04-17-2002, 01:41 PM
Tacitus was definitely a great writer with a pretty good sense of humour.<br>
As for military disasters, I don't know. The Romans were in the habit of doing many things in grandiose proportions, successes as well as failures.<br>
There are a few spectacular defeats that have not been mentioned: The first being the battle of Allia and the subsequent sack of Rome by the Gauls. The roman population nearly abandoned the city, according to the legend.<br>
There is of course the capture and subsequent death of the emperor Valerian at the hands of the Sassanid persians and the death of the emperor Decius and his son --if I remember welll-- against the Goths in Thrace. Actually the Persian hold the highest score as far as dead roman emperors are concerned: Valerian, Julian and probably Gordian III as well, officially said to have been eliminated by his successor Philip the Arab, but who was apparently soundly defeated by the Sassanids at the little known battle of Misiche, widely publicized by the persian king Shapur in the "res gestae divi Saporis". After that battle Philip gave away a big chunk of Asia to the Persians in exchange for his life and that of what was left of the expeditionary force.<br>
But in terms of not recovering, the biggest disaster IMHO is the sack of Rome in 410 CE by Alaric. It obviously caused a tremendous psychological shock, triggered an exodus from the City and caused among other things St. Augustine to write The City of God, one of the fundamental texts of christianity. Rome was more than a "museum", or "an empty shell" as I've read it described: it was the symbol of the Empire. A holy city in the religious sense. As Connolly rightfully wrote, after that "roman prestige plummeted" and contrary to all the previous disasters, the western empire never recovered from this one.<br>
I think it's Gibbon who wrote than rather trying to figure out why the Empire fell, it would be better trying to figure out why it lasted so long.. <p></p><i></i>
As for military disasters, I don't know. The Romans were in the habit of doing many things in grandiose proportions, successes as well as failures.<br>
There are a few spectacular defeats that have not been mentioned: The first being the battle of Allia and the subsequent sack of Rome by the Gauls. The roman population nearly abandoned the city, according to the legend.<br>
There is of course the capture and subsequent death of the emperor Valerian at the hands of the Sassanid persians and the death of the emperor Decius and his son --if I remember welll-- against the Goths in Thrace. Actually the Persian hold the highest score as far as dead roman emperors are concerned: Valerian, Julian and probably Gordian III as well, officially said to have been eliminated by his successor Philip the Arab, but who was apparently soundly defeated by the Sassanids at the little known battle of Misiche, widely publicized by the persian king Shapur in the "res gestae divi Saporis". After that battle Philip gave away a big chunk of Asia to the Persians in exchange for his life and that of what was left of the expeditionary force.<br>
But in terms of not recovering, the biggest disaster IMHO is the sack of Rome in 410 CE by Alaric. It obviously caused a tremendous psychological shock, triggered an exodus from the City and caused among other things St. Augustine to write The City of God, one of the fundamental texts of christianity. Rome was more than a "museum", or "an empty shell" as I've read it described: it was the symbol of the Empire. A holy city in the religious sense. As Connolly rightfully wrote, after that "roman prestige plummeted" and contrary to all the previous disasters, the western empire never recovered from this one.<br>
I think it's Gibbon who wrote than rather trying to figure out why the Empire fell, it would be better trying to figure out why it lasted so long.. <p></p><i></i>
