barca

Those two individuals were certainly innovative. Caeser's maneuver at pharsalus was clever and unpredictable. The point I was trying to make was that the legions of that time period were so self-sufficient that they didn't need a military genius to make them effective. Having a leader such as Caesr would make them that even more effective.

I am familiar with the various definition of "barbarian" Originally it was anyone that was non-Greek, such that even Phillip of Macedon who was quasi-Greek was considered a Barbarian. By the standards of the ancient Greeks the emerging Romans were barbarians as well, as Pyrrhus stated "These may be barbarians, but there is nothing barbarous about their discipline..." Subsequently the Rome borrowed the term from the Greeks to describe those civilizations outside of the Greco-Roman world. Generally speaking barbarian is used to describe the gauls, germans, and other tribes that were considered more primitive and crude compared to the Roman and Hellenistic civilizations of the same time. "Organized or not, predictability is indeed a poor quality for any army." And yet many of the Roman armies won in spite of being predictable. The legions of the late republic and early empire had a fairly standard way of lining up for battle, and they were so effective that the commanders didn't have to be innovative and unpredictable. Just like a football team with a strong running game (big offenesive line, powerfull running backs) can be predictable and still pile up the yardage to win games.

The Roman Republic seemed to have much more success against the highly organized combined arms forces of many of the eastern kingdoms, even those that had large numbers of cavalry. Against barbarians (gauls, cimbri, teutons) the outcome seemed less predictable. Not every Roman general was able to beat them in the manner of Marius or Caesar. It has been said that Caesar's quote"I came, I saw, I conquered" was with refernce to his easy success against eastern foes compared to what he had experienced in the west.

Thanks I just finished it. Very well written and easy to follow. Here's what I found intersting. He mentions Constantine and the peace treaty that he established with the Goths. I get the impression that he was creating a buffer or client state out of them. He may have been trying to bring their land (Dacia) back into the empire by diplomatic and economic means. Under Valens a number of incidents led to breaking of the treaty and subsequent economic hardships for the Goths. Is it possible that these hardships made them more vulnerable to the Huns? Prior to Adrianople barbarians had been an important part of the Roman military, but they were thought of as being romanized. There was probably a continuum in terms of degree of romanization, i.e. some were fully Romanized and some were fairly raw recruits who stll had ties with their homeland. That's perhaps why Fritigen's Goths were able to entice defectors from the regular Roman army. They were also able to recruit former slaves and other underlings from the areas that they ransacked. Somewhat reminiscent of Spartacus' slave rebellion. After Adrianople Theodossius worked very hard to salvage what was left of the military. He recruited Romans as well as Goths into the military. It's not clear to me if he could have done anything about the Goths that remained in the empire under their own leadership. The major problem with their continued pressence was not that they were Goths, but that they had Roman blood on their hands; they had annhialated a Roman army along with the emperor. That gave them an uprecedented self-confidence when negotiating because the Romans were afraid of them. They certainly didn't want to risk another Adrianople. The continued recruitment of barbarians into the army should not have been a problem in itself as long as they had severred their ties to the Gothic leaders.

I thought I would revive this thread since I was reading a bit about the Goths and Arianism. It seems to me that a basic tenet that the son is created by the father and is therefore subordinate to him. Doesn't this make it more like a form of polytheism? In the pagan religion Zeus or Jupiter was the father who had a son (Hercules) from a mortal woman. Isn't this similar to the Christian God having a son from Mary?

What if the Battle of Strassburg had resulted in a Roman defeat and the death of Julian?

Why didn't the East atrophy in the same way to where it could no longer support itself?

Could it have anything to with fortifications? Wasn't Constantinople more fortified? I could be wrong, but I get the impression that many of the cities in the West were less fortified because they felt confident that the army could deal with any incursions. Then when the army was unable to drive out the barbarians, many cities were left vulnerable.

You're right, didn't recall all of the details correctly. I did think it was interesting that these roman citizens who had grown accustomed to depending on mercenary armies were willing to take the initiative and go into battle. This seems contrary to the widely held assumption that citizens of the late empire tried to avoid military service at all costs. When this particular group lost its discipline and was forced to flee, Belisarius made no subsequent attempt to recruit them into service, since he regarded them as more of a liability. How hard would it have been to take these willing citizens and train them to function effectively against the Goths? Perhaps this was not the time or the place to raise raw recruits?

Short answer: all that is undeterminable, as any other anachronic comparison; period. How about this for an anachronistic comparison. If I remember correctly, when the Byzantines recaptured Rome, Belisarius sent out a group of Roman citizens in some sort of phalanx formation that initially drove back the Goths, but they subsquently lost their cohesion and they had to be rescued by the Byzantine troops. Could this group of well motivated though undisciplined citizen troops be similar in effectiveness to those of the early republic? Good enough to defeat an Etruscan army but not good enough to defeat a Romanized Gothic army?

"My general impression (just that!) is that the general average performance of the armies of both the Romans and their enemies tended to progressively improve year after year, given the slow but real advance in tactics and weaponry. " Are you saying that the armies of the 4th century were actually better than those of the republic and early empire? Marius' army which destroyed the Teutons would have been easily beaten by Fritigen's or Alaric's army? What really changed in terms of weapons? Gladius vs Spatha? Pilum vs Spears and/or darts? Scutum vs oval shield? Body armor? Lorica segmentata or mail vs other forms of mail? Helmets? Were there really any significant advantage of older versus newer armaments? Later in the middle ages there were certainly more significant advances such as more complete body armor, innovative weapons such as the halberd, etc.

I can find very few descriptions of large pitched battles against Germanic Barbarians in the fourth century. The two that come to mind most frequently are Strassbourg and Adrianople. The former could easily have been a disaster similar to Adrianople. Julian showed good generalship, preventing and ambush and holding his reserves to counter a breakthrough. The total numbers of troops involved, however do seem considerably smaller than in battles of the late republic and early empire.

Speaking of books has anyone read this one? http://www.amazon.com/Romes-Gothic-Wars-Co.../ref=pd_sim_b_4

You may be thinking about Ventidius, who seemingly was the first Roman that (quite successfully) applied such tactics against the Parthian army; Crassus' army was defeated exactly for not doing that. The "triumvir" simply tried to profit from a surprise factor that he actually lacked. From Plutarch: " And when Crassus ordered his light-armed troops to make a charge, they did not advance far, but encountering a multitude of arrows, abandoned their undertaking and ran back for shelter among the men-at‑arms, among whom they caused the beginning of disorder and fear, for these now saw the velocity and force of the arrows, which fractured armour, and tore their way through every covering alike, whether hard or soft. " I am assuming that these light-armed troops were archers and slingers And later he specifically mentions archers: "Accordingly, the young man took thirteen hundred horsemen, of whom a thousand had come from Caesar, five hundred archers, and eight cohorts of the men-at‑arms who were nearest him, and led them all to the charge."

You might want to look into the religious controversy of the time. The Goths were Christians, but of the Arrian heresy, which was not considered mainstream.

I find it perplexing that the late Roman army with all of its 650,000 men had that much difficulty containing a relatively small group of barbarians. It puts in to question wether Diocletian's "reforms" were really beneficial. They sounded good in theory. The total number of troops were increased, but the bureaucracy involved in maintaining them made them less available. Compared to the late republic, which had a much lower total number of troops, Consuls had no trouble putting together one field army after another. For example, when a large force of Teutons invaded and destroyed more than one Roman army sent against them, Gaius Marius was able to move on them and defeat them decisively. http://www.unrv.com/empire/cimbri-teutons.php

Julian the Apostate campaigned against the Persians in the East.

I don't think that the bows of the horse archers were as powerfull as the crossbow. I also don't know if their infantry archers had anything equivalent to the English Longbow. At Jaxartes Alexander used the Ballista (giant crossbow) as field artillery because it had a much greater range than the bows of the Scythian horse archers.

Different title, but it appears to be the same article.

Can you quote your sources? Book X of The Alexiad by Anna Comnena http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/annac...-alexiad10.html "The warriors at once flocked to that spot, as they saw he was strongly armed for battle. But Marianus, speaking in their language, advised the Latins to have no fear, and not to fight against fellow-Christians. But one of the Latins hit his helmet with his crossbow. This cross-bow is a bow of the barbarians quite unknown to the Greeks; and it is not stretched by the right hand pulling the string whilst the left pulls the bow in a contrary direction, but he who stretches this warlike and very far-shooting weapon must lie, one might say, almost on his back and apply both feet strongly against the semi-circle of the bow and with his two hands pull the string with all his might in the contrary direction. In the middle of the string is a socket, a cylindrical kind of cup fitted to the string itself, and about as long as an arrow of considerable size which reaches from the string to the very middle of the bow; and through this arrows of many sorts are shot out. [256] The arrows used with this bow are very short in length, but very thick, fitted in front with a very heavy iron tip. And in discharging them the string shoots them out with enormous violence and force, and whatever these darts chance to hit, they do not fall back, but they pierce through a shield, then cut through a heavy iron corselet and wing their way through and out at the other side. So violent and ineluctable is the discharge of arrows of this kind. Such an arrow has been known to pierce a bronze statue, and if it hits the wall of a very large town, the point of the arrow either protrudes on the inner side or it buries itself in the middle of the wall and is lost. Such then is this monster of a crossbow, and verily a devilish invention. And the wretched man who is struck by it, dies without feeling anything, not even feeling the blow, however strong it be."

A recent article by Adrian Goldsworthy describes the background and aftermath of Adrianople. He stated that it is was vary hard for the Romans of the 4th century to put together a large field army for a battle even though the total number was estimated to be about 650,000, divided into frontier troops and mobile troops. If those estimates are correct, wouldn't the losses at Adrianople seem minimal?

The Roman Ballista, and the smaller Scorpion were essentially larger versions of the medieval Crossbow. The Romans certainly used the scorpion as a field artillery piece, since it was more mobile than the larger ballista. http://roman-empire.net/army/scorpion-pics.html The Byzantines appeared to be unfamiliar with the crossbow when it was brought over to the east by the Crusaders. Why did the Byzantines lag behind the West in this important technology?