As has already been hinted, there really was no “Germany”, but merely a number of tribes all speaking dialects that were more or less mutually intelligible, and with some of these tribes having recently settled in the areas still bearing their names, such as Saxony, Swabia,and Bavaria. (Or being in the process of settling; I’m a little hazy on the chronology). At any rate, this might be part of the reason the Romans underestimated the threat from the north. The real threat in their eyes, at the time, was probably beyond the eastern frontier, namely the Persians.
Another possible factor was the worsening conditions of life for small farmers; beginning with Diocletian, domestic land policy increasingly clamped down on the privileges and freedom of such farmers, and is said by some to have been the beginning of Western European serfdom. Once you’ve arrived at the status of serf, it doesn’t make much difference to you whether your landlord’s name is Flavius or Adalbeorht. With that being the case, one could hardly count on the average Roman “non-citizen” to be a fount of patriotic fervor, spurred on to fight and die for the Emperor.
I might add that when Charlemagne was crowned, people celebrated that they now again had an emperor. In other words, 9th century people in Western Europe believed they lived in the Roman Empire, they just hadn’t had an emperor for a long time.
I know the fad was quite a few years ago, but your omission to capitalize goths has suddenly put a different light on this whole period of Italian history.
I feel the need to point out that there was a mockumentary on one of the faux history channels this past week on Rome. They made the claim that the sacking of Rome by the barbarians in =/- 400 AD was the only time they were sacked…
Of course the sacking by the Celts after the Battle of Allia in BCE 390ish never happened :rolleyes:
Actually the Celts that thrashed the Romans at that point in time actually lived in Northern Italy.
My dream job would be as a researcher/fact checker for documentaries, except I would be indicted for murder after about a year of my notes on the corrections needed to be made being ignored by the producers … it is a joke around the house that you can tell when I am watching some documentary by the resounding yells of “bullshit” emanating from the bedroom …
Second favorite dream job would be wading through SF/fantasy slush piles for Baen or Tor.
Sheer stupidity that claim (right out of Just So 19th century History stories, like so many other items…), the Roman army had become more or less one with the ‘barbarians’
Right, which makes the inept, 19th c theorising about genetic and relgious ‘pacification’ all the more bizarre and stupid. So Romans became genetically weak in a couple generations… right rigorous thinking there.
If one needed any other illustration of what Ev.Psych is nothing more than a sad excuse for retarded, primitive grasping at science as of c. 1870…
That thesis also doesn’t address the fact that the eastern part of the empire was just as Christian, and just as peaceful, and lasted for another millennium.
True, although that isn’t the only factor Frost cites as contributing towards the population becoming more peaceful. The state monopoly on violence was another factor:
