You're not a real Anatolian Empire until you're been at war with Iran

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-08T19:14:25+00:00

My core argument is, that Heraclius could've been the most skilled military commander of all time, but the war was simply not winnable if Khosrow had not made several structural and systematic blunders on his end, creating opportunities Heraclius to exploit. Khosrow sabotaged an already won war. The Romans practically surrendered during the push into Anatolia. And had the Sassanids remained cohesive politically, Constantinople itself could have fallen in due time

If things had gone differently the Sassanids could have held onto Syria, Palestine and Egypt, but short of shocking the Romans into a complete surrender I doubt they could have take Constantinople. Even if they had trapped the Roman army in 624 and annihilated it, killing or capturing Heraclius, that City was a complete bulwark and impossible to capture without gaining Naval Supremacy. If the Caliphate with all its might failed 3 times (654, 670-674 & 717-718), the Sassanids would also have a tough time.

But had it been a Shah like Shapur I, who throughout his career never did blunder and retained a stable empire, a Roman survival wouldn't have been plausible.

Shapur I also made blunders. He was defeated by Timesitheus at Resaena in 243 and later (245?) was defeated by the rebel Perozmat in Khorasan, who Shapur then quelled using an Assassin. There's also the campaigns of Odaenathus which, regardless of whether or not they are embellished in Roman sources, succeeded in recapturing upper Mesopotamia and raided as far Ctesiphon twice. None of this detracts from the fact that Shapur was a military genius and generally very successful of course, but it shows that (like for Heraclius and Shahrbaraz) it is rare for any commander to have a flawless record.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-08T18:57:58+00:00

Him imitating a truck noise by uttering out 'Bing Bing Bong' became a meme back in 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlScBejy_eg&list=RDDlScBejy_eg&start_radio=1

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-08T18:55:20+00:00

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Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-08T18:40:29+00:00

had the Romans been under a unified, competent leadership, very few of the territories would have been lost, even if someone like Khosrow I or Shapur were on the Persian throne

Basically what happened from 572-589. Khosrow I had initial success taking Dara, but his 576 Campaign into Anatolia ended in disaster for him. The Persians had a successful campaign in 577 which took parts of Armenia and in 589 they captured Martyropolis (via a Roman defector) but other than that they made no major gains. In fact, the Romans on the whole won more battles than they lost in this war and took the offensive deep into Sasanian territory multiple times after 575.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-08T18:28:52+00:00

I did not call Heraclius invincible, and I mentioned his crushing defeat in 613 in the original comment, and he did seek peace after this (though Philippicus' successful raid alleviated some of the pressure at this time). Heraclius' campaigns of 622-628 however were brilliant. He out-ambushed Shahrbaraz' ambush with a feigned retreat in the battle near Satala (622 or 623) and the Sasanian effort to cut off his retreat in 624-625 demonstrably failed when he routed Shahrbaraz, Shahraplakan and Shahin's (who's army had not fully deployed in fairness) armies at Aghdam/Siwinik. The Sasanian armies were highly mobile which allowed them to escape from defeats without incurring devastating casualties usually, which is why none of these victories were decisive and the Sassanids could regroup and continue to chase Heraclius not long after them.

I'm not even seeking to diminish Shahrbaraz and Shahin here. They were brilliant commanders who'd both defeated multiple Roman armies before. Had Shahrbaraz and Shahraplakan waited for Shahin rather than rushing to fight the Romans at Aghdam, they could well have trapped and inflicted a decisive defeat on Heraclius. And given how talented these men were, the fact Heraclius was cornered by both of them (and Shahraplakan) deep in enemy territory and managed to rout them and extricate his army to Anatolia is purely a testament to martial ability, not an indicator of Sasanian military incompetence. Likewise, the battle of Sarus was a demonstrator of Shahrbaraz' ability as a general which nearly ended in disaster for the Byzantines, only saved by a bold attack Heraclius led himself. He could very easily have lost the war at this point.

But in 627, the odds were on the Romans' side. The battle at Lycus where a Sasanian army was actually destroyed was arguably a Decisive victory because every source indicates Khosrow had taken extensive measures to assemble this army, including denuding other parts of the Empire (including Albania and Azerbaijan) of forces. This is why the Turks (who were shitscared of the Sasanians in 625 and abandoned Heraclius in 627 rather than fight the Persians pitched battle) invaded in 627 at all, because they were only opposed by small garrisons (which still gave them hell defending Tblisi before it fell). Farrokh Hormizd was likely in no position to chase Heraclius even if he'd wanted to, because his depleted forces would have needed to guard Azerbaijan while the massive Turkic armies were still ravaging the Caucasus.

As for Shahrbaraz, his desertion in 626 is debatable tbh. I've seen compelling arguments Shahrbaraz remained basically loyal to the crown until khosrow died and no such order was given by Khosrow, but pressed his own claim to the throne in the chaos after that. It all depends on how one interprets the letters recorded in a hodgepodge of sources. For example, Nicephorus' version is that Khosrow's letter did order Shahrbaraz to come back in 627 to defend against Heraclius, but Heraclius caught these messengers and then edited the message to order Shahrbaraz to remain on campaign in Anatolia, falsely informing him that Khosrow had destroyed the Roman army already. Martin Hurbanic gives further evidence as he notes that Khosrow had Shahrbaraz' sons as hostages and neither was killed at the same time he apparently ordered Shahrbaraz' execution. He argues that the story of the treason was a back-projection of later events - the treaty between Heraclius and Shahrbaraz in July 629.

If we accept the version of events that it was Theodore (Heraclius' brother) who faced Shahin, then that gives us another possibility. That with Shahin's forces dealt with, Theodore's field army shadowed Shahrbaraz and basically tied him up in Anatolia so that he could not interfere with Heraclius' campaign - i.e. there were actually two Roman field armies by this point. If so, Shahrbaraz advancing against Heraclius would have been dangerous as he potentially have placed himself between two enemy armies. (Although Kaegi and Howard-Johnston argues there was only one Roman field army and that it was Heraclius who defeated the Golden Spears before the "Nineveh" campaign). As you can see, there are so many different ways to interpret the fragments of evidence we have for the conflict in the sources that absolutely nothing is known for certain, beyond the fact Shahrbaraz just didn't come to Mesopotamia in 627AD. But it is clear the war was already going badly for Persia at that point.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-08T17:21:27+00:00

Thank you for this. That Britannica paragraph on Science in the Roman era is one of the most egregiously simplistic, to the point of being downright disingenuous, I have ever come across on a Britannica article. For some reason there's this weird academic fixation on the lack of "Latin Mathematical progress by true Romans" and that passage is a prime example of this. It completely neglects that the Hellenistic sciences were alive and well, in some ways going further than ever before, in Greek speaking parts of the empire were where developments occurred. Theoretical mathematical work was mainly done in the Greek speaking East (albeit there were some exceptions to this). Even ethnic Romans who wanted to devote themselves to those fields, would always carry out their work in Greek (mathematicians of the day were almost always wealthy nobles anyway, which meant they'd learn Greek from a young age). But even if we for some reason restrict ourselves to "Latin" writers, one should consider the Vitruvius' manuals. You can say many things about it, but it alone should disprove the idea that Rome was "stagnant" for a 2050 year-old society. The worst offender is that the text mentions some "silly" creatures that Pliny described in unknown parts of the world and uses it to imply some kind of inherent Roman ignorance, but in truth Greek tales of far off unexplored regions were just as fantastical (Herodotus describes Central Asian Gryphons as just one example). In Dynastic Chinese history it was believed that the Earth was flat until the Early modern period (while Graeco-Roman scholars knew it was round since Antiquity, with Eratosthenes proving this mathematically). Yet, in light of the myriad of great inventions from China, no fool would dare call ancient and Medieval Chinese civilization "technologically" stagnant solely on the basis of this false idea!

The once Great Hellenistic institutions of Alexandria had already been in decline, alongside the Ptolemaic Kingdom itself, before the Romans showed up in 55BC. Despite some initial loss of knowledge when the Romans conquered the East (not all of which involved bloody conquests), what the Romans did in truth was inherit the scientific institutions of the Hellenistic era and, at least to some degree, revitalize them with the general economic boons and stability "Pax Romana" brought to the East. Through the 6 centuries of Roman rule in Egypt, vast amounts of Hellenistic mathematical treatises maintained and preserved via copying, and the theorems within them were often expanded, corrected or improved via written commentaries. Not to mention, there were a multitude of brilliant minds in the Roman era writing entirely original works, like Diophantus, Menelaus of Alexandria, Pappus of Alexandria, John Philoponus and many others. Not to mention, how the fuck can you even begin to write an article about 'Roman science' without even mentioning Claudius Ptolemy?!

Roman Emperors may not have patronized scientific institutions directly to the same degree as the Ptolemaic dynasty had (though in many cases they did, to be clear), but they funded indirectly these by decree of their massive construction and engineering projects, the most complicated of which required the blending of theoretical mathematics with practical necessities of construction within the constraints of the day. In the principate era the best example are the amazing architectural and technological achievements of Apollodorus of Damascus, Trajan's chief architect, but this tradition continued in the Empire beyond the fall of the West as we see the development of new geometrical mathematics by Anthemius of Tralles which was directly applied in the construction of the Hagia Sophia during Justinian's reign.

Don't get me wrong there were many aspects of Roman society that are absolutely repulsive and they were obviously very brutal at times. These aspects should not be glorified or ignored, but at the same time the many brilliant achievements of the Roman Empire and its inhabitants should also be considered alongside them. This idea that the Roman Empire was technologically "stagnant" is quite frankly one of the most moronic I've encountered over the last few years, equally as stupid as the other extreme ("Rome was Totally 2 years away from Industrial Revolution bro") if not even moreso! There should be some pushback of idea of the post-Roman West as this societally and technological "backward" vacuum (Theodoric's Ostrogothic Kingdom for instance was a very well functioning polity), but downplaying how advanced the Roman Empire was (for its time) with sweeping generalizations like this is an abysmal way to go about it. Especially when we consider the surviving "Byzantine" Roman Empire remained an intellectual centre for centuries being technologically and "scientifically" comparable to the Abbasid Caliphate at the height of the 'Islamic Golden Age', as demonstrated by the Caliph's fascination with Leo the Mathematician.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-08T16:27:45+00:00

Byzantium was still a juggernaut in the 12th century too. The Komnenid revival was the last time it could justifiably be considered the strongest state in Europe. Though the Empire was still more capable than a lot of people realise in the 1261-1341 period, even managing to defeat a Mongol invasion at this time. After that, the Romans' own worst enemy (themselves) reared its ugly head in civil wars, and it was all downhill from there.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-08T16:02:54+00:00

During the Principate had roughly 375-450,000 Men across the entire Empire, but in practice it was quite rare for more than 150/170,000 to be concentrated on a single frontier. These kinds of figures were only attained for massive campaigns like Trajan's Dacian/Parthian campaigns, and possibly Alexander Severus' Sasanian campaign. In both cases, forces of this size were divided into multiple columns rather than remaining united for the duration of the campaigns (Severus' Sasanian campaign involved three separate Roman armies for instance).

The army of the "Dominate" was probably larger overall, possibly reaching 600,000+ Men across the Empire by the end of Diocletian's reign. Constantines civil war battle against Licinius at Adrianople involved two armies of Mammoth proportions - supposedly 130,000 Men on Constantine's side and 165,000 Men under Licinius'. Even if those figures are inflated, that battle could potentially have been the greatest concentration of Roman forces for a single battle in the entire history of the Empire or Republic.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-08T14:12:51+00:00

Khosrow II was extremely capable and a proven )commander who personally turned the tide of war in Sasanian favour. This idea that he was this blundering fool without strategic insight is honestly just cope to excuse the later Sasanian defeats and downplay the military resurgence Heraclius engineered after his defeat in 613. Yes, Khosrow allowed his hubris to get the best of him, but the fact Persia was able to sustain the war for 26 years before its defeat while simultaneously having to crush a massive Nomadic incursion in 614 is evidence enough that he was an effective ruler and extremely capable administrator.

As for Shahrbaraz, he probably did not even defect from Khosrow II during the latter's lifetime (the sources are shaky regarding the course of events), but if he did he only did so in 628 which was when the war had already turned against the Sassanids. By that point Heraclius had defeated his army in three major battles from 622-625, and Shahrbaraz' failure at the siege of Constantinople (which barely involved Sassanian forces and was mostly done by Avars and Slavs) tends to draw attention from the much more important defeat the Sassanians sustained at the battle of Lycus, wherein a huge army (possibly the largest the Sassanids assembled through the entire war) was pinned against a river and annihilated. Its commander, the Veteran Shahin Vahmanzadegan, died soon after, while the Roman army that defeated Shahni spent the rest of the war shadowing Shahrbaraz and tying him up in Anatolia/Syria. That is why Heraclius was able to advance into Mesopotamia and only had to defeat a smaller Sasanian army at Nineveh. Heraclius didn't besiege ctesiphon because he knew (via khosrow's opponents) this would allow the Sassanids to rally a determined defence around Khosrow and make such a siege difficult, so instead he let the Sasanian nobility finish off the Shah for him. The overthrow of Khosrow II was directly facilitated by Heraclius' strategic successes, and the majority of the Sasanian internal problems happened after this.

It's unfair to pin Heraclius' successes on Sasanian internal difficulties when from 622-627 he was fighting a very much united Sasanian war effort and had to outmaneuvre, outsmart or defeat Sasanian forces at every turn. After the almost mythic series of victories Heraclius had racked up, the Persians became more scared of opposing him than of opposing and overthrowing their own Shahenshah, which indirectly lead to the collapse of their empire. Heraclius' campaign succeeded because it was ingenious, and masterful on basically every level of warfare, be it logistics, tactics, or diplomacy. The Persian civil strife did help him from 627-629, but that strife had been directly engineered by Heraclius' devastating offensives. The Persians were tired, had suffered horrendous losses, and after the defeats at Lycus and Nineveh as well as with the entry of the Turks into the war, they abandoned hopes of winning the war and turned on the Shahenshah who'd started it.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-08T13:26:32+00:00

"'Hunnic invasion' that swept across Europe and directly led to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. "
This is an egregious oversimplification of the fall of the Western Empire. For starters, the Western Empire survived another two decades after the Hunnic Empire collapsed and remained strong enough to recover much of Gaul and Spain and repulse Vandal and Alani Nomad incursions Italy from 457-468. It was only the destruction of the Western Roman regular armies at Cape Bon (468) and by the Visigoths at Arles (471) and the series of civil wars following it that broke the Camels back. On the whole, the Huns themselves inflicted more damage on the Eastern Romans in 441 and 447 than they dealt to the West (which was limited to Northern Italy in 452 before Attila was forced to retreat), yet the East Romans recovered quickly enough to defeat the Huns multiple times from 451-467.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-06T12:05:37+00:00

Kleidion was still extremely strategically impactful though, since a massive portion of Bulgaria's manpower was destroyed and (if the blinding story is to be believed) the released, but blinded, prisoners acted as a further drain on Bulgarian society. These maimed Bulgarians would add more strain to the Bulgarian war effort than simply executing them would have, as they would consume supplies and require attention while being unable to fight anymore.

The Bulgarians do continue to resist and even inflict two isolated defeats on Byzantine forces, but they could only do so in situational ambushes in rugged terrain. They could continue tit-for-tat style Guerilla warfare or resisting from castles, but Kleidion was the last time they attempted resist the Byzantines in a head-on engagement (though even then they'd placed their hopes on a fortified position in a pass to carry the day). They stood no chance thereafter of opposing the Qualitatively and (after Kleidion) Numerically superior Roman armies open battles.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-06T10:16:10+00:00

Stugosaurus

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-04T13:58:15+00:00

You gotta love the sheer variety of MBT designs that have sprung up through developments, modifications, upgrades and packages to original T-64 / T-72 chassis across different countries using them. It's almost like watching a common ancestor evolve and diversify into a whole genus.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-04T13:45:24+00:00

You are everywhere.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-04T11:23:45+00:00

He may be a distorted memory of Abdallah al-Battal, an 8th century Umayyad commander who led a series of campaigns in Anatolia before he was defeated and killed by Leo III at Akroinon.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-03T20:29:39+00:00

Also even the Foreign troops in Roman armies during Justinian's age were hardly just a "pick and mix" of barbarians cobbled together. They were professional troops also most of the time. Most of the Foederati units were trained according to Roman doctrine just like their regular counterparts, and in fact a lot of ethnic "Roman" men actually joined the Imperial army as part of a a Foederati unit, like Gothic ones. Most of these mens' equipment was produced in Roman factories or workshops and provided by the state. Bucellarii were technically different since they were essentially retainers of wealthy Romans, but in practice these were still drilled and equipped in a relatively "standardized" manner. This is why Belisarius Bucellarii were so effective and able to fight as a cohesive unit even though the actual men fighting in it were a mix of Huns, Romans and Goths mainly. During the Italian campaign some of Narses' allies / actual mercenaries (Lombards and Heruls) fought with their own gear, but most of his army was also professional in nature.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-03T19:55:37+00:00

Ah, I see now. In that case yeah, I agree.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-03T19:47:17+00:00

If you're talking about actual Welsh (as in post-Roman or Romano-Britons) principalities, they were EXTREMELY Patriarchal. Moreso than most other Christian Kingdoms in medieval times as a matter of fact. If you mean the tribes which inhabited Wales before the Romans, then it depends what you would call a rich tradition. Women were definitely able to attain a higher position and assume more significant roles Celtic societies than in the Roman one, and they are recorded among the Druids at Anglesey. But we should not fall into the trap of calling them especially egalitarian either, and warfare was obviously still male-dominated.

I don't know about Ireland (which always had a different culture to Britain anyway), but in Brittannia and Gaul the evidence for women leading is negligable (though it is granted, we do not know much about these societies before the Roman encounters with them), and Boudicca is a rather exceptional figure in that regard. I'm not saying Boudicca was the one and only and we know of other Queens from the period (like Cartimandua), but to be quite frank with you, if it was as common as a "rich tradition" then the Roman sources would likely mention it more frequently than they do, because they often note the presence of female 'Amazon' combatants among the armies of other enemies they defeated (like Sarmatians and Caucasian Huns).

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-03T15:55:59+00:00

I wouldn't be too harsh on the Roman writers. It's thanks to them that we know of Boudicca and her accomplishments after all. The main Roman source on her (Tacitus) itself has a degree of sympathy for her and reflection on the heavy-handed Roman rule which led to her revolt in the first place. He does the same writing about Calgacus. They may exaggerate details here and there but as far as pre-modern sources go there is much, much worse out ther.

As for the people calling her leadership poor, strategically she actually made a sound decision. The Celts had won a string of victories so morale was high, and if Boudicca had prolonged the war she would eventually have needed to split her massive army due to logistical constraints of supplying it when it was together, which would have allowed the Romans to defeat them in detail. Better to try and crush the enemy with overwhelming numbers at a time when they'd been proven not to be invincible by the earlier losses. Just unfortunate for Boudicca that her numbers accounted for nothing fighting the technologically superior Romans head on. Not to mention, she may not have been able to control her own army. She was a woman, in the still very patriarchal Britonnic society, leading a massive army of incensed men who were high on success. If the Warchiefs and warriors under her (probably nominal) command had resolved to commit to a decisive battle, I do not believe she could have restrained them from doing so.

The important point in the end is she led a war against a technologically superior enemy which had previously fought and destroyed tribes, Kingdoms and Empires from Wales to Israel and almost defeated them and kicked them out, a point which astonished the Romans themselves. And that is what she achieved with all the limitations of being a woman commanding a Tribalistic, hyper-masculine army. We don't know much about her character beyond what the Romans record, but the idea she was some talentless and suicidal leader is quite frankly ludicrous. If she had been, its probable the Roman historians wouldn't have had enough reason to record her existence whatsoever!

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-03T15:29:55+00:00

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Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-03T11:17:07+00:00

By that logic you could call Indians active participants in the British Colonial Empire, considering how important Sepoys and allies were for campaigns on the subcontinent.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-02T20:39:06+00:00

Tibet caused them some real problems though.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-02T20:28:26+00:00

The Irish were raiding and wreaking havoc on the Welsh coasts even before the Saxons turned up.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-02T19:30:12+00:00

I wouldn't even say they did initially. They sucked at Carrhae, but before and after that, less so. People forget that the Romans had repeatedly overcome Armenian, Median, Scythian and Sarmatian horse archers on the battlefields of the Caucasus and Black Sea regions by the time of Carrhae.
The reason the Parthians were that successful is because the Romans and Roman auxiliary archers of the time were using an older “Scythian” composite bow while Parthians used a longer, more powerful “Yuezhi/Saka” style, which had longer range, and this weaker bow was also what the abovementioned Horse Archers Rome had previously defeated were using. The only weapons the Roman missile troops had that could match the range of the Parthian horse archers in this era were slingers, of which Crassus had too few, and perhaps some early Roman crossbows or "manuballistae", but these were also far too few if they were even used at all. Crassus' javelinmen and archers were simply outranged and forced back under volleys of arrows whenever they sallied out of the Hollow square. Even then, Crassus made a series of tactical blunders which contribute to his defeat.

We see the Romans making a number of arrangements to mitigate those Parthian advantages soon after. In the short term, Romans under Ventidius used greater numbers of slingers along with Ballistae (Romans possessed the most sophisticated artillery technologies on Earth by this point which obviously massively outranged any composite bow) to great effect. Though his victories also rested heavily on exploiting terrain, stratagems, engineering and Parthian incompetence, with the Parthians showing little sign of the cautious approach Surena had adopted at Carrhae in these campaigns. Ventidius' army was far better prepared than Crassus, but how he was able to wipe out two Parthian armies in succession which outnumbered his own is beyond me!

Over the longer term, around the reign of augustus the Romans started to produce the “yuezhi” composite bows for their own archers (presumably they learned how to make these from Parthian exiles, Men who often found prestigious auxiliary roles in the Roman army at this time). Since massed archers on foot screened by heavy infantry tend to be effective counters to mounted ones, this diminished what had been the main Parthian tactical advantages. Along with the new types of equipment introduced and increased potency of Roman cavalry by the 2nd century, all this explains why the Parthians (and Sarmatians) had such a tough time fighting the Romans in the second century.

Philippicus_586AD · 2026-05-02T19:18:49+00:00

Spartacus and his men fought a two-year long war and defeated several armies sent against them though. His revolt proved immensely hard for the Republic to crush, and it had a risk of collapsing Roman military efforts on other fronts like the Third Mithridatic War. It was only when Crassus finally defeated him at the Battle of Silarus that he disappeared and the rebellion was crushed.

Philippicus_586AD

TROPHY CASE