third century crises

[Goffredo]

I think that the necessity to face non-roman enemies was always the dominating factor but the political problems inside were a serious factor that contributed to the inability to deal with the "real" enemy. The fact that so many emperors were killed by "friends" (coups) makes me think that facing other roman armies was a necessity, but it really wasn't an independent evolutionary shaping force. (Note!The destruction of an antagonist roman army wasn't really the goal; many battles were NOT to the bloody end but only until one of the leaders broke or was killed in a coup). The tendency towards field armies became dominant when there was a difficulty to hold the frontier and the civil wars simply made things more difficult. Holding a frontier and defending the population is an objective problem that can only be solved if one can control the movements of the enemy outside and does not give them the initiative. But how much can one control the enemy on the other side of the frontier? To keep the initiative takes a lot of positive pressure from inside the empire to be able project force -real and apparent- outside. On the other hand controlling the forces inside an empire is in principle something that a leader or leading class can hope for, unless there is a spiral towards self-destruction like what happened in the third century. Preclusive defence is the best policy and a healthy empire will always attempt to adopt it. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/ugoffredo.showPublicProfile?language=EN>goffredo</A> at: 5/3/01 3:00:47 pm<br></i>