Quote:
Originally Posted by astralis
in addition to what triple C said,
the "barbarians" on the borders of the empire vastly enriched themselves through trade, and after a while developed both the economy and the military might needed to challenge the empire successfully.
|
While the barbarians did form larger federations, even a group of those federations shouldn't have been enough to challenge the Roman Army (even with distractions in Persia). It is worth noticing that Rome didn't collapse until the barbarian tribes were brought in en masse and used to protect the empire while the Roman army (which was actually Germanic by that point, just not tribal... meaning the Germans in it were integrated and "Roman") was used up in continual civil war. After that the state became powerless against the Germanic tribes because there was no longer an army that was left to be loyal to it.
I think it is interesting that Byzantium eventually collapsed the exact same way, with shortsighted pretenders and Emperors inviting the Turks in to assist in civil war, and eventually running out of Greeks to fight with.