Posted on 06/20/2012 6:42:38 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Mea culpa - I have been on the road for days. Sorry to ignore everyone.
The Assyrians, yes, but the Persians incorporated all subjects into their armies. Herodotus describes the composition of the Persian invading force in great detail, information he got from the Persians themselves. The Asian Greeks served the Persians, and worked as mercenaries for Egyptian pharaohs. The Babylonians relied on their Scythian and Median allies to sack Nineveh and smash the Assyrian empire.
Often the same thing is said about Highland Scotland, which was spared Roman conquest because Agricola wasn’t allowed to finish things up — that’s imperial politics for ya. Agricola knew what he was talking about.
Roman involvement with clients and allies in Irish fits their pattern elsewhere. Roman penetration of the German frontier was in the form of creeping Romanization. Tribes just along the border were brought into alliance through largesse; former auxiliaries recruited from over the border resettled after their service, and thus Roman towns grew up over the border, deeper and deeper in areas not strictly in the Empire. In the Near East, client states were maintained as buffers between Rome and Parthia, until the buffer states became more trouble than they were worth — then they got conquered outright.
Vercingetorix lived out his days near Rome, on a pension, basically under house arrest. Boudica was the Celtic leader who mass murdered thousands, so her complaints would be hollow.
Yes.
But the Persians never actually incorporated non-Persians into the actual Persian army proper. The army which Darius led into Greece was actually an assemblage of different military forces recruited from various subject people who fought in their own weapons and style. The Romans did this also with Auxiliary forces. But, as in the case of the Alaudae, one of the earliest examples, they recruited into the Roman Army proper individuals of non-Roman blood and armed and trained them as Roman soldiers proper.
The Romans did so with non-Roman and non-Italic people to an increasing extent with time so that the Roman Army proper towards the end of the Empire was nearly entirely composed of people recruited from outside the Italian Peninsula.
Even the auxiliaries were officered by Roman soldiers, learned Latin, and when discharged received full Roman citizenship. An inclusiveness absent in other Ancient Empires.
I believe the Romans practiced a form of incorporation and assimilation of subject peoples into their power structure to a far greater extent than any political entity before them and any of the political entities which existed after them for some time.
And that, I believe, is one of the reasons for the strength and stability of the Empire.
Great summary! Even though the Roman Empire underwent tremendous political turmoil leading to various regime changes, including having no central gov’t for much of the 3rd c AD, the stability of the Roman legions kept the local governance and commerce on track. Not bad for an empire with no public education system, no general literacy, no banking system, no postal system, a remarkable variety of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups...
bump
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
