Rethinking the fall of Rome's republic

MIT news ^ | November 9, 2011 | Peter Dizikes

[SunkenCiv]

Using a variety of sources, from ancient texts to new archaeological evidence, Broadhead has crafted a novel hypothesis about how Caesar -- as well as Sulla a few decades before, and Augustus several years later -- could march on Rome with his own legions.

"My interpretation is a demographic one," Broadhead says. "Ancient Italy was a place of high geographical mobility, instead of being a place filled with sedentary peasants, which is the stereotypical image." People in towns throughout the Italian peninsula, from whose numbers the Roman Republic traditionally recruited its army, often traveled either to the newly conquered outposts of the Roman world, or throughout Italy, in search of better living conditions.

The Romans had previously used a rigid list, the formula togatorum, to determine how many conscripts should be drawn from which town, stubbornly refusing to change the list over time. But as the population shifted around, Broadhead notes, it became "more difficult for the Roman state to monitor and control that movement, and so the system of military recruitment that had been based very rigidly on the geographical distribution of population dissolved."

The result, he adds, was "a new system of recruitment where a powerful general goes to the population and says, 'Will you all fight with me?' The answer is 'Yes,' because any such volunteers were likely to enjoy the spoils of war. Population movement led to the personal client army of the late republic, which has long been recognized as a key to understanding its fall."

[pabianice]

>>Goes to show that privatizing the military is a bad idea. You really don't want your generals having their armies loyal to them above the state.

Through the US Civil War, officers were appointed by politicians and elected by the enlisted men in their discrete units. Promotions were done locally at the unit level through the First World War. It is only since the Second World War that promotions and appointments have been done through the top officers of a service or through Congress. The Navy's system is the envy of the others, with officer promotion selection boards ruled only through official personnel records reviewed by disinterested officers who do not know the people up for promotion. The Air Force, on the other hand, has had the most trouble with outside influence marring promotion results.

[pabianice]

>>Population movement led to the personal client army of the late republic, which has long been recognized as a key to understanding its fall."

Recently, the History Channel examined the history of the Roman soldier. He went from a high-trained, massively-equipped Roman professional at the time of Caesar to a provincial joke of a mercinary with straw armor and no training at the time of the fall 400 years later. Coincidentally, this is what Obama is trying to do to our military.