When did the Roman Army lose it\'s...

[Nathan Ross]

We can see in the West that the losses of the underlying tax base, recruitment pool and infrastructure (roads, transport, suppplies, manufacture of arms, etc) lead to a serious cripping of the machinery of war. The Roman state in the Western provinces lost its ability to mount war as an organsational operation and thus lost its only real advanage over the tribes and cultures which bled in through the limes or frontier.

In the Eastern provinces of the Empire, this was not so and as a result there was no comparative 'decline'.

Francis - thank you for this very concise and cogent summary! About the best I've read for a long time.

We could say, then, that the late Roman army did not fail the state, but rather that the state failed the army...

There is no doubt, however, of the high quality of the later Roman army itself. Within the period 285-300, the imperial field armies of Diocletian and his colleages conducted successful campaigns against every one of Rome's external enemies: Persians, Goths, Franks, Alamanni, Carpi, Sarmatians and Mauri, besides reconquering the breakaway province of Britain and suppressing two major rebellions in Egypt. Would Trajan's army have been as effective?