Jubbergun wrote:
Remember how the Romans allowed/brought in barbarians to do the jobs Romans wouldn't do, and the barbarians sacked Rome?
dek wrote:
hablo espanol
You're drawing the wrong connection. It wasn't that the barbarians they let in sacked Rome, what put them in that position in the first place was complex social changes in Rome weakened the Roman state and economy, so they couldn't afford military and infrastructural upkeep.
The Roman legions were at their height towards the middle of the Imperial period, but had to be scaled back as the economy weakened. They replaced the classic Marian legion with the "manipular" legion, and replaced high-quality segmented armor with more economical variants that provided inferior protection. But they could have avoided having to make those cutbacks if they had cut military spending and focused on the economy earlier on. One of the curious themes of Roman history is "all we have is a hammer, everything is a nail" - how having military might often started conflicts that could have been avoided, rather than preventing them.
What drove this economic weakness was partly that Rome ceased to be a manufacturer of crops and goods because of slave labor and cheap imports, partly that Roman military protection and taxation made their allies more attractive economically than Rome itself, and partly that the Romans themselves became less ambitious and hardworking when it became more effective to find a way up doing petty administrative tasks like being an aedile somewhere or kissing the emperor's ass and becoming an augustale rather than doing something for the Roman state and people.
