What went wrong?

What went wrong?

Beware Cat Shirt $21.68

Rise, Grind, Banana Find Shirt $21.68

Beware Cat Shirt $21.68

  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    christianity

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >rome gets invaded by carthaginians, gauls, and constantly filled with pirates
      I sleep
      >rome gets invaded by goths 100 years after christianity
      AHHH THE CHRISTIANS ARE DESTROYING US

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Rome destroyed the gauls, carthaginians and pirates you dumb christian

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Let me guess, you also state that

      >The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Midwit take

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Frankish barbarian pseudo-Christians

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Western Rome was already fricked at that point. Multi-way civil wars of succession, needing massive barbarian armies to defend against even bigger barbarian armies as well as against Roman political rivals. dividing up the empire. Loss of the values that created the empire. Puppet emperors. Regular political assassinations.
    It was already over.

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    the huns

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      You moron
      The huns lost their only battle against Rome
      It was germanics who destroyed rome

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    empire economically broke because too many small farmers were crushed by taxes and kept escaping to latifundia, that were masters of tax evasion. such depopulation of both cities and countrise made recruting an army too difficult, so it was barbarized up to the point that (somewhat) romanized germans overtook the throne, as roman army did MANY times before. Also, Justinian plague severely crippled the population later on and prevented to restore any old order. Christianity also weakened the empire from the inside due to autistic catholic-arian-monophysitic-miaphysitic-etc. disputes between regions and power centers.

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    the antonine plague started the real economic decline and caused already poorly functioning roman economic systems to start collapsing

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Christianity made roman political elites believed Germs could be trusted and integrated

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Except, they got invaded by germans BECAUSE the elites wouldn't trust and integrate them, after said germans fought for them and asked to be integrated.

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Ricimer killing Majorian

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Powerful military figures had done similar things throughout the empire's history, why did it end the empire that time?

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Theodosius fricked it up. Would have been great if he knew how to handle shit.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Honorius fricked it up by being a spineless pawn of the court. Theodosius tried what he could to save the empire, but his sons were one worse than the other. The East was luckier because it did not have to deal with all the barbarian crap as much, although there were repeated incursions by Goths and Huns in the Balkans and even some disorders caused by Germanic troops in Anatolia.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        The empire survived a great many tribulations because bad leadership was quickly replaced with competent leadership. Honorius and Arcadius were the perfect storm of incompetence and longevity. If Honorius had died around the time his brother did, the empire was still salvageable. However, Honorius spent so much time fricking shit up that the situation was too far gone to be solved internally. I guarantee that if the western half of the empire survived long enough for Justinian to come to power, it would have at least survived as a unified Italy for hundreds of years.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Stilicho was far too good for his master, that's for sure. Under a different emperor he could have saved the West by slowly integrating the barbarians into the army and settling their families peacefully in depopulated provinces (preferably away from the limes). He even found a way to manage Alaric, which was not easy considering what happened after Stilicho's death.
          The only blemish in his career is how he dealt with Gildo's brother, if sources tell it true.

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Stabbing Stilicho in the back as he was trying to save them. Majorian too. Add to that an expensive and disastrous expedition from the East led by a corrupt and incompetent courtier, two sacks of Rome, a bunch of nobodies at the top, rivals and usurpers everywhere, barbarians flooding in (esp. after 406) and general decline in trade and city life.

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Aurelian did 9/11

  12. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    H*norius

  13. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Germanic migrants

  14. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Racism against Germanic migrants

  15. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    they were antisemitic

  16. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    every strong ruler(Stilicho, Aetius, Majorian) was murdered before they could solve the crisis

  17. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Not being as rich as the east

  18. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Warlords like Stilicho and Aetius unwilling to share power with anybody else. Making a cult of personality which inevitably leads to hard times when they die. Aetius was especially bad at this. Also the stifling of the Emperors, their power and ability to rule independently. An Emperor like Honorius never got the opportunity to learn how to lead armies or rule effectively since he was never given the chance to, he was strangled by Stilicho into near political irrelevancy, he very clearly did want to rule and eventually he came to the conclusion that it would never happen as long as Stilicho lived, he was of course right but neither could have he predicted the fallout of it. Aetius was again even worse at this, to the point where we know Valentinian III outright hated him for the majority of his reign because of how much power was stripped from him and that every decision of importance he did was rejected and overturned by Aetius, like the attempted ascending of Majorian into the Imperial family.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Honorius was fricking useless. Best thing he did was shutting himself up in Ravenna and letting more competent men handle things for a while. When he finally "grew up" he was even worse than before, betraying an effective magister militum (chosen as his guardian by the great Theodosius himself) and precipitating the barbarian disaster along the Rhine as well as the sack of Rome and eventually the loss of the West.
      Arcadius was just as bad. He lucked out with Anthemius and a few other things though, so his terrible leadership was somewhat mitigated.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >Best thing he did was shutting himself up in Ravenna
        That wasn't his choice. He was forced by Stilicho into this.
        > betraying an effective magister militum
        Why would he feel bad about killing a man who for his entire life refused to allow him any power at all? For all Honorius could tell, Stilicho was the enemy. He didn't allow him to take up arms with the military, he didn't let him rule where he wanted, he didn't let him manage his own administration, he forced him into a marriage he didn't care for. Honorius' incompetence is the result of Stilicho's meddling and deliberate crippling of his power and refusing to teach him anything. Honorius had no reason to be grateful to a man who did nothing but undermine him and weaken him regardless of how effective he was personally.

        Unlike Gratian, Honorius was never given his own staff, after all. That could coalesce a different power base from Stilicho's. Honorius was never given command or taught how to command, after all, that would undermine Stilicho's position. Honorius was shuttled around, away from his own administration, after all, he could use that to strengthen his own position and learn to rule independently. The simple reason being that unlike Valentinian and his son, Stilicho had absolutely no reason to let Honorius become an effective ruler. Gratian became Emperor as a child no different from Honorius but he was raised to rule and he became a strong Emperor. There is no reason to suspect Honorius would have turned out weak as he was if he actually got the opportunities to rule and learn.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          There was no time for Honorius to learn, and one does not learn leadership unless he is born with it. The barbarians were at the gates, potential usurpers everywhere, Britain, Gaul, and North Africa were not secure, and Alaric was rampaging through the Balkans and Italy. Gratian came from a slightly different time and was assassinated. Maybe Stilicho was trying to prevent just that for his charge?
          Arcadius was just as atrocious. When he "ruled" he kept making bad choices much like his brother.
          The late IV century was not the time to experiment with pampered and spineless boy rulers.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >There was no time for Honorius to learn
            He had his entire minority to learn. Just Stilicho and his refusal to give up any possible power to him prevented it.
            >and one does not learn leadership unless he is born with it.
            Lmao what? Nobody is born with the innate ability to command armies and know how to do so.
            >The barbarians were at the gates
            The same was with Gratian. In fact, this was a problem since the reign of Diocletian.
            >potential usurpers everywhere
            None actually. Constantine III later came into rebellion but he wanted accommodation with Honorius, not to overthrow him. Even the later Priscus from the Senate wanted the same thing.
            >Maybe Stilicho was trying to prevent just that for his charge?
            Valentinian had the same exact issues in the Balkans, Africa and in Gaul but he clearly had no problem in allowing his son to have a hand in learning how to rule.
            >The late IV century was not the time to experiment
            What 'experimenting'? You mean educating a ward? A completely normal thing? It clearly wasn't seen as out of the normal. Frick even Gordian III, during the crisis of the third century got to get a military and civic education.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      The west could’ve been saved under extremely lucky circumstances. There were tons of people who tried to course correct but they couldn’t undo the damage cause by a bunch of incompetents. For every “good” thing there was a million bad things going on.
      I want to be inclined to believe your way of thinking but based on descriptions of Honorius he was unlikely to be a component ruler and he never took any sort of measures to rule effectively. Both men were pretty much the only chance of western Rome staying afloat

  19. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Praetorian Guard

  20. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Probably permanent demographic shifts. The original stock of Romans and strain of Roman culture that powered the Early Empire to its heights had withered away.

    An inferior and increasingly demoralized people were trying to keep the husk of an Empire alive until it literally could not continue to function.

    On the other hand, the WRE almost did reconquer much of its territory under the last competent Emperor, Majorian.
    The Huns had been defeated and the immense pressure of migrating peoples over the Rhine had subsided.

    However, Majorian was betrayed by the Germanic Magister Militum Ricimer. The death of Majorian condemned the WRE to being dismantled as the Germanic officer class had taken over, the Romans were demoralized and soft, and the Aristocracy had become so corrupted and useless as to put up any valid resistance. Whatever bits of the upper class that were worth saving joined the clergy.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >The original stock of Romans and strain of Roman culture that powered the Early Empire
      The culture that had formed the Roman Empire was long gone by even the reign of Nero and was in its final days in the reign of Augustus. As it turns out, a Central Italian culture based on eternal warfare doesn't continue when there is no longer any reason for it to.
      >increasingly demoralized people
      >An inferior and increasingly demoralized people
      >the Romans were demoralized and soft
      Nice buzzwords
      > the Aristocracy had become so corrupted and useless as to put up any valid resistance
      They didn't participate in military matters for nearly 200 years by that point and you're just outright wrong. The Senate destroyed Majorian, and they later tried the same with Ricimer declaring him a public enemy and making war on him.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        You are right I concede. Would it be more fair to say that is was not Ricimer or Majorian that killed the WRE, but rather its Bureaucrats and Lesser Nobility?

  21. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    1. lack of enough money (The East had Egypt)
    2. out of favour - only Rome in the West. The East had Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem * Alexandria
    3. Goth/Vandal migration
    4. Incompetent people in charge or in position of power; Honorius, Olympius, Valentinian III
    5. Land abandonment. it was too complicated to keep

    Id also add that the most stable point post the year 350 for the West was under "Barbarian rule". Ostrogothic Italy was still under Roman law as a vassal state. Carthage was said to be a palace in far better condition than Rome was when Belisarius visited.

  22. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The main money started flowing eastward since the time Diocletian (maybe even before hand) and most definitely by Constantine. There's a reason why the main emperors were in the East. All the wealth of Egypt that would have gone to Rome was going to New Rome and Anatolia. Furthermore, the West did not have the natural defences that the East had (which would help them when the Caliphate came).

  23. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The western parts of the empire were heavily dependent on the east. The western empire had around 45% of the troops of the eastern empire despite being larger. Only Italy and Africa had decent infrastructure. Spain, Gaul, and Britain were underdeveloped outside of cities. Britain in particularly was still largely tribal. Much of the land was owned by wealthy senators and nobles, who kept much of the rural population as serfs. Rome's power had come from its ability to raise taxes and result large armies, but wealth was now owned by a small class of elites and the vast majority of the populace dependent on them. If the Western empire had been garrisoned by an extra 100,000 men it probably would have survived in some form, although Britain and parts of Gaul may have been lost. In hindsight, it would have been a good idea to abandon all of Gaul north of Gallia Narbonensis, but they didn't have that foresight, and the concept of Rome as a universal empire would've made it hard to justify. The tendency toward civil war was going to frick it over even in an ideal scenario, but it might have been able to maintain control of Italy and the coastal regions of the Mediterranean. The Eastern empire was able to cope despite several civil wars, although it had a much larger army, had excellent infrastructure in Europe and Asia, and was far richer.

    We almost got a revived western empire on at least one occasion. Maurice's will contained provisions splitting the empire between his sons. It's unknown how exactly it would've been divided, but an emperor in Rome and Constantinople is suggested. His other sons may have been set up in Carthage, Antioch, or Alexandria, but diving the empire between multiple people historically did not work. The tetrarchy was a mess after Diocletian and Constantine's sons fought each other for the right to be sole emperor. Tiberias II apparently planned to split the empire between Maurice and Germanus, but Maurice recieved all of it.

  24. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Ricimer

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *