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Thiudareiks Flavius · 10-16-2002, 10:09 AM

I was asked why I disagreed with the conclusions of Arther Ferrill's The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation on the thread about the Huns. Since this is a different and fairly substantial topic, I thought it was worth a thread in its own right. 
 
On the whole Ferrill's book is a useful resource as a summary of the major events in the collapse of the Western Empire, but the central thesis of Ferrill's work and his final conclusion are both very weak. Ferrill dismisses the longer term economic and administrative failings of the Western Empire, but does so without actually discussing them. He says that to see the later Empire "as a troubled giant .... a decaying Empire .... is to miss the point." (p.164) but he doesn't explain why. In fact, the long term problems of inflation, a declining population and a shrinking tax base, along with a widening gap between rich and poor in the West and a spiraling trend towards ruralisation of the population all combined and accelerated slowly over a long period between the reign of Diocletian and 476 AD. 
 
These problems were exacerbated by the division of the Empire in 395 AD, which saw most of the rich provinces go to the East, while the West got longer and more vulnerable frontiers, a far smaller population and a greater disparity of wealth and poverty. Rivalry and a lack of effective co-operation between East and West meant that these major inequalities increased in impact over the course of the following century. 
 
These problems were made even worse by the a major weakness in the late Roman system of government - a lack of any clear mechanism for the succession. This resulted in frequent civil wars, which further drained the resources of the West and increased the localisation of power and general Balkanisation of the Western half of the Empire. As Hugh Elton summarises it: 
 
These wars included Constantine against Licinius (316, 324), Magnentius agianst Constantius II (351-353) and Theodosius against Magnus Maximus (383-38EM and Eugenius (392-394). In the fifth century they spread to include Roman generals, e.g., Aetius against Bonifatius, although the usurpations of John (423-425) and Basiliscus (475-476) and Odoacer (476) were just as dangerous. 
 
 
So in the course of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries we see population decline, economic stagnation, a shrinking tax base, an exodus from towns, a localisation of power, a highly unequal division of the Empire which increased the effects of all these problems and institutional weakneses which led to usurpers and civil war. These things combined to fragment the power of the central administration which in turn led to the loss of several key Western provinces and finally to the break up of the Western Empire itself. 
 
What we conspicuously don't see in this period is any major military defeats of the Roman army by barbarian invaders. When the weakening, fragmenting and economically aenemic Western Empire is confronted by a military threat in this period it usually defeats it - at least for as long as the failing economy and collapsing administration is still able to organise armed resistance. 
 
The fall of the West was an economic and administrative failing - battles and tactics had virtually nothing to do with it. 
 
But Ferrill simply dismisses all this as "missing the point" without a word of explanation as to why all these highly significant factors are completely irrelevant. He simply tells us they are - end of story. 
 
He writes: 
 
Many historians have argued .... that the fall of Rome was not primarily a military phenomenon. In fact, it was exactly that. After 410 the emperor in the West could no longer project military power to the frontiers. 
 
(p. 164) 
 
This is quite true, but what Ferrill skips lightly over is the reason for this - the depopulated and cash-strapped Western Empire, having fought five civil wars in the last century and wracked by political instability, was simply in no position to field the armies it needed to protect the border provinces. It's not as though outdated Roman armies were being tackled and beaten by superior barbarian forces. The armies weren't withdrawing after being routed on battlefields by overwhelming or tactically superior Germanic troops. The Empire simply couldn't maintain its centralised military infrastructure any more because it didn't have the manpower or the cash to do so. 
 
Ferrill acknowledges that this so-called "military" collapse, strangely enough, didn't actually involved many battles or any major defeats, but he's not deterred: 
 
One need not produce a string of decisive battles in order to demonstrate a military collapse. The shrinkage of the imperial frontiers from 410 to 440 was directly as a result of military conquests by barbarian forces. 
 
(p. 164) 
 
Though these "military conquests by barbarian forces" occured, strangely enough, without any decisive battles. The truth is the barbarians moved, usually without major opposition, into areas that the dwindling and economically starved Roman army had already abandoned or which it could no longer defend in strength. Their "invasions" - actually very small in number - were a symptom of the decline of the Roman army and the economic and administrative decline of the West, not its cause. 
 
Ferrill asserts otherwise, with great boldness. But, again, he doesn't tell us why - he just tell us. 
 
To be sure, the loss of strategic resources, money, material and manpower compounded the mere loss of territory and made military defence of the rest of the Empire even more difficult. It is simply perverse, however, to argue that Rome's strategic problems in the 440s, 50s and 60s were primarilly the result of financial and political difficultiesor of long term trends such as depopulation. 
 
(pp. 164-65) 
 
Why is this quite reasonable and sensible conclusion "simply perverse"? Ferrill doesn't tell us, he just says it is. 
 
He goes on to argue that any explanation of the fall of the West has to take into account the survival of the East - which is very true - and seems to believe that this is an argument against the "simply perverse" idea that systemic and economic problems were the real causes. In fact, the East always had a far greater population and a massive concentration of the whole Empire's wealth. The division of 395 made this disparity worse, giving the West more to defend and far less resources with which to do it. Further weakened by civil wars, local warlords and a string of weak or shortsighted rulers, it's actually amazing the West struggled on for as long as it did. So it's very clear why the East survived while the West fell. 
 
Ferrill continually acknowledges key points in the real reasons for the fall of the West without acknowledging (or grasping) their significance. In discussing what the West did wrong while the East got right, he says the East "was better able to afford the heavy subsidies barbarian leaders demanded in the years after Adrianople" (p 166). But he fails to see why this is the case - because the East was far wealthier than the West. This was not a military factor, and it certainly had nothing to do with equipment, training or tactics - it purely economic. The East was able to pay Attila off for years and then, when he became too much of a nuisance, refuse to pay him anymore. The Hunnic king then decided to make up for his lost revenue by attacking the West, since the more impoverished half of the Empire made an easier target than the still relatively rich and strong East. 
 
Similarly, the East were able to pay off and deflect a succession of potential barbarian problems, usually getting them to afflict the increasingly weak and fragmented West. Ferrill briefly acknowledges the East's significant economic strength, but then ignores it to pursue his ghostly theory of military explanations. 
 
 
Without giving any good reasons for setting aside significant and relevant factors in the decline of the West such as economics and depopulation, Ferrill blithely declares that they can, indeed, be set aside. But not before lumping them in with "race mixture .... lead poisoning and other fashionable theories" (p. 166), which is a pretty shoddy piece of rhetorical trickery. 
 
He goes on to argue that the real reasons for the fall of the West was a deterioration of the Western Roman Army - not the decline in the infratructure and recruitment which sustained the army, as I've argued above, but a decline in the tactics, training and quality of the troops. 
 
For the decline in training he relies almost entirely on Vegetius' problematic manual and on a highly dubious report from Jordanes of a pre-battle speech by Attila about the quality of Roman troops. And for the decline in the quality of the troops he simply points to the "barbarisation" of the army and takes it as given that this meant the troops were therefore of low quality. Again, Hugh Elton shows the flaws in this idea. As he argues, the use of barbarian troops had been going on in the Roman army for centuries and continued in both the East and the West in this period. So why did this practice suddenly cause a decline in quality in the West in the Fifth Century? 
 
Secondly, most of the barbarian troops used in the West weren't part of the regular units anyway - they were federate bands hired for specific campaigns or to defend particular territories. Their use and significance certainly did increase as the Fifth Century progressed, but largely for the very economic and administrative problems that Ferrill is so keen to dismiss. So, once again, we aren't seeing a "military explanation" - we're seeing the result of longer term, systemic economic and social weakness. 
 
Ferrill's final sentence reads: "As the western army became barbarised, it lost its tactical superiority, and Rome fell to the onrush of barbarism". This is nonsense. There was no loss of "tactical superiority" - whenever the ailing Western Empire could field a decent sized army it won hands down. In fact the military history of the fall of the Western Empire is a string of Roman victories and barbarian defeats. It's the economic and administrative history of the West in this period which is the tale of woe and its the weaknesses here which robbed the Empire of its ability to field and maintain those armies and led, eventually, to its economic and administrative fragmentation and its eventual political collapse. 
 
Armies, battles and tactics were largely a side issue. 
 
Cheers, 
 
Tim O'Neill / Thiudareiks Flavius
 

Visit 'Clades Variana' - Home of the Varus Film Project 
Help create the film of Publius Quinctilius Varus' lost legions

10-17-2002, 06:58 AM

An excellent piece, I don't think I've seen the arguments put so well and so easily understood - thanks and well done. 
 
In fact I think I'll save it somewhere so that I can refer to it if needed. 
 
One thought on Ferrill's comments on the Huns and his idea that they changed their method of warfare. He seems to assume that 15000 would be a drastic reduction of their fighting numbers, but I can't recall any evidence that this was the case - in fact I don't think we have any relaible numbers for the Huns at all. Also he seems to miss that the Hunnic empire under Attila had many Germanic subjects and that these probably formed the majority in the army of 451AD.

Thiudareiks Flavius · 10-17-2002, 08:06 AM

Nik wrote: 
 
An excellent piece, I don't think I've seen the arguments put so well and so easily understood - thanks and well done. 
 
In fact I think I'll save it somewhere so that I can refer to it if needed. 
 
 
No problems - and thanks. 
 
 
One thought on Ferrill's comments on the Huns and his idea that they changed their method of warfare. He seems to assume that 15000 would be a drastic reduction of their fighting numbers, but I can't recall any evidence that this was the case - in fact I don't think we have any relaible numbers for the Huns at all. Also he seems to miss that the Hunnic empire under Attila had many Germanic subjects and that these probably formed the majority in the army of 451AD. 
 
 
I recently had a discussion on the subject of the size of the Hunnic army at Chalons. The consensus was that 50,000 was a reasonable estimate of the total Hunnic army of which no more than a third would have been Huns per se and the rest Germanic and Indo-Iranian allies. 
 
This is all very approximate of course. 
Cheers, 
Tim O'Neill / Thiudareiks Flavius
 

Visit 'Clades Variana' - Home of the Varus Film Project 
Help create the film of Publius Quinctilius Varus' lost legions

10-24-2002, 01:46 AM

Very interesting argument...I haven't abandoned ship here, but that wants some thought. 
 
Eric etc.

11-05-2002, 03:07 AM

Finally a moment to get some thoughts down on this. (Rather lengthy ones, I see) 
 
I think that there is a misunderstanding of Ferrill's intent and analysis, in that he very consciously separates Decline from Fall and proposes to treat only of the latter. That has rarely if ever been done before in treatments of the issue. His first chapter gives a remarkable analysis and summary of 'decline' theories. 
 
In fact I would say that he could have gone farther with them (probably into a companion volume!) by pointing out the slippery nature of 'decline'. Most analyses have treated the 'decline of Rome' as a constant downward curve, I think quite possibly because Gibbon (who started this industry) either misunderstood or did not properly value either the Byzantine contribution or the Diocletianic restoration. For him, after Marcus Aurelius it was downhill all the way to Constantine XIII Dragases. 
 
There were points well before the 5th century when the Empire was at least as much at risk of falling - all of it, not just the West - and yet it did not. I refer specifically to the period 258-268 when the Empire was riven in three major pieces, the East was twice devastated and for part of the time occupied by the Persians, and there never ceased to be a crop of ephemeral usurpers. More to the point, there is little reason to doubt that the economic underpinnings in the West specifically were in at least as bad shape then as they were in the early fifth century. The Alemanni and friends had burst through the Rhine defences and swept through Gaul into Spain; what we know of the time suggests that the devastation of civilian economic life could not have been much less grievous than it was immediately after 407. And the monetary system was worthless, as it was not in the early 5th century. 
 
And yet Gaul and Spain recovered to the point where they were generally prosperous for most of the 4th century - whether as prosperous as in the 2nd is pretty much unknowable, but writers like Ausonius and the archaeological findings don't leave much doubt that they were prosperous, as was Britain. The point is that at least until 407, there seems nothing in principle from keeping the West from continuing to pay for as large - and as good - an army as it had had in 397 or 387. (Vegetius makes the point that bad armies cost as much as good ones and he seems to have been pretty knowledgeable about military affairs in the West at the time.) 
 
(Incidentally on the subject of prosperity and how easy and fast it is to destroy, and indeed how fast it can come back in settled times, Ausonius could write in the late 4th century from the quiet of his study in the aula palatina at Trier of his grandfather's sufferings in the troubles of the 3rd century. Twenty or so years later, the aula was desolate. We might spare a thought here for Athaulf, son of Alaric, who having done his bit in carving up Gaul, declared that Rome was worth saving. He was a little too far out in front of the pack. And for Theoderic, who said that 'A good Goth wants to be like a Roman - only a bad Roman wants to be like a Goth.' They both knew what their peoples (and all the other tribes) were capable of by way of destruction and they didn't want it to happen. ) 
 
The constant-downward-curve analysis significantly also overlooks the fact that, once the West had been lost, the East continued to have peaks and valleys - plenty of them - for another thousand years. At least three times between 476 and 1071 (Manzikert) the Empire came close to utter destruction, yet it always came back, and was never so strong as it was on the death of Basil the Bulgar Slayer in 1025 - a mere 46 years before Manzikert led to the loss of Anatolia forever. (It really doesn't take long at all. If we'd had radio back then, I'd have remembered Basil from my boyhood. If you see what I mean.) Without Anatolia the Byzantines hadn't a hope in the long run, especially with the upsurge of Western energy piled on top. Whether Alexius Comnenus and his successors could have kept things alive and well if Romanus IV hadn't lost at Manzikert belongs to alternative history, but the fact is that 135 years after Manzikert, Constantinople was in the hands of the Latins and the rest of Byzantine history is a procession of ghosts - and yet even the ghosts recovered a little colour for a while. 
 
So what was the difference between an economically prostrate and separeted West on Aurelian's accession (270) and a similarly devastated and partly separated West in 408-410 on Stilicho's death? The answer pretty well has to be military capacity and political will - the capacity, as Ferrill puts it, 'to project Rome's military strength to the ancient frontiers.' His thesis is that, having survived plenty of other vicissitudes, and not ignoring the fact that the West was always weaker economically than the East, the West was lost as a result of contingent military and political circumstances that might conceivably have been averted. 'Military and political' is important, they can never be divorced in any society, whether civilians or soldiers or both together are making (or failing to make) the decisions. 
 
That is another important point in the argument. The consequence of failure to make decisions - to commit to battle, to finish off a dangerous enemy once victorious, to protect some provinces over others, to allow a nation-in-arms to exist within the frontiers - is as momentous - and as military, in the Clausewitzian sense - as the consequence of defeat in battle. By way of a modern example, we cannot say what would have happened if George F. Bush (who used to horrify process-minded commentators by referring to his policy against Iraq) had finished off Saddam Hussein in 1991. We can only know that he consciously did not, that Saddam is still there, and that another Bush looks ready to take him on again, with what consequences, and what further decisions taken or not taken, who can say? 
 
In this light, Stilicho's decision to let Alaric slip three times for political reasons, and to pursue a dynastic policy in the East at the expense of not looking after his homework in the West, counts as a political strategy with military consequences. Ferrill pins much of the responsibility (he never says blame, contemporaries were less charitable) for the catastrophe of 407-410 on Stilicho for precisely these failures in political strategy, and more remotely on Theodosius for a settlement with the Goths which might or might not have been avoided. Had Theodosius lived after 395, perhaps the Western Army might not have been let decline as badly as it was - but that's alternate history again. 
 
From personal experience in a national diplomatic service, I can only attest to what happens when the successors to the founder of a policy attempt to carry on that policy faithfully to the point where it becomes dogma inflexibly applied. Lester Pearson was the founder and great expositor of Canada's role as an international peacekeeper. Lester Pearson also had an army at his disposal which he put to good use in UN service, which his successors do not have, and more to the point, do not think they need. Theodosius, for all that he was no strong Emperor, seems to have been able to deal with Alaric & Co. most of the time. Stilicho was no Theodosius. And when Theodosius was gone, the anti-barbarian faction in the East did finally throw the federate troops and leaders out, several times, forcibly. The Romans in the West had Stilicho sitting directly on them protecting the Theodosian policy legacy at all costs. 
 
It is also unfortunately not true that after 400 the Romans did not suffer any major defeats. They suffered plenty of them. The breakthrough on the Rhine in 406 was a defeat by default - a huge flanking manoeuvre, in practice. Alaric's rampage through Italy and sack of Rome was no less a defeat because militarily unopposed. Gaiseric the Vandal defeated Boniface in Africa once and then he defeated Boniface and Aspar (East and West) together. Having consolidated Africa, he then defeated Roman armies sent against him - from West alone (Majorian) and West and East allied (Ricimer and Leo). He sacked Rome, there being no force that could oppose him. Aetius winning big at Chalons just didn't make up for it all. It saved Gaul, and all those peoples who were in Gaul at the time including Romans, but it didn't do much for the Roman State in the West. 
 
One final and contentious point. Ferrill is biting off a large and unpopular chunk by opposing contemporary historical thought and suggesting that military events, and even decisions or lack of decisions by identifiable personalities can indeed sway the course of history. That point of view has been denigrated since the early 20th century at least. The concept of 'scientific progress' is against it among other things, and Marxism (I don't mean Marxism-Leninism) has a far bigger impact on modern thought processes than we generally realize. 
 
I would suggest that the final turning away in the modern West was precipitated by the rise of several horrific regimes all espousing and/or practicing fuhrerprinzip - the ability of one will to guide a nation's destiny. The results were appalling. Unfortunately they do not of themselves refute that this is possible, merely that it could ever be desirable. Neither the Bolsheviks nor the Nazis assumed power inevitably. Hitler made a bald-faced grab against some odds in 1933, and Lenin in 1917 was more modest, he just said, 'we found power lying in the street', which is pretty much true, but then he had to fight wars to keep it, which the Nazis didn't. Especially in Germany, it is not at all certain that, had Hitler and the organization of his making not seized power, Germany would necessarily have begun another war of aggression, and the seizure itself was dependent enough on contingency to make us think with some reason that it could have been stopped. But the whole history of both regimes suggests that once in the saddle, their destinies was indeed decided by a very few men. 
 
In sum, I think that Ferrill takes a reasonable and defensible approach to the question of the loss of the West, colloquially called the Fall of Rome. 
 
E 
(L Spurius Rutabaga Cocles 
gregarius ad spem honestae missionis 
bloody XI Claudia 
bloody Durostorum

11-05-2002, 09:02 AM

Some pretty interesting comments there, although I'd question whether Vegetius really knew that much about military affairs, period. 
 
Your comments on Stilicho remind me of a question I've sometimes wondered about as to whether Stilicho, who is often praised by authors for trying to maintain the empire, was in fact a complete and utter disaster for the empire and did more harm than good.

11-05-2002, 10:29 PM

Well, poor old Vegetius gets a lot of doing down you know. We don't know if he really was an old campaigner, or a serving officer, or just somebody like most of us here with a taste for it and enough gall to write to his Emperor. I think he had some connections just because people ususlly don't write stuff like that to Emperors unless they think they can get it through. I'll write my Member of Parliament or a Minister or two and know they'll read it because we know each other, but I don't bother with trying the Prime Minister! 
 
Perhaps the way to put Vegetius in perspective is not through our eyes, because these high tech days he's less directly relevant, (but he's right on some things still - a bad army DOES cost as much as a good one, and infantry still DO need to fight face to face at times) but through the eyes of the Renaissance soldiers and everyone else in the profession who read him and put him to work down to Napoleon's time and thought he was pretty good stuff, and his material worked for them. If the Renaissance generals relied on him as a handbook than he can't have been that far out to lunch on his subject. 
 
Stilicho...has been debated from since before they lynched him right down to our own time. Personally I go with Ferrill's take, a decent general, a poor politician, and not imaginative enough to break out of the policy legacy Theodosius set for him. Maybe in those days you still had to actually be Emperor to do that, or maybe he didn't realize that he could have done without being Emperor...after all he was the first of the Ruling Marshals. Whatever, he didn't. 
 
Hey, how did I suddenly make Signifer anyway?? Does this mean I can cross-post to Syria PLEASE Legate eh??? I'll take the Thirteenth, the Tenth even, I'll go latrine orderly as long as it's sandy.... 
 
L Spurius Rutabaga Cocles 
Signifer ad spem legionis Syriacae 
bloody XI Claudia 
bloody Durostorum

11-06-2002, 03:07 AM

I can't leave this one alone it seems, now that I've time and a little red wine beside me. But it occurs to me that the restoration of 270-284 owes a lot to some decisions by some very remarkable individuals, Aurelian first and foremost. He could have kept on as the other Barracks Emperors had, fighting senseless civil wars until he himself was slaughtered. We have to assume that he inherited a fairly good Army from Gallienus. But he also spotted that there was real patriotism for Rome throughout the shattered Empire and a desperate need among those who counted for the horrors to end, and he worked it like nobody's business. That is called statecraft. 
 
He went first against Tetricus, the Gallic Emperor, who took two looks around and quit. We can be sure that the classic storiy that Tetricus deserted his Army in battle has way more to it than that if it happened that way at all. A deal was done, and it was done with the support of Tetricus' officers, two Emperors don't just sneak off to a bar for a quiet chat the night before battle. And it could only have been done if Tetricus had known Aurelian as a man of his word, and he was taking one HELL of a leap of faith even so. 
 
Aurelian went on to the East. En route, he rescued several Asian cities from the Goths, and risked his own life to keep his troops from plundering Tyana: "These are Roman cities...we are fighting to free them. When we catch up with the barbarians, then you will have your loot." You don't hear that very often in ancient history - or in ANY history, come to think. He had gonads down to his knees to pull that one off. (It is an utter fabrication that in the ensuing battle against the Goths, the war-cry was GO, NADS, GO!. Lampridius must have been drunk when he wrote that one. Oh never mind...) 
 
He had to take Palmyra down by force, there really seems to have been non-Roman nationalism at work there. But even after it revolted again, he spared Zenobia. She and Tetricus graced his Triumph, that was inevitable, part of the game. But right thereafter Tetricus got a good civilian job as Corrector Lucaniae, and Zenobia got a villa and a pension. H M D Parker calls her treatment 'almost cavalier', but Aurelian knew what he was doing. The Empire was so tired, and so desperate for peace, that he knew that a reputation for conciliation and clemency was the way to go and he went it. How many of his officials will have advised him to do them both quietly as soon as they were out of sight?? For that matter, given that murder was the way of the world, is it not a mark of Aurelian's standing among his officers that nobody even tried any dirty work while his back was turned? One nasty word over too much wine would have been enough - 'Who will rid me of this turbulent priest etc.??' Migod, maybe Aurelian didn't DRINK?? No...no, please Mitra no... 
 
Aurelian was assassinated, apparently 'by mistake' (Oh @#%$ you mean the poor bastard really wasn't going to get rid of us??') and the Army, used to doing as it damn pleased for 50 years, was so appalled that it actually let the Senate choose an Emperor (and I'd LOVE to have been a fly on the wall at those negotiations!) He was succeeded by Probus, another brief but great Emperor, whose sole recorded comment seems to have been, 'By gosh, if we keep going like this, we won't need armies any more!' <dusting his hands>. The soldiers must have believed him, because they killed him (wow, job security really is a killer issue!). Then Diocletian took over, and that was that as far as the Barracks Emperor era went. And not a moment too soon! 
 
It may be true that a man can only take what his times hand him. But how he grabs it...oh, there's the story - and the history. 
 
E 
Signifer ad spem legionis Syriacae 
bloody XI Claudia 
bloody Durostorum

11-06-2002, 08:39 AM

I rather suspect that if Vegetius had indeed been a serving or ex- military man his work would have been less of an Epitome (i.e. collecting together bits from other sources) and would have been more directly about current practice. 
 
It is possible that he wrote the first book as a way of showing he was up to mark for a good job in the civil service - it was a way of proving he was educated and literate. IIRC he may have been a high ranking civilian from some evidence. The emperor may never have even seen his work. 
 
His work does contain much useful information and advice - after all some of his sources were very good - and in the renaissance such a collection would have been seen as useful. But it doesn't really say anything about Vegetius' own experiences.

11-07-2002, 01:45 AM

I agree, Nick, we can't know anything about his background. 
 
Couple of things though - it was de rigeur in literary/historical circles to epitomize at that point in history, so we can't blame him for doing that for the sake of literary legitimacy, but it was even more de rigeur to embellish your prose. He did the one but not the other, he is spare to the point of rudeness for the times. That makes you wonder indeed - but he very clearly had a Message. He didn't only epitomize either, he says frankly (for instance) that his time has nothing to learn from the ancients about cavalry, but everything about infantry. He was able to bring a critical viewpoint to bear. 
 
I agree that the Emperor probably never saw his stuff...but think of all the stuff that gets sent at a modern head of government (even a competent one!) that he never sees. It could have been circulated in the senior bureaucracy...almost had to have been, because it was preserved, and in not just one copy. Somebody thought it was worth preserving, which means it got fairly widely circulated in opinion-making circles, which were comparatively small. There was no such thing as 'popular input' in those days, you had to KNOW somebody, or preferably many somebodies, and Vegetius seems to have known them. 
 
Put all that together and I come up with an informed, connected, Man With a Mission, and I admit that I'm drawing a long bow here. 
 
I've known Men With Missions, they're frankly pains in parte posteriore. He clearly didn't influence the decision makers of his day (maybe they didn't like his prose style, or he was personally too pushy??), and indeed by his time the Army may have been too far gone for his solutions to have been realistic (Men With Missions tend not to do well at political realities.) 
 
But he did leave a wonderful textbook for the Renaissance - a good enough one that for 1000 years it was preserved (and the first couple of hundred would have been the toughest) and a wonderful mine of information about the Army before his time that we'd otherwise never have had. 
 
E

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