Originally Posted by
Ludicus
In truth, the Empire was a victim of its own sucess.
The maintenance/preservation of the empire was a massive military exercise which had political and economic ramifications. Three centuries in decline (in the west) before it fell absolutely.
That said, regarding the portray of Roman decadence, read Tacitus, AD 100, (1) and Ammianus, AD 370 (2)
(1) Tacitus in his Germania warned that the moral virtues ans their simple lyfestile was creating a warrior enemy that the licentious Romans would be unable to resist: " In every home the children go naked and dirty, and develop that strenght of limb and tall stature which excites our admiration"
(2) Ammianus, sounded a similar warning in his portray of Roman decadence, 40 years before Alaric sacked Rome, about the deliquency in Rome (the rich and the poor, c. AD 370)
Brief excerpts:
Deliquency, the rich and the common people:
"Some men distinguished (as they think) by famous fornames, pride themselves beyond measure in being called...and many other equally fine-sounding indications of eminent ancestry..others resplendent in silken garments, as thoug they were to be led to death..when such men, each attended by fifty servants...their houses are frequented by idle chatterboxes..parasites..comparing them with the heros of old...some of them hate learning as they as they do poison and read with attentive care only Juvenal and Marius Maximus, in their boundless idleness handling no other books than these...but the height of refinement with these men at present is, that it is better for a stranger to kill any man“s brother than to decline his invitation to dinner...some of them, if they make a longish journey to visit their estates, or to hunt by the labours of others, think they have equalled the marches of Alexander or of Caesar...some of them shrink from the name of gamblers, and therefore desire to be called rather tesserarii,persons who differe from each other as much as thieves from brigands...As Cicero says " They know nothing on earth that is good unless it brings gains. Of their friends, as of their cattle, they love those best from whom they hope to get the greates profit..so much for the Senate"
" Let us turn to the idle and slothful commons...they spend their life with wine and dice, in low haunts, pleasures, and the games. Their temple, their dwelling their assembly and the height of all their hopes is the Circus Maximus"
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That much of the Roman population had slipped in delinquency is unquestionable, the upper classes in particular. This delinquency had also an effect in on political moral, because the aristocracy largely withdrew from publical life.
The later Roman empire, in other words, was a bankrput militarized state, a parasitic aristocracy and a hostile peasantry; significant parts of the empire ceased to be Roman at all, as barbarians tribes settled under official imperial approval and then without no approval at all. (for instance, Geiseric)
Some of the "barrack" emperors were sucessful in temporarely defeating the Germanic invaders (for instance, Gallienus) but they were unable to achieve a decisive victory, probably because they had always one eye on attempted/actual usurpations by rival generals.
As Ammianus commented " What fury of foreign peoples, what barbarian cruelty can be compared with the harm done by civil wars?"
The East Empire, when the West Empire fell, carried on business for another 1000 years; some of the enemies were paid off in tons of gold ( ex,Attila); unlike the western epire, the eastern empire had a short land frontier to defend; after garrisoning the lower Danube, it could turn its attentions to Asia; any seaborne invasion was almost impossible.
It seems to me that Justianian was the last truly decent Roman emperor -although Justinian“s reign wasn“t entirely glorious - aided by Belisarius, he reconquered much of the old Roman empire and he created the codification of the Roman law. But all of those who occupied the throne in Byzantium after him spoke another language -they spoke greek.