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> But in some plausible alternate history the Roman legions were using explosives and cannons to conquer the world a millennium before that.

IIRC early cannons were pretty severely limited by the state of metallurgy at the time.

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Wooden cannons do work, albeit with much reduced lifespans and maximum power. Even once metal cannons took off wooden cannons remained common for city and fortress defenses for quite a long time because they could be made cheap and as-needed and in great number, but obviously a wood log with a few wood straps around it aren't going to survive or be preserved for hundreds of years. The straps get recycled and new logs are found after they are either used or sit around for a few years to rot. Metal cannons did eventually win out eventually of course thanks to their accuracy, longevity, and improved metallurgy that made them more eventually more powerful than wooden equivalents, but it did take quite awhile for them to completely outclass and outrange wooden cannon, and wood cannons still had limited use up into the 1800s.

Interesting article about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cannons

The oldest bell foundries do seem to happen at around the same time as the emergence of what we'd call a cannon, but before that there were indeed bamboo tubed contrivances and similar. If the Romans did have gunpowder earlier though, I bet they'd find a way.. I mean you don't hear about stone cannons and they'd be heavy AF but why not? These people basically invented fracking in BC, and literally tore down mountains to shake out all the gold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_M%C3%A9dulas

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