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Post by timoneill on Jan 12, 2011 4:28:21 GMT
Yes, it is. The ignorance lies in the assumption that any stagnation was somehow due to Christianity rather than being an extension of a stagnation that began in the mid-Third Century, long before Christianity was more than a tiny persecuted illegal sect. It also lies in the assumption that things "moved backwards" thanks to Christianity rather than because of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Ask yourself this, why didn't the (equally Christian) Empire in the East experience things "moving backwards"? Why was this purely a western phenomenon? You seem to have a lot of reading and a lot more thinking to do. Sorry I have to disagree with you here. Feel free. But you won’t actually be disagreeing with me but with a large number of leading historians of the late Roman Empire and early Medieval periods. The roads remained and continued to be used and maintained for centuries to come. It’s not like they somehow forgot how to build roads – that’s not exactly rocket science. But with the vast economic resources of the Empire gone no-one built large networks of roads again for quite a while because (i) doing so was a vastly expensive undertaking requiring resources beyond that of smaller political units and (ii) they didn’t need to do so because, in most places, the Romans already had. Roman building techniques were lost for a while for the same reason – monumental buildings required a large tax base that no longer existed. Once large kingdoms arose from the ashes of the Empire, however, we find large public buildings rising again. Romanesque architecture (as the name should suggest) from the early Medieval period did advance on Roman techniques. And eventually led to Gothic architecture that left Roman buildings in their shadows in terms of height, size and technical achievement. I’m not sure what point you’re making about sanitation, but perhaps you’re under the impression people stopped bathing after the fall of Rome. They didn’t. They also didn’t stop using public bath-houses – all Medieval towns had several and larger cities had thousands of them. And Medieval armies did continue and develop the fighting traditions of the later Roman Army, developing them further. The later Roman Army had become increasingly cavalry-oriented, with a rise in the use of heavy cavalry. This continued after the Empire and led eventually to the rise of the ultimate heavy cavalryman – the knight. Military organisation changed but Medieval kingdoms could field armies every bit as large as later Roman forces, complete with the supply chain infrastructure to support them. Charlemagne regularly fielded armies of over 80,000 men in more than one theatre of war and managed to conquer vast territories east of the Rhine that the Romans could never hold. We see “no great scientific advances” coming out of Rome either, just some tinkering around the edges of what the Greeks achieved. So in other words nothing much changed in Byzantium – they kept up the tradition of commentaries on Aristotle etc. Which meant they preserved works that were lost in the fall of the Western Empire long enough to pass them to the Arabs who in turn passed them back to the West. Then we saw some real scientific advances – in later Medieval Europe. Now, what were you saying about Christianity in all this? |
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Post by noons on Jan 12, 2011 4:41:51 GMT
Hi Tim. About the fall of the Roman Empire, we all know that things didn't just change overnight, like they did with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Was there a time period before 476 AD when the Western Empire existed in name only? In other words, how much control did Rome itself have in the provinces like Gaul and Spain in 475 AD?
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Post by timoneill on Jan 12, 2011 4:48:07 GMT
Also you speak of the fighting skills of the Romans. By the end of the Western Empire the vast bulk of the imperial troops were Germanic mercenaries, or foederati, not Romans. We even have accounts of father's cutting off their son's thumbs so they would not be conscripted. Umm, no on both those points. The Roman Army had always included large numbers of non-Romans, it’s just that in the earlier Imperial Army they served in auxiliary units. The later Imperial Army did away with the legions/auxilia distinction, but the proportions of Romans vs non-Romans stayed much the same. And non-Romans did not make up “the vast bulk” of the later Army at all – estimates range from 10-20% at most. Most Roman soldiers were recruited as they were always recruited: from within the Empire. The later Army did increase vastly in size and this made it harder to recruit sufficient troops at times. That’s why Diocletian passed laws making it obligatory for the sons of serving soldiers to join the Army. There is one report of some men from one province trying to get around this by cutting off their sons’ thumbs. To extrapolate that across the whole Empire flies in the face of the evidence we have. The later Roman Army remained as formidable a fighting force as it had always been. It’s just that the Western Empire crumbled politically and economically around it. |
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Post by timoneill on Jan 12, 2011 4:53:40 GMT
Hi Tim. About the fall of the Roman Empire, we all know that things didn't just change overnight, like they did with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Was there a time period before 476 AD when the Western Empire existed in name only? In other words, how much control did Rome itself have in the provinces like Gaul and Spain in 475 AD? In 475? Very little. The southern areas of Gaul were in Visigoth control and had been for about 50 years. The rest of the south was under Burgundian control or nominal but non-existent Imperial rule. The north was under Frankish control or that of a totally independent local magnate called Syagrius who was supposedly magister militium Gallie but was actually the heir of a independent local warlord. Britain had fallen off the map in the 440s. Most of Spain was under Visigoth and Suevian control or, again, ruled by local warlords with nominal Imperial titles and no real alliegiance to the Emperor at all. The Emperor in Ravenna had ruled little beyond Italy since at least the late 440s. |
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Post by blessedkarl on Jan 12, 2011 5:09:12 GMT
Also you speak of the fighting skills of the Romans. By the end of the Western Empire the vast bulk of the imperial troops were Germanic mercenaries, or foederati, not Romans. We even have accounts of father's cutting off their son's thumbs so they would not be conscripted. Umm, no on both those points. The Roman Army had always included large numbers of non-Romans, it’s just that in the earlier Imperial Army they served in auxiliary units. The later Imperial Army did away with the legions/auxilia distinction, but the proportions of Romans vs non-Romans stayed much the same. And non-Romans did not make up “the vast bulk” of the later Army at all – estimates range from 10-20% at most. Most Roman soldiers were recruited as they were always recruited: from within the Empire. The later Army did increase vastly in size and this made it harder to recruit sufficient troops at times. That’s why Diocletian passed laws making it obligatory for the sons of serving soldiers to join the Army. There is one report of some men from one province trying to get around this by cutting off their sons’ thumbs. To extrapolate that across the whole Empire flies in the face of the evidence we have. The later Roman Army remained as formidable a fighting force as it had always been. It’s just that the Western Empire crumbled politically and economically around it. Thank you for that correction, Tim. It was not my intention to spread false information. Good stuff as always. |
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Post by humphreyclarke on Jan 12, 2011 12:55:56 GMT
The roads remained and continued to be used and maintained for centuries to come. It’s not like they somehow forgot how to build roads – that’s not exactly rocket science. But with the vast economic resources of the Empire gone no-one built large networks of roads again for quite a while because (i) doing so was a vastly expensive undertaking requiring resources beyond that of smaller political units and (ii) they didn’t need to do so because, in most places, the Romans already had As I understand it, roads were good for transporting large armies and establishing lines of communication from one end of the empire to the other, but they were pretty much useless for anything else. This was due to the expensive nature of land transport - still the case until the modern era. According to a lecture I have been listening to on Late Antiquity by Thomas F X Noble the beasts pulling a wagon load of grain would have consumed it if that grain had to travel more than a hundred kilometres. Moving goods across the Mediterranean was costly too and –making matters worse – the sea was impassable for virtually half the year. River Rhine transport cost perhaps 5 times as much as sea transport. Land transport by comparison cost 20 times as much, so water transport was by far the best option. Only the Roman state therefore had the money and the administration to move large amounts of heavy goods by land over long distances on a regular basis. Ordinary merchants couldn’t undertake such ventures. |
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Post by gymnopodie on Jan 13, 2011 16:28:20 GMT
humphreyclarke wrote:
He is wrong about that. Even a pack animal could go the 60 miles without consuming all the grain it could carry. During the great migration to the Western US during the nineteenth century, the trip took 4 or 5 months and the distance was about 2000 miles. They traveled by day while the beasts ate at night. And grass was pretty sparsely available in some areas. Of course winter travel would be impossible without feed. Either you had to take it with you or acquire it along the way.
Oxen can pull a wagon at a steady rate of 2 miles per hour. They could go the 60 miles in 3 ten hour days easily. Even primitive wagons could haul hundreds of pounds.
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Post by blessedkarl on Jan 13, 2011 17:10:56 GMT
Perhaps you could clear up some confusion on my point. My understanding is that it was rather less than efficacious to utilize oxen for pulling wagons. They moved slower than horses and the ancients could not properly utilize horses as the horse collar had not yet been invented. Is this true?  |
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Post by gymnopodie on Jan 13, 2011 23:53:43 GMT
blessedkarl wrote:
I don't know. Certainly the ancients used horses to pull a lot of things. I do know that the mule was the preferred animal to pull wagons across the US, but they were much more expensive than the oxen, so the wagon trains were mostly pulled by oxen - not because they were better but because they were cheaper to purchase.
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