10-26-2013, 09:01 PM
Quote:The Romans recovered from the Battle of the River Frigidus, for the most part. It wasn't until the Fall of Africa where the recruitment of Barbarians became more essential, as they were foederati (literally: "bound by treaty") and were cheaper troops.
Many Roman soldiers seemed to have been on Aetius' personal payroll or serving out of pure loyalty after that. Sidonius Apollinaris (I think, it would be in the pangeyric of Majoran as we know Aetius' troops would have been transferred to his command, but I will double check this) records that after his death Valentinian III was unable to win over the Praesental Army (I think it's likely by this point Aetius had combined the Gallic and Italic Armies due to low manpower), who are called "Bucellarii".
It depends on actually what you mean for 'the Romans recovered'.
The Eastern Romans recovered for sure because the Goths had suffered the main part of the casualties during the first day of battle, while the Western Roman Army was permanentely destroied, because nobody can think that in the V century you can recover from a huge defeat in a battle in which you have deployed 34.000 or 50.0000 men.
The names of the units quoted in the Notitia, after Frigidus, are only names written on the paper, the reality is that after Frigidus the West had no more a full working professional army.
