Would it have been possible for the Romans to conquer the Sassanids instead of holding borders?

Would it have been possible for the Romans to conquer the Sassanids instead of holding borders?

At the time? No.

The expense of the conquest would be to big for the earnings and they could lost or be invaded by another great power.

the "Romans"? No.
the Romans? They could have.

What other great power

The eternal horse-fucker.

Conquering the Parthians/Sassanids would be:

>very difficult
>extremely costly in lives and money
>would add a metric fuck ton of borders to protect
>would add millions of angry citizens and nobility extremely likely to revolt and hide in the mountainous terrain
>destroy the only common rival empire Romans had at this point, opening way to even more internal strife

The Zargos mountains are a pain in the ass to invade. The only reason Alexander did it was cuz he had basically already beat the Achaemenid army and exploited the internal instability of Persia at the time. They would have been able to take everything up to those foothills like the Ottomans did and wouldn't have been able to go much further.

This. Former Roman empire is invincible. Split in in half was a serious mistake

>empire
meh
you mean the roman republic right?

Even Adrian Goldsworthy agrees that Byzantine is a lesser successor in his books. It never have the strength of the former, united Roman Empire.

>Romans couldn't beat Parthians decisively
>B-But for sure we'd have beaten the much more aggressive and militaristic Sassanids

Either way the Eastern Romans technically DID decisively defeat the Sassanids, Emperor Maurice managed to take advantage of internal strife and place a claimant of the Persian throne on to the throne. Because of this they were finally able to stop paying the Sassanids for peace and divert resources to fight the Lombards and Slavs. Sadly Maurice was overthrown and executed with his six sons by Phocas a general who then became Emperor and plunged the Empire in to civil war and renewed Sassanid invasions.

Thanks to Phocas the Eastern Roman Empire began its shift to Greek instead of Latin (His successor made the official language Greek) and the Roman-Sassanid wars continued and allowed for the Arabs to begin their rise to power.

to be fair it did until after justinian I and from that moment on it went downhill

>phocas
really? i always thought it wasn't until his pretender heraclius that greek became the official language?

I mean in the sense that his actions lead to Greek being adopted in the same way that his actions lead to the final Roman-Sassanid war and the rise of the Arabs.

Phocas is honestly the worst guy, I do not like him at all.

No shit. Why would splitting your territory in half increase your strength? It was to ease management issues.

i personally think that maurice was the worst since he didn't do shit for the western empire while the huns and the germanics gangraped them

>lazy emperor

Maurice ruled from 582 to 602, the WRE fell in 472, that's 100+ years difference user. This is all after Justinian's attempted reconquest of Italy. Maurice was the great grandson of Justinian.

omg thanks for the correction
I meant marcianus
>even though i posted the pic

>correction

Since conquest was impossible, would a lasting detente that didn't involve tribute have been possible?

The empire had been making the shift from Latin to Greek since before Justinian. You can blame a lot of shit on Phocas but not that.

Horse-fuckers and the Caliphate.

watching the ottomans lectures by ttc's kenneth harl, a strong anatolian/mediterranean power will hold azerbaijan and armenia against a weak persian plateau state . this will yield them mesopotamia down to the gulf. A strong perisan state will reach the med to the detriment of the anatolian state.

Also, it is impossible to project power more than ~1500-2000 km from your capital (constantinople) as you will always have the balkan frontier to defend, seeing as you're a strong anatolian power and MUST expand into the balkans.

also, if you take the armenian plateau, the the other state cannot project power down the mesopotamian basin and taking the cities is just a matter of starving out the garrisons.

>Former Roman empire is invincible
>splits

You’re a fucking idiot. It’s insanely difficult to administrate a state that size in modern times. The fastest information could move was the speed of a horse.

The Sassanid empire conquered a bunch of territory including lots of Byzantine lands right before the Islamic conquests. They basically over extended themselves and thats how the Caliphate raped them and the Byzantines combined. So no, doing so would have left the Byzantines and/or Romans to outstretched

How did the Achaemenids rule an empire that size?

Not nearly as many people and cities back then.

40 million people is not alot?

The Achaemneid empire contained more than 40% of the world population at the time, and arrived centuries before the Sassanids.

Which of the two parts had the worst neighbours?

Not too many open fronts dividing the ruler's attention.

The Roman empire was easy to control from one center in times of relative tranquility. With the third century onward, however, the empire found itself under near constant external pressure from more sides than a single unified system could handle. Had it weathered the great migrations and successfully assimilated/pacified/repelled the migrant tribes it's possible the division would have eventually been abandoned and a centralized system restored.

By dividing the realm into satrapies.
The roman problem was that their culture ingrained into the higher classes an insane amount of ambition. Their problem wasn't one of administration but of surpressing rebellions as any sucessful general would proclaim himself emperor. The tetrarchy was meant to hinder this by giving each frontier its own emperor. The two emperor system was just an adapation of this precursor system.

>Former Roman empire is invincible
>Split in in half was a serious mistake
Speak like a true ignorant brainlet.

They could sack their most important cities at will, but no way they could integrate all those millions of sandniggers with a different religion, culture, history,...