Who would win

Cataphracts destroy infantry everyone knows that

and then Rome fought Parthia for literally hundreds of years afterwards scoring tremendous victories too

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Cilician_Gates
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan's_Parthian_campaign

Rome's inability to finish off Parthia was always due to the sheer distance this war was fought at, and not because they were unable to counter Parthian cavalry tactics. At their peak(~100AD) the legions were fighting and winning against Parthia and her Cataphracts.

same as above.

>sheer distance
It wasn't just distance. Rome made all of "one" barely touching foray into the actual Iranian plateau and even then were forced back. Stop talking like the Romans didn't have issues with cataphracts and horse archers.

You even posted Trajan's campaign which did more harm in the long run to the Roman Empire then good because the wasted effort and Hadrian being forced to concede ground lead to a large amount of finances, manpower, and economic stability be wasted by Trajan's expedition in the first place and hugely drew on reserves from the Roman legions in Europe so that they would NEVER again undertake an offensive campaign of conquest ever.

>Rome fought Parthia for hundreds of years
No they didn't. The two empires formally established relations diplomatically between each other in 96 BC. Crassus invasion was a massive failure in 53 BC, followed by Antony's own invasion which was another failure and an almost as humiliatingly bad one initiated by him in 40 BC and lasted 7 years and again ended up as a Parthian victory. There wouldn't be any more conflicts with Augustus brokering peace between the two empires until 58 AD which ended in a stalemate 63 AD with the Parthians making Armenia into a client kingdom. Ignoring Trajan, the next war they lost was against Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus in 161-166 AD and the final real war was with Septimus Severus in 195 AD. Caracalla just attacked Parthia unprovoked and spent his short campaign attacking townships before he died.

Hardly "hundreds of years" of ongoing war.

You are retarded either way and disingenuous.

>hurrrdurrrrduurrrrr au etard
Such civilized discussion. Mich ad hominem. Very wow.

>no argument
>no rebuttal
>shitpost one-liner response while attempting to save face
Yes, you need to end yourself via necking. Also:

>falsely accuses me of ad hominem
>while explicitly committing an attempt to poison the well

You need to go back to /pol/.

>doge post-speak
Why are you posting like a /v/ crossboarder?

>hurdurdrhrhrhrhrdurr
Truly, you are much more wise than I.

user's point is well made. There were sporadic conflicts over a course of a few hundred years; it was not continuous war with the Parthians, more of a France and Germany type relationship.

You retard.

Samefag

>samefag
Nope.

Kill yourself.

Retard

>implying any of this matters
Your just morons looking for attention by posting nonsense.

Nice MS paint skills

>Hardly "hundreds of years" of ongoing war.

you act like war back then consisted of incessant battle lines and constant campaigns instead single expeditions and skirmishes. Romans were at war with them longer that they were at peace, they did not go into a total war like they were a second Carthage and they had losing streaks as well as successful ones.

Now, the war was in the end nothing but a meatgrinder and money sink for both empires but clearly if the fucking cataphracts were a deciding factor Rome wouldn't have been able to match up to them over such a long period, and the Parthians would have been the ones to bring Rome down and not Germans.

now will you please stop going MUH CAVALRY ROMANS ABSOLUTELY #REKT CATAPHRACT STRONG, like Romans didn't adopt them themselves, far before they entirely retired the heavy infantry you claim the cataphract had made obsolete, anyway?

Nice autism.
>unique IP: 11 posters

>The Romans were at war with them then they were at peace.
Wrong. Relations were established between the two in 96 BC. Ignoring Crassus who acted independently, no "formal" war existed between Rome and Parthia until 40 BC. So a period of 56 years of peace. Followed by another peace lasting from 33 BC to 58 AD. So another 91 years of peace broken by five years of war that ended in a stalemate in 63 AD. Which would lead to another long stretch of peace between the two empires until 114 AD which lasted till 117 AD; which is 51 more years of peace until Trajan decided to go to invade Parthia. The next peace lasted till 161 AD, when Aurelius and Verus went to war with Parthia till 166 AD which ended again, 44 years of peace. And afterwards followed another period 30 years or so until Severus intiated war again in 195 AD and another one made up by Caracalla in 216 AD which is...21 years later.

>"Romans were at war with them longer than they were at peace"
I hope you realize how dumb your claim is.

>the number at the bottom left means anything
>blubluboubbouh
you're dump

Retard

>can't give a counter
>"i-it doesn't count"
Retard.

>Wrong. Relations were established between the two in 96 BC. Ignoring Crassus who acted independently, no "formal" war existed between Rome and Parthia until 40 BC. So a period of 56 years of peace.

so basically NOTHING THAT WOULD INDICATE THEY MEASURED THEIR MILITARY CAPABILITIES TO EACH OTHER

this was not a peace kept by an aversion to war between them, they just hadn't been arsed to attack yet. Crassus started it and went completely blind without even proper scouting, and that was the first contact between the strategies and tactics of both. The fact that he lost at all is only telling of his foolishness and not of the Romans' capacity to counteract that particular tactic or unit, the fact that they actually continued waging war against them at all tell us that's not the case.

saying Romans couldn't deal with Cataphracts because of Carrhae is like saying they couldn't deal with trees because of Teutoburg.

You act like Rome/Byzantine's biggest rival until the rise of Islam/Arab Caliphate wasn't coincidentally Persia/Parthia, their counterparts who just so happen to primarily use horsemen which just so happened to be the worst Achilles heel for how their heavy infantry operated.

So not that guy but lets recap:

>Rome invades Parthia under Crassus: war ends with Parthia winning
>Rome invades Parthia again under Antony: war ends with Parthia winning
>Parthia invades Roman territory: Parthia takes Armenia and achieves stalemate
>Rome invades Parthia under Trajan: Rome wins but immediate successor has to give everything back up because it made the Roman empire way too big to administrate or govern
>Rome invades Parthia under Lucius Verus; Rome wins but Parthia still holds Armenia with their dynasty reinstalled
>Rome invades Parthia under Septimus Severus; sacks Ctesiphon and after 7 years of taking northern Mesopotamia gives all of Mesopotamia back to the Parthians
>Rome invades Parthia under Caracalla during Parthian civil war, leads to nothing strategically

I like how much you keep strawman abusing in your posts. You claimed literally the Romans were longer at war with the Parthians then at peace, when objectively time can be fucking measured between conflicts to show this is clearly not true. On top of that, some of the worst Roman defeats were at the hands of cataphracts used by the Romans

>Carrhae
>Edessa
>Samsara
>Dara
The list goes on. The argument isn't cataphracts are immune or invicible compared to Romans, its that they can more often then not win, you moron.

>this was not a peace kept by an aversion to war between them
This is the worst non sequitur and by far one of your dumbest posts in this thread. They actively had peace treaties that lasted largely on a regular basis half a century between them. How stupid can you be?

*used by the Parthians/Persians

>saying Romans couldn't deal with Cataphracts because of Carrhae is like saying they couldn't deal with trees because of Teutoburg
This is a really stupid post. Like on par with that Arab tripcodefag who capslock all his posts.

if you really want to grasp at straws how about that pesky detail of having diplomatic relationships not being the same as having an actual peace accord.

seriously, just because they knew of each other doesn't mean they actually avoided having war, and that can be proved because a faggot consul actually went and started a war.

>You act like Rome/Byzantine's biggest rival until the rise of Islam/Arab Caliphate wasn't coincidentally Persia/Parthia, their counterparts who just so happen to primarily use horsemen which just so happened to be the worst Achilles heel for how their heavy infantry operated.

well yeah, Parthia WAS Rome's only meaningful rival, but they weren't utterly defenseless before horse archer and cataphract spam after the original blunder like the post that started the argument claims

You keep making dumber strawmans while abusing appeal to belief to make worse claims. In fact osmosis and contact between Rome/Byzantine with Parthia/Persia is why the Romans were so desperate to use foreign auxiliaries to augment their own cavalry and until they adopted their own version of cataphracts, recruits from Celtic and Germanic or even other nations like their own ones were always routed by the Parthian/Persians until that policy was implemented.

>this kid just dropping pol accusations like it even means something

nobody gives a fuck about greece on any board

Dara was a Byzantine victory though, Sassykids got destroyed by Belisarius.

>Massed infantry was obsolete even in the 2nd century
Not even a little but.

>while the Byzzie fighting style was modeled after the horse warriors of the East (with heavy armor
Retarded over simplification to say the least.

>which the lightly armored Roman legion
They weren't lightly armored.

>performed very poorly against.
Sacked cstephion three times, outlasted the parthians, outlasted the sassanids.

The only one grasping at straws is use given your constant backpedaling and attempt to deflect from the original tangent that cataphracts and heavy shock cavalry usually dominated Roman infantry.

>it doesn't count when they win b-because the first time they fought!
>or the second time

Also gonna respond again on this stupidity here:
>actual peace accord
They had peace treaties, stop inventing mental gymnastics to avoid this.

>Sassykids got destroyed by Belisarius
Yeah about that.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Callinicum

>Sacked Ctesiphon three times
Only attested in the Parthian period.
>outlasted the sassanids
To largely get raped by the Arabs and Turks for the next 800 years.

>it's a /pol/tard goes out of his way to ruin a decent thread episode

Sudoku yourself please

>Dara was a Byzantine victory though.
True but didn't he get defeated so badly in a future campaign against the Persians that it was one of the reasons why Justinian removed him from being the top general of ERE military?

>greeks

>You keep making dumber strawmans while abusing appeal to belief to make worse claims.

but it WAS the original claim.

>At the battle of Carrhae, Roman Legions fought against Parthian Cataphracts, which was the precedent model of Byzantine Cataphracts
>Guess who's won

the Roman legions in the 2nd century were not only superior to the Legions that fell at Carrhae(by virtue of being nearly 200 years in the future) making this an already asinine claim, they were also experienced in both facing and USING cataphracts like the ones they faced at Carrhae,

a fight against 6th century Byzantines like the OP wants wouldn't be a steamroll and definitely not because they had this particular kind of heavy cavalry that defeated the Republican era Romans five hundred years before.

>the original tangent that cataphracts and heavy shock cavalry usually dominated Roman infantry.

and Romans also had successful campaigns which coincidentally happened in the 2nd century which is when OP is inquiring, how about that.

for fucks sake, the picture that poster used doesn't even contain Parthians, it's Romans fighting eachother, using their own Cataphracts.

>the Roman legions in the 2nd century were superior to the legions that fell at Carrhae
Not the tangent being debated by anyone but you, ergo a strawman.
>asinine claim
The only asinine things in this thread are your posts.
>Romans
>2nd century
>possessing cataphract units
Retard.
>poster
You mean (You), retard? That image, is based off early 4th century Roman army units, not 2nd century ones.

>Not the tangent being debated by anyone but you, ergo a strawman.

BUT IT IS

THE POST SAID

>and then Rome fought Parthia for literally hundreds of years afterwards scoring tremendous victories too

>Rome's inability to finish off Parthia was always due to the sheer distance this war was fought at, and not because they were unable to counter Parthian cavalry tactics. At their peak(~100AD) the legions were fighting and winning against Parthia and her Cataphracts.

>To largely get raped by the Arabs and Turks for the next 800 years.
AHEM

That was your post, not mine. Ergo again, ad naseum, coming from your own mouth as you tried to alter the goal posts. You are obstinate, stop continuing to prove it further and writing in all caps just proves how much greater of a moron you've already demonstrated yourself to be like trying to pass of the Milivan Bridge fight as "2nd century".

And the Arabs who initially rolled back roman territory fought primarily on foot, with the cavalry they DID use being nothing fucking like anything the persians had used, or like what the turks would later use.

>muh horse archer
>muh cataphract
Is a retarded fucking meme. Infantry centric forces were very fucking plainly able to counter them when properly led, much as cavalry forces could counter infantry when well led.

The fucking Byzantines still mainted large bodies of infantry, and well trained infantry, even after encounters with the avars caused them to reoutift and train their cavalry.

In the west, infantry rapidly fucking eclipsed cavalry with even the knights coming to mostly fight on foot as states centralized. And this is with the later medieval european cavalry being objectively superior at EVERYTHING by virtue of having better arms, armor, horses, saddles, and being made up of lifelong warriors who trained from childhood.

The idea that heavily armored cavalry made infantry obsolete is just fucking retarded and clearly contradicted by the actions of literally every power that was able to raise bodies of both.

Even the fucking sassanids had bodies of well armed and trained infantry in their military.

Or, you know, the selucids, who saw their cataphracts fucking shit on in battle by legionaries.

BUT MUH MEME HISTORY

>I deny reality the post
>while samefagging

>fought primarily on foot
The Arab cavalry, both their horsemen and camel riders were noted as being hugely important and the major factors in their victories over both the Byzantines and the Persians, retard. The mobility of their lighter armed horse and camel riders is what lead to their victories over more heavily armored and slower Persian and Byzantine forces.

>meme
You don't know what a meme is, you piss-eating mongoloid. There's a reason why even Roman historians and writers make it a point to talk about how horsemen are a problem that has to be of singular focus for Roman commanders to deal with with special precautions and tactics. The rest of your post falls under tl ; dr backpedaling bullshit you spew ad naseum ad infinitum all over again.

>That was your post, not mine. Ergo again, ad naseum, coming from your own mouth as you tried to alter the goal posts.

which is what you were contesting and picking at for literally all this time.

>You are obstinate, stop continuing to prove it further and writing in all caps just proves how much greater of a moron you've already demonstrated yourself to be like trying to pass of the Milivan Bridge fight as "2nd century".

so now you nitpick about illustrations containing cataphracts not being "the" cataphracts?, why don't you take this relief of Romans running fleeing Cataphracts down from Trajan's column and fuck off.

You are aware that the hundred years war is literally the textbook example of a move away from cavalry towards large bodies of armored infantry, right?

And of that move being made by men raised to the saddle, as a direct result of infantry being able to defeat them right?

In a war where the primary participants both heavily centralized themselves, right?

You understand you're proving my fucking point, right?

He was using a very broad meme, so I countered with an equally broad meme, as from Lalakaon to Manzikert it was the Arabs and later Turks who were on the back foot, and equally true during the Komnenian Era. Come back when you have an argument, kiddo.

Is reading comprehension a problem for you? Do you have ADHD? Do you understand words you say don't fall under what another says, which is a textbook example of a fucking strawman argument? Did you not learn this before you dropped out of high school?

>Hundred Years War is literally a textbook example of a move away from cavalry toward large bodies of armored infantry
Its not but I can see why a moron like (You) would be dumb enough to think that.

>illustrations of cataphracts
>of roman soldiers on horseback and not distinguished in away in the same way a fully armored cataphract typically would be is somehow still a cataphract
Super retard.

Isn't me you dumbass, and yeah the Arabs completely failed to crush the Byzantines culminating in two disastrous sieges of Constantinople and 200 years of frontier raids is hardly "raping". Even after Manzikert the Komnenian Rulers did much to role back the progress of the Turks, the only meme spewing faggot is you.

I don't think you know what a tangent is. If I say the sky is blue, and you say "you can't say its green", that is a fallacy you are making by attacking me for saying I said something I never said.

>Romans struggle with cataphracts and cavalry units more then any other type of military force
>You: ARE YOU SAYING INFANTRY CAN'T FIGHT THEM?

>Isn't me you dumbass
Wrong.

Right.

Now go actually read about maurices strategikon, and you'll quickly realize that they'd long since reformed the army with a heavy emphasis on cavalry, in particular mounted archers, with equipment taken DIRECTLY from the avars, with those horse archer being backed by... cataphracts.

But sure, tell me all about the slow, clearly infantry based armies the arabs beat.

>The Arabs "failed to crush the Byzantines
So which side lost their most valuable provinces, territories, and lands? Or had their territory drop about 50% of its initial nominal size before the rise of the Rashidun Caliphate?

How dumb are you to misinterpret that post you are responding too?

But i'm right, like it or not but your arguing with two different people bud. Just to make it clear:

Are the only posts from me in this thread.

All of those posts are yours save one.

>pepeposting
True cancer revealing itself.

>maurices strategikon
And what does this have to do with 2nd century Roman armies?

Yes, the move by the french themselves towards fighting almost ENTIRELY on foot by the end of the war never happened.

Fucking 88% of the men at arms at agincourt fought on foot.

Oh, and let's just pretend that the french who got slaughtered at vernuil weren't primarily on foot or anything.

>french

>W-we weren't curbstomped by the Arabs!

Fun fact:
There are two people who think you are retarded, not just one.

Fun fact: claiming you aren't samefagging with a post responding four minutes later isn't helping you, autism kun.

The Rashidun, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate all died before the Byzantine Empire, they completely failed to conquer it as they set out to do "Constantinople will be conquered, blessed is the commander and his troops" and they all died before the Byzantine Empire, with the Abbasid caliphate losing everything except Southern Iraq by around 950 AD. Case closed.

>that is a fallacy you are making by attacking me for saying I said something I never said.

but i never said they didn't struggle with them either, again, original post

>and not because they were unable to counter Parthian cavalry tactics. At their peak(~100AD) the legions were fighting and winning against Parthia and her Cataphracts.

i brought up that it was nowhere near a decisive factor, and in the dates involved it was at a point in which Romans were actually not struggling with them at all, meaning it's not such a huge factor. Why isn't any of you fucking acknowledging this.

a 2nd century Roman Legion would actually have more trouble fighting a 6th century Byzantine Legion than fighting their cavalry, Cataphracts were really only super weapons because they could be used in conjunction with infantry because they were heavy as shit.

>Do you understand words you say don't fall under what another says, which is a textbook example of a fucking strawman argument?

kinda like what you're doing right now

Uh

The Arabs literally cut the Byzantine Empire in half within 20+ years of initial contact and wars. Losing permanently Syria, Roman Mesopotamia, Armenia, parts of Eastern Anatolia, all of the Caucasuses, etc...

>died before the Byzantine Empire
One, not really considering the Byzantine ****empire*** died well before 1453 and two, how does this remotely rebut losing more then half their territory permanently to the Arabs?

...

>but I never said
Yes you did.
>kind of like what you're doing right now.
I'm not, because I'm pointing out you continue to abuse this, retard. Also stop abusing the English language, are you ESL? You even branched out earlier trying to lie on what a peace treaty and diplomatic relations between the Parthians and Romans were repeatedly before that caveat in your claims.

So it took you another 3 minutes to edit line code in your web browser? Neat.

>3 minutes + 24 seconds later

...

...

Nice VPN, proxyfag.

>Yes you did.

address the quoted claim then

>I'm not, because I'm pointing out you continue to abuse this, retard. Also stop abusing the English language, are you ESL? You even branched out earlier trying to lie on what a peace treaty and diplomatic relations between the Parthians and Romans were repeatedly before that caveat in your claims.

diplomatic relationships are not the same as peace, and whether you accept that distinction or not it doesn't change the point of the argument, which was

>and they had losing streaks as well as successful ones.
>clearly if the fucking cataphracts were a deciding factor Rome wouldn't have been able to match up to them over such a long period

>diplomatic relationships are not the same as peace
Wrong.

>Wrong.

then how do nations at war declare peace?

No, you ESL speaking monkey. You claimed the Romans were at war longer with Parthia then at peace. Peace is a period between wars no hostilities engaged between two nations/empires/states/factions, retard. Considering Parthia and Rome had peaceful negotitions steaming as early as the very end of the 2nd century BC, you are patently full of shit.

...

>Syria
Antioch and the North reconquered under Macedonians
>Mesopotamia
Parts also reconquered.
>Eastern Anatolia
Cilica was one of the first Territorial gains for the empire in the early 900's, the only bit of Asia Minor the Arabs conquered for a significant period of time
>Armenia
Reconquered, see map. Prior to Manzikert it was literally a theme.
>Caucasuses
See map.

You are autistic.

>The Arabs literally cut the Byzantine Empire in half within 20+ years of initial contact and wars. Losing permanently Syria, Roman Mesopotamia, Armenia, parts of Eastern Anatolia, all of the Caucasuses, etc...

You mean the parts that were willing to take ANY ruler that wasn't the Byzantines or sassanids?

The two empires had just finished fighting a 30 year long war that brought them both to utter exhaustion and ruin, and hadn't recovered when the arabs came. The Romans in particular had lost almost their entire field army.

When phyruss sent terms to rome after Heraclea, were they at peace?

...

We posted a few seconds after each other, considering the wait time between posts it literally impossible. Why is is so hard to accept that I'm a different person?

You are dumb. No active hostility between two nations is a period of peace. Those period of peace exhaustively outlast wars. There are "no" centuries of war because even using simple arithmetic to add all the years of war between Rome and Parthia wouldn't even hit a single century.

So therefore you are full of shit. The Parthians and Romans not only constantly engaged in peace treaties between their sporadic on-off wars, but full on diplomatic relationships over dealing with the Selecuids, Pontus, the Armenian issue, and so on. You are a disingenuous poster.

The only autist is you, all of those territories were lost again.

>You mean the parts that were willing to take ANY ruler
You mean the territories that the Byzantines were completely expelled from, militarily occupied, and forced to accept foreign rule under the Arabs which didn't hurt their stationing there due to frequent wars and abuses heaped on them by both the Byzantines and Persians destructive wars in the first place?

>The two empirse finished fighting a 30 year long war
The last Roman-Persian War had ended nearly a decade before the Arabs showed up. And both sides constantly massively outnumbered the Arab armies typically either 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 and still were destroyed most of the time.

>And both sides constantly massively outnumbered the Arab armies typically either 2 to 1 or 3 to 1

According to arab histories that NOBODY takes seriously. The numbers they put forth are fucking laughable.

Why are you responding to my post, I'm mocking all of you guys because you are all clearly autistic.

>"Losing permanently"
>I demonstrate reconquest of parts of the empire and refute your asinine claim.
>"Wah wah your wrong"

>arab histories
Many of those numbers come from even Byzantine >lose it again
>"nah we didn't get raped though, it totally was ours to lose again to muslims permanently once more for good this time"

Keep in mind user that the same autists who believe Arab numbers are the same types of people who believe that Freddy Barby really did have 100K men on the third Crusade and that Darius III had a million at Gaugamela.

>See map.
It'd be a real *shame* if those territorial restorations were to be only ephemeral and temporary.

>its an infantry pleb vs cavalry patrician thread
>shit eating infantry goons chimping out

not surprised desu

I said the Arabs were outnumbered usually 2 to 1, not 10 to 1. Over inflation and exaggeration of Persians and Eastern Romans the Arabs fought goes without saying in Arab sources which are Greek tier in hyperbole and I'm usually the first to point out to Araboos that the Persians in particular had 7 years of civil war as well as a massive plague (Justinian's Plague its to believed reasserting itself after the end of the last war), wiping out half of the Persian Empire's western half's population.

You had a retarded argument and I refuted it, now your being a goalposting faggot who can't handle being wrong. And in case you haven't noticed, at Manzikert most of the army were Mercs who deserted before the battle, and the casualties only around 7,000, the only reason Asia Minor was even lost to begin with was because of a Civil war that broke out over the succession, which allowed the Turks to walk in without a fight, the actual Turkish success had much more to do with Byzantine politics, both before 1071 and after.

>I refuted it.
You didn't though, faggot. Funny how the rest of your post goes back under the same cycle of making up excuses for the Byzantines getting their shit kicked in and ignoring any major territorial reclamation ultimately being reversed by the Arabs/Turks.

>Its not their fault their commander was retarded enough to let a bunch of steppe niggers meet other steppe niggers belonging to the enemy leader and think nothing bad could happen
>Turks take all of inner Anatolia
>"M-muh Komnenos restoration!"