How do the dominant cultural narratives in art and mass media affect our politics?

Yup. The problems started when whole blocs of mercenaries/ former adversaries got recruited and were allowed to stick together. Worse, because of the politics back home combined with outbreaks of plague and the sheer scale of the legion operations, the actual Italian recruitment numbers were in a ditch somewhere getting drunk. So, all those ex-mercenaries might get to see a Roman commander... maybe. But, that was just about it.

Which meant loads of full battalions with few ties to Rome being equipped, trained and all too often underpaid... And then being expected not to turn around and loot Rome as a massive "fuck you for not feeding us"?

Yeah. Always keep the army happy, peeps. And always mix your groups up.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 20th 2018 at 12:30:55 PM

Or make sure your military has a strong culture of civilian leadership so they won’t turn on you as soon as times are tough and you don’t have to endlessly try to “keep them happy”.

Though, that’s more of a modern solution.

I’ll add that local recruitment was mainly for auxiliaries, and I don’t believe there are any examples of large groups of mercenaries being recruited and then turning on Rome wholesale.

Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 20th 2018 at 4:41:51 AM

The Sack of Rome? Those "Vandals" were semi-Romanised mercenaries thrown political bones to try to keep them sweet. And, you know... inducted into the legions, however haphazardly. Then... they got screwed over and took sides. Other, equally Roman second-class citizens of the Empire just as integrated into the legions over about as many generations took note: and either joined in in taking Rome to the cleaners, or stood to the side. A few even defended Rome.

That was the biggie. It wasn't the only.

Note: we've been sold the whole "barbarians from the north" narrative for centuries... Because in the remains of both the Western and Eastern Empires, it was flipping embarrassing to admit just how badly handled that whole civil war and its lead-up was.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 20th 2018 at 2:44:52 PM

The Vandals weren’t mercenaries or members of the Roman legions.

Eh. Yes, they were. Very definitely. Yeah. Centurians, the works — sure, they often had Latinised names... because they were Roman citizens.

Even though their rights were often ever-so conveniently ignored...

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 20th 2018 at 2:51:12 PM

Uhh...I think you might be thinking of another group?

Vandals weren’t Romans, and weren’t part of the Roman state. They didn’t hold Roman citizenship. They were allied at times, but not when the Sack of Rome occurred.

Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 20th 2018 at 6:56:56 AM

There were groups of Vandals that made it into the Roman military aristocracy, most notably Stilicho, but the greatest contributors to the Western Roman army were Goths, Heruli, Burgundians, Saxons, Salian Franks, etc. Take a look at the makeup of the Roman coalition under Aetius for a pretty good idea of who the WRE could generally turn to for manpower. The 410 Sack of Rome was a direct result of imperial atrocity towards the Visigoths, who were very Romanized and did a lot to maintain Roman continuity in Spain when they took over. The Vandals took over North Africa without really being foederati — more like kingmakers for whichever claimant followed Honorius. The 455 Sack was because Petronius Maximus had offended Genseric.

Seriously, they were. The bulk of the reason marrying Vandal royality became almost a political necessity was to keep their armies on the border facing outwards and fighting with the legions — in a military alliance. They were already integrating on a number of levels, not just among the higher-ups.

So, yeah.

As I said, though; it was haphazard. Rome broke a lot of its own rules by doing this... yet they did it. And, not just for a couple of years. The Sack of Rome was decades in the building. Decades where the organisation of the Western legions was, frankly, fucked up by increments.

The Eastern military at this time, however, was in far better shape. Partly because they didn't treat their auxiliaries and mercenaries like complete dirt, but also because they offered them better-defined (and thought-through) rights and roles within the chain of command... and tended to stick to treaties and contracts.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 20th 2018 at 3:10:00 PM

Foederati didn’t receive citizenship, only land. It was essentially a purely military alliance. I think you may be talking about one of the other Germanic groups, the Vandals never really integrated into Roman society to any great degree. The proposed marriage between Huneric and Eudocia was an unusual occurrence, even that wasn’t common. I don’t think there are any recorded marriages between Vandal and Roman royalty that went through.

Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 20th 2018 at 7:15:14 AM

"The Eastern military, however, was in far better shape. Partly because they didn't treat their auxiliaries and mercenaries like complete dirt, but also because they offered them better-defined rights and stuck to treaties."

The Eastern military was in much better shape because they paid Attila the Hun a lot of gold, weren't the destination for hundreds of thousands of migrating people, and had a better tax base. They were perfectly willing to break treaties — and made some astounding stupid decisions in betraying Attila a few times, which led to Thrace being a deliberately burned out no-man's-land by the time Marcian became Emperor. They had the exact same deficiencies in leadership as the West, without the broader systemic problems of having less money, less fertile land, and less defensible territory. I mean, in 395, the ERE had an emperor in Arcadius who was just as Stupid Evil as Honorius in the West. It was luck and factors outside individual human control that saved them, and they weren't exempt from usurpers — one of the reasons Zeno was basically powerless to save the WRE was because he was battling an insurrection of his own.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Sep 20th 2018 at 10:12:16 AM

Sure, the Eastern lot were never complete angels. But, they avoided pissing their own citizens and soldiers off enough to not get the absolute degree of cluster-fuck that happened in the West. Even while they were facing many of the same problems financially, politically, culturally and plague-wise.

The East adapted. Painfully, but it did.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 20th 2018 at 3:18:52 PM

Well, firstly, the West was never as forgone as our cultural memory would have us understand. As late as 467, they were reclaiming territory from the barbarians, and Majorian even managed to force the Visigoths back to foederati status. Secondly, what was lacking was the urban culture that allowed the Eastern emperors to pay more troops and bribe away potential enemies, and that didn't vanish because of the actions of individual emperors. Without fertile land and uninterrupted trade, that sort of capital generation is simply impossible, and that's not something the Emperor can control. How much longer would Majorian have lived if he had the systemic advantage of being able to throw gold at all his problems? Would Ricimer have even acted if the Roman aristocrats who backed him were all paid off? Third, the defensible positioning of Constantinople was an advantage that literally no major urban center in the WRE possessed. The barbarians could hardly reach the Eastern heartland. All of these advantages were systemic, not personal or policy-oriented.

Why is it that if a character isn't a constant quipper they get accused of being broody and whiny? I've seen this happen quite often, usually with characters who are obviously suffering PTSD.

Again with the "barbarians". Try "very disgruntled citizens of the collapsing Empire with a diverse, yet shared, northern heritage".

Most of them were speaking Latin. Many as a first language.

The whole "barbarians" thing needs chucking in the shredder. Because even when they were not Latin-speaking citizens, the Celtic and Germanic cultures were, in many ways, more advanced than the Med ones. Especially socially.

At that point in time, they could out-politic, out-spend and out-tactic Rome for a host of reasons, not all of them due to Rome wearing its governing pants on its head or enduring a cascade of calamity in its core.

Italian geography is not as flat as you want to make it seem: Rome had neglected the natural choke points leading to the river plains all on its own for centuries. All the lessons Hannibal and Fabius had taught them had been forgotten/ neglected to irrelevancy by this point, sadly enough.

There wasn't as much money to throw around, this is true. But the one way Rome could have used to avoid all-out collapse was... face the inevitable. That the nature of the Empire by that point was much less Latin than it had been. And, it could have handed those people the rights and means to adjust things to fit the new dynamic within some existing structure.

By insisting only on Latin solutions to problems and dealing with other cultures as if they were strangers you could buy off, use and then forget about, they just made things much, much worse for themselves by repeatedly insulting people... who, frankly, would out-number them post-waves-of-plagues.

The "barbarians" weren't locusts simply after loot. They were groups of people with laundry lists of long-standing grievances the elites of Rome repeatedly refused to take seriously enough.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Sep 21st 2018 at 10:45:13 AM

There is a lot of ancient Rome talk in this thread.

x3

Because they are often written to be broody and whiny, as compared to the others?

Except your central premise is incorrect; The Germanic tribes by and large weren’t Roman subjects. Sure, there were Germanic peoples in parts of the Empire, but the tribes we’re talking about like the Vandals are seperate political entities.

Edited by archonspeaks on Sep 21st 2018 at 3:33:33 AM

Wouldn't calling them that imply they don't have reasons to be not so cheery?

The problem is that writers usually do not find any middle ground. A character is either a constant quipper or brooding and miserable.

Edited by M84 on Sep 21st 2018 at 7:34:34 PM

Also. If the brooding is accompanied with violence is received better than if the brooding is done without violence.

Well it can be this or audience's having unreasonable definitions of whiny/weak.

Like Shinji in Neon Genesis Evangelion, many people threw shade at him for not initially wanting to pilot the giant robot that was meant to fight horrific Eldritch Abominations which is completely insane for the obvious reasons. A normal teenager isn't going to enthusiastically throw themselves into harms way against monsters and we shouldn't fault them for it.

And yet having normal fear and hesitation made him a "pussy" in their eyes.

Plenty of people complained about Harry being too bloody broody in Order of the Phoenix.

And it's also kind of obvious that the rest of the main cast is more or less just as fucked up. Except the penguin.

But because they are not the main viewpoint character, we don't get to see or hear their angst as much.

Edited by M84 on Sep 21st 2018 at 10:56:51 PM

Maybe they were right, I don't remember it well enough to say one way or another my point is just that sometimes the audience is just being unreasonable.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Sep 21st 2018 at 10:56:45 AM

Harry in the fifth book was much broodier, but it's somewhat justified. All of the shit that happened to him up to that point was catching up to him. Followed by a perceived snub by Dumbledore when he was not made prefect. A bit of salt in the wound so to speak. And then the whole psychic connection thing between him and Voldy really kicked in to high gear.

The sad thing of course is that Dumbledore didn't make him a prefect because he wanted to give Harry a break. "He's got more than enough shit to deal with and more to come, he really doesn't need to be worrying about making sure his fellow students are behaving themselves."

Edited by M84 on Sep 21st 2018 at 11:03:05 PM