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Back when the Italians were too bureaucratic for the Germans.

"Our series on the Roman armies will continue all the way up to 1453", this always brings a little tear of joy to my eyes :')

The Byzantines had their own Romanized "foederati" as well, they recruited Arabs, Seljuk mercernaries, Bulgars, Avars and Pechnegs and they held for another 1000 years.

"The Western Roman Empire has fallen. Begun the Middle Ages have."

It could be argued that the foederati system actually prolonged the Roman Empire , it was designed for a reason, primarily because the old standing armys couldnt cope anymore due to the size of the borders and mass incursions along it. The old standing armys alone couldnt respond fast enough, they couldnt be everywhere at once and so the Romans needed a layered approach to defence , defence in depth. The foederati Ultimately  did play a part in Western Roman Empires eventual collapse but i suspect that without the defence in depth they provided the Empire would of been overwhelmed much earlier.

Foederati: The story of Rome on the back foot. Thanks K&G for highlighting this underreported aspect of Rome's long and grinding imperial retirement. Your continued hard work is noted and appreciated!

The Frank's first enemy, then friend, and finally successor. They were just anime protagonists before that was a cliche.😂

When Rome stopped being fought for by Romans. When the stable boy could murder the Emperor and become Emperor. When the Praetorians sold the Emperorship...when "being Emperor" was more important than "governing the Empire", THAT is what caused the downfall of Rome.

Last time I was so early, Romulus and Remus were starting a very ambitious arts and crafts project

It’s telling that a frank would go on to be crowned as emperor of the Romans 350 years later

No one:


Rome and the Jin dynasty: Hiring barbarian mercenaries is a good idea

Rome's greatest strength was its ability to integrate outsiders.  First the actual City of Rome integrated the other Latins, then the Republic integrated the Etruscans and Smanites.  By Ceaser's time, southern Gauls from northern Italy were Romanized, and northern Gauls followed suit by the time of Clau-Clau-Claudius.  That's to say nothing of Iberians, Greeks, Egyptians, and even some Jews, like Josiphus.  At every step, the already Romanized sneered at the barbarian outsiders and insisted that they would never be fit to be Romans.

Service within the Legions, or alongside them as allies, was often the quickest road to Romanization.  The Italic allies may have lost the Social War, but it was their necessity to the Republic that gave their cities citizenship.  Likewise, Alpine and Narbonensic Gauls made up a large part of Ceaser's army.

The real question, it would seem, is why couldn't Rome assimilate these new groups, as it had the previous ones?

Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, while seminal, is not considered authoritative today. He had enough axes to grind in that work that he could have outfitted a literary legion of foederati himself.

The circumstances which led to the Battle of Adrianople were arguably the beginning of the end. The Romans now had to deal with vast amounts of their enemies within their own borders.

The Antonine Plague is the likely culprit for most of the Empire's woes. It killed 10% - 15% of the population. This crippled both the economy and army. Imperial revenue was reduced by nearly 25% and  the frontiers, due to the devastation suffered by the Legions, faced continual incursions. The shortage of manpower led to a need to find new sources, and so the ranks of the Legions began being increasingly supplemented by barbarian mercenaries. After nearly two generations of turmoil, the Crisis of the Third Century "began". Political instability rolled back the recovery of the Empire and cut a mortal wound into its heart. Mines could not operate and the silver coins where devalued. Inflation rocked the economy and armies, no longer receiving sufficient pay, proclaimed general after general the new Emperor and ground themselves down against eachother to see it done. I strongly doubt any of these things would have occurred without the devastation that the plague left in its wake.

If i ever won some huge lottery i'd give you $1.000.000 no questions asked, the respect i got for this channel can't be counted in money.

No one seriously claims that the barbarians were the only cause of the fall of the West. However, I would definitely say that they were ultimately the mechanism of the fall. Goths, Franks etc. saw the divided and weak state of Rome and pushed for greater power, as you would expect. The fact that barbarian magisti militum like Ricimer were able to hold the de facto rule of the West and others set up their own kingdoms in Roman territory really suggests that the collapse was not spontanious but brought about through barbarian agency. They were opportunistic and saw a vacuum left by disinterested and unsupported emperors and they rushed in to fill it.

When you spend all your hard earned denarii every single turn on that sweet, cheap, fresh, green Barbarian Cavalry.

There was an enormous amount of acculturation both before and after the fall of Rome with many Germanic tribes such as the Goths, Franks, and Vandals had spent quite some time living within the Western Roman Empire before they took it over. When the Ostrogoths under their king Flavius Odoacer completed the conquest of Rome in 476, they kept the Senate in place, formally acknowledged the suzerainty of the Eastern Roman Empire, took on Latin names and Roman dress. One could consider the fall of Rome in the fifth century as more of a internal political coup rather than uncivilized barbarians breaching the walls of the eternal city and tearing down the Roman civilization.