3rd century crisis crashed their economy, idk the details about their metallurgic pseudoindustry
Wood was a chronic problem too, for all large empires.
Germanic forestnaggers disrupting roman civilization and eventually a thousand years long dark age.
And the fact the troman army moved more away from from a centrlised force to a more distributed regional system to try and counter the 100 concurent wildfires the crysis roman army had to deal. Local systems just could afford to equip men to the standard of the high republic period.
>moved more away from from a centrlised force to a more distributed regional system
They stopped conquering new lands and started doing defensive ops, and modified the army to suit
The Limitanei-Comitatenses model is exactly the same as the Garrison-QRF model which has been used in COIN ops since WW2 at least that I'm aware of
3rd century crisis crashed their economy, idk the details about their metallurgic pseudoindustry
Wood was a chronic problem too, for all large empires.
-Romans never stopped using mail, not once, every other style of armor, such as Segmentata, Squamata or Musculata were situational and special application armors used by certain troops and units, they've always been found near garrisons and frontier forts, iconography depicts Roman legionaries wear them to differentiate them from Auxiliary troops.
-Oval shields were always there, only used mainly by Auxiliary troops. The Scutum was used specifically for use in formation combat which had plenty of space between legionaries(around 6 feet apart), they were good at giving the user control of a large cone of space in front and allowed them to come in close for melee, however Cavalry became more common and forced Romans to use spears as primary weapons again, making them fight in closer formations and also use round shields which impeded spear fighting less.
the 3rd century crisis didn't really affect their military quality, in fact their armors became way more complex than before, with fully covering helmets, reinforced limb protections and more layers, the 4th and 5th century saw a continuation of that trend, Romes' enemies stopped being inferior tribes and started matching them technologically, German confederations started wearing heavy armor and wielding swords and axes a lot more, and the Sassanid cataphracts and horse archers became a huge threat to the Legionaries on foot.
Good explanation.
I think your last point needs more respect, the germans of BC and the german tribes of AD 400 are very different groups. Having Rome on their border as a trade and information source probably contributed.
>, in fact their armors became way more complex than before,
Maybe it's a bad analogy, but late war germany was just like that... A waning empire can still make its equipment more expensive (but less technically sophisticated) and limited due to the lost/depletion of their main steel sites that were scarce in that time, iron alone isn't enough after the 0AD.
They're forced to do that in the same way that they altered their armour during Dacian wars for first time in centuries.
>a thousand years long dark age.
The "dark age" was more a provinces problem (britain was most affected).
It was more a retroactive "shift" (done by historians rather than ancient people) from the warm south to a colder era were germanics tribes (pre-civilizated) had advantage. A change of the "old axis" mediterranean-levante-persia-india to the atlantic-northern sea-baltic sea (where the Hansa would later be created).
Provinces of the Western Roman Empire "collapsed" probably (based on archeology) due to back-migration to the wealthier Italian peninsule or Eastern Roman Empire.
It was an internal brain drain that didn't affected the Mediterranean, yet. That civilization also had depleted woodlands and main mines so they're back to a Bronze Age dependency on commerce for metals, something not military stable in the long term. The periodic pandemics and military weakening depleted the urban society that was the basis of the old empire. The result was obvious.
The Byzantine Empire inherited the best of the classic greco-roman civilization but in the end they were eclipsed by the quickly changing west and middle east-Caucasus.
Europe itself didn't have a decentralized education up to 1000 and most works were to keep older text and extend the "new knowledge" of its time biased by religion.
Roma itself was kinda "stuck" technologically after the Republic, maybe only Gaul was showing things similar to the middle ages (guilds pseudoindustries that hugely improved sophistication and quality of their products and without rely on the old "employment system" based on slaves)
>The "dark age" was more a provinces problem
But it was so due to a combination of internal corruption and germanic tribes fucking up the empire until they broke it.
>dark age
stop watching history channel, you illiterate nagger. The early medieval period wasn't neither 'dark' nor didn't last 1000 years. You don't even know why pseudo-historians call it that way.
Butthurt medievalists can suck my dick. They talk about the technological and cultural advances of the middle ages as if those didn't could have happened under the romans, while pretending that the fall of the empire didn't cause endless wars and loss of knowledge, commerce, art, and human development not restored until almost a thousand years later (or until the 20th century if we talk about a peaceful and stable Europe)
There's a reason smart people in the Renaissance (and later the Enlightement) looked back to Rome as a lost golden era. Just compare places like Pompeii with the medieval shitholes that came later.
Even the fucking arabs and turks became civilized faster and more sucessfully before their stagnation than the useless germanic forestnaggers that keep fucking up our civilization up to WW2 larping as a warrior master race.
>But it was so due to a combination of internal corruption and germanic tribes fucking up the empire until they broke it.
Corruption can be assumed to be systematic to every culture of that time. Nepotism was the go-to for everyone after all.
Germanic tribes fucking up the empire I'd say was more of a symptom than a cause. Germanic tribes have always been the empire's biggest rival in the north, so a change in how this rival was managed (from succesfully to unsuccesfully) is indicative of an internal change.
>Corruption can be assumed to be systematic to every culture of that time. Nepotism was the go-to for everyone after all.
Sure, but there's being corrupt but still smart, and being retardedly corrupt sacrificing long term stability for short term personal gain.
The irony is that germanic tribes were so backwards and their lands so poor in resources that romans never got greedy enough to actually fully conquer them, and they just tried to keep forestnaggers in check while they focused in the much more lucrative middle east.
Meanwhile, germanic tribesmen like Arminius learned enough from the romans to actually becoming a real threat like
https://i.imgur.com/ii7VLBa.jpg
-Romans never stopped using mail, not once, every other style of armor, such as Segmentata, Squamata or Musculata were situational and special application armors used by certain troops and units, they've always been found near garrisons and frontier forts, iconography depicts Roman legionaries wear them to differentiate them from Auxiliary troops.
-Oval shields were always there, only used mainly by Auxiliary troops. The Scutum was used specifically for use in formation combat which had plenty of space between legionaries(around 6 feet apart), they were good at giving the user control of a large cone of space in front and allowed them to come in close for melee, however Cavalry became more common and forced Romans to use spears as primary weapons again, making them fight in closer formations and also use round shields which impeded spear fighting less.
the 3rd century crisis didn't really affect their military quality, in fact their armors became way more complex than before, with fully covering helmets, reinforced limb protections and more layers, the 4th and 5th century saw a continuation of that trend, Romes' enemies stopped being inferior tribes and started matching them technologically, German confederations started wearing heavy armor and wielding swords and axes a lot more, and the Sassanid cataphracts and horse archers became a huge threat to the Legionaries on foot.
>dark age
stop watching history channel, you illiterate nagger. The early medieval period wasn't neither 'dark' nor didn't last 1000 years. You don't even know why pseudo-historians call it that way.
Mail provides better protection.
Segmentata was not common.
Late Roman empire stopped order armor from artisan shops and set up factories that shat out equipment.
Not sure about the shields, not like rectangular shields are better.
>Mail provides better protection
It doesn't. Not sure if there were bows strong enough to pierce mail at the time but there certainly were blunt force weapons and mail gives little protection from them.
barbarization of the Roman military. Stagnation of the economy, debasement of the currency, less incentive for Roman citizens and subjects (especially AFTER they were all granted citizenship) to join the legion, and Germans are cheaper. For many reasons, they reverted to weapons they were more familiar with.
While Segmentata provided good protection (if not coverage) it required the use of rolling mills and big forges. It can safely be assumed that Segmentata was a product of a centralized system. Nobody else made Segmentata. Thus when the equipping of soldiers changed from being equipped by the state to giving them money and telling them to buy their own equipment, you can expect local styles and wargear to become predominant. This means mail and simpler shields.
Roman arms production was more standardized AFTER segmentata had fallen out of use. Although it provided good protection it had some pretty major drawbacks (uncomfortable to wear, expensive to produce, hard to maintain, etc.)
It annoys me how the pop history perception is that the legions got worse when it was in fact their enemies that got a lot better
It’s really annoying because the Legions would go on to restore much of the western empire under Justinian and would come out as the final victor of the Roman-Sassanid wars under Heraclius.
>barbarisation
Never happened. Roman legions stopped being Italian around the middle of the first century AD. After that they were usually from the provinces, same as the auxillaries. Caracalla gave all inhabitants citizenship since it wasn't relevant anymore, most people were poor farmers anyway while the rich kept consolidating their power.
Germans kept migrating to the empire since it was rich and offered lots of benefits in return for military service. They joined the army, adopted the religion, customs and culture of the Romans. The people serving as legionaries were all rural Gallo-Romans, Illyrians and Germans. But they all looked like Romans!
Alaric was a Goth that served in the Roman army. He wasn't some shit covered German but a guy that spoke Latin, dressed as a Roman and wanted to climb the ladder. But he and others realized they could use force to get more benefits from weak emperors.
When Stilicho moved to fight him the western legions were diminished from previous civil wars and needed new recruits. Problem was that the Roman people were destitute indentured workers at huge country estates for the wealthy. The senate refused to allow Stilicho to conscript their slaves/indentured workers but also refused to allow Stilicho to recruits German feoderati due to anti-German sentiment. >fucked if you don't, fucked if you do
collapse of the advanced roman supply chains, mines, and industries
This :
And the fact the troman army moved more away from from a centrlised force to a more distributed regional system to try and counter the 100 concurent wildfires the crysis roman army had to deal. Local systems just could afford to equip men to the standard of the high republic period.
>moved more away from from a centrlised force to a more distributed regional system
They stopped conquering new lands and started doing defensive ops, and modified the army to suit
The Limitanei-Comitatenses model is exactly the same as the Garrison-QRF model which has been used in COIN ops since WW2 at least that I'm aware of
sovl
3rd century crisis crashed their economy, idk the details about their metallurgic pseudoindustry
Wood was a chronic problem too, for all large empires.
-Romans never stopped using mail, not once, every other style of armor, such as Segmentata, Squamata or Musculata were situational and special application armors used by certain troops and units, they've always been found near garrisons and frontier forts, iconography depicts Roman legionaries wear them to differentiate them from Auxiliary troops.
-Oval shields were always there, only used mainly by Auxiliary troops. The Scutum was used specifically for use in formation combat which had plenty of space between legionaries(around 6 feet apart), they were good at giving the user control of a large cone of space in front and allowed them to come in close for melee, however Cavalry became more common and forced Romans to use spears as primary weapons again, making them fight in closer formations and also use round shields which impeded spear fighting less.
the 3rd century crisis didn't really affect their military quality, in fact their armors became way more complex than before, with fully covering helmets, reinforced limb protections and more layers, the 4th and 5th century saw a continuation of that trend, Romes' enemies stopped being inferior tribes and started matching them technologically, German confederations started wearing heavy armor and wielding swords and axes a lot more, and the Sassanid cataphracts and horse archers became a huge threat to the Legionaries on foot.
It annoys me how the pop history perception is that the legions got worse when it was in fact their enemies that got a lot better
Good explanation.
I think your last point needs more respect, the germans of BC and the german tribes of AD 400 are very different groups. Having Rome on their border as a trade and information source probably contributed.
>, in fact their armors became way more complex than before,
Maybe it's a bad analogy, but late war germany was just like that... A waning empire can still make its equipment more expensive (but less technically sophisticated) and limited due to the lost/depletion of their main steel sites that were scarce in that time, iron alone isn't enough after the 0AD.
They're forced to do that in the same way that they altered their armour during Dacian wars for first time in centuries.
Germanic forestnaggers disrupting roman civilization and eventually a thousand years long dark age.
>a thousand years long dark age.
The "dark age" was more a provinces problem (britain was most affected).
It was more a retroactive "shift" (done by historians rather than ancient people) from the warm south to a colder era were germanics tribes (pre-civilizated) had advantage. A change of the "old axis" mediterranean-levante-persia-india to the atlantic-northern sea-baltic sea (where the Hansa would later be created).
Provinces of the Western Roman Empire "collapsed" probably (based on archeology) due to back-migration to the wealthier Italian peninsule or Eastern Roman Empire.
It was an internal brain drain that didn't affected the Mediterranean, yet. That civilization also had depleted woodlands and main mines so they're back to a Bronze Age dependency on commerce for metals, something not military stable in the long term. The periodic pandemics and military weakening depleted the urban society that was the basis of the old empire. The result was obvious.
The Byzantine Empire inherited the best of the classic greco-roman civilization but in the end they were eclipsed by the quickly changing west and middle east-Caucasus.
Europe itself didn't have a decentralized education up to 1000 and most works were to keep older text and extend the "new knowledge" of its time biased by religion.
Roma itself was kinda "stuck" technologically after the Republic, maybe only Gaul was showing things similar to the middle ages (guilds pseudoindustries that hugely improved sophistication and quality of their products and without rely on the old "employment system" based on slaves)
>The "dark age" was more a provinces problem
But it was so due to a combination of internal corruption and germanic tribes fucking up the empire until they broke it.
Butthurt medievalists can suck my dick. They talk about the technological and cultural advances of the middle ages as if those didn't could have happened under the romans, while pretending that the fall of the empire didn't cause endless wars and loss of knowledge, commerce, art, and human development not restored until almost a thousand years later (or until the 20th century if we talk about a peaceful and stable Europe)
There's a reason smart people in the Renaissance (and later the Enlightement) looked back to Rome as a lost golden era. Just compare places like Pompeii with the medieval shitholes that came later.
Even the fucking arabs and turks became civilized faster and more sucessfully before their stagnation than the useless germanic forestnaggers that keep fucking up our civilization up to WW2 larping as a warrior master race.
the arabs were actually doing great until their books got wet lol
>But it was so due to a combination of internal corruption and germanic tribes fucking up the empire until they broke it.
Corruption can be assumed to be systematic to every culture of that time. Nepotism was the go-to for everyone after all.
Germanic tribes fucking up the empire I'd say was more of a symptom than a cause. Germanic tribes have always been the empire's biggest rival in the north, so a change in how this rival was managed (from succesfully to unsuccesfully) is indicative of an internal change.
>Corruption can be assumed to be systematic to every culture of that time. Nepotism was the go-to for everyone after all.
Sure, but there's being corrupt but still smart, and being retardedly corrupt sacrificing long term stability for short term personal gain.
The irony is that germanic tribes were so backwards and their lands so poor in resources that romans never got greedy enough to actually fully conquer them, and they just tried to keep forestnaggers in check while they focused in the much more lucrative middle east.
Meanwhile, germanic tribesmen like Arminius learned enough from the romans to actually becoming a real threat like
explains.
>dark age
stop watching history channel, you illiterate nagger. The early medieval period wasn't neither 'dark' nor didn't last 1000 years. You don't even know why pseudo-historians call it that way.
Because germanoids returned to monke until Charlemagne
Mail is easy to repair
Segmenta is not
Segmenta requires more specialization
Some people think Segmenta is more suited to sieges (blows from above)
Mail provides better protection.
Segmentata was not common.
Late Roman empire stopped order armor from artisan shops and set up factories that shat out equipment.
Not sure about the shields, not like rectangular shields are better.
>Mail provides better protection
It doesn't. Not sure if there were bows strong enough to pierce mail at the time but there certainly were blunt force weapons and mail gives little protection from them.
>there certainly were blunt force weapons and mail gives little protection from them
Wasted digits.
That's what the shield is for, (you) barbarian.
barbarization of the Roman military. Stagnation of the economy, debasement of the currency, less incentive for Roman citizens and subjects (especially AFTER they were all granted citizenship) to join the legion, and Germans are cheaper. For many reasons, they reverted to weapons they were more familiar with.
>downgrades in armor and the destruction of the Roman empire in the same century they start worshiping a israelite
Hmmmmm.....
In III century they were killing people who worshipped a israelite
anon, you're actually a fucking retard.
they were broke
Thats sounds true simply cause it sound like the most realistic answer
While Segmentata provided good protection (if not coverage) it required the use of rolling mills and big forges. It can safely be assumed that Segmentata was a product of a centralized system. Nobody else made Segmentata. Thus when the equipping of soldiers changed from being equipped by the state to giving them money and telling them to buy their own equipment, you can expect local styles and wargear to become predominant. This means mail and simpler shields.
Roman arms production was more standardized AFTER segmentata had fallen out of use. Although it provided good protection it had some pretty major drawbacks (uncomfortable to wear, expensive to produce, hard to maintain, etc.)
It’s really annoying because the Legions would go on to restore much of the western empire under Justinian and would come out as the final victor of the Roman-Sassanid wars under Heraclius.
Imo the late army is criminally underrated and the notion that they were inferior to their counterparts in the principate is straight up wrong.
How far did the Roman Empire spread into East Europe?
The Danube, Dace, Crimea.
Not far at all, the only reason Romans ever ventured there was to buy amber from Baltic tribes.
Flatening iron is too hard for the weak seed eating Meds.
They never stopped using mail and it was the most common type of armor even during the period that the LS was used.The LS is also not very good armor.
They realized the Greeks were right. They were always right.
Hamata is not linothorax
It's called the dark ages for a reason.
>barbarisation
Never happened. Roman legions stopped being Italian around the middle of the first century AD. After that they were usually from the provinces, same as the auxillaries. Caracalla gave all inhabitants citizenship since it wasn't relevant anymore, most people were poor farmers anyway while the rich kept consolidating their power.
Germans kept migrating to the empire since it was rich and offered lots of benefits in return for military service. They joined the army, adopted the religion, customs and culture of the Romans. The people serving as legionaries were all rural Gallo-Romans, Illyrians and Germans. But they all looked like Romans!
Alaric was a Goth that served in the Roman army. He wasn't some shit covered German but a guy that spoke Latin, dressed as a Roman and wanted to climb the ladder. But he and others realized they could use force to get more benefits from weak emperors.
When Stilicho moved to fight him the western legions were diminished from previous civil wars and needed new recruits. Problem was that the Roman people were destitute indentured workers at huge country estates for the wealthy. The senate refused to allow Stilicho to conscript their slaves/indentured workers but also refused to allow Stilicho to recruits German feoderati due to anti-German sentiment.
>fucked if you don't, fucked if you do