Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 8, 2010

The Roman–Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between states of the Greco-Roman world and two successive Iranian empires. Contact between Parthia and the Roman Republic began in 92 BC; wars began under the late Republic, and continued through the Roman, Sassanid and Byzantine empires. Although warfare between the Romans and the Iranians lasted for seven centuries, the frontier remained largely stable. Neither side had the logistical strength or manpower to maintain such lengthy campaigns so far from their borders, and thus neither could advance too far without risking stretching their frontiers too thin. Both sides did make conquests beyond the border, but the balance was almost always restored in time. The resources expended during the Roman–Persian Wars ultimately proved catastrophic for both empires. The prolonged and escalating warfare of the sixth and seventh centuries left them exhausted and vulnerable in the face of the sudden emergence and expansion of the Caliphate, whose forces invaded both empires only a few years after the end of the last Roman–Persian war. Arab Muslim armies swiftly conquered the entire Sassanid Empire, and deprived the Eastern Roman Empire of its territories in the Levant, the Caucasus, Egypt, and the rest of North Africa. (more...)

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