Plague - The Destroyer of Empires

[Nathan Ross]

To the Pagans, it was the end of the world.

No it wasn't. Some Christian writers used such ideas, but they were drawing on a Judeo-Christian tradition of plagues and the apocalypse which the traditional religions did not share. There is no suggestion that any 'pagan' at the time thought the world was ending.

They increasingly relied on mercenaries... lest those mercenaries turn on a weakened Rome.

The Roman army did not rely on 'mercenaries' to any extent until the 5th century. The Severan army, as I've said, expanded to even greater size on the traditional legion model. Rome was not 'weakened' or at risk from 'mercenaries' - are you thinking of the sack of Rome in AD410, perhaps?

I do wonder where you're getting your ideas about later Roman history. I recommended David S Potter's The Roman Empire at Bay before, I think - it's very good on the whole period from AD180 through to the death of Theodosius.

Regarding our subject, Potter makes the point that the empire was suffering from massive overpopulation at the end of the Antonine period, and the plagues actually thinned out the population in a beneficial way, increasing available land, lowering prices and raising pay.

Potter writes (p.17) that the empire had expanded from c.45 million under Augustus to c.64 million under Marcus Aurelius - "a population nearing the limit of its carrying capacity". Egyptian census records from the time of the plague do reveal a sudden fall in population, but also a rapid restoration "with a population that was slightly younger [and which] may have recovered to its preplague size within fifty years - and continued to place extreme pressure on the land that supported it".

why is there so much hate for the equipment and typical heavy infantry legionnaire on these forums? 

Is there? I've never seen any. What you might be seeing is a lack of disdain for the later army, which is still popularly portrayed as debased and inept, for no good reason.

Knights on the other hand were aristocrats, born into the station, who practiced at leisure... I'd love to see a legion face off against an Feudal army of unmounted knights and their conscripts.

This is off-topic, but we've had these debates before. Medieval society was completely different to Roman society, and the demands of warfare were different too. Knights (for most of the middle ages) were military professionals who spent their entire lives training for war. Comparing the military systems of completely different eras or cultures is never all that useful!