Which was the hardest of Rome's conquests?

Guess they didn’t conquer Sicily, Spain, and North Africa during the wa-oh wait.

Anything against the sassanids, their only true strategic rival. Hannibal got a few good tactical punches in but Carthage wasn’t as much of an existential threat as the Persians were, they were the only large empire in that area of the world that could rival them, and they never did beat them completely, probably their most hard-fought front with the least to show for it. Only took a few decades to finish Carthage, Rome fought the Persians for a thousand years

This is the correct answer. Second is probably the Sassonids.

>Carthage wasn't as much of an existential threat as the Sassonids.

First off, OP asked what was the hardest conquest, not which enemy was their most threatening. I'm pretty sure that bankrupt them until they looted the Carthaginian coffers and killed a 1/5 of the empire's able bodied men counts over the Arabian border raiding of the back and forth with the Sassonids.

Secondly, even Shapur wasn't ambitious enough to aspire for any more Roman land than Arabia and Armenia. He was never going to collapse the empire and his campaigns were taken so seriously because their unchecked expansion would put Egypt (the bread basket of the empire) and Anatolia in jeopardy. Carthage was hellbent on breaking Rome because they knew they would never sue for peace or if they did it would be short-lived.

You’re thinking tactically: numbers, battles, the flashiness of hannibal’s campaign, but long term, 2 decades of fighting with Carthage will never compete with the long term strategic ulcer that was their eastern border. Sure, per capita, they never bled more in 2 decades than they did against Carthage, but those 2 decades can’t compare to 1000 years of warfare for some land that would shift owners a dozen times during their conflict, all ending with their eventual defeat. So you have 2 decades of hardship followed by victory, ca a thousand years of hardship followed by defeat, I think the sassanids are still the harder conquest regardless of how your semantically structure the question by nature of never actually being conquered and secured as well as absolutely dwarfing the Carthaginian wars in every conceivable metric by nature of lasting a millennia as opposed to a couple decades. The sassanids were a harder conquest because they were literally never conquered, it’s simple strategic thinking really. Sassanids are a bigger strategic threat that required more resources long term and did not end well for the Romans. The Carthaginian are a blip in Roman history, the Persians are an ever-looming existential threat.
I completely disagree with you.

>1000 years of warfare

You're counting large stretches of peace in that in addition to including an entirely separate empire in the Sassonid's wars with them. In addition, the border wars never came close to threatening Rome. The lowest the Sassonids ever had Rome was after they captured Valerian in battle and they STILL didn't push hardly at all into Roman territory nor was the political banter that time worried about the Sassonids as much as the barbarians in the north that the Romans didn't have an army for. Thirdly, the plague(s) did more to Rome to hurt them against the Sassonids as opposed to any supreme Sassonid victory. Even with Julian falling and their army on death's door Shapur recognized he'd get farther sueing for peace and demanding territory in the agreement rather than through conquest.

It's just a simple fact that Rome was never in any threat of being conquered by the Sassonids where as they came the closest with Carthage.

How do you mean? Hardest to gain control over, or hardest to maintain control over?

>Hardest to gain control over
This.

And S*rdinia too

They were never under any threat of being conquered because they had to dumb countless resources into the eastern front to keep it that way. “Peace” during this conflict is just mobilization time, they were never really on peaceful terms with each other since they would frequently attack each other when the other was busy somewhere else and vice versa, even if you’re at peace you still need to keep a standing army there, and it has to be expensive or you’ll get steamrolled by the expensive sassanid army. If you consider trajan’s conquest, and then consider the logistical nightmare it would have been to hold that territory, you realize that this area of the world is the most highly contested and difficult conquest the Romans would ever attempt, so much so that Trajan immediately gave up on it as soon as it was finished.
Winning in 2 decades vs such an impossibly difficult task that you have to give up immediately and barely make it out of the middle east with your army in tact as they harass him the entire way, leading to hundreds of years more of this endless unwinnable conflict that required a constant expensive standing army to keep honest throughout hundreds of years. In all real logistical and strategic terms I am right. In meaningless brainlet tactical terms you are right.

If you're talking about which one fucked them up the most it was the Huns and surrounding Germanic migrations.

Killed the Empire and saw Rome sacked.

Reconquest of Gaul, Spain, and Britannia and then the entire East by Aurelian.

Rome was a rump state that easily could have dissolved into just the weaker of several Med powers, but Auerelian had a streak of victories against other legions with numerical superiority, and then put down an aristocratic uprising in Rome.

You need to quit moving the goalpost. You've gone from "biggest existential threat" to "you're considered at war when you're managing political machinations by proxy in Armenian secession" to "Trajan gave up on his conquests which had nothing to do with the fact he was quite literally on his death bed and everything to do with the wh*te Roman fearing the unconquerable Parthian bull" to "Parthians are Sassonids." You seriously need to do your homework on the subject because most of what you said is woefully ill-informed.

Also forgot to mention you shift from Sassonids were biggest existential threat to the Babylonian region was most difficult to maintain. These are two very different statements. Pick a point and argue it. Stop changing it when confronted with the least bit of scrutiny.

Carthage

Sassanids

This is pathetic, I’m not shifting the goalpost it’s all part of the same point. Rome’s middle eastern conquests fall under the banner of “hardest conquests” and my argument is that the fact that they failed to conquer the Middle East after trying to proves it was the hardest conquest, only real competition is Germany. The fact that Trajan was on his deathbed proved Rome couldn’t hold that territory, Hadrian knew it was a lost cause so at what point do they have any chance of actually conquering the territory? Trajan left for two reasons as all great men reason: personal and strategic. He wants to end his life on a high note in comfort in his own empire sure, but the other half is the strategic impossibility of his task which was only ever even remotely possible in the first place because the Persians were busy elsewhere. So Rome at its apex with arguably one of its greatest emperors vs the Persians at their most divided and weak, and it’s still an impossible task to hold, if Trajan’s army stayed in the Middle East they never would have left, doesn’t matter who leads it because it is a strategically daunting task. Only real argument is Persia or Germany as Rome’s hardest conquest; the proof is in the pudding of their failure and the long term ulcers they proved to be, Carthage is a meme answer and I haven’t shifted any goalposts.

I want you to reread your first post: You said their hardest conquest was the Sassanids, not the Middle East. You specified an enemy, not a place. You are also using Trajan's campaign against the Parthians as evidence that the Sassanids were great. It's two different empires, dude. So pick a point. Are you answering OP with a territory or with an enemy?

I'm glad you have divined Trajan's intentions and motivations during his campaign and Hadrian's intentions and motivations when he ascended. Maybe you should inform credible historians about this divination so they can document it rather than going through the trouble of analyzing pesky primary and secondary sources from contemporaries.

Britannia

It was the sassanids because they had the least amount of success against them. Bringing up Trajan is relevant because it shows even a weaker empire was too much to hold territory against. Thinking strategically is obvious and the sources we do have suggest this, you don’t lead an empire for entirely personal reasons. You’re the one trying to pick apart semantics and shift the goalpost, fact remains that Persians/sassanids/Middle East/whatever or whenever you want to talk about it because at every point it was more strategically daunting than a North African trade empire ever could be by nature of the territory as well as their enemies, suggesting his reasoning was entirely personal is ridiculous. You’re avoiding the actual topic desperately picking apart whatever little details you can about inconsistencies in my posts, that is the actual definition of shifting he goalpost: from the topic of discussion to my personal credibility. The fact that they won in two decades proves it was an easier conquest than Germany or the Middle East, two theaters which haunted the Romans for centuries.

As a person with an intense interest in the ancient world, and republican Rome in particular, I have appreciated this exchange.

Kudos to both of you.

Time wise, Hispania. Dacia and Carthage were also rather difficult and lengthy.

>Kudos
>people still using this

Utterly cringy. Top 5 wars, not just the wars Rome won("conquests"):
5)Invasion of Britannia
4)Gaulic War
3)Parthian Wars
2)Punic Wars
1)Brennus' two invasions of Rome

>Little details about inconsistencies

It's not a little detail to completely ignore that the Parthians and Sassanids are two different empires. It's a little detail to ignore that Trajan literally intended for his Parthian campaign to be his final campaign and ended it so that he could not die in foreign land, of which he died a year later, and instead say it was because he saw after winning every battle that the Parthians were unconquerable. It's not a little detail to ignore that Hadrian went against the advice of EVERYONE, including the wishes of Trajan, to abandon the territories and he did so to pursue a career of domestic agenda rather than military. It's not a little detail to ignore that stable relations existed between Rome and Parthia or Rome and Sassanids during off campaign seasons and that there were 50 year stretches of stability on the borders.

>The fact that they won in two decades proves it was an easier conquest than Germany of the Middle East.

Okay so we're talking strictly about territory now. What are you defining as "Middle East" because that is not equivalent to contemporary Persian borders. Are you talking about Persian territory as a whole? Syria? Babylon?

Regardless, Germany is the answer because Rome devoted more resources and manpower to taking Germany than they ever did with Persia.

>The fact they that they won in two decades

If we're using your math and counting all the time between wars as periods of war then: 264 - 146 =/= 20

If we are using a sensible metric of counting duration of years actively at war then: 23 + 17 + 3 =/= 20.

Food for thought, if we use the sensible metric to count time at war with the Sassanids then we have 18 years at war with Rome compared to the 43 years at war with Carthage. This is a fucking asinine metric to measure how difficult a conquest is, for the record. It's completely divorced from logistics, resources, intent, and any other factors that show how the sides struggled.

You’re a nigger.

Why are you niggers even talking about Sassanids when OP asked about hardest CONQUESTS?

And none of them rival what Carthage put Rome through in the 2nd Punic War.

Guess they consider attempted conquest as acceptable. I don't mind though, they're having a pretty good exchange.

> After conquest of Carthage "boy that was hard."
>After Germanics: "fug, our national identity has been rape babied out of existence and Rome lies depopulated and in ruins.

>Carthage wasn’t as much of an existential threat as the Persians were

taking into account the relative strength of the economy, military and political system, Rome conquering it's neighbors and the entire peninsula was harder for them than conquering the rest of the Mediterranean.

there was absolutely no way to tell that puny little city was going to amount to anything until it did.

What germanics are we talking about here, user? Because no one germanic entity did that to Rome.

>Which was the hardest of Rome's conquests?
The economy ;^)
they still couldn't conquer it in the end.

Nice Pepe, mind if I save?

this tbqh

go right ahead, friend

The Lumbars, Vandals, Franks and Goths

>Shapur wasn't ambitious enough to aspire for any more Roman land than Arabia and Armenia
Shapur campaigned in Syria and Osorene though.

Osroene is in Armenia and my mistake with mentioning Syria's neighboring province of Arabia instead.

So 4 different tribes from 4 different areas were Rome's hardest conquests? Imagine that...