Evacuations of Dacia and Britannia - a most serious blunder?

[Theodosius the Great]

Excuse my ignorance but does the Vatican claim legal succession to Rome?

Yes and no. In a legal sense it did claim to be the sucessor to the Western Roman Empire for roughly 700 years until the Italian Renaissance. Look up "Donation of Constantine" for more details.

Nighthawk,

What great posts, I gave you a laudes point 8)

I agree with everything you've said except maybe this :

Come in Nighthawk\\n[quote]“term limitsâ€

[S SEVERUS]

But that's kinda OT. However, Constantine managed to reoccupy Dacia after Aurelian had abandoned it. It's a shame his squabbling sons couldn't capitalize on his victories over the Sarmatians

Theodosius, can you give more detail please? Are you sure he fully reoccupied Dacia?? And how long was it? Can you give me a source?

[Theodosius the Great]

S Severus, I don't own any primary sources from the Late Empire, but here's something I just found from a secondary source :

In the autumn of AD 328, accompanied by Constantine II, he campaigned against the Alemanni on the Rhine. This was followed in late AD 332 by a large campaign against the Goths along the Danube until in AD 336 he had re-conquered much of Dacia, once annexed by Trajan and abandoned by Aurelian.

I guess I was wrong about the Sarmatians - apparently it was the Goths according to this. In any case, I don't think the reoccupation was permanent even during Constantine's reign. He penentrated deep into the former province conquered by Trajan and won a tremendous victory. There wasn't a peep out of the Goths for another twenty years. But "reoccupied" is perhaps too strong a word.

Hope that helps a bit. Maybe Vortigern or Aitor can provide more details.

[Flavius Promotus]

Constantine obviously brought an area north of the Danube under indirect Roman control which stretched more or less from north of the Iron Gorge area accross the Wallachian plain to the Danube. This area obviously included only the south-eastern part of the Carpathians, but it was still a pretty large area on the whole.
(maybe major earth dykes in the north of the Wallachian plain have something to do with Constantine's successes).

In order to have major forces at hand to restore order in this area, major counterfortresses were erected on the North bank of the Danube at Sucidava opposite of Oescus, and at Daphne (Transmarisca) [at least at Sucidava there had already been a counterfortress maybe from the Antonine? or Severan? period, but as far as I know nobody knows the condition of this installation in the early 4th century].

(apart from late Roman counterfortress in the Iron Gorge area, there was also another one at Drobeta).

This (indirect) Roman control over the Wallachian plain may have lasted until the 360ies (Julian refers in one of his letters to the Goths who, according to him, were up to something, so Roman order was perhaps slowly eroding).
The stupidity of the new emperor Valens then led to the first war against the Goths since the age of Constantine - nothing lasts forever :roll:

[Eleatic Guest]

[quote]The HRE was abolished by Napoleon in 1807. So, 1807-800=1007; still “a thousand years.â€

[petrinus]

so when did the dacian wars end, several resources are confusing this point, until recently i had thought much early with the whole moesian incident that would have been a success were it not for an upstart governor of sorts, as i understand it or my sources sell it. whats the best resource out there to acquire the correct perspective on this period....howevr long it was?

[Come in Nighthawk]

The so-called United States of America cover neither America (actually only less than a half of the northern part), nor consists of States (as they are actually not sovereign and independent and never really were), nor would they be united if the North had acknowledged in 1861 the right of self-determination of the South...Time to teach that at university! Very Happy
_________________
Stefan

:lol: Hmmm, I guess that would depend on the biases of your professors and your university (maybe your “Stateâ€

[Petra Rocks]

Whoa! This is going a little off topic folks. hock: US Federalism or lack thereof is interesting but not very topical.

Code:

Rome had "protected" itself from the other Italians, then from the Carthaginians, then from the Macedonians, etc., for four centuries. If the "Conscript Fathers" had asked that sort of question in 260 BC then the Romans would have ended up speaking Punic in short order. Instead they hung grimly on for 120 years and finally triumphed. It was Carthage that was soon speaking Latin.

True, but they didn't invade Gaul in the middle of the 2nd Punic war. With Parthia, Dacia and maybe Britian looking like more potentially dangerous foes why pick on the Germans in particular?

We might well take note of the fact that over the centuries the Chinese DID follow the Republican Roman and Trajanic formula of expanding slowly but inexorably outward. Their empire in fact reached its height

Yet for all that the Chinese were conquered by Mongols and Manchus, and fell into civil war several times. It borders were not in constant gradual expansion between 0 AD and 1600. I think China owned it survival to the fact it was a cultural zone, not a nation state. China was conquered or disintegrated dozens ( I think) of times but the pieces put themselves back together. Rome's empire was laid by the power of the gladius over a half a hundred cultures and when that power was gone there was nothing to glue the parts togther again.

then may we ALSO accept that after having invaded Italy ca. 166-168 AD they most certainly WERE, and should have been thoroughly subdued, not ignored or bought off…??

That does seems reasonable.

[Come in Nighthawk]

True, but they didn't invade Gaul in the middle of the 2nd Punic war. With Parthia, Dacia and maybe Britain looking like more potentially dangerous foes why pick on the Germans in particular?

This is a great discussion, the side issue of American Federalism and European Confederations aside…

Well… may I suggest first that it was the Gauls that had actually invaded Italy as long ago as the 4th Century BC, and had actually taken and sacked Rome? In fact, while Rome didn’t invade GAUL “in the middle of the 2nd Punic war,â€

[Eleatic Guest]

Rome's empire was laid by the power of the gladius over a half a hundred cultures and when that power was gone there was nothing to glue the parts togther again.

The glue should have been strong enough. The Christian faith alone must have worked like pure magnetism for a common central authority and there were other strong intergrating factors as well (Pax Romana, Latin and Greek language & culture, common citizenship of 212, universal fear of barbarians).

The Roman Empire went under for an array of reasons, but the most important were probably of exterior and to a large extent contingent nature. The Germanic Voelkerwanderung to the west, the Slavish infiltration in the Balkans, the Arab onslaught in the east, the first historical appearance of the plague under Justinian, the perennial rivalry with the second biggest military power of the globe, Persia, each of these events being of true world historic importance, proved combined being too much even for the Imperium.

[Felix]

Isn't it a joke that the Holy Roman Empire was not holy, was not Roman and was not an empire.

Voltaire.

[Petra Rocks]

[quote]Well… may I suggest first that it was the Gauls that had actually invaded Italy as long ago as the 4th Century BC, and had actually taken and sacked Rome? In fact, while Rome didn’t invade GAUL “in the middle of the 2nd Punic war,â€

[Eleatic Guest]

I don't think Rome's culture can be called homogenous. Hellenization was skin deep, the peasants spoke Aramaic in the East and Latin or Celtic in the west, Christianity with its constant schisms was probably more of a divider that a unifying force.

I see you are coming from the USA. The US is also far from a homogenous place, but do you also think that it would lack glue when things get very serious?

It is true that the peasants in Syria spoke largely Aramaic, but that can be counted as just a third lingua franca, not really much for the greatest empire of its time, and certainly much less than the numerous Chinese languages or mutually inintelligible Arabic dialects.

In the west Celtic was clearly very much in the demise, which can be seen from the fact that modern French hardly owns to it anything. In reality, the fact that all people in the West (save the English) nowadays still speak a Romanized language can be viewed as evidence for the deep going latinization process which they all underwent under the Romans.

The schisms within Christianity were important but did not by far play the part of later times, In fact, the arianistic Goths soon had to learn that there was no way past the mainstream and all adopted the Catholic faith. Here we have a nice instance where Roman culture had a truly homogenizing effect even after its downfall.

I think we should not always give in the temptation to judge history from its ends. IMO the fall of the Imperium was not inevitable, and the cultural glue was strong enough and perhaps getting stronger by the century. A reunification just did not materialize because of a row of negative contingent factors happened in soon succession, as I outlined above. [/quote]

[petrinus]

you say the fall of the empire was not inevitable, id like to agree but with borders and boundries pushed so far, foreign wars costing more than they were bringing in, the military often divided, revolts rampant, and the politics in rome what they were, well....i dont think it would require a seer to see that hatchet falling, personaly i blame christianity, some of you may think it unified the empire as it absorbed aspects of various faiths, hence we have so many saints and hell is now called hell, more on this another time, but i feel really it was disastrous, especially considering what happend with the whole late period bit, constantine and all,.............give me pagan rome any day and i'll lay my spoils at the altar of mars

[Eleatic Guest]

...personaly i blame christianity......give me pagan rome any day and i'll lay my spoils at the altar of mars

I think you should read Nietzsche..he might be your man..every second page or so he blames Christianity for the downfall of the Roman Empire. :wink: Honestly, I do not know where this assumption comes from, and I have only read it with him. In which way could have Christianity contributed to the decline of the Imperium?