aspqrz02
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It is unlikely, based on later experience, that the Empire could have expanded to the Elbe *and* held those gains. They couldn't hold Dacia or Armenia, nor Mesopotamia, under Trajan and his successors who, arguably, had a stronger army and better leadership than the Julio-Claudians ...
The problem was, as with so many things historical, the economics ... the Roman economy simply couldn't support the sort of armed force needed to defend itself and expand itself much further than it did historically ... especially in the west where the potential conquests were basically sparsely populated trackless wilderness of no economic value in the short or medium (and probably medium-long) terms. It wasn't any better to the south - if anything, Africa was worse because of the sharp disease gradient - and to the east, well, the Sassanians and Parthians were a formidable foe that the Romans were never quite able to take down (again, largely because of economics).
You also have the problem that, historically, the plagues that hit the Mediterranean world in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD were an inevitable byproduct of the expansion of the Empire (and its neighbouring Macedonian Successor/Sassanian/Parthian Empires/Kingdoms as well) which linked the Asian, South Asian, African and European disease pools ... to the extreme detriment of the Empire's manpower (and therefore economic) base.
If you expand the Empire more, sooner, and into lands that will be an economic drain, then the impact of the plagues ... which can't be avoided with then current medical knowledge or technology ... will be worse, if anything, weakening the Empire sooner and much more than historically.
All in all, somewhat paradoxically, I'd suggest that the chances are that the very success you suggest would very likely (if not certainly, cogitations on alternate history being very much 'for the want of a horseshoe nail' sort of things) be a bad thing, survival wise.
Then, of course, given the manpower intensive nature of warfare where the technology of the day provided virtually no force multipliers while, on the other hand, *training* did ... the Romans won more often than not because of superior training (and the elan/morale that comes from that), but this could be shattered quite easily ... defeats like Teutoburgerwald, Carrhae and Adrianople all had long term effects that were very similar, it's just fortunate that the earlier ones weren't followed up (for whatever reason) by the victorious enemies ...
Some historians have suggested that Adrianople was, in fact, the end of the Roman (Professional) Imperial Army because so many of its trained Field Army troops (especially from the Western Dioceses) were lost, and there simply wasn't anyone (or any time) to train back up to strength ... the Late East Roman (Byzantine) Army being a very different creature and, of course, the West collapsing ... some of those historians go further and suggest that it is virtually a certainty that, even if Adrianople hadn't been a disastrous defeat, a disaster *like* Adrianople was simply inevitable because of the relatively slim margins the Roman 'force multipliers' offered their armies.
YMMV.
Phil
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Author, Space Opera (FGU); RBB #1 (FASA); Road to Armageddon; Farm, Forge and Steam; Orbis Mundi; Displaced (PGD) ---------------------------------------------- Email: aspqrz@tpg.com.au |
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