09-20-2012, 08:15 PM
Quote:It may be, (thinking off the top of my head) that it was the maturing political structure of the western barbarian polities - Frankish and Visigothic kingdoms - that enabled them to effectively counter Roman power by offering a viable alternative. In the east, caught between migrating steppe peoples and Persia, those on the borders of the empire were unable to develop a structure and localised political cohesion that could equal or surpass the power and stability of the Roman state.
Hmm... :neutral:
Perhaps. I suspect that the Mediterranean world destabilized central Europe, largely through the demands of the slave trade. This prompted the development of mercenary warbands, such as the Gaesatae, at the expense of tribal institutions. I suspect that this system not only couldn't create a viable alternative to Roman power, no matter the scale, it made Roman power seem like a viable alternative to it. Early Christianity would represent an ideological challenge to the warband system. I suspect that may contribute to the Balkan Gothic case, but I am not so sure it would have the same effect in later periods.
D.H. Green discusses the mercenary warband system, in the Germanic context, in [i]Language and History in the Early Germanic World[/u], several of the key terms are borrowings from Celtic languages, but I'm not sure how the mercenary warband system functioned in the earlier Gallic context.
