Thread: The Fall Of Rome?

Originally Posted by leibstandarte10

Internal corruption and decadence and Attila the Hun.

Attila was persuaded NOT to continue his advance on Rome after having a private meeting with the Pope of the time. No one knows what the conversation was about or what kind of a deal was made. It's just that at the end of the meeting Attila withdrew -- for a year.

By the following year he was planning again to attack Rome. But he died of a nosebleed before they even began the march.

Originally Posted by Amled

Dio does mention that Claudius used Batavian troops during the Conquest of Britain, but if they were categorized as auxiliaries or regular legionnaires I don't remember.
There are a number of exhibits, documents arrowheads and the like, in the British Museum, that point to there being non-Roman troops posted there.

What do you mean by "non-Roman". Non Italian? Or a non citizen. Come on they had an African Emperor, one who spoke Latin with a Carthegenian accent and Arab, so the later would be more correct.

Originally Posted by sparten

What do you mean by "non-Roman". Non Italian? Or a non citizen. Come on they had an African Emperor, one who spoke Latin with a Carthegenian accent and Arab, so the later would be more correct.

Oops...you're quite correct correct, the latter of course!

The point of using auxilleries was that they knew the lay of the land, were acclimatized and they could well be motivated against whatever adversary the Romans were fighting then. Syrian Archers and the unspellable Heavy Cavalry one can understand, the British afterall use Gurkhas even now, but the point of using say, tribemen from Arabia Petrea in Britannia, unless of course they were legionairres any way? Using them against the Persians would be pretty useful, good motivation but in Britain?

Originally Posted by sparten

The point of using auxilleries was that they knew the lay of the land, were acclimatized and they could well be motivated against whatever adversary the Romans were fighting then. Syrian Archers and the unspellable Heavy Cavalry one can understand, the British afterall use Gurkhas even now, but the point of using say, tribemen from Arabia Petrea in Britannia, unless of course they were legionairres any way? Using them against the Persians would be pretty useful, good motivation but in Britain?

You’re probably correct, in that once the conquest was over and you had a pool of ”Romanised” indigenous locals they would be preferable to use as auxiliaries.
As for using units like the Syrians, and Cataphracts (no trouble spelling it, but it sprains the tongue pronouncing it,) wouldn’t you think that they would be used as assault troops, rather then in garrison?
Apropos “out-of-place” units, at the British Museum they had a Berber camel saddle dated back to early A.D., they had retrieved from some dig or the other. Now it was probably something someone had brought over as a souvenir. But still can’t you imagine the sight of a Berber Camel unit charging a line of blue painted Britons or Picts? It would have scared the crap out of ‘em!

We know that legionairres came from all over the empire. So if you find a piece of Mesopotamian pottery say, most likely a soldier from that region brought it over to remind him of home.

Originally Posted by Amled

As for using units like the Syrians, and Cataphracts (no trouble spelling it, but it sprains the tongue pronouncing it,) wouldn’t you think that they would be used as assault troops, rather then in garrison?

Well I always end up pronouncing and thus spelling them as "Cataracts"!
Syrian Archers seem to have been an inherent part of the Roman ORBAT from almost as soon as Pompey conquered that area. Finding them and to a lesser extent th C A T A P H R A C Ts would be unsurpising anywere.

IF you had to pick the biggest reason, I would pick that the roman government ignored the peasants too long and failed to take to include them as part of the government.

If they did, the goverment would have been more resilient to the internal factors and be able to change without destroying itself.

It was getting too expensive to field well trained professional Roman legions and thus the Romans didn't have the stamina anymore.

Originally Posted by sparten

Syrian Archers are not a very good example, they were for the most part standard in the Roman ORBAT anywere the empire went.
Did'nt local auxilleries serve only in their own province while , legionairres served only elsewere?

I take the following from a book of mine, Roman Warfare , by Adrian Goldsworthy pp 126 - 127.

The Romans had always relied on foreign troops to supplement the numbers of the citizen legions. These included allied troops as well as the followers of tribal war-leaders whose loyalty was to their chief whether he fought with or against Rome. It was particularly common to raise contigents from the area in which the army was campaigning, both because it was easy to do so and also because such troops were usually suited to the conditions of local warfare. Caesar relied largely on Gallic and German cavalry during the conquest of Gaul, but, although effective in battle, these proved poor scouts since reconnaissance played a minor role in tribal warfare. The early Principate saw the creation of the regular auxilia, foreign troops uniformed and paid by Rome, and trained to the same standards of discipline as the legions. The men were long-service professional soldiers like the legionaries and served in units that were equally permanent. Unit titles were usually taken from the ethnic group or tribe from which it was first raised. Most auxilia served far from their place of origin, and little or no effort was taken to draw new recruits from the original source. Therefore auxiliary units tended to become of mixed nationality, although long-service in a province might cause one group to predominate. The language of command and of the unit's administration was always Latin, which made it relatively easy to absorb a mixture of nationalities in a single regiment.

Sparten,

It appears that auxilia sometimes stayed in their place of origin, such as Caesar's Gallic and German cavalry, or went abroad.

The auxilia were never grouped into units of similar size to the legions. The infantry were formed in cohorts and the cavalry into similarly sized alae. Each cohort or ala was independent, with its own commander, an equestrian usually holding the rank of prefect. A number of auxiliary units were attached to a legion, and prolonged service together raised the efficiency of such forces, but there was no standard complement of auxilia permanently supporting every legion. The smaller size of auxiliary units made it much easier to shift them from one area or province to another. The mixed cohorts (cohortes equitatae), which included both foot and horse in a ratio of about four to one, were especially suited to garrison and local policing activities. The auxilia provided a more flexible and cheaper supplement to legionary numbers. They also supplied the army with some troop types in which the legions were especially deficient, in particular supplying large numbers of very good cavalry. Auxiliary infantry also included units of archers and slingers, but the traditional view that that auxiliary foot were lighter equipped and fought in looser order than the legions is mistaken. The typical auxiliary infantryman wore scale or bronze scale or mail armor of similar weight to the legionary cuirass and a bronze helmet, carried a flat, oval shield and was armed with a gladius and a javelin or spear. This is not the equipment of a nimble skirmisher. There may have been a few cohorts with lighter equipment who fought as skirmishers, but we have no direct evidence for this. The vast majority of auxiliary cohorts fought in close order in a way not markedly different from legionaries.

Originally Posted by RustyBattleship

Attila was persuaded NOT to continue his advance on Rome after having a private meeting with the Pope of the time. No one knows what the conversation was about or what kind of a deal was made. It's just that at the end of the meeting Attila withdrew -- for a year.

By the following year he was planning again to attack Rome. But he died of a nosebleed before they even began the march.

From J.B. Bury's History of the Later Roman Empire p 296:

Attila survived his Italian expedition only one year. His attendants found him dead one morning, and the bride whom he had married the night before sitting beside his bed in tears. His death was ascribed to the bursting of an artery, but it was also rumored that he had been slain by the woman in his sleep.

Bury takes this account from Jordanes, and the woman's name was Ildico.

Originally Posted by Blademaster

IF you had to pick the biggest reason, I would pick that the roman government ignored the peasants too long and failed to take to include them as part of the government.

However, you must consider the fact that Rome had never been a true democracy. Truthfully, the Republic did incorporate more opinions of the lower classes, if only barely. Nonetheless, the Empire and Republic prospered even when the peasants were not involved in the process of power. I don't think the fall of Rome was due to a lack of democracy, since many peasants were so illiterate that they would have no better idea of how to run the Empire than an emperor. Perhaps if the Senate (which was not a democratic body) had been revitalized, the Empire could have done better. Anything would have been preferable to the long and terrible reigns of Honorius and Valentinian III!

Originally Posted by Blademaster

It was getting too expensive to field well trained professional Roman legions and thus the Romans didn't have the stamina anymore.

I also have that impression, but I can't back it up with any documents. I'll have to do research on that point.

It was a process not an event.
I think if the Arabs had not come on the scene, the Empire would have survived, recovered from the war with Persia and lasted longer then it did. I know Bulgaroctonus (and others) hold it to have lasted till 1453, but I believe that is pushing it a lot. I would say the "Roman" Empire died somewhere between Battle of Yarmuk and the Seige of Constantinople.

Arabs were not the only cause of the demise, but they sure hastened it.

It was a process not an event. I think if the Arabs had not come on the scene, the Empire would have survived, recovered from the war with Persia and lasted longer then it did. I know Bulgaroctonus (and others) hold it to have lasted till 1453, but I believe that is pushing it a lot. I would say the "Roman" Empire died somewhere between Battle of Yarmuk and the Seige of Constantinople.

It was the Turks who finished off the Empire. They might have survived if the Turks had not come on the scene.

Originally Posted by Bulgaroctonus

However, you must consider the fact that Rome had never been a true democracy. Truthfully, the Republic did incorporate more opinions of the lower classes, if only barely. Nonetheless, the Empire and Republic prospered even when the peasants were not involved in the process of power. I don't think the fall of Rome was due to a lack of democracy, since many peasants were so illiterate that they would have no better idea of how to run the Empire than an emperor. Perhaps if the Senate (which was not a democratic body) had been revitalized, the Empire could have done better. Anything would have been preferable to the long and terrible reigns of Honorius and Valentinian III!

I think the bolded and italicized word above is a key to one of the major reasons for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

Up until the 2nd century, Roman life was largely urban. That was what their republic was based around, and that feature did last longer than the Republic. Over the course of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the population gradually shifted to become much more agricultural. When that population began to decline, the measure used to counter-act a declining labor force in agriculture was serfdom. And so the peasants of the later Roman Empire were just that, peasants. They were not citizens anymore, and they weren't too concerned with who ruled over them.

So whereas before they had been citizens of Rome, working their own land and willing to fight to preserve the way of life that was distinctly Roman, in the 4th and 5th centuries they became indifferent. And that was what enabled the Empire to fall to outsiders. The vitality of a motivated populace (and the discipline that was funnelled into) was what built the Empire, and a loss of that vitality and motivation was what caused it to end.

Originally Posted by sparten

It was a process not an event.
I think if the Arabs had not come on the scene, the Empire would have survived, recovered from the war with Persia and lasted longer then it did. I know Bulgaroctonus (and others) hold it to have lasted till 1453, but I believe that is pushing it a lot. I would say the "Roman" Empire died somewhere between Battle of Yarmuk and the Seige of Constantinople.

Arabs were not the only cause of the demise, but they sure hastened it.

I agree that the Arab invasion of the Levant was a great blow to the Empire. Had Muhammad never existed, or at least had his armies never gained victories in Palestine, the Roman Empire would have held on in the East. The Emperor of the time, Heraclius, had proved himself eminently talented in his defeat of the Persians outside Constantinople in 626 and a year later at Nineveh in 627. Heraclius could have certainly pressed his advantage against the Persians and strengthened Roman power in the East.

Imagine that!

Alas, it was not to be. Troung is also correct that it was ultimately the Turks that ended the Roman Empire. Their assault came in two main periods. The first was the campaigns of the Seljuk Turks, who were able to inflict severe defeats on the imperial army at Manzikert in 1071 and Myriokephalon in 1176. If the Comnenian Emperors had succeeded in driving the Turks from the Anatolian plateau in the 12th century, I think the Empire would have done very well.

The second period of Turkish aggression was the Ottoman expansion that began in 1299 AD with the rise of Osman I. Of course, it was this final wave of Muslim expansion that ended the Empire. The Fourth Crusade was also responsible for the weakness of the Empire in this period, since the Latins had rerouted the trade routes to the Italians' advantage and very much compromised the strength of the Empire with their capture of Constantinople in 1204. I don't know what the Empire could have realistically done to stave off the Ottoman Turks, since the Empire had little strength left at that point.