Whatever became of the Roman Army in the West

[geala]

Very good explanations and arguments, as usual, Robert.


But I've one question. You wrote:

...

The main difference between the situations in the West and the east were that a) the East had a geographic advantage (in the sense that a rebel that managed to gain control of Asia, almost always failed to control Europe) and b) the East managed to forestall the leading role of generalissimos such as Arbogast, Stilicho, Aetius and Ricimer, whose struggle to gain and hold power did innumerably more damage to the strenght of the state than any invading Germanic army.

Wasn't economic mismanagement (not really growing poverty) in the west part of the problem? You said the stronger west failed. I've read that in the 5th c. (I think after the loss of the biggest part of the African provinces in the 420s? I'm not sure.) the military budget alone of the east was bigger than the whole budget of the west. And that the budget of the west equates to the annual income of just 3 great (but not of the greatest) private latifundiae. That seems to have been a problem of misguided wealth, a false politics of taxes? Maybe understandable because the empire wanted to protect the backbone of the state but to no good efforts. I missed arguments about this problem f.e. in Peter Heathers book about the fall of the (western part of the) empire. What do you mean?