Rome

The most powerful military on the planet ever is either the US/USSR objectively speaking.

I would include European colonial powers but they were at each other's necks so no.

I understand that their siege warfare was vastly superior to anything that had really been seen.
But, I am talking open field warfare.
How much more tech could they really have had in those few hundreds of years between various armies. I mean, swords and shields seem pretty continuous to me.
Additionally, i get that roads is a big part of what made the empire elite. But, seriously, how hard is it to put stones down to connect towns. If others hadn't done it, that just says a lot more about them as people.

Hence why I said in the ancient world. Obviously a good stockpile of nukes and one F-16 could take care of any ancient army.
similarly, Colonial powers had guns... hardly ancient warfare.

Do you have examples of this? What battles were either side "Wrecked"? Thanks

I guess I was thinking of Pyrrhic war
Quick look at wikipedia gave me battle of Asculum (greek victory) and battle of Beneventum (roman victory)
I'm not really that deep in roman history though

Interesting. Thank you for the battle names. I will look into them more.

>Did the Roman empire at it's height have the most powerful military on the planet in the ancient world?
Pretty much yeah. They had a fully professional army with top tier gear of a size comparable with the largest army of the time, which however was half made of conscript.
>Would the Romans have beaten any other great military in their prime as well? Xerxe's Persians? Alexander the Great's army?
Any previous ones, given same tier commanders? Sure.

Then its a pointless argument. Ancient powers - all of them- are at best, regional hegemons.

What is Roman military power to China? And vice versa? See?

>Shitty ones
Republican cavalry routinely defeated its opponents. The meme of them being bad comes from losing bad against more numerous opponents like at Canne.
Imperial cavalry was literally a mash up of the most celebrated cavalry forces of the period (north african and gaulish light horse and eastern cataphracts), so yeah.

>What are auxiliary units
>What are Equites cataphractarii
Every nation that had superior cavalry the Romans would beat, then establish auxiliary cavalrymen from that nation.

Actually, not so much... What was attempted was introducing vastly different tech.

look at the battle of Cynoscephalae

Romans could hold a phalanx down frontally but not defeat it, however, the Roman maniple was so flexible and mobile they just had to quickly get behind it and slaughter them.

>what are motherfucking cataphractoi

>I understand that their siege warfare was vastly superior to anything that had really been seen.
>But, I am talking open field warfare.
No, you don't get it.

You push them inside the cities where they think themselves safe, and let the siege machinery do the talking, then negotiate peace, then the locals find out they just have shut the fuck up, not rebel and pay tributes, and if they do they get to keep their religion and culture, and you actually protect the peace better than the former masters did.

And that's how you take over the world when there is no mass transportation, airplanes, contemporary national states (as opposed to loose collections of tribes), and nukes.

>seriously, how hard is it to put stones down to connect towns
No. Shit has to be invented, mastered, improved upon, and redesigned, and this species spent millennia without shit because it's hard to invent, and no matter how accostumed you are to living in the middle of the end-product version of the shit, it is not obvious.

It's hard and you need to think outside the box to come up with the shit, then prove it is applicable and successful in your present day.

All very good points.
It is true that Siege warfare dictated all other policy and types of war.
Additonally, good point about just because we are accustomed to something doesn't make it common sense.

Parthia fucked them up on a regular basis and kept them from expanding east.

I forgot to mention that divide and conquer was instrumental in getting the empire started and running smoothly.

Find the most friendly barbarians, aid them in taking over their rivals, promise them they will be chieftains or even local KANGZ.

Ultimately assimilate both friendly and enemy barbarians, because you have cultural as well as political hegemony, and all the cool kids want to learn your language and buy your things, you're the only superpower that can globalize its stuff in that location, etc.

But let me expand on why "roads aren't obvious."

Roads take a lot of work to make. They didn't have the machinery of today, which is very specialized in addition to using engines, asphalt and working quickly.

People need to be convinced that all this neverending labour is not a gigantic waste of time.

It's not just: "It would be nice if we had a road", somebody has to do the damn shit that brings it into existence, one stone after the other.

That, my friends, is hard.

What are some great examples of these divide and conquer methods that you allude to? I know from reading that a very prominent example is Aleric... but are there others?

Also, very good points about the roads. It does take work to make that feat possible as well.

Insubres and Boii, who are Gauls, rebel against the Roman Republic, for "some reason" Cenomani decide to join Rome and Veneti even though Cenomani are Gauls...

After the Battle of Pydna, Rome divides Macedonia in four republics.

Cue any Macedonian reporting his fellow Macedonian man for having anti-Roman sentiments.

Caesar loved it during is Gallic campaign, and even though Vercingetorix managed to bring all the remaining tribes under his banner it was too late. The man's practically synonymous with divide et impera.

Fun fact, even the nazis did it. They banned the communist party and the social democratic party with the help of the centre party and the national people's party. Then the nazis banned those two party as well and remained the only legal party left in Germany.

The Persian empire had armies of conscripted peasants. They relied on their professional immortals and chariots/elephants to do the job and the Romans could easily go toe to toe with the immortals and has a history of being able to take down elephants.

Alexander's army rrelied heavily on his phalanx holding down the enemy while his companions got the flank. The Romans faced similarly composed armies from the diadochi and crushed them.

Except Antony gave Parthia the big dick and recovered the golden eagles easily after Crassus fucked up in Carrhae, the Parthians fucking Rome up regularly is just a meme.

Are you getting your history from 300?

Slavery and conscription was outlawed in Persia and the immortals were the King's personal guard. There were only 10,000 of them, you're suggesting their entire professional army was 10,000 soldiers?

The Persian Army was raised Feudally. In addition this was attached with numerous armies of their subject peoples, and mercenaries.

Consider the fact that by the time of Hannibal, the Roman army consisted of about half Romans and half foederati/ mercenaries/ allies.
Infantry were generally a 50/50 split between Roman and allies, cavalry were closer to 80% being allies, and light infantry/ skirmishers were also largely pulled from non- Roman areas (such as the balearic islands).
Ergo, divide and conquer was essential to the Roman system of warfare, considering over half of their army was composed of allies.
Its also worthwhile to note that those outside the Roman empire were typically much more divided than you would think. Even if the Romans were fighting say the Franks (a confederation of Germanic tribes from the late period) there could also have been a good portion of Frankish auxiliaries on the Roman side as well, for various reasons. The tribes from say, the Franks, would have had less loyalty to being a Frank than they would have to the interests of their own tribe. This of course goes all the way back to those tribes in Gaul, Spain, wherever such as the Boii, Veneti, etc.
If you want an example, you can look towards the start of the 2nd Punic war. The war started not because Rome itself was directly attacked, but because Sagentum, a Roman ally, was. Further exaples are the starts to each of the Gallic wars. Caesar origionally came to Gaul at the request of an ally to stop the Helvetii from rampaging through their territory.
Forgive me as well if I butcher names here, its been a little while since I last read the Gaelic wars.

Roman born cavalry mainly harassed or chased routed enemies. Allied/auxiliary cavalry was usually better when it was from Celtic or Germanic tribes but they still sucked ass; see ERE's attempts to use Germanic/Gothic tribal horsemen against Persians.

I hope you don't seriously believe this.

No, he didn't. Antony had a failed expedition that got his legionary forces ass-reamed and forced to retreat back to Anatolia. Octavian/Augustus managed to make diplomatic overtures that got the eagles returned to the Romans.

>Antony gave Parthia the big dick
By failing his invasion, being betrayed by his Armenian allies, and getting OP horsemen Parthia pls nerf and sent running back to Rome which is what killed most of his popularity with the Senate and Optimates?

The Immortals were the professional standing army, which there was always at any given time employed and maintained as soldiers at exactly 10,000 in number. The Companions were exactly 1,000 men specifically making up the Great King's personal guard and private army.

They both used the best of scale armor available to them but the Companions operated as both horsemen and infantry; primarily as cavalry though and were heavier armed. It was also showing from after Xerxes I reign that the Persians were switching to more cavalry based tactics and formations and moving away from light/medium infantry.

They also appropriated militias and governor's household troops and satrap forces used for garrison duties. But this doesn't equate to how things worked under the Arsacids or Sassanid dynasties.

Well the Sassanids was also feudal. The Arsacids had this Nomadic Tribal Clan shit going on.

Parthia won most of its war against Rome due to intrigue and terrain. This is how most of Rome's major defeats happened. Enemy cleverly used terrain or confusion. Not that this discounts Parthian victories, not at all. But Parthia didn't beat Rome with a superior military.

>kept them from expanding east.
No. Rome didn't expand into east because, well, philosophical reasons. Romans after Augustus did not have any desire to expand into east, and saw Rome as the "Mediterranean empire". It quite literally was a philosophy of not expanding anymore. And true enough territorial gains after Augustus were negligible aside from Britannia.

The Sassanids and Arsacids were both incredibly feudalistic but the Sassanids were far more structured centrally and had much greater centralized power. They also had a rough equivalent to "professional" standing regular soldiers in the form of the Aztan aka "free men" caste operating as low level nobles who made up the entirety of Arsacid and Sassanid medium and heavy calvary and cataphract forces. The Arsacids were more dependent on the seven other Great Parthian Houses to bring in their vassals and could only really campaign during Spring or Summer seasons and not as well in the Winter or Fall.

And the Sassanids revived the concept of the original Immortals via the Zeydan Immortals; an entire elite cataphract force handpicked and commanded by the Great King or the Great King's heir/crown prince. They were reliant on other Iranian allies and the Armenians to provide more horsemen; in fact Armenians and Parthians got equal status with their Persian kin in Sassanid military and could get up to the highest ranks in the Sassanid military.

Its actually hilarious how similar Sassanid Persia is with middle age European kingdoms.

Parthia
>raids middle east, barely ever reach the med
Rome
>burn down parthian capital city 5 times

I'd say the one getting fucked up here is Parthia.

Rome
>Burn down Parthian capital
>Go home
>Army & Emperor get raped along the way.

Sassanids
>Burn down eastern Rome
>Go home
>Entire army wiped out by a city state

Well shit, not even a city state really.An autonomous Roman city.

If you're referring to Valerian, he fought against the sassanids, not parthians.

>He uses the greek name

HAHAHA STUPID BARBAROI! FEAR MY GREEK WARCRY AIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAI!

>Rome
>start first two wars with Parthian Empire
>lose them despite it being a defensive war for the latter
>Trajan invades Parthian Empire
>military and economically cripples the Roman Empire forever by this being the last great Roman offensive attempt at conquest
>sack and capture Ctesiphon
>Trajan gets ill in Mesopotamia
>start suffering a massive series of counter-attacks; barely keeps a stalemate, Roman attempts to enter the Iranian plateau continually fail
>Trajan dies
>Hadrian takes over
>gives up everything
>Parthians harass retreating Roman forces, losing several more legions
>Bring a massive unknown disease back to Anatolia
>massive population loss as well as financial net-loss and manpower weakening from a pointless expedition
Sasuga Rome

>entire army wiped out by a city state
>Sassanids
When did this happen?

>mfw everything Trajan did was for naught but weaken Rome
>mfw departing Roman soldiers from Parthian lands brought some kind of disease that devestated like half the population of the urban Roman eastern holdings in the Levant, Balkans, and Anatolia
Was dying part of Trajan's master plan?

Saphur I attacked the Romans during the crisis of the third century and captured Valerian. After some looting and pillaging, he started returning home and his entire army was beaten by Odaenathus and an army consisting mainly of Palmyrene peasants.

>no mention of Cassius' ravaging of Mesopotamia and Ctesiphon
>no mention of Severus and Caracalla's victories
Biased much?
Besides, you can talk of Rome not gaining all you want. By virtue of Parthia getting rekt, they still got it worse.

No, there were more powerful militaries in china throughout romes entire existence

Of course!

Learn to read.

>his entire army
No, he lost a small part of his army and retreated. And in the long run letting it be a Roman internal affair helped Shapur's goal of weakening the Romans.

More powerful how? They had a doubtful size advantage, they were mostly conscripted, and they were hard to keep raised for a long time without starting famines.
The professional Han forces were certainly a match for the legions, but they were like a fourth in size.

Reminder that the Romans greatest advantage against Carthage and Hellenistic states was their massive manpower pool of Latins and Italic allies.

>Rome pulls out 40-50 000 men out of her ass for the first battle against Pyrrhus when they didn't even control all of Italy

No they weren't. Rome co-existed with Han China, which was weaker to Rome in almost all conceivable ways. Weaker production (iron, gold etc) and similar population. Roman military was also more advanced on basically all levels.

Cassius barely managed to reverse the Roman losses after that traitor Roman legion commander, Quintus, and Orseoes I's son, the prince/heir in standing, nearly took all of Roman's entirety of the Levant and Asia Minor and that was the only real offensive war ever made by the Arsacids on Roman territory.

Rome was struggling during the 2nd punic war though. After Cannae they had to extend the service age, reduce qualifications and allowed slaves to fight.

Actually whoops, was thinking of Ventidius there.

Its Shapur, not Saphur. And the defeat was not serious given he was still able to continue the same year into Roman Syria and raze several cities as well as steal Roman coin and money.

For all intents and purposes they lost the war in Italy, but won those in Spain and Northern Africa, the latter being the one that turned out to really matter the most.

>No, he lost a small part of his army and retreated
But my post didn't say he lost his entire army. I pointed out how his entire army was beaten. Which was very embarrassing.
You know you've triggered some Persiaboos when they start their argument by attacking a typo lol.

>For all intents and purposes they lost the war in Italy
How?
Hannibal crossed the Alps with two objectives: raise the italics in rebellion, and make Rome surrender.
He failed both.
Hannibal's success in Italy is grossly overstated, strategically speaking.

>For all intents and purposes they lost the war in Italy, but won those in Spain and Northern Africa
This is something you could say if the war ended with Hannibal controlling Italy, whereas in reality Hannibal was hunted down to the tip of the boot and kept there while his brothers got beheaded until he got recalled home.
I can't see how you could possibly argue for Carthage to have won the italian theather.

No shit Rome was struggling when they lost more soldiers then other nations population of men. And Rome didn't need to wait long after defeating Hannibal that they started more wars.

They never won a battle against Hannibal. Italy was decimated. Hundreds of thousands of lives lost. The consequences of the war in Italy were felt for a long time afterwards.

Hannibal was able to turn a solid number of Roman cities though. The Gauls of the Po plain had only a few years before succumbed to Roman power, only to come to the aid of Hannibal a few years later. In addition, the Romans lost their colonies in Gaul, and a good number of cities turned to Hannibal in Southern Italy.
It might indeed be a stretch to say that Carthage "won" the war in Italy, as they never accomplished their goals, true, but they were winning until Hannibal was recalled. Though Hannibal never fully achieved his aims, the war was by no means a win in Italy for the Romans.

>And Rome didn't need to wait long after defeating Hannibal that they started more wars.
Dude they started more wars while Hannibal was still in Italy. The romans were absolute madmen.

>Hannibal was able to turn a solid number of Roman cities though.
Hannibal turned basically no italics against Rome. Only greeks and gauls.

>They never won a battle against Hannibal.
>but they were winning until Hannibal was recalled
It's true that they never won an open battle against Hannibal, but that's because he maneuvered away from any clash he wasn't sure to win. That meant by the time he was recalled he had been forced to the literal tip of the boot, Calabria, unable to assist the reinforcements sent to him who got slaughtered upon landing in both attempts and losing every single city he conquered.
You can say Rome didn't win any pitched victories, but overall? Hannibal got BTFO.

the Romans had neverending manpower and constantly started wars while ignoring defeats. At the battle of Kallinikos where Perseus defeated the Roman expedition force he offered peace without demands and to pay the Romans indemnity. Instead Rome demanded unconditional surrender.
Rome is the AI in Paradox games that never surrenders and has bullshit bonuses.

Its not a typo when you completely fuck up his name.

>his entire army beaten
No proof of that, in fact both fragemntary Persian and Roman records indicate he defeated a small vanguard that linked up with one of the Persian garrison forces in Nisibis before they could be reinforced by Shapur.

And when he attempted to attack Ctesiphon itself, Odaenathus lost pretty badly. Given Romans themselves say he had to run back to his capital in flight and implying his army was routed decisively. Hell, its the principal reason or one of the main ones leading to his assassination.

>Persiaboos
I think you're just gripping sour grapes because the Persian-Roman Wars are the inverse of the Parthian-Roman Wars which lead to the Persians winning and invading more often then the Romans did.

>Hannibal turned basically no Italics against Rome. Only Greeks and Gauls.
Wrong, and a bold-faced lie if there ever was one in this thread. Capua was literally the second most populated, economically powerful, and major source of Latin manpower in the Roman Empire and they were turned against the Romans by Hannibal.

>Mfw Persia became a Rome client state under Trajan

Shit bait

>Confusing Parthia with Persia
>mfw "client state" of Parthia lasted for less then a year
>mfw everything Trajan did failed to materialize permanently and Hadrian conceded original boundaries and territories back to Parthian Empire
>mfw only long standing real influence on the Parthian/Arsacid dynasty was that Trajan and Caracalla made it so the Sassanid Persian dynasty could become a BIGGER threat to Rome then the relatively passive Arsacids
Sasuga dumb frogposter

>I think you're just gripping sour grapes because the Persian-Roman Wars are the inverse of the Parthian-Roman Wars which lead to the Persians winning and invading more often then the Romans did.
False tho. The Sassanids were surely more successful than the parthians, but they still got threathened deep into their core lands every war while never managing to hit west of Anatolia.

>He (Trajan) deposed Osroes I and put his own puppet ruler Parthamaspates on the throne.

>literally less than a year

But was Mesopotamia a core land? I always thought the Persian plateau was from where their manpower came.

No they didn't. The Romans never managed to EVER get into Iranian hinterlands or the Iranian plateau, ever. Period. And were also heavily reliant on the Persians to deflect steppe tribals and barbarians from Eurasia and the Caucasus areas. And why the default Byzantine/ERE practice was "I really don't want to fight these guys, find out how much money we have and pay them to go away."

>less then a year

>But was Mesopotamia a core land?
Where exactly do you think their capital was? It's like asking whether Italy was a core land in the late roman empire when most of the troops were german.

Persiaboos in this thread:
>hahaha Rome succs, only managing to sack persian capitals and barely controlling the land for a few month, Persia clearly performed better by managing jackfuckingshit
You're embarrassing to read.

The only part of Mesopotamia that was tied populace wise to Iranians was Eastern Iraq with Ctesiphon. That's it. The Iranian plateau itself is where the majority of manpower for the Persians were coming from; Gilan/Daylam, Pars, Media, Atropatane, Susa, etc...

It wasn't. Ctesiphon was the royal capital, but its not part of ethnic Iranian territory. They inherited from the Arsacid dynasty, bucko. They retained their capital that close to Roman territory as a symbolic gesture of "Fuck you" to the Romans and Byzantines. We also know the majority of actual Iranian built Sassanid towns and cities are in Iran proper.

Shit baiting, dude.

>We got conquered and raped by Roman Bulls.... b-but it wasn't for long

Read the thread dude, it's not baiting it's literally what's going on in here.

Romans only captured Sassanid capital once that has been attested and verified. The only other attempt was never proven under a certain later Roman emperor and generally viewed as historical propaganda. The majority of sacks or captures on Ctesiphon were against the Arsacids/Parthian Empire, and by majority I mean every single success save one of them.

No, you read the current context about Persia and Parthia and stop with the strawmans.

>Ctesiphon was the royal capital, but its not part of ethnic Iranian territory.
Does it matter? It's where the roman armies needed to go to depose persian kings and impose peace between the two empires.

>he can't even rebuttal anymore and is just spamming shrektext oneliners
Literally you are that booty-blasted.

>he thinks there's just one dude arguing against persiaboo delusions in this thread

It does matter when you are caught lying considering the 5 of the 6 captures of Ctesiphon were against the Parthians and not the Persians and that the Romans/Byzantines never disposed a single Persian ruler.

>he
(You)

>Does it matter?
Yes, part of the thing about history is telling the truth and not lying. Just like how being a doctor means you have to explain the symptons of a disease or illness to a patient instead of just telling them the endgame of their sickness in the first place.
>It's where roman armies needed to go
Its where Roman armies typically lost, usually.
>depose persian kings
Go ahead and mention the Sassanid monarchs they deposed. I'm waiting.

>quads
>quad 4s
Checked

>Romans may have conquered Persia b-but we conquered some desert from them

There's more of one poster arguing against you in this thread. I just said that Mesopotamia (where the Sassanid capital was) was a frequent battleground during the BYZ-SAS wars, which is true. The guy talking about Ctesiphon being conquered wasn't even referring to the sassanids specifically either as far as I can read, so you're actually strawmanning here.

It does considering you think a multinational multi-ethnic Parthian/Persian capital that served as solely an administrative and military headquarters and staging point for the grandees/Wuzargan was some kind of Persian military recruitment center.

No, there's just you against two or three of us and some guy whose shitposting.

>Its where Roman armies typically lost, usually.
Better than losing barely past the border like the persians almost invariably did.
>Go ahead and mention the Sassanid monarchs they deposed. I'm waiting.
Why only sassanids? Wanna start moving goalposts?

Reported for shitposting.

A strawman is making an attack on a false point your opponent never made in the first place. That is what you are doing, textbook definition to the letter here. I and the other guy explained Ctesiphon was just the capital city, not a "core" ethnic Iranian land. They even refer to the fucking province entirely as Asoristan, "Land of the Assyrians".