Rome Vs China not so far fetched?

[Destraex]

I refer to the recent post about total war's next game being a twin pack of rome and then china

Rome VS Han China not so far fetched.

I have recently purchased a book called The Armies and Enemies of Ancient China by John P Greer

It details an attempted invasion of Rome by the Chinese.

In 97AD Pan Ch'ao had the largest empire in terms of land mass apart from Rome.
Pan Ch'ao allocated a portion of his army to defeat this additional kingdom called Rome.
The Chinese called Rome (the capital) Ta-ts'in.
they approached the captital, acutally approaching Roman held Antioch by mistake. When they crossed the middle eastern expanses
during the approach the Partians told the chinese army (or portion of the army) of the strength of rome . Upon hearing this the chinese
general decided he did not have enough strength to proceed and withdrew.

In 116AD Trajan's march through Pathia to Ctesiphon were apparently one days march from chinese border garrisons.



Another strange find while I read this book was how varied the steppe tribes were. One of the northern steppe tribes that was consistently allied to china during a lot of wars it had with the hun steppe tribes was the Wu Sun. they were notable apparently as they were all fair haired and blue\green eyed.

Apart from this book:

Of course there are also the archeological evidence iirc that had a roman encampment of some type within chinese borders. Thought to be a surviving detachment from the parthian wars or some sort of trading post.

Perhaps the west was not so far from being in conflict with the east as first thought.

[garudamon11]

BS
if such a game is made im SO not buying it . retarded idea and very unhistorical

[Comrade_Rory]

BS
if such a game is made im SO not buying it . retarded idea and very unhistorical

Well first of all he didn't just make it up if it's in a book...

There were interactions between China and Rome anyway.
And there IS a roman styled fort in the middle of some desert in China, infact the people of the town near it celebrate their attachment to rome annually with a festival where they dress in Roman legionaire costumes and it's even said that you can see european influences in the genetic features of some of the people who live there.

It's believed that mercenaries who fought for Rome had moved to China and brought their influences with them.

But it's still a connection.



Don't be so quick to shoot down someones post.

I would buy it and so would thousands of others.

[-Joker-]

BS
if such a game is made im SO not buying it . retarded idea and very unhistorical

Yeah i agree you up 100%

[♔Oggie♔]

How odd. I would never had thought about the Han Chinese trying to invade the Roman Empire. Now that would have been a clash of cultures. I really wonder who would have won and then I do not mean this part about a chinese army invading the Roman Empire for they would have been slaughtered when the Roman legions would have united against the invader. No I mean when two equally large armies would have stand in front of each other, neither one having any advantage over the other, so it would only come down to armour, weapons and strategy.
This would really be interesting. But then again would I like to see this in a total war game? I'm not sure. I guess that in the scenario of a release I will wait and read other forum members reactions and reviews, watch their pictures and video's first and then make a decision.

[♔Oggie♔]

Nice information sir, really interesting. I knew of chinese traders or at least chinese goods which were brought by the Silk route to (and from?) the roman empire. But not of this.
+ rep.

[MorganH.]

Nice find Graham,i remember reading about it as well last year or so,but i never gotten into it really ,;till now that is ! 2nd +rep from me today old stick!!

European features from Chinese Locals



I would love a RTW which would encompass the far East and this way create a Shogun II as well !

It would be awesome for a ''Western'' player to be able to explore the ''China and beyond'' regions with diplomates,traders,spys,mercenaries etc ,But only as long the CAI wont permit the far East Nations to cross the Middle East and vice versa for realistic purposes !

Under that condition i say; a Global R or S TW II ?,yes please !!

[MorganH.]

Tried to find more on archeological evidence,only found this;

A child from Zhelaizhai sits on the town's 'Roman Wall'

[Dynamo11]

So historically, you can play Rome but only just come SLIGHTLY close to fighting China. Man I ain't sold, I prefer smaller maps anyway (M2TW sized with India)

[Sup With That?]

Brigadier Graham basically summed this up perfectly (for which he has received +rep).

I knew vaguely that Rome had made contact with China by the time of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, simply because the Chinese had a name for Rome and it's people. Why people fret so much over it being the Han dynasty, though, is beyond me.

If you ask me the Three Kingdoms era of China is the perfect setting for the next TW game.

Horrific AI, constant CDT...you name the issue, nothing would stop me from buying that game and playing it.

[ProvostGuard]

If I'm not mistaken, recent tests have shown that those individuals are more likely to be related to Caucasians (literally people from the Caucusus regions) than they are to Romans. The historian who originally proposed this theory, Homer H. Dubs, has been criticized and challenged by a number of experts. I think the main problem with this theory is that the inhabitants of Liqian do not look Mediterranean at all.

This is not to say that there were no relations between the Romans and the Chinese. However, it was on such a small scale that it is difficult to imagine that the two of them would have ever gone to war or could have fought anything more than a border skirmish.

If anyone's interested, some of Dubs' articles can be accessed through JSTOR. Of course, you might want to read them with a grain of salt.

God bless.
Jeff C

[Chewie]

There will probably be more people playing a Three Kingdoms TW in China alone than there are people playing NTW/ETW/MTW worldwide right now.

Too bad CA won't make it.

P.S.
I would DEFINITELY buy it.

P.P.S.
I'm not sure if it was the same documentary but some British professor on the show stated had Rome and China met in battle, Rome would have been crushed!

[Legionaire-Shen]

I always hope to see a total war game that contain the entire Europe and Asia.

RTW: Alexander goes east and almost reach China. While Roman build an empire, Han is fighting Xiongnu, possibly the Huns.
MTW: Mongolian defeat Jin and Song, then go west. Turkish people also fight both Chinese and European
ETW and NTW: Russian attack Qing from siberia, British attack from the sea.

[Divi filius]

pffft. bs
and whatever that book says, ctesiphon was NEVER EVER a days march from the han border. thats the biggest bs i´ve ever heard. maybe the author meant a day´s tank ride, since the han planned the invasion with their armored artillery a little to sloppy, thats why it failed.

the whole story sounds very fantastic and is a perfect example how people believe what they read cuz its written and attractive to their mind. like gossip. i study history and find it unbearable that people come up with fairy tales like that out of will to let it be true although any actual scientific source would negate it. but thats not being checked, instead ppl search with google and come up with more hints and speculation. less sensation greed plz.
no offense to forum members.

[Sup With That?]

pffft. bs
and whatever that book says, ctesiphon was NEVER EVER a days march from the han border. thats the biggest bs i´ve ever heard. maybe the author meant a day´s tank ride, since the han planned the invasion with their armored artillery a little to sloppy, thats why it failed.

the whole story sounds very fantastic and is a perfect example how people believe what they read cuz its written and attractive to their mind. like gossip. i study history and find it unbearable that people come up with fairy tales like that out of will to let it be true although any actual scientific source would negate it. but thats not being checked, instead ppl search with google and come up with more hints and speculation. less sensation greed plz.
no offense to forum members.

Please give us some sources that discredit it then.

I'm intrigued.

P.S: Nothing offended me about your post other than your lack of respect for the English language! Nah I'm only playing with ya, ignore me!

[valentinian]

Having two heavy infantry civs slugging it out in the barren western realms of China or modern Afghanistan isn't terribly interesting. Supply lines for both empires would be overstretched. The Romans never fought well against the Parthians partly because of the lack of proper logistical support, and the Han border armies were never interested in going too far away from their forts besides smacking down a few barbarian tribes.

Like shogunate Japan, imperial China has enough material to go without having to jam some Romans into it I love the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, but I'd totally buy a Total War treatment of the Three Kingdoms era. It's got the heroes, generals, strategists, massive armies, spies ... all the elements of a TW series.

[Sup With That?]

Having two heavy infantry civs slugging it out in the barren western realms of China or modern Afghanistan isn't terribly interesting. Supply lines for both empires would be overstretched. The Romans never fought well against the Parthians partly because of the lack of proper logistical support, and the Han border armies were never interested in going too far away from their forts besides smacking down a few barbarian tribes.

Like shogunate Japan, imperial China has enough material to go without having to jam some Romans into it I love the Romance of the Three Kingdoms series, but I'd totally buy a Total War treatment of the Three Kingdoms era. It's got the heroes, generals, strategists, massive armies, spies ... all the elements of a TW series.

Provided they don't have Lu Bu wading through units of 160 infantry then I'll be happy. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is great, but the sheer exaggeration of a lot of the characters makes me cringe (having grown accustomed to modern obsession of detail).

[ray243]

Lost Legion!

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums...p/t-37148.html

I Remember a documentary about this some time ago on discovery, I found it a quite interesting theory!


THE LOST LEGION

"The battle of Carrhae ended 53 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, in the last day of the month of may, with a shameful disaster for the Roman army. Seven legions having the strength of 45,000 soldiers were humiliated and routed by 10,000 Parthian archers.

Carrhae, an ancient biblical city now known as Harran, is located on Turkey’s oriental border.

The commanding officer of this unfortunate expedition was Marcus Licinius Crassus, a 62 years old tribune who had organized that campaign eager to gain glory and wealth, even though he was already one of the most rich and powerful men in Rome.

Perhaps he did it just because he envied the military successes of Pompeius Magnus and Caesar, and foolishly thought that he may equal them, even though Pompeius Magnus and Caesar were war professionals while Crassus was a mere amateur. His only triumph had been the bloody defeat of Spartacus, but achieved with Pompeius’ help: in fact he had too little experience and genius to embark on a large-scale operation abroad.

The Republican government loathed to let him depart with such a sizeable army as there was no real emergency in the east, but Crassus eventually enlisted the support of Pompeius Magnus and Caesar, who did not fail to see the opportunity to free themselves of a powerful competitor whilst waiting to settle the score with each other.

During the hot public debate in the Senate a tribunus plebis named Ateius attempted to stop him. Plutarcus writes that, when he realised that his efforts were in vain and that he would not receive enough supporting votes, he lit a brazier and, while throwing grains of incense into the flames, started to curse Crassus and evoke the infernal gods. Judging from the name and the behaviour of this man, we can guess that he was of Etruscan descent.

Some metropolitan legions grouped in Rome and marched through Campania and then met at Brindisi with the others coming up from Calabria and then left in spite of the stormy sea. Not all the ships reached the other shore.

Crassus had fortune, the blind goddess, on his side during his youth: he came out unscathed from the civil wars; then was implicated in the Catiline conspiracy but bore no consequences; he paid the debts of a spendthrift Caesar whilst being tightfisted himself and with his family.

But things had changed and while aging he became a blunderer, making mistakes which were numerous and serious.

For instance, in a speech to his soldiers he proclaimed that he would destroy a bridge “so that none of you will be able to return”. Noticing their dismayed expression, Crassus corrected himself by explaining that he was referring to the enemy, not his own soldiers.

He ordered the distribution of lentils and salt to the troops, oblivious of the fact that this was the meal offered at funerals.

The worst possible omen occurred when Crassus dropped on the floor the slippery entrails of a sacrificial animal that were placed in his hands by a haruspex. (a soothsayer) Crassus attempted to correct this mistake by crying, “Fear not, despite my age, the hilt of my sword will not slip out of my hand”.

On the day of the battle, Crassus wore a black tunic, instead of the purple one de rigeur for Roman generals. Even though Crassus quickly returned to his tent to change, he left his officers speechless. We can still imagine those officers crossing their fingers (“fare le corna”, forefinger and little finger raised, a very efficacious propitiatory gesture of Etruscan origin) and grasp a certain part of their body.

Moreover, Crassus refused to listen to his veterans who were in favour of marching on the coast and avoid the desert to reach the Parthian capital. Rather, he trusted the arab Arimanes and his six thousand horsemen, who had secretly sided with the Parthians and abandoned the Romans few minutes before the battle.

Crassus, facing the enemy, ordered his soldiers to form a square, packed like sardines, instead of scattering them so that they ended up being slaughtered by enemy arrows before they could even attempt a response.

The Parthians were using reflex bows: those with recurved edges, such as the ones used by Mongols and Chinese. These bows doubled the propulsion power of the arrows enabling them to be shot to a distance of up to 400 metres – so that they were as lethal as Kalashnikov bullets. This kind of bow was a Chinese invention, and was further perfected by the Chinese themselves in the 16th century, with their arrows capable of reaching up to 600 metres.

Seeing the danger, Crassus’ son, Publius, attempted a sally with a thousand gaulish cavalrymen, but half of them were slain and ran through with arrows and the remainder were taken prisoners. The head of Publius was put on a spear and shown to the Romans and to his father, and on this tragic occasion we can see the only glimpse of roman greatness in Crassus, who for a while ceased to act like an old fool, as he told his soldiers to keep up the fight and that the death of his son was only his private injury, not theirs.

At nightfall, Crassus accepted to negotiate with the enemy but was caught instead in a trap and his head was also cut off. 20,000 Romans died that day, 10,000 were taken prisoner, and the remainder managed to escape and return to Italy.

This setback was partially redressed by Marcus Antonius few years later and a diplomatic solution with the Parthians was reached under Augustus in 20 BC when a peace treaty was stipulated and the lost insignia were retrieved. The Parthians agreed on the return of the eagles and the banners of the seven Roman legions, but when Augustus sought the return of the prisoners abandoned in 53 BC they maintained that there were no prisoners to repatriate.

The Parthian practice had always been to shift prisoners caught in the west to Turkmenistan in the east. By so doing they would secure their loyalty against their worst enemies - the Huns - and this is probably what happened to the unfortunate Romans whom the Parthians had caught. The Roman historian Plinius also upholds this theory in explaining the disappearance of so many men.

What happened then to those 10,000 legionaries? No plausible answer could be found for two thousand years until an American sinologist, Homer Hasenpflug Dubs, announced a possible answer during a conference in London in 1955 called, “A Roman City in Ancient China”.

Dubs had found out that in the annals of the Han dynasty there is the record of the capture of a Hun city, by the chinese army, in 36 BC named Zhizhi, now known as Dzhambul, located close to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan.

It made a deep impression on Dubs that the Chinese recorded that they found palisades of tree trunks, and that the enemy had used a previously unseen battle formation at the gates of the city, namely a testudo of selected warriors forming a cover of overlapping shields in front of their bodies in the first row and over the heads in the following rows. These facts are reported in the biography of Chen Tang, one of the victorious Chinese generals, written by the historian Ban Gu
(32 – 92)

Many prisoners were taken during this battle and it appears that the Chinese were so struck by the military skills of those warriors that they moved them, after enlisting, further east, in a place that by imperial decree was named Li-Jien (which sounds in Chinese as the word “legion” and is the name by which the Chinese called Rome) in Gansu province. The legionaries numbered 145, and formed a garrison protecting the inhabitants from Tibetan raids. It was uncommon for Chinese to name their cities after barbarian names: the only two other known cases, Kucha and Wen-Siu, occurred where large colonies of foreigners had settled.

The difficulty was to locate this outpost, as the name Li-Jien is not found on modern maps any longer. Dubs claimed to have found it, and identified the location as Zhelaizhai, not far from Lanzhou.

Subsequent archaeological expeditions made by Chinese, Australians and Americans teams appear to support the choice of this Chinese city even though the smoking gun which may finally solve the mystery has yet to be found.

During excavations in 1993 some fortifications were unearthed as well as a trunk fixed with stakes, possibly dating back to the time of the arrival of the legionaries. The trunk was a kind of hoist used by the Romans to build fortifications, but was unknown in China. It is now on display in the Lanzhou museum.

The physical features of the inhabitants, in some cases, are also strange. A certain Sung Guorong, for instance, seems to confirm the hypothesis advanced by Dubs. He has been interviewed and filmed by several journalists: he is 46 years old, 1.82 meters tall, blond, with an aquiline nose and big blue eyes, and he loudly proclaims that he is a Roman, not a Chinese. He also claims that there are at least 100 people that look like him in the area.

Not that real Romans had such features, but certainly among the Latin legionaries there were some german as well as gaulish auxiliaries. Perhaps one of Mr. Song’s ancestors is one of those 500 gaulish horsemen that were captured during Publius Crassus’ tragic sally. Lanzhou University has conducted DNA tests on the population of Zhelaizhai and findings show that 46% of them have genetic sequences that are similar to Europeans.

They must have been very tough these ancestors of ours to resist, to put down new roots over there, and to avoid falling prey to discouragement. They had left Rome 20 years earlier, abandoning their wives and children. Or perhaps, who knows? they may have called themselves very lucky seeing the fate of their unfortunate companions left on the field. At least they were still alive. They remarried with local chinese women, different indeed from their perfumed and refined Calpurnias, Messalinas and Clodias whom they had left behind in Rome but with them they did built a new house and a new family.

In the future, deeper examinations conducted on the Y chromosome (which is subject to little variation as it is transmitted directly from father to son) will further shed light on this mystery. This will help gather more precise information to assess kinship ties with people now living in Europe, and will help to prove the hypothesis of Dubs.

From the point of view of the artifacts, Roman coins and pottery have been unearthed in Zhelaizhai, as well as an helmet bearing the engraving in Chinese characters, “One of the prisoners”. However, since this village is located along the Silk road, these are
natural discoveries and similar artifacts have been found in distant places such as Vietnam and Korea.

One of Zhelaizhai’s specific characteristics, worth mentioning, is the passion for bulls and tauromachy which continues to this day, and is not shared by neighboring areas.

Local authorities have immediately sensed the tourist potential offered by this possible link and have built a pavilion with Roman marble statues to attract visitors.

The Chinese were aware of the existence of a big empire in the west and sent a legation in the year 97 AD, headed by Kan Ying. This legation arrived in Mesopotamia but, prior to boarding a ship to Rome, the Parthians (always them!) convinced the Chinese that two years of sailing would be necessary to reach the Eternal City.

The Parthians did not have any interest, commercially speaking, in having their two main customers meet, as this would have cut them out of a lucrative trade. For istance it is well-known that Caesar spent a considerable amount for silk bespoke-tailored togas, and that he gave Servilia, his mistress and mother of Brutus, a pearl from the south seas for which he paid 60,000 sesterces and Caesar was a trend-setter, imitated by other wealthy romans. Something like few years ago with Italians imitating FIAT’s chairman Giovanni Agnelli habits and choices.

The naïve Kan Yin trusted them and decided to return back to China empty handed.

Marcus Aurelius in 166 AD sent an official delegation of Romans carrying presents to the Chinese capital of Luoyang and their arrival is recorded in the dynastic annals.

The Chinese however did not respond to the Roman openings, perhaps because of the occurrence in 184 AD of the peasant rebellion known as the Yellow Turbans, which caused a frightful civil war and the fall of the Han dynasty, which had ruled over China for four centuries."

Angelo Paratico


The lost Legions?


http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums...p/t-37148.html

http://people.virginia.edu/~ewg4x/roman_li-chien.pdf

That thesis is quite dated ( it was first published in the 60s if I recall things correctly) and it is a view that has been challenged and disputed by a fair number of historians. To my knowledge, it is not an accepted view today.

[Sebastos Abdes Pantera]

Great post Graham. Everyone who says there not buying, wait untill the game comes out before passing your judgement.

[Destraex]

Well my post ended up in no mans land again.
It was intended as a discussion just like the other discussion about the possible new total war game and how feasible it is. Now its just a hidden post. Lets see how many discuss things now that its here compared to how many have posted while it was in the main forum.

I will offcourse review the information herein when I have more time. I just found it interesting that some sources suggest the east and west were very close to fisticuffs. Close enough for some realistic what if scenarios.

After all, turkey in ETW gets to conquer america if it wants. How historical is that?