# Han China vs. The Roman Empire



## Mabel Gleeful (Nov 30, 2016)

During the Han dynasty occurred one of the very direct first contacts between Rome and China, so what would happen if both had gone to war with each other?

Specifications: 
-This is Han China and the Roman Empire at their peak, that is, when they controlled the most territory.
-Assume that both empires are contiguous. 
-Winning is by conquering or destroying the other's empire.


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## Island (Nov 30, 2016)

Han China.

IIRC, the largest battle that the Romans participated in was the Battle of Cannae where they fielded 80,000 soldiers whereas the Qin, the Han, and the Three Kingdoms regularly fielded a few hundred thousand soldiers.

The Han had the closest thing that the ancient world had to a modern military structure, i.e., divisions, battalions, companies, and platoons. It also mass produced equipment and weapons.

The Han, simply put, could amass significantly larger armies at a much faster rate than the Romans.

That said, the Roman political system was a lot less stable than the Chinese political system. The Roman Emperor had to juggle the loyalty of various factions (the Senate, the Praetorian Guard, provincial governments...) whereas the Chinese Emperor was revered as a God-Emperor who surrounded himself with eunuchs, relatives, and other individuals who were less likely to revolt against him; it was typically when a weak Emperor or a series of natural disasters struck that the Emperor's power was called into question.

Not to mention, Han China was (comparatively) homogeneous whereas the Roman Empire was a patchwork of ethnicities, religions, etc.

The Roman Empire would sooner fold under pressure than the Han Dynasty, something that would happen pretty quickly once the Chinese overrun its eastern provinces.

It would be nearly impossible, however, for either to actually _conquer _the other since we'd be talking about a single government trying to govern up to 90% of humanity, spanning from Gibraltar to Beijing.

But, yes, Han China would win if we controlled for the logistical difficulties of actually conquering empires of that size.

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## Empress Angeline (Nov 30, 2016)

China via much larger population.


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## Island (Nov 30, 2016)

[CITATION NEEDED] said:


> China via much larger population.


Incorrect.

Rome and China were comparable in population and geographical size. IIRC, they both had around 50-75 million people, together being home to about half of the world population.


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## Empress Angeline (Nov 30, 2016)

China is far more developed and technological, Rome only holds logistics advantage.


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## Fang (Nov 30, 2016)

Island said:


> Han China.
> 
> IIRC, the largest battle that the Romans participated in was the Battle of Cannae where they fielded 80,000 soldiers whereas the Qin, the Han, and the Three Kingdoms regularly fielded a few hundred thousand soldiers.



The Romans have defeated Germanic and Proto-Germanic hordes that have numbered in the hundreds of thousands even before the transition from Republic to Principate. They also had nearly a dozen if not more front line veteran legions sitting across and in proximity to the Rhine River.



> The Han had the closest thing that the ancient world had to a modern military structure, i.e., divisions, battalions, companies, and platoons. It also mass produced equipment and weapons.



This is flagrantly untrue. The Roman war machine transition from privately provided and funded citizen militas to government mandated arms, armor, weapons, and divisions before Marius came. After Marius' reformations, the Romans continued to refine and organize their military for centuries, hell it endured more or less intact even into the late Byznatine period.

Also one of the reasons why the Romans and their rivals the Persians were the premier powers were because they acquired chainmail armor from the Celtics and applied that to their military, which most would not have adequate equivalents until the late 4th century to rival or match.



> The Han, simply put, could amass significantly larger armies at a much faster rate than the Romans.



Hardly. The Roman Empire controlled nearly a quarter of the planet's population at their height. And Hannibal couldn't put a dent in their manpower despite winning battles for nearly 2 decades on the Italian penninsula and constantly decimating Roman armies in the tens of thousands.



> That said, the Roman political system was a lot less stable than the Chinese political system.


[

Not really, no. The Senate controlled the interior provinces of Italia, parts of Iberia, Hispania, and aspects of Gaul and lower Germnia. The rest of the Empire was administrated by Proconsuls, consuls, and other administrative figures who answered primarily to the Roman Emperors and their deputies.



> The Roman Emperor had to juggle the loyalty of various factions (the Senate, the Praetorian Guard, provincial governments...) whereas the Chinese Emperor was revered as a God-Emperor who surrounded himself with eunuchs, relatives, and other individuals who were less likely to revolt against him; it was typically when a weak Emperor or a series of natural disasters struck that the Emperor's power was called into question.



None of these things are unique or native only to the Chinese. Emperors in China were frequently murdered, assassinated, desposed of, exiled, and so on. The Han Emperors in fact in general had less political or military power invested in them because they were not TYPICALLY Roman generals or accomplished administrators who ascended to the throne.



> Not to mention, Han China was (comparatively) homogeneous whereas the Roman Empire was a patchwork of ethnicities, religions, etc.



And yet Roman Empire endured in one form or another from its founding a city in the 8th century BC to the fall of Constantinople in the mid-15th century AD. Certainly longer then the Han ever lasted. On top of that, Latins and Italics along with Greeks and Roman/Latin colonists colonized the fuck out of Spain, Portugal, France, lower Germany and the Balkans as well as significant parts of the Roman East. On top of which, later forms forming the Social War had citizens of foreign nationalities allied with and later assimilated into the Roman Empire be eligble for Roman citizenship with services in the Roman military.

Its not an issue.

In fact there's a reason why the Roman Empire's military was so feared and effective was because it was constantly evolving and incorporating different elements from allied and enemy powers militaries into their own after the end of Pax Romana.



> The Roman Empire would sooner fold under pressure than the Han Dynasty, something that would happen pretty quickly once the Chinese overrun its eastern provinces.



No it wouldn't.

a) I'll repeat: the Roman Empire lasted longer then the Han Empire
b) Said Roman Empire frequently warred with another macro-state, the second Iranian/Aryan Empire of the Arsacid dynasty (i.e. Parthians) and later Sassanid aka the Neo Persian Empire
c) The threats to Roman stability were significantly more extrusive from foreign and external elements; increasing wars with a far more aggressive Sassanid Persian Empire, age of migrations that saw the start of the Turkic and Hunnic migrations deflected by the Sassanids into Eurasia and Eastern Europe, Germanic tribes making more wars and rivalry between the Eastern Roman vs Western Roman Empires

The Han had less external issues and still folded due to internal failings in their military and political systems then Rome did.



> It would be nearly impossible, however, for either to actually _conquer _the other since we'd be talking about a single government trying to govern up to 90% of humanity, spanning from Gibraltar to Beijing.



You're forgetting the Parthians and Sassanids both governed a large portion of the planet's population between the two.



> But, yes, Han China would win if we controlled for the logistical difficulties of actually conquering empires of that size.



They wouldn't.

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## Fang (Nov 30, 2016)

Also



"China was more developed"

lol


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## Empress Angeline (Nov 30, 2016)

Fang said:


> Also
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Wikipedia, always a reliable source.


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## Island (Nov 30, 2016)

Fang said:


> The Romans have defeated Germanic and Proto-Germanic hordes that have numbered in the hundreds of thousands even before the transition from Republic to Principate. They also had nearly a dozen if not more front line veteran legions sitting across and in proximity to the Rhine River.


None of these hordes were anywhere near as sophisticated as the Chinese, however. It's one thing to beat a numerically superior opponent, but it's another thing to beat a numerically superior opponent who matches you in quality of equipment, weapons, tactics, and training.



Fang said:


> This is flagrantly untrue. The Roman war machine transition from privately provided and funded citizen militas to government mandated arms, armor, weapons, and divisions before Marius came. After Marius' reformations, the Romans continued to refine and organize their military for centuries, hell it endured more or less intact even into the late Byznatine period.


Not on the scale that the Chinese did.

Liu Bang (founder of the Han Dynasty) amassed an army between 500,000 and 800,000 soldiers at the Battle of Gaixia while Cao Cao (towards its end) raised an army between 200,000 and 800,000 at the Battle of Red Cliffs. The high-end estimates are likely exaggerated, but there's a fairly consistent trend of individual battles seeing upwards to a few hundred thousand soldiers on each side.



Fang said:


> Hardly. *The Roman Empire controlled nearly a quarter of the planet's population at their height.* And Hannibal couldn't put a dent in their manpower despite winning battles for nearly 2 decades on the Italian penninsula and constantly decimating Roman armies in the tens of thousands.


Han China also had nearly a quarter of the world population, so this point is moot.



Fang said:


> Not really, no. The Senate controlled the interior provinces of Italia, parts of Iberia, Hispania, and aspects of Gaul and lower Germania. The rest of the Empire was administrated by Proconsuls, consuls, and other administrative figures who answered primarily to the Roman Emperors and their deputies.


The point I was making was that the Chinese Emperor wielded more authority than the Roman Emperor; the Chinese state was more centralized than the Roman one.



Fang said:


> None of these things are unique or native only to the Chinese. Emperors in China were frequently murdered, assassinated, desposed of, exiled, and so on. *The Han Emperors in fact in general had less political or military power invested in them* because they were not TYPICALLY Roman generals or accomplished administrators who ascended to the throne.


This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Chinese military worked; the Chinese didn't maintain a sizable standing army in peacetime, so there was little military clout to be had.



Fang said:


> And yet Roman Empire endured in one form or another from its founding a city in the 8th century BC to the fall of Constantinople in the mid-15th century AD.


This is outright dishonest because "one form or another" amounted to a crippled city-state in the 15th century. There's a reason we make a distinction between the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire.



Fang said:


> Certainly longer then the Han ever lasted.


You're comparing the Roman state to a single Chinese dynasty. Even though the Han Dynasty fell, the Chinese state continued to exist in one form or another.

In contrast, Rome as a state ceased to exist after the fall of the Byzantine Empire.



Fang said:


> In fact there's a reason why the Roman Empire's military was so feared and effective was because it was constantly evolving and incorporating different elements from allied and enemy powers militaries into their own after the end of Pax Romana.


Hype doesn't mean a lot since Westerners know far more about the Romans than they do about the Han Chinese.



Fang said:


> I'll repeat: the Roman Empire lasted longer then the Han Empire


Again, this a comparison between a state and a dynasty, which is outright dishonest. The Imperial Chinese state existed far longer than the Roman state.



Fang said:


> Said Roman Empire frequently warred with another macro-state, the second Iranian/Aryan Empire of the Arsacid dynasty (i.e. Parthians) and later Sassanid aka the Neo Persian Empire


So? Chinese factions that were larger than most of Roman's adversaries frequently warred with each other.



Fang said:


> The Han had less external issues and still folded due to internal failings in their military and political systems then Rome did.


The fall of the Han Dynasty was a succession crisis that culminated in a military coup by a local warlord; the Imperial Chinese state continued to exist regardless of the fact that the dynasty was overthrown.



Fang said:


> You're forgetting the Parthians and Sassanids both governed a large portion of the planet's population between the two.


OP said that, for the purposes of this thread, Rome and China are contiguous.

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## Mabel Gleeful (Nov 30, 2016)

Fang said:


> After Marius' reformations, the Romans continued to refine and organize their military for centuries, *hell it endured more or less intact even into the late Byznatine period.*



Late Byzantine period? By that time (about the Fourth Crusade) the Roman Empire had lost all of its territory in Western Europe, all of North Africa and could hold only to a few territories in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In fact, in less than two centuries into the Byzantine period the Roman Empire lost most of its Western half.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Nov 30, 2016)

Island said:


> The Han had the closest thing that the ancient world had to a modern military structure, i.e., divisions, battalions, companies, and platoons. It also mass produced equipment and weapons.



The legions are constantly cited by historians as being the first organised military institution and the closest to our current military system. I know that these are biased historians from European and North American universities, but this claim can't be dismissed just like that. Both empires had very well organised armies, not just the Chinese.



Island said:


> That said, the Roman political system was a lot less stable than the Chinese political system. The Roman Emperor had to juggle the loyalty of various factions (the Senate, the Praetorian Guard, provincial governments...) whereas the Chinese Emperor was revered as a God-Emperor who surrounded himself with eunuchs, relatives, and other individuals who were less likely to revolt against him; it was typically when a weak Emperor or a series of natural disasters struck that the Emperor's power was called into question.



How is Han China more stable when 1) it was in a constant state of warfare, 2) it had to change capitals due to a rebellion that momentarily toppled it, which is why we separate it into Western and Eastern Han, 3) it broke spectacularly into the Three Kingdoms about the same time that the Roman Empire entered the so-called Crises of the Third Century? Both were more or less equally unstable.



Island said:


> Not to mention, Han China was (comparatively) homogeneous whereas the Roman Empire was a patchwork of ethnicities, religions, etc.



Both empires were also more or less heterogenous. Scholars exaggerate the heterogeneity of Rome's multiple ethnic groups while overstating the homogeneity of those of China. The Romans tried to Latinise and Hellenise their conquered subjects, which is why languages like Punic and Gaulish no longer exist, while there were several ethnic groups in ancient China that still exist to this day.




Island said:


> It would be nearly impossible, however, for either to actually _conquer _the other since we'd be talking about a single government trying to govern up to 90% of humanity, spanning from Gibraltar to Beijing.



Han China and the Roman Empire circa the 2nd or 3rd century CE (when both were in their peak) did not hold 90% of all the world's population of that time. India alone could have had as much as  inhabitants at the time.


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## Fang (Nov 30, 2016)

Island said:


> None of these hordes were anywhere near as sophisticated as the Chinese, however. It's one thing to beat a numerically superior opponent, but it's another thing to beat a numerically superior opponent who matches you in quality of equipment, weapons, tactics, and training.



You said nothing about "sophistication", only numbers. Also Romans frequently warred with people on similar technological levels including the Parthians, Persians, Scythians, Celtics, and Germanics who all possessed chainmail, stirrups, composite recurved bows, and so on. On top of that, the Romans averaged around 5'7 to 5'9 in height and were defeating Germanics who spanned an average of a full "Roman" head taller then them for nearly 500 years.

So not only did they fight people who could surmount the same kind of numbers the Chinese could, but also physically were dwarfed and still won against them.



> Not on the scale that the Chinese did.



I think you are overrating the Chinese "scale".



> Liu Bang (founder of the Han Dynasty) amassed an army between 500,000 and 800,000 soldiers at the Battle of Gaixia while Cao Cao (towards its end) raised an army between 200,000 and 800,000 at the Battle of Red Cliffs. The high-end estimates are likely exaggerated, but there's a fairly consistent trend of individual battles seeing upwards to a few hundred thousand soldiers on each side.



Unless you given me verified specifics of the Chinese constantly throwing several hundreds of thousands of men without any drain on their manpower, that hardly is impressive. The Chinese "brother of Jesus" religious rebellion supposedly had caused the deaths of over 120 million in China in the mid-19th century, historically it was proven no more then 30-40 million die. Chinese ancient sources for numbers are about on the same wavelength of hyperbole as ancient Greeks and medieval Arabs.



> Han China also had nearly a quarter of the world population, so this point is moot.



So my point stands they don't really have superiority in numbers.



> The point I was making was that the Chinese Emperor wielded more authority than the Roman Emperor; the Chinese state was more centralized than the Roman one.



I call bullshit on that. Quantify the Chinese Emperor having "more authority" then any Roman Emperor.



> This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Chinese military worked; the Chinese didn't maintain a sizable standing army in peacetime, so there was little military clout to be had.



Then that is Chinese weakness. The Romans, Byzantines, Persians, and so maintained a standing military as a defensive precaution to garrison territories across the far flung aspects of their empires, project power and authority, ensure the stability of trade networks both overland and maritime and that is why both the Romans and Persians enjoyed a stronger economy then the Chinese did.



> This is outright dishonest because "one form or another" amounted to a crippled city-state in the 15th century. There's a reason we make a distinction between the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire.



No, there isn't. Nor is there any dishonesty in anything I said. If you buy into Gibbon's cart blanch bullshit who is no more then a glorified histographer then actual historian, then everything about the Byzantine Empire is bullshit which is flagrantly untrue.  Nor is the fact you are focusing on the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 somehow going to invalidate it holding out against Arabs and Turks for over 800 years prior.  The Byzantines are as Roman as the original founders of Rome themselves and still viewed themselves as such even up to World War 1.

The triumphs of Justin and Justinian, the Isuarians, and so on don't get handwaved away. Byznatine is Roman.



> You're comparing the Roman state to a single Chinese dynasty. Even though the Han Dynasty fell, the Chinese state continued to exist in one form or another.



I'm comparing one empire, the Romans, with another, the Chinese Han. Not states, not nations, but macro-nations as defined as imperial powers.



> In contrast, Rome as a state ceased to exist after the fall of the Byzantine Empire.



By that definition, so did the Chinese after the rise of the Mongolians, or the assumpation of the Qing dynasty to power.



> Hype doesn't mean a lot since Westerners know far more about the Romans than they do about the Han Chinese.



Who said anything about hype? But Rome is certainly more relevant to the world then the Han ever were which is one of the reasons why the most relevant half of the world is the Western Hemisphere and not the Eastern Hemisphere. And regardless, you are making a deflective argument which has nothing to do with what the tangent I stated. The Romans and their Byzantine successors were far more relevant militarily because they absorbed concepts like cataphracts, heavy cavalry, horse archers, and new units and tactics from their allies and enemies. They ceased being heavy infantry reliant by the 5th century thanks to constant wars with the Sassanid's cavalry and constant brush wars with Hunnic and Turkic raiders.

So their military is also vastly more flexible then the Han's.  



> Again, this a comparison between a state and a dynasty, which is outright dishonest. The Imperial Chinese state existed far longer than the Roman state.



No, its between two Imperial powers, not races or nations. There is no dishonesty here.



> So? Chinese factions that were larger than most of Roman's adversaries frequently warred with each other.



>Germanics
>Iranics/Persians

Nope.



> The fall of the Han Dynasty was a succession crisis that culminated in a military coup by a local warlord; the Imperial Chinese state continued to exist regardless of the fact that the dynasty was overthrown.



So it fell due to internal incompetence, its not a special apple.



> OP said that, for the purposes of this thread, Rome and China are contiguous.



And Rome then wins because it has a history of not capitulating even when faced with severe losses of manpower in frequent wars shown during the first and second Punic Wars, repeated campaigns with the Parthians and Sassanids, and has history and experience of fighting a far larger and diverse nature of opponents then the Han ever did; Parthians, Persians, Germanics, Celtics, Carthiagians, Greeks, Macedonians, Arabs,  Jews, Turks, etc...


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## Fang (Nov 30, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> Late Byzantine period? By that time (about the Fourth Crusade) the Roman Empire had lost all of its territory in Western Europe, all of North Africa and could hold only to a few territories in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In fact, in less than two centuries into the Byzantine period the Roman Empire lost most of its Western half.



>Hello 9th century
>Hello 10th century
>Hello 11th century

All of which showed the Byzantines recapturing lost territory in the Balkans, Southeastern Europe, and parts of the Near East from the Arabs and Turks. The death blow to the Eastern Roman Empire came from the sack on Constantinople by Western crusaders during the ill-fated 4th crusade. Even Manzikert wasn't the death knell of the empire and the Byzantines were shown to be both recovering both military and economically until added with the Venetians providing financial aid to the Seljuks and other Turks to weaken their Byzantine mercantile rivals.


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## Countless Insect (Nov 30, 2016)

Honestly speaking, the only question that matters is: Were the Chinese ever as successful and prosperous as the Romans were in conquest, expansion and cultural achievement?

They were not. They might have gotten a few things more advanced compared to the Principate, but those achievements are perhaps the result of a less... Hostile environment combined with a generally homogeneous culture. But given the sheer number of foes, foreign cultures and hordes the Romans were constantly beset by, not to mention their practically war-winning tactics and ways of war that forever changed ancient warfare; the Chinese simply fall short in comparison. What? All they ever did was fight their fellow Chinese and the occasional steppe horde. Two enemies which the Romans had decisively crushed in the form of the Italic tribes and the Huns.

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## Mabel Gleeful (Nov 30, 2016)

Fang said:


> >Hello 9th century
> >Hello 10th century
> >Hello 11th century
> 
> All of which showed the Byzantines recapturing lost territory in the Balkans, Southeastern Europe, and parts of the Near East from the Arabs and Turks. The death blow to the Eastern Roman Empire came from the sack on Constantinople by Western crusaders during the ill-fated 4th crusade. Even Manzikert wasn't the death knell of the empire and the Byzantines were shown to be both recovering both military and economically until added with the Venetians providing financial aid to the Seljuks and other Turks to weaken their Byzantine mercantile rivals.


And that's only a fraction of what the Roman Empire originally possessed. Meanwhile, the Byzantines never recovered Iberia after the 5th century and North Africa and most of the Middle East after the 7th. With the advent of the Arab Caliphates, the Byzantines entered into steady decline, resilient with a few ups, but still steady.


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## Mider T (Nov 30, 2016)

[CITATION NEEDED] said:


> Wikipedia, always a reliable source.


Appropriate username lol

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## bitethedust (Nov 30, 2016)

Even if China loses this, Lu Bu's STILL the strongest.


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## Countless Insect (Nov 30, 2016)

bitethedust said:


> Even if China loses this, Lu Bu's STILL the strongest.


Diocletian would like to test that claim.


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## Fang (Nov 30, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> And that's only a fraction of what the Roman Empire originally possessed.



Irrelevant. Under the Macedonian dynasty, the Eastern Roman Empire recovered considerable swathes of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans and increased their land and territory back into the Levant of the Near East. It is known as the "revival" period for a reason despite the Byzantines being surrounded on all sides by hostile powers.



> Meanwhile, the Byzantines never recovered Iberia after the 5th century and North Africa and most of the Middle East after the 7th. With the advent of the Arab Caliphates, the Byzantines entered into steady decline, resilient with a few ups, but still steady.



Not the 5th century, after the 6th century.


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## Island (Nov 30, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> The legions are constantly cited by historians as being the first organised military institution and the closest to our current military system.


The Chinese had a military structure that was (loosely) equivalent to a modern military structure, i.e., a loose equivalent to platoons, companies, and so forth, as early as the Qin Dynasty.

I don't think there are many historians that are comparing the Han and the Romans for the purposes of who had a military system that most closely resembles a modern one.

That said:



Mabel Gleeful said:


> I know that these are biased historians from European and North American universities, but this claim can't be dismissed just like that. *Both empires had very well organised armies, not just the Chinese.*


I didn't disagree with this; my point was that the Chinese had a highly effective and highly organized military structure that allowed them to field hundreds of thousands of soldiers in a given battle.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> How is Han China more stable when 1) it was in a constant state of warfare, 2) it had to change capitals due to a rebellion that momentarily toppled it, which is why we separate it into Western and Eastern Han, 3) it broke spectacularly into the Three Kingdoms about the same time that the Roman Empire entered the so-called Crises of the Third Century? Both were more or less equally unstable.


Because the Chinese state was never existentially threatened whereas the Roman state semi-regularly faced crises that threatened its continued existence. Even when the Chinese state was conquered by the Mongols and later by the Manchus, both groups were absorbed into it.

Most crises that the Chinese state faced were homegrown threats over the Emperorship, usually brought on decadence, famine, natural disaster, etc. Even during these times of crises, its ability to respond to threats didn't really diminish; it was still fielding incredibly large armies.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> Both empires were also more or less heterogenous. Scholars exaggerate the heterogeneity of Rome's multiple ethnic groups while overstating the homogeneity of those of China. The Romans tried to Latinise and Hellenise their conquered subjects, which is why languages like Punic and Gaulish no longer exist, while there were several ethnic groups in ancient China that still exist to this day.


Many ethnic groups within Han China were still highly Sinicized.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> Han China and the Roman Empire circa the 2nd or 3rd century CE (when both were in their peak) did not hold 90% of all the world's population of that time. India alone could have had as much as  inhabitants at the time.


I'm not actually sure why I wrote 90%. 25% + 25% does not equal 90%.



Fang said:


> You said nothing about "sophistication", only numbers.


Who knew that it was necessary to state that the _other _largest empire in the world made similar technological advances?



Fang said:


> Also Romans frequently warred with people on similar technological levels including the Parthians, Persians, Scythians, Celtics, and Germanics who all possessed chainmail, stirrups, composite recurved bows, and so on. On top of that, the Romans averaged around 5'7 to 5'9 in height and were defeating Germanics who spanned an average of a full "Roman" head taller then them for nearly 500 years.


I'm not disputing this.



Fang said:


> *So not only did they fight people who could surmount the same kind of numbers the Chinese could*, but also physically were dwarfed and still won against them.


Such as?



Fang said:


> I think you are overrating the Chinese "scale".
> 
> [...]
> 
> ...


Somehow, I trust historians over some guy on the Internet who disagrees with the assertion. I haven't encountered any literature that calls into question the size of the armies present at the Battle of Gaixia.

That said, these numbers are fairly consistent through the ages; Tang, Song, and Ming scholars, as well as twentieth-century Western historians seem to be on the same page with the size of ancient Chinese armies.

The only dubious number I mentioned was Cao Cao's boast of having an army of 800,000 men, which, IIRC, comes from _Romance of the Three Kingdoms_.



Fang said:


> I call bullshit on that. Quantify the Chinese Emperor having "more authority" then any Roman Emperor.


The Chinese Emperor was a God-Emperor who surrounded himself with eunuchs and regularly appointed relatives to high-ranking political posts; even provincial officials were appointed by the Emperor.

Again, the collapse of the Han Dynasty: a thirteen-year old became Emperor, and the resulting power vacuum created a succession crisis.



Fang said:


> Then that is Chinese weakness. The Romans, Byzantines, Persians, and so maintained a standing military as a defensive precaution to garrison territories across the far flung aspects of their empires [...]


I didn't say that the Chinese didn't have defensive garrisons.

A garrison is not a standing army.



Fang said:


> [...] project power and authority, ensure the stability of trade networks both overland and maritime and that is why both the Romans and Persians enjoyed a stronger economy then the Chinese did.


Source? Estimates of the size of ancient economies are dubious, at best, so I'm curious to see what source claims that the Persian economy was larger than the Chinese one.



Fang said:


> No, there isn't. Nor is there any dishonesty in anything I said. If you buy into Gibbon's cart blanch bullshit who is no more then a glorified histographer then actual historian, then everything about the Byzantine Empire is bullshit which is flagrantly untrue.  Nor is the fact you are focusing on the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 somehow going to invalidate it holding out against Arabs and Turks for over 800 years prior.  The Byzantines are as Roman as the original founders of Rome themselves and still viewed themselves as such even up to World War 1.


I bet you also think that the Ottomans were a continuation of the Roman Empire.



Fang said:


> Byznatine is Roman.


You could make this argument up until the Fourth Crusade, sure, but afterwards is really pushing it, especially when this "continuation" is functionally a city-state.



Fang said:


> I'm comparing one empire, the Romans, with another, the Chinese Han. Not states, not nations, but macro-nations as defined as imperial powers.


Then you'd be comparing Imperial China to the Roman Empire. Again, Han is a dynasty; the end of the Han Dynasty did not mean the end of China as an imperial power.



Fang said:


> By that definition, so did the Chinese after the rise of the Mongolians, or the assumpation of the Qing dynasty to power.


Both the Mongols and the Manchus integrated themselves into Chinese society; I don't know of any historians who consider the fall of the Ming Dynasty as an end of the Imperial Chinese state. Most historians consider the Imperial Chinese state to have existed from the Qin Dynasty in the second-century until the Xinhai Revolution in 1911.



Fang said:


> Who said anything about hype? But Rome is certainly more relevant to the world then the Han ever were which is one of the reasons why the most relevant half of the world is the Western Hemisphere and not the Eastern Hemisphere.


Who is more relevant isn't important to the thread.



Fang said:


> And regardless, you are making a deflective argument which has nothing to do with what the tangent I stated. The Romans and their Byzantine successors were far more relevant militarily because they absorbed concepts like cataphracts, heavy cavalry, horse archers, and new units and tactics from their allies and enemies. They ceased being heavy infantry reliant by the 5th century thanks to constant wars with the Sassanid's cavalry and constant brush wars with Hunnic and Turkic raiders.


What happened in the 5th century is irrelevant to a thread about 2nd century Rome.



Fang said:


> So it fell due to internal incompetence, its not a special apple.


The Han Dynasty fell; the Chinese state did not. Again, you're comparing a state with a dynasty instead of a state with a state.



Fang said:


> And Rome then wins because it has a history of not capitulating even when faced with severe losses of manpower in frequent wars shown during the first and second Punic Wars, repeated campaigns with the Parthians and Sassanids, and has history and experience of fighting a far larger and diverse nature of opponents then the Han ever did; Parthians, Persians, Germanics, Celtics, Carthiagians, Greeks, Macedonians, Arabs,  Jews, Turks, etc...


If we're going by precedent, then I should remind you that one of these states continued to exist into the twentieth century whereas the other ceased to exist in a meaningful way after the Fourth Crusade.

Reactions: Like 1 | Disagree 1


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## bitethedust (Nov 30, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> Diocletian would like to test that claim.



You just jelly, Lu Bu's the strongest


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## Fang (Nov 30, 2016)

Island said:


> Who knew that it was necessary to state that the _other _largest empire in the world made similar technological advances?



I gave a fairly comprehensive list of technological advancements in Western Asia and Western Europe of what Rome and its opponents/rivals possessed. You gave me simply numbers and nothing else, numbers that haven't really be substantiated outside of unverified historical accounts.

Who knew this would go over your head?



> I'm not disputing this.



Then why are you continuing on this nonsense about "sophistication" here?



> Such as?



Such as the fact that Caucasians and Africans are typically taller, larger, more sturdily built, and physically more imposing then East Asians/people of Mongoloid descent? We know the average size of a Roman soldier was 5'7, we know that all Roman literature from Tacticus and later writers talk about the size of Germanics being several handspans to heads taller then them.



> Somehow, I trust historians over some guy on the Internet who disagrees with the assertion. I haven't encountered any literature that calls into question the size of the armies present at the Battle of Gaixia.



Am I supposed to take the fact that YOU haven't encountered any anecdotal refutations of inflated numbers in Chinese history as proof I shouldn't question them?



> That said, these numbers are fairly consistent through the ages; Tang, Song, and Ming scholars, as well as twentieth-century Western historians seem to be on the same page with the size of ancient Chinese armies.



Please post several western scholars that stand by those numbers universally.



> The Chinese Emperor was a God-Emperor who surrounded himself with eunuchs and regularly appointed relatives to high-ranking political posts; even provincial officials were appointed by the Emperor.



I'm waiting for tangible evidence of tangible powers of Chinese Emperors being superior to Roman Emperors here. They had the power to pick and choose who served in their courts, as their administrators, officers, governors, military generals, running the economy and so on and get immortalized after their deaths usually.

So not seeing it.



> Again, the collapse of the Han Dynasty: a thirteen-year old became Emperor, and the resulting power vacuum created a succession crisis.



So what?



> I didn't say that the Chinese didn't have defensive garrisons.
> 
> A garrison is not a standing army.



* gar•ri•son (gărˈĭ-sən)*
*►*


n.
A military post, especially one that is permanently established.
n.
The troops stationed at a military post.
v.
To assign (troops) to a military post.



> Source? Estimates of the size of ancient economies are dubious, at best, so I'm curious to see what source claims that the Persian economy was larger than the Chinese one.



Source? The Parthians and Persians sat on the crossroads of the Silk Road, they benefited as the middle men, and their wealth was the reason why they were able to choke the Romans and Byzantines merchants with higher tariffs.

Add that their physical location straddling almost all of the trade routes across the Silk Road into Central Asia and the Indian Sea is why several Roman/Byzantine attempts at expeditions directly bypassing the Parthian and Sassanid empire were attempted in the first place. The Roman economy was matched at its heights by the Iranians, and both would've matched if not exceeded the Han's.

And while evidence of how large the Parthian and Persian economy is fragmentary due to lack of lots of written records we do have evidence of the wealth they possesed given the status of Persian silver, gold, ceramics, and power of their agricultural possessions. It was always on par with the Romans and Byzantines.



> I bet you also think that the Ottomans were a continuation of the Roman Empire.



Grasps at straws harder. The Byzantines are Romans, spoke Latin until the end the 7th century before switching to Greek  and continued to identify themselves both racially and culturally as Romans. The Ottomans are Turks.



> You could make this argument up until the Fourth Crusade, sure, but afterwards is really pushing it, especially when this "continuation" is functionally a city-state.



The sack of Constantinople by the 4th Crusader Host on top of betrayal by Latins in Constantinople of their duties when it came to military responsibilities and refusal to pay their dues in customs and tariffs is the death blow of the Byzantine Empire before that, they were still actively recovering up to that point.



> Then you'd be comparing Imperial China to the Roman Empire. Again, Han is a dynasty; the end of the Han Dynasty did not mean the end of China as an imperial power.



I am comparing Han China with the Roman Empire. The Romans did not center their empire around a single ruling family or dynasty. It's that simple.



> Both the Mongols and the Manchus integrated themselves into Chinese society; I don't know of any historians who consider the fall of the Ming Dynasty as an end of the Imperial Chinese state. Most historians consider the Imperial Chinese state to have existed from the Qin Dynasty in the second-century until the Xinhai Revolution in 1911.



By point clearly went over your head. Because both cases are a foreign non-Chinese dynasty establishing its militarily and politically over ethnic native Chinese to establish their own empire and dynasties, regardless of how short lived they were.



> Who is more relevant isn't important to the thread.


]

Not in the current topic but it certainly helps that Romans are the basis of modern Western culture and society and part of the reason why the West is superior to the East.



> What happened in the 5th century is irrelevant to a thread about 2nd century Rome.



I don't care. Because I was elaborating a point about Justinian's conquests not falling until more then a century later after the Eastern Roman Expeditions to reunite both halves of the same original empire.



> The Han Dynasty fell; the Chinese state did not. Again, you're comparing a state with a dynasty instead of a state with a state.



The Roman Empire was never a singular "state". Do you not understand what an empire is? It is a collection of different peoples united under a singular political entity with a stratified system of central government and military.



> If we're going by precedent, then I should remind you that one of these states continued to exist into the twentieth century whereas the other ceased to exist in a meaningful way after the Fourth Crusade.



Good for you but if you want to compare impact and influence, the Romans/Byzantines are still going to win in that regards. Either way seeing where this is going, I don't think this debate is going to end up anywhere else so I'm done here.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Island said:


> Because the Chinese state was never existentially threatened whereas the Roman state semi-regularly faced crises that threatened its continued existence. Even when the Chinese state was conquered by the Mongols and later by the Manchus, both groups were absorbed into it.
> 
> Most crises that the Chinese state faced were homegrown threats over the Emperorship, usually brought on decadence, famine, natural disaster, etc. Even during these times of crises, its ability to respond to threats didn't really diminish; it was still fielding incredibly large armies.



This is completely false. There's a reason why we talk about different dynasties. Each were toppled and then disappeared. This is especially true between the Han and Tang dynasties. The Han dynasty was toppled once and later recovered itself in a new capital. It was later so thoroughly destroyed that this is why China entered the Three Kingdom period, which also does not mean that there were only three kingdoms, but a multiplicity of states, many short-lived, fighting with each other much like Western Europe during the Thirty Years War. These states had different administrations as well. Even the Tang dynasty, that didn't grab power and established a centralised authority _until the seventh century,_ had a different administration than preceding dynasties. In other words, each dynasty was a completely different state.

Also, by your logic that the Mongols and Manchu were "absorbed" into the Chinese state I can easily say that the Germans that conquered the Western half of the Roman Empire and later formed the Holy Roman Empire were also "absorbed" into the Roman state.





Island said:


> Many ethnic groups within Han China were still highly Sinicized.



And many ethnic groups in Rome were also highly Romanised. Like I said, this is the reason why languages like Punic and Gaulish no longer exist. Heck, we have peoples like the Thracians and Ilyrians who pretty much completely disappeared and became fully Roman. Even peoples like the Jews were highly Romanised.


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## Island (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> [...]


The crux of this is that you don't believe that Han was capable of raising the kind of armies that Chinese sources claimed they could; I'll see about digging up some Western sources for you in the next day or two.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> This is completely false. There's a reason why we talk about different dynasties. Each were toppled and then disappeared. This is especially true between the Han and Tang dynasties. The Han dynasty was toppled once and later recovered itself in a new capital. It was later so thoroughly destroyed that this is why China entered the Three Kingdom period, which also does not mean that there were only three kingdoms, but a multiplicity of states, many short-lived, fighting with each other much like Western Europe during the Thirty Years War. These states had different administrations as well. Even the Tang dynasty, that didn't grab power and established a centralised authority _until the seventh century,_ had a different administration than preceding dynasties. In other words, each dynasty was a completely different state.


A state is more than just the central government and its bureaucracy. A state is a political entity which maintains bureaucracies, legal systems, military organizations, and (sometimes) religious organizations through the monopolized use of force.

The Chinese state, i.e., the institutions surrounding the ruling dynasty, continued to exist from the Qin to the Qing.

If you'd like a source for this definition, check out Max Weber. Along with Comte and Durkheim, they're considered the fathers of modern sociology.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> Also, by your logic that the Mongols and Manchu were "absorbed" into the Chinese state I can easily say that the Germans that conquered the Western half of the Roman Empire and later formed the Holy Roman Empire were also "absorbed" into the Roman state.


This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Mongol and Manchu conquests of the Song and the Ming, respectively. The Mongols and the Manchu conquered China and replaced the previous government with themselves. They kept most Chinese institutions, adopted Chinese culture, adopted Chinese language, and became Chinese in everything but name.

They literally just replaced the preceding dynasties whereas the Germans destroyed the Roman Empire and only _vaguely _kept its institutions.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> And many ethnic groups in Rome were also highly Romanised. Like I said, this is the reason why languages like Punic and Gaulish no longer exist. Heck, we have peoples like the Thracians and Ilyrians who pretty much completely disappeared and became fully Roman. Even peoples like the Jews were highly Romanised.


I'm not denying this, but Romanization and Sinicization are on two entirely different levels. Again, the Mongols conquered the Song and _became_ Chinese.

Kublai literally just transplanted Mongol elite on top of Chinese society and continued business as usual, plus or minus a few institutions that he didn't like. IIRC, the Mongols refused to participate in foot binding.

A similar thing happened when the Qing conquered the Ming; the Manchus asserted their dominance and then settled into their new role as the ruling elite of the Chinese state.

The nearest Western equivalent would be the Norman conquest of England, but even that falls short of how deeply the Mongols and the Manchus integrated themselves into Chinese society.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> Such as the fact that Caucasians and Africans are typically taller, larger, more sturdily built, and physically more imposing then East Asians/people of Mongoloid descent? We know the average size of a Roman soldier was 5'7, we know that all Roman literature from Tacticus and later writers talk about the size of Germanics being several handspans to heads taller then them.



And the Chinese also repeatedly faced Caucasian Scythians and Xiongnus and defeated them constantly. And there's no reason to think that peoples like the Rong, the Di, the Xianyun, among others, were less sturdy. Also, you were saying before that ancient Chinese sources are unreliable in terms of army estimates. I completely agree with this, but the same can be said about Roman sources talking about taller barbarians for propagandistic and self-aggrandising purposes.  



Fang said:


> Source? The Parthians and Persians sat on the crossroads of the Silk Road, they benefited as the middle men, and their wealth was the reason why they were able to choke the Romans and Byzantines merchants with higher tariffs.
> 
> Add that their physical location straddling almost all of the trade routes across the Silk Road into Central Asia and the Indian Sea is why several Roman/Byzantine attempts at expeditions directly bypassing the Parthian and Sassanid empire were attempted in the first place. The Roman economy was matched at its heights by the Iranians, and both would've matched if not exceeded the Han's.
> 
> And while evidence of how large the Parthian and Persian economy is fragmentary due to lack of lots of written records we do have evidence of the wealth they possesed given the status of Persian silver, gold, ceramics, and power of their agricultural possessions. It was always on par with the Romans and Byzantines.



China also benefited from the Silk Road and its riches. It traded with Iran and India and its how it contacted Rome for the first time. Heck, it's how China exported products like paper, silk and rice to the the rest of Eurasia and Africa and how it imported wheat and sugar. Both were also of a similar geographical size and similar population number, so I don't see how the Chinese economy is weaker. Then you take into account the Crises of the Third Century, the losses to Sassanid Iran, the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of the Arabs, and you can see how both economies were unstable. Heck, at the time the Romans were losing the majority of their empire to the Arabs, the Tang dynasty was consolidating its power and creating what has been deemed the Golden Age of China. That could be used as an argument for the economic superiority of China in general to Rome.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Island said:


> If you'd like a source for this definition, check out Max Weber. Along with Comte and Durkheim, they're considered the fathers of modern sociology.



You excluded Karl Marx,  alongside the ones you mentioned, and who had a lot to say about China, far better things to say in fact. Seems to me his exclusion was on purpose.



Island said:


> This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Mongol and Manchu conquests of the Song and the Ming, respectively. The Mongols and the Manchu conquered China and replaced the previous government with themselves. They kept most Chinese institutions, adopted Chinese culture, adopted Chinese language, and became Chinese in everything but name.
> 
> They literally just replaced the preceding dynasties whereas the Germans destroyed the Roman Empire and only _vaguely _kept its institutions.



How did the Germans only "vaguely" maintained Roman institutions? They maintained the Roman Christian Church, they maintained the figure of the emperor, they even adopted the Latin language for crying out loud.



Island said:


> I'm not denying this, but Romanization and Sinicization are on two entirely different levels. Again, the Mongols conquered the Song and _became_ Chinese.
> 
> Kublai literally just transplanted Mongol elite on top of Chinese society and continued business as usual, plus or minus a few institutions that he didn't like. IIRC, the Mongols refused to participate in foot binding.
> 
> ...



The exact same things can be said about the Germans. The Germans conquered the Romans and adopted their language, their religion, their literature and their imperial institutions. The Vandals of Spain and the Franks of France no longer speak a Germanic language, but a descendant of Latin for this very same reason. It's why we use the Latin alphabet and not Germanic runes. Fact is, you're minimising the enormous level of assimilation that the Germans went through after conquering the Roman Empire, which is pretty much on the same level as that of the foreigners that conquered China, basically just to keep the Western stereotype of China as an indistinguishable mass of sameness.


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## Island (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> You excluded Karl Marx,  alongside the ones you mentioned, and who had a lot to say about China, far better things to say in fact.


I'm not familiar with Karl Marx's writing on China.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> Seems to me his exclusion was on purpose.


I understand Fang accusing me of dishonesty because he probably doesn't leave his basement very much, but you seem to be a lot more reasonable than that.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> How did the Germans only "vaguely" maintained Roman institutions? They maintained the Roman Christian Church, they maintained the figure of the emperor, they even adopted the Latin language for crying out loud.


Which is a lot less than the Mongols and the Manchu preserved. We're talking in relative terms.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> The exact same things can be said about the Germans. The Germans conquered the Romans and adopted their language, their religion, their literature and their imperial institutions. The Vandals of Spain and the Franks of France no longer speak a Germanic language, but a descendant of Latin for this very same reason. It's why we use the Latin alphabet and not Germanic runes. Fact is, you're minimising the enormous level of assimilation that the Germans went through after conquering the Roman Empire, *which is pretty much on the same level as that of the foreigners that conquered China*, basically just to keep the Western stereotype of China as an indistinguishable mass of sameness.


No it's not. Again, the Mongols and the Manchus transplanted themselves on top of Chinese society whereas a significant number of institutions and structures were destroyed when the Germans conquered the Romans.

That said, I never claimed that China was one homogeneous mass; I claimed that it was more homogeneous than Rome, which is true considering that many of the groups that exist in or around China are splinters of Chinese culture.

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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Island said:


> Which is a lot less than the Mongols and the Manchu preserved. We're talking in relative terms.



Define "a lot less". For starters, pretty much none of the institutions, like the _thing,_ of the Germans survive, even though we know they existed. Instead, many of the Roman territories that were conquered by the Romans no longer speak a Germanic language but a Romance one, they follow republicanism as their mode of government, they follow monarchies based on the Roman emperor, they follow a descendant of Roman law, and use the Latin alphabet. Even in those countries where a Germanic language is spoken, like England and Germany, we find that all institutions are descended from Rome. All Germans converted to Roman Christianity too. 




Island said:


> No it's not. Again, the Mongols and the Manchus transplanted themselves on top of Chinese society whereas a significant number of institutions and structures were destroyed when the Germans conquered the Romans.
> 
> That said, I never claimed that China was one homogeneous mass; I claimed that it was more homogeneous than Rome, which is true considering that many of the groups that exist in or around China are splinters of Chinese culture.



Many of the groups that exist in Europe are also splinters of Roman culture. And what Roman institutions were destroyed by the Germans? The Church? The emperor? The imperial administration? All of them remained. So thorough was the Romanisation of conquering Germans that they even abandoned their own form of Arrian Christianity.


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## Fang (Dec 1, 2016)

Island said:


> I understand Fang accusing me of dishonesty because he probably doesn't leave his basement very much, but you seem to be a lot more reasonable than that.



I don't think you are remotely in any position to talk about what I do at all since you are no Nostradamus here and have no magical insight into my life. If you want to play bullshit with barbs that hold no remote possibility of truth then go ahead and keep breaking that tooth of envy over and over as much as you want.



Island said:


> The crux of this is that you don't believe that Han was capable of raising the kind of armies that Chinese sources claimed they could; I'll see about digging up some Western sources for you in the next day or two.



A) I said I'm not interested in debating you period.
B) That I never said anything of the such, I said I don't find inflated Chinese military numbers to be any more believable then hyperbolic exaggerations the Greeks or Arabs have used to inflate or exaggerate then numbers of their own enemies armies
C) I don't care because see point A again
D) Don't quote my post because I already said I'm done here with the both of you



Mabel Gleeful said:


> And the Chinese also repeatedly faced Caucasian Scythians and Xiongnus



That would matter if Iranics were on the same size or stature as Germanics or Nordics in general.



> and defeated them constantly.



Protip: the treaty between the Chinese and the Iranins was because the latter was much better able to field mobile armies to deal with Iranic horsemen then the Chinese were themselves. And secondly they did not "reguarly" defeat them because the main issue was harrasment and raids on their border towns and colonies in Central Asia usually lead to their garrisons being defeated because Iranic horsemen were able to wheel in, pillage, and leave before heading back Westwards.



> And there's no reason to think that peoples like the Rong, the Di, the Xianyun, among others, were less sturdy. Also, you were saying before that ancient Chinese sources are unreliable in terms of army estimates. I completely agree with this, but the same can be said about Roman sources talking about taller barbarians for propagandistic and self-aggrandising purposes.



1. Bullshit
2. Patently untrue

Namely, Roman sources are less biased when it comes to dealing with "barbarians" and foreigners then Chinese sources which is why their use in academia still remains viable as mostly impartial sources. Tacitus writings exploring the cultures of Germanics and Celtics serve no purpose in being used as "propaganda" or for self-fulfilling boosts to Roman readers at all.

Also hence why Tacitus, Severus, and others writings are still used as a measuring stick for knowledge on ancient Celtics, Germanics, and so on. Secondly, its completely nonsensical to compare any Far Easterners when it comes to height, stature, mass, or body size with Westerners.

Modern average height in China is apparently 5'6 for men today. That's below what we know for ancient Romans over 2000 years ago when the requirements according from Ceasar to Tacitus and Vegetius and so on tell us the minimum height requirement for their soldiers was 5'7. Based off anatomical and genetic tests from a host of Roman skeletons we have, the average height for Roman males was 5'6 to 5'8 which fits.

Given Procopius tells us that the Germanics were "exceptionally tall and stalwart" compared to the Romans in stature and Ceasar speaks of them being considerably taller then his tallest soldiers (likely 5'8 - 5'9 given 5'7 is the average and human variability works that way), ancient Germanics were probably between 5'8 to 5'10 even back in the late Bronze Age to early Iron Age.



> China also benefited from the Silk Road and its riches. It traded with Iran and India and its how it contacted Rome for the first time. Heck, it's how China exported products like paper, silk and rice to the the rest of Eurasia and Africa and how it imported wheat and sugar. Both were also of a similar geographical size and similar population number, so I don't see how the Chinese economy is weaker. Then you take into account the Crises of the Third Century, the losses to Sassanid Iran, the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of the Arabs, and you can see how both economies were unstable. Heck, at the time the Romans were losing the majority of their empire to the Arabs, the Tang dynasty was consolidating its power and creating what has been deemed the Golden Age of China. That could be used as an argument for the economic superiority of China in general to Rome.



None of this is relevant to the tangent that the Iranians benefited the most from the Silk Road to my earlier point that they were right smack dabbed in the middle of it and held the ability to enforce tax and tariffs however they wanted to because both China and Rome/Byzantine were exporting AWAY from their homelands and importing into them meaning any merchants, caravans, traders, have to cross through their lands and military outposts to go about whichever way. I'm not saying the Romans/Byzantines or Chinese didn't tremendously benefit from the Silk Road, my point is the Iranians benefited the most because they were the mid-way point for either side's traders.

Also it is not "Sassanid Iran", if you want to use the name of the Sassanids properly it is Eranshar, as they called it. And as I recall, the Persians and Byzantines had exhausted themselves in 30 years of a final war that ended in a stalemate before being hit by a resurgence of Justinian's Plague for 7 years before the Arabs showed up. In fact based off Al-tabari's findings and modern matches in forensics in Iraq near Ctesiphon ruins, more then half of the entire population in Western Persia was dead by the time the Arabs started assaulting both empires.


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

bitethedust said:


> You just jelly, Lu Bu's the strongest


Lu bu's just a mad dog, all his warmongering and constant betrayal amounted him to being executed by his greatest Rival and abandoned by his allies. So in that manner, Cao Cao is the stronger one.


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## tivanenk (Dec 1, 2016)

To anyone saying that China has better weaponry:

a) These guys suffered from severe shortage of good ore compared to their European counterparts.
b) They were massively behind when it came to defensive armor compared to their European counterparts.

Also, Romans generally had the better generals back in the day, and better strategists.


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## bitethedust (Dec 1, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> Lu bu's just a mad dog, all his warmongering and constant betrayal amounted him to being executed by his greatest Rival and abandoned by his allies. So in that manner, Cao Cao is the stronger one.



Cao Cao's weak and you're weak for not believing in the Lu Bu


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> That would matter if Iranics were on the same size or stature as Germanics or Nordics in general.
> 
> 
> 
> Protip: the treaty between the Chinese and the Iranins was because the latter was much better able to field mobile armies to deal with Iranic horsemen then the Chinese were themselves. And secondly they did not "reguarly" defeat them because the main issue was harrasment and raids on their border towns and colonies in Central Asia usually lead to their garrisons being defeated because Iranic horsemen were able to wheel in, pillage, and leave before heading back Westwards.



Neither did the Romans always defeat the Germans or the Celts (heck, the former were the ones that toppled the Western half of the Empire). Hadrian had to built his wall in Britain and basically gave up on Ireland because he couldn't get past Celtic resistance; they were also unable to conquer the rest of Northern Europe because of Germanic resistance. And the "Iranics" you mention being smaller than Germans were also the same that kept the Romans at bay and one of Rome's most difficult enemies. Heck, Rome lost territory to them, whether Parthians or Sassanids, on various occasions (in fact, one could argue the Romans lost more territory to the Parthians and Sassanids than the latter did to the Romans), whereas the Saka Scythians that the Chinese fought never really got past the garrisons you mentioned. The Romans also lost to Jewish rebels on occasions, who managed to destroy entire legions. I don't think you will say that the Jews, and the neighbouring Arabs that the Romans were also unable to fully conquer, are as sturdy and big as the Germans, or that they are sturdier than East Asians.




Fang said:


> 1. Bullshit
> 2. Patently untrue
> 
> Namely, Roman sources are less biased when it comes to dealing with "barbarians" and foreigners then Chinese sources which is why their use in academia still remains viable as mostly impartial sources. Tacitus writings exploring the cultures of Germanics and Celtics serve no purpose in being used as "propaganda" or for self-fulfilling boosts to Roman readers at all.
> ...



There's absolutely no reason to think that ancient Chinese sources are more biased and less viable than Roman ones, and Chinese sources also continued to be used by modern academia. Secondly, even if Tacitus and other Roman historians are correct, we can easily reverse your size argument to say that the taller and supposedly sturdier Germans lost to the smaller Romans, constantly to boot. And I already pointed out how the Romans could lose to Parthians and Sassanids that by your own admission were not "the same size or stature as Germanics or Nordics in general". While sturdiness is certainly important, it seems that height did not matter on how strong, fast and physically durable your soldiers were in battle.



tivanenk said:


> To anyone saying that China has better weaponry:
> 
> a) These guys suffered from severe shortage of good ore compared to their European counterparts.
> b) They were massively behind when it came to defensive armor compared to their European counterparts.
> ...



That Romans generally had better military leaders than the Chinese is completely subjective and it's incredibly hard to measure. I have noticed in this thread how comments like this are never backed up with any example or proof. Also, what shortages of food did China have in comparison to Rome? Famine was also constant in the Roman Empire, and we can mention plagues and epidemics as well, which were also easily spread precisely because of the universality of famine and malnutrition.


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## Fang (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> Neither did the Romans always defeat the Germans or the Celts (heck, the former were the ones that toppled the Western half of the Empire).



It took the Germanics nearly 600 years to topple the Western Roman Empire and it still had more to do with internal affairs dealing with incompetence of emperors and the reliance of foreign soldiers and mercenaries in the Western Roman Empire's armies then actual decisive weakness. Honorius was still sending his own armies after usurpers and rivals in WRE lands while Germanic troops were running wild inside of their borders.

The Romans were more successful battling and conquering their rivals then the Han ever were, hell early wars between the Romans and Proto Germanics had the former annihilate and even entire tribe Germanic tribes like the Teutonics completely off the map at the end of the day.



> Hadrian had to built his wall in Britain and basically gave up on Ireland because he couldn't get past Celtic resistance



Hadrian's goal was resettling the size of the Roman Empire to a more tolerable limit then continuing the blind expansionist push that Trajan was using. There is a reason why the Roman Empire never attempted an offensive campaign at conquest following Trajan's disastrous Parthian War. And the Wall was built because the Roman Legions could not navigate or successfully push into Scotland, not Ireland. 

Ireland has some rudimentary small scale military forts but it was never intended as a military conquest. In fact it seems like coastal Ireland was a commercial partner to the Roman economy.



> they were also unable to conquer the rest of Northern Europe because of Germanic resistance.



So what? The Romans had no issue frequently going into areas of what is now modern northern Germany, southern Sweden, parts of Denmark and so on to frequently beat back the Germanics. 

Marius even went genociding there, the only affect was that the Romans maintained a large military presence at and across the Rhine River after the failure of Varus. The issue has more to do with environmental factors then military inadequacy. Just like Scotland, northern Germany is heavily boggy, forested, and closed off with hinterlands that make large troop formations nearly impossible to maneuver. 

Even in the WRE's decline, they were still shitkicking the Germanics and even at their nadir the Vandals, Goths, and others ran screaming to the WRE after ERE abandoned them to buy off Attila. And who defeated Attila the Hun? That's right, the WRE Empire. Germanics bringing down WRE has more to do with the incompetence of Roman leaders then any outright military inferiority.



> And the "Iranics" you mention being smaller than Germans were also the same that kept the Romans at bay and one of Rome's most feared enemies.



They were smaller then Germanics yet still taller and more robust in stature then any person of Mongoloid descent.



> Heck, Rome lost territory to them, whether Parthians or Sassanids, on various occasions (in fact, one could argue the Romans lost more territory to the Parthians and Sassanids than the latter did to the Romans),



The Parthians usually lost most of their wars against the Romans. In fact they were on the losing end of things more often then not unlike the Sassanids. There are very few wars where the Parthians either instigated or either won or were winning at any rate.



> whereas the Saka Scythians that the Chinese fought never really got past the garrisons you mentioned.



The Saka are just a sub-tribal confederation of Scythians. Secondly, the Chinese could not exert much in the way of military presence into Central Asia or Western Asia, hence their reliance on the Iranians to patrol and protect trade routes and caravans. I think you are mistaking the Steppes with plain old Eurasia here.



> The Romans also lost to Jewish rebels on occasions, who managed to destroy entire legions.



The Jews have never won a single war against Rome.



> I don't think you will say that the Jews, and the neighbouring Arabs that the Romans were also unable to fully conquer, are as sturdy and big as the Germans, or that they are sturdier than East Asians.



I'm pretty sure ancient Jews were pretty buff as benefiting most people living in the Bronze and Iron Ages in Europe and Western Asia. Also the Arabs were fully subjugated between the Romans/Byzantines and Parthians/Persians at any rate. 

Also anyone would be sensible enough to realize most people in the Middle East, Eurasia, and Europe as well as North Africa in general are taller and larger in stature then people in Eastern Asia.



> There's absolutely no reason to think that ancient Chinese sources are more biased and less viable than Roman ones, and Chinese sources also continued to be use by the modern academia.



No, but I said that Roman sources are more impartial then Chinese sources specifically when it comes to dealing with foreigners and non-Romans.



> Secondly, even if Tacitus and other Roman historians are correct, we can easily reverse your size argument to say that the taller and supposedly sturdier Germans lost to the smaller Romans, constantly to boot.



That wouldn't work. My purpose was pointing out the Romans and their Byzantine successors frequently warred with a far more diverse nature of opponents throughout history, across a larger area in the world, and frequently won. So here let's recap:

The Romans have fought and won against:

- Germanics (even genocided several of them)
- Celtics
- Semitics
- Hunnics
- Arabs
- Turkics
- Africans
- Iranics
- Carthaginians
- etc

Can you point to where the Han have fought anywhere remotely as varied or physically impressive people?



> And I already pointed out how the Romans could lose to Parthians and Sassanids that by your own admission were not "the same size or stature as Germanics or Nordics in general".



The Romans and Byzantines frequently shit-kicked the Parthians outside of a few outlier wars. The Sassanids are a different ballgame agreed but they are far greater then the Parthians/Arsacid dynasty ever was. And by my admission, the Iranics are still taller then the Chinese.



> While sturdiness is certainly important, it seems that height did not matter on how strong, fast and physically durable your soldiers were in battle.



Yes, but given the Romans have a history of beating people who dwarf the Han Chinese and were on a similar level of technological advancement at least in terms of war capacity, I have a dim view of them losing to the Han.


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## Nevermind (Dec 1, 2016)

As far as I can recall, the Han Chinese had access to the crossbow where the Romans didn't, and I think they had superior metallurgy on the whole where the Romans still used bloomery furnaces.

That said, didn't the Chinese often greatly exaggerate the numbers they fielded?

If you're talking about a field engagement that's one thing, but of full scale invasion? That's entirely different. You'd need to examine fortifications for defense in depth, etc. The Romans had very sophisticated artillery that I can't recall hearing the Hans fielding, but I could be wrong.

And what era of the Romans are we talking about here, for instance? I'm assuming it's at their height in the second century, but the army changed quite a bit in the succeeding ones.



> This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Chinese military worked; the Chinese didn't maintain a sizable standing army in peacetime, so there was little military clout to be had.



This also matters a lot, since the Roman soldiers would obviously be much more experienced.

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Fang (Dec 1, 2016)

The OP just said at their peak. Physically Rome would've been at its largest extent under either Augustus/Tiberius, Trajan/Hadrian, or Aurelian.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Nevermind said:


> As far as I can recall, the Han Chinese had access to the crossbow where the Romans didn't, and I think they had superior metallurgy on the whole where the Romans still used bloomery furnaces.
> 
> That said, didn't the Chinese often greatly exaggerate the numbers they fielded?
> 
> ...


Yeah, I said in my opening post that this was the Romans at their height.


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## Haro (Dec 1, 2016)

Looks like we got some history buff's here

whats a good documentary series to look at to learn about the Roman empire


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

bitethedust said:


> Cao Cao's weak and you're weak for not believing in the Lu Bu


Whatever you say loser dog. And aside from being a fortunate cunt, what else did Lu Bu achieve?


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## Nevermind (Dec 1, 2016)

OK, so it would be Rome in the second century then.

You'd have lorida/chainmail/short sword and infantry being the primary arm of the Romans at that point. Maybe there were cataphracts at that point but I can't recall. Seems likely given they already encountered the Parthians centuries earlier.


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## Fang (Dec 1, 2016)

Nevermind said:


> OK, so it would be Rome in the second century then.
> 
> You'd have lorida/chainmail/short sword and infantry being the primary arm of the Romans at that point. Maybe there were cataphracts at that point but I can't recall. Seems likely given they already encountered the Parthians centuries earlier.



Cataphracts don't start really showing up in the eastern Roman militaries until the early or mid 4th century iirc.


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> Cataphracts don't start really showing up in the eastern Roman militaries until the early or mid 4th century iirc.


Not even as Mercenaries? Because the Romans, like most of their neighbors and former enemies were rather liberal when it came to hiring Mercs.


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## bitethedust (Dec 1, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> Whatever you say loser dog. And aside from being a fortunate cunt, what else did Lu Bu achieve?



He has a fictional cute waifu. Lu Bu 1 - Cao Cao 0


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

bitethedust said:


> He has a fictional cute waifu. Lu Bu 1 - Cao Cao 0


And thus you show your degeneracy. Now GTFO, for real men are talking about real things.

Reactions: Friendly 2


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## Fang (Dec 1, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> Not even as Mercenaries? Because the Romans, like most of their neighbors and former enemies were rather liberal when it came to hiring Mercs.



They did hire and use mercenaries and auxiliaries from people they conquered. Particularly horsemen from Northern Africa and Western Europe but the Germanic and Celtic cavalry they used tended to fold up and get routed easily by Parthian and Persian horsemen. Its not until the ERE and WRE were divided and seperated and starting around the 400s that the Byzantines started to seriously mimic medium and heavy Sassanid cavalrymen into their own armies.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> No, but I said that Roman sources are more impartial then Chinese sources specifically when it comes to dealing with foreigners and non-Romans.



Ok, what makes the Chinese more biased in their description of foreigners than the Romans?



Fang said:


> It took the Germanics nearly 600 years to topple the Western Roman Empire and it still had more to do with internal affairs dealing with incompetence of emperors and the reliance of foreign soldiers and mercenaries in the Western Roman Empire's armies then actual decisive weakness. Honorius was still sending his own armies after usurpers and rivals in WRE lands while Germanic troops were running wild inside of their borders.
> 
> The Romans were more successful battling and conquering their rivals then the Han ever were, hell early wars between the Romans and Proto Germanics had the former annihilate and even entire tribe Germanic tribes like the Teutonics completely off the map at the end of the day.



By the same token, none of the foreigners that had different culture and language that the Chinese faced such as the Saka, the Rong, the Di, the Ma, the Xianyun, conquered China. It wasn't until the Song dynasty that we see foreigners take the imperial throne. And it's incredibly subjective to say Chinese conquests were easier when defeating the multiple states of China such as Lu, Qin, etc., is no different than defeating Greeks, Celts, etc. 







Fang said:


> Hadrian's goal was resettling the size of the Roman Empire to a more tolerable limit then continuing the blind expansionist push that Trajan was using. There is a reason why the Roman Empire never attempted an offensive campaign at conquest following Trajan's disastrous Parthian War. And the Wall was built because the Roman Legions could not navigate or successfully push into Scotland, not Ireland.
> 
> Ireland has some rudimentary small scale military forts but it was never intended as a military conquest. In fact it seems like coastal Ireland was a commercial partner to the Roman economy.
> 
> ...




No, the Romans were not "shitkicking" the Germans during their decline. It's the reason why the Ostrogoths sacked Ephesus and destroyed the Temple of Artemis there, why the Vandals kicked them out of Hispania to never be recovered fully (heck, all Justinian could do was recover a small coastal portion), why Rome was sacked at the time of St. Augustine, and why the Romans had to ally themselves with the Germans against Attila, who by the way was easily smacking them around prior to said alliance. 




Fang said:


> They were smaller then Germanics yet still taller and more robust in stature then any person of Mongoloid descent.
> 
> The Parthians usually lost most of their wars against the Romans. In fact they were on the losing end of things more often then not unlike the Sassanids. There are very few wars where the Parthians either instigated or either won or were winning at any rate.
> 
> ...



The point is not whether the Jews won any war against Rome, is that they were able to win battles and destroy entire legions. And the issue with height is that it. So it is completely fallacious to be basing sizes in antiquity with sizes today. Heck, even if we base sizes on , we see that the Arabs and Iranians are about as tall if not smaller than the Chinese and Japanese. Fact is, people with the same size as East Asians could defeat the Romans. And again, I already pointed out how the smaller Romans defeated taller Germans. Height is irrelevant in military terms. What matters is things like strength, and I've shown how that doesn't depend on height. 

And where do you get that Rome won most of its battles and wars against Parthia? If that was the case, then Rome would have conquered Parthia's territories like Alexander the Great did. In fact, show me where it says that Parthia lost most of its battles and wars against Rome when both were at a stalemate with each other.







Fang said:


> That wouldn't work. My purpose was pointing out the Romans and their Byzantine successors frequently warred with a far more diverse nature of opponents throughout history, across a larger area in the world, and frequently won. So here let's recap:
> 
> The Romans have fought and won against:
> 
> ...



Cultures and nationalities are irrelevant, the only thing relevant is military technology and none of the peoples you mentioned had higher technology than the Chinese. Defeating Parthians, Punics and Greeks is no different than defeating the different states of Lu, Qin, etc., or the many rival claimants to the imperial throne that could amass armies as powerful in terms of numbers and technology as those of Carthage and Parthia.

And I already explained the size thing as being irrelevant in the end, though there's also another thing that must be pointed out and that's how you do not provide any evidence that ancient peoples of East Asia are smaller than the ancient peoples the Romans faced. Is there any kind of book, study, etc., about ancient heights that confirms that ancient East Asians were on average smaller than ancient Europeans, Northern Africans and Middle Easterners?


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> They did hire and use mercenaries and auxiliaries from people they conquered. Particularly horsemen from Northern Africa and Western Europe but the Germanic and Celtic cavalry they used tended to fold up and get routed easily by Parthian and Persian horsemen. Its not until the ERE and WRE were divided and seperated and starting around the 400s that the Byzantines started to seriously mimic medium and heavy Sassanid cavalrymen into their own armies.


Really? I thought they also hired the commoners and nobles of Central European steppe tribes like the Bastarnae and the Sarmatians. Unless that's a thing that only happens in video games.


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> Cultures and nationalities are irrelevant, the only thing relevant is military technology and none of the peoples you mentioned had higher technology than the Chinese. Defeating Parthians, Punics and Greeks is no different than defeating the different states of Lu, Qin, etc., or the many rival claimants to the imperial throne that could amass armies as powerful in terms of numbers and technology as those of Carthage and Parthia.
> 
> And I already explained the size thing as being irrelevant in the end, though there's also another thing that must be pointed out and that's how you do not provide any evidence that ancient peoples of East Asia are smaller than the ancient peoples the Romans faced. Is there any kind of book, study, etc., about ancient heights that confirms that ancient East Asians were on average smaller than ancient Europeans, Northern Africans and Middle Easterners?


Are you shitting me man? The Punics, Greeks and Parthians were entirely different beasts altogether compared to what the Han fought.

The Carthaginians were masters of naval war and constantly beat the Romans on the seas despite being somewhat inferior on the battlefield due to their over-reliance on Mercenaries and a small number of Citizen-soldiers from the generally disinterested populace. That is up until the Romans were able to get their hands on an entirely intact Punic warship in a manner that almost seemed like Divine intervention, a warship that they were able to reverse-engineer and eventually use to break Carthaginian naval supremacy.

Did the Chinese ever fight and defeat a foe with far superior naval power? No, they fought a largely equal foe in the form on their fellow Chinese.

The Greeks/Hellenes were masters of the Macedonian Phalanx and also utilized the infamous Alexandrian-style cavalry along with auxiliaries from the east and the terrifying War Elephants. They fought in an entirely different manner to the Roman legion and even after Pyrrhus' retreat from the Italian peninsula, the Phalanx was still considered to be unbeatable in its element and can only be realistically fought head-on by another Phalanx. It was only until the Macedonian wars that the Phalanx began to lose against the Roman Legion due to the stagnation of Phalanx tactics and the gradual loss of importance of the various units supporting it. And even then, just scarcely a decade or so after the conclusion of the Macedonian Wars; the Romans broke the back of the Seleucid empire in their first foray into Asia against a properly supported Phalanx with such monsters as War Elephants and Cataphracts beside it.

Did the Chinese ever fight against a foe with a completely different fighting style with such history and infamy behind it, even after its glory days? No. They once again fought against enemies not too dissimilar to them.

And lastly the Parthians... Little else needs to be said to the ones who stole the East from the Seleucids as they have the facilities and industry needed to support  the numbers of professional medium and heavy cavalry they possessed along with their auxiliary infantrymen from the Greek Poleis, Median Mountains and the Valleys of Armenia. Things that the various raiders from China's northern borders were sorely lacking.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> Are you shitting me man? The Punics, Greeks and Parthians were entirely different beasts altogether compared to what the Han fought.
> 
> The Carthaginians were masters of naval war and constantly beat the Romans on the seas despite being somewhat inferior on the battlefield due to their over-reliance on Mercenaries and a small number of Citizen-soldiers from the generally disinterested populace. That is up until the Romans were able to get their hands on an entirely intact Punic warship in a manner that almost seemed like Divine intervention, a warship that they were able to reverse-engineer and eventually use to break Carthaginian naval supremacy.
> 
> ...



The only thing different or superior is the Carthaginian navy. That's it. In anything else facing a Greek, Parthian or Carthaginian army is no different than facing an army from the state of Ji, Wei, etc. Their military technology were the same.


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> The only thing different or superior is the Carthaginian navy. That's it. In anything else facing a Greek, Parthian or Carthaginian army is no different than facing an army from the state of Ji, Wei, etc. Their military technology were the same.


 
Again, the Hellenes and Parthians fought in an entirely different manner to the Romans. And the Romans beat them.

While the Chinese fought foes who are not all that different in terms of tech level and fighting style or were inferior in most respects.

Now who is much more impressive?

Reactions: Disagree 1


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## Fang (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> Ok, what makes the Chinese more biased in their description of foreigners than the Romans?



What doesn't? Tacitus was also relevant because of his insights and writings are written in a contemporary period of the Roman invasion and conquest of the Celtic peoples in the British Isles and has a personal connection with several of the officers leading the subjection of the British peoples.

Its first-hand knowledge which is the best in terms of primary resources for historical knowledge.



> By the same token, none of the foreigners that had different culture and language that the Chinese faced such as the Saka, the Rong, the Di, the Ma, the Xianyun, conquered China.



What does China have to do with the Han dynasty specifically?



> It wasn't until the Song dynasty that we see foreigners take the imperial throne. And it's incredibly subjective to say Chinese conquests were easier when defeating the multiple states of China such as Lu, Qin, etc., is no different than defeating Greeks, Celts, etc.



Nonsense. The Romans were able to militarily project their power from across Europe, North Africa, the Near East, and into even parts of Western Asia. So far, we know the Romans can access and war logistically across a greater range then the Han can, and fought multiple regional superpowers and won; Carthage Empire, Macedonian Empire, Seleucid Empire, Epirus, and so on. Considerably more impressive.



> No, the Romans were not "shitkicking" the Germans during their decline.



There are no "Germans" in Antiquity. The Germanics were not able to make any significant inroads into Western Roman Empire lands until incompetent or corrupt Western Roman Emperors like Honorius or Jovinus allowed them to settle and then started a purge of mixed and/or Germanic integrated officers like Strabo.



> It's the reason why the Ostrogoths sacked Ephesus and destroyed the Temple of Artemis there, why the Vandals kicked them out of Hispania to never be recovered fully (heck, all Justinian could do was recover a small coastal portion), why Rome was sacked at the time of St. Augustine, and why the Romans had to ally themselves with the Germans against Attila, who by the way was easily smacking them around prior to said alliance.



Which still does not remotely refute the fact that said Vandals, Goths, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths were running terrified into the "declining" Western Roman Empire's territory from the Huns and that the Western Roman Empire defeated him at Catalaunian Plans because of the Romans tactics and later again forced him back Eastwards?

Does not look too good for those Germanics.



> The point is not whether the Jews won any war against Rome,



Irrelevant. The point is the Jews were only able to defeat a few legions thanks to treachery, surprise, and laxity of the Roman garrisons in Judea and Palestine. They did not win a single war and were outright obliterated by the Romans once they were prepared for them. Which is very relevant.



> is that they were able to win battles and destroy entire legions.



So what? Boudica destroyed an entire Roman legion but again that's owed to the fact she drew out several Roman forces when harassing Roman colonias in Britain and then afterwards from said military disaster got utterly annihilated at the Battle of Watling when she faced actual resistance. It means nothing, just like with the Celtics, the Jewish revolt was permanently ended and suppressed for good once the Romans were aware of what was going on. 



> And the issue with height is that it. So it is completely fallacious to be basing sizes in antiquity with sizes today. Heck, even if we base sizes on , we see that the Arabs and Iranians are about as tall if not smaller than the Chinese and Japanese. Fact is, people with the same size as East Asians could defeat the Romans. And again, I already pointed out how the smaller Romans defeated taller Germans. Height is irrelevant in military terms. What matters is things like strength, and I've shown how that doesn't depend on height.



1. Your links don't work
2. No, they don't because modern day Iranian males are on average 5'8 and the modern day Chinese males are 5'6. So no, I highly doubt between Neolithic to Iron Age periods Iranians would be shorter then the Chinese in either ancient times or modern times
3. No one the size of East Asians ever defeated the Romans because height and stature is greater in Cacuasians then Mongoloid people
4. The purpose of bringing up the Romans defeating taller Germanics and Celtics is because it showcases their physical superiority to the Han Chinese



> And where do you get that Rome won most of its battles and wars against Parthia? If that was the case, then Rome would have conquered Parthia's territories like Alexander the Great did. In fact, show me where it says that Parthia lost most of its battles and wars against Rome when both were at a stalemate with each other.



You are grasping incredibly at straws here. Defeat does not always equate to successful conquest. The Parthians instigated all of two wars with the Romans and the second one of which was accidental. The Arsacid dynasty frequently lost the VAST majority of wars against the Roman Empire. Crassus invasion was defeated by Surena but that was never an invasion that was officially endorsed or sponsored by Caesar or Pompey, the other members of the First Triumvirate nor ratified by the Roman Senate. The first actual and only real antagonistic war started by the Parthian Empire was shortly following the actions of Marc Antony leading to a failed invasion of the Parthian Empire which lead to a counter-invasion of the Roman East by Parthia that lasted 13 years before it ended in a stalemate. Every other war saw the loss of territory, prestige, manpower, and a subordinate position of power ending with Romans superior to the Parthians.

Even Trajan's successful invasion was a disaster because he over-stretched the Roman Empire's limits, drastically removed vital legions in western and northern territories from Rome's European holdings to draw more manpower up to hold annexed Parthian lands and ultimately was pointless because Parthian counter-attacks, ambush style warfare, and the Romans inability to get into the Iranian plateau meant any success was temporary at best. Add the fact that Hadrian wisely gave up all lands taken by Trajan to restore the pre-war borders while the returning Roman soldiers brought a massive plague back into the Roman Levant doesn't help them even when they were largely winning the war.



> Cultures and nationalities are irrelevant



Bullshit. They are very relevant. The Germanics, Celtics, Iranics, Turkics, Arabs, Semites, and so on fought wars differently according to different rules and beliefs, they are incredibly relevant and important.



> the only thing relevant is military technology and none of the peoples you mentioned had higher technology than the Chinese.



You have literally no idea what you are talking about. Celtics, Germanics, and Iranics all had access to heavy chainmail armor, large two-handed swords that could nearly cleave a man in half, halberds, saddles and stirrups, heavy spears, and either a one-handed or two-handed axe as a sidearm, and so on. Also double checked and the Romans had both large and small personal crossbows as well as their better known artillery weapons.  What gave the Romans the edge was acquiring chainmail technology from the Celtics early on and equipping that to overcome bronze armor used by their contemporaries who didn't have same technology.



> Defeating Parthians, Punics and Greeks is no different than defeating the different states of Lu, Qin, etc., or the many rival claimants to the imperial throne that could amass armies as powerful in terms of numbers and technology as those of Carthage and Parthia.



Nonsensical attempt at false equivalence. The Parthians were never permanently defeated or extinguished by the Romans, the Parthians wealth and commerce as well as military presence is also likely vastly greater then any individual sub-state of Chinese kingdoms.



> And I already explained the size thing as being irrelevant in the end, though there's also another thing that must be pointed out and that's how you do not provide any evidence that ancient peoples of East Asia are smaller than the ancient peoples the Romans faced. Is there any kind of book, study, etc., about ancient heights that confirms that ancient East Asians were on average smaller than ancient Europeans, Northern Africans and Middle Easterners?



Why don't you google anthropological data on ancient peoples? There is a reason why East Asians are vastly shorter then people in Western Asia, Africa, and Europe today as they are then in the past.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> Again, the Hellenes and Parthians fought in an entirely different manner to the Romans. And the Romans beat them.
> 
> While the Chinese fought foes who are not all that different in terms of tech level and fighting style or were inferior in most respects.
> 
> Now who is much more impressive?


No, they weren't that different. The Romans, Chinese, Parthians, Greeks and Carthaginians all fought using infantry, cavalry, archery and steel weapons. People like to overrate battle formations to hell, but it's not as if the many states of China did not develop their own unique battle formations anyway. Also, the Romans defeated the Greeks far more because the latter were politically and economically weak than because of any kind of Roman superior strategy.

Reactions: Agree 1 | Disagree 1


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## Fang (Dec 1, 2016)

"Inferior to anyone the Han fought technologically"

Reactions: Like 1


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> No, they weren't that different. The Romans, Chinese, Parthians, Greeks and Carthaginians all fought using infantry, cavalry, archery and steel weapons. People like to overrate battle formations to hell, but it's not as if the many states of China did not develop their own unique battle formations anyway. Also, the Romans defeated the Greeks far more because the latter were politically and economically weak than because of any kind of Roman superior strategy.


Pha. L. Anx. Tac. Tics. Invincible from the front, even after the stagnation of its supporting parts. Yet the Romans demolished it despite somewhat lesser numbers on Cynoscephalae, Pydna, and Magnesia. And you know why? Because of... *SUPERIOR BATTLE TACTICS AND FLEXIBILITY*.

You clearly do not understand what you're talking about and until you make a proper argument, my final say is that the Romans will win against the Chinese.

Reactions: Like 1 | Disagree 1


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## Crimson King (Dec 1, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> Whatever you say loser dog. And aside from being a fortunate cunt, what else did Lu Bu achieve?


He became known for someone you do not ever pursue.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> What does China have to do with the Han dynasty specifically?



Okay, let's rephrase that. No foreigner was able to conquer the Han dynasty, it fell under internal Han Chinese threats. The Romans, on the other hand, fell to foreign Germans.  



Fang said:


> Nonsense. The Romans were able to militarily project their power from across Europe, North Africa, the Near East, and into even parts of Western Asia. So far, we know the Romans can access and war logistically across a greater range then the Han can, and fought multiple regional superpowers and won; Carthage Empire, Macedonian Empire, Seleucid Empire, Epirus, and so on. Considerably more impressive.



And the Han projected their power across a similar massive geographical size. The Han dynasty also conquered the massive Qin dynasty, which itself conquered Chinese states such as Lu and Wei that were comparable to the Hellenistic kingdoms. The only reason why we don't think that's impressive is because of the stereotype of Chinese sameness and of China as a single nation when in reality its size is comparable to the whole of Europe and the warring states of the Zhou period, as well as the Qin dynasty that conquered them, were comparable to the powerful Roman Republic, Carthage, the Seleucids and the Ptolemies. 




Fang said:


> 1. Your links don't work
> 2. No, they don't because modern day Iranian males are on average 5'8 and the modern day Chinese males are 5'6. So no, I highly doubt between Neolithic to Iron Age periods Iranians would be shorter then the Chinese in either ancient times or modern times
> 3. No one the size of East Asians ever defeated the Romans because height and stature is greater in Cacuasians then Mongoloid people
> 4. The purpose of bringing up the Romans defeating taller Germanics and Celtics is because it showcases their physical superiority to the Han Chinese



The first link was to a book on Google Books called The Masculine Century, p. 168 which mentions how height has differed from century to century, sometimes increasing and other times decreasing, with Europeans having an average height of 1.73 in Late Antiquity and declining to 1.67 in the early Middle Ages. The second link is to a page called disabled-world.com with a chart of the average height of each country. It mentions how the average height of China is 1.72, while that of Iran is 1.73, that of Saudi Arabia 1.69 and Egypt 1.70. Heck, it says that the average height in Beijing is 1.74. It also mentions how the average height in Japan is 1.72. In other words, Arabs are smaller and Iranians are only 1 cm taller than Chinese and Japanese. So at least Middle Easterners and Northern Africans are about the same as East Asians. 

And aside from the fact that there's absolutely no reason to believe that ancient Han Chinese are physically inferior to Europeans, you yourself said this:

"Which still does not remotely refute the fact that said Vandals, Goths, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths were running terrified into the "declining" Western Roman Empire's territory from the Huns and that the Western Roman Empire defeated him at Catalaunian Plans because of the Romans tactics and later again forced him back Eastwards?

Does not look too good for those Germanics."

The same Huns that were East Asians. In other words, even if we believe that East Asians were smaller, that still shows they were just as capable of defeating taller opponents, and that height does not equate to physical superiority. And by the way, the Huns were defeating the Romans and the same Germans that were also defeating said Romans and conquered the Western half, some parts like Hispania and Britain permanently, which goes to show even further how you overestimate European and Roman physicality. 





Fang said:


> You are grasping incredibly at straws here. Defeat does not always equate to successful conquest. The Parthians instigated all of two wars with the Romans and the second one of which was accidental. The Arsacid dynasty frequently lost the VAST majority of wars against the Roman Empire. Crassus invasion was defeated by Surena but that was never an invasion that was officially endorsed or sponsored by Caesar or Pompey, the other members of the First Triumvirate nor ratified by the Roman Senate. The first actual and only real antagonistic war started by the Parthian Empire was shortly following the actions of Marc Antony leading to a failed invasion of the Parthian Empire which lead to a counter-invasion of the Roman East by Parthia that lasted 13 years before it ended in a stalemate. Every other war saw the loss of territory, prestige, manpower, and a subordinate position of power ending with Romans superior to the Parthians.
> 
> Even Trajan's successful invasion was a disaster because he over-stretched the Roman Empire's limits, drastically removed vital legions in western and northern territories from Rome's European holdings to draw more manpower up to hold annexed Parthian lands and ultimately was pointless because Parthian counter-attacks, ambush style warfare, and the Romans inability to get into the Iranian plateau meant any success was temporary at best. Add the fact that Hadrian wisely gave up all lands taken by Trajan to restore the pre-war borders while the returning Roman soldiers brought a massive plague back into the Roman Levant doesn't help them even when they were largely winning the war.



First of, the examples you put such as Crassus and Trajan's disastrous invasions and the 13 years war just goes on to support my argument that the Parthians did not lose the majority of their wars and battles. And you still haven't shown where, such as books, studies, etc. it says the Arsacids lost most of the time to the Romans. 




Fang said:


> Bullshit. They are very relevant. The Germanics, Celtics, Iranics, Turkics, Arabs, Semites, and so on fought wars differently according to different rules and beliefs, they are incredibly relevant and important.
> 
> You have literally no idea what you are talking about. Celtics, Germanics, and Iranics all had access to heavy chainmail armor, large two-handed swords that could nearly cleave a man in half, halberds, saddles and stirrups, heavy spears, and either a one-handed or two-handed axe as a sidearm, and so on. Also double checked and the Romans had both large and small personal crossbows as well as their better known artillery weapons.  What gave the Romans the edge was acquiring chainmail technology from the Celtics early on and equipping that to overcome bronze armor used by their contemporaries who didn't have same technology.
> 
> Nonsensical attempt at false equivalence. The Parthians were never permanently defeated or extinguished by the Romans, the Parthians wealth and commerce as well as military presence is also likely vastly greater then any individual sub-state of Chinese kingdoms.



And the different states of China had access to similar weapons and armours as well and developed their own different strategies, battle formations, etc. So did the many foreigners like the Saka, the Rong, etc. It's why books like The Art of War or the were written. Also, if the Romans were unable to permanently defeat the Parthians, while the Han dynasty was able to completely conquer and vanquish the comparatively big empire of the Qin dynasty is an argument against Rome, not in favour of it. 



Fang said:


> Why don't you google anthropological data on ancient peoples? There is a reason why East Asians are vastly shorter then people in Western Asia, Africa, and Europe today as they are then in the past.


And again, no they're not vastly shorter than people in Western Asia as I proved above. Only Europeans are vastly bigger, and they are vastly bigger than anybody else on the planet, not just East Asians. Heck, Europeans are bigger than even people of European descent from North America by up to 10 cms, the latter of whom are just three cms. taller than the Chinese and Japanese. 

As for the average height of Romans, Geoffrey Kron's study "Anthropometry, Physical Anthropology, and the Reconstruction of Ancient Health, Nutrition and Living Standards" shows that the average height of Hellenistic Greeks was 1.71 and that of Italians 1.68 (p. 72; you can find this study on Jstor). That's not that different from the average height of the Han dynasty at 1.69, with tall men like Xiang Yu measuring up to 1.90, according to  ().


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## dr_shadow (Dec 1, 2016)

Chinese military history isn't really my field, but glad I found this thread.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> Pha. L. Anx. Tac. Tics. Invincible from the front, even after the stagnation of its supporting parts. Yet the Romans demolished it despite somewhat lesser numbers on Cynoscephalae, Pydna, and Magnesia. And you know why? Because of... *SUPERIOR BATTLE TACTICS AND FLEXIBILITY*.
> 
> You clearly do not understand what you're talking about and until you make a proper argument, my final say is that the Romans will win against the Chinese.



And it's not as if the Chinese didn't have battle formations equally as effective as the phalanx that were also bested. And no, the Romans did not possess superior battle tactics to any of the rival empires and states they faced. Even their victory against Carthage owes more to the fact that they allied themselves with the Hellenistic kingdoms, which were culturally and geographically closer to Rome than Carthage, of the Mediterranean than because the Romans were superior strategists to the Carthaginians.


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> And it's not as if the Chinese didn't have battle formations equally as effective as the phalanx that were also bested. And no, the Romans did not possess superior battle tactics to any of the rival empires and states they faced. Even their victory against Carthage owes more to the fact that they allied themselves with the Hellenistic kingdoms, which were culturally and geographically closer to Rome than Carthage, of the Mediterranean than because the Romans were superior strategists to the Carthaginians.


The only ally was Syracuse you ignoramus. And the Chinese never had formations and pikes as effective and as long as the Hellenes did. They instead used spears and halberds, which were considerably shorter than the Sarissa and were wielded without shields. Which reduces their ability to defend in melee as their only protection is Leather Lamellar, which is roughly equivalent to the Hellenic Linothorax which was the standard-issue armor of the Diadochi Kingdoms.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> Okay, let's rephrase that. No foreigner was able to conquer the Han dynasty, it fell under internal Han Chinese threats. The Romans, on the other hand, fell to foreign Germans.


You're really proving your ignorance and willful blindness aren't you? The Germans merely knocked down a rotten, crumbling ruin of what the Roman Empire degenerated into because of the decadence and incompetence of the ruling classes. It was bound to collapse anyway.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> And the different states of China had access to similar weapons and armours as well and developed their own different strategies, battle formations, etc. So did the many foreigners like the Saka, the Rong, etc. It's why books like The Art of War or the were written. Also, if the Romans were unable to permanently defeat the Parthians, while the Han dynasty was able to completely conquer and vanquish the comparatively big empire of the Qin dynasty is an argument against Rome, not in favour of it.


You are a charlatan and a fool. The Romans could never Conquer Parthia because their territories were too vast and too far away to properly consolidate, not to mention the massive amounts of cavalry levies the Arsacids could field to constantly harass Roman frontier Garrisons. The Qin chinese on the other hand are... Wait for it...* FUCKING NEIGHBORS. NO SEA, NO DESERTS AND NO VAST MOUNTAIN RANGES TO STAND BETWEEN THEM AND QIN LANDS. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT DISTANCE AND GEOGRAPHY MEANS TO AN EMPIRE OR ARE YOU TOO BUSY MENTALLY FELLATING THE GREAT CHINESE COCK?
*
Also, which side has Chainmail and swords, which were in very high demand in Han China and are too valuable to give off to footsoldiers; reserved only for Nobles and their Bodyguards as standard-issue equipment? Hint: It's not the Han.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Fang (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> Okay, let's rephrase that. No foreigner was able to conquer the Han dynasty, it fell under internal Han Chinese threats. The Romans, on the other hand, fell to foreign Germans.



Irrelevant. The Romans and their Byzantine successors frequently blunted and defeated the Germanics for centuries (nigh on 600+ years which is longer then the entirety of the Han's dynasty's duration for that matter) before succumbing and that was again mainly due to weaknesses inherent in Western Roman Emperors where corruption, hedonism, and incompetence lead to purges of Germanic conscripted Roman soldiers.



> And the Han projected their power across a similar massive geographical size.



Similar is not the SAME. Projecting one's power across almost all of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa in disaparate parts of the world that are not always linked or held together in the same geographic areas > one contained contagious area. Roman reach, logistics, and projection is superior to the Han's.



> The Han dynasty also conquered the massive Qin dynasty, which itself conquered Chinese states such as Lu and Wei that were comparable to the Hellenistic kingdoms.



"Qin dynasty duration: 221 BC to 206 BC"

lol

Am I supposed to be impressed by the fact the Han felled a rival empire that couldn't even last two decades because of how incompetent their rulers were they couldn't even follow through with a proper successor to the founder?



> The only reason why we don't think that's impressive is because of the stereotype of Chinese sameness and of China as a single nation when in reality its size is comparable to the whole of Europe and the warring states of the Zhou period, as well as the Qin dynasty that conquered them, were comparable to the powerful Roman Republic, Carthage, the Seleucids and the Ptolemies.



No, its because large swathes of what the Chinese ruled with their various dynasties are massively inflated by the size of the Gobi desert in the northwest, and the fact that the relevance of those states have very little to do with global or international history.  Size isn't even everything when one lacks duration to survive for centuries.



> The first link was to a book on Google Books called The Masculine Century, p. 168 which mentions how height has differed from century to century, sometimes increasing and other times decreasing, with Europeans having an average height of 1.73 in Late Antiquity and declining to 1.67 in the early Middle Ages. The second link is to a page called disabled-world.com with a chart of the average height of each country. It mentions how the average height of China is 1.72, while that of Iran is 1.73, that of Saudi Arabia 1.69 and Egypt 1.70. Heck, it says that the average height in Beijing is 1.74. It also mentions how the average height in Japan is 1.72. In other words, Arabs are smaller and Iranians are only 1 cm taller than Chinese and Japanese. So at least Middle Easterners and Northern Africans are about the same as East Asians.



Not really, no.

I don't care for sources like that. Also still waiting for proof or evidence of the Han being on par with 5'7 to 5'8 Romans and Iranics in Antiquity.

Only decline in height happened after the end of Antiquity/Late Classical period in Europe so I'm not buying that.



> And aside from the fact that there's absolutely no reason to believe that ancient Han Chinese are physically inferior to Europeans, you yourself said this:



I said that the Romans are physically superior to the Chinese because they constantly bested people who would are vastly more robust, physically larger, and of greater stature then the Han Chinese.



> "Which still does not remotely refute the fact that said Vandals, Goths, Ostrogoths, and Visigoths were running terrified into the "declining" Western Roman Empire's territory from the Huns and that the Western Roman Empire defeated him at Catalaunian Plans because of the Romans tactics and later again forced him back Eastwards?
> 
> Does not look too good for those Germanics."



Yes I indeed said that but you are omitting something very important here:



> The same Huns that were East Asians. In other words, even if we believe that East Asians were smaller, that still shows they were just as capable of defeating taller opponents, and that height does not equate to physical superiority. And by the way, the Huns were defeating the Romans and the same Germans that were also defeating said Romans and conquered the Western half, some parts like Hispania and Britain permanently, which goes to show even further how you overestimate European and Roman physicality.



Do you know the most common language in the Hunnic Empire and what its lingua franca was? It was Gothic.

A) The Hunnic Empire founded by Attila and his brother was largely a confederation of united tribes not just of Hunnic peoples but largely outnumbered in terms of manpower by Sarmatians, Germanics (Vandals, Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Alemanni, etc...), and even some other Iranic tribes into a singular "horde"
B) The Hunnic Empire was defeated by the Sassanids twice in the Caucasus and Near East and deflected toward the Eastern Roman Empire's lands
C) The Hunnics could not siege the major fortified towns and cities of the Eastern Roman Empire and migrated further westwards through the Balkans and Southern and Eastern Europe
D) This displaced hundreds of thousands of non-aligned Germanics and Iranic Saramatians into Western Roman Empire lands
E) The Huns as I'm getting to largely were reliant on their numbers being massively expanded by the Germanics, the Germanics were not fighting the Western Romans at that point and ultimately it was because of the Western Roman Empire that the Hunnic Empire which the Germanics could not defeat was blunted out of Western Europe and then broken out of Europe entirely by the Western Roman Empire's revived military under Aetius



> First of, the examples you put such as Crassus and Trajan's disastrous invasions and the 13 years war just goes on to support my argument that the Parthians did not lose the majority of their wars and battles. And you still haven't shown where, such as books, studies, etc. it says the Arsacids lost most of the time to the Romans.



I don't need to fucking show any books. The Parthians under the Arsacid dynasty continually lost territory to the Roman Empire from before the Trimuvrate all the way to Caracalla. How do you think the Roman Empire was continually expanding through the Levant and Near East and encroaching steadily on the Iranian hold on Mesopotamia? There is a reason why the Parthians are usually on the defensive side of wars with Rome and typically lose them.

So here's to recap why you are being completely dishonest on this sub-topic:

First war: 54 BC sees a  Roman invasion by Crassus against the Parthian Empire that ends in disaster in 53 BC with the loss of 30,000 to 34,000 men against Surena's Parthian army (Roman instigation/aggressor)

Second war: During the civil war of the first Triumvirate between Pompey and Ceasar, the Parthians conqueror Syria, Judea and some other Roman holdings in the Near East in 44 BC. In 43 BC sees Marc Antony start another Roman invasion against the Parthian Empire to avenge Crassus' defeat, conqueror the Parthian Empire and retrieve the lost standards from a decade earlier. According to Roman sources and Jewish and Greek ones as well, the Roman expedition had a fighting strength over "100,000" legionaries. Antony fucks up and alienates several of his local allies and the Parthians stage frequent ambushes that kill over 10,000 men. Another 10,000 are captured, mainly Germanic allies and foedarti while Antony loses 1/4th of his remaining force due to the harsh climate and weather conditions in the Iranian mountains. Antony's subordinate is successful in restoring the pre-war boundaries but otherwise another failed Roman offensive which leads the situation back to its previous war level. (Roman instigation/aggression)

Third war: 58 AD sees Parthian Empire engaged in a war with Rome over mutual interest and competing purposes over Armenia. After a five year war ending in 63 AD, the Parthians secede a branch of their ruling dynasty as subordinate rulers to the Roman Empire and withhold from intervening with Roman interests in Armenia which acts as a buffer state. Armenia also gains some land from the Parthian Empire's Caucasian holdings. (Parthian instigation/aggression)

Fourth war: 115 AD Trajan sets out to emulate Alexander the Great's defeat and conquest of the Achaemenid Persian Empire by invading and attacking the Parthian Empire which is in the midst of an internal civil war over the throne. For largely two years, the Romans push the Parthian and Persians back although are never able to make headway into the Iranian plateau or heartlands, they do sack and capture Ctesiphon, take Selecuia, and several major territories for a short time in Babylonia and other parts of Parthian Mesopotamia. Only after disease starts rampaging in the Roman ranks across the Persian Gulf coast and Trajan falling ill does the war end without the vaniquishment of the Parthian Empire's entire Mesopotamia holdings in 117 AD, which sees Hadrian, Trajan's successor, restore the prewar boundaries as they overtaxed the swollen Roman Empire and the figurehead placed on the Arsacid throne is assassinated. (Roman instigation/aggressor)

Fifth war: 161 AD, Roman Emperors Verus and Marcus Aurelius started the war against the Parthian Empire due to their predecessor's belief that the Parthian Emperor had "wronged him" and Parthians were again interfering with Roman rule and control in Armenia. The war started as a stalemate before the Romans took the offense, completely reconquered Armenia and most of the upper Caucasus areas and forced the Parthians to secede parts of Mesopotamia back to them by 165 AD. (Roman instigation/aggressor)

Sixth war: 198 AD Emperor Severus invades Parthian Empire's capital lands and sacks Ctesiphon, details are unknown but the Romans then took a year or two invading and raiding various Parthian holdings in Mesopotamia. (Roman instigation/aggressor)

Seventh war: 216 AD with dreams of glory, Roman Emperor Caracalla invades the Parthian Empire for the final time and ignores all diplomatic pretext to accuse his Parthian counterpart of causing the war while the Parthians are undergoing another dynastic civil war for the throne between the two oldest sons of the last reigning Parthian ruler. The Roman army ransacks various townships and cities in Parthian Mesopotamia before Caracalla is assassinated while taking a piss on the side of the road a year later in 217 AD. (Roman instigation/aggressor)

Do you see the pattern here?

Parthia got its shit kicked 3/4ths of the time by the Roman Empire.



> And the different states of China had access to similar weapons and armours as well and developed their own different strategies, battle formations, etc. So did the many foreigners like the Saka, the Rong, etc. It's why books like The Art of War or the were written. Also, if the Romans were unable to permanently defeat the Parthians, while the Han dynasty was able to completely conquer and vanquish the comparatively big empire of the Qin dynasty is an argument against Rome, not in favour of it.



I'm not seeing anything that compares to heavy chainmail, overlapping iron armor, or laminated steel here for equipment or armor. Also the Parthians were saved for the same reason, distance made it impossible for them to be conquered. Also LOL at thinking the Chinese had more wars or experience fighting Iranic horsemen then the Romans did. The Saka were merely a single small branch of one of the hundreds of various Scythian tribes.



> And again, no they're not vastly shorter than people in Western Asia as I proved above. Only Europeans are vastly bigger, and they are vastly bigger than anybody else on the planet, not just East Asians. Heck, Europeans are bigger than even people of European descent from North America by up to 10 cms, the latter of whom are just three cms. taller than the Chinese and Japanese.



First off, no. Secondly, Northern Europeans are the tallest people but two centuries ago the average White American was taller then average White European save Germanics and other Nordics acting as the isolated outliers. In the late 1800s, the average British man was 5'6 and the average American was 5'10. It was also noted American Revolutionary soldiers loomed over British Royal Marines by 4 or more inches in the Revoutionary War period.

It remains a fact that regarding this, that Caucasians are physically more robust and larger then Mongoloids. You put the average Persian, German, or Dutch, or Englishmen next to the average Mongolian, Han Chinese, Korean, or Japanese male and it won't be simply a difference of height but also physical body mass.



> As for the average height of Romans, Geoffrey Kron's study "Anthropometry, Physical Anthropology, and the Reconstruction of Ancient Health, Nutrition and Living Standards" shows that the average height of Hellenistic Greeks was 1.71 and that of Italians 1.68 (p. 72; you can find this study on Jstor). That's not that different from the average height of the Han dynasty at 1.69, with tall men like Xiang Yu measuring up to 1.90, according to  ().


[/quote]

I'm familiar with Kron's work.

Average height for a Roman soldier was a compulsory 6 Roman feet which translates to 5'7 to 5'8 or 177 cm. There are even skeletons of taller Roman soldiers being in excess of 177 cm. The same Professor Kron found over 900 adult bodies averaged 170 centimeters for the typical Roman citizen.




Here are some hard facts, taken from Geoffrey Kron, "Anthropometry, Physical Anthropology, and the Reconstruction of Ancient Health, Nutrition, and Living Standards," in Historia 54/1 (2005):

Kron found the mean height of 927 Italian adult males from 500 BC to 500 AD to be 168.3 cm, with no significant trends in height based on region or date. Some isolated findings:

146 individuals from Pontecagnano (4th-3rd c. BC), mean height 169.1 cm
49 individuals from Herculaneum (various periods), mean height 169.1 cm
67 individuals from Civitanova (various periods), mean height 169 cm
60 individuals from Monte Casaia (various periods), mean height 167.8 cm

However, as he notes, these heights very likely underestimate the heights of young males of military age because they include many older males as well, and height can diminish as much as 3 cm during an individual's lifetime.

Lawrence Angel has also studied heights of individuals from Greek burials on a much smaller scale, and he found that based on a study of 58 individuals from Classical Greece, the mean height for males during this time was 170.5 cm. Based on a study of 28 individuals from Hellenistic Greece, the mean height was 171.9 cm. Further anthropometric studies of individuals buried in Corinth and the Athenian Kerameikos corroborate these findings.

Kron emphasizes that most of these mean heights were not reached again until the mid-19th century by many European nations, and not until the mid 20th century (!) by Italy and Greece.

So far:

- Romans have the height advantage
- Mass advantage
- Technology advantage
- Force projection advantage
- Fought a larger and greater diverse nature of enemies through the centuries
- Roman Empire lasted longer then the Han in duration

Not seeing the Han winning.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> The only ally was Syracuse you ignoramus. And the Chinese never had formations and pikes as effective and as long as the Hellenes did. They instead used spears and halberds, which were considerably shorter than the Sarissa and were wielded without shields. Which reduces their ability to defend in melee as their only protection is Leather Lamellar, which is roughly equivalent to the Hellenic Linothorax which was the standard-issue armor of the Diadochi Kingdoms.



The fact that none of the Hellenistic kingdoms, not even the neighbouring Ptolemaic Egypt came to help Carthage shows they were at least tacit allies with the Roman Republic. While even just having Syracuse as an ally, at a time when it was very much a colony to one of the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Mediterranean, proves me right. And how do you know that the Chinese formations and weapons were not as effective? Do you have an accurate way to measure such effectiveness? 



Countless Insect said:


> You're really proving your ignorance and willful blindness aren't you? The Germans merely knocked down a rotten, crumbling ruin of what the Roman Empire degenerated into because of the decadence and incompetence of the ruling classes. It was bound to collapse anyway.



So wait, when one points out defeats against the Romans, you quickly point out the economic and political weakness of it, but when I point out that Rome didn't win because of superior strategy but also because of economic and political weakness of their enemies, you immediately say that I'm wrong and that it was strategy and not the economy that allowed Rome to win. You are being inconsistent is what I'm saying. 




Countless Insect said:


> You are a charlatan and a fool. The Romans could never Conquer Parthia because their territories were too vast and too far away to properly consolidate, not to mention the massive amounts of cavalry levies the Arsacids could field to constantly harass Roman frontier Garrisons. The Qin chinese on the other hand are... Wait for it...* FUCKING NEIGHBORS. NO SEA, NO DESERTS AND NO VAST MOUNTAIN RANGES TO STAND BETWEEN THEM AND QIN LANDS. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT DISTANCE AND GEOGRAPHY MEANS TO AN EMPIRE OR ARE YOU TOO BUSY MENTALLY FELLATING THE GREAT CHINESE COCK?*



Parthia was not a neighbour to Rome, really? Even when they were right besides each other in Mesopotamia and the Levant? And Alexander the Great proves you wrong. He invaded the Achaemenid Empire from Macedon and conquered as far as India. The Romans could have done the same thing. The fact that they didn't shows that they were either considerably weaker than Alexander, or that Parthia was equally as strong. Also, the Qin Empire's geography was just as varied as Mediterranean and Western Asian geography. 

Also, I've never said that Han China wins. I'm just trying to refute hogwash arguments for why it would lose against the Roman Empire. 



Countless Insect said:


> Also, which side has Chainmail and swords, which were in very high demand in Han China and are too valuable to give off to footsoldiers; reserved only for Nobles and their Bodyguards as standard-issue equipment? Hint: It's not the Han.



And I guess that you have sources that corroborate what you're saying. Because otherwise, how is it possible for one side to be in need of chainmail and swords while the other isn't? At most, there were periods in Han China where this occurred, and they most likely were not at the peak of the Han dynasty.

Reactions: Dislike 1


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## tivanenk (Dec 1, 2016)

Europeans always had superior military for the most part because of two reasons:

a) better raw resources (Asia suffered from severe shortage of good metal ore)
b) better war mentality (Asians typically never fought in total war scenarios where the objective was to grind down all of the opposition, and when they fought against someone who did, like the Mongolians, they got pulvarized and shit on)

Reactions: Disagree 1


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## Nevermind (Dec 1, 2016)

Europe didn't really start to pull away in the global arms race until the 18th century, actually.

But I'll ask again what kind of scenario - a single battle, a protracted war, etc.?


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## Fang (Dec 1, 2016)

tivanenk said:


> Europeans always had superior military for the most part because of two reasons:
> 
> a) better raw resources (Asia suffered from severe shortage of good metal ore)
> b) better war mentality (Asians typically never fought in total war scenarios where the objective was to grind down all of the opposition, and when they fought against someone who did, like the Mongolians, they got pulvarized and shit on)



You have no idea what you are talking about. Asians were the model of civilization and warfare until the collapse and decline of the Ottoman and Safavid gunpowder empires could no longer compete with European powers.



Nevermind said:


> Europe didn't really start to pull away in the global arms race until the 18th century, actually.
> 
> But I'll ask again what kind of scenario - a single battle, a protracted war, etc.?



OP's scenario is their territories are right next to each other and the goal is to wipe the other out completely.

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Nevermind (Dec 1, 2016)

Alright, so that means fortifications and artillery matter a lot more. I'm unfamiliar with Han technologies in that regard.


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> The fact that none of the Hellenistic kingdoms, not even the neighbouring Ptolemaic Egypt came to help Carthage shows they were at least tacit allies with the Roman Republic. While even just having Syracuse as an ally, at a time when it was very much a colony to one of the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Mediterranean, proves me right. And how do you know that the Chinese formations and weapons were not as effective? Do you have an accurate way to measure such effectiveness?


Simple: The Phalanx has 18 to 21-foot long Sarissas. The Chinese footmen have two-meter long Spears and halberds. Which one of the two is harder to fight and defend against en masse?



Mabel Gleeful said:


> So wait, when one points out defeats against the Romans, you quickly point out the economic and political weakness of it, but when I point out that Rome didn't win because of superior strategy but also because of economic and political weakness of their enemies, you immediately say that I'm wrong and that it was strategy and not the economy that allowed Rome to win. You are being inconsistent is what I'm saying.


You're putting words in my mouth you ignoramus. I will not answer such a stupid question.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> Parthia was not a neighbour to Rome, really? Even when they were right besides each other in Mesopotamia and the Levant? And Alexander the Great proves you wrong. He invaded the Achaemenid Empire from Macedon and conquered as far as India. The Romans could have done the same thing. The fact that they didn't shows that they were either considerably weaker than Alexander, or that Parthia was equally as strong. Also, the Qin Empire's geography was just as varied as Mediterranean and Western Asian geography.
> 
> Also, I've never said that Han China wins. I'm just trying to refute hogwash arguments for why it would lose against the Roman Empire.


Again. *NO SEA. NO DESERTS. NO VAST MOUNTAIN RANGES.*



*DO YOU SEE ANY OF THOSE THREE SEPARATING QIN AND HAN LANDS IN CHINA?*

For fucks sake, are you so stupid as to not realize that the borders of the Roman Empire aren't exactly where they'd muster their veteran legions, the ones who are expected to go out on an offensive war versus the Auxilia and the Legions stationed to guard the border?

Reactions: Disagree 1


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> Irrelevant. The Romans and their Byzantine successors frequently blunted and defeated the Germanics for centuries (nigh on 600+ years which is longer then the entirety of the Han's dynasty's duration for that matter) before succumbing and that was again mainly due to weaknesses inherent in Western Roman Emperors where corruption, hedonism, and incompetence lead to purges of Germanic conscripted Roman soldiers.



At most, that proves that _neither _was bested by foreign invaders, but fell under their own weight and by their own hand. 



Fang said:


> Similar is not the SAME. Projecting one's power across almost all of Europe, the Near East, and North Africa in disaparate parts of the world that are not always linked or held together in the same geographic areas > one contained contagious area. Roman reach, logistics, and projection is superior to the Han's.



The Mediterranean world you're talking about is not composed of "disparate parts of the world". Heck, Europe and the ANE are continuous landmasses, and North Africa is right below Europe. So there's really not that much difference between the powers of both empires. You remind me of a comment that said "Europe is just a part of Asia with undeserved pretensions". Now, I do agree on one thing, which is that the Romans had far superior ship technology, allowing them more mobility. But that's it. That still didn't allow the Romans to defeat the Parthians, who didn't even have a proper navy like that of Rome. 



Fang said:


> "Qin dynasty duration: 221 BC to 206 BC"
> 
> lol
> 
> Am I supposed to be impressed by the fact the Han felled a rival empire that couldn't even last two decades because of how incompetent their rulers were they couldn't even follow through with a proper successor to the founder?



I like how Roman victories are attributed to their superiority in technology and tactics while Chinese victories are attributed to enemy incompetence, even though one can easily say that many Roman victories were also due to the incompetence of their enemies rather than any kind of superiority. Conversely, you also immediately point out Roman incompetence and and decadence whenever they are defeated. Amazing. 



Fang said:


> A)* The Hunnic Empire founded by Attila and his brother was largely a confederation of united tribes not just of Hunnic peoples but largely outnumbered in terms of manpower by Sarmatians, Germanics (Vandals, Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Alemanni, etc...), and even some other Iranic tribes into a singular "horde"*
> B) The Hunnic Empire was defeated by the Sassanids twice in the Caucasus and Near East and deflected toward the Eastern Roman Empire's lands
> C) The Hunnics could not siege the major fortified towns and cities of the Eastern Roman Empire and migrated further westwards through the Balkans and Southern and Eastern Europe
> D) This displaced hundreds of thousands of non-aligned Germanics and Iranic Saramatians into Western Roman Empire lands
> E) The Huns as I'm getting to largely were reliant on their numbers being massively expanded by the Germanics, the Germanics were not fighting the Western Romans at that point and ultimately it was because of the Western Roman Empire that the Hunnic Empire which the Germanics could not defeat was blunted out of Western Europe and then broken out of Europe entirely by the Western Roman Empire's revived military under Aetius



Even then that means that an East Asian people was able to defeat and subjugate Indo-European and Caucasian peoples. 



Fang said:


> No, its because large swathes of what the Chinese ruled with their various dynasties are massively inflated by the size of the Gobi desert in the northwest, and the fact that the relevance of those states have very little to do with global or international history. Size isn't even everything when one lacks duration to survive for centuries.



And the various dynasties were able to survive for centuries. The Han dynasty had to be toppled twice, in a span of centuries, in order to be put down for good, while the Zhou dynasty also endured the entire centuries of the Warring States period before finally being put down for good by Qin Shi Huangdi. And how do you accurately measure "international" or "global" importance? Fact is, the sphere of influence of the Han dynasty was similar to that of Rome, even having contact with India and Iran. Also, by that same logic, I can say that Rome's size is inflated by the Alps, the Sinai Peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea. 



Fang said:


> I don't need to fucking show any books.



Great, let's just throw evidence out of the window. 



Fang said:


> The Parthians under the Arsacid dynasty continually lost territory to the Roman Empire from before the Trimuvrate all the way to Caracalla. How do you think the Roman Empire was continually expanding through the Levant and Near East and encroaching steadily on the Iranian hold on Mesopotamia? There is a reason why the Parthians are usually on the defensive side of wars with Rome and typically lose them.
> 
> So here's to recap why you are being completely dishonest on this sub-topic:
> 
> ...



And I can turn that around: the fact that despite centuries of Roman aggression the Parthians kept continually kicking them out of their territory shows that the Romans were completely unable to conquer what in essence was the same territory held by Alexander centuries prior, who not only conquered those territories, but also advanced into northern India. In other words, this can be an argument in favour of Roman weakness against a more or less equal opponent. Also, the Near East was no longer controlled by any Iranians by the time the Romans took it, it was instead controlled by the Greek Seleucids; it was from them that the Romans took these territories, not Parthia which continued to encroach Seleucid territories until conquering most of it. You may be 



Fang said:


> I'm not seeing anything that compares to heavy chainmail, overlapping iron armor, or laminated steel here for equipment or armor. Also the Parthians were saved for the same reason, distance made it impossible for them to be conquered. Also LOL at thinking the Chinese had more wars or experience fighting Iranic horsemen then the Romans did. The Saka were merely a single small branch of one of the hundreds of various Scythian tribes.


The Han dynasty coated its soldiers in lamellae armour that had metal plates and leather laced together (see David A Graff's "A Military History of China" p. 27 and H. Russell Robinson's "Oriental Armour" p. 126) and all Eurasian civilisations at that point already used steel to build their swords and other weapons. So no, the Romans were not superior in this regard. And as I pointed out in a previous post, the terrain and geography argument is not a good one because Alexander the Great was able to pass through that very same terrain all over from Macedon, conquer it and reach as far as northwest India. And you may be right that the Chinese did not face Scythians as often as the Greeks or the Romans, but they still faced them and they still fared well against them.



Fang said:


> First off, no. Secondly, Northern Europeans are the tallest people but two centuries ago the average White American was taller then average White European save Germanics and other Nordics acting as the isolated outliers. In the late 1800s, the average British man was 5'6 and the average American was 5'10. It was also noted American Revolutionary soldiers loomed over British Royal Marines by 4 or more inches in the Revoutionary War period.
> 
> It remains a fact that regarding this, that Caucasians are physically more robust and larger then Mongoloids. You put the average Persian, German, or Dutch, or Englishmen next to the average Mongolian, Han Chinese, Korean, or Japanese male and it won't be simply a difference of height but also physical body mass.



I already left a link with a chart that proves you wrong about Western Asians and North Africans being taller than East Asians, and even White North Americans are only marginally taller. Fact is, the recent towering tallness of Europeans is a recent phenomenon, the product of having had better living standards and a far more varied diet for decades than most East Asians. Even here, it's only certain Europeans such as Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians that are significantly taller. English, French, Irish, are only taller by a few centimetres more. 



Fang said:


> I'm familiar with Kron's work.
> 
> Average height for a Roman soldier was a compulsory 6 Roman feet which translates to 5'7 to 5'8 or 177 cm. There are even skeletons of taller Roman soldiers being in excess of 177 cm. The same Professor Kron found over 900 adult bodies averaged 170 centimeters for the typical Roman citizen.
> 
> ...



And this very same argument could be used for the Han Chinese as well. Since the average is also around 1.70 as I left in my link about ancient Chinese heights, and it points out to tall men that could measure up to 1.89 cms., there's no reason to believe that Han Chinese soldiers are going to be smaller and less powerful. 

So to recap:
-They are in fact more or less equal technologically, with the Romans having only the edge in shipbuilding.
-There's no reason to assume that Han Chinese soldiers are weaker and smaller. 
-They have around the same experience in fighting a variety of opponents.


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## Mider T (Dec 1, 2016)

mr_shadow said:


> Chinese military history isn't really my field, but glad I found this thread.


You didn't find it, I linked you.


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## Mider T (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> "Qin dynasty duration: 221 BC to 206 BC"
> 
> lol
> 
> Am I supposed to be impressed by the fact the Han felled a rival empire that couldn't even last two decades because of how incompetent their rulers were they couldn't even follow through with a proper successor to the founder?


This is incorrect, it fell in 206 A.D.; 4 centuries.


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## Qinglong (Dec 1, 2016)

the Qin dynasty is noted for how short it lasted, are you mixed up with another Dynasty?


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## Mider T (Dec 1, 2016)

Yes I was, the Han Dynasty.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> Simple: The Phalanx has 18 to 21-foot long Sarissas. The Chinese footmen have two-meter long Spears and halberds. Which one of the two is harder to fight and defend against en masse?



The phalanx could be defeated by a heavy infantry and a cavalry having higher manoeuvrability, as Richard Gabriel points out in "The Great Armies of Antiquity" p. 227. 



Countless Insect said:


> You're putting words in my mouth you ignoramus. I will not answer such a stupid question.


No, I'm not, you argued that decadence and incompetence was the cause of Roman defeat at the hands of invading Germanic tribes, which is the same as being economically and politically weak. 



Countless Insect said:


> Again. *NO SEA. NO DESERTS. NO VAST MOUNTAIN RANGES.*
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Except you're wrong. There are vast mountain ranges in China, so culturally important they are even held as sacred sites and constantly appear in Chinese painting and literature. There's also massive rivers like the Yellow river. Chinese terrain is just as dangerous and hard to cross as that of Western Asia. Fact is, the Qin conquest of all Chinese states and then some, and the Han conquest of said empire plus some more territories, is a remarkable feat no less incredible than the the conquest of Carthage and Egypt by the Romans.


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## Qinglong (Dec 1, 2016)

Qin Er shi's massive incompetence was a pretty major contributor to the Qin collapse


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> blah blah blah i'm not answering the questions and im going around in circles..

Reactions: Disagree 1


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> Look ma, I'm an ignoramus!

Reactions: Disagree 1


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## Fang (Dec 1, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> At most, that proves that _neither _was bested by foreign invaders, but fell under their own weight and by their own hand.



There's a difference because even in the final years of the Western Roman Empire's existence, they were still able field sizable Roman/non-Germanic populated armies against other usurpers and rebels while the Germanics were coasting into WRE lands.



> The Mediterranean world you're talking about is not composed of "disparate parts of the world".



Are the Caucasus not divided by vast mountain ranges and higher latitudes of elevated terrain from Southern Europe? Is Mesopotamia and the Levant right next to or adjacent to Hispania and Iberia? I don't think so. Is Northern Europe directly bordering the Levant and Near East? No.



> Heck, Europe and the ANE are continuous landmasses, and North Africa is right below Europe. So there's really not that much difference between the powers of both empires. You remind me of a comment that said "Europe is just a part of Asia with undeserved pretensions". Now, I do agree on one thing, which is that the Romans had far superior ship technology, allowing them more mobility. But that's it. That still didn't allow the Romans to defeat the Parthians, who didn't even have a proper navy like that of Rome.



What the hell is ANE? Yes technically Europe and Asia are part of a singular continent but they are divided by mountain ranges, seas, deserts, and other environments. Asia, Europe, and North Africa are three different continents all the same in a conventional sense and from Southern Europe the Romans are able to project a military and economic presence from Spain and Portugal, through Libya, Egypt, Cyrencia  all the way to Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Asia Minor and as far Northwards as Northern Europe's Germany and Norway.

Hell of a lot more impressive then the Han.



> I like how Roman victories are attributed to their superiority in technology and tactics while Chinese victories are attributed to enemy incompetence, even though one can easily say that many Roman victories were also due to the incompetence of their enemies rather than any kind of superiority. Conversely, you also immediately point out Roman incompetence and and decadence whenever they are defeated. Amazing.



Powers rise and fall like the ebb of tides in the ocean. Sometimes the Romans won through attrition and brute force rather then through tactics or strategy. What defeated Hannibal the Great was Fabian tactics that tore away at Hannibal's limited reserves and short supply of equipment and circumventing his advantages in the Italian peninsula to go directly after Carthage herself to force him into an open battle he couldn't win. Rome had lost  a massive amount of men constantly in the tens of thousands in every battle Hannibal won against them for 18 years until they trampled him down.

I never attributed anything to the Western Roman Empire's fall save gross incompetence of its generals and emperors as corruption destroyed it. But its highlights of success are still far greater then what the Han dynasty did.



> Even then that means that an East Asian people was able to defeat and subjugate Indo-European and Caucasian peoples.



Protip all Caucasians are typically Indo-Europeans. Secondly, Attila and his brother swayed various Germanic and Iranic tribes into joining them. Thirdly, he's not called the Scourge of God for nothing. And he still ultimately lost against the weaker Western Roman Empire and Sassanid Empire in the end thanks to Aetius ingenuity and tactics.



> And the various dynasties were able to survive for centuries. The Han dynasty had to be toppled twice, in a span of centuries, in order to be put down for good, while the Zhou dynasty also endured the entire centuries of the Warring States period before finally being put down for good by Qin Shi Huangdi. And how do you accurately measure "international" or "global" importance? Fact is, the sphere of influence of the Han dynasty was similar to that of Rome, even having contact with India and Iran. Also, by that same logic, I can say that Rome's size is inflated by the Alps, the Sinai Peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea.



I'm not sure what you are talking about, but the actual Han dynasty itself died out early in the 3rd century. Unified Roman didn't end until the 6th century.  And just because the Han had contact with the Parthians, Sassanids, and Indians doesn't really mean much when so did the Romans and Byzantines and even Greeks/Macedonians before them.

"How do you accurately measure international or global importance?"

The side that forms the foundation of the dominant hemisphere of the planet. And it's not the East anymore for the last three or four centuries.



> Great, let's just throw evidence out of the window



If that's what you want to do then go ahead.



> And I can turn that around



No you can't. The Arsacid dynasty aka the Parthian Empire was always on the losing end of the wars with the Roman Empire. They were the ones who were almost always forced to fight defensive wars for their survival and had no way of threatening the core or Roman heartlands while the latter could to them. Romans could not destroy the Parthians but they always weakened her, took territory from her, and were the dominant of the two empires.



> The Han dynasty coated its soldiers in lamellae armour that had metal plates and leather laced together (see David A Graff's "A Military History of China" p. 27 and H. Russell Robinson's "Oriental Armour" p. 126) and all Eurasian civilisations at that point already used steel to build their swords and other weapons. So no, the Romans were not superior in this regard. And as I pointed out in a previous post, the terrain and geography argument is not a good one because Alexander the Great was able to pass through that very same terrain all over from Macedon, conquer it and reach as far as northwest India. And you may be right that the Chinese did not face Scythians as often as the Greeks or the Romans, but they still faced them and they still fared well against them.



Post scans like I did. And no, Alexander can not replicate the Roman feats nor did he ever face or have as advanced a military as the Romans did.



> I already left a link with a chart that proves you wrong about Western Asians and North Africans being taller than East Asians, and even White North Americans are only marginally taller.



White North Americans average over 5'10, which is more then "marginally" taller then East Asians. So no, you are wrong here.



> Fact is, the recent towering tallness of Europeans is a recent phenomenon, the product of having had better living standards and a far more varied diet for decades than most East Asians.



Only partially true. Genetics play as much a role in height and stature in a person as much as their diet does. Southern Europeans in antiquity largely consumed mostly wheat and barely with augmented sides of fish. Northern Europeans, primarily Germanics/Nordics from Scandinavia largely are noted from genetic testings to eat mainly beef and milk. Koreans are a naturally short people even by East Asian standards and Northern Koreans are receding even further due to malnutrition continuting in generations thanks to the poverty level in their country.

You can have a Korean or Chinese or Japanese have the same diet as a German, Dutch, or Swede but they are never going to be remotely the same height thanks to genetics.



> Even here, it's only certain Europeans such as Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians that are significantly taller. English, French, Irish, are only taller by a few centimetres more



No, they are significantly taller. I'm pretty certain when you remove foreigners from English or Scottish or French heights (the former and the latter are swamped with Asian and Southwestern immgirants), you'll get a far higher median. In fact, the BBC reports the average height in the UK is 5'10.



> And this very same argument could be used for the Han Chinese as well. Since the average is also around 1.70 as I left in my link about ancient Chinese heights, and it points out to tall men that could measure up to 1.89 cms., there's no reason to believe that Han Chinese soldiers are going to be smaller and less powerful.



Going by ancient Roman sources then the average Roman soldier is 6 feet tall. 



> So to recap:
> -They are in fact more or less equal technologically, with the Romans having only the edge in shipbuilding.
> -There's no reason to assume that Han Chinese soldiers are weaker and smaller.
> -They have around the same experience in fighting a variety of opponents.



Nah, Romans are superior in every way. They have more siege weapons, professional armies, the equivalent to the ancient world's version of a deep-water navy, a larger economy, and more history fighting Iranic horsemen, cataphracts, heavy infantry, and so on.



Mider T said:


> This is incorrect, it fell in 206 A.D.; 4 centuries.



No. The Qin literally lasted 14-15 years. Are you confusing them with the Qing?


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> Post scans like I did. And no, Alexander can not replicate the Roman feats nor did he ever face or have as advanced a military as the Romans did.


Funny thing actually, one of his cousins tried to pull off the same thing in the western world. His army was cut to pieces by the Italic tribes and he got killed by a javelin.

And those same Italic tribes taught the Romans the importance of fast heavy infantry.


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## Fang (Dec 1, 2016)

Are you talking about Pyrrhus? Because the dude was beating the Romans and one of the greatest generals of his era.


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## NostalgiaFan (Dec 1, 2016)

Well I am confused as fuck on where to start.

Are we just discussing Han China vs the Roman Empire during Trajan's rule?


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

NostalgiaFan said:


> Well I am confused as fuck on where to start.
> 
> Are we just discussing Han China vs the Roman Empire during Trajan's rule?


Basically when both were at their peak, which in the case of Rome was during Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius if I'm not wrong. I don't know what emperor presided during the peak of the Han dynasty though.


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## Mider T (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> No. The Qin literally lasted 14-15 years. Are you confusing them with the Qing?


No, the Han.  I already corrected myself.


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## Countless Insect (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> Are you talking about Pyrrhus? Because the dude was beating the Romans and one of the greatest generals of his era.


Nah, Alexander I of Epirus. Uncle to Megas Alexandros.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 1, 2016)

Fang said:


> There's a difference because even in the final years of the Western Roman Empire's existence, they were still able field sizable Roman/non-Germanic populated armies against other usurpers and rebels while the Germanics were coasting into WRE lands.


Are you forgetting the massive armies immediately after the fall of the Han that opened the Three Kingdoms period?



Fang said:


> Are the Caucasus not divided by vast mountain ranges and higher latitudes of elevated terrain from Southern Europe? Is Mesopotamia and the Levant right next to or adjacent to Hispania and Iberia? I don't think so. Is Northern Europe directly bordering the Levant and Near East? No.



The exact same thing can be said about China, which contains deserts, massive rivers, snowy mountains and a whole load of islands that are not adjacent with each other. In fact, the distinction of continents done by European geography has always been faulty. If Europe is a continent, by that logic so is China.



Fang said:


> What the hell is ANE?



The Ancient Near East, which in all honesty, had it remained part of the cultural sphere of Hellenism and Christianity and not turn to Islam we would consider it today part of Europe.



Fang said:


> Yes technically Europe and Asia are part of a singular continent but they are divided by mountain ranges, seas, deserts, and other environments. Asia, Europe, and North Africa are three different continents all the same in a conventional sense and from Southern Europe the Romans are able to project a military and economic presence from Spain and Portugal, through Libya, Egypt, Cyrencia all the way to Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Asia Minor and as far Northwards as Northern Europe's Germany and Norway.
> 
> Hell of a lot more impressive then the Han.



Again, no. The many states spread all over China that were not only around the same size as each individual Roman province, or basically today's nation states and countries, show how the sphere of influence of the Han was comparable to that of Rome. Heck, even countries like Vietnam and Korea, or what would become said countries, were already being influenced by the Han dynasty.

Not only that, but you seem to talk as if the Romans projected their influence over all Africa. They didn't. They just controlled the top part of Africa, which is far from having influence on the whole continent, and the top part of Africa, as well as Mesopotamia and the Levant, only constituted the Mediterranean world, which is about the same size as the Han dynasty's empire and is far from being a true global civilisation.



Fang said:


> Protip all Caucasians are typically Indo-Europeans. Secondly, Attila and his brother swayed various Germanic and Iranic tribes into joining them. Thirdly, he's not called the Scourge of God for nothing. And he still ultimately lost against the weaker Western Roman Empire and Sassanid Empire in the end thanks to Aetius ingenuity and tactics.



Define "lose". He wasn't killed, and all the Romans did was keep him at bay. Attila still took a lot of Roman territory, and hastened the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Saying Attila was defeated by the Romans is like saying Alexander was defeated by the Indians.



Fang said:


> Unified Roman didn't end until the 6th century. And just because the Han had contact with the Parthians, Sassanids, and Indians doesn't really mean much when so did the Romans and Byzantines and even Greeks/Macedonians before them.



No, it ended (at least momentarily) with the Crises of the 3rd Century, which was around the same time the Han dynasty permanently fell, and even after those crises ended by the end of that century, where several rival empires, kingdoms or however you wanna call them (like the Palmyrene Empire of Zenobia that presaged the rise of the Arabs) emerged from within Rome - no different from the Three Kingdoms -, it was still permanently broken into two, with one half composed of the original Roman territories falling in the 5th century. I guess you say the 6th century because Justinian did recover Italy and much of North Africa, but that's like saying that the Han didn't fall because the Tang dynasty, which was also composed of Daoist-Confucian Chinese like the Han dynasty, recovered much of the same territory. 



Fang said:


> The side that forms the foundation of the dominant hemisphere of the planet. And it's not the East anymore for the last three or four centuries.



Except that today East Asia is one of the motors of the world economy. Sure, the US and its allies in NATO, as well as Russia, continue to be the dominant hegemony as they have been for the last 400 years or so like you say, but East Asia is a close second. I mean, for crying out loud, not only does half our stuff we use come from China, South Korea and Japan, China also has the second biggest GDP after the US. That is global influence, and thus it stands that Chinese history and the many states and civilisations that developed in China and East Asia count as global history as well. That's not even mentioning Chinese exports that became important for Western civilisation throughout history, like paper and gunpowder.





Fang said:


> Post scans like I did. And no, Alexander can not replicate the Roman feats nor did he ever face or have as advanced a military as the Romans did.



Point is that if Alexander could pass through the Persian territories that constituted the Parthian Empire, then it stands that the much superior Romans could have done the same. The fact that they couldn't conquer that same empire, even though Alexander did it before them, shows that it's not terrain and geography that held them back like you say, but the Parthians. If the Parthians can hold the the Romans at bay, then the even more powerful Han dynasty can do the same. As for scans, here they are:

*Spoiler*: _Scans_ 











Fang said:


> White North Americans average over 5'10, which is more then "marginally" taller then East Asians. So no, you are wrong here.


Five centimetres is not that much (5'10 is 1.77, Chinese and Japanese measure 1.72). It's not the full 12 centimetres that Dutch or Scandinavian males measure, which again is a recent phenomenon. Diet and living standards (and we can also add engaging in certain activities like certain sports) are the main reason for average heights, not genetics. So yes, if South Koreans were given the same diet as Scandinavians or Dutch men, and adopted many of their activities like practising certain sports, their average height would significantly rise in a few generations. Conversely, have Scandinavians or Dutch living in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and in a few generations they will get significantly shorter. 

As for ancient heights, again, the Chinese at military ages were pretty much the same height as that of Romans. I already posted a link that points out how this was determined also via examining dead bodies, and using Kron's claim that age makes people shorter, this would mean that the average height of military young people could be as much as 3 centimetres more. Also, Roman sources were doing approximations, using a different scale than ours. Kron's anthropometric study is thus the more correct one. 



Fang said:


> Nah, Romans are superior in every way. They have more siege weapons, professional armies, the equivalent to the ancient world's version of a deep-water navy, a larger economy, and more history fighting Iranic horsemen, cataphracts, heavy infantry, and so on.



What "larger" economy? And the Han Chinese made war a freaking art (like pretty much all cultures), so to say they didn't possess professional armies is rather ludicrous. And perhaps you could specify what siege weapons the Romans possessed that the Chinese didn't, with sources backing this up, rather than just state that they did. The only real thing that the Romans had over the Chinese was their navy, and even this is not decisive since it did not help them in vanquishing the Parthians and the Sassanids.

Reactions: Dislike 1


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## Fang (Dec 2, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> Are you forgetting the massive armies immediately after the fall of the Han that opened the Three Kingdoms period?



Quantify those massive numbers with academic sources.



> The exact same thing can be said about China, which contains deserts, massive rivers, snowy mountains and a whole load of islands that are not adjacent with each other. In fact, the distinction of continents done by European geography has always been faulty. If Europe is a continent, by that logic so is China.



Bullshit, it can't be said at all. Europe and Asia are not continuous comparing Western Europe, Southern Europe, Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, North Africa, or the Levant and Mesopotamia as occupying a single expansive landmass unlike China. You're trying to compare apples with oranges here.



> The Ancient Near East, which in all honesty, had it remained part of the cultural sphere of Hellenism and Christianity and not turn to Islam we would consider it today part of Europe.



Nonsense. Even in late antiquity and the early middle ages, Christanity was never dominant in Mesopotamia and Judaism remained strong along with other pre-Abarahamic faiths. Hellenism wasn't even that widespread outside of Roman and Greek colonies.



> Again, no. The many states spread all over China that were not only around the same size as each individual Roman province, or basically today's nation states and countries, show how the sphere of influence of the Han was comparable to that of Rome. Heck, even countries like Vietnam and Korea, or what would become said countries, were already being influenced by the Han dynasty.



So what? Rome was exerting influence and power even over Celtic tribes beyond Hadrian's Wall and those across the Irish Coast as well as several "nations" below the Saharan deserts such as the Nubians and Ethiopians. We have a damn good idea how powerful and long reaching the Roman economy was, same can't be said for the Chinese given the higher production of gold, silver, copper, and other precious metals is well known to us today.



> Not only that, but you seem to talk as if the Romans projected their influence over all Africa.



I didn't. Don't misquote me.



> They just controlled the top part of Africa, which is far from having influence on the whole continent, and the top part of Africa, as well as Mesopotamia and the Levant, only constituted the Mediterranean world, which is about the same size as the Han dynasty's empire and is far from being a true global civilisation.



Roman Empire:

- all of Western Europe
- significant parts of Northern Europe
- all of Southern Europe
- most of Eastern Europe
- almost all of Asia Minor
- the entirety of the Levant
- parts of Caucasus
- parts of Mesopotamia
- all of North Africa
- access to the Atlantic
- access to the Mediterranean
- partial access to the Persian Gulf and Indian Sea

I'd say the Romans having access to three continents, several oceans and seas, being one of the two dominant regional superpowers for nearly 1000 years gives them a higher mark for a "global civilization" then Han China will ever have.



> Define "lose". He wasn't killed, and all the Romans did was keep him at bay. Attila still took a lot of Roman territory, and hastened the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Saying Attila was defeated by the Romans is like saying Alexander was defeated by the Indians.



Nonsensical comparison. Attila openly lost the Battle of the Catalauan Plains, was forced from Roman territories in both the Western and Eastern halves in a constant retreat, and died with all his gains in Western Europe completely lost and his horde falling apart shortly afterwards. He lost everything in the end. And Alexander is a loser for having an empire that endured for only 10 years without having his heir's future secured or protected and the Diodachi taking it apart for good.



> No, it ended (at least momentarily) with the Crises of the 3rd Century



No, because Justinian reign and rise is centuries after the Crisis of the 3rd Century. Aurelian did his thing, cool, but that's irrelevant to the fact that Justinian reunited the empire after the Western half's fall.



> which was around the same time the Han dynasty permanently fell



The temporary fragmentation of the Roman Empire was the Gallic Empire in 260 AD and the Palmyrene Empire in 270 AD. Both which are half a century or more after the fall of the Han dynasty. Its not "around the same time" at all unless you are being vary liberal about differences of a half century ore more.

,





> and even after those crises ended by the end of that century, where several rival empires, kingdoms or however you wanna call them (like the Palmyrene Empire of Zenobia that presaged the rise of the Arabs) emerged from within Rome



I just covered this above.



> - no different from the Three Kingdoms -, it was still permanently broken into two, with one half composed of the original Roman territories falling in the 5th century. I guess you say the 6th century because Justinian did recover Italy and much of North Africa, but that's like saying that the Han didn't fall because the Tang dynasty, which was also composed of Daoist-Confucian Chinese like the Han dynasty, recovered much of the same territory.



Uh no, because the Eastern Roman Empire was a direct continuation of the original Roman Empire. It carried the same laws, institutions, beliefs, military, practices, administration, and identity. Constantinople's official name was still Nova Rome aka "New Rome". Justinian's attempts were to reunify the Roman Empire to its original height, not a new dynasty acting like a facisimle of the previous one in the case of the Tang vs the Han or the Song later on and so forth.



> Except that today East Asia is one of the motors of the world economy. Sure, the US and its allies in NATO, as well as Russia, continue to be the dominant hegemony as they have been for the last 400 years or so like you say, but East Asia is a close second. I mean, for crying out loud, not only does half our stuff we use come from China, South Korea and Japan, China also has the second biggest GDP after the US. That is global influence, and thus it stands that Chinese history and the many states and civilisations that developed in China and East Asia count as global history as well. That's not even mentioning Chinese exports that became important for Western civilisation throughout history, like paper and gunpowder.



Irrelevant. The Chinese are like the Indians, they can not compare to the GDP, human development, personal wealth, affluence, or technological advantages the West has. The West is the dominant half in the world politically, militarily, economically, and education wise, there is no denying this.




> Point is that if Alexander could pass through the Persian territories that constituted the Parthian Empire



Alexander has what to do with the Parthians?



> then it stands that the much superior Romans could have done the same.



No it doesn't. The difference mainly being both the Romans and Parthians and later Sassanids have about a minimum of 400+ years of technological advancements, military experience, new tactics, and strategies that would be a far cry from doing one thing against a weakened Achaemenid Empire and another thing against a peak Parthian Empire which curbstomped the Selecuids and Maceodnians who used the same tactics and had superior numbers then Alexander ever did.



> The fact that they couldn't conquer that same empire, even though Alexander did it before them, shows that it's not terrain and geography that held them back like you say, but the Parthians. If the Parthians can hold the the Romans at bay, then the even more powerful Han dynasty can do the same.



Again. You can not compare the Parthian Empire with the Achaemenid Empire. And secondly the Roman Empire was already larger and had to maintain active military presence with garrisoned soldiers and armies in different territories across Europe, Asia, North Africa, and the Levant already before actively looking to invade the Parthian Empire. Alexander also had the advantage of an army that spent decades being prepped, drilled, and actively trained to specifically invade the Persian Empire by his father, Philip II.

You can't make that an equivalent comparison.



> As for scans, here they are:
> 
> *Spoiler*: _Scans_



I don't see any mention of mailed or heavy chainmail armor.



> Five centimetres is not that much (5'10 is 1.77, Chinese and Japanese measure 1.72). It's not the full 12 centimetres that Dutch or Scandinavian males measure, which again is a recent phenomenon. Diet and living standards (and we can also add engaging in certain activities like certain sports) are the main reason for average heights, not genetics. So yes, if South Koreans were given the same diet as Scandinavians or Dutch men, and adopted many of their activities like practising certain sports, their average height would significantly rise in a few generations. Conversely, have Scandinavians or Dutch living in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and in a few generations they will get significantly shorter.



"5'10 or 5'11? Not that much compared to 5'6 to 5'7 guys!"

And wrong, genetics play a more vital role in human growth then anything else. Far Easterners will always be the shortest people after Hispanics in Central America. You are delusional if you think South Koreans eating more meat centric diets will ever approach those statures at all.



> As for ancient heights, again, the Chinese at military ages were pretty much the same height as that of Romans. I already posted a link that points out how this was determined also via examining dead bodies, and using Kron's claim that age makes people shorter, this would mean that the average height of military young people could be as much as 3 centimetres more. Also, Roman sources were doing approximations, using a different scale than ours. Kron's anthropometric study is thus the more correct one.



Kron's anthropmetric implies that the minimum height of the average Roman male is above 5'7 before accounting for 3 inch loss with advanced age. So again, ancient Romans would've still been taller then the ancient Chinese.



> What "larger" economy?





Kek.



> And the Han Chinese made war a freaking art (like pretty much all cultures), so to say they didn't possess professional armies is rather ludicrous. And perhaps you could specify what siege weapons the Romans possessed that the Chinese didn't, with sources backing this up, rather than just state that they did. The only real thing that the Romans had over the Chinese was their navy, and even this is not decisive since it did not help them in vanquishing the Parthians and the Sassanids.



Uh huh. So I'm waiting for proof those 6 stone primitive crossbows would pierce Roman shields or chainmail armor.


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## tupadre97 (Dec 2, 2016)

china wins because they still exist

Reactions: Dislike 3


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## Fang (Dec 2, 2016)

By that same "logic" Rome exists because

>France
>Spain
>Portugal 
>Italy
>Romania

Rome wins.

Reactions: Like 2


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## dr_shadow (Dec 2, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> Basically when both were at their peak, which in the case of Rome was during Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius if I'm not wrong. I don't know what emperor presided during the peak of the Han dynasty though.



Emperor Wu (r. 141-87 BC) is generally remembered as the "best" Han emperor.

Simply by being in power for such an incredibly long time, 54 years, he automatically gets credit for all the cultural and military accomplishments that happened on his watch, regardless of he had anything directly to do with them or not.

One thing he definitely did do was endorse Sima Qian's world history as the imperially approved record of all pre-Han antiquity. Without Sima's book our knowledge of China would be significantly murkier.

Wiki says he made big military inroads into Central Asia, but not sure if this was the dynasty's absolutely greatest extent or not. Probably close to at least.

Privately he had the quirk of being a monotheist. Rather than worship the Five Emperors as his predecessors, he preferred only The Supreme One (Tai Yi 太一). I'm sure this probably endeared him to Muslim and Christian missionaries centuries later.

Reactions: Informative 1


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 2, 2016)

Fang said:


> Bullshit, it can't be said at all. Europe and Asia are not continuous comparing Western Europe, Southern Europe, Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, North Africa, or the Levant and Mesopotamia as occupying a single expansive landmass unlike China. You're trying to compare apples with oranges here.



Except that China is not a single encompassing landmass as well if Europe and West Asia aren't. Compare the areas bordering India and Southeast Asia with those bordering Central Asia with those bordering Mongolia and Siberia, not to mention its borders with the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Compare the multiplicity of terrains that exist in Sichuan, Yunnan, Beijing, and so on, with those of Europe and West Asia. Compare the size, which is close to 10 million Km2, not counting those regions that also fell under Chinese influence like Mongolia, Vietnam and Korea. Fact is, China is its own continent, and controlling it is not much different than controlling the Mediterranean world.



Fang said:


> So what? Rome was exerting influence and power even over Celtic tribes beyond Hadrian's Wall and those across the Irish Coast as well as several "nations" below the Saharan deserts such as the Nubians and Ethiopians. We have a damn good idea how powerful and long reaching the Roman economy was, same can't be said for the Chinese given the higher production of gold, silver, copper, and other precious metals is well known to us today.



And exerting influence over Iran, India, Southeast Asia, Mongolia and Central Asia, and one could also include Japan and Korea if we want to count Saharan nations as being under Rome's influence, is not comparable to that? How? You're massively downplaying the Han Chinese sphere of influence.



Fang said:


> Irrelevant. The Chinese are like the Indians, they can not compare to the GDP, human development, personal wealth, affluence, or technological advantages the West has. The West is the dominant half in the world politically, militarily, economically, and education wise, there is no denying this.



What does living standards have to do with global power and influence? Fact is, East Asia has now arguably surpassed Western Europe in this regard, and only the United States and Canada put the West above East Asia. So yes, Chinese history is global history as well. 



Fang said:


> Roman Empire:
> 
> - all of Western Europe
> - significant parts of Northern Europe
> ...



The Romans controlled only _part _of two continents given how Europe and Asia should not be counted as separate continents. Neither did the Romans control all of North Africa, only _portions _of it. And Han China had access to the Pacific and the Indian oceans, and to the Silk Road as well through which it traded with far-away Parthia. It controlled parts of Inner Mongolia and the several states that were comparable in size to the nations in Mesopotamia, North Africa and the Levant, let alone Europe, that Rome controlled. I will keep saying this: Han China was about the size of the Mediterranean world that Rome controlled.



Fang said:


> Uh no, because the Eastern Roman Empire was a direct continuation of the original Roman Empire. It carried the same laws, institutions, beliefs, military, practices, administration, and identity. Constantinople's official name was still Nova Rome aka "New Rome". Justinian's attempts were to reunify the Roman Empire to its original height, not a new dynasty acting like a facisimle of the previous one in the case of the Tang vs the Han or the Song later on and so forth.



And the states postdating the Han dynasty were also direct continuations by your logic, since they also carried much of the same institutions, religion, language and so on. And same laws, same institutions and beliefs? No. Christianity added new laws, such as laws against idolatry, animal sacrifice, banning crucifixion, even banning gladiator fights at a certain point. The Church was a new institution as well. And by the time of Justinian, Christianity had replaced Hellenism and the worship of prior gods for the most part, with only a small minority of people represented by philosophers like Damascius continuing to worship the Hellenic gods. In fact, political and cultural change between the time of Diocletian and the time of Justinian, around 200 years, was far bigger than the political and cultural change between the Han and Tang dynasties.



Fang said:


> Nonsensical comparison. Attila openly lost the Battle of the Catalauan Plains, was forced from Roman territories in both the Western and Eastern halves in a constant retreat, and died with all his gains in Western Europe completely lost and his horde falling apart shortly afterwards. He lost everything in the end. And Alexander is a loser for having an empire that endured for only 10 years without having his heir's future secured or protected and the Diodachi taking it apart for good.



Openly lost?


I agree Alexander was a loser, but the point is that just like how it can't be said that he lost against Indians, Attila can't be said to have lost against the Romans.



Fang said:


> Justinian reunited the empire after the Western half's fall.



No, Justinian only reunited part of it. He did not reconquer Britain and the vast majority of Gaul and Spain.



Fang said:


> The temporary fragmentation of the Roman Empire was the Gallic Empire in 260 AD and the Palmyrene Empire in 270 AD. Both which are half a century or more after the fall of the Han dynasty. Its not "around the same time" at all unless you are being vary liberal about differences of a half century ore more.


And it should be pointed out that such fragmentation came three centuries after the First Triumvirate that established the Empire, whereas the Han dynasty lasted from 206 BCE to 220 AD, so the Han actually lasted longer. Yes, the Han was momentarily toppled, but by this logic we should consider the different dynasties of Imperial Rome that were toppled as well different states or regimes. Heck, you're forgetting the period of the Five Emperors after Commodus' murder.



Fang said:


> I don't see any mention of mailed or heavy chainmail armor.



Even if it isn't chainmail, their armour still contained metal plates which would by then be made of steel, meaning that they had comparable armour to the Romans.



Fang said:


> You are delusional if you think South Koreans eating more meat centric diets will ever approach those statures at all.


.



Fang said:


> Kron's anthropmetric implies that the minimum height of the average Roman male is above 5'7 before accounting for 3 inch loss with advanced age. So again, ancient Romans would've still been taller then the ancient Chinese.


He didn't say three inches, he said three centimetres, a crucial difference:




Fang said:


> Kek.



This only means that the Romans extracted and circulated more metals, not that they have a larger economy. The reason for this is that precious metals were less valuable in China, but there's no reason the Chinese could not have extracted a similar amount of them if they so wanted.



Fang said:


> Uh huh. So I'm waiting for proof those 6 stone primitive crossbows would pierce Roman shields or chainmail armor.


For starters, you haven't mentioned what siege weapons the Romans possessed that the Chinese didn't. Secondly, I already proved that the Chinese possessed steel armour, and their bows could pierce them, or at least, helped win battles against enemies with steel armour.


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## RavenSupreme (Dec 2, 2016)

are the romans allowed to send in germanic tribes? as in: do we assume complete 100% loyality?


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 2, 2016)

RavenSupreme said:


> are the romans allowed to send in germanic tribes? as in: do we assume complete 100% loyality?


I didn't think of that, but I guess mercenaries available to both empires should be allowed.


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## Countless Insect (Dec 2, 2016)

RavenSupreme said:


> are the romans allowed to send in germanic tribes? as in: do we assume complete 100% loyality?


No you fool. Only Auxilia and Legionnaires since this is the Roman Empire under Trajan/Hadrian.


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## Countless Insect (Dec 2, 2016)

Also, way to prove that you're a total loser dog who argues as well as the average Spacebattler Mabel, there's nothing you can do or say that won't convince me or the rest of the OBD that the Han Chinese are superior to the Roman Empire. So congratulations on your "victory" as how Spergbattlers would consider it.


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## Fang (Dec 2, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> Except that China is not a single encompassing landmass as well if Europe and West Asia aren't. Compare the areas bordering India and Southeast Asia with those bordering Central Asia with those bordering Mongolia and Siberia, not to mention its borders with the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Compare the multiplicity of terrains that exist in Sichuan, Yunnan, Beijing, and so on, with those of Europe and West Asia. Compare the size, which is close to 10 million Km2, not counting those regions that also fell under Chinese influence like Mongolia, Vietnam and Korea. Fact is, China is its own continent, and controlling it is not much different than controlling the Mediterranean world.





A) China is not a continent nor has ever been one
B) It is a directly continuous area
C) It has no ability and never has any ability even today of projecting global power to other parts of the world outside of its immediate area

Try again.



> And exerting influence over Iran, India, Southeast Asia, Mongolia and Central Asia, and one could also include Japan and Korea if we want to count Saharan nations as being under Rome's influence, is not comparable to that? How? You're massively downplaying the Han Chinese sphere of influence.



China has never exerted influence on Iran or India. Ever. Mongolians were walled away and they maintained garrisons, outposts, and forts because they were scared of the Hunnics and Turkic tribes, who frequently raided and destroyed their armies every time they attempted to push northwards. You are massively overplaying the Han's influence if you think they had any sort of political or military dominance in Western Asia.

The Parthians and Sassanids both owned large swathes of Central Asia for fuck's sake.



> What does living standards have to do with global power and influence? Fact is, East Asia has now arguably surpassed Western Europe in this regard, and only the United States and Canada put the West above East Asia. So yes, Chinese history is global history as well.



It has everything to do with what is more clear cut with every post you make of you being some kind of Sinaboo who thinks Chinese have the influence or global power even today. East Asia has not surpassed Western Europe in anything except total population. And the Chinese have no global impact on world culture or world history.



> The Romans controlled only _part _of two continents given how Europe and Asia should not be counted as separate continents.



Wrong. Europe, Asia, and Africa.



> Neither did the Romans control all of North Africa, only _portions _of it.



Wrong again. The Romans completely controlled all of Northern Africa after defeating Carthage in the Punic Wars and acquiring Egypt for good after the end of the Ptolemaic dynasy.



> And Han China had access to the Pacific and the Indian oceans



They didn't own the Indian Ocean and who the fuck were they trading with in the Pacific? Japan? Philippines? Korea? lol.



> and to the Silk Road as well through which it traded with far-away Parthia.



Everyone had a part of the Silk Road. My original point the other day was that the Iranians the most benefited because they were the middlemen here.



> It controlled parts of Inner Mongolia



Largely rural areas and steppes with no dedicated agricultural centers, urban concentrations, and little else. Not really that impressive.



> and the several states that were comparable in size to the nations in Mesopotamia, North Africa and the Levant,



There are no states or nations in Mesopotamia, the Levant, or North Africa at that point. All of it was controlled between the Romans/Byzantines and Parthians/Persians. And you're giving me nothing but vagaries that don't mean anything. The vast majority of the world population was in those regions and areas controlled by the Rome/Byzantine and Parthia/Persia.



> let alone Europe, that Rome controlled. I will keep saying this: Han China was about the size of the Mediterranean world that Rome controlled.



You can keep saying that as much as you want but it won't be true regardless of your insistence. The majority of the WORLD's urban centers, cities, towns, and other urban development are most heavily concentrated between Europe and Western Asia until the the 9th or 10th century. The Han don't compare.



> And the states postdating the Han dynasty were also direct continuations by your logic, since they also carried much of the same institutions, religion, language and so on. And same laws, same institutions and beliefs? No. Christianity added new laws, such as laws against idolatry, animal sacrifice, banning crucifixion, even banning gladiator fights at a certain point. The Church was a new institution as well. And by the time of Justinian, Christianity had replaced Hellenism and the worship of prior gods for the most part, with only a small minority of people represented by philosophers like Damascius continuing to worship the Hellenic gods. In fact, political and cultural change between the time of Diocletian and the time of Justinian, around 200 years, was far bigger than the political and cultural change between the Han and Tang dynasties.



Uh no. The Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire is a direct continuation and successor of the original Roman Empire, no amount of backpedaling or deflective bullshit trying to implicate unrelated Chinese dynasties are on the same ballpark as that. No one cares if they switched from Latin to Greek after the end of the 7th century but you are going to find no one with any lick of sense or actual appreciation of Roman history and culture will ever buy your crap trying to engineer a false premise that changes that fact.



> Openly lost?



>attempt an offensive attack
>fail offensive attack
>retreat
>dies
>empire fragments and breaks up immediately
>Byzantines and Sassanids destroy stragglers in Europe and Asia

"Then Jordanes claims the Visigoths outstripped the speed of the Alans beside them and fell upon Attila's own Hunnic household unit. Attila was forced to seek refuge in his own camp, which he had fortified with wagons."

"On the following day, finding the battlefield was "piled high with bodies and the Huns did not venture forth", the Goths and Romans met to decide their next move. Knowing that Attila was low on provisions and "was hindered from approaching by a shower of arrows placed within the confines of the Roman camp", they started to besiege his camp. In this desperate situation, Attila remained unbowed and heaped up a funeral pyre of horse saddles, so that if the enemy should attack him, he was determined to cast himself into the flames, that none might have the joy of wounding him and that the lord of so many races might not fall into the hands of his foes"

"While Attila was besieged in his camp, the Visigoths searched for their missing king and his son . After a long search, they found Theodoric's corpse "where the dead lay thickest" and bore him away with heroic songs in sight of the enemy. Upon learning of his father's death, Thorismund wanted to assault Attila's camp, but Aetius dissuaded him. According to Jordanes, Aetius feared that if the Huns were completely destroyed, the Visigoths would break off their allegiance to the Roman Empire and become an even graver threat. So Aetius convinced Thorismund to quickly return home and secure the throne for himself, before his brothers could. Otherwise, civil war would ensue among the Visigoths. Thorismund quickly returned to Tolosa (present-day ) and became king without any resistance. Gregory of Tours claims Aetius used the same reasoning to dismiss his Frankish allies, and collected the booty of the battlefield for himself."

Lost.



>



>majority of those writers are histographers who go against orthodox outcome
>and disregard primary and second hand direct sources

"After killing his brother, Attila was strengthened by the resources of the deceased and forced many thousands of neighboring peoples into a war. This war, he announced as a guardian of Roman friendship, he would wage only against the Goths. But when he had crossed the Rhine and many Gallic cities had experienced his savage attacks, both our people and the Goths soon agreed to oppose with allied forces the fury of their proud enemies. And Aetius had such great foresight that, when fighting men were hurriedly collected from everywhere, a not unequal force met the opposing multitude. Although the slaughter of all those who died there was incalculable - for neither side gave way - it appears that the Huns were defeated in this battle because those among them that survived lost their taste for fighting and turned back home." - Prosper, _Epitoma Chronicon_, s.a. 451."

Don't care what they think. Outcome is direct, simple, and exhaustively clear:



> I agree Alexander was a loser, but the point is that just like how it can't be said that he lost against Indians, Attila can't be said to have lost against the Romans.



Except he did, you are outright lying now.



> No, Justinian only reunited part of it. He did not reconquer Britain and the vast majority of Gaul and Spain.



No one gave a shit about a backwater colony like Britain. The purpose was to recapture the core heartlands of the original Roman Empire. He took back most of North Africa, parts of Hispania, all of Italy, and portions of Gaul. Stop giving me this diatribe of crap trying to downplay Justinian's accomplishments.



> And it should be pointed out that such fragmentation came three centuries after the First Triumvirate that established the Empire, whereas the Han dynasty lasted from 206 BCE to 220 AD, so the Han actually lasted longer. Yes, the Han was momentarily toppled, but by this logic we should consider the different dynasties of Imperial Rome that were toppled as well different states or regimes. Heck, you're forgetting the period of the Five Emperors after Commodus' murder.



Stupid nonsense. The Crisis of the 3rd Century was averted, the vested power of the Roman Emperors and the Roman Senate, and the facilities of Roman governing were never destroyed or interrupted. It is more apparent then ever that you are not only massively biased toward the Han but have some kind of nonsensical belief that Roman authority was sundered because it was going through crisis which Aurelian stopped.



> Even if it isn't chainmail, their armour still contained metal plates which would by then be made of steel, meaning that they had comparable armour to the Romans.



Its clearly not the same still. Overlapping chainmail is superior to scale armor and so on. So its clear cut the Han used inferior and lighter armor then the Romans.



> .



>four or five of those guys are African-Americans
>rest of them are outliers
>average height between starting 12 ethnic Koreans is 191.25 cm



>average height between starting 12 ethnic Chinese is 204.08 cm

What a magical finding, players specifically selected for their height and stature are among the tallest people in their country to represent themselves internationally huh? Totally equatable to the average in their nations!



>average height between starting 12 ethnic Iranians is 199.41 cm

You are absolutely insane if you think any Far Eastern nation's average height is going to jump to Western World's standards in West or Northern Europe and trying to use basketball heights is cringe inducing.



> He didn't say three inches, he said three centimetres, a crucial difference:



"By a good 3 centimeters or more" translate to "a good 1.2 inches or more" minimum as a low end. So still making the Far Easterns considerably shorter.



> This only means that the Romans extracted and circulated more metals, not that they have a larger economy. The reason for this is that precious metals were less valuable in China, but there's no reason the Chinese could not have extracted a similar amount of them if they so wanted.



Holy shit you are insane. The evidence is fucking there that the Han were incapable of matching the Romans industrial output in metals and ores despite having a similar sized population and evidently already having some sort of socialistic or communistic tendency to disallow privatized industrialism in their empire. There is nothing but the opposite disdaining against your claim, so there is that in simple black and white.



> For starters, you haven't mentioned what siege weapons the Romans possessed that the Chinese didn't. Secondly, I already proved that the Chinese possessed steel armour, and their bows could pierce them, or at least, helped win battles against enemies with steel armour.



You didn't mention or show any steel armor at all.  As for Roman weapons:

The Tormentum.
The Ballista.
The Testudo.
The Vinea (arbor-sheds)
The Helepolis.
The Turris.
The Battering Ram.
The Onager
Just a few but christ I'm done here.

Reactions: Like 1


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## creyzi4zb12 (Dec 2, 2016)

Rome should have the advantage here since they have really big shields and the Chinese likes to rely a lot on arrow spam.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 2, 2016)

Just a few remarks. First, what the heck is a "continuous area" anyway? Why isn't Europe one? Why is China one? Fact is, China has a landmass that rivals Europe, and has deserts, massive revers and snowy mountains. The only reason we don't consider it a continent is because European geographers preferred to mash all of Asia into a single landmass while wanting relatively small Europe to be separated from it. Chinese geographers, prior to the arrival of the Portuguese at least, did not separate the world like this and considered regions like India, Arabia and Iran to be comparable in size and scope to Europe. And indeed, using the logic of European geographers, China can be considered its own continent. 

Second, it is completely false that China never exerted influence over Iran and India. This requires to ignore exports like rice, silk (which is what gave the name to the Silk Road in the first place), paper, the compass and gunpowder, and requires to ignore the Mongol conquests as well. 

And no, the Romans did not control "all" of North Africa. Neither did Carthage for that matter. The only significant part of North Africa that the Romans controlled was Egypt. Otherwise, this is what the Romans controlled of North Africa:


And the comment about the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans is interesting, because if China did not control the Indian and Pacific, then neither did the Romans control the Atlantic. And with whom did the Romans traded in the Atlantic anyway? Themselves? I guess you can mention independent African peoples south of the Roman lands, but I think we can all agree that if this trade existed, it was insignificant. 

Finally, how are South Korean basketball players outliers when the page I put listed over 100 of them? And your comment about the Chinese basketball team being chosen from the tallest people in China also holds true to the basketball teams of the United States and Europe. The point is that here we have examples of East Asians achieving the same height as Europeans, which shows that diet, living standards and doing certain physical activities are the main marker of height, not genetics. It's also incredibly ridiculous to say that the Chinese who constantly went to war were physically weaker than the Romans. And I've already left a link showing that the height of the ancient Chinese was in reality about the same as that of the Romans, especially when using Kron's argument that basing heights on dead bodies leads to an underestimation of the actual heights of young men in their primes, something equally applicable to the Chinese. You also disregarded the fact that Europeans have gotten taller in recent centuries than the rest of the world. This from the book "Futurevision: Ideas, Insights and Strategies" by Howard F. Didsbury, p. 245:



The only reason why today's East Asians are smaller than Europeans is because they had worse living standards for longer and industrialised later than Europeans.


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## Fang (Dec 2, 2016)

I already said I'm not continuing the debate with you seeing where your going with this clear-cut case of Sina bias or the fact you somehow think having trading relations with Parthia/Persia equates to "influence over them" which is completely nonsensical.


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## Mabel Gleeful (Dec 2, 2016)

Also:


Fang said:


> evidently already having some sort of socialistic or communistic tendency to disallow privatized industrialism in their empire.





Fang said:


> It has no ability and never has any ability even today of projecting global power to other parts of the world outside of its immediate area


Jesus, I'm accused of being a "Sinaboo" but just look at your anti-Chinese comments.

Reactions: Like 1 | Winner 1


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## Fang (Dec 2, 2016)

"Anti-chinese" comments?

Not really.


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## Countless Insect (Dec 2, 2016)

Mabel Gleeful said:


> Cherrypicking


Just shut up. You've lost. And you've proven that you're biased and unfair in debate.


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## epyoncloud (Dec 7, 2016)

Rome lost to attlia, we didn't. Han stomps.

also, most likely MAD.

Reactions: Dislike 1


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## Countless Insect (Dec 7, 2016)

epyoncloud said:


> Rome lost to attlia, we didn't. Han stomps.
> 
> also, most likely MAD.


Great going necrobumping this decisively concluded thread. And the Huns got smashed by the Goths and the Western Roman Empire just a few years after their so-called final victory, so suck it.


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## epyoncloud (Dec 8, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> Great going necrobumping this decisively concluded thread. And the Huns got smashed by the Goths and the Western Roman Empire just a few years after their so-called final victory, so suck it.



which side Sun Tzu is on? Checkmate.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Countless Insect (Dec 8, 2016)

epyoncloud said:


> which side Sun Tzu is on? Checkmate.


Sun Tzu is overrated. The likes of Sulla, Gaius Marius and Scipio Africanus/Asiaticus shit all over him with their achievements and the quality of opponents they fought. The difference between making theory against a relatively equal foe and actually applying it against a myriad of enemies who fight and plan strategy differently.

Oh and by the way, he isn't born yet during this time. Try again.


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## epyoncloud (Dec 11, 2016)

total fail


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## Countless Insect (Dec 11, 2016)

Using a video game as your argument? Sad!

Reactions: Like 1 | Disagree 1


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## tivanenk (Dec 11, 2016)

Sun Tzu was already bones inside of a grave during this time. Unless the Han invented voodoo or miracle medicine shit by this time, he ain't a factor.


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## epyoncloud (Dec 12, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> Using a video game as your argument? Sad!




a video game based on historical events and real wars, not fiction and fairy tales.


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## Countless Insect (Dec 12, 2016)

epyoncloud said:


> a video game based on historical events and real wars, not fiction and fairy tales.


Fiction and Fairy Tales? Is that what you were arguing about when you brought up Sun Tzu? We aren't even sure if he is real or an amalgamation of several Chinese military leaders like King Arthur was a composite of numerous historical figures.

Also: 

And less than 5 years after that, the Hunnic horde was disintegrated thanks to the Germanic tribes, which then turned around and pulled the plug on the dying western empire before dividing it among themselves.


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## Kaaant (Dec 12, 2016)

Shogun 2 is also based on history, like the fact the Chosokabe are able to to defeat the Oda and Tokugawa clans by themselves and seize the shogunate and change reality.

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Countless Insect (Dec 12, 2016)

Kaaant said:


> Shogun 2 is also based on history, like the fact the Chosokabe are able to to defeat the Oda and Tokugawa clans by themselves and seize the shogunate and change reality.


You also forget that the Total War series is extremely simplified and focuses solely on the military aspect while giving a few nods over to the whole business of managing an empire.


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## Dakka Man (Dec 12, 2016)

Countless Insect said:


> You also forget that the Total War series is extremely simplified and focuses solely on the military aspect while giving a few nods over to the whole business of managing an empire.


Even there it isn't really 100% accurate.


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## epyoncloud (Dec 13, 2016)

Kaaant said:


> Shogun 2 is also based on history, like the fact the Chosokabe are able to to defeat the Oda and Tokugawa clans by themselves and seize the shogunate and change reality.


 

Are you denying the Huns raped the roman empire, isn't that kind of like denying the Holocaust?

what the roman arguers are trying the prove is that rome had the best-trained military, yet they can't defend against the asian hordes.  (although I gave them credit for having a large-long border and hard to maintain defense)


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## Countless Insect (Dec 13, 2016)

epyoncloud said:


> Are you denying the Huns raped the roman empire, isn't that kind of like denying the Holocaust?
> 
> what the roman arguers are trying the prove is that rome had the best-trained military, yet they can't defend against the asian hordes.  (although I gave them credit for having a large-long border and hard to maintain defense)


It did you fucking Sinaboo, didn't Fang already mention that the Parthians and Sassanids could only stalemate the Roman and Byzantine Empire due to the difference in military quality and geographical and logistics issues? And how I mentioned that the Huns never recovered after the Catalaunian plains? before getting crushed by the Germanic tribes? And the Western Empire by that time was irrecoverably spiraling down towards collapse after Alaric's sack.

God, stop arguing like a Spacebattler. Every post you do makes it seem more and more obvious that you do not belong here.


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## dr_shadow (Jan 19, 2017)

I'm currently reading the _Book of Han_, and to my surprise there is no monograph (_zhi_ 志) on warfare, despite it being such a central concern for all pre-modern regimes. The work has monographs on more trivial matters like ritual, religion and agriculture.

There is plenty of implied strategic information because it tells you which countries and tribes China was at war with at various times, but so far there seems to be no _tactical_ details about how the actual battles were fought. So what kind of weapons, formations and philosophies they used must be determined from archeology or fished out of other works that don't deal specifically with warfare.

Six of the seven "Military Classics", including of course _The Art of War,_ existed in the Han dynasty, and we may assume that Han generals studied them. But without any empirical descriptions of actual battles it's harder than expected to know how they actually translated the theoretical insights of Sun Zi, Wu Zi and the others into practice. But maybe this is explored in commentaries to the Military Classics themselves that I have not read.


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## Countless Insect (Jan 19, 2017)

mr_shadow said:


> I'm currently reading the _Book of Han_, and to my surprise there is no monograph (_zhi_ 志) on warfare, despite it being such a central concern for all pre-modern regimes. The work has monographs on more trivial matters like ritual, religion and agriculture.
> 
> There is plenty of implied strategic information because it tells you which countries and tribes China was at war with at various times, but so far there seems to be no _tactical_ details about how the actual battles were fought. So what kind of weapons, formations and philosophies they used must be determined from archeology or fished out of other works that don't deal specifically with warfare.
> 
> Six of the seven "Military Classics", including of course _The Art of War,_ existed in the Han dynasty, and we may assume that Han generals studied them. But without any empirical descriptions of actual battles it's harder than expected to know how they actually translated the theoretical insights of Sun Zi, Wu Zi and the others into practice. But maybe this is explored in commentaries to the Military Classics themselves that I have not read.


So a whole lot of nothing but speculation for the Han side then. Also, why necrobump for an already concluded thread?


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## dr_shadow (Jan 19, 2017)

Countless Insect said:


> So a whole lot of nothing but speculation for the Han side then. Also, why necrobump for an already concluded thread?



Because I am reading the book now and not when the thread was going on, it wasn't locked, and bumping it by one (relevant) post doesn't hurt anyone.

If people don't care about the new information they can abstain from posting and it will sink back into obscurity.


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## Flashlight237 (Jan 19, 2017)

I'm not sure if disease should be part of the equation, I mean if i recall correctly, the Conquistadors only needed 300 men to wipe out the entire Aztec empire, and the main causes of the victory were technological advantages and disease. Even if that were the case, I'm not sure if the Han Chinese and the Romans (both who took up relatively-similar time frames) would spread some disease either of the empires have not heard of or not.


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## The Immortal WatchDog (Jan 19, 2017)

Island said:


> Han China.
> 
> IIRC, the largest battle that the Romans participated in was the Battle of Cannae where they fielded 80,000 soldiers whereas the Qin, the Han, and the Three Kingdoms regularly fielded a few hundred thousand soldiers.]



with the possible exception of Leyte Gulf the largest naval engagement in human history occurred between Rome and Carthage - between 225,00 and 500,000 people.

Rome routinely fought numbers in the hundreds of thousands in certain campaigns in western Europe. While those troops were inferior to Han soldiers in training they probably possessed superior metallurgy as a lot of the Asian steel and iron forging techniques people praise were being done in Northern Europe a thousand years prior and were reverse engineered by the Romans.



Island said:


> The Han had the closest thing that the ancient world had to a modern military structure, i.e., divisions, battalions, companies, and platoons. It also mass produced equipment and weapons.



Modern militaries still use Roman drills, still cite Caesar and Sulla and Pompeiian battle tactics, still study their maneuvers and organizational structure.

Only the Mongols have done more for human military advancement than the Romans and I'd arguably put both nations above even stuff invented by Boneparte and their ilk in terms of relevance even to the modern era.

Hell Romans were some of the first people to come up with manuals to fight insurgencies



Island said:


> The Han, simply put, could amass significantly larger armies at a much faster rate than the Romans.



Rome never fielded large armies because their doctrine was never about using superior numbers to crush an enemy but by fusing superior training with absurdly swift replenishment rates to create a monster of a military that could wear down enemies that outnumbered them. Rome could field a 50,000 man army against the Han lose it and replace it faster than the Han could replenish their losses and overextending themselves into Roman territory would be a fatal mistake many an enemy made and paid for at the cost of their civilization.




Island said:


> That said, the Roman political system was a lot less stable than the Chinese political system. The Roman Emperor had to juggle the loyalty of various factions (the Senate, the Praetorian Guard, provincial governments...) whereas the Chinese Emperor was revered as a God-Emperor who surrounded himself with eunuchs, relatives, and other individuals who were less likely to revolt against him; it was typically when a weak Emperor or a series of natural disasters struck that the Emperor's power was called into question.



uuhh what? The Roman system was no less unstable than any Chinese dynasty...arguably more so given the Eastern and Western Roman empires lasted longer than any of them.

Also, the Roman emperors were likewise seen as quasi divine...and considering how often Asian courts dealt with intrigue I'm gonna say no.




Island said:


> Not to mention, Han China was (comparatively) homogeneous whereas the Roman Empire was a patchwork of ethnicities, religions, etc.




Which was only ever a problem for Rome in Judea and in the North West namely in England and parts of Germania- Rome had its share of revolts but the same could be said for any major empire and Chinese culture is most definitely not homogeneous

[





Island said:


> The Roman Empire would sooner fold under pressure than the Han Dynasty, something that would happen pretty quickly once the Chinese overrun its eastern provinces.



Tell that to the GGauls, the Carthagenians, The Huns and the Greeks.



Emperorofliberty said:


> Wikipedia, always a reliable source.


 



Island said:


> None of these hordes were anywhere near as sophisticated as the Chinese, however. It's one thing to beat a numerically superior opponent, but it's another thing to beat a numerically superior opponent who matches you in quality of equipment, weapons, tactics, and training]



Except I don't believe for a second that the Han Dynasty did any of that, the same academics who make that claim, seriously think Tokugowa could take his forces and kick the shit out of Spain or France or England...when the Dutch routinely fist fucked Samurai and Chinese units any time they got anywhere near them.




Island said:


> Liu Bang (founder of the Han Dynasty) amassed an army between 500,000 and 800,000 soldiers at the Battle of Gaixia while Cao Cao (towards its end) raised an army between 200,000 and 800,000 at the Battle of Red Cliffs. The high-end estimates are likely exaggerated, but there's a fairly consistent trend of individual battles seeing upwards to a few hundred thousand soldiers on each side.



See i can buy the half million figure, the eight hundred thousand figure is a logistical impossibility..for the exact same reason we both scoffed at the idea of Kublai Khan mobilizing all eight hundred thousand Yuan assets in the Westeros vs Kublai Khan thread...because the logistics of moving an army that massive would be a fucking nightmare for anyone prior to the first world war...and even then they struggled with adapting to the logistics of moving troops like that early on...and they had phones, telegrams and aerial recon.

So I'm gonna say.."historians who cite this figure may as well be citing Herodotus when talking about Persia"



Island said:


> The point I was making was that the Chinese Emperor wielded more authority than the Roman Emperor; the Chinese state was more centralized than the Roman one.



depends entirely on the Emperor.





Island said:


> You're comparing the Roman state to a single Chinese dynasty. Even though the Han Dynasty fell, the Chinese state continued to exist in one form or another.



...the Chinese state continued to exist much in the same way France, Spain, The Germanic and Italian kingdoms and England can trace their origins back to Rome.

China is not a homogeneous entity...unless you wanna claim the three kingdoms,  the Liao Dynasty and the Jin dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty were merely a continuation of the Han.

In which case I'm fairly certain the average "Chinese" person of the period under no circumstances considered the dozens of different peoples that made up the "manchurian" bloc of ethnicities Chinese until very recently.




Island said:


> In contrast, Rome as a state ceased to exist after the fall of the Byzantine Empire.



you mean like the Han?




Island said:


> Hype doesn't mean a lot since Westerners know far more about the Romans than they do about the Han Chinese.



It baffles me that someone as well versed in history as you, would dismiss the Roman army and its respect as hype.


Island said:


> The fall of the Han Dynasty was a succession crisis that culminated in a military coup by a local warlord; the Imperial Chinese state continued to exist regardless of the fact that the dynasty was overthrown.
> .



....I feel your view of what counts as a Chinese state, China and Chinese in general would drastically conflict with what the citizens on the ground in those periods would view.



Mabel Gleeful said:


> I know that these are biased historians from European and North American universities, but this claim can't be dismissed just like that. Both empires had very well organised armies, not just the Chinese..



...no, lets not PC history here...the only Biased in academia in the west comes from the fifty cent brigade that has infested ivory towers and turned history into some pop culture ZOMG BRUCE LEE TEH CHINA STRONKEST..circle jerk that has little to do with actual history.\

There's this sick fetishistic need to deconstruct Western civilization to the point where they call Egyptian and Persian scholars "dead white men" and there's little merit in what's taught now when it comes to crap like this.



Fang said:


> somehow going to invalidate it holding out against Arabs and Turks for over 800 years prior.  The Byzantines are as Roman as the original founders of Rome themselves and still viewed themselves as such even up to World War 1.



Adding to this, eight centuries fighting off an implacable enemy, while also being at various periods, ignored by and even plotted against and beset by the Catholic west to the point where treachery had their capital city raped and pillaged by crusaders.

Oh and also while fending off an Ebola outbreak that was one of the deadliest epidemics in human history. The Byzantine empire was by no means a paper tiger and even at the end...Mehmet the great had to build cannons so massive there was an actual coin shortage because the mints lacked the material to produce copper coins IIRC in a siege where twelve thousand Greeks, rogue Ottomans and Geonese mercs held off three hundred thousand turks in a fifty three day siege...that shifted the balance of power in the ancient world and marked the change of an era...in human history. This was, a depopulated watered down parody of what it once was and it still is probably one of the greatest sieges and battles of the middle ages. By no means would the Han Chinese easily invest in a siege like that then walk it off.

The Han Chinese aren't marching into the eastern parts of the Empire without finding their logistics quickly cut off, the fifty thousand man army they just crushed was one of two or three on the way with two or three commanders raising additional forces of comparable size to throw at them..all the while they have to somehow maintain and feed an army of two or three hundred thousand in hostile lands..on foraging as their supplies run dry.

This ain't ending well..for them and they might soon find themselves bleeding to death from too many victories.



Island said:


> If we're going by precedent, then I should remind you that one of these states continued to exist into the twentieth century whereas the other ceased to exist in a meaningful way after the Fourth Crusade.



No, no, no.

This is not how China works, this is a historical fiction regurgitated by Sinophiles, Wumaos and The Chinese government itself..it is not at all accurate.



epyoncloud said:


> Rome lost to attlia, we didn't. Han stomps.
> 
> also, most likely MAD.



No it didn't and no you didn't

Jesus Christ, you Wumaos are supposed to be a lot more subtle than that, your local party chief is wasting government resources paying your ass.

Reactions: Like 1 | Agree 3


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## The Immortal WatchDog (Jan 19, 2017)

Also adding to this dipshit's comments about Atilla

First of all I'm under the impression that the Xionghu or Qun peoples being connected to the Huns seems to be an extremely dubious thing if not outright bullshit invented due to one translator hearing the stories, thinking of the similarities shrugging his shoulders and just going with it. They were their own people their own empire and while part of the "steppe" seemed to have more in common with Mongolians and proto-turks than they did the peoples whom the wall was built to guard against (at least primarily)

How you can claim the Chinese beat the huns when their victory consisted of walling themselves up and hiding is a little silly. Rome decisively smashed the same peoples that brought China to its knees and they did so at one of their weakest points historically.

Adding to that Modu Chanyu is not Attila the Hun by any stretch of the imagination.

Reactions: Like 1 | Agree 2


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## NostalgiaFan (Jan 20, 2017)

The Immortal WatchDog said:


> Also adding to this dipshit's comments about Atilla
> 
> First of all I'm under the impression that the Xionghu or Qun peoples being connected to the Huns seems to be an extremely dubious thing if not outright bullshit invented due to one translator hearing the stories, thinking of the similarities shurgging his shoulders and just going with it. They were their own people their own empire and while part of the "steppe" seemed to have more in common with Mongolians and proto-turks than they did the peoples whom the wall was built to guard against (at least primarily)
> 
> ...


Agreed with your points but I just want to ask, about Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, is it really fair to give all the credit to the Romans for that battle? From what I read the Romans were not the only ones fighting, they were also aided by the Visgoths, Saxons, Alans, and other Germanic Tribes. The Huns themselves were not just fighting alone either, Ostrogoths, Gepids, Scirii, and other Steppe and Germanic Tribes were fighting for the Huns as well. Franks and Burgundians of different tribes fought on both sides of the battle showing how it was much more complicated then just "Romans vs Huns". 

I heard from some sources that by himself, Attila might not have even been able to sum up 10,000 men or so, and the Roman Leader, Flavius Aetius, was said to be so low on Men he could only spare up some auxiliaries and had to ask for help due to the rest of his army being stationed else where.

In fact the battle was less "Romans vs Huns" and more like a conglomerate of two sides representing almost all the relevant factions in the region at the time fighting for which Empire's side they felt best to stay on. Not trying to downplay the Romans at all and I am sure they still played an important role anyway but I feel people are giving them more credit then needed when many of the Germanic Tribes also played an important role in the battle.


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## The Immortal WatchDog (Jan 20, 2017)

NostalgiaFan said:


> Agreed with your points but I just want to ask, about Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, is it really fair to give all the credit to the Romans for that battle?




I would say yes, for a few reasons which I'll get into below but I'd argue Aetius was the architect of that battle and the master mind behind its strategies. Gibbon for all his faults was right about one thing, he truly was the last of the Romans, him and Pope Leo The Great can more or less take credit for keeping the west alive for a bit longer and keeping the inevitable fall from  being a mad max style clusterfuck that it could have been.



NostalgiaFan said:


> From what I read the Romans were not the only ones fighting, they were also aided by the Visgoths, Saxons, Alans, and other Germanic Tribes.



Well, remember this is the point where the western Roman army was so completely dependent on Germanic mercenaries that they weren't really truly a Roman army at this point. The Roman army was Theodoric and his men and mercenaries, that was the state of affairs when Attila came a calling and why he had such success, he was less a war lord invading an empire and more a contractor taking up a salary dispute 

the East still had clutches of power and might, but the West had degenerated to where it was nearly utterly dependent upon mercenaries...This is where the subsidy crisis hits full swing because they were basically handing citizenship out to entire armies IIRC.

Things were bad here - Attila didn't face a Roman army in the Caesar/Trajan sense. He faced a Revenna mutt force



NostalgiaFan said:


> The Huns themselves were not just fighting alone either, Ostrogoths, Gepids, Scirii, and other Steppe and Germanic Tribes were fighting for the Huns as well. Franks and Burgundians of different tribes fought on both sides of the battle showing how it was much more complicated then just "Romans vs Huns".



right, I was just smashing up the Wumao there in general terms, granted Attila to my knowledge was always in command of a coalition of "savages" and not just Hunnic forces, that he was more a Mafia Don who ruled a rainbow gang than anything else. So one tends to refer to them all as the Hun army./



NostalgiaFan said:


> In fact the battle was less "Romans vs Huns" and more like a conglomerate of two sides representing almost all the relevant factions in the region at the time fighting for which Empire's side they felt best to stay on. Not trying to downplay the Romans at all and I am sure they still played an important role anyway but I feel people are giving them more credit then needed when many of the Germanic Tribes also played an important role in the battle.



Right and like i said...things had degenerated in the west IIRC to the point that you're describing was every battle ever for that century, part of the preceding and what was left of the West at the time.

So its less about robbing credit from the Germans and more...The German people were the Roman army

Reactions: Agree 1


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## NostalgiaFan (Jan 20, 2017)

The Immortal WatchDog said:


> I would say yes, for a few reasons which I'll get into below but I'd argue Aetius was the architect of that battle and the master mind behind its strategies. Gibbon for all his faults was right about one thing, he truly was the last of the Romans, him and Pope Leo The Great can more or less take credit for keeping the west alive for a bit longer and keeping the inevitable fall from  being a mad max style clusterfuck that it could have been.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That I can agree with. People like to pretend that the Roman army was still exactly like Caesar's Legions even to the decline of the Empire, when in fact if you would look at the WRE and compare it to the Germanic Tribes they were fighting with and against, you could barely tell the difference.

But I guess my main point is that, Yes Aetius was the guy in charge, but even concerning his already Germanized army his actual forces were very few while there were just as much if not more Warriors from other kingdoms to the point that I feel calling it a "Roman army" is kinda like calling the army led by Duke Wellington at Waterloo a "British army" when the actual British consisted only of a small part of the overall force. Feels more appropriate to call it an allied army then just Roman.

But yeah I believe even the Huns were sorta Germanic by this point. Years of living next to various Germanic tribes must have had them breed with them and caused their nomadic lifestyle to dampen as the years went by to the point they themselves were less Nomadic and more like the German tribes they invaded, at least in the regions to the west. Thinking of Attila as the Late Antiquity version of the Godfather is hilarious tbh.


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## Countless Insect (Jan 20, 2017)

The Immortal WatchDog said:


> Well, remember this is the point where the western Roman army was so completely dependent on Germanic mercenaries that they weren't really truly a Roman army at this point. The Roman army was Theodoric and his men and mercenaries, that was the state of affairs when Attila came a calling and why he had such success, he was less a war lord invading an empire and more a contractor taking up a salary dispute
> 
> the East still had clutches of power and might, but the West had degenerated to where it was nearly utterly dependent upon mercenaries...This is where the subsidy crisis hits full swing because they were basically handing citizenship out to entire armies IIRC.
> 
> Things were bad here - Attila didn't face a Roman army in the Caesar/Trajan sense. He faced a Revenna mutt force


Now I know it's vogue and rather truthful to say that the Late Roman Army was a shadow of its former glory during the Hunnic invasion, but the aside from the Foederati; aren't the few remaining "true" Legionnaires quite effective still? I mean, they might have been treated like crap by the ruling classes; but there are those who claim that they weren't really as shit as most say, confusing them for or bunching them up with the Foederati, who were by all accounts practically massive warbands of barbarian rabble with a minority of rather deadly if impetuous nobles no different from the Celts that the Romans conquered during the early years of the Principate.


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## The Immortal WatchDog (Jan 20, 2017)

NostalgiaFan said:


> That I can agree with. People like to pretend that the Roman army was still exactly like Caesar's Legions even to the decline of the Empire, when in fact if you would look at the WRE and compare it to the Germanic Tribes they were fighting with and against, you could barely tell the difference.



Exactly! Hence my referring to the Roman side as "Roman" since relatively speaking, it kinda was/





NostalgiaFan said:


> But I guess my main point is that, Yes Aetius was the guy in charge, but even concerning his already Germanized army his actual forces were very few while there were just as much if not more Warriors from other kingdoms to the point that I feel calling it a "Roman army" is kinda like calling the army led by Duke Wellington at Waterloo a "British army" when the actual British consisted only of a small part of the overall force. Feels more appropriate to call it an allied army then just Roman.



Ah! But history tends to credit it as a British Victory, Wellington himself gets the credit for defeating Boneparte (and Andrew Jackson later would get powerscaled as a General off this ) sort of how Eisenhower is credit as being the mastermind behind much the allies success once the US got involved and Grant is the man who ended war in the South when in reality it was his turning Sherman loose that did it...I referred to it as a Roman army since it was Roman commanded, Roman trained and in the service of Rome

plus the man behind the victory was very much Roman

fair enough though, I get what you're saying.


NostalgiaFan said:


> . Thinking of Attila as the Late Antiquity version of the Godfather is hilarious tbh.



While the History is 99% bullshit one of the best things to come out of them was one of their psuedo historians comparing Attila to Pablo Escobar and I cringed at first..and then it hit me

no he's right..The dude has more in common with say the Opium dealing war lords of pre world war two China, Lucky Luciano and Dutch Shultz or Al Capone then he does say Genghis Khan or other steppe conquerors. His organization was almost set up like one no less  




Countless Insect said:


> Now I know it's vogue and rather truthful to say that the Late Roman Army was a shadow of its former glory during the Hunnic invasion, but the aside from the Foederati; aren't the few remaining "true" Legionnaires quite effective still? I mean, they might have been treated like crap by the ruling classes; but there are those who claim that they weren't really as shit as most say, confusing them for or bunching them up with the Foederati, who were by all accounts practically massive warbands of barbarian rabble with a minority of rather deadly if impetuous nobles no different from the Celts that the Romans conquered during the early years of the Principate.



Well  I mean the east existed at all after this period was a testament to what was left of the original Roman military and its infrastructure, IIRC the Catholic church at the time also seemed to take some of them in and that probably helped them survive the fall all the better. Those who still had it, still had it

Problem is I don't even know how many "traditional' Roman legions remained around at that point and if they were even funded properly...Things went real bad.

Not that it was an indictment against whatever of the traditional forces were kept around, that wasn't the intention of my post at all.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Gig (Jan 20, 2017)

Countless Insect said:


> You also forget that the Total War series is extremely simplified and focuses solely on the military aspect while giving a few nods over to the whole business of managing an empire.


Rome total war 1 has the bronze age old kingdom egyptian army as a playable faction, when egypt is supposed to be a hellenic state during that time period

Reactions: Agree 1


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## NostalgiaFan (Jan 20, 2017)

Gig said:


> Rome total war 1 has the bronze age old kingdom egyptian army as a playable faction, when egypt is supposed to be a hellenic state during that time period


As well as Viking Era Berserkers playable to the Germans(who act like a united faction instead of a confederation of tribes). 
I fucking love the Total War series but you have to be all kinds of retarded to believe it can be used to gather information and facts to historical discussions(unless you are discussing what is not accurate).


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## Countless Insect (Jan 20, 2017)

Gig said:


> Rome total war 1 has the bronze age old kingdom egyptian army as a playable faction, when egypt is supposed to be a hellenic state during that time period


But that's what Roma Surrectum and Europa Barbarorum are for!

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Gig (Jan 20, 2017)

NostalgiaFan said:


> As well as Viking Era Berserkers playable to the Germans(who act like a united faction instead of a confederation of tribes).
> I fucking love the Total War series but you have to be all kinds of retarded to believe it can be used to gather information and facts to historical discussions(unless you are discussing what is not accurate).


I like that rome (a unified state) is split into 3/4 factions while, Gaulic and Germanic tribes who where divided into multiple tribes are portrayed as a unified nation

Reactions: Funny 1


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## NostalgiaFan (Jan 20, 2017)

Gig said:


> I like that rome (a unified state) is split into 3/4 factions while, Gaulic and Germanic tribes who where divided into multiple tribes are portrayed as a unified nation


If there is one thing Rome 2 did better then the original it was portray the factions more accurately.


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## Mider T (Jan 20, 2017)

epyoncloud said:


> Are you denying the Huns raped the roman empire, isn't that kind of like denying the Holocaust?


Lol @ this dumb shit.

Reactions: Agree 1 | Funny 1


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