Did the East defeat the West again then? | EUROtoday

“Romani semper vincunt”, “the Romans always win”, is what an unnamed legionary carved into the stone of a fortification in what’s now Jordan within the second century AD. At that point, the south-eastern border of the Roman Empire ran there. In reality, the Romans had virtually all the time defeated their opponents within the east since they’d gained a foothold in Asia Minor three centuries earlier as heirs to the Hellenistic Empire of Pergamon, and their few defeats, such because the downfall of a military led by Crassus at Carrhae towards the Parthians in 53 BC, had been shortly forgotten. For virtually half a millennium, Rome's legions and later the Eastern Roman border troops managed the massive area between the Bosporus and Euphrates, the Black Sea and the Libyan Desert, earlier than their rule all of the sudden collapsed beneath the onslaught of the Arab cavalry armies united beneath the banner of Mohammed.