(August 11, 2012 at 1:41 pm)Minimalist Wrote: ...
Now, granted there were huge grain carriers operating between Carthage and Rome in the Imperial period but the Romans would have had no cause to expose those ships to the Atlantic. They were far too necessary to maintaining the food supply in the capital. While military vessels may have had the capability to remain at sea for longer periods of time it is also true that when Pompey the Great campaigned against the Cilician pirates he did it by conquering the land they were based in - not by sinking every individual pirate ship.
As for getting back...we know NOW where the westerlies are. They would have had no such information.
Finally, there is nothing in the record which indicates that anyone ever claimed to have made such a trip.
Obviously, if Romans recorded such a claim, subsequent history would be very different.
However, based on pure technical ability, I think it is not implausiible.
1. It won't be a warship as roman era warships were fair weather craft not suited to carry large amount of provision.
2. I don't see roman merchant vessels as having any flaw that would make them fundamentally more unsuited to ocean travels than Columbus's vessels. I think by 2-3rd centuries roman grave stone depictions show the Romans even had multi-masted ships with gaff or Lateen rigged sails on some masts and square rigged sails on others, implying a respectable ability to beat to the windward and good capacity to sail large with wind, in other wards, approximately level with 15 century atlantic sailing technology, in some respects, showing sail innovation not popularized in Atlantic sailing till after the 1770s.
3. It's a stretch, but it's not inconceivable for the Romans to have known, or in necessity have made the leap about the westerlies in southern latitudes because: 1. There might have been now lost records from earlier egyptian or phoenecian, who had completed circumnavigations of africa, telling them so. 2. Romans could have made the leap themselves by observing wind in the 40s in the northern hemisphere primary blew from the west, thus usually pinning any sailing ships in their harbors on the aquatanian coast, and made the leap and speculated that a symmetrical westerlies band in the southern hemisphere as well.