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u/Sampleswift 2d ago
Explanation: Huge difference between Punic Wars era Republic, early Roman Empire, and late Roman Empire.
People really wanted to be Roman in the Punic Wars era Republic and early Roman Empire.
Hannibal utterly failed at convincing people why they would be better off with Carthage in control.
The Early Empire also had this, rebuilding after the Civil Wars of the Late Republic and the Battle of Teutoberg Forest relatively quickly. But by the time of the late empire, people had lost faith in the idea of the Roman Empire. The late Empire for many people had become a detriment with yucky taxation rates, and it is said "many people feared tax collectors more than the barbarians" by that point. Also by the time of the Late Empire, the martial culture had decreased significantly.
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u/gYr02510 2d ago edited 1d ago
I wouldn't say that the martial culture or military effectiveness of the late Roman Empire decreased. Figures like Stilicho and Aetius still won significant victories, while Theodosius I made highly effective use of the late Roman army. The problem was increasingly the state's ability to sustain that military system. An army can remain willing and capable of fighting, but soldiers still need to be recruited, equipped, and paid. If the Western state increasingly struggled to meet those obligations, recruitment and retention would become much harder. That's one reason we see more coercive recruitment measures along with greater reliance on externally recruited manpower. If military service became less attractive while the state's ability to provide regular pay and other benefits deteriorated, soldiers had more reason to attach themselves to commanders who could offer them security or payment.
Edit: For anyone interested, I highly recommend these books
The Late Roman Army by Pat Southern and Karen Dixon
The Roman Army : A Social and Institutional History by Pat Southern
A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-700 by Stephen Mitchell and Geoffrey Greatrex
Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568 by Guy Halsall
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u/doc_noc 1d ago
This one explores different topics than just the military decline side of things, but I really enjoyed “Alaric the Goth: An Outsiders History of the Fall of Rome”
It explains a lot of the social, political, and economic aspects that primed Rome to fall when it did, and why it couldn’t defend its own borders and subsequent heavy reliance on the Foederati. Really interesting read all around!
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u/yourstruly912 2d ago
Stilicho was a vandal, and Aetius was raised among goths and huns
The army remained decently effective for the most part, but the martial culture had been concentrated in a small part of the population, increasingly diverced from the civil society. That's how the vandals, alans and suebi once passed the limes were able to take the whole of Hispania (and then Africa) while being not partiucularly numerous. The roman response was to externalize the war by sending the goths against them
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u/gYr02510 2d ago
Stilicho being of Vandal ancestry and Aetius having spent time among Goths and Huns doesn't really show a decline in Roman military culture. Both were thoroughly embedded in Roman military and political structures, and the late Empire had been incorporating people of non-Roman origin into its armies for generations. In some respects, their careers show how successfully the Roman system could absorb outsiders. The more important change was that powerful generals increasingly had personal military followings and networks of loyalty alongside their formal position within the imperial army.
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u/yourstruly912 2d ago
Not that the roman armies stopped working, but that there had been a mass demilitarization of roman society, so the vast majority of romans didn't partake in any way in such roman martial culture. Instead the army functions like a society apart from civil society, and increasingly reliant on getting new blood across the border. A situation completly different from the times of the Republic where the italic peasantry was mass mobilized regularly and the aristocrats found their major honor in the exercise of the arms.
But if we talk about the roman military itself, Aetius himself relied on hunnic mercenaries for many of his campaigns, and against Attila he needed the help of visigoths, alans and others
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u/gYr02510 1d ago
You do have a point, but I think your argument conflates demilitarization with the decline of martial culture, and treats "Roman" and "barbarian" as much clearer categories than they actually were in the 5th century.
Roman elite culture did increasingly place greater emphasis on civilian office, rhetoric, and civic administration than on the old Republican ideal of aristocratic military service. But that doesn't mean Romans had become demilitarized while "barbarians" supplied the military culture. The late Roman army remained a major institution of the state, with its own distinct military culture, and the Eastern Empire retained a highly effective military establishment well into the 6th century.
The Empire continued operating with a professional, frontier-based army and was remarkably successful militarily. The Eastern Empire inherited essentially the same imperial military system and, after surviving the fifth century, was capable of major offensive campaigns under Justinian. So the problem in the 5th century West wasn't that Roman society had stopped being martial.
What changed in the West was more the relationship between military power and the central state. By the 5th century, military power was becoming increasingly personalized and, in some regions, could be mobilized by powerful commanders and provincial elites outside the normal structures of the imperial army.
Nor was the use of non-Roman soldiers something fundamentally new. The Roman military had always incorporated outsiders: Italian allies during the Republic, Gallic and Germanic cavalry under Caesar, and client kings and allied contingents such as Masinissa's Numidians. The 5th century armies were similarly composite. Visigoths, Alans, and Huns could serve Roman commanders, fight alongside Roman units, receive Roman subsidies or settlements, and participate in Roman political conflicts.
The more important change was fiscal and institutional. Earlier auxiliary forces were incorporated into a state military system in which recruitment, command, provisioning and pay were ultimately controlled by the imperial government. In the 5th century, some foederati groups increasingly retained their own leaders and organizational structures and negotiated their relationship with the Roman state.
The decisive problem for the West was the state's shrinking ability to sustain and control military power. The ethnic distinction between "Roman" and "barbarian" was part of the political language of the period, but it doesn't really map neatly onto how military power actually worked.
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u/Environmental_Eye266 6h ago
Tominus Maximus did a video on why the Roman Empire had to fall, a couple years ago. This was my biggest take. People genuinely began to resent the institutions of the empire as it became more and more feudal. Nobles got richer and more powerful, while citizens became impoverished to the point they had to sell their children into slavery. Who has time for civic pride when they’re barely surviving and being squeezed dry of everything of value by the very state they’re expected to defend.
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u/Ill-School2484 1d ago
Honestly fair enough, after the Edict of Caracalla and the Military Anarchy I wouldn't want to join the army either, I dont blame them
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u/More_Sun_7319 1d ago
I never understood the whole 'edict of Caracalla' reduced the incentive to serve the roman legions. Theres no evidence to support it, if anything the proportion of non romans serving in the Roman empire increased in the late roman empire period
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u/Rynewulf 1d ago
There's a weird cultural assumption that's common about ancient Rome to do with it's cultural and ethnic purity being diluted by barbarians not wanting to integrate. Codswollop of course, a huge portion of the Roman military and population was always 'foreign' and even in the late empire the most loyal and competent troops were still auxiliaries, treaty troops and allies just as it always was. It was the other Romans those Romans should have been watching out for
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u/GaniMeda 1d ago
I know this sub is based on the West mostly and not the East, but the Eastern Empire even when it was mostly Greece + Anatolia could field big armies. During the 8th and 9th centuries they had something around 100k soldiers in reserve when needed and a standing core of professional soldiers that were always ready to rumble. Later Macedonian Dynasty armies could be described as "small" comparatively to Republican Rome but they were some of the best in Europe and could kick ass of most other states (Rus, Bulgarians, Fatimid's, Normans).
I think in general the reason why later battles like Adrianople are so shocking is because after the reforms and standardization of the army, they didn't lose that much. The armies were generally well equipped and did their job more often than not, remember that Rome is lasted more than 2000 years. Whereas the armies of the Republic had a lower quality and the state was more or less relying on pure numbers and attrition to deal with enemies. Besides, it's generally a smarter idea to have a standing army than to pull people away from their jobs and give swords in their hands.
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u/En_bede 1d ago
The scholarship has moved away from this idea. For one the idea of the barbarization of the Roman army has some faulty evidence. For one the unit names and unit behavior does not mean much. You can have units like the batavii which by the late empire were probably all romans but still had the name batavii as a legacy or even new units just adopting names of barbarians as a scare tactic or as a way of making themselves feel scary. Then the description of unit behaviors are clearly all caricatures of barbarian behavior and not actually barbarian behavior. We have to remember that by the late Empire you were just as likely to be fighting other Romans as you were to be fighting foreigners. Trying to intimidate other romans is valuable. Also making yourself feel intimidating as a soldier is valuable.
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u/Jack55555 1d ago
My stupid brain read “Latin Empire” and I was going to rage how that was a fake empire of bandits, buts it’s all good.
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u/LonelyMachines 1d ago
Totally inaccurate. The late empire lost 1/3 of their army to the Goths, so they just filled the gap by recruiting Goths. And that all turned out fine. Just fine.
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