romans could have gone was Hibernia, and they were having a hard enough time finding a use for Britannia. The Greeks lands were the osurce of much of the wealth, power, and knoweldge for the Roman empire, which is why they went there first and stayed there longest. The germannic tribes you mention were mostly North-east of Rome's western provinces, not still further west. The Iberians were fully incorporated into Rome's empire, while the Hispaniards were generally a result of the cultural mixing that happened after the Romans left.

So the two-fold response to your question is: How much further would you have liked them to go? And Why would they go for the bronze medal when the gold medal was waiting for them to seize it?