The Roman empire was nothing special and was not that great

D.I. they held the Mediterranean and part of England that's it. At the same time even though they held a larger percentage they did not hold as many people as the British empire. They had most of Europe's civilized nations and the top crescent of Africa not the worlds. http://www.google.com... D.II. The link above will show you a Greek sword that is nothing like the Roman/Spanish gladius the Romans stole the Spanish sword then used it in a Greek phalanx formation these were not Roman they were just stolen from other civilizations also the maniple is almost the exact same thing just with a twist stolen from the Samnites during the Samnite wars also the groups forming the checkered pattern of the maniple were in a phalanx formation. As far as the way the Romans fought and the boats they used those were almost completely Greek triremes and as far as boarding the ship that's what the triremes were designed for boarding the enemy boat wasn't it anything new in Thermopylae the Athenian triremes guarding the naval pass did just that crashed into and boarded Persian ships as they were designed to do and always had done its actually a newer idea for ships to shoot at each other. Now for Roman cavalry it was just Macedonian Companions and the Greeks were better with it. http://en.wikipedia.org...(military_unit) As my opponent clearly shows the Romans stole the Greek religion and gave them different names with more military personalities and more order also the Romans tried to wipe out the Christians before they became them. With architecture my opponent agrees they used Egyptian columns and also a lot of Greek architecture. D.III. The Greeks did not collapse because of costly Peloponnesian war though that made them weaker it did not destroy them they were conquered by Macedon. The Egyptians collapsed thanks to a un advanced military system. And even after the division of the empire lived until Rome came along. D.IV. as far as cavalry please revert to D.II. But for siege equipment their was one piece of equipment used by only to civilizations at the time the ballistic invented by Macedon stolen by Rome. The Second Punic War a victory? Hannibal destroyed Rome time and time and time again best of these was Cannae the Romans starved Hannibal out and then attacked him and his horribly weakened force there was no way Hannibal could win that battle he was out numbered horribly. Also Carthage itself was weak from a minimal navy limiting their trade. Also Magnesia was luck almost completely pure luck. From here my opponent states about the Romans taking Gaul and Britain etc. But really that's not a huge accomplishment they beat a bunch of barbarians who were using outdated weapons were outnumbered and many times surrounded and still many times one of which being the Tornberg Forrest when an entire Roman legion was wiped out. Here my opponent states that the Romans failed because they only had mercenaries this is false the Romans still had a fairly large army also few people were willing to join because if they did survive then their family was gone their home was in ruins and they were broke so no one wanted to join. A.I. What allowed Rome to do this was they were using others technologies. A.II. Once again Rome tried to kill the Christians before they joined them and only joined in its last breaths Christianity would have been fine. A.III. The Roman Republic collapsed early on and caused power struggles for Rome internally for the rest of the empires lives and the Roman Republic was full of mini dictatorships this was shown well in The Second Punic War when politicians were commanding on the battlefield instead of professionally trained generals and the Roman politicians were terrified of making generals and only did it when they were in their darkest hours in fear of someone becoming the king which ended up happening anyway. Conclusion As I have shown Rome has had few victories and the only ones they had were thanks to stolen technologies.