Demographic changes Roman to Dark Ages?

Factual Questions
21

Based on what I’ve read, what happened in many places after the Empire fell is that the population declined over time, and contracted into the city centers, leaving the rest of the city to the elements. Some of this was due to infrastructure destruction (i.e. aqueduct destruction), while some was due to food shipment disruption.

So for example, in Rome, as the population declined, they concentrated in the Campus Martius (the part with the Pantheon, Campo di Fiori, Piazza Navona, etc…) because it was near the river and the Vatican. The rest of the city was left to go wild, more or less.

22

Allegedly, Rome was first deserted (with wild animals etc.) as a result of the ruinious wars between Byzantium and the Gothic kingdom - Rome was besieged a couple of times, leading to a near-complete (but temporary) abandonment.

23

There was some sort of extreme climate event in 535 AD that affected the Northern Hemisphere. We know from later events like the eruptions of Tambora in 1815 and Krakatoa in 1883 that those can disrupt a society, even a society with more advanced technology than Dark Ages Europe would have had. This is especially true if the society is also affected by things like a recent major war.

Western Europe being more affected than Eastern Europe could happen as a result of a climate anomaly brought on by something like a volcanic eruption. That’s pretty much what happened when Tambora erupted in 1815.

24

I was always intriqued by the notion that some remote corner of the Western Empire retained the old Roman ways-maybe some large valley in the Alps? it would be neat to have a real Roman legion still around, Ca. 1000 AD.

25

If by a “real” Roman legion you mean the guys who marched up and down the Empire looking like this*, you won’t even find one in the Western Roman Empire ca. 400 AD. You’ll be dealing with these guys instead. In terms of gear, tactics, looks and, to a large extent, ethnic makeup, they’re probably not very different from the “barbarians” that they’re fighting. (Who, BTW, have come a long way from the smelly days of old. Are these handsome fellas Romans or Germans? The mustache is probably the best way to tell for sure.)

The gladius is replaced by the spatha, the scutum is replaced by round shields, helmets and armor are a lot more German-looking, and they’re wearing pants. Army organization has changed a lot, too. The self-contained “mini armies” that were the legions of old (of 5,000 men plus auxiliaries) have been replaced by a organization into limitanei (border troops) and comitatenses (field armies), divided into regiments of about 500-1,000 men, and combined into larger forces as needed in a more flexible fashion. Plus, cavalry seems to really be a thing.

Heck, a lot of the time, you won’t be dealing with Roman armies at all, but instead forces of Goths or Huns brought on board wholesale, as mercenaries or foederati, fighting under their own leaders.

If you go to the East, you’ll find Roman armies running Persian-style horse archers and cataphractii. Basically, if you transplant Caesar to the fifth century, he’ll probably be pretty disoriented when he takes a look at the armies.

Then again, Caesar would probably have been feeling pretty lost, in general. Why are there multiple emperors, and why do they look like eastern-style despots? For that matter, what is an emperor? I’m Caesar, those aren’t invented yet in my day. Why has the currency gone tits up? Why is the bureaucracy ginormous? What’s up with this proto-feudalism that you guys are sliding your way into? What the heck is this Christianity thing, and what happened to the old temples? Why isn’t the capital Rome anymore? I mean, that is just ridiculous. And, most likely, why is everyone speaking weird Latin? Well, except those guys over there, who seem to prefer Greek. On the plus side, the baths and the roads are awesome, although that’ll probably go to hell, too, the way you people are carrying on. On the whole: Get me out of here, I’m confused!

(*Not that they were ever necessarily that neat and tidy outside of a parade ground. Probably more like this.)

26

That’s a very good post - also on that point: many of the “barbarians” you would be dealing with circa 500-1000 were in no way interested in destroying Rome! Rather, they wished to preserve it, and inherit it. The Gothic kingdom of Italy is a case in point - keeping civilization safe from the ‘hardcore’ barbarians, like those awful Franks and Lombards. :wink:

27

Thanks for the links-I guess the old Imperial soldiers would not be too effective in AD 1000. Were 5000-man legions just impossible to support by this time? What became of the old-style helmets and armor?

28

Yikes. You can probably build yourself an academic career figuring out the evolution of the Roman army, and all the whats and whys. I haven’t done that, so I’m certainly no expert. Paging Kobal2, I suppose. And if we get into it, we’ll be here all week. It’ll be a fun week, but kind of off-topic. Still, for those specific questions:

The reorganization from old-school legions into border troops / mobile field armies (which happens around the time of Diocletian and Constantine) is probably just a sensible change, considering what the army’s job is at that point. Which is: Mostly being border police along the (absolutely humongous) frontier, and then responding the fastest with the mostest to where that week’s crisis is. This is a different sort of job from, say, marching into a territory to conquer it. By the time of Diocletian, the army was probably already largely operating as vexillations, that is, parts of legions peeled off from the main legion ad hoc, rather than as full legions all the time. The limitanii / comitatenses thing is probably just a formalization of that into the army structure. And, again, the grouping into smaller forces rather than huge legions (although groups of about 1,000 soldiers were confusingly still called legions for a long time) is just reshuffling for flexibility. The field armies they were combined into would be 20,000 - 30,000 men strong, and the army as a whole was just as big when the fifth century got going as in the glory days of the Empire, as least as far as I can tell.

Another reason to put your main forces into concentrated field armies, and turning your border troops into a thin line of lighter troops (rather than having a legion for every x number of miles of frontier) is that you can then stick an Emperor in front of a field army. Especially in the third century, whenever a general won a battle (or, sometimes, successfully sneezed in the enemy’s general direction) his troops would go “General X for Emperor!”, and you’d have a usurpation or a civil war on. Better, if you’re Emperor, to be the Johnny On The Spot whenever a fire breaks out. This is part of the reason for the much larger reliance on cavalry in the later armies: They get to the fire real quick. The first Emperor to create a large mobile cavalry force is Gallienus, in the third century.

(Obviously, the Empire is still freaking big, so that’s not really going to work. Which is part of the reason for the various multi-Emporor or multi-Empire configurations that you get. The rest of the reason is probably another week-long topic to get into.)

As for the difference in look, weapons, helmets and armor from the old-style legions: I’m not entirely sure, to be honest, but my guess is that it has to do with who gets requited into the army these days. Which is: Germans. They would probably come with fighting styles and preferred gear already, and the army would adapt to them rather than the other way around. That is mostly a guess on my part, though, so y’all can feel free to correct me on it.

Another thing that happens to the army over time is that the difference between legions and auxiliaries disappear. It all just becomes the army, and, as far as I can tell, the later army is more or less all made up of what would all be auxiliaries in the olden days. Italians sure don’t want to be in the army anymore. I suppose that when the specialized jobs, manpower base, gear and tactics of the old-style auxiliaries get folded into the main force, then that leads to the army changing.

29

Another important factor is societal change insofar as where soldiers come from.

The army of the republic was supposed to be made out of Roman citizens of middling prosperity - a Roman yeomanry if you will - to fight and then go back to the family farm. Though even in repulican times, that was an ideal much honoured in the breach. The idea was that such soldier-citizens would have high morale and patriotism. A major reason for a distinction between “regulars” and “auxillaries”.

Increasingly though, in republican times, the army came to be pay-for-play - which meant increasingly loyalty to whoever could pony up the “pay”. Meanwhile, Roman success was undermining the “yeoman farmer” class, as giant slave-worked estates drove them out of business and on the dole.

It proved impossible to re-create Roman “regulars” without recreating the society from which they sprang. Moreover, “regulars” of the old style were unsuited to lengthy duty at distant frontiers.

This had much to do with why the Republic ulimately failed … it resulted in armies more loyal to successful commanders who could guarantee their pay, than to the “system”.

30

Well, now you’re talking about the Marian reforms. The Marian legions are basically your stereotypical, famous, bad-ass Roman legions, from the Late Republic and the early Empire. I was talking (or, well, trying to say something) about the change from those to the army of the late Empire.

Although this means that I can bring up a question that no one asked: Was the fifth-century Roman army worse than, say, the first-century Roman army? Well, people used to say yes, now they seem to be saying no, and I’m not sure if anyone really knows. If you can somehow get them into a fair fight, I’ll bring the popcorn. (The first century army sure looks cooler, though, so they’ll win the catwalk segment of the contest.)

And another one: Would the first-century Roman Empire have been able to stand up to the barbarian invasions/migrations (choice of terminology depending on how PC you are) that played such a part in bringing down the fifth-century Western Empire? Again, who knows? It’s all rather complicated. I will say, though, that the fifth-century Romans sometimes seem to be unable to organize themselves out of a paper bag. But then again, that’s probably true for, say, the Late Republic and the third century Empire, too. Maybe a few waves of fifth-century style foreigners deciding to set up show in your back yard would have been a headache at any time in Roman history.

31

I always assumed that the earlier infantry was superior, but that the early armies remained weak in cavalry - clever enemies could exploit that, while avoiding or neutralizing the devestating impact of their infantry. Though of course, it is impossible to know for sure, lacking a time machine. :wink:

The main problem for the late empire was that putting together a mobile, effective field army was very risky. Create such a tool, and the next thing you know, it will be used by some ambitious general for “creative regime change”. It proved very hard to fight off barbarians with one eye on this problem.

32

Well I ain’t really an expert there - I mostly come in to bloviate *after *the fall of the Empire :), and of the Roman Empire proper I’m a lot more knowledgeable about the Republican period than the Imperial one.
That said, and because the same thing happened throughout the middle ages when this or that form of armour fell out of favour : they likely melted that old crap down to make newer, cooler stuff with. Waste not, want not.

[QUOTE=Martian Bigfoot]
As for the difference in look, weapons, helmets and armor from the old-style legions: I’m not entirely sure, to be honest, but my guess is that it has to do with who gets requited into the army these days. Which is: Germans. They would probably come with fighting styles and preferred gear already, and the army would adapt to them rather than the other way around. That is mostly a guess on my part, though, so y’all can feel free to correct me on it.
[/QUOTE]

That’s probably a large part of it, yeah. The other part is that, from what I gather, as the infrastructure of the Empire fell more and more to the dogs gear manufacturing was “outsourced” to local smiths rather than rolled out of big manufactories in Italy. So the forms of gear that took over were simpler stuff that “barbarians” could replicate easily rather than more specialized items. It’s easier to turn out a spangenhelm than it is to hammer a one-piece imperial galea. It’s easier to make chain or scale mail than bendy lamellar armour (although it also takes longer). It’s easier to make a flat shield than a curved one. Etc…
Another argument I’ve come across re: why chainmail eventually took over entirely is that it’s a lot easier to repair, or to make a new suit out of pieces of old, broken ones. A soldier can even field-repair it himself by “sewing” the edges of a gash with a length of cheap steel wire. It’s not as good as a proper repair, but it’s “good enough for Army work” :slight_smile:

But it’s one of those questions that doesn’t really have a straight answer. We don’t really know the whys and wherefores, we’re just pretty sure that they did.

There were no smelly days of old ! The Gauls and Germans invented soap (where Western Europe is concerned) and were very much into bathing and cleanliness - in fact, Pliny the Elder slammed their men for using even more soap than their women ! Metrosexuals and shit :). Oh, and the Franks typically cropped their hair short : only the kings were allowed long hair.

We’ve gained quite a bit of new insight into pre-Roman cultures in the past couple decades and a lot of stuff we sort of took for granted, based solely on Roman accounts, is being revised. It seems like those cultures were a lot more “civilized” and advanced than we’d figured.

33

Well, indeed. Again, part of the reason why Diocletian, back in his day, tried to square the circle and have four emperors. Not that the problem was ever solved. Diocletian’s tetrarchy turned into a civil war round-robin when he was no longer around to herd the imperial litter of cats. And in the fifth century, it really bites everyone in the ass. Like when Constantine III jumps ship from Britain and takes his troops to fight off a bunch of barbarians in Gaul. The next thing that happens, because it’s obviously so what everyone needs right now, is that he wants to be Western Emperor instead of Honorius. Then, instead of the Romans getting together and dealing with the whole barbarian issue in force, Honorius’s puppet master in chief Stilicho has to take his Italian forces and stare down a rival Roman army instead. And to do that, he needs to co-opt the nearest Gothic force to help him out, instead of wiping them out, like he really should have done years ago. It really is a bit of a clusterf**k sometimes. As I said, unable to organize themselves out of a paper bag.

And as for having separate Western and Eastern halves of the Empire, to spread the monarchial TLC around some: Now allocating military resources to where they’re needed becomes a matter of foreign policy, between separate Empires who don’t even like each other most of the time. Chuck in the problem of having really crappy emperors who are maneuvered around by powerful generals and advisors, and it gets messy fast.

34

The stereotypical lorica segmentata (you know, this stuff) may not have been very common, ever, anyway. It also doesn’t seem to have been used for that long, relatively speaking - maybe first to fourth century. And even during that time, did every legionary dress like that? The consensus seems to be no, absolutely not. Was it even better than mail armor? No one seems to agree, but there’s a good chance that it actually wasn’t.

Through most of Roman history, your average legionary probably wasn’t the fashion icon you’ll see in a Hollywood movie, anyway. All the really fancy stuff is early Empire, and probably not that widespread even then. For a typical Roman soldier, if there is such a thing, we should probably think less opening scene of Gladiator, and more dude in a brown tunic, wearing mail, and with a bucket on his head. Like these handsome hunks. Certainly during the Republic, and again for the late Empire, only with different style buckets.