There is a point that these "displays of weakness" were usually caused by the very thing that was supposed to keep the empire safe: IE: the Legions.
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There is a point that these "displays of weakness" were usually caused by the very thing that was supposed to keep the empire safe: IE: the Legions.
The army is usually the biggest expense for premodern empires. The bare fact that they were that for the Roman Empire is not enough to conclude they were a drain, you're right. But there is a big difference between a healthy percentage of total expenses and an unhealthy one. Roman armies were frequently bribed to support one or another candidate for the throne and their pay raises were very infrequently reversed. There is thus a case to be made, and it is made often in both ancient and modern literature, that the legions had become too expensive.
In the Roman Empire the central government paid for some high level officials, interregional infrastructure, food transports to the capital(s), and most of all the army. Almost all other state responsibilities, even most tax collection, were left to local communities. This is where it gets tricky because this is where most of the elites are: running cities and estates in the provinces. Their discontent with the central government was certainly not that it interfered too little in how they ran their towns, they liked their autonomy. It may be that it was due to their lack of connection to the imperial family and other officials at the center but that too seems unlikely, as they did intermarry and some took up posts in the imperial administration. Perhaps a particularly exclusive clique (maybe the Illyrian generals in the third century) might raise some concern. But the main issue seems to have been that central government couldn't guarantee the safety of outlying provinces. This was the cause for the breakaway of both Palmyra and the Gallic Empire, both also during the Crisis of the Third Century. In place of the central government they raised a new one that was focused on defending the borders that mattered to their local clients, i.e. the Persian border and the Rhine. Obviously they stopped paying taxes to the center, so these regional crises contributed to a general one.
Two things are notable here. First, how expensive the army was to maintain should be seen in relation to its performance. A cheap army that is incapable of guarding the border is no good to regional elites. An expensive army that doesn't guard the border but only fights in civil wars is no good either. But they seem to have been happy enough with an expensive army that did its job.
Second, chronology. Discontent among regional elites dates to fully 200 years before the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In the interval it does not seem to have played a big role, probably because the tetrarchy solved the problem of emperors focusing on one border at the expense of the others. If you want to argue that elite disaffection was crucial you have to show that it recurred. Clearly that was the case in the fifth century but then it was the result of the borders being overrun and not the cause.
The argument that the army had become too expensive is actually one that focuses on the costs to lower levels of society. Diocletian had restored the borders and thus satisfied regional elites but to pay for it had also instituted largely ineffective economic policies, particularly the Edict on Maximum Prices which disrupted trade throughout the empire. Moreover his reforms tied people to jobs they may not have wanted or have been suited to do. Designed to pay for the tetrarchy system and its military, Diocletian's economic policies sustained him in the short term but depressed the empire in the long run.
I don't think anybody disputes that the use of the legions in civil wars was catastrophic to the long term survival of the Empire, but the fact that the legions were misused does not mean that they were not vital to the survival of the Empire.
To go through this 1 thing at a time:
1. The leaving of tax collection to local elites was largely in the principate, when elites still bought into the empire, the Dominate was forced to create new state officials to take up the slack as the empire lost elite support in it's last few centuries, basically having to create a new elite class.
2. You're focusing on the exception and not the rule, the army did enormous amount of guarding and fighting and functioned well most of the time. You're highlighting issues where it failed, but most of the time it was the only thing that rendered large portions of the empire viable both through preventing raids and through its supply lines being the basis for trade.
3. Elite disaffection is why the dominate had to create an enormous bureaucracy to manage the empire that was previously done by elites
4. Diocletian's policies were not ineffective at all. They restored the economy and most evidence basically points to the roman world and economy being more interconnected and vibrant than it had been under the principate, you can see this in archaeological evidence of the transport of goods, this point is just incorrect.
Fundamentally, the roman empire stood on three legs, the army which defended and enforced the will of the empire, the tax system which funded the army and the roads (and infrastructure more broadly) which enabled the army and the taxes to move effectively, lose any of those, and the empire collapses, which is what happened as the tax base disappeared.
1. The leaving of tax collection to local elites was largely in the principate, when elites still bought into the empire, the Dominate was forced to create new state officials to take up the slack as the empire lost elite support in it's last few centuries, basically having to create a new elite class.
2. You're focusing on the exception and not the rule, the army did enormous amount of guarding and fighting and functioned well most of the time. You're highlighting issues where it failed, but most of the time it was the only thing that rendered large portions of the empire viable both through preventing raids and through its supply lines being the basis for trade.
3. Elite disaffection is why the dominate had to create an enormous bureaucracy to manage the empire that was previously done by elites
4. Diocletian's policies were not ineffective at all. They restored the economy and most evidence basically points to the roman world and economy being more interconnected and vibrant than it had been under the principate, you can see this in archaeological evidence of the transport of goods, this point is just incorrect.
Fundamentally, the roman empire stood on three legs, the army which defended and enforced the will of the empire, the tax system which funded the army and the roads (and infrastructure more broadly) which enabled the army and the taxes to move effectively, lose any of those, and the empire collapses, which is what happened as the tax base disappeared.
There don't seems to be any point where the quantity of troops that the empire mantains is overkill. The Empire just has a very long land border that takes a lot of troops to propperly cover. Sure, many of the border legions are sitting there rather bored many a times, but otoh it also seems like any hole in the line would have been quickly enough exploited with the result of seeing the interior being raided.
One thing the Romans just wern't good at apparently was to limit the width of a border that they would need to defend.
One thing the Romans just wern't good at apparently was to limit the width of a border that they would need to defend.
I assume this is a response to my post above.
I'm not convinced by your criticisms. For these reasons:
Ad 1. Even before Diocletian some tax collectors were officials in the service of the central state and Diocletian certainly increased their number. Tax collection by local communities and entrepreneurs probably decreased. But who filled these new offices? Diocletian made tax collectors (decurions) personally liable for a shortfall in revenue so only rich men could do it. The decurions were members of their local city council which didn't include commoners, so clearly decurions had a certain social status locally.
Ad 2. I agree, the army did function well most of the time and I said so in my previous post. I only highlighted two notable failures because they shed light on the causes of disaffection. It was your claim in a previous post that elite disaffection was a main cause of the empire's failure, so naturally I wanted to take a closer look at such disaffection. It's not logical to look at disaffection in times when everything goes well.
Ad 3. Do you have evidence for this claim? It's not clear to me that men from the senatorial or equestrian class refused to serve in government posts. With one exception: they clearly didn't want to be personally liable for tax revenue. The fact that they refused precisely this position but not others is evidence to me that Diocletian set the expected tax returns too high, it says nothing about elite disaffection in general.
Ad 4. Cite your evidence, please. My own search in the academic literature turns up mostly conclusions like this one (from Groen-Vallinga and Tacoma, "The value of labour: Diocletian’s Prices Edict"): "It is obvious that the Edictwas prescriptive rather than descriptive: by setting maximum prices it tried to impose a ceiling. It is also quite clear that the attempt was a failure and that it had to be abandoned soon afterwards."
except they didn't. the Empire was toppled because of internal factors, not because they lost battles against foreign invaders.
What would you think would have been the required number of troops to garrison the long border and maintain enough reserves to reinforce these garrisons when needed?
It's a very large empire with a very long border, transportation and communication aint always fast and large enemy armies might apear at various points on a border that goes for thousands of kilometers. The border forts are usefull as they form centers around which towns develop and likely can be used to tax trade.
It stands to argue that Rome always struggled to maintain enough men to defend their huge empire, and imho this specificly tied into the reason to abandon Dacia even though it went against the ideals of Rome to loose any land they had conquered. Atleast i don't get the impression that they had too much armies for that function, rather that they were conspiciously lacking men to plug holes so that the defensive line fell apart.
Yes Roman armies were often disloyal, but they were also needed in volume to defend a long border like that.
they also created a temptation for Roman Emperors to do stupid stuff, like invade places like Dacia and start wars with Persia.
They were too large, too cumbersome, and too prone to rebellion. Rome would have been better served keeping up the client kingdoms which were disposed of in the late republic and the early Empire than they were doing silly things like having to send a quarter of a million soldiers to fight Jewish and Samaritan rebellions. Sending central treasury money from Rome to Northern England is expensive. They would have been better served reducing their military footprint and shortening their border & holdings.
If Emperors could do away with less legions, believe me they would considering how hard it was to maintain them and to replace them when bad stuff happens and of course how many unstability they cause by creating pretenders every second.
As for client kingdoms they well never were loyal to Rome to begin with. I have no ideas were this idea comes from. They servility only existed because of Rome's military might and they started to rebel as soon as that might wavered since the very beginning from the early days of the Latin league all the way the odd dance of the crusader states and everything in between (punic wars, pontic wars etc.)
Plus the additional problems they added by picking side when Rome had a civil war which let's be honest was the Roman national sport. Or when they picking their favorite liege (looking at you Armenia...).
Now of course they were some advantages to keeping some client but a subsitute to the legions they were not and never were meant to be. The legions was what placated them and defended them in the first place.
In fact after Carrhae the east was left defenseless as Rome had not real army to oppose the Parthian after Crassus' legion were wiped out and the only reason the whole eastern part did not fall then was because Parthian sucked terribly at siege and were not really in a conquering mood preferring to kill each others in civil wars (also a favorite hobby of theirs).
Not suprising then that the eastern provinces were those that had the most legion to defend the border after that and were rabidly brought under direct control while rule was very decentralised until then (and for other reasons mentionned above)