Was the Roman Empire meant to last?

**lars573** · 05-27-2006, 15:34

Originally Posted by Tiberius

Commodus messed the government up. Once you have useless people appointed at the posts, they get influential. These useless people will support other useless people, making it hard to get the deserving and talented people to get their posts. Commodus wasn't the last good emperor. He was far from good. He wasn't the last useless emperor. I'm saying that he was the first useless emperor in a trend that goes down for centuries. Sure, the late Empire had its share of good emperors, but the empire was in such a mess that they couldn't really get it back to its state, during the time of the five good emperors. Also, don't just look at the numbers. I'm sure the quality of the troops had dropped by that time, and the new barbarian threats were far more dangerous than the Gauls.

That's not true either. Late imperial troops were just a highly trained and decently equipped as Caesar's legions. Morale was the problem, they motivation to defend their homes and conquer new lands was gone. The why is because Diocletian needed a lot more people to man his new much larger army. And the army was manned by citizens, so he made all free men citizens. But that still didn't get enough volunteers. So he made legionary service heriditary. He began forceful recruitment from the veteran colonies around the empire. But especially on the border. Also the situation that existed after Commodus was killed was very similar to the situation after Nero died. Really it happened after most dynastic periods ended. Commodus wasn't the beginning of the end. The crisis of the 3rd century was. That shook the foundations of the Roman state to it's core that caused the fundimental shift in society. It started the march to feudalism.