I like to point out that Sol Invictus might develop like western equivalent to Shinto religion in Japan. What I mean is that syncretism will be much more wide spread then it was for Christianity or any similar faiths. It’s basically Romans just organizing its pantheons by adding new or foreign ones or old obscured while reorganizing existing cults, traditions, philosophies, and deities into it. Less “desirable” ones are censored into obscurity or removed completely by state persecution especially if seen as threat or hostile to empire.
Sol Invictus will definately be a part of this TL, but you have certain given me alot to work with in terms of how it is handled. I'll have to think about it further until then.
Thank you for all the ideas, though I don't think Aurelian would just divorce his wife like that.
Why won't Aurelian divorce his political insignificant wife? She hasn't given him son nor multiple children.
Hmm, some very good points to be sure, I'll try to take those into account. Though Aurelian would attack the Sassanids first, as he was already preparing to invade before he was assassinated.
Seems a bit rash to divorce his wife to marry the daughter of an insignificant aristocrat when he's already doing a decent job managing the empire himself.
Wut? Aurelian was the one who abandoned Dacia, why would he reconquer a province he ordered abandoned for the sake of a more defensible border?
The Senate is an increasingly irrelevant body, the army is what matters more than everything else and he has the loyalty of the army.
Dacia can be made client or buffer state. Better that way. Get more defensible borders while keeping coastal areas of modern Romania. Everything north and east of river is Dacia kingdom loyal to Rome that helps absorb bit of barbarians encroachment or raids.
Invading Gothic Dacia is going to be very costly and very time consuming for little benefit that a status quo that sees the Goths pliant doesn't already have. Furthermore, Aurelian is going to get his foreign victory anyway, against the Persians.
It will be less than five years since they left Dacia and even if the goths walking in the day the Roman left, they will still not be that entrenched in the area. Plus there will still be allot of citizens in the area who will most likely help you.
Dacia was already in an actively deteriorating situation when Aurelian had the province evacuated. The tribes being pushed westward by the Goths were already in Dacia and it was a constant struggle to keep the province Roman. Clearly it wasn't that defensible. And has already been mentioned a few times now, much of the Roman populace was evacuated to other provinces when Dacia was abandoned.
Many of the mines, especially the gold mines, had been long closed down by the end of the 3rd Century as they were tapped out. The Romans worked quick at getting what mineral resources they could. Anything left probably wouldn't be worth the expense of trying to defend a much longer border.
Aurelian already brought peace to the empire, that's why he was going east to fight the Persians. It was a random conspiracy cooked up by a paranoid corrupt secretary that got him, not a continuation of the civil wars he just ended. And reconquering a province he just ordered to be abandoned would be simply ridiculous and make him look like an idiot. Better to secure the eastern border against Rome's inveterate enemy than wage a pointless war for an indefensible border, Aurelian was no fool.
Dacia wasn’t defendable, that’s a fact. Look at how frequently it was attacked and how much it stuck out like a soar thumb. Having the Danube as the border was far more better solution that worked out quite well for the empire. If the empire could’ve defended it without it being a drain they would’ve. If he retook it he’d just be wasting irreplaceable imperial resources on a province that’ll just be attacked in a few years and need more resources put into it. And retaking it isn’t nearly as prestigious as beating the Persians, which wouldn’t have been too hard considering it was done by Carus a few years later.
And yet, Aurelian was already in the final stages of preparations to invade the Persian Empire, and the Romans had a serious interest in doing so until Carus went as far as sacking Ctesiphon, and was planning to go further before his sudden death in 283. It stands to reason that Aurelian could actually roll back pretty much all of Rome's losses in the east from the 3rd century anarchy.
