Did the Roman Empire ever explore, or how far did they know?

[caldrail]

A question asked on another forum, but an interesting one. The short answer is yes, although we don't know much about it, and they had knowledge of powerful empires across the continent of Asia because there was trade. That actually sums up the where most of their geography came from - merchants who weren't acting under official orders but seeking new lucrative markets, or in the case of empires like China, heard stories passed on through intermediate trade.

Were there any official expeditions? Again, the short answer is yes, though these were far and few between since the Roman Empire became a very insular beast, but of course sometimes they got curious.

There was a military expedition that went south along the Red Sea coast, blantantly aggressive, which did sterling work subjecting the locals to Roman victory, defeated eventually by sickness, exhaustion, and thirst, forced to retire to safer territory. There is also a mention in the sources of an expedition into the deep deserts of North  Africa (Though the areas are probably much more arid now) where the soldiers fought with 'troglodytes' (cavemen). One might add that Caesar's campaigns in Britain were also explorations since the island had not received any official Roman attention before that, and he was looking for precious metals to pay off his debts before returning to Rome. I would add that military scouts must have made many explorations of frontier areas to gauge external threats or find an existing one.

Strabo of course wrote a guide to peoples and nations around the Indian Ocean.

[guy]

On 9/1/2021 at 7:51 AM, caldrail said:

Were there any official expeditions? 

There was a military expedition that went south along the Red Sea coast, blatantly aggressive, which did sterling work subjecting the locals to Roman victory, defeated eventually by sickness, exhaustion, and thirst, forced to retire to safer territory. There is also a mention in the sources of an expedition into the deep deserts of North  Africa.

Interesting point. Strabo discusses the attack on the distant Kush by General Petronius:

 

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The Kingdom of Kush was an ancient kingdom in Nubia, centered along the Nile Valley in what is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt. The region of Nubia was an early cradle of civilization, producing several complex societies that engaged in trade and industry. (Source: Wikipedia)

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*Strabo describes a war with the Romans in the first century BC. According to Strabo, the Kushites "sacked Aswan with an army of 30,000 men and destroyed imperial statues...at Philae." A "fine over-life-size bronze head of the emperor Augustus" was found buried in Meroë in front of a temple in 1912. (See Wikipedia article below.)

Here is a great new video on Kush and contact with Rome.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush

Edited February 2 by guy

[caldrail]

Check this out....

 

 

Edited September 3, 2021 by caldrail

[caldrail]

This video discusses Sino-Roman contact from a military perspective....

However it is also true that trade and diplomatic missions were taking place on rare occaisions during the Roman period.

Sino-Roman relations - Wikipedia

 

Edited September 3, 2021 by caldrail

[guy]

Here’s an interesting article on the Limes  Africanus (the southern borders of the Roman Empire)

 

(Limes Tripolitanus: Source Wikipedia)

 

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Unlike the Limes in other parts of the Empire that had continuous border fortifications, the Limes Africanus consisted of several independent sections from different periods in Roman history, including the Fossa regia, the proposed Fossatum Africae, the Limes Mauretaniae, the Limes Tripolitanus, and a fossatum located in Tunisia.

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2021/09/the-limes-africanus/141417?fbclid=IwAR28fANRIrnWZ21vaRSXSNFl0FiOyk0UFHHNQaWZygccUpcRY7twqIToo3M&amp

Edited February 2 by guy

[caldrail]

The point about the limes is that they were not fortifications. Neither was the stone barrier at Hadrian's Wall despite the usual depiction of towers and crenellations (the walkway was not wide enough for practical defence purposes). These constructions were barriers to control passage across the frontier, not prevent it. In North Africa the walls link one side of certain valleys to the other, the objective being to obstruct free passage of mounted people. The trajanic wall in eastern Europe (nothing to do with the emperor Trajan, this was a 4th century construct) was the same, obstructing horsemen from the distant east. In fact I can only think of two walls that were deliberately obstructive, one at Alesia (okay,  that was two), and the wall built by Crassus to contain Spartacus and his horde. Neither of those were frontiers but military constructions built to control a battle. Note that by the later empire the Romans had all but given up using such barriers and relied on intercepting intrusions inside Roman territory.