I’ve been thinking lately about how the Roman Empire could have been conquered by the Visigoths. It just boggles my mind that an empire that could govern such far flung places as what are now England, Morocco, and Syria, would be defeated by the Visigoths. At their most powerful, Rome was in control of the modern day areas of England, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Greece, the Balkans, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Lybia, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Yet with all that territory, they didn’t think of attacking Germany just to their north? And if they had invaded Germany, say in the mid 2nd century during Hadrian’s reign, would the Roman Empire been able to have survived intact? I think that if they had been able to do so, the Roman Empire might have survived intact for a much longer time than it actually did. They would have had the Sahara to defend their southern border and the relatively unpopulated Russia to the east, so I think they would have survived much longer if they had only invaded and conquered Germany when they had the chance.
Well, they did try to invade Germany. Once. Then the Emperor cried like a little bitch and moaned to Varus to give him his (dead) legions back. From then on, the following Caesars dotted that line on the map, and on the other side of the line wrote “Hic Sunt Alemanii. Tu Est Fucking Warned”.
The Romans could have absorbed and Romanized any one barbarian nation or wave of barbarian nations – the Chinese absorbed and Sinicized all their conquerors and their national culture survives to this day. But Rome had to deal with wave after wave of them, each driven by the wave behind it, all fleeing drought in the Central Asian steppes. As I understand the story.
That is to say, they decided the Rhine was a [ahem] more stable and defensible imperial frontier than the Elbe, and that the forest barbarians to the east of it were not worth the expense of civilizing. [sniff]
Just to the north over huge and very difficult to pass mountains. A lot easier to just go around them. So while Germany may have been geographically closer, if you look at ease of travel France is much easier to get to.
This does beg the question as well of why the Visigoths and other barbarian tribes went straight for the city of Rome itself rather than other surrounding, presumably less well defended areas. I don’t honestly know the answer, and that also leads me to the next question. Why, if the Visigoths were so interested in conquering an empire, did they not keep the wetern Roman Empire intact? If they could conquer Rome itself, why not the rest of the territory that was in the western part of the Empire as well?
They didn’t all go for Rome, indeed the Visigoths held much of France and Spain but nowhere in Italy.
They didn’t - it was the Ostrogoths who conquered Italy under Theodoric “the Great” in the late 5th century.
So in a sense you answer your own question by saying “… and other barbarian tribes”- the Visigoths (or any other group) couldn’t have kept the empire intact as they were not the only players. They couldn’t beat Rome and the Huns, Vandals, Alans, Franks, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, etc etc all together.
- just so you know, “begs the question” doesn’t mean “triggers the question”. It means “what you have just said assumes something that hasn’t actually been proven yet”.
That’s the problem with such empires build on conquest. There’s always another nation on the border they need to extend dominion over in order to secure the border. And it always raises more problems. Beyond the Germans were the Slavs. In any case, the Goths followed in the wake of the Huns, which came from the far east. The Goths themselves were supposedly originally from Sweden. The Langobards and Angels supposedly from southern Denmark, the Cimbri from northern Denmark. Should the Roman Empire had extended to have included all of Scandinavia too?
If constant expansion was a solution to external problems and would not nlead to dire internal problems, we would all be Mongols. Bigger entities are more difficult to hold together even without enemies. In Rome particularly there are countless occations when parts were held by different military dictators, even as small as Britain only. One of these splits happened in 395, just before the Goths left towards west and that winter Rhine froze.
Another aspect of this is that the barbarians wanted a new life inside Rome so their goal was never to conquer it. Sure they were ready for fight if they were prevented from going where they felt they needed to, but their intention was never to replace Rome with anything. So the political relationship between Rome and barbarians beyond Donau is not simple. The system worked (with a lot of problems) for Romans until the Huns broke it. The resulting wave of peoples was not intending to destroy Rome or even part of it. Rome was the greatest thing they knew. It just happened that when there were so many of them at the same time, they came to accidentally break it.
As to why Theodoric invaded Rome, it was largely because Zeno told him to, having become sick of Odoacer’s support for rebellion against him. And as for the Visigoths, they weren’t particularly interested in conquering Rome. Alaric sacked the city because he had been promised indemnities for ending his war against Rome and never got them.
Your entire analysis betrays a pretty myopic W. European view, as well as a lot of factual faults.
As others pointed out, they did, several times. It wasn’t successful in the long run. There was not enough economically useful - to the Roman economy - there to hold. It was economically unsustainable vis-a-vis cost. And forward policy in the European East, Dacia (Romania roughly) was a failure and had to be abandoned, even though it was climatically / economically more favourable.
Of course this ignores that the Empire did not fall, it continued on some thousand years, but the*** Western Empire*** fell.The vastly richer Eastern Empire continued on as at least remained recognisably Roman for another century and maybe two or three depending on how you want to argue that (although I guess I would opt for around a century, granting an argument here that later on it became more a Graeco-Roman rump state after it lost its last western possessions).
Absolutely not. Probably would have collapsed from internal strain soon.
Mate, you need to read a fuck load more history before you write something as nonsensical as that. Russia was a source of problems, not a barrier.
Also by the later stages of the Empire, much of the Roman army was them or of 2nd or 3rd generation frontier army that was culturally almost indistinguishable from them (as they also romanised).
I think it must be emphasized that everything indicates that Rome was in a long-run decline in the West. City sizes were on the way down due to population decreases, the economy seems to have been in a downward spiral. There is good reason to believe that the barbarians did not so much cause as reveal the collapse of the Western empire.
Anyway, if Rome has started spending precious arms and treasure to make its frontier with Scandinavia and the Slavic east, the problem of overreach likely would have started earlier, probably setting off economic decline faster as taxation bore down to pay for the less productive regions.
And of course the example of Dacia tells us that Germania would probably have been left to its own when the crisis came.
But in re the assimilation issue raised by BG, I’d say the Romans DID assimilate that last wave. The Franks were speaking a Latin dialect fairly rapidly, in fact all the Germanic invaders of the solidly Latin speaking regions ended up speaking Latin dialects. Hell the modern line of Romance versus non-Romance on the continent comes pretty close to the old Roman frontier (of course exceptions, Balkans “gone” with the oddball Dacian outlier).
Perhaps the major difference, the Eastern empire had an alternative cultural template, Hellenised Roman culture, so after it lost its Western / Latin speaking possessions, it slid into that template.
Yes the big reason the Roman empire collapsed in the best was the troubles in the east; From about 100 AD they were in almost costant wars against the Persians (espcially after the Sassaniads showed up
Most of the Army was in the East; the West got what could be spared; not usually much.
Good point, again emphasising that although we Westerners obsess about the Western empire, it really wasn’t the focus of the Empire. The East and North Africa was where the tax revenue, the grain etc really came from. Gives us a distorted view of the Roman empire to look at it through the lens of what happened in France, Spain, even Italy to an extent.
In fact, I’d argue that the best alternative history scenario to save some of the provinces of the West would be to abandon the northern parts. The climate had changed for worse since Augustus and plagues were going around. The West seemed to be going feodal anyway so maybe they had just too many provinces that were not that suitable for the Roman way of life with dense population, big cities, expemsive theatres and heavy taxation of countryside.
It’s not possible to condense the complex causal relations that led to Rome’s downfall into a couple of paragraphs – historians usually need hundreds of pages to go a little deeper than the surface. I’ll start with one of your subsequent questions:
Why didn’t the Romans invade Germania?
They tried, several times. Rome was very aware how vulnerable the Northern flank was: The Germanic Cimbri and Teutoni had defeated several Roman armies between 113 BC and 105 BC (that battle had a lasting effect on the Roman mindset wrt the Germanic tribes) and who knows what would have happened if they had decided to move toward the panic-stricken Rome.
Instead, they split up, wandered around the Southern European region and were finally not just defeated but wiped out. They, like other enemies of Rome before and afterwards, had not realised the nature of Roman thinking.
After Caesar had conquered Gaul and had destroyed the Celtic culture so thoroughly that any identity was lost, the Romans had multiplied the length of their frontier with the adventurous Germanic tribes: The Rhine divided Roman from Germanic territory (52/51 BC) now but was no barrier in itself. And worse, the Northern border area was fragmented, some tribes within the Roman lands were still hostile, while others outside were fickle allies, the entire frontier was neither well guarded nor fortified and the distances were noticeable.
Octavian became very aware of the fragile situation after Roman troops had been defeated in Gaul by Germanic parties (17/16 BC): He expanded the Roman territory (after the tribes beyond the Alps had been conquered, the Danube became the Rhine’s Southern equivalent in 15 BC), multiplied the number of troops in the border lands and built streets, fortifications, forts and towns to integrate the territories into the Roman cultural sphere and exercise influence on the tribes beyond the frontiers to turn them into allies and assimilate them by continuous contact with the superior Roman achievements.
But Augustus wasn’t satisfied with influence by dominance, he wanted to conquer Germania, and 30 years of war followed.
The invasion of the Germanic core lands began 12 BC and Drusus (Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus), stepson of Emperor Augustus, was successful in the field: he subdued the Frisians (Friesen) and Chauci (Chauken) close to the North Sea, the Sicambri (Sugambrer) who lived in the modern Netherlands and when he defeated the Usipetes (Usipeter) and Marsi (Marser), he was sure he had control of Germania up to the Weser. More victories expanded his influence close to the Elbe. In 9 BC, Drusus died, and the able Tiberius succeeded him and continued the long-term campaign successfully.
Around 4-6 AD, Germania was on its way to become another Roman province; first towns were built in the heart of the Germanic territories (Waldgirmes, for example) while Germanic allies supported Roman troops in wars around the Empire and gained influence within the military. Simultaneously, still independent Germanic tribes started to built hierarchies that went beyond the traditional clan and tribal level: The Marcomanni, defeated by Drusus in 9 BC, evaded the Roman grip by migrating East into the territory later known as Bohemia (Böhmen) and established an alliance of several Germanic and Celtic tribes (3 BC) so powerful that it became a threat to the Roman Empire.
Augustus planned to destroy that alliance in 6 AD and Tiberius led twelve (!) legions against them; the Great Illyrian revolt, however, thwarted that plan and Augustus had to acknowledge Maroboduus (Marbod), leader of the Marcomanni, as king.
Around the same time, a Cheruscan warrior in service of the Romans returned home after fighting for them with his tribesmen in other parts of the Empire. After Arminius, his Cheruscan name is not known, met the new Roman governor, Publius Quinctilius Varus, and heard about his plans to extend Rome’s hegemony once more beyond the Rhine up to the Weser and Elbe, he started to plot against his patrons and found allies among the threatened Germanic tribes.
In the fall of 9 AD, Arminius extinguished a Roman army that consisted of three legions, three cavalry detachments and six cohorts of auxiliary troops. The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest had a long-lasting effect on the political landscape of Europe and the development of the Germanic tribes toward a nation.
However, in the short-term, the Romans prevailed: Arminius was beaten in two following encounters by Germanicus but the Germanic resistance could not be broken and Germanicus decided to end the campaign in 16 AD.
A costly war between Arminius and Maroboduus resulted in the latter one’s escape to Rome but his kingdom could not be conquered and a Germanic unity, that might have likely been Arminius’ central goal, was not established. Rome’s further expansion had been stopped but it had not been pushed back, not yet. And when Arminius was killed in 21 AD by relatives, any such plans dissolved with the squabbles among the tribes.
Still, Rome’s influence beyond the Rhine was crumbling: The Frisians rose up in 28 AD (protesting the high taxes) and the Romans had to withdraw across the river.
The following decades are characterized by Germanic riots and raids and Roman retaliations, followed time after time by peace and prosperity.
The Romans held their ground and even managed to regain territories that had already been lost. But they had given up on the idea to conquer Germania completely and when they opted to build the Limes (around 83 AD) and to take up a position of all-round defense (around 130 AD), their days as the leading power in Europe were numbered, even though it didn’t look like it.
But Roman economy was built upon expansion, Roman politics on dominance by force, Roman influence on its cultural advance and, of course, its wealth (generated to a considerable degree in past conquests) that allowed the buildup and upkeep of an unsurpassed infrastructure that transformed heterogeneous territories into Roman provinces.
Yet, without the coming Migration Period, they might have succeeded in transforming the Empire into a self-sufficient system and even if not, Rome might have stayed at least an unconquered regional power, but changes far away in Asia had a ripple effect that doomed them.
Awesome post - I’m learning quite a lot here.
Still, one point puzzles me still: everyone seems to agree that the start of the fall, that is to say the point where it was going to go pear shaped no matter what happened next, was this seemingly abrupt change of stance, from “move over the border ! Then the next ! Keep going until you’ve got no more borders to cross !” to “Let’s build us a giant wall and stand on it, right ?”.
As you say, most of Rome’s wealth and culture was derived from spoils of war and enslavement of defeated foreigners. I assume the Roman higher ups were at least dimly aware of this, and of the fact that halting the expansion would mean much fewer loot & slaves and financial chaos, in the short term at least.
So why did they do it ? Does it have to do with the fact that, as they moved further and further inland and away from the era’s freight highway (i.e. the Med. Sea) they had too many logistical issues ? Had they reached a particular stretching point where simply keeping what they had together and pacified was a full time job ? Or was it decided by a committee (;)) ?
I think it was a combination of the two. The Empire was getting so large and complex it was turning out to be impossible to manage. That’s why Diocletian made the reforms he did, and why, for most of the time after Diocletian, you had multiple emperors. Beyond that, the Romans had run out of places to expand into. Germany and the land beyond the Danube weren’t rich enough to be worth conquering, and while Persia was, the Persians were as strong as Rome. So, there was really nowhere to go.
I’m pretty skeptical of explanations for the fall of Rome that depend on factors that were true for hundreds of years before the Western Empire fell. For example:
But Rome didn’t fall in 100 AD (or 200 AD or 300 AD or even 400 AD).Certainly having to fight Persia was a drain on their resources and manpower, but it was something they’d managed to do for hundreds of years before the sack of Rome.
But the era of major expansion for the Empire ended long before the Empire itself did. They apparently did figure out how to keep things going without relying on conquering ever more territory, as Rome lasted for centuries after expansion stopped.
Why?
‘True’ in what sense, in any event.
One would easily submit that a cumulative cost and drain ate away at the capital reserves over a long period of time. To the contrary, there is no reason to think such a break point would arrive instantly.
Or perhaps one could rather posit that they didn’t and that the entire thing ran out of steam gradually, as the slowly accumulating inefficiencies, debasements of currency, decline of - rather than looking for a snap point, a long, slow down trajectory.
Add to that the proposition that the climate was turning negative and disease impacts (it is, I think, uncontroversial that Western empire saw significant long-run urban population declines, excluding Rome), and one can easily see a story of increasing and accumlating stress to maintain the West until breaking point.
Rome came pretty close to falling apart in the third century, though. Starting around 235, you had this fifty year period where Rome was constantly in civil war and was falling apart, at one point, actually splitting up into three different states. Only Diocletian’s reforms ended up saving it.