The opening scenes of the 2000 blockbuster Gladiator are based on the victories of Marcus Aurelius over the Marcomanni, a Germanic tribe of south-central Europe, in the third quarter of the second century. Two hundred years later, the Romans were still at it. In 357, 12,000 of the emperor Julian’s Romans routed an army of 30,000 Alamanni at the battle of Strasbourg. But within a generation, the Roman order was shaken to its core and Roman armies, as one contemporary put it, ‘vanished like shadows’. In 376, a large band of Gothic refugees arrived at the Empire’s Danube frontier, asking for asylum. In a complete break with established Roman policy, they were allowed in, unsubdued. They revolted, and within two years had defeated and killed the emperor Valens – the one who had received them – along with two-thirds of his army, at the battle of Hadrianople.
Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire (p. xi). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
Unfortunately, immigration wasn't the only lead-up to the revolt. The move was complicated by the lack of Roman oversight of the imigration. Only one group was given asylum but the absence of Roman soldiers meant that many more took advantage of the move. Then the Romans who were in charge of the migration took bribes rather than maintaining the rules of disarmament. Then the guys in charge turned around and basically robbed the imigrants by charging vastly overrated sums for food. All this was on top of other issues that had been growing in the empire for at least 150 years if not more including economic issues, taxation issues, military incompetence, policing, corruption in government, etc, etc, and etc. This is only my opinion but I think the problem is more basic. Setting aside the issue of sin for a moment, there's the fact that Politics is the only profession that is completely filled with amatuers. There's no training nor are there any guidelines to identify who would and would not be good at governing. But how can you test for wisdom?
ReplyDeleteGood insights. This selection is only from Heather's introduction, and I'm sure he'll flesh out the other things you talked about, but I thought this was striking, and that it provides a lesson for our times.
DeleteThe parallels between the fall of Rome and the modern West is a topic that many counterculturalists address - in particular, Stefan Molyneux and his many videos on the matter.
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