Total War: Attila

[Hasdrubal]

Tell Edward Gibbons and other historians that wrote about Stilicho otherwise. They mentioned Stilicho's barbarian ties quite often.....

Gladly, but he wrote during the 19th century so it might take some effort to reach him. Also, that should tell you something about the quality of some historians. Gibbon had an agenda to show the reasons for the end of Rome - barbarians was one of them. He had no problems taking ancient sources literally which stressed the barbarian background of Stilicho, who nontheless acted like every other power-hungry Roman would have done. I somehow think that if his Vandal father had named him Flavius Aemilianus or something equally Latin, we would not be having this discussion.

Possibly, however Gibbons main reasoning for the downfall of the Western Roman empire was Christianity. While I'll agree saying Christianity helped divide the the Romans through ideology of who's right, who's wrong. I would say the Barbarians were the main contributing factor to the fall of the Western Roman empire, and I'll give my reason why I believe so.

Rome went from using in house Italians because obviously that's where they started. Glory, Loot, and the chance to serve your country were something the Romans loved and relished in, and for hundreds of years they did just that. However, as the Roman empire grew, places of Glory, Loot, became thin. It no longer became "What country we should conquer next?" It turned into which part of the Empire should we defend next?

Money from inflation started to kick into overdrive, which obviously someone had to do something with it, and it's why Constantine basically made silver and bronze worthless. No one with an Italia heritage wanted to join the Legions anymore. It was dangerous, dirty, no money in it, and if some disease didn't kill you most likely an opposing Army would.

After the extreme Roman failure of Adrianople, it was pretty much over as Italian armies were replaced with Barbarian mercenaries. Racism against your defenders obviously didn't help. Heck, Alaric just wanted to be acknowledge and even said he would help protect the Danube which was a PHENOMENAL deal for the Romans. Instead the Romans spit in their eye, and we got the sacking of Rome.

Only reason the East kept in power as long as they did was because of the Theodocian walls though Pope Innocent III helped out with that when he sent a crusade to it.

Barbarians imo is the number 1 reason why the Western Roman empire fell.

Note: Didn't Edward Gibbons write the fall and decline of the Roman Empire in the 18th century? Thought he wrote it during the American Revolution or maybe before it. I'll go look it up.