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It's not that Rome's armies were less mobile, it's that the priorities shifted to the East and the West became neglected, and most Roman military officers preferred serving in the East rather than be on the frontier….an attitude that had long been present even during Julius Caesar's day.
When you guys say that the use of barbarians in the military was one of the reasons for the decline of Rome, do you only mean at the end? It seems those who integrated in Empire, at least up until the 3rd or 4th century, were quite romanized and very successful at keeping the Germani, Persians, and other enemies at bay.
Up until about the 3rd century Barbarians were Romanized and integrated into Roman society to the point that they thought of themselves as Roman. In the late empire this no longer happened and barbarian contingents were settled within the empire under their leaders on condition that they defend a certain segment of the frontier. In addition, barbarians were no longer taught to fight as legionnaires. They fought as they had traditionally fought, this eliminated a major integrating factor and the barbarians existed as societies within Roman society and thought of themselves as Goths, Gauls, and Huns first and only peripherally identified with the Romans. This is what I mean when I say that Barbarians contributed to the decline of Rome.
OK, I get that. Would you say another difference with barbarians in teh roman army would be that earlier, they didn't (couldn't?) achieve high rank, but later in the Empire they did?Another possible reason: When Diocletian divided the provinces and made dioceses he also made the Italian provinces equal to all the others. Would you say this is a big deal as far as the fall goes? If they kept the central power and authority of the Roman empire in Italy, could that have maybe prolonged the empire? (I don't know how I could fit Constantinople into this theory though)
Another possible reason: When Diocletian divided the provinces and made dioceses he also made the Italian provinces equal to all the others. Would you say this is a big deal as far as the fall goes? If they kept the central power and authority of the Roman empire in Italy, could that have maybe prolonged the empire? (I don't know how I could fit Constantinople into this theory though)
That led to its own issues but I think it could be argued either way as to the effect that splitting up the empire had. After all, the Roman Empire actually continued in the East until the 15th century...not bad, all things considered. Now that you're more familiar with these issues, you might find the thread here somewhat interesting.
Would you say another difference with barbarians in teh roman army would be that earlier, they didn't (couldn't?) achieve high rank, but later in the Empire they did?
I dont now what the rank distribution for non-Romans in the Roman army was either in the early or late empire. I would imagine that even in the late empire non-Romans were not truly given command of large numbers of Roman troops. To the best of my knowledge barbarians were only given command of barbarian troops.Keep in mind here though the in the early empire Romanization was a process that only took one or two generations and the names would be the onyl thing that distuinguished ethnic Romans from Romanized peoples. They were essentially the same in thought and attitudes. Therefor and analysis of promotions based on ethnic names would probably be misleading at best. Simply put, we probably dont have enough information to make an informed analysis of promotion ratios in the Roman army.
I think he's the only one who credited Christianity as one of the contributing factors associated with the fall of Rome, but from my perspective, it was what saved it. 🙂
Gibbon does go into this question in some detail and he points out advantages and disadvantages to the adoption of Christianity. He also prefaces the discussion by pointing out that religion is a matter of the next world not this one, and so the effect of the faith on the fate of the empire ought to be a matter of indifference to the true believer. He needed to bear in mind the sympathies of his audience and the legal prohibition on blasphemy so you can't take what he says as necessarily reflecting his own view. But I think on reflection his actual opinion of the reasons for the fall of Rome in the west was simply that it was overwhelmed by barbarians. He does point out that Christianity led to disunity within the empire and that it diverted resources that could have been used defensively, but he never says that this was enough to tip the balance.
I have never read Gibbon's work, but I thought I had heard that he ascribes a passive attitude to Christians in the empire, which also contributed to the fall. Is this wrong? Surely, there must have been something in his work that resulted in its characterizing as a “blame Christianity” book, even if it does discuss other reasons for the fallInterestingly, one of the most important contributors to the fall - the population drop of the empire in the first few centuries A.D. - likely would have been unknown to Gibbon.
Gibbon gets misrepresented a fair bit. He certainly wasn't a fan of the established church, and although he never admits it I get the distinct impression he was an atheist. But he doesn't portray them as being passive in the sense of turning the other cheek. He just points out that towards the end the church was diverting manpower away from the army, which isn't quite the same. As to the population decrease, he talks about it in some detail in fact. But of course he was relying purely on documentary evidence so he wouldn't know some of the detail we have. And of course, the size of the population of the empire is still a matter of some controversy.I'd recommend you read it, but if you don't have time I have done a review of Decline and Fall that might serve instead. The first video is here, but I haven't quite finished doing the whole book yet.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AD2mKFIs4o
