7 ms·

Who Were the Romans, Part V: Saving and Losing an Empire

127 points by danso 5y ago

GaryTang 5y ago
flash forward to modern usa, we are letting the barbarians in but this time they call themselves communists or socialists
- dmos62 5y ago
  1950s called. They want their McCarthyism back.
  - dragonelite 5y ago
    This...
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    You americans already have your McCarthyism back. Cancel culture is that very same thing. The only difference is now it is left wing, instead of a right wing.
  - MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
    We are trained to discard certain thoughts and phrases simply by conditioning. If one desires to intellectually stretch oneself a bit, it is often illuminating to take the opposite position. Can you perhaps think of any argument, any angle where "McCarthy was right"?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
pjc50 5y ago
This is long, but it's addressing the same questions as Gibbon's six-volume famous Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire in a considerably more readable way.
- lou1306 5y ago
  Not to mention, more historically accurate. Gibbon's work is, of course, a milestone in historical research, but his thesis in a nutshell was "Rome fell because of the spread of Christianity and a general loss of morality". This more or less translates to "immigrants corrupted the core values of classical Roman identity", which is exactly the overall theme that this series of posts tries (successfully, in my opinion) to confute.
brazzy 5y ago
TLDR: Rome got big and successful by being pragmatically open and inclusive to outsiders. It treated its allies and conquered people well and gave them a path to citizenship, which made them invested in Rome's continued existence, rather than eager to see it fall (which has made other empires implode rapidly when there was a crisis in the central power). Rome fell because because beginning in the 4th century, they stopped incorporating allied troops as paid and respected units within the Roman military command structure, and instead had them operate under their own kings, paid with conquered land. Consequently, these "foederati" didn't see themselves as Romans and when the central power waned, saw that as a chance to conquer more territory.
- ithkuil 5y ago
  Why did that change in policy take place?
  - crocodiletears 5y ago
    Reduced centralized administrative capacity due to consecutive crises of succession in the third century conspired with a large wave of Germanic refugees fleeing the huns that Rome would have traditionally repelled or redistributed throughout the empire in such a manner as to diminish their capacity to coordinate political demands or insurgency. In the end, they got the worst of both worlds. The Romans failed to properly treat, repel, redistribute, or contain the refugees. They also failed to dismantle the leadership structure of the germanic tribesman before they got into roman territory. As a result, the Germanic tribes became indendent armed political blocs within Roman borders capable of threatening and negotiating with roman authorities for concessions, land, and power.
    - brazzy 5y ago
      I think you're mixing up cause and effect. After the Diocletian reforms, the administration was more centralized and powerful than ever. It would absolutely have been possible to incorporate the Germanic tribes under the old auxilia system, and that would have prevented the formation of such "armed political blocs". But that would have required paying them more or less like regular legionnaires. And Rome didn't want to spend that kind of money anymore; maybe it didn't have that kind of money, due to the economic troubles caused by the crises of the thrid century that you mention.
inglor_cz 5y ago
I like reading that blog, but this article seems to leave a lot of questions unanswered. Perhaps because there is no known answer. Diocletian's reforms were probably forced by necessity and the western part of the empire continued to exist and even thrive a long time after Diocletian was dead. We would not pin the Cold War on Napoleonic reforms either. The foederati system does not seem as bad as Bret Devereaux puts it. It is not that different from modern NATO and a ton of other, earlier alliances among sovereigns. And a lot of Germanic people actually integrated into late Roman society, including a famous general named Stilicho, who was of Vandal origin. The invasion of the Huns was pretty traumatic for the Western Roman Empire and it is possible that if it did not happen, or if the Huns met defeat early, the empire could have limped along for next thousand years, just like the Eastern Empire did. In studying defeats and collapses, we tend to overlook other instances of similar problems that did not end up catastrophically. Austria, and later Austria-Hungary, a hodgepodge of nations of unequal standing, was able to survive for many centuries before disintegrating in 1918 because it lost a major war so thoroughly that the civilian population was struck by long famine.
- watwut 5y ago
  > Austria, and later Austria-Hungary, a hodgepodge of nations of unequal standing, was able to survive for many centuries before disintegrating in 1918 because it lost a major war so thoroughly that the civilian population was struck by long famine. The national movements were the thing of the late 18 century. They haven't thought about themselves as nations all that much before, they were kingdoms. The unequal standing got bigger and language oppression and such got bigger in that late period.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    It is more complicated than that. The German speaking court in Vienna tried to elevate the German language above the others, if only to simplify record keeping and everyday executive functions. This was pretty obvious in the 17th century already, with formerly important Czech language being pushed aside long before any modern national movements. Multiethnic empires generally need a single language for their internal functionality, as few people are able to master languages as different as German, Czech, Polish and Hungarian on an adequate level. Austria-Hungary in 1914 was a peaceful, growing and sort-of prosperous nation. The nationalist squabbling was incessant, but did not prevent a fairly fast growth of living standards and businesses of the old empire were tighly interconnected all over the map. The war proved too destructive to handle, though. Even the most prominent nations of the empire (Germans, Hungarians) lost interest in anything but feeding their hungry families at the end of it.
yyyk 5y ago
In a previous entry[0], I thought the author was writing against some antagonist. Now I see it was Niall Ferguson (who is almost a professional contrarian). Well, it's easy to dunk on Ferguson, trivial to show Rome was multi-ethnic, and it's widely accepted the failure to deal with the Germanic tribes was a major factor in the events to follow. I even agree with him regarding Diocletian. But IMHO Devereaux stretches his argument a bit too thin. The blog entry makes it sound as if foederati arrangement was something entirely new and bad. The term however dates to the Republic, when it often referred to the socii. As he describes it, their arrangement wasn't all that different from the socii arrangement. Both cases allowed a sovereign mini-state under Roman rule which contributed soldiers (the difference in the 4th century was indeed giving the foederati land to sustain on, but that only made it closer to the socii arrangement). The Romans were building on a successful arrangement. Yet this time the arrangement fell flat. That's a messy story, and I doubt it has a simple answer. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27627376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27627376
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > The Romans were building on a successful arrangement. Yet this time the arrangement fell flat. The socii nearly destroyed Rome, though; the eventual solution was to more or less incorporate them. Like, it went _worse_ the second time around, but the first incarnation wasn't great, either.
  - yyyk 5y ago
    There was a long period of very successful socii service beforehand, and even the author mentions the policy's positive outcomes in his previous posts. Here, incorporation had significant problems almost from the get go. Yet it's almost the same policy... More importantly, the author portrays it as some horrible deal, but late feodrati arguably got a better deal than the socii did: there was a problem when the rewards went mostly to Rome following conquest of Italy while socii still had to serve, but the feodrati got land and tax exemption for service. The author's story basically lays all the blame on Rome's lack of inclusiveness (and none on the various 'barbarians'), yet I don't see that many evidence for it in the post. The author doesn't show that inclusion was closed off, or all that worse than in any of Rome's earlier period. Evidently by resettling the 'barbarians' the Roman ruling class intended to integrate them, and the self-ruling status they got was more likely their demand rather than Rome stubbornly refusing to accept them. Plenty of Germans did integrate into Rome and Roman customs, arguably even after the fall of Rome.
malchow 5y ago
For casual readers unfamiliar, what is happening is typical of what is happening in other corners of university history departments: less factual history and more politicized interpretive dance. Typical young classical historians reject the idea of a "fall" of Rome. That basic long-arc story is now rejected. Rome simply evolved. Most of us read Gibbon and later popular historians, thus we are familiar with the "fall" story. The clash between academic and popular Roman history makes for a lot of articles about how you, the layman, misunderstand Rome. In short, you don't misunderstand Rome. For a very good riposte to these arguments, see Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, Oxford University Press 2005.
- scarmig 5y ago
  Of course, if you bothered to read the posted article, the author takes the "decline of Rome" perspective and rejects medievalists' "change and continuity" perspective.
  - malchow 5y ago
    Why do you say that's a "medievalist" perspective? The "change and continuity" perspective is endemic to an array of interpretive schools.
    - jcranmer 5y ago
      If you had read the article, you would have learned that Devereaux contends that the "change and continuity" is promulgated primarily by historians studying the Medieval period, and not those studying Classical Antiquity.
      - malchow 5y ago
        It isn't promulgated primarily by historians studying the Middle Ages. It's promulgated primarily by classicists, and in truth held by the majority of academic historians, and I'm willing to believe widely by medievalists. The author shouldn't have made such a pat assignation of blame. But, erm, I was supposed to subsume his (in my view flawed) sorting argument into my thinking, and not having done so shows I didn't read the piece? How odd.

127 points by danso 5y ago

flash forward to modern usa, we are letting the barbarians in but this time they call themselves communists or socialists

dmos62 5y ago
1950s called. They want their McCarthyism back.
- dragonelite 5y ago
  This...
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  You americans already have your McCarthyism back. Cancel culture is that very same thing. The only difference is now it is left wing, instead of a right wing.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
  We are trained to discard certain thoughts and phrases simply by conditioning. If one desires to intellectually stretch oneself a bit, it is often illuminating to take the opposite position. Can you perhaps think of any argument, any angle where "McCarthy was right"?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

pjc50 5y ago

This is long, but it's addressing the same questions as Gibbon's six-volume famous Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire in a considerably more readable way.

lou1306 5y ago
Not to mention, more historically accurate. Gibbon's work is, of course, a milestone in historical research, but his thesis in a nutshell was "Rome fell because of the spread of Christianity and a general loss of morality". This more or less translates to "immigrants corrupted the core values of classical Roman identity", which is exactly the overall theme that this series of posts tries (successfully, in my opinion) to confute.

brazzy 5y ago

TLDR: Rome got big and successful by being pragmatically open and inclusive to outsiders. It treated its allies and conquered people well and gave them a path to citizenship, which made them invested in Rome's continued existence, rather than eager to see it fall (which has made other empires implode rapidly when there was a crisis in the central power). Rome fell because because beginning in the 4th century, they stopped incorporating allied troops as paid and respected units within the Roman military command structure, and instead had them operate under their own kings, paid with conquered land. Consequently, these "foederati" didn't see themselves as Romans and when the central power waned, saw that as a chance to conquer more territory.

ithkuil 5y ago
Why did that change in policy take place?
- crocodiletears 5y ago
  Reduced centralized administrative capacity due to consecutive crises of succession in the third century conspired with a large wave of Germanic refugees fleeing the huns that Rome would have traditionally repelled or redistributed throughout the empire in such a manner as to diminish their capacity to coordinate political demands or insurgency. In the end, they got the worst of both worlds. The Romans failed to properly treat, repel, redistribute, or contain the refugees. They also failed to dismantle the leadership structure of the germanic tribesman before they got into roman territory. As a result, the Germanic tribes became indendent armed political blocs within Roman borders capable of threatening and negotiating with roman authorities for concessions, land, and power.
  - brazzy 5y ago
    I think you're mixing up cause and effect. After the Diocletian reforms, the administration was more centralized and powerful than ever. It would absolutely have been possible to incorporate the Germanic tribes under the old auxilia system, and that would have prevented the formation of such "armed political blocs". But that would have required paying them more or less like regular legionnaires. And Rome didn't want to spend that kind of money anymore; maybe it didn't have that kind of money, due to the economic troubles caused by the crises of the thrid century that you mention.

inglor_cz 5y ago

I like reading that blog, but this article seems to leave a lot of questions unanswered. Perhaps because there is no known answer. Diocletian's reforms were probably forced by necessity and the western part of the empire continued to exist and even thrive a long time after Diocletian was dead. We would not pin the Cold War on Napoleonic reforms either. The foederati system does not seem as bad as Bret Devereaux puts it. It is not that different from modern NATO and a ton of other, earlier alliances among sovereigns. And a lot of Germanic people actually integrated into late Roman society, including a famous general named Stilicho, who was of Vandal origin. The invasion of the Huns was pretty traumatic for the Western Roman Empire and it is possible that if it did not happen, or if the Huns met defeat early, the empire could have limped along for next thousand years, just like the Eastern Empire did. In studying defeats and collapses, we tend to overlook other instances of similar problems that did not end up catastrophically. Austria, and later Austria-Hungary, a hodgepodge of nations of unequal standing, was able to survive for many centuries before disintegrating in 1918 because it lost a major war so thoroughly that the civilian population was struck by long famine.

watwut 5y ago
> Austria, and later Austria-Hungary, a hodgepodge of nations of unequal standing, was able to survive for many centuries before disintegrating in 1918 because it lost a major war so thoroughly that the civilian population was struck by long famine. The national movements were the thing of the late 18 century. They haven't thought about themselves as nations all that much before, they were kingdoms. The unequal standing got bigger and language oppression and such got bigger in that late period.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  It is more complicated than that. The German speaking court in Vienna tried to elevate the German language above the others, if only to simplify record keeping and everyday executive functions. This was pretty obvious in the 17th century already, with formerly important Czech language being pushed aside long before any modern national movements. Multiethnic empires generally need a single language for their internal functionality, as few people are able to master languages as different as German, Czech, Polish and Hungarian on an adequate level. Austria-Hungary in 1914 was a peaceful, growing and sort-of prosperous nation. The nationalist squabbling was incessant, but did not prevent a fairly fast growth of living standards and businesses of the old empire were tighly interconnected all over the map. The war proved too destructive to handle, though. Even the most prominent nations of the empire (Germans, Hungarians) lost interest in anything but feeding their hungry families at the end of it.

yyyk 5y ago

In a previous entry[0], I thought the author was writing against some antagonist. Now I see it was Niall Ferguson (who is almost a professional contrarian). Well, it's easy to dunk on Ferguson, trivial to show Rome was multi-ethnic, and it's widely accepted the failure to deal with the Germanic tribes was a major factor in the events to follow. I even agree with him regarding Diocletian. But IMHO Devereaux stretches his argument a bit too thin. The blog entry makes it sound as if foederati arrangement was something entirely new and bad. The term however dates to the Republic, when it often referred to the socii. As he describes it, their arrangement wasn't all that different from the socii arrangement. Both cases allowed a sovereign mini-state under Roman rule which contributed soldiers (the difference in the 4th century was indeed giving the foederati land to sustain on, but that only made it closer to the socii arrangement). The Romans were building on a successful arrangement. Yet this time the arrangement fell flat. That's a messy story, and I doubt it has a simple answer. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27627376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27627376

rsynnott 5y ago
> The Romans were building on a successful arrangement. Yet this time the arrangement fell flat. The socii nearly destroyed Rome, though; the eventual solution was to more or less incorporate them. Like, it went _worse_ the second time around, but the first incarnation wasn't great, either.
- yyyk 5y ago
  There was a long period of very successful socii service beforehand, and even the author mentions the policy's positive outcomes in his previous posts. Here, incorporation had significant problems almost from the get go. Yet it's almost the same policy... More importantly, the author portrays it as some horrible deal, but late feodrati arguably got a better deal than the socii did: there was a problem when the rewards went mostly to Rome following conquest of Italy while socii still had to serve, but the feodrati got land and tax exemption for service. The author's story basically lays all the blame on Rome's lack of inclusiveness (and none on the various 'barbarians'), yet I don't see that many evidence for it in the post. The author doesn't show that inclusion was closed off, or all that worse than in any of Rome's earlier period. Evidently by resettling the 'barbarians' the Roman ruling class intended to integrate them, and the self-ruling status they got was more likely their demand rather than Rome stubbornly refusing to accept them. Plenty of Germans did integrate into Rome and Roman customs, arguably even after the fall of Rome.

malchow 5y ago

For casual readers unfamiliar, what is happening is typical of what is happening in other corners of university history departments: less factual history and more politicized interpretive dance. Typical young classical historians reject the idea of a "fall" of Rome. That basic long-arc story is now rejected. Rome simply evolved. Most of us read Gibbon and later popular historians, thus we are familiar with the "fall" story. The clash between academic and popular Roman history makes for a lot of articles about how you, the layman, misunderstand Rome. In short, you don't misunderstand Rome. For a very good riposte to these arguments, see Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, Oxford University Press 2005.

scarmig 5y ago
Of course, if you bothered to read the posted article, the author takes the "decline of Rome" perspective and rejects medievalists' "change and continuity" perspective.
- malchow 5y ago
  Why do you say that's a "medievalist" perspective? The "change and continuity" perspective is endemic to an array of interpretive schools.
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    If you had read the article, you would have learned that Devereaux contends that the "change and continuity" is promulgated primarily by historians studying the Medieval period, and not those studying Classical Antiquity.
    - malchow 5y ago
      It isn't promulgated primarily by historians studying the Middle Ages. It's promulgated primarily by classicists, and in truth held by the majority of academic historians, and I'm willing to believe widely by medievalists. The author shouldn't have made such a pat assignation of blame. But, erm, I was supposed to subsume his (in my view flawed) sorting argument into my thinking, and not having done so shows I didn't read the piece? How odd.