SPQR FAQ

February 17, 2006 5:17 PM

What were the communications mechanisms that kept something as large as the Roman Empire cohesive in any sense?

I thought I'd beat the rush...and I really am interested. Not far from where I grew up, a hot summer revealed the pilings of a bridge Julius Caesar had built to cross the Rhine and attack the Germans. How did they hold it all together for so long? Why did those mechanisms fail?

posted by atchafalaya to Education (16 answers total)

Roman roads were by far the most advanced of any civilization up to that time.

I had dinner once in a revolving restaurant in Aachen, Germany -- at one point, you could see a road that was absolutely straight, going away from the city, as far as the eye could see. Roman.
posted by WestCoaster at 5:25 PM on February 17, 2006

Also consider that far-flung Roman outposts were quite independent affairs, with little need for communication in the first place. Send a bunch of soldiers out to Brittania with some simple rules to follow. Let them figure it out in the field.
posted by frogan at 5:56 PM on February 17, 2006

The Romans built roads passable in all seasons, throughout the empire. Postal mail wasn't invented by Rome, but they took a good idea and went with it. And finally, the province system was truly decentralized - governors of the far-off provinces had very little supervision and complete power over their province.

Why did it fail? Same reason as most governments do: corruption that eats at the heart of the land until the people aren't willing to defend it any more. This Caesar fellow you mention, for instance, declared that the laws made by Congress didn't apply to him. Luckily, this happened a long time ago and there are no parallels to today.

Thousands of books have been written on the questions you ask, so forgive us if the answers you get here are simplistic.
posted by jellicle at 5:57 PM on February 17, 2006

Response by poster: I've read some the books, but thanks to Vacapinta, I'm looking for the deeper answers.

I mean, corruption, sure, but I don't know if I agree that's the cause of the defense breakdown. I mean, Romans settled retired soldiers along the frontier, right? So they had a permanent incentive to defend their land. And presumably were far from corruption.

I do remember reading that the Roman shortsword got longer as the years passed.
posted by atchafalaya at 6:02 PM on February 17, 2006

Response by poster: I didn't mean that as a snark at Vacapinta, by the way.
posted by atchafalaya at 6:03 PM on February 17, 2006

The defense broke down because they kept hiring mercenaries, among other things. There was also a policy of accepting subjugated peoples into the Empire, so eventually there were entire areas where the "Romans" had never been to Rome, and had very little loyalty to the Empire. There were also a lot of frontiers, and it became hard to defend all of them.

Those retired soldiers in the field? Many of them "went native" and worried more about keeping their family/neighbors safe than defending the Empire.

Many military commanders were not promoted or posted on the basis of merit, but rather on the basis of who they knew or what they knew about whom. Or how much of a threat the current Caesar thought they were. (after a bunch of military coups, f'rex, many of the more popular commanders were posted to places like Gaul or Africa, as far away from Rome as they could be.)
posted by jlkr at 6:24 PM on February 17, 2006

The Idea of Rome involved euergetism at its core, a trickle down sponsorship of urban patronage by rich pater familias. To the Romans the countryside existed only as a means of furthering city life. This system persisted for centuries. Eventually though rich Romans in the West amassed enough economic power and that they could retreat into a well-fortified domus and tell the tax collectors to go screw themselves. Rome lost most of North Africa and Gaul that way. In the north the Franks immigrated, who were very anti-urban and anti-tax. Their devolved political attitude led to massive desertion and absenteeism in the border regions. Eventually, most people figured they were probably better off paying lower taxes under a Frankish local ruler rather than to a far distant "Hellene" or "Romanoi" absentee landlord.

In the end the Roman Empire didn't really "fall", it just moved its borders eastward and centred on Constantinople, where unlike Europe the urban culture and euergetism remained strong. Its strength waxed and waned, occasionally managing to re-occupy Spain, North Africa, and Italy, for several hundred years after the "fall" of Rome, but in the end the economics of the West basically sucked, and they were more distracted by the way Islam quickly conquered the remains of the Persian EMpire and then came gunning for them full tilt.

I wrote about this before on MeFi. In 630 the ROmans *finally* beat the Persians after centuries of rivalry. They thought that they would be able to dominate the richest part of the world, from Greece over to India and into Afghanistan, but then along came the first clash with the Arabs at Yarmuk in 636 and it all went pear shaped. Also, religious extremism in the Roman Empire meant that many of the non-Orthodox Christian foederati/mercenaries preferred to live under Arab rule than Roman rule.

Also, the urban pandemics 6th century didn't help. Increased trade with equatorial Africa and India brought some really nasty stuff back.
posted by meehawl at 8:28 PM on February 17, 2006

This Caesar fellow you mention, for instance, declared that the laws made by Congress didn't apply to him. Luckily, this happened a long time ago and there are no parallels to today.

I don't know if this was meant seriously at all, but it's a big mistake to compare the late Republic with a modern democracy. The Roman Senate wasn't elected, it was an ossified oligarchy of the aristocrats and the rich. Caesar was arguably the most progressive politician of his time, and while he was, of course, ambitious and power-hungry, his politics made him more the Bill Clinton of his time than the George Bush.

A fraction of the people did get to vote on certain things, but the Senate wasn't one of them.
posted by lackutrol at 5:39 AM on February 18, 2006

.... If you are speaking of America, we arn't a democracy, we're a Republic with some things democratic. This is uncommon knowledge to most people, appearantly.

And, a great example of this, was that Bush didn't win the majority of the popular vote in the last election. He just won the electoral vote, which is what actually elects people. Atleast, I'm pretty sure that's how it ended up working out.

And yeah, I guess all our Presidents and Senators are common folk. Oh wait...Reagan...nope...Bush Senior....nope, GWB....nope. Yeah, if Kerry would have won......oh wait, nope.

The one with the most money thrown around generally wins the election. So....I'm fairly certain our Senate and Congress is composed of the rich and aristocrats of society. And we don't vote on most things either. I'm not sure about you, but the only thing I get to vote on is State Measures, Local Measures, Local Offices, State Offices, and the President.

So much for a big mistake in comparing.
posted by Phynix at 2:07 PM on February 18, 2006

Phynix, I'm not sure why you're grinding this particular axe, and I guess you do have a point about the influence of money in elections, but look at Bill Clinton, LBJ, Harry Truman for some counter-examples. And I'm sure I wouldn't say the US is the best example of a modern democracy in the first place...

Which brings us to one point that you're missing: process. It's not that the Roman Senate got elected through corrupt means or by having lots of money, it's that it wasn't elected in the first place. They were there precisely because they were old, rich families (or just rich in some cases). The Roman constitution operated on the idea that becuase you had more property, you should have more of a stake in the business of the state. This was considered fine and proper.

The other point you're missing is that Caesar challenged that to some extent by supporting reform measures that would favor the plebs. Cato and his crew didn't want their traditional privieges to be limited in any way. That's a good part of the reason they didn't like him. So, aside from the question of personal ambition, GWB or Reagan are almost the opposite of Casesar, because they wanted to increase the power of the rich oligarchs and themselves, rather than wanting to decrease that power, as Caesar did (though he wanted a lot more for himself too).

To re-rail slightly, the roads, as other posters have said, were the reason for the superiority of Roman communications. They were very very good roads and many are still in use today (why we Americans need to be constantly repairing our highways is a puzzlement to me, considering we have a great historical example in the Romans). The Romans had relay systems to get messages out quickly on these roads, and could also transport goods much more quickly than other groups or states.

This communication system didn't fail, but the center of gravity of the Empire moved East and became Byzantium, most precipitously when Constantine moved the capital to what is now Istanbul. Italy became more a frontier than the center of the Empire, and so it became less important to guard.

atchafalaya, if you are interested in this historical period, I'd recommend you read Count Belisarius, by Robert Graves, a re-imagining of what life might have been like for an aristocrat in Italy when the Empire has decidedly moved East. The main character was an actual historical figure who became an important general under a Byzantine emperor, Justinian (among others).
posted by lackutrol at 3:00 PM on February 18, 2006

And, WestCoaster, that road was perfectly straight because all Roman roads were. This is because the tools they used (such as the groma) meant that they could achieve great precision on a straight line. They didn't, or rarely at least, consider going around an obstacle rather than barreling right through it.
posted by lackutrol at 3:09 PM on February 18, 2006

Caesar was arguably the most progressive politician of his time, and while he was, of course, ambitious and power-hungry, his politics made him more the Bill Clinton of his time than the George Bush.

If we really want to go for it, this analogy works much better if you imagine that Augustus (Caesar didn't live long enough for us to really know what he had in mind) is being played by FDR. That puts us half a century later, with Nero being played by Bush. I agree that it's dumb to look for parallels, but if we're going to, we're definitely in a 54-68 AD period.
posted by MarkAnd at 4:02 PM on February 18, 2006

To further belabor the point, because I find this amusing and because I can't figure out exactly what on earth the poster is interested in, Suetonius reports (probably not reliably, but what the hell) that Nero used to go around disguised as a commoner in order to beat people up, sometimes not too successfully. If our VP had a shot a man while deer hunting (in camouflage, you see), this would be another excellent parallel. As it is, the orange vest ruins it.
posted by MarkAnd at 4:07 PM on February 18, 2006

MarkAnd, I like the Bush-Nero parallel best. But instead of parading around with actors and prostitutes, he's parading around in a flight suit (I guess that sort of fits the diguised-beating-people-up thing a bit too).
posted by lackutrol at 4:33 PM on February 18, 2006

I do remember reading that the Roman shortsword got longer as the years passed.

If you're interested in that level of detail, you might want to check out Arther Ferrill's The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation (referring to the Western empire); or his essay in Grand Strategies in War and Peace, ed. Paul Kennedy. The following quotes are from the essay.

According to Ferrill, the most important frontier was the northern (German) frontier: more than half of all legions were stationed along the line from Britain to the Black Sea. The cornerstone of imperial grand strategy was the tremendous tactical superiority of the Roman legions over barbarian enemies: "Against untrained troops, they simply could not be defeated, even when they were greatly outnumbered. Only when a Roman army was caught by surprise on unfavorable terrain, that is, when there was a great failure of generalship, did barbarians have a chance to win a tactical victory." In addition, they had major advantages in military engineering, logistics, and siege warfare.

So why did it break down? First: "The Roman method of frontier defense in the first and second centuries A. D. did require political stability, since there was no central reserve, and the legions were stationed far from the imperial capital where the emperor normally resided. In the third century, when that political stability broke down, so did the frontiers." Between 235 and 284, there was a succession of civil wars, with more than 20 emperors.

And second, at the tactical level, Roman discipline broke down. Ferrill attributes this to the large-scale use of Germanic mercenaries, from Constantine onwards, because of the difficulty of recruiting soldiers from Roman citizens. The Roman soldiers who served beside Germanic troops "resented the differences between their own harsh discipline and low pay and the relatively comfortable conditions under which the barbarians served. To avoid mutiny, the Roman commanders had to agree to soften the training of the infantry...."

Ferrill quotes Vegetius, describing how Roman soldiers stopped wearing armor after 383 or so:

,,, when, because of negligence and laziness, parade ground drills were abandoned, the customary armor began to seem heavy, since the soldiers rarely wore it. Therefore, they asked the emperor to set aside first the breastplates and mail, and then the helmets. So our soldiers fought the Goths without any protection for cheat and head and were often beaten by archers. Although there were many disasters, which led to the loss of great cities, no one tried to restore breastplates and helmets to the infantry. Thus it happens that troops in battle, exposed to wounds because they have no armor, think about running and not about fighting.

posted by russilwvong at 5:46 PM on February 18, 2006

Between 235 and 284, there was a succession of civil wars, with more than 20 emperors.

This is commonly known as the Crisis of the Third Century. See especially "Economic impact" -- the civil wars not only broke down the political stability, they made empire-wide trade nearly impossible. This helped create parochial political institutions that had less allegiance to (distant, unhelpful) Rome.

There was also a great deal of hyperinflation, a la Brazil a generation ago, or Weimar Germany. I've seen this described as a fundamental inability to understand the modern concept of the money supply -- it simply wasn't in their vocabulary, so the Romans of the day literally didn't understand why everything cost more and their crops bought less year after year, only that they were getting poorer. Worse, this spurred aggravating policies by various emperors.

Another key problem that we don't usually think about was depopulation. We've become so used to the global population explosion as a problem that we're only now coming to grips with the fact that most Western countries are not replacing their populations. Russia is outright losing population. The US is stable because of immigration (think about that the next time somebody argues for a border fence). The later Roman empire, for various reasons, faced net population loss in many regions such as Gaul, which affected agricultural productivity and contributed to economic problems such as inflation.

The solution in many cases was the invitation extended to "friendly" barbarians to move into parts of the Empire and run them semi-autonomously. Again, this led in time to a reduction in loyalty to the central government.

I think it's clear that they held it together for so long largely by dint of some technological advantages. The vastness per se of the Empire permitted the construction of things like the aqueduct systems and thus fortified towns. Smaller political units couldn't manage such feats and could not compete. The political structure was also beneficial up to a point -- devolved political power was a double-edged sword, but such "loose" rule was less of an imposition. Collect the taxes, call on the army whenever you have some unrest at the gates or a leaky water supply.

But the political structure at home was increasing fragmented, weak, and manipulable. You could almost say that the politics of Rome were of such low relevance to the provinces that it eventually no longer mattered who was in power, so there was no incentive to keep it stable -- until it was too late. The Empire tried managing its vastness with an East/West subdivision (numerous other macro-provincial structures were tried as well), but this also sapped energies and resources through the creation of competing power centers which oft-times warred among themselves.

A big What-if? here is whether a central government repair could have been effected that would have forestalled the other weaknesses and collapse. I think the answer depends on your political philosophy to some degree.

A good book on the general topic (not this specific one) is Jared Diamond's Collapse.
posted by dhartung at 11:06 PM on February 18, 2006