Roman Empire fell because ‘prosperity made people weak’

[Viggen]

...thats should stir some controversy...

 

The Roman Empire fell because its people became ‘lazy and weak’ when they had more money, a researcher has claimed. Historians have believed for centuries that war, economic collapse and political changes brought down the ancient giant in the 5th Century AD. But after SEVEN years of groundbreaking research, Dr Jim Penman PhD claims that a surge in prosperity changed the traditionally stoical Romans’ biolological make-up, causing them to become idle and disrespect authority....

 

via SWNS

[C. Fabius Lupus]

The Eastern Empire did not fall and it was even wealthier.

 

It is funny how people usually think the Western Empire was Rome and it came to an end in the 5th century. The capital of the Empire was Nova Roma, i.e. Constantinople. The independent administration of the West was only a temporary phenomenon with many interruptions. And the Western Empire was not dissolved by Odoacer but reunited with the East. Odoacer was a Roman foederati general, not a barbarian invader. The former capital Rome fell later on under temporary control of barbarians, but Roman rule over the West was fully restored under Justinian.

Many dates can be named as the "Fall of the Roman Empire" according to the historical interpretation. But the end of the Western Empire is the weakest interpretation of all. It is probably an interpretation promoted by the Pope in Western Europe, since the Catholic Church claimed to be the legal ruler of the Western Empire by forging the so called "Donation of Constantine".

For all other purposes the end of the rule of the last Western Emperor Romulus Augustulus was a minor event in the history of the Roman Empire that lasted a thousand years longer.

[Onasander]

Romulas wasn't recognized by anyone as emperor save the barbarians. The Roman Emperor in Constantinople didn't acknowledge him.

 

I can see where this guy is coming from, and SOME of those mechanisms effecting birth rates, such as food supply, can count towards his theory, but depends of correlating statistical assumptions with our "apperception" of "Roman Apperception", which is tricky at best when looking for mechanisms that can claimed as cause and effect.

 

An example being.... founding Roman Towns. The deposition itself along a plan, with stock ethical/cultural romans, especially if of a military background, into landholding positions at the very foundation all across the empire really hurts this theory, as a considerable portion of the population that owned property, and thus have need to resorts to courts, the law, and an education necessary to understand the law, and thus become political players on a microscale in their own right, had a very early monopoly, and the linguistic evidence is, at least in the west..... this was outrageously successful. The concept of founding Roman towns in the west even survived the empire for a time, its legal language survived (morphed into the romance languages) and the catholic church continued to expand on a modification of these principles.

 

Likewise, there are strong similarities between the household political theories of the Greeks and Romans (plus Jewish concepts) and feudalism. If anything, the Roman respect for authority didn't die off, it survived them and had a lasting impact in the cultures that rose in their wake.

 

Likewise, Romans actively imported whole communities of kinds of warriors, and placed them around the empire as permanent recruit able pools of residents who would join their native unit and carry on their praised military skill set.... this system was still (to a degree) intact at the collapse of the western empire. We gave a thread on this somewhere on this site, where we found the oddity of parts of the Roman Empire.... surviving the Empire, in the west. The collapse of political authority and the assertion of alien authority didn't immediately lead to a outright dismantling of all aspects of the Roman State, but the new powers didn't have the need, priorities, imperatives to maintain the various arms of the empire in their area intact. Imagine every state in the US became its own country. NASA's Space Control is in Houston, but it doesn't launch from there.... how much money do you think Texas would continue to invest into it? But does it automatically lose such empertise and insight if it neglects it? Not immediately.

 

Secondly, the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west was a military collapse, one of a Empire based on rebellion prone legions affiliating under several competing authorities. This isn't evidence of a lack of authority, but too many authorities. Its border was insecure, highly fluid, and experienced far too rapid of a rate of immigration, entire communities and nations came in. The Romans had been transitioning in this period to defensive Limes and internal field armies, and fortified cities. Its military was scaling down, and not from a lack of available manpower. It was available money, ability to upkeep infrastructure such as roads and auxillaries organized and paid directly from a central treasury, owing allegiance directly to the state, that was diminishing. A lack of posterity from Emperor Thrax on.

 

This produced the feudal system, which was built on the manorial economy, which emulated to a degree Roman countryside living.

 

Very much, the Roman sense of authority survived. Its basics of community did too. We in fact see genetically it was the militant romans who had a early monopoly on the communities, and access to female war slaves to get the early population boom. To what extent did these communities overcome the necessity of producing a net surplus of children to carry this advantage is up for debate in any region, I lack such data.... but the Romans appeared to of left their genetic markers all over the place, and shuffled populations considerably.

 

So I'm left rejecting my surface understanding of this theory. The western empire suffered a relatively sudden military collapse via invading migrant populations at a time when it was remodeling its military away from the system used in Caesar and Augustus' time, which was admittedly prone to civil war. It was a highly fluid situation, and state doctrine was way too slow to adapt in the west. Minor things, such as putting down a mild revolt from aristocratic pagan discontent in a few provinces caused the legions to be off balanced at a crucial time. Much of the west was lost (not all of it).

 

If we accept this theory, we have to deal with the paradox of the eastern roman empire lasting till the 15th century. We also have that oddity of Belisarius and romans lasting in southern Italy and Sicily for hundreds of years. Likewise, it doesn't quite explain Islam, or the Iconoclastic-Orthodox schisms that lead the the eastern empire halving.

 

Furthermore, respect for authority is a nebulas as fuck term. We "know what that means", but what does it mean biologically? Romans had a cultural shift away from authority in rejecting the pecking order? So what, serotonin went up, or down? In who, and how did this effect the ability of Romans to recruit, fund, and maintain sound armies?

 

Likewise, the very shape of the empire really hurt its continued expansion. It was round, hollow in the middle. It faced several times two front wars, sometimes more. If you expand a round/oval empire, the expansion from the center outwards would require not merely twice the forces of holding the original territory, but more, as the expanded oval is LARGER, and needs between a third to half the times of force extra over mere doubling. If I have a circle of TWO territories, and claim every territory along my territory the same width as my starter territories, if each territory is the same size, I end up with more than 4 territories. This puts a Hugh logistical, financial, and recruiting burden on Roman expansion. Had the Romans held the Carpathian Mountains and the Baltic's, they could of broken this Round State Expansion Friction, but they couldn't pull it off, so couldn't reach parity with the immigrants pouring in.

 

The immigrants pouring in were substantial in numbers. It would be a false corallary to assume Rome was suffering a demographics collapse at this time, if anything, it was surging. It couldn't adapt quickly enough. Its very hard to say what intellectual efforts would of been needed from a historical point. Your talking theoretical statecraft here, pure philosophy and not fact driven history.

 

If Romans disregarded authority, how did the bishops survive? How did the emphasis on religious conservatism and bone fide authority become the staple of modern christian orthodoxy, which in the Greek church's case, is a living fossil of Roman State Religion, more so than even the Catholic church. It doesn't begin to lend evidence to what we know of this theory.

[caldrail]

Whilst agree that immigration was gradually diluting the latin-ness of Rome, so the same process had been underway via slavery. As it happens Rome was a very cosmopolitan society anyway and all this 'romanisation' stuff you read about is often miodrn invention. True, the Romans did encourage people to adopt latin ways, and gave them preference if they did, but there was never any compulsion and large sections of the population were essentially maintaining their cultural roots. That these people interacted daily with the empire in which they lived does not infer they adopted a complete cultural packakage to go with it - as I've said before, owning a roman pot does not make you roman.

 

As for attitudes toward authority, there was a drift away from loyalty toward the city stateafter about two hundred years of prosperous empire. After that, the economy of the Roman world began to shrink (though in some repects it occaisionally did well). Bishops were only directly affecting a proportion of society anyway, and many of them only paid lip service to their preferred faith. In fact, bishops were lamenting the state of Roman morality.

 

Where now is the ancient wealth and dignity of the Romans? The Romans of old were the most powerful, now we are without strength. They were feared, now it is us who are fearful. The barbarians peoples paid them tribute, now we are the tributaries of the barbarians. Our enemies make make us pay for the very light of day, and our right to life has to be bought. Oh what miseries are ours! To what state have we descended? We even have to thank our the barbarians for the right to buy ourselves off them! What could be more humiliating andand miserable.

Salvian

 

it would seem that the decline of the west had less to do with immigration and more to do with political will. Cicero had said that civic duty required more courage and dedication than military careers (he was almost certainly right), whereas the bulging and anonymous civil service of the later empire encouraged apathy and corruption.

 

In the end, though, all the countless pages of speculation about why the border collapsed, paticularly in the west, amount to one simple fact: the empire grew old. Adapt though it might, its mechanisms for dealing with with change gradually became set and atrophied, its military 'immune system' needed more and more help from outside, and finally - faced with new generations of vigorous neighbours, who had borrowed from the empire what they needed to give their political system and their cultures strength and coherence - it died of old age.

The Empire Stops Here (Philipp Parker

[Onasander]

I gotta disagree with the last there, I wouldn't call incorporating barbarian armies into the roman system as evidence of senile old age, as the Romans always had auxiliaries. In modern and near modern times, Ethnic units have been used to great success, including with the British Gurkas. The Eastern Roman Empire made great use of it too.

 

Romans more or less bungled it, but honestly, the way it happened so suddenly, it wasn't like they had much time to get all the Germans and goths under control. The ideal would of been in a "United Empire" to say "Fine, you can come in, we will help you set up, but you'll be broken up, and transfered from the northern border in Europe to Asia Minor and Africa.... And those people (who?) Would get sent to Europe ideally. This way, everyone is out of their element, they feel secure, and you fast track their nobles.

 

There was too empires at the time, and you just can tell all the Goths and Germans to go to Africa and Spain. Kinda filled to capacity. The imperial authorities clearly didn't take consideration as to where they were settling these people, nor break down their basic autonomy.

 

The Romans were more or less experimenting with utilizing Ethnic Armies on the fly here, and lacked the liquidity to field a sufficient army in reserve to overcome any debacles the field forces might encounter. They more or less had to keep in a menacing enough position to keep anyone from getting any ideas (roman or barbarian), as well as repel foreign forces. They obviously failed, but it was close. They could just of easily of survived, integrated the migrants and slowly rebuilt its military and economic fortunes. The arrival of the Huns is evidence of ways the Romans could of integrated the barbarians into Rome. Backfired, but Flavius Aetius came close.

 

Likewise, the resurgence under Belisarius and Narses clearly shows they were not dying of old age. Plague more than anything killed that.

[caldrail]

The issue with auxillaries is that the Romans used such formations as allies, second class forces, based primarily on the frontier, whereas the later feoderatii were part and parcel of the Roman defense system, largely because they needed the manpower in arms and finding enough recruits had become all but impossible (they had been experiencing difficultuires since the reign of Augustus and quite probably earlier than that). The rsurgences you mention are not those of the Roman state, but of initiatives led by individuals. Skilled leadership had declined along with everything else in the empire thus when someone came along who genuinely had talent, they usually made a big difference.

 

As a case in pojnt, note how Sebastianus, when summoned from Italy to lead the eastern armies, realises that the bulk of the legions were pretty well too far gone to be any use. He deliberately handpicks younger, keener men who were more easily trained and willing to fight. Without his initiative, the Goths would not have been been on their back foot prior to Adrianoplke, and notice that the petty intrigue and lack of ability in senior command made certain that Valens army would not capitalise on their advantage.