Seek history, Wu Huang! May I ask why the Roman Empire was so powerful that it was often defeated by Parthia and Sassanian Empire?

The Big Three crassus was killed and thousands of Roman soldiers were captured. Even Emperor Dongluo was captured. Every war has failed. It seems that only Trajan has won the battle. After the failure, he got compensation. Is the Roman legion so vulnerable?

During the period of crassus, the power of the Roman Empire was embodied in Caesar. Needless to say, his military achievements. It was because Caesar conquered Gaul that crassus ran around and died.

Parthia and the Roman Empire won and lost each other, not always. If it weren't for the Jewish uprising in the rear of Trajan, maybe Parthia would have been destroyed by him.

The rise of Sassanian Empire was short-lived, but in its heyday, it was called the second Persian Empire. Of course, the Eastern Roman Empire, which was still at sunset, couldn't beat it, but the Sassanian Empire soon declined and then overtook it (in the five wars between Byzantium and Sassanian, Sassanian won the first three times and lost the last two times).

The strength of the Roman Empire was mainly in the pan-Europa era or the era of ignorance, darkness and backwardness. It appeared as an advanced national organization, superior to the scattered European countries at that time (it should be called European ethnic groups or tribes ...), so it was invincible on the Mediterranean coast and the European continent. However, when it comes to the people riding machetes and horses on the Iranian plateau in Central and Western Asia, the rigid and monotonous Roman phalanx bred by the Mediterranean sunshine is no match for Persians and Arabs with developed art of war. The bloated infantry phalanx often loses in the face of Persian soldiers who go up and down like the wind. Persian cavalry was the most powerful Ansimo sword array in the Tang Dynasty, and it was not surprising that the Romans were defeated.

But then again, southern Europe and western Asia have really hated each other since ancient times. Macedonian Empire, Eastern and Western Roman Empire, Parthia, Sassanian, Hittite, Phoenicia, Persia, Greece, Troy, Osman, fighting with each other, greeting each other, very lively. Since Alexander the Great, most wars in southern Europe and western Asia have been defeated by southern Europeans.

Parthia and Sassan are the heirs of the Persian Empire. Although they later declined compared with the ancient Persian empire, they were still very powerful.

Let's start with Pattaya. The most powerful army in the Roman Empire was the Macedonian phalanx. This is an infantry phalanx, and the main force of Pattaya and Sassan's army is cavalry. At any time, the infantry is very weak in the face of the impact of cavalry. ...

Plus Parthia's bow and arrow has a longer range than the Mediterranean, so run, shoot, run and fly a kite. ...

Five large-scale wars broke out between the Sassanian dynasty and Byzantium. The first three Persians won, and the last two Byzantines won, and the outcome was equally divided (Byzantium won first and then lost ...) Besides, Byzantium later abolished the Sassanian emperor and set up a puppet, so the contrast between Byzantium and Sassanian should be even.

It depends on when the Roman Empire was founded and when it began to lose to these two countries frequently. When the Roman Empire was first established, it would certainly not be defeated by a small country. It must be that after years of development, the country began to be arrogant and extravagant, and then it lost ~ ~ ~

The official demise of the Roman Empire (referring to the Western Roman Empire) was in 476, but in 4 10, the Goths had looted Rome and established their own kingdom within the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire existed for a short time, only equivalent to the Han Dynasty in China. Why this happened, and why the Roman Empire could not exist as long as the China Empire, is undoubtedly a very interesting and even worthy of special study. The following are just some thoughts on this issue.

Toynbee distinguishes between two kinds of relationships that may exist in any particular society, one is the relationship between various groups within the society, and the other is the relationship between different societies outside the society. In order to facilitate the discussion, we can start with the foreign relations of the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire was established after conquering the Mediterranean world, and the center of gravity of the Roman Empire has always been in the Mediterranean. Theoretically speaking, just as Rome's initial security was guaranteed by conquering neighboring nationalities, the peace and security of the Roman Empire were consolidated not by passive defense, but by active and tenacious military action. But after conquering the Mediterranean world, the Romans seemed to have neither the necessity nor the ability to continue to conquer the unknown world outside the Mediterranean. Or, as Montesquieu said, in order to control human ambition, nature has set some insurmountable boundaries for every country, beyond which it is doomed to failure.

Therefore, according to Appiah, because the Romans have occupied the best part of land and sea, on the whole, their purpose is to preserve their empire in a cautious way, rather than infinitely expanding their power to rule the poor and unprofitable barbaric tribes. According to Gibbon's research, the policy of preserving the empire rather than conquering the world was decided by Augustus. The advice left by the Roman emperor who founded the Roman Empire to his heirs is to keep the land that seems to be in the front line and boundary drawn by nature for Rome forever: west to the Atlantic Ocean; North to the Rhine and Danube; East to the Euphrates River; The south reaches the deserts of Arabia and Africa.

It is not necessarily the best policy to keep the best land that has been occupied, because it means building a safe and solid imperial border line and never expanding again. If compared with the Chinese empire, it can even be said that this is a rather conservative policy.

When the Chinese Empire rose, its center of gravity was in the Yellow River Basin or the Central Plains, and no major changes have taken place since then. However, the territory of the Chinese empire has been extended from north to south to coastal areas, and the northern territory was mostly maintained in the Great Wall area before the Qing Dynasty. In other words, the Chinese empire did not stay on the land occupied when it rose, but built a great wall-like defense line in the north and gradually expanded in the south until it occupied the whole Chinese headquarters. The resulting cultural circle in China or China has almost never been shaken by nomadic people who invaded the northern border.

In terms of preserving the established empire, the Chinese Empire is undoubtedly more successful than the Roman Empire. Of course, the success of the Chinese Empire is not only the policy of defending the north and attacking the south, but also related to the specific geographical environment of China headquarters. Except that nomadic people in the north may invade China from the north, China has insurmountable natural borders in the other three directions. Although they limited the boundaries and scope of the Chinese Empire within these boundaries, they also became a natural barrier for China. Moreover, until the19th century, China in these territories did not really encounter foreign enemies from other directions, especially from the coastal direction.

The situation in the Roman Empire was obviously different. Different from the headquarters in China, it seems that the Mediterranean world is not a relatively closed world where one nation or country can monopolize, but an open world where several nations or countries can compete with each other. More importantly, in addition to various nationalities, the Mediterranean world has a wider known or unknown world, including Europe, Asia and Africa. If we say that the Chinese empire centered on the Central Plains is almost only under the external pressure of the nomadic people in the north, then the Roman empire centered on the Mediterranean may be attacked by various ethnic groups from northern Europe, Eastern Asia and Southern Africa, regardless of whether it is barbaric or not.

Commenting on the decline of the Roman Empire, Gibbon said that the Romans did not know the danger they faced and how many enemies they had. On the other side of the Rhine and Danube, Europe and Asia in the north are full of countless hunting and nomadic tribes, ready to try. ......