Late Roman Army during the 5th century

[Robert Vermaat]

You could try and level a charge of the late army finding it hard to recruit, but it is hard to make stick even considering the greater size of the army compared to the early Imperial period.

Goldsworthy raised doubts about the supposedly larger size of the late army.

I’m sure he does, but then I don’t recall that he has sufficient evidence to prove his case for that doubt.

Rather I suspect the charge that it is hard to recruit soldiers is a constant refrain through history, up to and including today.

Compare the Rome of the punic wars with the one under siege in 410 CE. A city of perhaps half a million people couldn't raise enough troops to deal with maybe 30,000.

It can be doubted that Rome was that large by Ad 410, but even so – what use would it be to put spears in the hands of completely untrained citizens, even if the numbers were available? The post-Adrianople period has learned us it took years to rebuild the Roman army, and even that may never have been achieved.

Can this explain a near-total reliance on people from beyond the frontiers? Many people couldn't serve in republican times, prior to Marius (couldn't meet the property qualification) , but republican armies did rather well. :wink:

An unfair comparison – Republican armies also depended for a lot of manpower on non-citizens. Also, the enemies had profited from centuries of contact with the Romans and the formation of political conglomerates – the supertribes. No longer was it enough to send in a legion and a similar number of auxiliaries.

Btw, where did you find that the Empire faced a ‘near-total reliance on people from beyond the frontiers’? During which period? The later 5th century in the West?

There's a difference between foreigners or barbarians making up part of the army and comprising virtually all of it.

Of course, and the latter only happened during the last decades in the West. It was not a symptom.

Rather than a steady decline I see an army developing by the end of the 4th century into perhaps the first “modern” army in the way we understand such terms.

Didn't seem to fare too well for all that. mile:

You can mock it and look upon it with disdain, but then you are obviously forgetting that that same army managed to defend the East for another 1000 years, supported by an age-old military tradition that formed the basis of military treatises for another 5 centuries.