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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Sallent, post: 2780921, member: 76194&quot;]I am by no means an expert on late Roman History, but one difference that jumps out between the world of 200BCE and the world of 400 CE is that the nature of warfare had changed. The Rome of 200 BCE, like their enemies, relied on farmers for their troops, except maybe the Carthagenians whom relied on mercenaries. The point is that these were part-time warriors, and a loss of an army could be much more easily replaced as long as you had the manpower and a few months to train the new army.&nbsp; By around 400 CE the barbarian enemy had changed, and the armies of part-time warriors had given way to hierarchical and better organized states and alliance networks with a permanent warrior class. This warrior class could devote itself specifically to training and preparing for war, and were by this point&nbsp; as well armed and trained as the Romans. In fact, many of their generals and officers were former Roman soldiers themselves, having been forced by Rome to fight for them as part of peace treaties. These were no longer the mobs of barbarians Caesar had to contend with in Gaul, or Claudius&#039; generals had to deal with in Britain, but rather professional soldiers well knowledgeable in Roman tactics. They also had the&nbsp; weapons and skills to take on Rome, and a strong, large, and well organized state apparatus to sustain them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Therefore, when Rome suffered a massive defeat, it could not simply hope to conscript and train some farmers in a few months and challenge these warriors. The Romans had to pay massive amounts of gold to make them go away, and give up land. The money and loss of land (which equalled loss of future income and manpower) only made things worse, as they were no longer dealing with smaller tribes that could be easily bribed and manipulated into fighting each other (the tactic Rome had used for hundreds of years to keep the Germans at bay.)</p><p><br /></p><p>So why were these barbarians not like the barbarians of the past? Why had the Barbarian enemy changed so radically from 100 BCE, or even 200 CE, by the time the 4rth century rolled around? I think two factors are at play:</p><p><br /></p><p>1: The Roman policy of raiding barbarian tribes once every generation to remind them of the power of Rome finally got the tribes to slowly consolidate into ever larger and more powerful political entities to deal with the Roman threat, until they eventually became kingdoms large enough to field their own professional class of full-time warriors.</p><p><br /></p><p>2: The Roman policy of recruiting these Germanic warriors to fight their civil wars taught these better organized barbarians proper Roman army techniques and tactics, until they were finally as well armed and skilled as the best Roman army out there...and with a better organized states (proper kingdoms) behind them with the money and hierarchy to maintain order, the training and techniques could be maintained, refined, and reinforced to new recruits joining the barbarian warrrior class and armies.</p><p><br /></p><p>The barbarian army at Adrianople was as well armed, as well trained, and as capable of using tactics as their Roman nemesis.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]643214[/ATTACH]</p><p>* I might have been a philosopher, but I never realized the effects all that raiding of Barbarian tribes would have on their political development.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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