3 ms·

The basic premise I got from Mike Duncan's podcast was that: when Rome ran out of dangerous external enemies to fight (ie Carthage), people in Rome found intern

The basic premise I got from Mike Duncan's podcast was that: when Rome ran out of dangerous external enemies to fight (ie Carthage), people in Rome found internal enemies to fight. That was fine for a few centuries, until external enemies re-emerged, and then it really fell apart.

arrosenberg 3y ago
Eh, kinda. It was more that they overextended themselves and could no longer defend their borders with their citizen-soldiery that expected to be home in time for harvest. Multiyear campaigns and distant conquest required a professional army. Because of that, Marius reformed the army to allow the proletarii in, pay them from the treasury and outfit them from state arsenals and armories. Prior to the reforms, soldiers were patricians and wealthy plebeians who could afford to outfit themselves with equipment and supplies. The wealthy of Rome were not willing to pay for all of this, so the practice was for generals to pay their soldiers out of taxes and loot. Thus the legions became loyal to their generals instead of to the Republic, which essentially made them warlords. There were plenty of places left to conquer - Augustus would somewhat famously and disastrously try to conquer Germania east of the Rhine, Egypt was assimilated after Pompey's defeat, etc.
- philipov 3y ago
  Both you and the person you're replying to are correct. These are not mutually exclusive factors. (Well, except the part about egypt: that was assimilated after Anthony and Cleopatra's defeat, not after Pompey's defeat. Caesar allowed Cleopatra to remain a client monarch.) Interestingly, that disasterous campaign you mentioned by Augustus to try to conquer up to the Rhine was done exactly to address the difficulty of defending Rome's extended borders. He felt that it was important for the empire to achieve its natural borders, just the same as France sought to do after the revolution. However, even had those natural borders been secured, it would have done nothing to address the internecine strife that was was instrumental to the decline and final collapse of the western empire. It is necessary to look at a combination of both internal and external pressures to explain what happened.

arrosenberg 3y ago

Eh, kinda. It was more that they overextended themselves and could no longer defend their borders with their citizen-soldiery that expected to be home in time for harvest. Multiyear campaigns and distant conquest required a professional army. Because of that, Marius reformed the army to allow the proletarii in, pay them from the treasury and outfit them from state arsenals and armories. Prior to the reforms, soldiers were patricians and wealthy plebeians who could afford to outfit themselves with equipment and supplies. The wealthy of Rome were not willing to pay for all of this, so the practice was for generals to pay their soldiers out of taxes and loot. Thus the legions became loyal to their generals instead of to the Republic, which essentially made them warlords. There were plenty of places left to conquer - Augustus would somewhat famously and disastrously try to conquer Germania east of the Rhine, Egypt was assimilated after Pompey's defeat, etc.

philipov 3y ago
Both you and the person you're replying to are correct. These are not mutually exclusive factors. (Well, except the part about egypt: that was assimilated after Anthony and Cleopatra's defeat, not after Pompey's defeat. Caesar allowed Cleopatra to remain a client monarch.) Interestingly, that disasterous campaign you mentioned by Augustus to try to conquer up to the Rhine was done exactly to address the difficulty of defending Rome's extended borders. He felt that it was important for the empire to achieve its natural borders, just the same as France sought to do after the revolution. However, even had those natural borders been secured, it would have done nothing to address the internecine strife that was was instrumental to the decline and final collapse of the western empire. It is necessary to look at a combination of both internal and external pressures to explain what happened.