sparten

I agree with you there. But, and this is the imporatant point, I think around the empire underwent a transformation which turned it into a Greek Empire. There is little doubt the the Roman Empire existed after 476 AD and at Yarmuk, but I really don't think it existed at Mazikert or in 1204 or 1453. Maybe at the second seige of Constantinople.
BTW there were three Arab seiges right and I believe the third one actually suceeded, but the Arabs were bribed away.
At that time they were looking east anyway.

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Bulgaroctonus

Although the Empire became increasingly Hellenized, it remained officially a Roman Empire. I have had this dispute with Praxus, whose presence I miss, and he has the same opinion as you do. I will admit that I am a bit of a romantic about the Roman Empire, and I am always looking for its legacy. Also, since my user name is that of a Eastern Emperor, you can see that I have a certain pro-Roman bias.

That being said, there are significant justifications for calling the Byzantine Empire the Eastern Roman Empire. The Empire's native Greek name was Pωμανία Romanía or Βασιλεία Pωμαίων Basileía Romaíon, a direct translation of the Latin name of the Roman Empire, Imperium Romanorum. Likewise, its Emperors were 'Roman' and the inhabitants of the Empire, at least the Greeks, called themselves Romans. Even the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, conqueror of Constantinople, thought that he was the new Roman Emperor.

Secondly, the imperial line was unbroken from Arcadius accession in 395 AD as Eastern Emperor to Constantine XI Dragases' death in the siege of Constantinople on May 29, 1453. That is, there was a continuous political body, although there were significant cultural changes.

As to your questions about the Arab sieges. There were two. The first took place 674-78 AD, and the second was 717-18 AD. In both sieges, the Arabs were driven away with great slaughter. Especially in the second, the imperial navy routed the Muslim fleet and the the Arabs had to beat a long march back to the Caliphate.

sparten

Yes the Roman Empire remained officially, that is true. But then the Persian Empire remaind in some form until 1979, after all they still called themselves, Iran which is similiar to the name Cyrus would have used. And, unlike the Gibbon crowd I don't believe that the Eastern Empire was a failer at all. What I mean is that it undrwent a metmorphisis which transformed it into a very different empire then what existed in in 14AD, 285 AD, 395 AD or even 600 AD. And this is a process above and beyond the normal changes tnat occur with time, England is very different from the England of 1066, but there is still a certain continuity that you can see, one which is missing with the Eastern Empire. When the Hellenic Empire started and the Roman Empire ended I don't know, but I would say Arab Conquests was the cataclysm which was the underlying cause. Without them, not only would the Roman Empire continued with its rule in the levent and North Africa, where incidentally there rule was more or less secure after they defeated the Persians, but they would have been able to concentrate on the west as well, and which I believe Herculius was planning to do.

I know there were two Arab sieges, the second one was an utter defeat for the Arabs after which they began to look more and more East (which culminated in Talas). But there seems to have been another seige or expedition which succeeded or was about to succeed and then the Byzantines agreed to give tribute. I'll confess I had never heard of it until a few days ago, but it seems to be thee reason Irene was giving Harun al Rashid tribute.

Blademaster

The point was that the government ignored the plight of peasants far too long. You need healthy peasants and healthy job sectors for the Romans to collect sustained taxes to maintain armies and government. If you don't take care of the peasants, who you gonna tax then? Because they failed to take in the feedback of the peasants, they gradually lost their tax bases, thus being unable to field more armies as they could before. Before they could field armies because they based their treasury on loot and land. After the Romans had basically conquered whole of Europe worth conquering, there was no loot left. The only way to raise money is to tax the peasants and skilled workers. But Rome's style of governance didn't exactly encourage the trade of skilled workers because they consistently denied the rights of those skilled workers and basically prevent migration up the economic ladder. Therefore, peasants remained poor, and the Romans' avenue of gold supply was in short decline.

If the Romans had started paying more attention to the peasants, they would have been able to create a sustainable tax base from which they could maintain their professional legions and engineers necessary to maintain the empire and ward off threats, and even in some cases go on expeditions to claim more land for the empire.

It wasn't the case of being overstretched. It was the case of killing too many golden hens to satisfy the hunger of the Roman Empire.

sparten

You are looking at the Roman Empier with 21st century glasses.

sparten

As for the part about raising new armies, lets look at the previous world empire, Persia. The Persians could never quite conquer Greece for long, they would destroy Greek armies (or navies), the later would simply build new ones, yet the Persians when defeated could not do the same. Why? A city state can decree (as the Romans and Greeks did) that all men between the ages of 15~45 are liable for service and train them as such. If it dominates a few colonies away from home they can do the same there. So if one army gets destroyes, they can simply send in more men. An empire, especially a large one like Persia and Rome cannot. Why, necause such a large empire and in Romes case a very divese and cosmpolitan one, may well be built through force, but it is governed through consent. You just cannot compell every man into service (and even if you could who would pay for it?). So why would someone in Britannia care if the Parthians are invading Arabia? Or vice versa. Now, legionairres from Britannia would no doubt be extremly loyal and extremly motivated to defend Arabia, but thats because they would be professionals. The only way an Empire like Rome could have an army is if they recruited from all over, and for that the legions had to be professionals. It has nothing to do with Gibbons "civic sence", or Edward Creasys 19th century racial theories of a "mongeral empire".

Bulgaroctonus

Does not Herodotus record the amazing numbers of the Persian armies? The Persians did create new armies after their defeat at Marathon. The Persians had far greater resources than all of Greece, and had the campaign been properly led, would have conquered Greece. Things like Thermopylae and Salamis were anamalous victories. The Persians, it seems, gave up because they deemed Greece was not worth it.

Nonetheless, a city state will have miniscule resources compared to an Empire. In addition, a city-state, with the exception of Sparta, will usually not train its militia to the standard of the Roman legions.

Your point is also disproven by Roman expansion. The Romans drew strength from their status as a city-state, that is true. They were able to raise large armies after Hannibal inflicted serious defeats. However, after the Punic Wars, the Romans conquered one municipality after another. All of the Greek states and petty Eastern realms fell partially because of the fact that they were smaller than Rome and had fewer resources to command in their defence. I think the expansion of Rome after the Punic Wars, and even in Italy before that point, proves that city-states were an outmoded form of rule.



Again, one of Rome's defining aspects was its ability to raise new armies. Perhaps after Adrianople there were problems, but that was due to a whole slew of factors that were are discussing. History shows that during their height, the Romans pursued an objective with dogged determination, even if that meant the loss of several armies. Many Roman Republican conflicts (Numantine War, Jurgurthine War, etc.) were marked by early Roman defeats, but this fact did not stop the Empire. In fact, it was Rome's construction of Roads and systematic lines of defence that distinguished it from the haphazard Empires before and since. Roman soldiers were moved around the provinces on those roads as quickly as possible, and that is the benefit of an Empire.

As to your point about paying for the armies. Well, the early emperors had something called the Aerarium Militare , a military treasure gained from taxes and overseas conquests. Of course, when large-scale conquests stopped in the second century, there were some problems keeping the Aerarium full, and the tradition was probably gone by the time of Constantine or Theodosius.


Because after he is done serving in the army he and his children receive Roman citizenship and a plot of land. In addition, he earns a salary with the army. The army did decline in the fifth century because it appears the government had immense trouble paying the legionaries and finding plots of land. This eliminated much of the stimulus to go to war. Also, a soldier going on an offensive campaign, or even supressing something like the Jewish revolt of 66-70, could expect a large amount of plunder.

I agree, a professional army is the best to have.

Bulgaroctonus

Iwarmonger and Blademaster,

I have been remiss in replying to your comments about the economic and social decline of Rome. This is because I am not an expert in those elements of their decline. I have read many conflicting reports about exactly what happened to Roman society in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. I will have to go over my old books to find the truth of this matter.

For now, I have found an enlightening conversation between two Oxford scholars and authors, Bryan Ward-Perkins and Peter Heather, on the subject of Roman collapse.

http://blog.oup.com/oupblog/2005/12/...ll_of_rom.html

sparten

Bulgar, I did not mean that an empire loses wars because of a lack of resources. far from it. What I meant was that for an empire, building an army is a far more complicated taxing and time consuming process than it is for a city state. Lets take your example of the Greco-Persian wars. True despite Herodotuses inflated numbers, the Persian (or more correctly, Iranian) army was huge. But lets remember Xerxes had to goto the ends of the earth or at least his empire to find troops for that little party, including Sindh, now in Pakistan. My point was relation to city states, lare hetrogenous empires find army building more complicated, and because Rome was from around the 4th century AD unable or found it difficult to do so, was because of that, not because of Gibbons reasoning "loss of civic sence".

Bulgaroctonus

Sparten,

Pardon me if it appeared I misunderstood your point. I do recognize your argument. It is a point that we should discuss at length.

My argument is as follows. Although the Roman Empire may have suffered from greater logistical complexity, its transportation system and ability to summon soldiers from a large territory outweighed this.

Here is a question to consider: How was the Empire able to resist its enemies under Diocletian and Constantine, but gave way in the time of Valens, Honorius, and Valentinian III? I shall explain the importance behind this question.

According to your theory, or at least my interpretation of it, the Empire had a cumbersome recruiting system. This is a property inherent in all large, ancient realms. Therefore, the Empire under Constantine and the Empire under Honorius & Arcadius (sons of Theodosius I) must have been subject to the same plight. That is, both periods had this hinderance.

However, Constantine and his successors were able to beat back the Empire's enemies, while the Theodosians remained woefully inept in that regard. There must have been another factor that weakened the Empire. That is why I view your theory as incomplete.

The discrepancy between the period of 306-337 and 395-423 could be explained along your lines if we could prove that the military's recruiting system worsened.

I must put more thought into this. I hope my thoughts are clear on this matter.

Blademaster

If that means understanding the real faultlines that causes the Roman Empire to fall, yes.

Today, we are better equipped with more precise knowledge of why the Roman Empire fell because we can obtain a deeper understanding using centuries of research and observation.

Maximus

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sparten

You can blame Constantinople for that. 395 AD, the latter hadmost of the old undivided empires resources and it was not interested in any of the Weteren provinces beyond Italy. They had the the Persian "We are going to recreat the glory of Cyrus" Empire to worry about. When push came to shove they amputated the west like a rotten limb.

EricTheRed

cause it was

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lwarmonger

I disagree. The German commander in chief of the West (Stilcho I believe his name was) was largely to blame for it. Not only did he largely ignore the barbarians who were sweeping through the Western Empire, he did so in order to assemble a force from which to wrest Dalmatia from Constantinople. A multi-cornered civil war did not help, as each of the factions focused more on one another than they did on defending the empire. The West was rotten, and it was really beyond Constantinople's ability to save.