Learn from the decline of Rome from the Romans

TheDanold

TheDanold

Unimatrix
"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced. If the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt, people must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." – Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC

A man should be upright, not be kept upright. – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

"I fear for our nation. Nearly half of our people receive some kind of government subsidy. We have grown weak from too much affluence and too little adversity. I fear that soon we will not be able to defend our country from our sure and certain enemies. We have debased our currency to the point that even the most loyal citizen no longer trusts it." – A Roman Senator in A.D. 63

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4BC - 65AD.

More laws, less justice. – Marcus Tullius Ciceroca (42 BC)

The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. – Tacitus

A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures? – Cicero


Hmmm, curiously absent seems to be calls for more healthcare, education and social welfare and government growth to "save" the empire. .
 
TheDanold said:
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Hmmm, curiously absent seems to be calls for more healthcare, education and social welfare and government growth to "save" the empire. .
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Hmmmm...and we're talking about the same Rome that fell to the barbarians, right?

Great point, DeMano....
 
Onceler said:
Hmmmm...and we're talking about the same Rome that fell to the barbarians, right?

Great point, DeMano....
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That's correct, they strayed away over the years from funding core functions of government like defence and instead funneled money into the dole (social welfare cash giveaways).
 
TheDanold said:
That's correct, they strayed away over the years from funding core functions of government like defence and instead funneled money into the dole (social welfare cash giveaways).
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That's an interesting Reader's Digest summary of the fall of the Roman Empire.

Man, are you pathetic....
 
If you want to have a REAL discussion about the fall of Rome, we can talk about the military budget, which left little room for anything else because the empire was so overextended, foreign policy arrogance, complacency, urban decay due to negligence, horrendous public health conditions, and the ever growing disparity between rich & poor in ancient Rome.....
 
SongAndDUnceler said:
That's an interesting Reader's Digest summary of the fall of the Roman Empire.

Man, are you pathetic....
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Moron, that is what actual Romans observed and thought was causing decline. I would think they know their empire better than Reader's Digest or any other post-Roman era publication.
 
TheDanold said:
Moron, that is what actual Romans observed and thought was causing decline. I would think they know their empire better than Reader's Digest or any other post-Roman era publication.
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Most of those quotes are literally hundreds of years before the empire actually fell, with numerous political changes in between.

You know little to nothing about Rome. You're just grasping, because, once again, you started a thread that backfired....
 
Onceler said:
If you want to have a REAL discussion about the fall of Rome, we can talk about the military budget, which left little room for anything else because the empire was so overextended, foreign policy arrogance,
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The military budget was funded by those areas they conquered and not an issue, moreover the empire was at it's peak in size in Trajan's era, which was over 350 years prior to the fall of the empire, so overextension is not the reason.

Onceler said:
complacency,
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This is contradictory to your earlier statement of aggresiveness in foreign policy.

Onceler said:
urban decay due to negligence,
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This is false, public health conditions constantly improved, a good example was after the great fire in Nero's time, ordinances went out to seperate buildings to avert fire spreading.
Moreover, barbarians are not going to be more interested in invading a decaying city, they are after riches.

Onceler said:
horrendous public health conditions, and the ever growing disparity between rich & poor in ancient Rome.....
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This is just more bullshit, I mean what the fuck is your source for any of this? You are just spouting off Liberal wishlist bullshit that has no historical relevance to fact.
If you want to talk disparity between rich and poor, check out what Marcus Licinius Crassus owned compared to the rest of Rome which was before Christ was even born and way before the fall of the Empire. As the Roman Senator above noted, the amount of people receiving government aid was large and growing and it was of deep worry to him.

You are so out of your league it's not even funny, go away annoying little man or better yet read the quotes from the statesmen who lived in that time and try to understand why they thought what they did.
 
"But the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.... The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians."
- Gibbon - Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
 
Collapse of the Roman Empire, by Hugh Elton
Because the East survived when the West collapsed, institutional weakness and barbarian invasions, conditions common to both halves, are insufficient explanation for the Fall of Rome. Instead, Elton says the cause of the Fall of lies financial difficulties only the West faced. The best single explanation would be poor leadership rather than military failure.
 
Again, the statesmen who you quoted did not "live at that time." They lived hundreds of years "before that time."

It's fun to watch you try to pull stuff out of your arse in knee-jerk responses to the points I brought up. I haven't seen an historian yet not include the Roman military budget and the overextension of the empire as one of the primary reasons for Roman downfall. It's idiotic to suggest that it was just "covered" by the conquered areas. They had an unbelievable amount of territory to defend, and it's a fact that the military budget dwarfed other expenditures during the era of their downfall (again, hundreds of years after the quotes you posted, which you're relying upon as a "commentary on the downfall" - what a friggin' buffoon. It's like me quoting Ben Franklin on why we're fighting the war in Iraq).

Complacency is not "contradictory." I like how you turned "overextension" into "aggressive." The overextension came about from centuries of expansion, and the fact is, the Romans WERE complacent at the time of the barbarian invasions. Again, this is something that ancient historians are pretty much in unanimous agreement upon. Do you deny it?

Public health conditions were also horrendous at the time of Rome's fall. Emperors kept more & more money for themselves, and there was very little investment in infrastructure. Decay & disease were rampant.

So out of my league "it's not even funny." Again, you know little to nothing about the Roman Empire, little boy....
 
Richard Hooker marks the Fall during the reign of Diocletian (284-305) when the Empire was split into two halves. Each half had a senior augustus and a junior caesar. Together these four rulers were known as the "tetrarchy." While the tetrarchy didn't last long, the division of the Empire became the norm.


Adrian Dorrington says the Empire was split not just geographically, but culturally, with a Latin Empire and a Greek one, the latter of which survived because it had most of the population, a better military, more money, and better rulers.
 
Socrtease said:
Richard Hooker marks the Fall during the reign of Diocletian (284-305) when the Empire was split into two halves. Each half had a senior augustus and a junior caesar. Together these four rulers were known as the "tetrarchy." While the tetrarchy didn't last long, the division of the Empire became the norm.


Adrian Dorrington says the Empire was split not just geographically, but culturally, with a Latin Empire and a Greek one, the latter of which survived because it had most of the population, a better military, more money, and better rulers.
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Better technology was a big factor in helping the East stave off the spread and rise of Islamic conquerors, specifically Greek Fire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Fire
 
Agreed BUT your post was intended to lay the ENTIRE fall of a HUGE empire, with no ability to rapidly respond to problems like hoards of barbarians invading, and a lack of circulating currency, solely at the feet of the fact that too many Romans were on the dole. I agree that it was ONE of the causes but not THE cause.
 
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