More competent commanders for one, look at the crisis, you have men like gallienus, aurelian etc who are soldiers turned emperors that know how to command their troops, the worst times in the crisis was when men like them were gone and the senate elected weak idiots to rule, same thing in the 5th century, occasionally you had someone like stillicho, aetius or majorian who are military wise atleast competent enough to fight off rome's enemies, but once they were gone rome got sacked twice and finally taken over, also by that time the germans had evolved to be a lot like the romans in both technology and administration
>the germans had evolved to be a lot like the romans in both technology and administration
How are tribal confederations anywhere close to superstate administrations. Also technology is a meme, they always had access to the same shit, it's just the Romans could churn out a whole lot more of it.
I would argue against that. The biggest tproblems was economic and political unstability. The economy more or less collapsed and transitioned to a barter and trade economy. Trade dropped significantly and that cost the moire tons tax revenue. Another problem was the land owners no longer felt loyalty to the state. They were not paying taxes. They more or less wanted the empire to fall apart. That's what fricked them. Military defeats are one thing. But almost total economic collapse is really serious
depends, i read that during the time of theodosius some already were like the vandals and the franks, goths seemed to be split on the matter, with one king reportedly persecuting christians as he saw them as a threat to gothic culture, but another being skeptical and converting after visiting constantinople because apparently the city was so magnificent it convinced them the romans had to be favoured by god, got on such good terms with theodosius that when the gothic king died, theodosius decided to bury him in constantinople with full roman honours
Theodosius annihilated the city of Thessalonica after they killed his favored Gothic general, who himself was killed only because he executed a gay pagan chariot racer that made advances on him.
Maybe the rank and file were, but it seems all the important barbarian generals in the late Roman Empire were Arian heretics.
> But by the early part of the fifth century, paganism was a dead letter, and barbarian generals were nearly all Christian, some Arian, some Nicene.
> It is more difficult to locate western Arian barbarian generals in Roman service who openly manifested their religious affiliation.The Visigoth Alaric, who was accompanied by the Arian bishop Sigesarius, is a special case because his western appointment was by the usurper Priscus Attalus. More significantly, in 427 the barbarian Arian general Sigisvult was accompanied by the Arian bishop Maximinus when he undertook his expedition against the rebellious Count Boniface in Africa in 427—while in Hippo on Sigisvult’s orders, Maximinus engaged in his famous debate with Augustine. But Based on the extant evidence, the western barbarian general who manifested his religious affiliation most openly than the other was the Patrician and Master of Soldiers Ricimer.
Not to forget all the trouble caused by the Goth Gainas caused he was refused an Arian church in Constantinople lol
> “There was a general named Gainas, by origin a [Gothic] barbarian, who was extremely courageous in battle and enjoyed the Emperor’s favor. This man was deceived by the heresy of Arius and persistently asked the Emperor Arcadius to give one of the churches of the city to the Arians. The Emperor did not know how to answer him, since he feared that Gainas, a foul-tempered and violent man, would become angry and bring about a rebellion within the Empire.”
christianity and germanic influences changing the cultural views and beliefs of the average roman's desire to be a warrior/landowner
Cucktianity made Romans stop genociding Germanics because they were now le christian.
Your argument is moronic. I´m not even a Christian (I´m agnostic) but this "le cuckstianity killed Rome xD" is seriously 11 year old fricking logic. As if history is that fricking black and white. The Western Roman Empire was already in shit creek before it adopted Christianity, conversely like another anon pointed out the Eastern Roman Empire went on to be massively successful for hundreds of years as a Christian empire. You can also spin your childish argument like this
>Rome converts to Christianity >non-Christian barbarian pagans attack and sack Rome >Rome along with it´s culture and wealth falls into a period of irreversible decline and darkness >the pagan barbarians who now inhabit Rome for the next few centuries leave all of (now Christian) Rome´s splendor and technology to rot in the dust (most of them didn´t even have a written tradition) >the vast majority of people who preserved history and our heritage through these dark ages were Christian scribes (the only 3 written vernacular languages for hundreds of years up until medieval times were Latin, Greek and (old) Irish, all from Christian populations) >Europe starts to emerge out of it´s period of isolation, backwardness and irrelevance once most of western Europe had converted to Christianity >the more Christianity is ingrained and forms of a part of everyday European life, the more prominent and powerful western European kingdoms become, starting with the Crusades and ending with colonisation of nearly the whole globe by the 1800´s >Christianity is largely abandoned post WW2 and now the Western world is in a state of severe moral decline
I get that there are very few historians on this board capable of processing history as something more binary than "X (bad thing) happened while Y (good thing) existed so X is bad!" but I just have to point out the utter simplicity and myopia in this "argument"
I should have emphasized christianity was only part of the reason it fell, sure the religious change also changed some cultural ideas about glorifying war, but plenty of medieval states and even the east did pretty good with jesus, i think another reason was assimilating, early roman expansion shows them slowly expanding, assimilating people as they go >there's a funny story about that >claudius wants to integrate the gauls more into the empire >random italian senator starts yelling about sharing the senate house with barbarians >claudius points out he's of fricking samnite origin and to sit the frick down as at one point rome considered even fellow italians as barbaric
when the germans started migrating into the empire rapidly, they stuck together, and usually kept their own leaders and values, this naturally made it harder for the romans to assimilate them, and since the germans had swords, you couldn't really convince them with this grander cause of defending one's home since they just lost theirs, best the romans could do was keep paying them
I honestly think the adoption of Arian Christianity by the Goths and its sectarian nature made it even harder for the Roman Empire to assimilate the Goths. It seems like some Romans were aware of this as Eunapius gives an account of the divide between Arian Goths and pagans Goths
> In Eunapius’ account, Eriulf, the chieftain of the Arian Christian majority, hated the Romans and represented the “Gothic party” hostile to assimilation. This group relied on a common oath never to seek reconciliation with the empire. Nevertheless, Eriulf appeared at the rich table of the emperor Theodosius and indulged liberally in wine. The pagan Fravitta, in contrast, supported assimilation and worked for adherence to the treaty the Goths had concluded with Theodosius and had affirmed on oath. Over this issue a quarrel arose in the course of which Fravitta killed his opponent with his own hands. Eriulf’s followers struck back and a general brawl ensued. The fight had began at the emperor’s table, but Theodosius was “not very angry about it.” (History of the the Goths, Herwig Wolfram).
> While Fravitta’s support among the Goths decreased, his position at court was strengthened. Immediately after the murder of Eriulf-a deed by which Fravitta cut himself off from tribe-he probably went over entirely over entirely into Roman service. Fravitta, the pagan friend of Rome, was regarded as a hero especially by the Eunapius and his successor Zosimus. His rival Eriulf, however, a Christian who hated Rome, embodied the fusion of barbarian culture and the new faith. (History of the Goths, Herwig Wolfram).
2 years ago
Anonymous
The goths were more romanized than the Catholic franks
After reading a lot about the late Roman Empire, I honestly ended up wondering what the hell pagans were doing? It’s not like they were being thrown to the lions. It’s apparent that the the majority of the senators remained pagan and they were practically useless at everything and only made things worse. Those senators were anything but warlike. They were just interested in protecting their revenue at the expense of the empire. For instance we have contemporary evidence for the successful efforts of the senators of Rome to prevent the conscription of their tenants at a time when Gildo, the rebellious commander in North Africa, was cutting off the food supply of Rome and advising Honorius to kill Stilicho cause he was draining their money.
It’s also not like pagans were forbidden from joining the Roman army as they could still clearly climb the ranks event up until the last days of the Roman Empire as evidenced by the pagan magister militum, Marcellinus, who died in 468 and was an openly devout pagan. Yet from Julian onwards (despite still having religious freedom, especially in the army) for another 30 years, it doesn’t like pagans were anymore interested in fighting for the empire than Christians. Constantius III, Stilicho, Petronius Maximus, Magnus Maximus, Gratian, Valens, Valentinian, Flavius Victor, Count Theodosius and his son (also Theodosius) etc were all Christian even though the majority of the useless senators were pagan.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>I honestly ended up wondering what the hell pagans were doing?
There just wasn't that many of them. The idea of there being a massive class of Pagans in the Later Roman Empire by the 5th century just isn't true. 'The Last Pagans of Rome' is a very long book, but more or less shows that in the Roman Empire, the 5th century did not have a considerable population of Pagan men in the upper class wielding real political power. The majority of the Senate was Christian and the many of them who were not Bishops did not find the aspects of Roman culture which were linked to Paganism in the past to be all that bad of a thing.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I think this demonstrated by the fact that the very devout pagan senator Symmachus ended up with an extremely devout Christian senator as a grandson.
> Memmius Symmachus was an Roman aristocrat, an historian and a supporter of Nicene Orthodoxy. Although Symmachus was the head of a family with a long connection with Pagan tradition—his grandfather Quintus Aurelius Symmachus delivered a famous speech urging the return of the Altar of Victory to the Roman Senate House—he was an ardent Christian interested both in theological disputes and, more prosaically, in the struggles for the control of the Pope. Symmachus cultivated the ancient Roman culture, writing a Roman history in seven volumes; this work has been lost except for a section quoted by Jordanes in his Getica.
Rome did not fall because barbarians sacked it. Rome was sacked because it was falling. Germanic peoples couldn’t have conquered Rome of Rome wasn’t rotting from the inside.
guy literally thought it was a good idea to murder the wives and children of half his christian forces simply because they were germans and he thought they'd riot if he killed the one half german half roman who could wrangle them into place (they did)
You’re delusional if you don’t think there was massacres in the late Roman Empire, but that only made things worse if anything
> The ministers of Honorius now did the most unwise thing that they possibly could have done. They dismissed the Gothic and other barbarians officers from their commands, and passed a law that no Arian Christian were in future to be allowed to enter the imperial service. The barbarians troops, who were most of them Arians, and had been devoted to Stilicho, were of course thrown into great excitement by the proof of the ill-will of the government, but at first did not venture to rebel, fearing that the Romans might revenge themselves upon their families. However, the mob of Italian cities, having got to know that heretics and foreigners were now out of favour, rose and murdered the innocent wives and children of the barbarian soldiers, and looted their property. The result was that the thirty thousand men, inflamed with the bitterest hatred, at once deserted from the Roman army and joined that of Alaric.
Rome never got conquered by a pagan barbarian chieftain. Christians had their limits, you know.
> Now the barbarians, by whom the seven-hilled city was destroyed, were, without exception, Arians; that is, rebels against the lamb, who strove to dethrone the cosubstantial Son of God by stripping him of his divinity. Alaric, Astolphus, Gaiseric, Ricimer, Odoacer, Theodoric, Vitiges, Totila, who lent a hand to the work of chastisement, were Arians: both Goths and Vandals were persecutors of the Catholics, but not one single barbarian chief, who was a pagan, ever entered Rome.
>only reason it expanded that much was some idiot wasting the finely crafted treasury left behind by a more competent emperor
Aside from that I think the reason the eastern empire survived is like a lot of people have said already, it had closer infrastructure between it's big cities and naturally being at the crossroads of europe, africa and asia allowed for vast sums of trade wealth to flow in, they were also somewhat just lucky that the sassanids seemed to frick off for like, most of the 5th century, also less places for germans to invade from except maybe the danube
>the greatest portion of authority was centered in the figure of the emperor, and western emperors were all terrible except Majorian >the richest provinces were in the East, and their wealth went to Constantinople >unguarded frontiers by said shit emperors allowed the great migrations, which eventually led to the fall of Carthage - the bread basket of Rome itself >the eternal city was sacked twice >the Huns outclassed the romans in every way and dealt untold damage to both empires
mind you, the WRE lasted for 80 years, which is a pretty long time, all things considered. Also while there was religious strife, to blame christianity for every problem is naive at best and fedora at worst.
christianity and germanic influences changing the cultural views and beliefs of the average roman's desire to be a warrior/landowner
How do you explain the fact that the empire was plagued by the same problems during the crisis of the third century,when the empire was still pagan?
More competent commanders for one, look at the crisis, you have men like gallienus, aurelian etc who are soldiers turned emperors that know how to command their troops, the worst times in the crisis was when men like them were gone and the senate elected weak idiots to rule, same thing in the 5th century, occasionally you had someone like stillicho, aetius or majorian who are military wise atleast competent enough to fight off rome's enemies, but once they were gone rome got sacked twice and finally taken over, also by that time the germans had evolved to be a lot like the romans in both technology and administration
>the germans had evolved to be a lot like the romans in both technology and administration
How are tribal confederations anywhere close to superstate administrations. Also technology is a meme, they always had access to the same shit, it's just the Romans could churn out a whole lot more of it.
Don't forget Henry VIII. War hero.
I would argue against that. The biggest tproblems was economic and political unstability. The economy more or less collapsed and transitioned to a barter and trade economy. Trade dropped significantly and that cost the moire tons tax revenue. Another problem was the land owners no longer felt loyalty to the state. They were not paying taxes. They more or less wanted the empire to fall apart. That's what fricked them. Military defeats are one thing. But almost total economic collapse is really serious
Germanic warrior are pagan at the time.
depends, i read that during the time of theodosius some already were like the vandals and the franks, goths seemed to be split on the matter, with one king reportedly persecuting christians as he saw them as a threat to gothic culture, but another being skeptical and converting after visiting constantinople because apparently the city was so magnificent it convinced them the romans had to be favoured by god, got on such good terms with theodosius that when the gothic king died, theodosius decided to bury him in constantinople with full roman honours
moron
They converted to arianism way before Romans were christians
Theodosius annihilated the city of Thessalonica after they killed his favored Gothic general, who himself was killed only because he executed a gay pagan chariot racer that made advances on him.
Maybe the rank and file were, but it seems all the important barbarian generals in the late Roman Empire were Arian heretics.
> But by the early part of the fifth century, paganism was a dead letter, and barbarian generals were nearly all Christian, some Arian, some Nicene.
> It is more difficult to locate western Arian barbarian generals in Roman service who openly manifested their religious affiliation.The Visigoth Alaric, who was accompanied by the Arian bishop Sigesarius, is a special case because his western appointment was by the usurper Priscus Attalus. More significantly, in 427 the barbarian Arian general Sigisvult was accompanied by the Arian bishop Maximinus when he undertook his expedition against the rebellious Count Boniface in Africa in 427—while in Hippo on Sigisvult’s orders, Maximinus engaged in his famous debate with Augustine. But Based on the extant evidence, the western barbarian general who manifested his religious affiliation most openly than the other was the Patrician and Master of Soldiers Ricimer.
Not to forget all the trouble caused by the Goth Gainas caused he was refused an Arian church in Constantinople lol
> “There was a general named Gainas, by origin a [Gothic] barbarian, who was extremely courageous in battle and enjoyed the Emperor’s favor. This man was deceived by the heresy of Arius and persistently asked the Emperor Arcadius to give one of the churches of the city to the Arians. The Emperor did not know how to answer him, since he feared that Gainas, a foul-tempered and violent man, would become angry and bring about a rebellion within the Empire.”
>all
>a small handful
>source even says it’s hard to say
It was pretty evenly split.
Severe lack of recruits for the army
christcuckery plus incompetence
Eastern Roman Empire did great and was far more Christian.
Your argument is moronic. I´m not even a Christian (I´m agnostic) but this "le cuckstianity killed Rome xD" is seriously 11 year old fricking logic. As if history is that fricking black and white. The Western Roman Empire was already in shit creek before it adopted Christianity, conversely like another anon pointed out the Eastern Roman Empire went on to be massively successful for hundreds of years as a Christian empire. You can also spin your childish argument like this
>Rome converts to Christianity
>non-Christian barbarian pagans attack and sack Rome
>Rome along with it´s culture and wealth falls into a period of irreversible decline and darkness
>the pagan barbarians who now inhabit Rome for the next few centuries leave all of (now Christian) Rome´s splendor and technology to rot in the dust (most of them didn´t even have a written tradition)
>the vast majority of people who preserved history and our heritage through these dark ages were Christian scribes (the only 3 written vernacular languages for hundreds of years up until medieval times were Latin, Greek and (old) Irish, all from Christian populations)
>Europe starts to emerge out of it´s period of isolation, backwardness and irrelevance once most of western Europe had converted to Christianity
>the more Christianity is ingrained and forms of a part of everyday European life, the more prominent and powerful western European kingdoms become, starting with the Crusades and ending with colonisation of nearly the whole globe by the 1800´s
>Christianity is largely abandoned post WW2 and now the Western world is in a state of severe moral decline
I get that there are very few historians on this board capable of processing history as something more binary than "X (bad thing) happened while Y (good thing) existed so X is bad!" but I just have to point out the utter simplicity and myopia in this "argument"
I should have emphasized christianity was only part of the reason it fell, sure the religious change also changed some cultural ideas about glorifying war, but plenty of medieval states and even the east did pretty good with jesus, i think another reason was assimilating, early roman expansion shows them slowly expanding, assimilating people as they go
>there's a funny story about that
>claudius wants to integrate the gauls more into the empire
>random italian senator starts yelling about sharing the senate house with barbarians
>claudius points out he's of fricking samnite origin and to sit the frick down as at one point rome considered even fellow italians as barbaric
when the germans started migrating into the empire rapidly, they stuck together, and usually kept their own leaders and values, this naturally made it harder for the romans to assimilate them, and since the germans had swords, you couldn't really convince them with this grander cause of defending one's home since they just lost theirs, best the romans could do was keep paying them
I honestly think the adoption of Arian Christianity by the Goths and its sectarian nature made it even harder for the Roman Empire to assimilate the Goths. It seems like some Romans were aware of this as Eunapius gives an account of the divide between Arian Goths and pagans Goths
> In Eunapius’ account, Eriulf, the chieftain of the Arian Christian majority, hated the Romans and represented the “Gothic party” hostile to assimilation. This group relied on a common oath never to seek reconciliation with the empire. Nevertheless, Eriulf appeared at the rich table of the emperor Theodosius and indulged liberally in wine. The pagan Fravitta, in contrast, supported assimilation and worked for adherence to the treaty the Goths had concluded with Theodosius and had affirmed on oath. Over this issue a quarrel arose in the course of which Fravitta killed his opponent with his own hands. Eriulf’s followers struck back and a general brawl ensued. The fight had began at the emperor’s table, but Theodosius was “not very angry about it.” (History of the the Goths, Herwig Wolfram).
> While Fravitta’s support among the Goths decreased, his position at court was strengthened. Immediately after the murder of Eriulf-a deed by which Fravitta cut himself off from tribe-he probably went over entirely over entirely into Roman service. Fravitta, the pagan friend of Rome, was regarded as a hero especially by the Eunapius and his successor Zosimus. His rival Eriulf, however, a Christian who hated Rome, embodied the fusion of barbarian culture and the new faith. (History of the Goths, Herwig Wolfram).
The goths were more romanized than the Catholic franks
After reading a lot about the late Roman Empire, I honestly ended up wondering what the hell pagans were doing? It’s not like they were being thrown to the lions. It’s apparent that the the majority of the senators remained pagan and they were practically useless at everything and only made things worse. Those senators were anything but warlike. They were just interested in protecting their revenue at the expense of the empire. For instance we have contemporary evidence for the successful efforts of the senators of Rome to prevent the conscription of their tenants at a time when Gildo, the rebellious commander in North Africa, was cutting off the food supply of Rome and advising Honorius to kill Stilicho cause he was draining their money.
It’s also not like pagans were forbidden from joining the Roman army as they could still clearly climb the ranks event up until the last days of the Roman Empire as evidenced by the pagan magister militum, Marcellinus, who died in 468 and was an openly devout pagan. Yet from Julian onwards (despite still having religious freedom, especially in the army) for another 30 years, it doesn’t like pagans were anymore interested in fighting for the empire than Christians. Constantius III, Stilicho, Petronius Maximus, Magnus Maximus, Gratian, Valens, Valentinian, Flavius Victor, Count Theodosius and his son (also Theodosius) etc were all Christian even though the majority of the useless senators were pagan.
>I honestly ended up wondering what the hell pagans were doing?
There just wasn't that many of them. The idea of there being a massive class of Pagans in the Later Roman Empire by the 5th century just isn't true. 'The Last Pagans of Rome' is a very long book, but more or less shows that in the Roman Empire, the 5th century did not have a considerable population of Pagan men in the upper class wielding real political power. The majority of the Senate was Christian and the many of them who were not Bishops did not find the aspects of Roman culture which were linked to Paganism in the past to be all that bad of a thing.
I think this demonstrated by the fact that the very devout pagan senator Symmachus ended up with an extremely devout Christian senator as a grandson.
> Memmius Symmachus was an Roman aristocrat, an historian and a supporter of Nicene Orthodoxy. Although Symmachus was the head of a family with a long connection with Pagan tradition—his grandfather Quintus Aurelius Symmachus delivered a famous speech urging the return of the Altar of Victory to the Roman Senate House—he was an ardent Christian interested both in theological disputes and, more prosaically, in the struggles for the control of the Pope. Symmachus cultivated the ancient Roman culture, writing a Roman history in seven volumes; this work has been lost except for a section quoted by Jordanes in his Getica.
But the barbarians who sacked Rome (Goths) were Christian. Arian Christian anyway.
Rome did not fall because barbarians sacked it. Rome was sacked because it was falling. Germanic peoples couldn’t have conquered Rome of Rome wasn’t rotting from the inside.
Honorius lived too long
Cucktianity made Romans stop genociding Germanics because they were now le christian.
See
guy literally thought it was a good idea to murder the wives and children of half his christian forces simply because they were germans and he thought they'd riot if he killed the one half german half roman who could wrangle them into place (they did)
You’re delusional if you don’t think there was massacres in the late Roman Empire, but that only made things worse if anything
> The ministers of Honorius now did the most unwise thing that they possibly could have done. They dismissed the Gothic and other barbarians officers from their commands, and passed a law that no Arian Christian were in future to be allowed to enter the imperial service. The barbarians troops, who were most of them Arians, and had been devoted to Stilicho, were of course thrown into great excitement by the proof of the ill-will of the government, but at first did not venture to rebel, fearing that the Romans might revenge themselves upon their families. However, the mob of Italian cities, having got to know that heretics and foreigners were now out of favour, rose and murdered the innocent wives and children of the barbarian soldiers, and looted their property. The result was that the thirty thousand men, inflamed with the bitterest hatred, at once deserted from the Roman army and joined that of Alaric.
Goths chimped out because of Christian emperors abusing them and before Adrianople pagan emperors resettled them in the empire peacefully quite often
Rome never got conquered by a pagan barbarian chieftain. Christians had their limits, you know.
> Now the barbarians, by whom the seven-hilled city was destroyed, were, without exception, Arians; that is, rebels against the lamb, who strove to dethrone the cosubstantial Son of God by stripping him of his divinity. Alaric, Astolphus, Gaiseric, Ricimer, Odoacer, Theodoric, Vitiges, Totila, who lent a hand to the work of chastisement, were Arians: both Goths and Vandals were persecutors of the Catholics, but not one single barbarian chief, who was a pagan, ever entered Rome.
it starts with a G and ends with the destruction of civilization
I mean, was there any region beside Rome and Carthage that wasn't piss poor?
assyria , aegypt, , mesopotamia(?)
Southern Spain, and southern Gaul
>falls
Nothing.
Why are Greeks better at being Romans than actual Romans?
>only reason it expanded that much was some idiot wasting the finely crafted treasury left behind by a more competent emperor
Aside from that I think the reason the eastern empire survived is like a lot of people have said already, it had closer infrastructure between it's big cities and naturally being at the crossroads of europe, africa and asia allowed for vast sums of trade wealth to flow in, they were also somewhat just lucky that the sassanids seemed to frick off for like, most of the 5th century, also less places for germans to invade from except maybe the danube
>gets Turk'd
Nice job there, Spapolopolus
Ethnic Greeks were only the slaves and peasants
>this kills the greekcuck
Step aside gayreeks.
This is a job for REAL Romans.
>the greatest portion of authority was centered in the figure of the emperor, and western emperors were all terrible except Majorian
>the richest provinces were in the East, and their wealth went to Constantinople
>unguarded frontiers by said shit emperors allowed the great migrations, which eventually led to the fall of Carthage - the bread basket of Rome itself
>the eternal city was sacked twice
>the Huns outclassed the romans in every way and dealt untold damage to both empires
mind you, the WRE lasted for 80 years, which is a pretty long time, all things considered. Also while there was religious strife, to blame christianity for every problem is naive at best and fedora at worst.
Germans.
Ricimer
Had a goth phase a never recovered
top kek
Do you have map of Byzantium?
actually simple.
an empires borders are defined by the speed of communications
>Civil wars every two seconds
>Nightmarishly corrupt tyrannical government