Caesar was only a few days from leaving Rome for the safety of his army. I wonder how history would have played out had he lived?
He would likely have subdued the Dacians centuries before Trajan would do so. He mostly likely would have defeated the Parthians and avenged the disaster at Carrhae, but would it have been purely a punitive campaign or would he have carved out new Roman provinces in the Middle East and beyond?
Would Caesar have founded the Principate instead of Octavian? Would Octavian have succeeded Caesar and still become Augustus?
Anyway, Roman-related posts are always appreciated.
Some years earlier Pompey had been hired by the backstabbing Senate to clear the pirates (he was the one they wanted, but he’d been burned by them before, and just claimed to have no further interest in public life, to the point that he got exactly what he wanted from them). Pompey had also removed a threat in the east years earlier, and the 2nd c BC the remains of one of the spinoff Alexandrian kingdoms was eliminated and Greece had been conquered. Carthage had been destroyed by an earlier generation.
Caesar’s pattern was to eliminate threats to Italy. The Gauls were still the biggest threat in the minds of Romans and other Italians due to the Gallic invasion that was far beyond living memory. Caesar’s shattering of the Gallic tribes and two attempts to establish a bridgehead in Britain suggests his eventual course of action.
Instead, as a consequence of the civil war, he wound up snuffing the other nearby spinoff Alexandrian kingdom (Egypt) using, what, a half a legion? His conquest of Egypt was his masterpiece, or at least one of them. :’) By that time his two peers, allies, and older contemporaries were dead (Pompey and Crassus). He cultivated allies, and had an obvious knack for recognizing ability.
Octavian was quite young when Caesar was assassinated, but had learned well, and wound up systematically building an effective and highly loyal cadre. He was blessed to find Agrippa, who had a rare combo of logistical planning and snap decisionmaking in the heat of battle. Agrippa played Caesar to Antony’s Pompey.
Octavian also wound up with perhaps the best one-two punch any Roman family produced for the army, Tiberius and Drusus. They solidified Gaul and cleaned out the entire Rhineland frontier, and as loving brothers (some said half-brothers) never had doubts about each other. Often in long-lived political systems, the greatest are found at the beginning, and the Roman Empire definitely fits that.