Disintegrative Historical Forces?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Heresson
This should be moved into History section.

It's not really a history thread.

[Kidlicious]

Getting away from focusing on just the fall of the Roman Empire I think that the fall of all empires throughout history has taken place in the midst of some sort of failure of the economic system.

[Odin]

I consider the notion the Christianity contributed to the fall of Rome to be rubbish, IMO it's the other way around. The decline of the empire, especially the civil wars following the death of The emperor Commodus lead to the spread of salvationist cults simply because those civil wars caused life for the average Joe to suck.

IMO Rome sowed the seeds of it's own fall during the 2nd Punic War. the long campaigns prevented the citizen-soldiers to go and farm, causing them to loose thier land to the great aristocratic families. The dispossessed farmers difted into the cities and became the urban poor (Proletarii in Latin, litterally meaning those whose only contribution to the state was popping out more Romans).

The pre-Marius millitary system relied on plenty land-owning peasants and so the decline of a land-own peasantry had disasterous effects. This resulted in the reforms of Marius, which turned the Roman millitary into a professional force. The problem with this is that it made the soldiers more loyal to thier commanders then to the roman state. Not only did this result in the fall of the republic, but it also caused the civil wars of the late empire. And it was the cvil wars of the late empire and the damage to the economy they caused that weakened the empire enough that it was overrun by barbarians.

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Kidicious


It's not really a history thread.

You're not quite grasping the concept

And, as somebody's mentioned, teh frogs will bring our civ down, but not yet. On their secret bases on two earth moons, they're preparing an army to take back their homeland.

[Velociryx]

You're not quite grasping the concept

Now Heresson...I've told him that very thing myself....*shrug* You learn to love him tho...

And, as somebody's mentioned, teh frogs will bring our civ down, but not yet. On their secret bases on two earth moons, they're preparing an army to take back their homeland.



-=Vel=-

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Heresson
And, as somebody's mentioned, teh frogs will bring our civ down, but not yet. On their secret bases on two earth moons, they're preparing an army to take back their homeland.

That belongs in the History Forum.

[Heresson]

that's what I'm talking about!

[Elok]

Of course there are disintegrative historical forces. Napoleon's Death Ray, for example. Or the positron cults of ancient China. I've heard some vague rumors of Roman acid-sprayer brigades, but I'm not sure what to think about those.

[Velociryx]

No,no,no, Elok...am I mis-remembering, or didn't the Positronic cult of China get wiped out by the Neutronic cult in 856AD?

I could have sworn.....

-=Vel=-

[Elok]

Hey, the fact that they were aware of the existence and classification system of antimatter in the ninth century makes them a force to be reckoned with anyway. They had a good run, and they were instrumental in the Tang dynasty's brief period of prosperity.

[Velociryx]

-=Vel=-

[Dr Strangelove]

The Marian reforms occurred several centuries before Rome croaked. The aristocratic system and the proliferation of the proletariat co-existed with the rise of the Roman empire to its height of power. It seems to me that the downfall of Rome was largely attributable to the proliferation of enemies and the accrual of the effects of multiple bad policies over the centuries.

At the end of the fourth century Rome faced generally hostile Persians on the east and multiple hostile German tribes on the north, with the addition of the unfortunately too competent Huns arriving on the scene by the early fifth century. The Romans made a serious blunder by disengeniously allowing the Visigoths to settle within the empire, then shafting them by giving them bad land and taking their children as slaves. The Romans then compounded their folly by enlisting the men of the tribe into the army. Trained and equipped the Visigoths destroyed critical portions of Rome's trade network before finally being bribed into accepting part of the empire in exchange for peace.

Bad policies which doomed Rome included failure to reform the currency. Since each new emporer printed new coins to celebrate his reign the currency became progressively inflated causing trade to suffer. The carving of the empire into autonomous regions meant that when one region was threatened the other could opt to refuse to come to its aid. Finally over the last two centuries of Rome's existence the emporer's had resorted to paying off legionnaries by converting them to Liminii , forces which were paid in land and promised that they would serve only in their own district. By the fifth century nearly two-thirds of the legions were of this type. Under such conditions the empire could only muster a few legions to meet serious challenges like the Visioths, the Huns and the Vandals.

In one way Christianity mnay have hastened the downfall of Rome. The ability of the empire to maintain sufficient forces had always rested on the Roman warrior cult along with then promise of aquiring wealth through plunder and slaves. Christianity put a damper on all three. Christians valued pacifism over the warrior virtues, they forbade the taking of plunder and they eventually abolished slavery. The size of the Roman military declined, possibly due to these factors.

[Heresson]

you are completely wrong. Roman military, at least on paper, was at the fall of it as large as ever... and byzantine military under Justinian had even more men.
The problem was not in number.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Rome fell apart because they couldn't decide on a clear cut sucession plan for the Emperors.

There's more to it than that. Rome had to support a large permanent army (or collection of armies, if you like).

Financing the armed forces meant swingeing taxation, but also constant wars of conquest and aggression, in order to secure gold mines in Wales, Gaul and Dacia, the granaries of Ptolemaic Egypt and Carthage, silver and tin in Spain and Britain, safeguarding the necessary luxury trade routes of the Eastern world with wars against the Seleucids and Parthians.


When the armies stopped advancing and just maintained the status quo or shifted to defence, the rot had to set in.


Along with that you had a large body of disenfranchised slaves, religious dissension (both between pagans and Christians and between Christian sectaries), a divergence of cultures and wealth between the East and the West, population pressure from the Franks and other Germanic tribes and epidemics and famines.

Had the Romans triumphed under Varus, perhaps it might have been different in some respects, or had they pursued technological innovation with greater degrees of application, then who knows what could have occurred.