Before the Fall of the Roman Republic
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
> I jokingly said when I started writing, that I wanted people to come out of it with a general feeling of unease about what’s going on in the United States and in the West generally. To emerge from reading the book, go back to flipping on the news, and think, “This is not good.”
So... if you read it and think "wow this is eerily parallel to our current reality," it's going to be hard to know how much of that is because it _really was_ eerily parallel, and how much is because the author _wanted it to feel_ eerily parallel.
I think the assertion that Mike Duncan is "a fairly renowned historian" needs some qualifications. For one, I don't think he has a history degree. And while he seems to be very good at compiling various sources and summarising them in a way that is accessible to the general interested public (and I do agree that he doesn't pretend everything is simple when it's not, and that he corrects his mistakes), that doesn't mean that he does original research, or if he does, that this research is in any way peer-reviewed by the larger community of historians.
This is not a bad thing, but it's something to keep in mind when reading a book that tries to paint a particular narrative. (And I did really enjoy reading the book, FWIW)
Regardless, I read a few books about the fall of the Republic a couple of years ago, all of which were written pre-Trump, and I did indeed find the resemblance eerie.
Perhaps it’s is so. Unrelated to his joke, it’s similar and worth the read.
I’d argue xenophobia is very limited in a population of >300M, it’s just one of those issues where the minority is very vocal which the media loves to magnify. There was just an article on HN about people grossly overestimating the size of subgroups in the populace and I’m sure xenophobes would be one of those overestimations.
The Gini coefficient gives you a measure of income inequality, and the US "wins", handily.
Systemic racism & xenophobia is a bit harder to measure. There's the IPC index, but I can't find a reference comparing the three countries. Immigration rates point to all three being rather bad, with China being the worst. (In that they are the one of the three to have a negative immigration rate)
It's worth keeping in mind that "xenophobia" doesn't make sense, per se. There is, at least in the US, a clear hierarchy of immigration nations, and some are very welcome, while others are decidedly not. I'd assume the same is true in Russia and China. (I vaguely know it to be the case in Russia. I have no idea about China)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_nationality_law#Acquis...
This seems very close to the 2018 World Bank data you linked for Russia and the US, but as you will note the last year of available data for China with the World Bank is 2016 at which point the gini coefficient exceeds Russia.
What really does seem to be the sad, sad reality is that America needs external enemies or else it feeds on itself. Since the fall of the USSR politics have gotten steadily nastier, but all the sudden people are finding lots of common ground in solitary against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But will that solidarity last more than a few news cycles?
I hear people say that our response to 9/11 shows that the terrorists won. I think actually bin Laden did a huge favor to the military industrial complex - they won.
IMO the entire narrative that Americans are so divided is largely an illusion. People are highly divided over wedge issues in online arguments.
If you turn off the internet, the phone and FOX/CNN/MSNBC people are pretty much the same.
Sporting events are a good example of reality. If the media narratives were true getting a 100k people in a sports stadium would result in utter chaos.
We are certainly not as divided as in the 60s. That is so apparent if you read any history from that time.
Actually, if we suffer from anything it is exactly represented by Dalio. Conflating extreme wealth accumulation with extreme intelligence and wisdom. The ideas of billionaires are given far too much weight. Not based on the ideas themselves but on the size of their net worth.
IMO if Feynman or Einstein were alive today no one would listen to them, "If you are so smart why don't you have a billion dollars???"
The useful lesson from the "falling Empire stages" is to gracefully cede influence without entering into counterproductive wars with new rising powers, as you mention with China.
The Xenophobia in America is a walk in the park compared to any European country. Still the best place for immigrants. Income inequality is bad but povery has improved a lot and so has crime compared to previous decades. I mean, the great depression was literally before WW2 which is obviously a worse time than now (ask any black person or non-european immigrant how unequal or xenophobic America was back then!) after which there was a great economic boom.
Perhaps the past is easier to measure than the present?
A lot of the political norm that is being erased now is for 20th century norms. I would say Andrew Jackson shooting people on the whitehouse lawn was a norm. Congress attending Church every sunday at the Capitol was also a norm and it was erased.
I think a lot of people correlate without articulating causation to sound smart.
I ask because it seems like we have mostly the same politicians (McConnell, Pelosi, Biden, even Trump ran as an independent) as we did then.
This certainly predates social media (tabloids, tabloid television), but social media definitely took things to a new level.
Hating the political opposition is the norm, not the exception.
Not in a healthy democracy, but I guess that is the exception as well.
The senate had a well established history of turning against its greatest generals by Caesar’s time. You mention the defeat of Carthage, but who defeated Carthage, and what happened to them afterwards? Scipio Africanus did at the Battle of Zama, and he was promptly exiled from Rome afterwards by his political rivals (and was lucky to avoid execution really). It is absolutely no surprise that the Roman republic eventually fell to an extremely competent general leading an extremely loyal army, after having the senate try to take him down a peg.
Those checks and balances were simply not needed during peaceful times, and consistently failed any time they were tested during conflict. It’s like how people say Athens never had the position of “dictator”, yet for every significant crisis Athens got into, it found itself ruled by a dictator.
A roman dictator on the other hand was anointed by the Senate to "get shit done" until the scourge was over or 6 months, whichever comes first. Normally in Roman times, they tended to shy away from single authority. Even the military was divided between two consuls so that if one got any funny ideas, the other could effectively repel their attack. During a dictatorship though, the anointed would have supreme authority over all things Roman. They could wield armies and the state coffers at their disclosure. This rarely happened and the senate really tried to only anoint people that were worthy of it.
Cincinatti, the capital of Ohio, is actually named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus who famously saved Rome twice. He was farming when he was anointed dictator and was very reluctant to stay in politics unless needed. It's a fantastic story.
> Those checks and balances were simply not needed during peaceful times
There weren't any peaceful times. Almost literally. Rome was at war for all but 6 years of the entire Republic.
The Roman Republic, as a political entity, was able to muster enormous resources relative to its size, and in the midst of calamitious circumstances too. The best example is the Republic raising legion after legion with which to challenge Carthage, and maintaining the loyalty of all of the cities allied to it, after Hannibal's army had defeated it in a string of battles, and finally, killed a significant fraction of its male population at the battle of Cannae.
I assume it was the construction of the Roman government, with its elected leaders, and the political culture of the Roman polity, that viewed the people as the source of all power (as exemplified by SPQR), that inspired this cohesion and loyalty, and it was these qualities that were the primary and ultimate source of its power.
Roman generals in later centuries frequently seized power to become emperors, and this in turn undermined the basis of Roman power, which was a large subsection of the population and fraction of power centers being integrated into the political establishment through elected positions, and consequently having a stake in the success of the state. So the suspicion the elected leaders had towards generals may have been well-founded, and been the reason the elected government maintained power for as long as it did.
It’s also a mistake to say that Rome inspired significant cohesion and loyalty. The only groups that remained loyal to Rome during the second Punic war were the northern Latin cities. Many cities in the south defected to Hannibal, a lot of the Gallic tribes that had peaceful arrangements with Rome took the opportunity to restart aggressions, Macedonia and many Greek states also took the opportunity to start various conflicts with Rome.
The characteristic of the senate that you could credit to some extent was that they would simply never surrender. That seems to be a very strong Roman cultural value during that period. Rome lost every battle it fought in Italy during the second war. After Cannae they had almost no army, and Hannibal took his army to Rome, and Rome refused to surrender, and Hannibal… left. Because he didn’t have the resources to besiege Rome, and Carthage hadn’t managed (and never did manage) to reinforce him. So he spent a around a decade in control of large areas in southern Italy, unable to fully defeat Rome, and Rome unable to evict him from the peninsula, and with no realistic prospect of ever being able to.
And they never did. Scipio Africanus removed Hannibal from Italy by first conquering Carthaginian Iberia, and then launching a campaign in Africa. This caused Carthage to recall Hannibal home, where he was subsequently defeated by Scipio, ending the war.
It’s also worth noting that Scipio’s campaign in Africa was not properly funded by Rome. His army had a large contingent of volunteers, and the campaign was mostly funded by his private supporters.
The fractious nature of Senate politics was a consequence of a culture and set of institutions that encouraged and allowed domestic conflicts to be settled within the confines of established political processes, so that the Senate as an institution, while often beset by bitter internal political strife, did not face challenges from external centers of power within Roman society. The power and resiliency that this gave the Senate allowed it to maintain control even when Rome was under extreme stress, like it was in its depopulated state during the Second Punic War when it managed to raise two dozen legions.
>>The only groups that remained loyal to Rome during the second Punic war were the northern Latin cities.
You're correct that there was a lot of defection, but most cities in the Italian peninsula remained loyal to Rome.
During the second Punic war nearly half of the republic defected, and almost all Roman allies turned on them. Including a pro-Carthaginian uprising in Sardinia, and and outright defection of Syracuse to Carthage.
I guess you’re free to interpret things however you want, but “cohesive and loyal” is such an incredibly creative interpretation of the Roman republic during Hannibal’s invasion.
I believe you are incorrect about the defections as well. One source supporting this notion is Adrian Goldsworthy's "The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265–146 BC", which, by way of Wikipedia, claims:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War#Hannibal_cros...
However, the majority of Rome's allies remained loyal, including many in southern Italy.
> Several of the city states in southern Italy allied themselves with Hannibal, or were captured when pro-Carthaginian factions betrayed their defences. These included the large city of Capua and the major port city of Tarentum (modern Taranto). Two of the major Samnite tribes also joined the Carthaginian cause. By 214 BC the bulk of southern Italy had turned against Rome.
https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Revolution-Oxford-Paperbacks-No...
(Also posted as a top level comment.)
On the other hand the narrative that America is going the way of Rome has been an ongoing thing since at least the 1950s, in different decades the thing that the person crafting the narrative felt was really bad became the cause of Rome's fall. I suppose it is a favorite to write about because Rome was a Republic once, and America is a Republic, and Rome fell and it was a big, big deal. So people can get really worked up over this idea.
Many of the 'causes' of the coming downfall have been bad morals in one way or another; narrative is that Rome fell because of its weakening moral fiber, so in the '50s this weakening was caused by miscegenation, in the 60s debauchery and emasculation of the younger generations, 70s the same and maybe just being tired out by the discipline required for maintaining empire, 80s homosexuality, I think 90s was emasculation of younger generations again although I think there was still quite a bit of gay panic then too.
So nowadays hmm, "ambitious people started looking inward to gain power instead of outward" oh yeah, putting personal ambition ahead of social duty, that's a recurring one, I think it was a common complaint in the 50s as well.
I mean I sure do think things are not that great, but not sure if I buy that there are any more actually relevant similarities between the fall of Rome and U.S than there are between the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations.
https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Revolution-Oxford-Paperbacks-No...
I can agree that income inequality, racism and xenophobia are symptoms of an underlying disease but even if America has the same disease as the Rome, this is a different host with different strength, weaknesses and immune system. Rome wasn't found upon rebellion, it didn't have a civil war at the scale of america andnit didn't have WMDs, fighter jets, interlinked supply chains and the internet. It could be worse or better or a seasonal bug.
You should also understand that the eastern Roman empire lasted up until only a few hundred years ago. And it was no joke. It took over a millenium for Rome to fall. Constantinope fell on 1453, columbus discovered america on 1492. If Rome is strictly western Rome then the equivalent would be America losing global influence and military power but still remaining relatively prosperous and strong with perhaps few states splintering.
Different variable, different input, similar symptomps but likely different output imo.
You know what parallel scares me? Rwanda.
The founding of Rome involved one brother killing the other over a hill… and if you don’t think they had large scale civil war, you simply haven’t read Roman history
An interesting aside, the civil war being referenced was actually over a question of Roman citizenship, which used to only apply to people in the city. For quite some time, the (now-)Italian peninsula was under Roman control, but its inhabitants were given a sub-citizen status with much lesser rights. The civil war established that citizenship could be offered to a much wider area.
...Ahem.
(It is not a pleasant period of history to read about.)
Roman history, particularly pre-imperial, does show a lot of "why exactly will they not just die?", but some level of resilience in large Mediterranean powers of antiquity was pretty common. (Carthage took two wars and decades to lose the Punic Wars.)
History is path-dependent and all stories are retro-actively told. There are a lot of cases where it depends on the people in the room, or the sentiment of the people in the room that day, or even something so random as taking a wrong turn and coming across a group of anarchists ready to throw some bombs (WW1). When looking at Rome, it's better to draw broad parallels with little weight.
I agree, it's imprudent to try and draw direct parallels between the US and any other historical empire, including Rome.
That said, we can learn much from history. And in the US and Europe, we can learn even more from the history of the "West."
As Eugen Weber[0] put it[1]:
...But where should we start? Perhaps the first
thing to ask is what the scope of a series on the
history of Western Civilization should be?
And the best way to think of it is that we are going
back to the old country. We're going back to where
many of our ancestors came from. To see where their
stories came from, and their memories and their
habits and the way they are, which has made us the
way we are.
This is what history is about. Where we come from.
What lies behind the way we live and act and think.
How our institutions, our religions, our laws were
made.
Understanding the thoughts, fears, triumphs and failures of our forbears is an important window on our human nature and the things that have driven us since time immemorial, and continues to drive us to this day.
Whether it's the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and the many civilizations of the Levant/Fertile Crescent as well as Rome, the Abrahamic[2] religions and the thinkers/ideas of the ensuing millenia, they all have something important to teach us about the world we live in now. They did, after all, birth many of our core beliefs, ideas and institutions.
While it's generally not productive to point at specific issues and exclaim "This is just like Rome!" or something similar, understanding the culture and practices of our ancestors can give us insight into our current world.
But that's not enough. While human nature is human nature which hasn't really changed in a couple hundred thousand years, times do change.
And when they do, we need to, as Lincoln pointed out[3]:
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the
stormy present. The occasion is piled high with
difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act
anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we
shall save our country.
As we are keenly reminded by Paul M.M. Cooper and his Fall of Civilizations[4] podcast.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Weber
[1] https://archive.org/details/western-tradition-01-the-dawn-of... (timecode: 06:35)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions
[3] http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/congres...
[4] https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/
Edit: Fixed formatting/transcription issues.
Apparently, I'm on a tour of "old saws," so here's another one:
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him
drink.
You can lead a fool to knowledge, but you can't make
him think.
[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana#Vol._I,_Reaso...
I think if one[2] of you could just a bit more explicitly acknowledge that you are not saying "OMG this is EXACTLY the same, America is 100% for certain going to fall just like Rome in 471!" but only "there are quite a few parallels here, here, and there, so it might well behoove us to keep an eye on this, this, and that"; and/or the other could apply this more charitable reading -- which seems to be the precise point they're arguing -- to what the first is saying, then it looks to me like there really isn't any (or at least, not much) actual disagreement between you at all. Or is it just me that's totally misreading one or both of you?
Hey BTW, thanks for that second more caustic formulation of the saying; hadn't seen that one before. I may, when sufficiently exasperated, use it in future... But there is actually a bit of optimism to it: While you can't cure stupidity, you may be able to at least alleviate ignorance -- one issue and one fool at a time. (After the fool in question has been led to knowledge on issue X, he won't need to think about it for himself any more; while still in general a fool, hopefully he won't, armed with newfound knowledge as he now is, act like one on this issue in the future.)
__
[1]: Not being an American, "America is going to fall...!" doesn't have the same direct relevance for me, but I can see the same parallels being applied to other realms -- and AFAIK, they have been used like that about lots of nations, since about forever.
[2]: nobody9999? Not sure; possibly getting who is on which side of the argument mixed up since I see only the comment I'm directly replying to on this input screen. Could be the other way around.
Good call. I have no issue with edgyquant.
They said:
For sure I’m not saying there aren’t lessons, just
that the type of people who cherry pick a few
examples and take them as given proof of some
historical trend aren’t likely to find these lessons.
>I think if one[2] of you could just a bit more explicitly acknowledge that you are not saying "OMG this is EXACTLY the same, America is 100% for certain going to fall just like Rome in 471!" but only "there are quite a few parallels here, here, and there, so it might well behoove us to keep an eye on this, this, and that"; and/or the other could apply this more charitable reading -- which seems to be the precise point they're arguing -- to what the first is saying, then it looks to me like there really isn't any (or at least, not much) actual disagreement between you at all. Or is it just me that's totally misreading one or both of you?
Unless I missed something, neither edgyquant nor I asserted anything even close to "OMG this is EXACTLY the same, America is 100% for certain going to fall just like Rome in 471!"
If I read them correctly, edgyquant pretty directly dismissed such "reasoning," and I never even approached saying anything close.
But you're right. Edgyquant and I seem to be (mostly) in agreement.
What's more, I didn't get the sense from edgyquant that they thought we were in conflict, nor did I contradict anything they said. Rather, I elucidated why I thought that history was valuable.
Perhaps edgyquant got a different vibe. I don't know. Perhaps they can chime in.
But at the same time, the network of defense agreements led to a rise of regional power blocs (increasing polarization). The Anglo-German arms race led to a surplus of military, and an increasing rift between the German and the British bloc. The Russo-Japanese war caused a shift of Russian interests to the Balkans, which also mattered to Austria (sort-of part of the German bloc). The insults of 1870 and the Marocco crisis led to a deepening rift between Germany and France.
The Italo-Libyan war exposed that the Ottoman empire was extremely shaky, further stoking interests in colonial expansion. Which promptly happened with the Balkan Wars.
Those anarchists with bombs were the particular match to a powder keg sitting around. Chances are there would've been a different match on a different day, had this not happened.
Maybe there still would've been a small path away from the conflagration if the assasination and consequences hadn't happened. But each previous event narrowed that path.
History may be path-dependent, but there are some paths that are narrowing down the options you can consequently take. The same holds for Rome - the actions taken increasingly narrowed down the possible ways forward. (And that, I'd argue, are the main lessons to draw from any collapse - what actions narrowed the solution space, which ones broadened it)
Very different things.
Things are a lot more fragile and unstable than people realize so it's important to zoom out and look at all these issues in aggregate in order to formulate effective plans for revitalizing decaying democratic institutions so that we can properly deal with the inevitable shocks that cause the decline and collapse of nations.
Western Rome also lost huge ability to project power when it fell and decomposed into its constituent states. Whereas as recently as the reign of Diocletian Rome was projecting power well into Germania proper by the end of the 4th century Rome couldn't even defend its own borders. The equivalent for the US would be China/Russia wantonly attacking American client states (Germany, France, Israel, Taiwan) without fear of retaliation.
During the Macedonian Dynasty (867-1056), they were arguably still the dominant power. Arab-Byzantine Wars lasted for 500 years and involved the entire Mediterranean. The Byzantine Italy existed until 1071.
Even after, the Komnenian Restoration (12th century) revived the Empire to some extent in financial, cultural, and territorial form.
Sure, they weren’t as powerful as the Roman Empire at its peak, but still could project plenty of power after mid-600s.
The highlighting of divisions - imaginary or real rarely helps and almost always makes things worse.
There's a reason retaliation in soccer is an automatic red card. It's not that the retaliation isn't warranted; it's because it typically is.
Regarding machetes, just shows you don't need firearms for a massacre.
It’s like when people say that the British created the tensions between Muslims and Hindus on the subcontinent. That overlooks the millennia of Muslim invasions and rule by sultanates (the process by which I came to have an Arabic surname despite being born 8,000 miles from the Middle East).
Rome was bloodily founded, with the forced subjugation of other nations and peoples across what is now Italy.
The correlation seems less about the fall to ruin, but that that somewhere like the US would fall into a dictatorship and has many ingredients as Julius Caesar served to claim emperor. I would also add a hefty amount of backwards looking rhetoric also to the mix - things were better, more moral in the past; or we must address sins of the past. Putin has been using similar rhetoric to Caesar swapping the Ukraine for the Celts.
I recommend Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History on the Celtic Holocaust that poses that the whole expansion and annihilation of the Celts was a money making scheme by Julius Caesar to grasp power.
(But that's not to diminish that Julius Caesar was a bad dude.)
And it's not like it's something completely out of the question - there was literally a coup attempt to circumvent election results (which are already gerrymandered to hell) a year ago.
Only barely so, and not for lack of trying, and Rome still had massive and frequent civil wars both in the late Republic as well as throughout the imperial period.
Republican Rome stretched from Spain to the Nile River in the south and Syria in the East. Over 350,000 (and quite possibly a lot more) Roman soldiers, out of a population estimated to be around 60,000,000 (most of whom were not citizens), fought at just the Battle of Actium at the end of the Republican era.
In a pre-industrial era with a pre-industrial economy.
The American Civil War had more soldiers, yes, and proportionally more with regards to population--but also had an economy that could support it. And it happened once. Not "every few years for centuries on end". Roman civil wars were titanic and they went on for decades. (The third century CE is referred to as an ongoing crisis for a reason.)
As for the rest--the differences between the Western Roman Empire and the East are so significant that even if you happen to be right (and you might be, I don't find it credible myself) it strikes me as it'll be by accident.
And what is that? India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh), China, Russia, and all the Gulf States, are also xenophobic and racist and have high levels of income inequality. Most countries are xenophobic and racist by American standards—if they lack income inequality it’s because everyone is equally poor. So what’s the common thread?
If these things are rampant, but on the decline, it's not the same thing. If they were more or less in check, but are now running wild through the decaying empire, that's the signal.
Again, my opinions are totally my own (and maybe somewhat overstated here) and don't reflect OP at all. Just a thought.
Tolerance and permissiveness seem to be rising since then as far as I can see. Although you may be referring to the troubling rise in policies of institutional racism like race discrimination in university admissions, which I agree is one obvious thing that seems to be going backwards in recent times.
Even Obama was a right wing xenophobic racist nazi for suggesting the border should be secure, deporting illegal immigrants, separated and caged children. Not to mention all the other horrible stuff like claiming that marriage was between a man and a woman.
So yes I think I'm on good grounds to believe xenophobia and racism has been decreasing even within the past decade.
Obama absolutely would be called a racist xenophobe today based on his stated policies of border control, his mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and instances of separating immigrant children from their families. That is how far the window has shifted on this topic. Birthright citizenship doesn't change that.
So that's how far the window has shifted on the subject in a few short years. Therefore I think it is quite reasonable to question the allegation that racism and xenophobia is getting worse.
Also, why does the tech community have an obsession with Rome?
American centric negativity combined with self aggrandizing projection.
The comparisons to Rome are the new JavaScript frameworks of HN.
This question comes across as a bit sneering (more so one of its answers), but I'll say general intellectualism. This is what the orange site is about after all.
See a defence of the classics here: https://acoup.blog/2021/09/10/meet-a-historian-michael-taylo... - The blog ACOUP is probably better than the submission, so I'll agree with your first point.
You could make a case for Chinese history being equally rich, if not more. But note that the language and cultural barrier would be greater for most people on this site. Its relevance for the shaping of the "Western" world would be less relevant. The amount of study material and analysis in the English language would be less. But if there were decent enough articles on it, it would result in a flood of submissions to this site.
The question isn't why are we obsessed with Rome. It's why not.
Myths aside, we don't really know anything about the founding of Rome. But it's clear that (like the United States), Rome was originally a "frontier" place, situated at the intersection of several older groups of Italic peoples.
> it didn't have a civil war at the scale of america
The Social War would certainly beg to differ - a war fought over who got to be full-fledged members of the Roman community.
> it didn't have WMDs, fighter jets, interlinked supply chains and the internet.
One of the most stunning features of the late Roman Republic (and subsequent Empire) is the degree to which trans-Mediterranean trade takes off in the second century B.C.E. after the Roman defeat of Carthage. By the standards of the ancient world, the late Roman Republic was incredibly interconnected.
I'm not trying to argue that the parallel totally fits or that the outcome will be the same. But I think there are more similarities here than you give credit for.
The best example is this gem
> The ultimate consequences of allowing the Italians to become full roman citizens was nothing. There were no consequences. Rome just became Italy and everybody thrived, and they only did it after this hugely destructive civil war that almost destroyed the republic right then and there.
This is incorrect.
Citizenship ( and subsequent Military outsourcing) was devalued in imperial times because citizenship was liberally granted . "Barbarian" tribes on the borders would be granted citizenship. Even the Apostle Paul was reputed to be a citizen. This dynamic led the eventual collapse of the Roman work ethic, and the filling of Rome with destitute populations depending on handouts (bread & circuses). The cultural loss of Roman-ness
Would this cavalier attitude come back to bite them?
Of course it did. Many times, but foremost is the name Arminius [1]. Yes, the same Arminius, a barbarian child, became a Roman citizen, and later on as an officer, led Roman legions to the great debacle of the Teutoborg Forest [2]. Because he knew Roman tactics inside & out, it enabled him to destroy completely three legions (17th, 18th, and 19th legions, three cavalry detachments and six cohorts of auxiliaries) - Some of the auxiliaries may have become part of the ambushing force. Later on, this became so rampant that even words to describe the outsourced military to barbarians became synonomous with the barbarians themselves. When they eventually threw off their labors, conquering Rome was easy, as many of the barbarians were the standing military of Rome at that time.
Similarly, it was also Alaric of the Visigoths that sacked Rome, having become familiar with Roman tactics after working for them for years. After several shakedowns, he finally just took Rome.
Of course, I am not talking about other key points such as currency devaluation & Inflation/Hyperinflation
" Nero was one of the first emperors to devalue the denarius, and by the time Gallienus took the throne in 253 AD, the coins contained approximately 5% silver and consisted of a bronze core with a thin layer of silver. By 265 AD, the denarius contained 0.5% silver; the result was inflation of up to 1,000% across the empire. By this time, Rome had no more enemies to steal from so taxation was raised. The resulting mess completely paralyzed trade. By the end of the 3rd Century AD, the vast majority of trade was localized with barter methods used instead of the exchange of currency." [3]
I recognize the fully irony of the military outsourcing of the Romans, and ours, with Blackwater and the other associated Private Military Companies. Our currency debasement, and more recently, inflation, just to name a few. There are many more parallels.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminius
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest
[3] https://historycollection.com/downfall-5-reasons-roman-empir...
Surely there was a balance between the two extremes that Rome failed to achieve?
To retain culture, and to forge a national identity without appearing weak and establishing a Roman policy of "buying off enemies", and, "using citizenship as part of the buy".
This set up precedent for military service (auxiliaries to citizen). I guess we could call it the flawed path to citizenship......