Barbarization?

[Robert Vermaat]

A foederatus (if that's a word!) could come and go much more freely, presumably... (I realise that you could then turn that around, and ask why any Goth would join the army when he could be a federate!)
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As for Alaric, from what I can work out so far he was constantly angling for a better position, and knew that he could get a better deal out of the Roman state, both east and west, as a free agent than he could by taking a regular military position.
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But yes - it's soldiers (presumably) killing Gothic civilians. My point was that they weren't the same group of Goths killing their own families (!) - but it is rather hazy...
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It strikes me that if this horde of barbarians crossed the Rhine in midwinter, they would need to keep moving - with all grain and other food supplies kept in stores, mostly inside fortified towns, their abilities to live off the land would be very limited, and if they remained in one place long they would face starvation. This might have been one reason why they ended up so far away from northern Gaul.
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The 'troops of Gaul' must have been sent across the Pyrenees by Constantius III, although I admit this isn't as clear as I would like!
However, Orosius's description of the original 'invasion' under Constans mentions another group: "certain barbarians, who had at one time been received as allies and drawn into military service, and who were called Honoriaci".
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Orosius (him again!) writes that "the Alans, Suebi, Vandals as well as many others with them, overwhelmed the Franks, crossed the Rhine, invaded Gaul, and advanced in their onward rush as far as the Pyrenees. Checked for the time being by this barrier, they poured back over the neighboring provinces." He then describes them "roaming wildly through Gaul."
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No source, by contrast, suggests that any military force opposed these successive barbarian influxes and movements. Why not? As for the Rhine, Orosius puts it neatly: Francos proterunt, Rhenum transeunt, Gallias inuadunt. So - the Rhine was defended by the Franks!

@ foederati vs regular army. Well that seems to me my problem – we have a large number of barbarians (fighting as a Gothic army under Alaric) vs. a Roman army that (according to the theory under discussion) is filled with hundreds of thousands of similar soldiers. Now Alaric does not seem to want to be a ‘free agent’, nor do his men – they clamor about becoming regular forces (just like the rest). That is a contradiction that I cannot explain with any theory that the ranks of the Roman army was already filled with non-Romans. Either a barbarian wanted to serve as a Roman soldier or not. Seeing that large amounts of Goths (et al) fought with Alaric, demanding legal status, and assuming that the tribes at home were not left undefended, I just cannot go with an assumption that the Roman army was already packed to the rafters with non-Romans of a similar origin as Alaric’s troops, but lacking the room (or whatever) to accommodate such numbers. Assuming there were not a million of available non-Roman soldiers available, the logic of numbers and availability tells me that the Roman army was not already full of non-Romans and that Alaric became a magnet for all who wanted but so far couldn’t.

@ Alaric himself, if he had been able to enter the Roman army with all those who (according to this theory) apparently already entered Roman service, his career could have gone all the way to the top. That he did not enter the army signifies for me that the army was not open to any non-Roman. Another reason to reject the hypothesis of a ‘barbarian Roman army by 400’.

@ the massacre, we have indeed soldiers killing civilians, but the theory under discussion would have us accept barbarian troops killing the folk of other barbarian troops. I cannot see such a situation just yet, whereby the Roman army was in fact one barbarian faction fighting another barbarian faction. Maybe after 460 or so, but not by 400 without proper evidence.

@ The invasion of Gaul by 406 – the ‘horde’ could indeed have ran south as you assume, but that would have been an enormous gable – what if the food to the south of the Pyrenees had been guarded as well? Which indeed was the case, as the invaders streamed back into Gaul. Starving, I presume, if the sources are correct.
So, why did they not remain in NW Gaul to attack the cities (where you presume they guarded the food)? Who guarded the cities? Surely not citizens and farmers? Or, as is my hunch, the armed forces of the region which were pulled back or remained in place to ward off the invaders? Who, as would happen in Roman doctrine, could break through the frontier to be harassed by the field army? All the way south?

@ troops in Spain, in the end we see these invaders go south and cross the Pyrenees. You would say because of the food (but they were plundering the countryside of Gaul, without any troops to hinder them), I propose because of the troops in Gaul pushing them south, perhaps to starve them or to engage them in Spain. We know they were attacked there, and the Vandals were badly defeated.
I would propose that the troops guarding the Pyrenees were those units loyal to Honorius, who guarded the passes in order to stop Constantine III, later joining Maximus before being pulled back to Italy. Constantine III could not have denuded Britain and Gaul of soldiers to be defeated by Honorius later – I think he had to leave border troops beside the federates, and maybe he lost his troops through the defection of Gerontius. 

@Orosius (and Jerome), the sources are difficult to read. The shock must have been immense, and a number of sources describe this apparently utter destruction that ensued. I mentioned a number of them HERE: Fastidius, Orientius, Salvian, the Narratio, and similar approaches by Sidonius and Gregory of Tours.
Their language is clear – cities burned, countryside destroyed, unburied bones in the fields and wrecked homes. ‘All Gaul is a single funeral pyre’.
Sure.
However, archaeology (I was thinking of that while writing ‘the sources, my bad) does not show a layer of destruction around this period. Which would be the case if you assume that the Rhine was undefended, the federates overwhelmed, an enemy roaming through all the provinces looking for food and the cities undefended (not my theory, NB). So I’m thinking hyperbole. The Rhine limes was broken, sure, but not undefended, and the troops of Constantine herder the barbarians towards Spain (in the hands of Honorius’ cousins). That’s my theory and it works better I think than an undefended Gaul.