From: phs172m@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (Stephen Harker)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: Re: Chinese Meet Romans?
Date: 24 Aug 92 09:02:09 +1000
Organization: Physics Department, Monash University, Australia
Summary: Repost

In article <1992Aug20.024445.16020@cactus.org>, rlp@cactus.org (Robert Platt) writes:
> A few years ago I attended an exhibit of artifacts of the 1st emperor
> of China, including a very small part of the Terra Cotta army with
> which he was buried.  The first emperor believed he ruled the whole
> universe because he had conquored all of the inhabited areas that
> were known to Chinese civilization.  He fielded armies of up to a
> million men that included both infantry and cavalry.  The Chinese
> possessed crossbows capable of penetrating metal armor.  Notes
> from the exhibit stated that had the Chinese and Roman empires met,
> the Romans would have been easily defeated.   I find this very credible,
> the Chinese were superior in weapons, tactics, logistics, and engineering.

While Tuomas Viljanen writes:
> The question is: Would long thrusting spears, crossbows and chariots have
> been match against the pila of the Legiones ? Legionarii were more than a
> match against pike phalanges, chariots were relatively antiquated at the time
> and the Romans themselves did know the crossbow - arcubalista and the counter-
> measures against it. And though Roman horsemanship is often without reason
> denigrated, the Equites were as match as any cavalry against the Han cavalry.
> Trajan had also catafractarii to deal with the heavies, too. 

	On the question of contacts between Rome and China the following
quote from the UNESCO History of Mankind series, Volume 2 II "The Ancient
World" might be of interest (paraphrased):

	A group of western traders posed as Roman Ambassadors and were
received as such at Ch'ang-an in AD 166. The Chinese became suspicious of
this embassy from King An-tun (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) of Ta-ch'in
(Rome) whose tribute consisted of typically tropical products, quite
evidently picked up in the Malayan peninsula.  (They had got to China by
sea from Malaya).

	On the question of relative army strengths you could argue it
either way which we have seen done by Tuomas Viljanen and Robert Platt. I
don't know whether there is any hard and fast evidence as numbers and
effectiveness of weapons tends to be inflated or reduced by many ancient
and modern authors depending on their personal knowledge or bias and is
hard to guard against.  I suspect that the advantage would depend on the
terrain and the compentency of the commanders.

	Both Rome and China could field large armies and large number have
at times been given for each.  In practice the "real" numbers used in
battle seem to seldom go over 100,000 to 150,000 probably due to control
problems.  Later Chinese dynasties did field much larger armies, but this
was with a much greater population and economic base (T'ang and especially 
Sung dynasties according to MacNeil).  The real performance of crossbows
tends to be limited by their slow rate of fire, certainly the Chinese
armies that defeated the nomads did so largely using composite bows and
later Chinese armies emphasised the composite bows.  

	Roman armies initially had problems against horse archers with
composite bows (Carrhae) which they addressed by using large numbers of
foot archers and smaller numbers of horse archers, as well as other
tactical measures.  However Rome never did have the success against the
nomads that the Chinese did under both Han and T'ang dynasties.  However
Roman legionaries at Tigranocerta proved capable of charging and destroying
cataphract cavalry!  In "The Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome" by Phil
Barker (WREG), some of troops fielded by Trajan in Dacia were 16 Alae,
including 4 Milliaria plus 4 Cohortes Quingenaria Equitata and 4 Cohortes
Milliaria Equitata (Alae = cavalry, equitata = half cavalry), also 4
Cohortes Quingenaria Sagittari and 1 Cohortes Milliaria Sagittaria
(archers), though the source for this is described as controversial.  Still
the Romans did field considerable numbers of cavalry and archers against
even opponents who were not strong in these areas.

-- 
Stephen Harker			phs172m@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Monash University		Baloney baffles brains: Eric Frank Russell
Xref: sparky soc.history:8072 soc.culture.japan:7708