Who would've won in a war between the Roman and the Han empire?

Did Rome and China have any direct contact at all?

The romans would've won, their populations were similar and the romans simply outproduced them in temrs of gold and other materials

nothing short of rumors, The closest China came into contact with Romans was
Specifically the ambassador was told that further to the west lay one of the greatest and wealthiest empires of the world. He was halfway to Jerusalem before they turned back.
The next part are all speculative and i don't remember the details so much so take it with a grain of salt.
There were rumors of a Roman legion reaching all the way to China and working as mercenaries to one of the rebelling Generals in a battle. Said to have white skin and blue eyes.
They battled using a "strange" formation the Chinese dubbed the "fish-scale formation".
This group of mercenaries were defeated in battle and their weapons taken. Not knowing what to do with them they were arrested and given a small town. They were quickly forgotten.

...

Didn't China and the Romans both have regular sea-born trade with India?

Whoever's defending

Source?

Han Chinese scholars saw the Roman Empire as analogous to China.
Yet, very little real knowledge was acquired from primary sources. It was all heresay.

Acting like Romans didn’t have lying merchants is retarded.

>There were rumors of a Roman legion reaching all the way to China and working as mercenaries to one of the rebelling Generals in a battle. Said to have white skin and blue eyes.
>They battled using a "strange" formation the Chinese dubbed the "fish-scale formation".
>This group of mercenaries were defeated in battle and their weapons taken. Not knowing what to do with them they were arrested and given a small town. They were quickly forgotten.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqian

yes indeed, although both of them stopped due to extraordinary circumstances.
Rome because of the Islamic conquest of Egypt and China because of the Islamic conquest of the Tarim Basin.

If we used a battle simulator to simulate combat between two equally sized armies with the same absolute numbers of infantry, cavalry, etc in the year -100 BC, what would the result be?

could've been remnants of hellenic seulecid hoplites

More likely that it was Yuezhi/Tocharian remnants misidentified as Europeans by wewuzers.

>primary sources
I dont remeber the han ambassador but i do remember Wei.
>History of Wei by Yu Huan
Right this one. It always sounded too fantastic to be true.

Yes, but were they not both trading with India back in the first few centuries of the common era? (I have no idea, but I would think yes)

don't really know anything about them

There are some towns who go wewuzromans in china apparently, but genetic studies have shown that they're not.
Nice to have something that can be conclusive like that.

Neither would be able to conquer the other

At best it would end with a roman being crowned emperor being china after china losing a lot, but that roman emperor of china would just form a new dynasty and oppose the roman empire until it split

Romans couldn't even conqueror Parthia/Persia, the insanity of factoring in logistics and support, plus caravans, supplies, food, and weapons and the rest of what the Romans would need to China is beyond capacity of Rome to remotely facilitate. This is Crassus level of delusional belief Romans could manage that with Han China much less struggling with Parthia/Persia.

both empires have all the wealth they need ,consider the rest barbarian so they didnt need anithing for the rest of the world,a battle like that wouldnt benefitiate neither .
in that time only partian could be considered civilized too

>genetic studies
Fucking called it. Thank goodness for technology.
Yep seven centuries worth for both.

Probably Rome as they had a real industry.

but they could they take mesopotamia if they really wanted in 114 parthia would have fallen it was in the last stages ,but romans they have became too criscuck for their own good,after that never would atempt to conquer any more land

a single roman province made more gold than the entire han empire.

Rome, easily. Rome defeated all kinds of enemies including empires. The Han dynasty only ever fought horsemen and small tribes.

parthia would have need to be conquered then kushans and in 100 years when the provinces were asimilated could make a direct confrontation with the chinese,i dont see any alternative universe in what this could have happened ,parthia and kushan empire is the max ,and maybe some conflict with the indians that all

Rome and Carthage had good relation too, it doesn't mean shit

there was only one time when china could have realistacally been conquered with alexander the great before the unification of china after that you would have to wait 2000 years to have another chance

Unless you had a common enemy with the steppeniggers and trust me everyone hates the steppenigger

if they were close to each other and with both empires at their max maybe chineses, too much slaves in rome that could make a rebellion if the things go wrong

some of them would have became spys for the chinese and with a better expectation of future the betrayeal if the chinese play well their cards is not soo hard to imagine

A weakened Parthia was attacked while in the middle of a civil war by Trajan and they still failed to do anything other than chimp out on the Parthians/Persians and the client king appointed by Trajan was immediately deposed of the moment the Romans had to evacuate in the face of Parthian resistances and logistical issues. The closet the Romans ever even got to actually hitting Iranian hinterlands was a temporary attack on Susa and even then took heavy losses when Parthian cataphracts could properly engage them.

Except the Han and Parthians had had good relations for centuries while they barely even knew what the Romans were, much less the large distance and relative isolation from each other certainly didn't make things any easier going from a known and familiar ally like Parthia/Persia to an unknown quantity like the Romans.

>Liqian origin theory
I've wondered why Hollywood hasn't made this into a movie yet. Given how the industry has a hard on for pandering to the yellow man for shekels. It's a pretty cool story too.

>tom cruise and friends lose battle at Carrhae
>parthinians chain them up
>gratuitous gladiator scene follows
>parthinians get tired of romans and sell them to china merchant
>gratuitous sailing on junk scene (alternative gay sex scene on the ship)
>fight for the yellow man in many battles and graciously given a village and qt chinks for fighting valiantly

take away the
>(alternative gay sex scene on the ship)
and you'd be good

already exists, Dragon blade from 2015 starring Jackie Chan.

I unironically liked this movie.

the parthians

Oh shit really? How is it?

Its a campy B tier low budget movie with nice fights and visual effects with John Cusack and Jackie Chan. Its fun.

>Cusack
Eugh.

IIRC, is mostly right, but in the version I was taught in school, a Chinese diplomat got to Parthian Mesopotamia, and due to the language barrier between them, when he asked for a ship to Rome, he was told that he would have to travel around the horn of Africa, and that the trip would take three years. He then turned around and went home. If he traveled 20 more days west by land, he would have made it to Roman Territory.

Judea

Attrition

>implying that any of those empires had the technology/logistic to launch a successful invasion of these dimensions

Gold as a monetary system in ancient times is subjective. For example; the Aztecs and Mayans used cacao as a form of currency, and all native Americans never used gold for trade. So it all depends on the civilization, friendo

Chinese records are all second or third hand heresy. The reason Chinese call Romans Da Qin is not to praise Romans but rather to rebuff the Parthian/Persian merchants boastings by saying Chinese empire Qin of the past were like that.

I really want to choose the Romans, but the Han Empire would outnumber the Romans by at least 10 to 1. I think a Roman legionnaire could take on 2 or 3 little chinese men, but not 10.

europe is too big on this map

underrated post

Even if Roman empire could take 10:1, given that Chinese have a sophisticated conscription system(the entire country's 18-50 year old already have atleast a two years worth of service/training time) and Roman empire doesn't have anything except maybe forced peasant conscription, it would be a complete and utter disaster.

IIRC Rome had about 35% of the worlds popoulation around 100AD?

>complaining about the area distortion that occurs when projecting a 3D surface onto 22 dimensions
lrn2 differential geometry

Romans had better DEF

Hans had better ATK

so it depends on who attacks

Are you by any chance an atheist Israeli who wants to migrate to the USA?

more importantly if China conquered Roma in 50BC then how many months pregnant would Annelise Marie Frank be when she was liberated from a train car by the Louisiana Tigers???

Whoever dumb enough to move first

>let's project my anger on an entity 2000 years ago

Grow up

A single Chinese province produced more Jade then the whole Roman empire.

What made Roman defense notable? I mean the Chinese had ranged artillery and the great walls. As well as all of their cities being a walled fortress.

I remember hearing a story of a Roman Ambassador who made it to China by sea, and bright gifts to the Han court. This story was told my my Chinese professor in history of Asian Civilization, and the professor implied they were pretty close. Anyone know of this account? The Han ambassador getting turned around in the Middle East is common knowledge, but I have not seen anyone in this thread mention the Ambassador from Rome

a lot of chink professors are full of shit. my chinese history professor at [top 10 us university] was a nationalistic old chinese doofus and he would tell us bullshit about how the chinks discovered america first because of chinese records of hummingbirds and shit. supposedly, my professor was a big shot who was consulted by a lot of big companies for his "expertise" on chinese culture. i always got a chuckle at how the non-chinese TAs would always cringe and roll their eyes whenever the old fart would get into his bullshit stories. generally, when it comes to asian history, always have a healthy dose of skepticism.

Neither because there's 1.000s of Km inbetween them which implies overstretched supply lines and ridicolously small expeditionary forces
Remove distance and you'll likely have a stalemate anyway, each empire had its own set of advantages (population, industry, farming, navy, infantry, cavalry, bureaucracy) but neither had enough to decisively triumph

The story is about supposed group of Roman ambassadors. The Chinese didn't buy the story because the gifts the supposed ambassadors brought were of such low quality.

Oh forgot to add, the Chinese thought they were just simple merchants.

This. Chinks are fucking retarded.

I'm the only one who is amazed by the idea how it would have been being a Roman explorer and find an unknown and giant empire on the other side of the world with total different architectures, traditions, languages etc? It would be something impossible nowadays, unless we find an inhabitated atlantis under the water or an alien population on Mars. The world now Imho is so boring and small compared to the one 2000 years ago, there isn't pretty much nothing interesting to discover anymore

Both sides would have lost.

This

So like the Assyrians and their allies who devoured them as soon as the steppe niggers showed?
no way
>empires don't turn on each other
Rome, easily.
>superior infantry
>more manpower (yes actually, Rome had many more people who could be levied into military service who had prior military experience, 100,000,000 chinese peasants mean nothing against 100,000 veterans)
>superior heavy cavalry
>superior light cavalry
>superior logistics
>superior seige

Yeah he ruins it, I guess the chinese didn't realize how stupid his voice sounds.

There's also a fucking blind kid as a roman emperor.

>white skin and blue eyes.
Romans?

You can find those features in italy., not exactly common.
But it's like how the Japanese see all Americans as Blonde with Blue eyes.

My teacher for early modern east asian history is Chinese I think. He's pretty cool and doesn't talk up china
But then again he's british

>Romans
>Cavalry
See pic.

Also I'd fight you on logistics. Romans had baggage trains. Han Dynasty chinks meanwhile had a literal military rank handling logistics (the Commissioner of Supplies), who commanded an army of laborers & auxiliaries whose sole task is to handle supply matters, and in addition did supply depots which was extremely ahead of its time.

Not that guy but the Roman cavalry would really depend on if they had Auxiliaries.

now called Zhelaizhai
people there are sure they are romans descendents

Persians and Parthos because of commerce with both

There are findings of a few roman coins in China I think

>Rome had about 35% of the worlds popoulation around 100AD