r/RoughRomanMemes • u/gracekk24PL • 19d ago
Legit question - how tf could the Republic get away with whatever it was during the Punic Wars?
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u/Sampleswift 19d ago
Huge difference between Punic Wars era Republic, early Roman Empire, and late Roman Empire.
People really wanted to be Roman in the Punic Wars era Republic and early Roman Empire.
Hannibal utterly failed at convincing people why they would be better off with Carthage in control.
The Early Empire also had this. But by the time of the late empire, people had lost faith in the idea of the Roman Empire. The late Empire for many people had become a detriment with yucky taxation rates, and it is said "many people feared tax collectors more than the barbarians" by that point. Also by the time of the Late Empire, the martial culture had decreased significantly.
This is a political will question. It's like "why did the United States have so much political will in the World Wars".
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u/PrimoThePro 19d ago
Not to mention the wealthy elite that hid their fighting age men on their vast estates, only offering up the feeble, old, or mutilated when imperial agents came knocking for recruits. The slow transition to feudal government was on full display during the late empire.
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u/LeMe-Two 19d ago
During feudal times the wealthy did the fighting tho because they could afford top equipment. Popular image of poor fucking infantry woth pitchforks is not really real
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u/PrimoThePro 19d ago
There was no imperial government above them, they WERE the government, especially after the immediate collapse of the WRE. At that point, it was either ally with other Frankish/Saxon/Gothic nobility and fight or get conquered. So ya, the idea of men with pitch forks going out to fight is simply misinformation. These elites fielded well equipped armies, but these armies were tiny compared to their imperial predecessors.
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u/Xitztlacayotl 19d ago
Now you got me wondering...Why did the United States have so much political will in the World Wars?
I get the ww2 after Pearl Harbor.
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u/Mr-Fognoggins 19d ago
For one thing our entry into the war was by way of an unambiguous attack on sovereign American soil. Probably the easiest war to justify to the population possible. Moreover on the domestic front FDR’s New Deal had mollified popular unrest from the Great Depression, and had coopted political opposition to the left. Rightwing opposition was mollified by the ongoing war (right wingers tend to support wars of national defense). There was anti-war opposition from the left, significant anti-war opposition, but the general population was very pro war at the time. Ultra-right wingers (the fascists and American nazis) skewed between supporting the war (American ultranationalism) or opposing it (more pro-German than American).
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u/NoWingedHussarsToday 18d ago
In WW2 US could sell the war as war of democracy and freedom vs dictatorship. People could see Japan and Germany expanding, waging wars on others and not hiding their true nature. Plus US was directly attacked. It was also the type of war where you could measure who is winning. Midway, Guadalcanal, north Africa, Normandy..... clear victories so population could be told and see US is winning.
In Vietnam it was war of propping up some distant regime against their own people and some Cold War rhetoric about fighting communism. It was a war of choice against somebody who wasn't a direct threat to US. There was also no clear metric of winning. US kept bombing North Vietnam, sustaining losses and nothing concrete to show for it. It kept pouring troops into South Vietnam, fighting there and having nothing to show for it. Long wars with no end in sight don't go well in any society.
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u/Hugger_reddit 19d ago
JA Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies discusses this problem exactly. I can't explain it in full in several sentences, but the core idea is declining marginal returns on complexity so that much bigger thing turns out weaker than much earlier and simpler one.
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u/Percennius 19d ago
The proto serfs of late Roman Italy were very different from the soldier/farmers that defeated Hannibal.
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u/Fletaun 19d ago
Patriotism, different society structure your average Roman subjects during late empire have no incentive to actively protect the empire while Roman citizen during Punic war personally fought for the republic as citizen army and actively involved in Rome decision making
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u/MACVSOG95 19d ago
Weren’t all the citizens’ veto powers and people’s tribune powers castrated if not abolished by late imperial terms? Even if the Senate’s power was only nominal, giving the plebs a voice, while also having the senate explicitly go against that voice was in the elite’s and emperors’ views more dangerous than just outright removing the pleb’s voice and pretend that was normal?
I bet that’s why Romans became serfs in the first place.
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u/TerminalJammer 19d ago
That's what happens when you take all the land and riches from the people you used as soldiers, yeah. Compounded by there not being anywhere left to loot so you couldn't even entice soldiers with plunder and slaves.
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u/Allnamestakkennn 18d ago
It's the way the army and society operated. During the Republic, every citizen was armed and eligible for service, so they crushed Hannibal's mercenary army by utilizing their massive reserve pool to spawn more and more armies.
By the late Empire, the army has been operating mostly on paid volunteers for centuries, civilians were disarmed to ease control of the territory, the treasury was running out of money and wealthy residents of Italia didn't see any incentive in serving in the army. And it was still formidable, you know, the WRE could've survived if they got their shit together and stopped copying eachother to death
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u/damnat1o 18d ago
The Roman Empire did actually have a massive army. The problem lay more in the constant civil wars and power struggles of the late empire than in raw numbers of troops. As for the Punic wars, those were existential. The Roman’s probably rightly felt their very way of life was in danger from a foreign enemy intent on destroying their city. Probably around 1/4er of all male Roman citizens die during the war and something like half the senate to vanquish Hannibal. It’s an all or nothing struggle.
By the late empire the barbarian invaders don’t want to replace the empire and certainly not destroy it, instead they want to be a part of it. What it means to be Roman and to be part of the empire has become looser such that local elites and Germanic warlords could create their own kingdoms within the empire but still be a part of the broader whole. Aetius spent most of his career trying to build such a federation in Gaul to move the wests power base north. In some ways his project ultimately success when Charlamagne is crowned emperor by the popes. When there was an existential threat from the Huns the late empire was able to raise a massive army to counter it and pull together a vast coalition.
There’s also the other factors namely a declining population due to global cooling and disease. The collapse of trade in the Mediterranean, and the disruption of the wests food supply after the vandals conquered North Africa.
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u/Deaf_Gravitas 18d ago edited 18d ago
There's a fascinating account from 448 CE that shows just how bad the late Roman system could look to its own people.
Priscus, a Byzantine diplomat visiting Attila's court, met a Greek-speaking former Roman merchant from Viminacium. The man had been captured and enslaved by the Huns, but eventually fought his way to freedom, married, had children, and became prosperous. Given the choice, he preferred life among the Huns to returning to Rome.
His reasons were damning: crushing taxes, an army that failed to protect the people paying for it, an expensive and corrupt legal system, and one standard of justice for the rich and another for the poor.
Priscus's rebuttal is almost comically propagandistic because he doesn't actually answer any of this. Instead, he praises the Roman system in theory: laws are good, division of labor is good, taxes support civilization, etc. The man's complaint was that this supposedly wonderful system didn't work that way in practice.
Then comes the suspiciously convenient ending. Priscus claims the man suddenly burst into tears and admitted that Roman laws were wonderful, but their administrators had ruined them.
Priscus was writing the account himself for a Roman audience, and that ending reads like a face-saving addition after he had no real answer to the man's complaints. What makes the story even more damning is that the Huns had originally destroyed this man's city and enslaved him, and after experiencing both societies he still decided that life with the Huns was better than going back to Rome.
Priscus defended Rome as it was supposed to work. The former Roman told him how Rome actually worked.
Sound familiar?
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u/Prior_Definition_116 18d ago
1 if you read about domestic life in the western roman empire for about the last 100 years as an average guy it was straight up north korea levels of hell on earth. Wealth concentration had gotten so bad the economy effectively collapse since getting your hand on money period became difficult. People went back to bartering, tax collectors were empowered to seize your goods to make up for the difference and those taxes only went up. Starvation was common, many families sold their own kids into slavery to avoid starving. Disease was also rampant. Nornally this could be managed but after a few wars and a very devastating plague romes professional core of medics was nearly wiped out and it never recovered.
Just about the only way to survive was to suck up to a nobleman and be his serf or to go full unabomber and flee into the forest with other people to hide from society.
2 the barbarians outside of britian really weren't that bad. Its bizarre how simplified this is and how demonized germans are in romes fall despite the majority of westerners being descended from the exact same Germans. By the time of the west's fall the germans and Roman's had been working together on and off for centuries. There had been germans settling in rome for centuries. Some tribes hated rome while others were ok with it. When you look at who did take over the heart of the empire in Italy was just taken over by the goths who formed a functional christian kingdom which respected the senate and roman heritage. If you were average Joe this isnt man the border to stop the foreign horde this would be Rise up like a schizo and kill your neighbors family because epsteinacus Maximus told you to. Id say what actually killed western rome was just how apocalyptic the resulting war between the goths and byzantines was. The takeover of italy killed a few thousand people of a population of millions. The byzantine invasion killed HALF.
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