[Bathing and Writing in Ancient Rome]

Secondly, I am curious about the way Romans wrote. Again, my understanding -and this may be wrong- is that they used no spaces dots or anything between words. This sounds like an extremely inconvenient way to write and read and I am curious if this style of writing was used for all languages by the Romans (greek, latin and other languages they would have used to communicate with the provinces) and why this rather odd way was preserved for the entire duration of the empire. Tradition? Consistency?...

That fascinating issue has been actually highly debated in recent years.

[Caesar or Scipio: who was the best general?]

I rest my case.

Given your last line; is any debate invited here?

But of course!

 

Be my guest...

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

Plainly, the West fell and the East survived in spite of Adrianople.

This is neither plain, nor in accordance with established thinking. As you rightly have asked of others so often, I now ask you to name established academic and primary sources to confirm your hypothesis, as it somewhat counters established analysis.

If you don't find it "plain", that is your opinion, BTW just a bare assertion. The evidence is already above; after Adrianople, Fritigern's army attacked Constantinople, not Rome (please someone tell me how surprising was Fritigern's selection). It's indisputable that the risk was primarily for the East; if Constantinople didn't fall, it was mostly for those same defenses that has previously been so absurdly dismissed.

 

Whatever you may define as "established thinking", you must be well aware that your logic here is overtly fallacious on at least three additional counts; it's an open argument from authority (i.e. I'm wrong because I'm purportedly against "established thinking") , you're demanding negative proof (of an inexistent theoretical relation between Adrianople & the Fall of Rome), and you're also trying to avoid the burden of proof (it is the people that states that a relation between those two events existed at all who must give the evidence backing such assertion).

 

For the record, it seems you're still not aware of any mechanism by which Adrianople would have affected the West without affecting exponentially more the East; period.

My suggestion that a Roman victory at Adrianople would have led to a different outcome is not speculatory, as I have not suggested what that different outcome would have been.

Aside from an obvious internal contradition between both clauses from your last statement, your suggestion most obviously speculates with alternative possibilities from an actual historical event not having taken place; i.e. you stated that (SIC) "history of the Goths and the Western Empire would have been very different"; Different? Granted. Very? Why? That's speculation.

As you well know, the changing, alteration or swapping of one variable for another by definition changes outcomes; speculation only enters the picture if one tries to forecast what that outcome may be. And in any case, there is nothing wrong with that - we are all history enthusiasts and this subject, for us, is supposed to be... fun?

Yes, everybody knows it (the so-called Butterfly effect); that's why I called it a tautology, and that's exactly why it is entirely useless here; i.e. changing anything would have made virtually everything different (not "very"; the Butterfly effect didn't tell you that).

It is still speculative, and all this is indeed fun for history enthusiasts (at least, talking for me).

Browbeating laypersons with academic terms and concepts with which they are obviously unfamiliar with to me detracts from it somewhat.

So you think letting me be browbeated, even knowing I'm right, would be the right course of action?

Actually, if that happens in a natural way, it would still be fun.

Besides, I can't understand why "laypersons" should be "obviously unfamiliar" with the academic terms and concepts that I use .

In any case, why would any of us have learned such stuff if we were never going to use it?

 

Let us try this; if you have any question on any of such terms and concepts, I will be more than happy to answer it, if I'm able to.

Are you suggesting that in the event of a Roman victory, the Goths would STILL have used the Balkans as their stomping ground for a decade or two afterwards, and that despite being no longer a threat, the Goths would still have had an Alaric with which to subjugate Rome? That is speculatory indeed.

Indeed; that may be one of the reasons why I didn't suggest anything even remotely like that.

I do agree with yourself and Sonic's view that the impregnable nature of Constantinople helped to turn the Goths westward, but I also feel that the Victory at Adrianople signalled for the Goths and other Germans that Rome (the empire) was not as formidable as once it was. By turning from Constantinople and heading for the West, they were not so much turning from a stronger Empire to a weaker one - to them it was all the same empire and the division at that stage by no means permanent - but simply hitting a more available target.

Actually, I never stated what turned the Goths westward, and I don't think Sonic did it either, at least so far within this thread.

 

If you really want to know what I think about this issue (please forgive me if that was not the case, as you haven't asked me anything yet):

 

- You and some historians may be giving too much weight to the Gothic contribution for the demise of the Western Empire; they were indeed a relevant factor, but only one among myriads, and in all likelihood not even the most relevant.

Even if we restrict ourselves to the northern Barbarians, there were many more populations that invaded the Empire too; in fact, the individual contribution of some of them, like the Huns (for obvious reasons) and the Vandals (for conquering North Africa, the main source of taxes for the West) might have been even more critical.

And of course, there was a great number of additional contributing factors for the Fall of the West, aside from just the northern Barbarian invasions.

 

- As for the "established thinking", please try Ward-Perkins; trust me, you won't regret it .

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

Far as I'm aware, none of the proposed mechanisms (above or elsewhere) on the theoretical relationship of the Roman defeat at Adrianople and the Fall of the Western Empire (i.e., loss of manpower, moral effect, immigration of the Barbarians and so on) has been even remotely able to fulfill such criterion.

Plainly, the West fell and the East survived in spite of Adrianople.

Far as I'm aware, my objection is still standing unchallanged ...

At the time of Adrianople the East and the West were still regarded as a single state, although obviously the two governments were starting to drift apart in many ways. Still, ROMANIA was regarded as a single entity, by barbarians and Romans alike. When the Goths gained their victory at Adrianople, they saw themselves as defeating a Roman army, and were increasingly confident against Rome thereafter, regardless as to which bit of the Empire they had defeated. This victory allowed them to drive a path through the Empire virtually unchallenged, culminating in the sack of Rome and ending in Aquitaine where they gained an independent kingdom.

And of course, when those same Goths were utterly unable to conquer Constantinople (the capital city for the whole Romania) even in the aftermath of Adrianople, the military consequences and psychological impact of such notorious Gothic failure must have been at least equally immense, if not even more.

In any case, explaining the universal outcome of the Goths just from their victory at Adrianople would be an extremely crude oversimplification; the Goths had a centuries-long curriculum with many notable victories.. and multiple defeats under the Roman armies too; there's a priori no reason why this particular victory must have been so portentuous; after all, this particular Gothic war was eventually won by the Romans (again) and Fritigern disappeared just a couple years later; even more, this was hardly the first defeat of the Romans by the Germanic Barbarians, not even the first time an Emperor perished fighting against them.

Adrianople presumably significantly contributed to the consolidation of the Goths in the Balkans; period. The much later Gothic expeditions to the West were explained by entirely different and essentially unrelated factors.

To say that Adrianople did not cause the fall of the West because it happened in the East is a remarkable over simplification, and I am slightly surprised to find such localised thinking here.

I'm actually extremely surprised by the utter lack of localization for the argumentation here; any deleterious effect from this defeat that may have even just potentially affected the Western half of Romania (including the possible strengthening of the Goths) must have affected exponentially more the Eastern half, for patently obvious reasons.

If you are aware of any possible exception, please share it with us.

Yes, I know it's simple; but why "over"? Why must all historical processes have been tortuous or laberynthine? In any case, gratuitously mixing up events so remote by any measure as Adrianople and the Fall of the West seems to be unnecessarily over-complicating an already complex historical process.

To give a crude analogy, in 1987 a severe storm afflicted the UK which killed dozens and wrecked millions of pounds worth of property. This storm started out as a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico.

The analogy is not crude, but it is entirely irrelevant, mainly because the Hurricane was the only destructor there, while the Goths were just one among myriad Barbarians invading the Roman Empire (any Roman Empire), and also because the Barbarian invasions were in turn just one among myriad factors for the Fall of the Western Empire, and also because Adrianople was in turn just one among myriad factors relevant for the fate of the Goths.

If you really want to try analogies for Adrianople & the Fall of the West, how about let say the Ephesian Vespers and Caesar's failure to conquer Britannia? After all, both scenarios would have been a much more closer match in social, geographical and chronological terms (and of course, both involving a priori entirely unrelated phenomena too).

I think it is fair to say that if Adrianople had been a Roman victory, the history of the Goths and the Western Empire would have been very different.

What if the Battle of Strassburg had resulted in a Roman defeat and the death of Julian?

Strictly speaking, that statement from NN is a tautology, and both it and Barca's question (*) are unhistorical speculations, "what-if" scenarios.

As unhistorical speculation goes, a rather likely outcome would be that the Visigoths wouldn

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

... a thread may well be opened in the arena so that people who simply dont like each other can trade insults whilst the rest of us get on with things.

Talking just for me, that's absolutely not my case; I just come here to talk about "things".

 

EDIT: I entirely missed the Tartarus post, sorry. Maybe this post should be there too.

[Caesar's Remains]

By the by, what ever happened to the tomb of Alexander the Great?

Usus autem sum, ne in aliquo fallam carissimam mihi familiaritatem tuam, praecipue libris ex bibliotheca Ulpia, aetate mea thermis Diocletianis, et item ex domo Tiberiana, usus etiam [ex] regestis scribarum porticus porphyreticae, actis etiam senatus ac populi. 2 et quoniam me ad colligenda talis viri gesta ephemeris Turduli Gallicani plurimum invit, viri honestissimi ac sincerissimi, beneficium amici senis tacere non debui. 3 Cn. Pompeium, tribus fulgentem triumphis belli piratici, belli Sertoriani, belli Mithridatici multarumque rerum gestarum maiestate sublimem, quis tandem nosset, nisi eum Marcus Tullius et Titus Livius in litteras rettulissent? 4 Publ<i>um Scipionem Afric<an>um, immo Scipiones omnes, seu Lucios seu Nasicas, nonne tenebrae possiderent ac tegerent, nisi commendatores eorum historici nobiles atque ignobiles extitissent? 5 longum est omnia persequi, quae ad exemplum huiusce modi etiam nobis tacentibus usurpanda sunt. 6 illud tantum contestatum volo me et rem scripsisse, quam, si quis voluerit, honestius eloquio celsiore demonstret, et mihi quidem id animi fuit, 6 <ut> non Sallustios, Livios, Tacito<s>, Trogos atque omnes disertissimos imitarer viros in vita principum et temporibus disserendis, sed Marium Maximum, Suetonium Tranquillum, Fabium Marcellinum, Gargilium Martialem, Iulium Capitolinum, Aelium Lampridium ceterosque, qui haec et talia non tam diserte quam vere memoriae tradiderunt. 8 sum enim unus ex curiosis, quod infi[ni]t<i>as ire non possum, ince<n>dentibus vobis, qui, cum multa sciatis, scire multo plura cupitis. 9 et ne diutius ea, quae ad meum consilium pertinent, loquar, magnum et praeclarum principem et qualem historia nostra non novit, arripiam.

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

As for the fortifications of Constantinople - no, they were not responsible for Byzantine success in any way, and whilst fortification represented medieval power in a very solid and overt manner, that power was ultimately political and castles changed hands all too readily, plus the ability of the Crusaders to loot Constantinople proved how little value the walls had. You find that ever since mankind evolved a barrier you couldn't break through, it was the front door that usually let the enemy in.

In spite of his best intentions, the previous statement patently pointed out the indisputable fact that Constantinople remained unconquered in spite of countless attacks from some of the most powerful armies across all History for almost a full millennium; judge by yourselves.

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

Have you ever tried to use PM for personal issues entirely irrelevant to the thread's topic and that no one else cares about?

We might well be purchasing a one-way ticket to Tartarus here

Anyway:

 

EDIT: This issue is relevant only for the directly involved.

 

next time, better try PM...

(Can't wait to read it!)

[Which of lost works do you miss most?]

SIBYLINE SCROLLS.

 

There is quite a lot of reference to these in RUBICON by Tom Holland. The part that sticks in my mind was something to do with burying a Gaul and a Greek alive, under the forum (?) to prevent some catastrophe.

IIRC that happened when Hannibal's army appeared outside Rome's walls, or possibly after Cannae. Someone correct me if I am wrong, please

 

 

Actually I think this was 114 BC - the Romans being somewhat exercised at the time by the hordes of Cimbri and Teutones who had appeared in the north. Thenabouts they also sacrificed a vestal virgin or three on a charge of infidelity. The burial was in the forum boariarum BTW

The Gauls & Greeks were buried alive in 226 BC, when Rome was facing a huge Gaulish coalition; this is Plutarch, Marcellus, 3, 1-4:

 

"After the first Punic war had come to an end in its twenty-second year, Rome was called upon to renew her struggles with the Gauls...

the Romans were greatly alarmed by the proximity of their country to the enemy, with whom they could wage war so near their own boundaries and homes, as well as by the ancient renown of the Gauls, whom the Romans seems to have feared more than any other people...

Their alarm was also shown by ... the extraordinary sacrifices which they made to the gods.

For though they have no barbarous or unnatural practices..., at the time when this war burst upon them they were constrained to obey certain oracular commands from the Sibylline books, and to bury alive two Greeks, a man and a woman, and likewise two Gauls, in the place called the "forum boarium", or cattle-market;

and in memory of these victims, they still to this day, in the month of November, perform mysterious and secret ceremonies".

 

Vestal virgins were executed more than once (just check out this nice thread), usually across really hard times for Rome, but almost always on the standard charge of unchastity (fornication); burying them alive was a common punishment. Some vestals were indeed buried alive at Rome in 215 BC (the year after Cannae), according to St. Jerome.

 

The Vestal virgins Aemilia, Licinia, and Marcia were condemned for unchastity in 114 BC (e.g. Livy, Periochae 63, 4); the military disaster of that year was courtesy of the Thracian Scordisci, who defeated a consul and some legates.

[Shroud of Turin Not Jesus, Discovery Suggests]

First up is the basic story from National Geographic News:

Shroud of Turin Not Jesus', Tomb Discovery Suggests

From a long-sealed cave tomb, archaeologists have excavated the only known Jesus-era burial shroud in Jerusalem, a new study says.

The discovery adds to evidence that the controversial Shroud of Turin did not wrap the body of Christ, researchers say...

This must be a really bad joke.

Either the identification of the 2000 years-old textile or the isolation of the bacterial DNA were by themselves notable archaeological deeds; the uncalled pretension to connect this findings to the Shroud of Turin as an obvious cheap maneuver for additional publicity is just utterly absurd.

 

For many years the Shroud has already been the epitome of absurdity in vrtually any possible aspect (archaeology, physics, chemistry, biology and so on), even a huge mess for the Christian theology itself; its discovery and study (

[Which of lost works do you miss most?]

Caesar's lost works--his jokes, his personal writings ... i know that octavius suppressed them ...

Can you quote your source?

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

Second the second:

(And please, no comments about the historical accuracy of calling them 'Byzantine' - it's only to differentiate between them and the citizens of the city of Rome!)

Yes, those good ol' times .

Sonic is naturally absolutely right; VII century Rome and its people were not longer the City (Urbs) i.e. a bona fide city-state, let say in the sense of a Classical polis; Rome had been a regular civitas (technically a colonia) at least since Aurelian.

We don't need to be utterly idealistic here; the plebeian patriotism of the old Republic was always mixed with ambition, as it was essentially the only way for most of them of improving their economic status and to even get a chance for introducing themselves to politics.

That is why the Plebeians actually fought internally for their right to fight externally, one of the most obvious explanations behind any hard facts under the semi-legendary accounts of the plebeian secessions.

On the other hand, those incentives were essentially absent at later times (Luttwak's 3rd phase), when there were no more new territories for being conquered and the political-military glory was reserved to the Emperor and his proxies.

 

.... one of the most relevant and problematic criterion indispensable for any of the literally hundreds of proposed mechanisms for the Fall of Rome is that they must explain why the West fell and the East survived; that critical and undisputable fact can't be just left aside.

Could it have anything to with fortifications? Wasn't Constantinople more fortified?

 

I could be wrong, but I get the impression that many of the cities in the West were less fortified because they felt confident that the army could deal with any incursions. Then when the army was unable to drive out the barbarians, many cities were left vulnerable.

Not sure about that; this might be anyway closer to what Maty was explaining, i.e. geography as a contributor to the selective demise of the West as a whole, not specifically related to Adrianople.

 

Constantinople was definitely one of the best fortifications across all History, for both its natural and man-made defenses, even before the erection of the formidable Theodosian Walls (which were BTW "Theodosian" for the second, not the first Theodosius).

It would be indeed extremely hard not to perceive this as one of the most relevant factors that explained why the West fell and the East didn't, even in spite of Adrianople...

 

All that said, dealing with all the countless factors potentially involved in the Fall of the Western Roman Empire may very well get us quite far from the original topic of this thread.

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

You seem to be searching for some elegant and sophisticated answer. Sometimes there just isn't one. I'm not sure what mechanisms you're talking about...

No, you are not. Thanks but no, thanks; EDIT

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

First the first; regarding the original topic of this thread, one of the most relevant and problematic criterion indispensable for any of the literally hundreds of proposed mechanisms for the Fall of Rome is that they must explain why the West fell and the East survived; that critical and undisputable fact can't be just left aside.

 

Far as I'm aware, none of the proposed mechanisms (above or elsewhere) on the theoretical relationship of the Roman defeat at Adrianople and the Fall of the Western Empire (i.e., loss of manpower, moral effect, immigration of the Barbarians and so on) has been even remotely able to fulfill such criterion.

 

Plainly, the West fell and the East survived in spite of Adrianople.

 

For any of the above mentioned mechanisms (and maybe more [if they were indeed operative]) it was the East, not the West, which should have fallen.

 

In fact, Constantinople itself was attacked by the victorious Goths almost immediately after this battle; even so, the East most obviously survived.

 

Whatever factors may have most obviously made the Western Roman Empire ultimately even more vulnerable than the Eastern was, there's no reason to relate them to Adrianople at all; period.

 

I rest my case.

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

And that the Danube is in the eastern empire is largely irrelevant. Because Constantinople sits like a cork in a bottle guarding the eastern empire, invaders crossing the Danube tended to go west. As in deed did the Goths once they had had a look at Constantinople.

 

I'll address the other issues later I hope, but meanwhile let's not assume it's all based on misconceptions, eh?

Regarding this particular topic (Adrianople potential impact for the Fall of the Western Empire), that might not be required at all, as your specific argument is actually quite straightforward; i.e. the Roman casualties at Adrianople would have critically reduced the manpower reserve of the West.

 

IMHO, it would be difficult to find hard evidence for that argument; the 15,000 to 20,000 Roman casualties from that battle were in all likelihood absorbed by the 200,000 plus men of the Eastern army and local recruitment.

 

BTW, the only misconception that I pointed out was the localization of the Danube in the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, a point that is actually critical for your original argument as a whole, given the number of troops that were regularly there.

 

You can easily verify that for any reason from Augustus to Theodosius there were almost always more Roman troops deployed in the East (Danubian border included) than in the West.

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

How about this for an anachronistic comparison. If I remember correctly, when the Byzantines recaptured Rome, Belisarius sent out a group of Roman citizens in some sort of phalanx formation that initially drove back the Goths, but they subsquently lost their cohesion and they had to be rescued by the Byzantine troops. Could this group of well motivated though undisciplined citizen troops be similar in effectiveness to those of the early republic? Good enough to defeat an Etruscan army but not good enough to defeat a Romanized Gothic army?

Anachronic is anachronic, = indeterminable; the number of immeasurable potentially relevant variables is simply too large.

 

You really should read the whole long answer from the link above.

 

Motivation is obviously critical, but only one among myriad critical factors; the French soldiers seem to have been rather well motivated when they were utterly massacrated by the British archers at Azincourt.

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

Are you saying that the armies of the 4th century were actually better than those of the republic and early empire?

Marius' army which destroyed the Teutons would have been easily beaten by Fritigen's or Alaric's army?

Short answer: all that is undeterminable, as any other anachronic comparison; period.

Lomg answer may be found here.

 

What really changed in terms of weapons? Gladius vs Spatha? Pilum vs Spears and/or darts? Scutum vs oval shield? Body armor? Lorica segmentata or mail vs other forms of mail? Helmets? Were there really any significant advantage of older versus newer armaments? Later in the middle ages there were certainly more significant advances such as more complete body armor, innovative weapons such as the halberd, etc.

That question has been answered in many interesting related threads here at UNRV; besides, a lot of books have been written on this issue. For now, let just say there were indeed multiple significant changes, hardly restricted to weaponry alone. As usual, then and always, the Roman army outstandingly adapted to the most diverse conditions.

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

Later Imperial armies were actually able to put together immense armies against myriad ubiquituous bands of hostile Barbarians all along the immense borders of the Empire

 

I can find very few descriptions of large pitched battles against Germanic Barbarians in the fourth century. The two that come to mind most frequently are Strassbourg and Adrianople. The former could easily have been a disaster similar to Adrianople. Julian showed good generalship, preventing and ambush and holding his reserves to counter a breakthrough.

 

The total numbers of troops involved, however do seem considerably smaller than in battles of the late republic and early empire.

Please note both of us are saying essentially the same with different words.

 

Large global Imperial armies of hundreds of thousands were required at the late Empire (Luttwak's 3rd phase) not because big pitched battles were a common ocurrence, but rather because they ought to permanently face myriad small local skirmishes all along (and even within) the imperial borders.

 

The distribution of the units of the Saxon Shores, mentioned in my posts from this Thread, are a good example of the distribution of the Roman garrisons; the full picture for the Theodosian empire can be appreciated on the Notitia Dignitatum.

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

There are literally hundreds of hypotheses advanced to explain the Fall of the Western Roman Empire; there are tons of books on this issue , many of them excellent. I guess by now it's crystal clear for everyone that I'm a big fan of Ward-Perkins, mainly because he made an impressive thorough critical analysis of the updated relevant literature, and also because his book is quite accesible.

The reforms of Marius were to make a better, more professional army. To have a larger pool of well-trained recruits that could be called upon for battle. Eligibility was extended to the lower classes and some of the newly conquered people. Is this not the beginning of what was done in the later Roman empire (including Diocletian's reforms) where eligibility was extended to barbarians, some of which had questionable loyalties? ... The later citizen armies did suffer major setbacks against the Teutons and Cimbri, which were probably because of poor generalship. I don't see how the armies themselves could have deteriorated since the time of Scipio or Paulus. Although they had devastating losses against the Teutons (much greater losses than at Adrianople), they were still able to put together additional armies against them.

Actually, the Romans ought to professionalize their army largely because any traditional citizen unit was inappropiate for any years-long remote campaign, where citizen soldiers were obviously unable to care for their farms as expected. The notorious poor performance of the citizen legions in Spain and especially against the Cimbrii & Teutons was the drop that filled the glass; the so-called Marian reforms (presumably attributable not just to Marius) were ostensibly effective even in the short term, given their evidet success against the Cimbrii & Teutons.

The classical works of Edward Luttwak are particularly informative on this issue; the Roman army evolved clearly because so did their enemies, ecology and requirements, not just for the caprice of a couple of rulers.

Prior to Marius' reforms the Roman Citizen army had completed an unprecedented series of victories and conquests. The eventual defeat of Pyrrus and Hannibal. The rapid defeat of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Even after significant losses in battle, they were always able to round up another army. ...On of the obvious advantages of a citizen army is self-sufficiency. A professional army is costly, and a very large professional army can be an economic drain.

Not to mention the obvious risk of rebellion. Even so, the Romans had really no other chance (read above). Anyway, both the pre- and post-Marian Roman armies had a long series of victories and conquests (and of defeats too); the armies of Sulla, Lucullus, Pompey, Caesar, Augustus & Trajan were indeed already professional. Up to the latter emperor, we are stilll in the first phase of Luttwak; i.e., the Roman armies were almost always attacking and conquering, not defending; the conquered territories were mostly client states, expected to be defended primarily by themselves. That's why relatively small armies were almost always enough; Augustus actually reduced the late Republican army to less than half its original size.

Besides, non-Romans (Barbarians) were admitted to the Roman Army snce the very beginning, as socii or auxilia; not to mention the permanent enfranchisement of new citizens from the conquered populations, reportedly since the Monarchy.

The citizen armies could have been rather costly too; aside from the inevitably required inversion, the farming productivity of the citizen-soldiers was obviously lost while in service. Later Imperial armies were extremely costly mostly for their size.

How would the legions of the republic have performed against Fritgen's Goths? I would say that even if they had lost at Adrianople, there would be another citizen army that would rapidly confront them.

How would the late empire deal with a massive invasion of Cimbri and Teutons? They were more accustomed to dealing with small raiding groups, and were not accustomed to dealing with a large barbarian army capable of inflicting massive casualties on the Romans (some estimates 80,000, although I believe these are exagerartions)

In general terms, Classical casualty figures were notoriously unreliable. Most of what I have expressed on anachronic comparisons of commanders & armies in this post would apply here too. My general impression (just that!) is that the general average performance of the armies of both the Romans and their enemies tended to progressively improve year after year, given the slow but real advance in tactics and weaponry. Besides, once the Roman conquest stopped (mainly for logistic reasons) and the Imperial borders became fixed, a permanent quasi-Darwinian selection of the Roman enemies took place there.

After the first phase, Roman armies ought to progressively increase as long as the emperors stubbornly tried to conquer even more and never retreat.

The more professional armies of the later Roman empire supposedly had a greater pool of trained recruits, but they weren't able to put together a field army to defeat a relatively small group of Goths...

So here is what I see as a paradox. The professionalization of the army was to make sure, that there were always available large numbers of well-trianed recruits, that could be called upon to deal with any threat that might arise. In reality, the old citizen army seemed more reliable in terms of responding to setbacks and always being willing to confront an enemy.

That apparent paradox is easily explained by the evolution of the conditions of the Empire and its enemies; in general terms it's harder to preserve any territory that to conquer it.

Later Imperial armies were actually able to put together immense armies against myriad ubiquituous bands of hostile Barbarians all along the immense borders of the Empire; there were only 20,000 to 30,000 Romans fighting the Goths & allies at Adrianople simply because most if not all of the other 400,000 plus soldiers were busy serving in garrisons required all across the Empire, and not just resting at their homes. In fact, even if the old Republican citizen army would have been ultimately able to satisfactorily adapt itself to years-long remote missions (extremely unlikely), analogous effectives (and money) would have been in all likelihood required to protect the colossal late Empire.

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

I think the problem here is that it's too hard to convince you of any evidence at all. You allude to criteria for acceptance but I sense a lot of goal post moving. If you dion't want to accept anyone elses view, fair enough, but at least have the honesty to say that instead of clicking your fingers at people to find more arguments for you to dismiss.

If you can't understand what I'm talking about, don't worry; mind your own business and let people chat.

 

I think the problem here is that you don't have the honesty of sending me a PM instead of posting any personal issue that nobody else cares about.

[What's the last book you read?]

Yes...the book/s (Jennings wrote a sequel to Aztec before his editor and the other writer released three or four more) ...

Actually the sequel (Aztec Autumn) was a great disappointment to me.

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

It seems pretty unlikely that you may find hard evidence backing most of these premises.

I'm inclining to the difference coming down to geography.

One problem here is you're based on a geographical misconception (keep reading).

Simply put, you needed a much larger army to defend the western empire than you did the east.

Simply put, the main problem here is that nobody told it so to most Roman Emperors, from Augustus to Theodosius, which systematically stubbornly placed more soldiers in the East most of the time; amazingly enough, the whole empire survived for five centuries.

Asia Minor is almost an island, in that where it is not isolated by sea, mountains do a pretty good job (in fact north and south, you have both).

As Asia Minor was almost never a border zone, that was essentially irrelevant; in any case, Parthians, Sassanides and Arabs found all their way through Anatolia when they required so.

Macedonia is almost inaccessible from the north, and can't be reached from the west unless you go through Greece - as the Romans eventually did when they conquered the place -

Why should going south have been more difficult than going north through the same way? In any case, that's exactly what the Goths and other northern invaders did.

... and the Middle East and Egypt have the desert.

Which didn't deter the Persians from constantly fighting the Romans and invading their eastern provinces for centuries.

The west on the other hand has only the Rhine and Danube between it and the barbarian hordes. It's easier for the barbarians to get in and stay in, and when the empire exerts too much pressure its easier to get out and stay out until -as inevitably happens - the empire is distracted by another emergency.

First, this is your main geographical misconception; the Danubian border (or almost all of it) was in the East, not the West.

Besides, such hypothesis simply ignores the obvious fact that the Rhin was a far more stable border than either the Danube or the Middle East all along the Roman Empire.

So because the west needed more soldiers...

Again, on average the West actually required less soldiers for centuries.

... the loss of a field army at Adrianople inevitably hurt them more.

Why?

The loss of 15,000 to 20,000 men from the Eastern units (no less than 200,000 men) was replaced with recruits from the East; why should this loss inevitably hurt more the no less than 200,000 Roman soldiers from the remote West?

The strain of getting and supplying replacements fell disproportionately on the west because the east could afford to do so more gradually, and where replacements could not be found to hold the line, the danger and long-term damage was not as severe.

Why would the strain have affected more the West? Why would the East have afforded to do so more gradually? Why was the danger not as severe?

 

Finally, why would the West have required to find replacements for the soldiers fallen in the East? That simply doesn't make sense.

[What's the last book you read?]

I've read Jennings Aztec a few years back, but I can't recall if I ever finished it. I remember it had lots of explicit violence and sex in it though. The part where Mixtli orders a village to be massacred was pretty horrible, especially how he described killing the head priest by covering him in plaster and then waiting for the sun to dry around him, causing his skin to rupture and his internal organs to spill out. Aztec is a fascinating novel but it isn't for the faint hearted, those with weak stomachs, or the easily offended.

Entirely agree here; Aztec is frankly gore and the main character is like a mixture of James Bond, Casanova and the Marquis de Sade; even so, Jennings is well versed on the history of the period from all sides and he is aware of a lot or trivia usually ignored by most historians, which is BTW essentially exact more often than not.

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

I've written a review of "Day of the Barbarians" which hasn't been posted yet. But I wrote a paragraph on the impact to the Western Empire:

The most severe pressure from this barbarization was in the Eastern Empire, and yet it was the East that ultimately survived (as the Byzantine Empire) and the West that didn't. Barbero explains why:

[Rome's Disgrace at Adrianople]

Any objective evidence on the hypothetical effect of this battle over the Western half would be welcomed.

 

(Aside from the mere theory of Chaos, I mean)

 

Thanks in advance.