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Military Degeneration and Decline of the Roman Empire
江静
（河海大学常州校区，江苏常州213022）
Abstract:The cau of the decline of Roman Empire is a mystery to many historians of western civilization.Political and social weakness,or economic retroversion are conceived to be contributable factors.This issue,however,is approached here from the perspective of military degeneration,which cloly relates to political anarchy,economic depression and barbarian invasions,and therefore,makes it for the most part convenient for the third-century Persian Sassanids and Germanic peoples to invade into the Empire,and wipes Romans out on the historical stage.
Key words:political anarchy;economic depression;barbarian invasions;Roman Empire;military degeneration
中图分类号：I106文献标识码：A文章编号：1009-5039(2013)22-0257-04
1Introduction
Dio Cassius,a historian of the third century,proclaimed the death of Marcus Aurelius as a decline of the Roman Empire:“from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust”[1]180.The catastrophe of Rome has fascinated many historians.Gibbon saw religion as a pri⁃mary cau of its decline.Christianity in his view“sapped the mor⁃al of the Empire,deadened its intellectual life and by its embit⁃tered controversies undermined its unity”[2]420.Other historians have emphasized the empire’s political and social weakness,or its economic decay.However,this problem is analyzed from the per⁃spective of military degeneration.The gradual degeneration of Ro⁃man armies,is a direct cau for the crisis of the third century, which marks an noticeable decline of the peace and prosperity of the Roman Empire.
2Military Power Shift&Military Degeneration The rising and flourishing of Rome,from a small town on the Tiber River to a gold empire spanning Europe,Africa and Asia, was owed to no other cau than the strong army fighting on the frontiers and guarding in the state.So a strong military power is of an extreme importance to Rome.saloge
In the early republic,military power was under the control of the civilian authority(the Senate)and the
state was maintained in stability and prosperity.But the problems caud by Rome’s rapid expansion made the power gradually shift from the Senate to the emperors(usually military leaders).There were three major reasons for this.Firstly,the expansion brought a large number of profits and slaves into Rome,which broke up the economic foundation of the Senate—the small-scale farming and gave a ri to large plan⁃tations.Before the Punic wars,most Italians owned their farms that supplied most of the families’needs.However,Rome’s conquest in the early republic of Cathage and Hellenistic world did terrible damage to farmland.And the farms owned by the veterans turned to be unprofitable after the war.Conquently,most of the peasant farmers began to work as tenant farmers or hired workers.The land went into the hands of the wealthy class and was converted into large plantations with cheap slaves.Secondly,the decline of small-scale peasant farming made it harder to recruit the soldiers since only landowners were legible for the farming.In Marius’military reform,he came to u volunteers for the army,mostly the formless farmers and rural proletarians.The enlisted became the clients of their generals,in the hope that they could obtain a piece of land as a form of veterans’bonus when they retired.Henceforth the peas⁃ant farmers would look to the military leaders who were capable enough to meet their demands rather than to the Senate.Thirdly, with the loyalty and support of their own troops,which were guaran⁃teed by rewards,the ambitious military generals sought to take pow⁃er.For the above reasons,both military and political power in the late republic was
shifted into the hands of military leaders like Sul⁃la,Pompey,Caesar,etc.From the Principate of Octavian on,a mili⁃tary monarchy was firmly established.
Rome’s military degeneration is a result of this power shift. After the generals came to the throne,it is the responsibility of the emperors to compensate their soldiers in order to build a solid ba of support.Sulla rewarded his veterans with the profits from the confiscations,as many as100,000.Pompey restored equestrians to the extortion court juries and allotted land to his veterans through a land bill.Under Augustus,apart from the legal pay for professional soldiers,there was occasional bonus and the promi of a pension on retirement in the form of money or a plot land.[1]137-153Till the so⁃cial revolution of the third century,the soldiers became the new privileged class,replacing the civilian,propertied class.The for⁃
收稿日期：2013-07-10修回日期：2013-08-25
作者简介：江静（1980-），女，江苏常州人，河海大学常州校区外语部讲师，研究方向为外语教学与研究。
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mer privileged class,middle class and lower class were all forced to meet what the soldiers needed and should shoulder the increas⁃ing costs of the army.With the ri in the soldiers’status,the cor⁃ruption of the whole army was in a tendency,which naturally brought the Empire into the great crisis in the third century.In the following part,degeneration of the Roman army of the third-centu⁃ry crisis is discusd on three dimensions—political anarchy,eco⁃nomic depression and barbarian invasions,which manifestate the Empire’s decline in whatever n.
3Political Anarchy
Rome’s political anarchy in the third century lay in its liabili⁃ty to disputed successions,which involved the ri of the army in politics—the right to share in the proclamation of emperors.With the general development of military monarchy from Augustus on⁃wards,the situation in the third century became that the emperors abandoned their dependence on the Senate and proclaimed their re⁃liance on their troops.Though the Senate of the late Empire still strove against the attempts to thrust it down,its strict adherence to the Republican tradition was no more than an illusion when it dealt with the emperors backed up by the armed forces.But becau of a lack of the rule of hereditary succession and the mutinous temper and the changeable will of the army,military power in the soldier-emperors frequently went out of control,which conquently result⁃ed in violent changes in the throne.
The profit–bad temper and will of the Roman army in the third century were decisive in filling the throne.Every proclama⁃tion of the emperor was unexceptionally due to a purcha of sup⁃port and fidelity from his troops.Maximus,Valerian and other men of military rank all owed their elevation to the army.After the proc⁃lamation by their troops,the emperors,to cure the stability of his throne,were suppod to enrich the soldiers in whatever forms:mil⁃itary payroll,booty from conquests,money,land,etc,even at the cost of extorting his civilian population.Septimus Severus ever said to his son:“live in harmony,enrich the soldiers,and scorn all oth⁃ers”[3]372.The large gold pieces of Gallienus issued to the troops ex⁃actly expresd such a purpo.However,the soldiers’greed for profits,especially money,would never be satisfied by their soldier-emperor.In this situation took place constant assassinations of the emperors by their own troops for the purpo of elevating a new em⁃peror who,in their view,could meet their growing demands.
In the Roman army,the Praetorian Guard assumed the most ominous role in the ri and fall of emperors.It,t up by Augustus in the early empire,had been of an extreme importance to assure the emperors’safety.Its importance fed its arrogance and imperi⁃ousness.Until the early third century,tho Praetorian cohorts be⁃came“insatiate money getters and wanton spendthrift”,and grew so eager for revolution that even put the Empire for sale[3]373.And its prefects,such as Aurelius,Aur
elian,Probus,grasped one after another at the succession.This is the reason why Diocletian dis⁃solved the Praetorian Guard of such dangerous strength. Disputed successions were always accompanied by civil wars and internal chaos.As early as A.D.192,the death of Commodus touched off a long period of civil war for a ize of the throne.Three groups of legions were involved in making emperors,parately led by Pescennius Nigger—a Praetorian Prefect under the Commodan dynasty,Godius Albinus—a provincial general,and Septimus Severus.The success of the Severus’army ended this war and re⁃stored the stability of the State.But the assassination of Alexander Severus brought on another half century of civil wars.The army be⁃came a law into themlves,elevating the emperors at will:“The army,consisting predominantly of the least Romanized provincials, ud their weapons to place their own commanders on the throne.”From the assassination of Alexander Severus in235to the acces⁃sion of Diocletian in284,twenty-six soldier-emperors were pro⁃claimed,and all but one died at the hands of their own soldiers[3]375. Behind the civil wars between the pretenders left internal chaos, depopulation,epidemics,inflation,invasions of northern barbar⁃ians:“During the entire civil wars—Rome was drifting into anar⁃chy.”[4]166Anarchy marked the crisis of the third century.
4Economic Depression
Rome’s economic depression in the third century,to a large extent,was a respon to the costs of the struggles between the pre⁃tenders to the throne,and the extravagant outlay on the soldiers.In the third part of this paper,it is mentioned that gifts of money,be⁃fore every change of the throne,were made by the pretenders to the soldiers to purcha their support.But after a new emperor was made,he was much more prodigal towards his soldiers to cure their loyalty.In the third century,the soldiers’wages had rin somewhat above their already high level,from225denarii annually fixed by Augustus,to300denarii under Domitian,to500under Septimus Severus,to800under Caracalla,and to1,800in the c⁃ond half of the third century[3]469.Also,large quantities of luxurious prents,for example,gold rings,were granted to the soldiers. Apart from legal payment,the soldiers were enriched by illegal ex⁃tortions as they now ro in increasing numbers into the equestrian order and substituted men of natorial rank,thus accessible to bribery.It was the extraordinary upkeep of all privileged soldiers that incread military budget and finally brought an economic mis⁃ery of the third century.
The late emperors resorted to debasing the coinage with far-reaching conquences to fill the growing military demands.The Ro⁃man aureus,up to A.D.250,had been reduced by two thirds in size; the denarius,which had for centuries possd its value,retained only fifty percent of its original puri
ty and size;the gold coinage re⁃mained pure but was accepted only by its weight in the end[5]219-220. The reduce in the value of the currency produced a runaway infla⁃tion in the late third century:the prices ro to twice,even wor, three times their former level.To keep up with the rising prices, the emperors had to compensate the soldiers by an increa in their pay—a vicious circle that could never been broken.
In view of the problems caud by monetary devaluation in the third century,the new taxes in kind as well as a progressive tax⁃ation in normal items were invented by the emperors to increa their revenue for the soldiers’benefits.Caracalla replaced the five-percent tax with ten-percent tax on manumissions and bequests and legacies.To expand the new taxable resources,the emperors
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donald trumpbegan to confer Roman citizenship to all the people in the Roman Empire.Roman taxes now were levied on provincials.Moreover, the new taxes in kind were impod on Roman citizens.There was a tax in gold;the landowners were required to provide soldiers from their coloni;the annona-corn,applying to the soldiers’clothing and wares,was in fact collected by extortion[5]220.In a word,the tax⁃es levied in the third century was far more heavier than in the previ⁃ous centuries,most of which,i
f not all,were bestowed upon the sol⁃diers,as Caracalla ud to say:“Nobody in the world should have money but I,so that I may bestow it upon the soldiers.”[3]382 When the increa in taxation and the new taxes in kind again proved ineffective later,compulsive rvices and brute extortions came into being.In the frightful period of civil wars between the pretenders,the population shrank dramatically and more and more land went out of cultivation,together with a shortage of labor.This reduced the taxable resources.Since the resultant decrea of the revenue from the reduced economic resources fell short of the insa⁃tiable military demands,the State resorted to brute compulsion and extortion.Considerable quantities of most requirements were sup⁃plied by requisitions from farmers and artisans in the region where the army was stationed.The untilled land was forcibly tied to the landowners.The administrators were compelled to rve without pay and to meet deficits in revenue out of their own pockets.The confiscations of the properties of the rich moved on a large scale,as en in the Maximinan Age:
villagersAny person merely summoned to court by an informer was im⁃mediately found guilty,and went away from the proceedings stripped of his entire property.Everyday one could e the very wealthy of yesterday reduced to beggary for the future.[3]382 Above all the exactions of the state were connected with the soldiers’booting.The soldiers,as the agents of the tyrannical gov⁃ernment,now acted like bandits,wandering through the land and plundering the properties of the upper class:
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The chief evil,however,was the enormous number of govern⁃ment agents,mostly soldiers performing the duties of the police⁃who in their pursuits of political criminal penetrated into all the cities and villages arched private hou.[3]382
In the catastrophic decades,tho who suffered most from the soldiers were the bourgeois middle class.They had ever contrib⁃uted a lot to the economic prosperity of the early empire,but were thoroughly ruined and got impoverished in the late empire.So did the lower class.The Roman population other than the soldier-em⁃peror and the privileged armies were almost squeezed to the last drop by the oppressive weight of the taxation.
Here,military degeneration means that the military-minded emperors,with a general apathy of the population,expended money excessively on the privileged armies to cure their loyalty.It ne⁃cessitated the debament of the coinage,the heavy taxes,brute compulsion and widespread extortions,which weakened the eco⁃nomic strength of the Empire and thus caud its economic retro⁃gression.
5Barbarian Invasions
The threats pod by Persian Sassanids,Goths,Franks,Ale⁃manni on Rome’s frontiers in the third ce
ntury,to a considerable degree,were caud by the relaxation of military discipline and the modification in the structure of military forces.
The third-century Roman army was not what it had been in its best days.In the earlier centuries,the soldiers,in most cas,were professionally trained in a good order and in a rigid discipline,as shown below:
At the very beginning of their training,recruits should be taught with the military step.The soldier is to be trained in leaping also,to enable him to leap across ditches or overcome some imped⁃ing height,so that when difficulties of this nature ari he can cross with.Recruits should be obliged frequently to carry burdens weigh⁃ing up to sixty pounds.[3]451-452
Under vigorous discipline,the soldiers of the early Roman pe⁃riod,therefore,fought on the frontiers no only with body also with soul.They never waited for the outbreak of wars,nor did they sit with folded hands in peacetime.The Roman conquest of the world and the peace and prosperity of the early empire,no doubt,were considerably attributable to this perfect discipline.But for the army of the third century,they gained enormously importance in politics. The ambition of solider-emperors to establish an absolute military monarchy,which required the strong support and high fidelity of the army,induced
the indulgence of the soldiers in political,eco⁃nomic and more important,military life.As the soldiers reached a high degree of status,discipline naturally declined.In the middle of the cond century,the soldiers were en to spend their spare time applauding actors and were more often found in the nearest tavern garden than in the ranks.Hors shaggy a rare sight was a soldier with arm on Few of the soldiers could vault upon their steeds,the rest scrambled clumsily up by dint of heel or knee
The most demoralized of all,however,were Syrian soldiers, mutinous,disobedient,ldom with their units,straying in front of their prescribed posts,roving about like scouts.[3]468
As indicated above,the ever-rigid discipline got visibly cor⁃rupt.Till the third century,Septimus Severus even permitted the soldiers to wear gold rings and to live with their wives in wedlock, teaching them to covet money and turning them aside to luxurious living.Since then,the ever-famous vigor of Roman soldiers and their strenuous military life were totally undermined.The relax⁃ation of Roman discipline,certainly,weakened military power and thus encouraged outside attacks.The result was that the army failed to resist the constant barbarian invasions of the third century. Moreover,the high proportions of barbarian invasions into the Roman Empire in the third century were caud by the barbariza⁃tion of the army.Throughout the Principate,the professional army consisted of about thi
rty legions of Roman citizens supplemented by an equal number of provincial auxiliaries.Yet the constant wars in the Roman conquest of the world made the romanized man-pow⁃er fall far short of what was needed.In this ca,the army of the first two centuries tended to be barbarized.The tendency was for⁃malized by Hadrian’s reform:the garrisons were to be conscripted from the native provinces in which the army was stationed,and ag⁃gravated by Septimus Severus,a military usurper,who meant so
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much to t up an undisguid military monarchy as to increasingly recruit soldiers from the less civilized provinces.The conquence was a barbarization of Roman military forces.Especially,under the rious conditions of the third century—unprecendently numerous and simultaneous foreign attacks with the relaxation of military dis⁃cipline and the declining military power,the desperate emperors re⁃lied on the barbarized armies to a high extent.“The foreign,mostly German,elements play the leading part in government and in the army,and ttling in mass displace the Roman population,which disappear from the fields.”[2]423They even hired an army of Ger⁃mans,technically
Roman,to defeat the Germanic peoples.This meant a new access of the Germans in large numbers into the Em⁃pire.In the third century,the roman army was full of Germans, Moors,Illyians,Sassanids and other barbarian peoples in the Ro⁃man army.Though they were somewhat romanized,they still kept their national characters and regarded the native Romans with hos⁃tility as they were always despid by them.Most important,they had for a long time cast greedy eyes on Rome’s wealth.So the barbarized armies fostered the centrifugalization of the whole Ro⁃man army as well as a breakdown in discipline,and further lowered their guard on the frontiers against foreign invaders who were the same attracted by Rome’s wealth and so eager to plunder(particu⁃larly the Germanic peoples).
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The relaxation of military discipline and the barbarization of Rome’s military forces,fraught with political anarchy and econom⁃ic depression of that time,made it for the most part convenient for the third-century Persian Sassanids and Germanic peoples to in⁃vade into the Empire.
6Conclusion
The years that followed the death of Marcus Aurelius pictured a dark third century.In this disastrous period,the Roman Empire declined in an absolute n:great political chaos,deep economic depres
sion and massive barbarian invasions.It was the increasing degeneration of military forces that caud its decline. References:
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n,to some extent,is similar to Benjamin Franklin.Afterwards, he earns more money from bootlegging and squanders recklessly, this runs counter to his early ideal and shows the beginning of the corruption of American Dream.When time reaches to the Genera⁃tion reprented by Gatsby,the corruption is more rious.The American Dream los its original positive meaning and shows that the America has become a society,which is eking only profit. 4Conclusion
The paper has discusd“A Farewell to Arms”and“The Great Gatsby”,their similarities and differences.Although the two writers both belong to the Lost Generation and lived in the same pe⁃riod,the ways they reveal in their works are different.Their aims to write are different,too.Hemingway es the creation of literature as his own responsibility and won the Nobel Prize for showing the human society and human being himlf,however,Fitzgerald is dif⁃ferent.His only aim of writing is for living,to fulfill his American Dream.Considering his lacking in the n of individual and so⁃cial curity,he cannot write the works like“A Farewell to Arms”; similarly,considering Hemingway’s special worrying mentality,he cannot write the works like“The Great Gatsby”,either.Heming⁃way and Fitzgerald each stand on their own worlds to e them⁃lves.As the great masters in American literature,their influence is perpetual!
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