What went wrong?

What went wrong?

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

LifeStraw Water Filter for Hiking and Preparedness

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Internal political and ethnic conflicts within the Western Roman Army and between its top brass and political officials. Also unironic conspiracy theories causing political hysteria that resulted in violence between political allies.

    The Western Roman Empire collapsed due to external forces, but only because its political and military authorities were primarily concerned with internal forces.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >The Western Roman Empire collapsed due to external forces, but only because its political and military authorities were primarily concerned with internal forces
      Totally fricking moronic post

      https://i.imgur.com/IrorCEG.jpg

      What went wrong?

      The Western army, all things considered, did pretty well as a military force. It was hugely understrength, paper figures from the Notitia Dignitatum puts the manpower at 400k but archaeological excavations show this was likely just the paper strength.

      Constant civil wars during the 3rd century crisis (30 emperors in 50 years and maybe another 50 usurpers) meant much of the army was in disarray. Diocletian reformed the army so they operated in smaller more mobile units. Those on the border designated limatanei and those in the field army the comitatenses.

      Now the economy was pretty fricked but Constantine managed to solve it for a while. The problem then became the Goths migration. It turned into a revolt and Valens dies during the battle of adrianople. Theodosius is a complete cuck who lets the goths keep all their weapons and basically their own kingdom in croatia.

      Theodosius sons Honorius and Arcadius are about as moronic as they come. Honorius even more so but he luckily has Stilicho to keep shit mostly together. Then in 407 the Rhine freezes over so thick entire armies could cross. Stilicho is then put to death by Honorius for reasons and now Gaul is full of Germans while the Goths sack Rome. After this the west deathspirals.

      Tldr the empire collapsed due to civil wars, economic crisis and shit emperors. Factoring it all in, the army did pretty well.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        No, you're actually the moron and you are omitting extremely important details of many of the events there and you even get the dates and orders of several events (notably the crossing of the rhine by the Vandals and Visigoths) wrong. The Crossing of the Rhine happened in 404/5 and notably prior to Stilicho's assassination, which was prompted by a power struggle with Emperor Honorius in which he was accused of using the Goths under Alaric (who were contracted as Roman soldiers) to wage an internal war against the emperor, this resulted not only in Stilicho's death, but also in what can be described as a pogrom against the families of the Gothic soldiers due to their supposed association with Stilicho (who was partially Gothic on his father's side). This is what resulted in the sack of Rome by the Goths under Alaric. While this was going on, a soldier in Britain had declared himself to be the legitimate emperor and took advantage of the internal conflict in Italy preventing any kind of armed response to the Crossing of the Rhine to take control of Gaul politically.

        Even after this, the Western Empire doesn't death spiral, there is a period of resurgence under Flavius Aetius until the Vandals conquer North Africa. Also there was brief hope in 463(?) when the Eastern Emperor sends an expedition to try to take back North Africa, but it is destroyed by fireships.

        The Notitia Dignitatum doesn't give the manpower of forces, earlier overestimates of the late Roman Army's manpower (which have since been corrected by the archeology you mention) were due to AHM Jones' (incorrect) assumptions about the nominal strength of the units listed, but the ND doesn't give the manpower, it gives units, it's more like an ORBAT.

        Also the Goths only had to fight (and kill) Valens because Valens promised them safe passage across the Danube and lands in Illyria and then attempted to kill them red wedding style.

        t. Peter Heather.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          And, all the more damning, you say that the Army did pretty well, and it did, under Aetius later and under Thedosius earlier against the Greuthungi and Sassanians, but in the period you mention, the Roman Army 1) lost the only major battle it fought (Adrianople) and 2) never even bothered to show up to fight the Goths in Italy or the tribes crossing the Rhine.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Flavius Aetius
          >Resurgence
          If by resurgence you mean he managed to cobble together whatever was left of the Roman army and get a coalition to fight the huns then yes. He had no way of ever retaking former territory as seen with Valentinian 3rds attempts a few decades prior. The loss of Spain to the visigoths robbed the western empire of its traditional recruitment areas for soldiers so became even more reliant on Foederati.

          >Valens tried to red wedding the goths
          Genuinely no idea what you are on about. Valens helped the goths over the danube and the goths mostly disarmed as agreed. Its when corrupt officials kept siphoning off food for the goths which caused them to starve. Fritigern starts a rebellion joined by other gothic refugees. Theres 0 record he deliberately tried to kill them at any point prior to fritigerns rebellion.

          Stilicho was part Vandal not part goth. The Rhine froze in winter 406 with Stilicho executed in august 407 and Constantine 3rd usurper rising in the same summer. Constantine had pulled the troops from Britain to help restore order in Gaul due to the incursions of Franks, Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards and other assorted tribes.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    me on the right

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      im the one with the spear

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Many things.
    Large slave dominated estates replacing some of the farmer communities.
    Taxation revenue dropped off due to wars and raids and raising taxes to compensate made thing worse.
    German tribes became more advanced.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      This, the mid and late Roman empire was a huge shitshow. The Byzantines managed to fix somethings but they were effectively more like a Macedonian kingdom of old than a nation that could be considered in anyway Roman following Justinians autocracy and the eventual massacre of all Latin peoples within the Empire.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >implying the Latins weren't all dirty Germanics by that point

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          They weren't. That would come slightly later.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    To add to what other anons said, the fact Honorius was a drooling moron didn't help much either.
    Gods, if only Valentinian I had a snickers with him on that faithful day...

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Barbarian invasions and internal strife at the same time. Rome could and did handle those issues one at a time, but both at the same time proved too much to handle.
    The Late Roman Army was superior to armies of the Republic and early Principate though, both in doctrine and equipment. They were far more flexible than the older armies were and also had to fight enemies that were far more organized and better led than their past enemies were. Hannibal and Mithradates were both extremely talented of course, but consider that most every Germanic king was their equal in the Late Roman era.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    A whole hell of a lot of things. I haven't made it all the way through the unabridged version of Mr. Gibbon's damned thick square book(s) yet, but the takeaway for me so far is that there's no nice neat single Achilles' Heel that, had it been removed, would have us all speaking Latin today.
    One of the biggest problems was the breakdown of the citizen soldier model in favor of super-wealthy patricians whose legions were paid by (and loyal to) them personally. After a weasel like Septimus Severus sets the precedent for a military coup to replace a sitting emperor, there's a paradox that starts to hamstring security against migrating tribes and other external threats:
    >Emperor has a weak general -> legions likely get rekt by external threats
    >Weak emperor has strong general -> strong general wakes up from uncomfortable bed in his field tent and decides to pay a visit to Rome for a taste of the sweet life
    >Strong emperor has strong general -> strong emperor figures out the second scenario, finds a way to remove the strong general to avoid a potential coup, and thus provokes the first scenario
    And that's before we factor in stuff like multiple plagues and an economic model that was fundamentally flawed in important places.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      a weak emperor will and did murder competent generals to secure their position.
      See: Honorius and Valentinian

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Caesar turned the republic into a dictatorship, concentrating power and thus creating absolute corruption.

    The republic, much like our modern democracy was divided and could be seen as 'weak' but the checks and balances kept it from spiraling.

    Once the dictatorship took over, while initially having a high concentration of power allowed it to act decisively and be 'strong' eventually it rotted from the inside due to corruption that is an inevitable consequence of authoritarianism.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >the checks and balances kept it from spiraling
      >muh absolute power corrupts absolutely
      It always surprises me when I come across someone like you who thinks we live in a well structured and ran society. How do you allow yourself to be this delusional?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >implying the best Roman emperors weren't the ones that were had the ability to delegate their power to rule effectively

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Ok, and? There's a stark difference between delegating power to trusted subordinates as opposed to handing it over to a room full of corrupt oligarchs.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >a room full of corrupt oligarchs
            You just described the Dominate m8.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Name a society that exists on this planet that has better standards of living and level of individual freedoms than West-aligned democracies.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >The republic, much like our modern democracy was divided and could be seen as 'weak' but the checks and balances kept it from spiraling.
      it's precisely because it didn't have proper checks and balances that it fell into a de factor dictatorship

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >but the checks and balances kept it from spiraling.
      Is that what Sulla called his pen and his sword?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Caesar turned the republic into a dictatorship, concentrating power and thus creating absolute corruption.
      As corrupt as the Empire was, the late Republic was far more corrupt, and that corruption is what fricked it over.

      >the checks and balances kept it from spiraling.
      No. The checks and balances - the Tribunes - just got murdered by the Senate when they were inconvenient to the corrupt Senators. Even when the reforms they were calling for were not just good ideas but necessary (most notably land reform, because Senators were buying up all the land from indebted soldiers, who were indebted due to wars the Senate started). Because the Senators kept murdering everyone who opposed them it eventually became necessary for Caesar to march an army in and enact reforms by force. And they still murdered him.

      Caesar's great mistake was trying to preserve the institutions of the Republic and not just killing the entire Senate when he had the chance. Landleeches destroyed Rome.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        This. Chances are Caesar may have been able to actually save the republic if he just went and burned the city of Rome to the ground.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Too many civil wars and the state couldn’t pay the army

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    the principate was a mistake

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Rome's civil society degenerated to such a degree that an empire of 60,000,000 people was unable to bring enough martial power to bear to repel 600,000 forest/steppe Black folk going for a god damn walk.
    Society's die from within.
    >but muh ERE
    Even without an outright collapse antiquity ended in the East by the 7th century. Dead from within.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Society's die from within.
      Exemplified by the statement. Go back to school. You are not well enough educated to positively contribute to society.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Unironically because Rome was so big and powerful.

    The empire was so big and had lasted so long that the idea it could ever end was inconceivable to everyone within it. Like, people realized theoretically that it could stop existing, but they couldn't imagine that their individual actions could ever lead to that. So all the generals, governors, and other rich aristocrats within it started fighting for control of the state without ever worrying about the overall health of the empire. Once the Germans started migrating in the same thing happened, emperors figured 'Hey, I can give these guys some land in the empire and they'll act like a private army, it's fine because there's no way this one tribe could ever face the entire empire together'. And bit by bit the empire got weaker and weaker.

    By the time people realized what was going on in the mid 5th century it was too late. And even then, in classic fashion, they still ended up fighting over the collapsing empire rather than work together to save the thing.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The military became caste-based and frontier defense became static. Military services became hereditary, and suddenly the Romans had to negotiate both with external invaders and their own legions which had once again become loyal to local generals which also acted as tribal chiefs. This worked out great in the short term, the late Roman army was deadly effective, but it meant that out West, away from the power and wealth of the East, there became less and less reason to be a direct member of Rome. Most of the Western Roman successor kingdoms swore fealty to the Emperor in Constantinople, with the notable exception of the Vandals, who strangled Mediterranean trade and cut the West's breadbasket off from the rest of the now looser 'Roman commonwealth' that developed after 475.
    In my opinion the final blow to the Western Roman Empire was ironically the conquests of Justinian. Invading Africa and taking the Vandals to task was based, but invading Italy was a massive blunder. Suddenly Romans living in Rome speaking Latin and believing they were living under the one true Senate and Emperor in Constantinople were getting attacked by Greeks who said "no, you are not Roman, you are filthy barbarians under a barbarian king who need to be brought to the light of civilization". Italian identity was born that moment.
    Late Roman identity was complex, many 'barbarian' kingdoms after the 'fall of Rome' derived their legitimacy from the Nicaean church which held the Empire as a part of God's divine plan for the world and the Roman Emperor in Constantinople as ruling by the grace of God. The 'reconquest' by Belisarius finally broke that worldview, and bankrupted the Empire besides. Of course the Romans in Constantinople kept better records than the Ostrogoths, so we mostly get their side of the story, the story where the Emperor tried to restore Rome to its former glory and was rejected by the smelly barbarians living in what was once Rome's glorious homeland.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >the Nicaean church which held the Empire as a part of God's divine plan for the world and the Roman Emperor in Constantinople as ruling by the grace of God
      Augustine's coping exercise had already retconned that.

      >Society's die from within.
      Exemplified by the statement. Go back to school. You are not well enough educated to positively contribute to society.

      >oh no the electronic dictionary put an apostrophe here that you didn't edit out

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The Ostrogoths were a unironic improvement for italy

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Ostrogoths left most WRE institutions in check
        By wishing to restore Rome, Justinian unironically killed it, and ERE as well

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Justinian killed the ERE
          Damn for real dude? Crazy how it lasted another 900 years after him.
          No, the real reason that the ERE died is that the Palaiologoi stole the throne from the Laskarids and then promptly ran the empire into the ground because they were moronic.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Every other emperor is murdered and usurped by an ambitious general who is then murdered and usurped by another ambitious general who is then murdered and usurped by another ambitious general...
    There's plenty of other reasons, but holy frick what a moronic political system.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Rome fell because of whatever thing my ideology is obsessed with.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You're not totally wrong.
      >Gibbon fresh out of Wars of Religion
      >Religion killed Rome
      >contemporaries like Harper or some people
      >disease and climate change killed Rome
      >that one Chinese guy I forget the name of
      >Rome fell because the technological/operational gap between the Barbarians and The Empire closed
      We all project what we know.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Christianity

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Germs

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      6th century fall of rome enjoyer

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Reminder that the Eastern Roman Empire is Roman. But it’s the Roman Empire without Rome, like if Puerto Rico or Hawaii continued to call itself the United States after losing all other states to invasion/civil wars.

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The roman empire had a milion problem, some of them since centuries some of them more recent; and when you cut the west from the wealth of the east and you leave it alone to defend the most dangerous frontiers things eventually fall apart.

    Also it had the 2 worst emperors back to back, recimer fricking up any good emperor and a bilion other problems.

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >What went wrong?
    Romans.

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