"...The great and mighty Roman empire of old fell in large part because it refused to respond positively to the changes forced upon it."
aesthete8
Ed Cryer
"aesthete8" <art...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:87bbeaea-6d53-4f96...@p36g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
> http://www.jconline.com/article/20090720/LIFE08/907200302
It's nice and easy to deal in broad generalities; especially easy when
you're talking about such a wide-spread, heterogeneous mass such as the
Imperium Romanum was. You can pick a cause from many and hyperbolize on
it to your heart's content. Try these;
Barbarian inroads.
Christianity.
Drought and Famine.
Splitting the empire into two.
Rivalry and warfare between contenders for the purple.
And now this guy's suggesting that if only the Romans had granted
territory to Alaric and his host, Attila and his hosts, plus more vast
hordes being forced south and west to the edges of the Rhine and Danube
by warfare in their own lands, then the Empire might have survived.
Nay, nay, my lad. The Roman Empire didn't so much fall as evolve. That
guy's arguments about intransigence and stubborn refusal to change might
apply to the senate and conservative elements in the times of Julius
Caesar, and why the Republic evolved into the Empire; but not for the
"fall" of the empire as a unit.
Ed
Francis A. Miniter
In *The Dream of Scipio* by Iain Pears (which examines the
decline from the point of view of what later became
Avignon), it is also suggested that decreases in tax
revenues from the provinces made it increasingly difficult
to sustain a standing army.
--
Francis A. Miniter
Oscuramente
libros, laminas, llaves
siguen mi suerte.
Jorge Luis Borges, La Cifra Haiku, 6
Ed Cryer
"Francis A. Miniter" <fami...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:h57ck7$fu0$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
It's this question of armies in the field that carries more weight with
me. When you consider how many citizen-recruits could be drafted against
Hannibal, how easily J Caesar could recruit new troops, for how many
centuries the Romans had trouble all along the frontiers and yet managed
to cope; well, you have to ask yourself what changed.
That's why Gibbon blamed Christianity; Christians refused army-service.
Ed