rome\'s most fearsome enemy

[Peroni]

I wouldn't like to face an army of Dacians armed with the falx! hock:

[Goffredo]

Just respect to Empire (post Augustus), apart from other Romans, strictly in terms of direct damage and effects, not indirect ones, that directly led to decline and collapse of the West, my personal listing of the most dangerous enemies of Rome are:
1) Sassanians
2) Goths
3) Huns and their allies
4)...
last) Germans

Overall I think the Rhine boundary was relatively quite stable. The real enemies that really caused major historical consequences, that "changed the world", were those along the Danube and the Eastern Sassanian theaters. The Rhine became a problem and was breached only once the empire's resilience was lost. The resilience was directly lost due to the long term effect of the huge expenses against "Persia" and the relatively more immediate catastrophic failure of the Gothic problem that culminated in the revolt of the mass of goths that were allowed to cross the Danube.

The "Goths" were more sophisticated and became a truly huge demographic and military problem once they got pushed up against the Danube by the mounting hunnic pressure and were allowed to enter the empire in a disorganized way. The confusion led to their revolt and impossibility of eliminating their cancerous presence. Later the Huns themselves arrived in Pannonia with a huge mess of allies.

In the East the Sassanians, ever since Shapor 1, really did match and occasionally over-shadowed Rome's power. Ever since Shapor the two "equal" empires were periodically at each others throats. In the third century the coups and roman internal wars of the third century, the Goths, and this new truly mortal Persian enemy, there was a huge increase in size of army (30% increase of army size and expenses causing major economic, social and political effects that changed the nature of the empire). Ultimately, a hundred years leter, the Gothic problem was handled terribly, as mentioned above. But ultimately they were induced to move west and leave the eastern half of the empire. But by then the economically weaken west and the fragmented and bastardized army could no longer manage the effects of independent and ultimately hostile forces inside its territory. The Rhine collapsed from inside and was easily overrun by the "Germans". Once inside the west the empire could hardly hope to expel the barbarian "kingdoms" and the cancer grew more and more. Later even the Huns were induced/decided by the eastern empire to move to the weaker west. The richer east, without the Gothic and then hunnic problem, reorganized and managed to deal with its only really long-term dangerous enemy, the Persians. The eastern empire and the Persians kept fighting and ultimately the exhausted themselves and were then unable to resist Muslim expansion.

In a fair comparison to the world-shaking effects of the aggressive Sassanian neighbors, of the Gothic problem, and the hunnic invasion, the Rhine enemies had practically no effect in the everyday life of Romans and had no direct effects in the collapse of the western half except at the very end. Indirect maybe, but them maybe not. The "Germans" of the Rhine, as enemies, were for centuries relatively trivial, almost to the point of being irrelevant.

[S SEVERUS]

Republic :
Hannibal was the most dangerous.

Principate :
The kingdom of Dacians - Domitian had soms serious trouble wtih them and Trajan needed a big army to defeat them.

The Marcomanni - It took M Aurelius a lot of hard fighting to subdue them.

The Sassanids - I follow Goffredo.

The Goths - were a real menace after Theodosius.

[TITVS SABATINVS AQVILIVS]

Fearsome? Why? Do you really think the Romans were in fear of someone? I think that what they could feel, facing the danger, was attention, worry, alarm, maybe..., but not true fear.

I think that as "Populus Romanus" it was the least inclined to feel the true, real fear, almost "genetically". It was a state of mind that derived from the republican history in my opinion: too many dangers were surpassed, yes, through great pains, but always surpassed. A calm certainty that could have been doped, always more, their reflexes, in a figurative sense, of course, like less or more, a nobleman that does not realize to be ruining his properties and gives his bad situation just a cursory glance: he's not in fear, is just annoyed or irritated. Of course, I'm not telling about the "immediate" fear, like when people face an actual siege or raid, but about that fear, or better, that anxiety, caused by "overhanging" or "imminent" dangers.

I think that tells the Romans apart in comparison with other peoples, like the Cartaginians (may I ?), the Gauls, the Germans, the Dacians, the Marcomanni and Quadi, the Goths, or even the Sassanians, whose aggressiveness could directly derive from their "deep" and real fear of Roma, and is similar to some dogs aggressiveness: impressive, but due to the fear.

An accelerated changing could be in the last times of the Empire as the last Romans had lost totally their spiritual strength derived from the classical vision of the world, and were unable to spiritually react and fight back as was "normal" to their, not too much, remote ancestors.

Valete,

[Tarbicus]

A Roman with scars on the back of his body was a shameful thing, and it was nothing to do with slaves. The more scars you had on the front the higher you were held in esteem.

[egfroth]

Hey guys! The Empire didn't end in the 5th century! It kept going for another 1000 years.

You can't leave out the Arabs (captured HUGE sections of the Empire in the 8th century), the Russian Vikings and, finally, the Turks. And you should probably add the Franks and Normans to that list (including, of course, the Crusaders of the First and Fourth Crusades).

[Ioannis]

The Roman Empire survived until 1453 in the form of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. In that case, it was the Ottoman Turks that put an end to this magnificent empire.

[egfroth]

Precisely - and many times the Romans of the Byzantine era faced enemies of considerably greater military sophistication than those of the earlier centuries - continuing the Empire for another millenium after the "end" of the Empire with the fall of the West.

Gibbon has a lot to answer for.

[Ron Andrea]

I would suggest that the biggest enemy of Imperial Rome was time. Entropy is the natural disintegration of order into chaos unless outside energy is continually applied.

In Rome's case, the cost of maintaining its huge armies, huge bureaucracies, and the subsidizing the increasingly demanding, but unproductive population of Rome itself gradually became more than the empire could support.

Rome didn't fall so much as it fell apart. (Byzantium was a successor state, but underwent the same growth and vitality followed by decline and fall.)

Such has happened to powerful, and not-so-powerful, nations throughout history. Such also happens to businesses, sports franchises, automobiles and our bodies.

Time trashes all your trophies.

[Ioannis]

Well put Ron!

[Avatar]

The Romans themselves. Look at their history. Mad Emperors, civil war, etc...

[Antonius Lucretius]

perhaps we would all be speaking Latin still.

Er.... Excuse me.. But a lot of us still speak Latin, in its Italian, Spanish, French, and so on, variants.
It's not Cicero's Latin, but Cicero couldn't understand the archaïc latin inscriptions in his time either. Eh.. 8)

For a long time, in the early days and according to the Romans themselves, the Gauls were Rome's most dangerous enemies. Hannibal beat the Romans several times with the essential help of Gallic warriors. There was the term "tumultus gallicus" which described if I remember well a call to arms organised specifically in case of a Gallic raid.
Then after the Gauls were conquered, the Germans in the West and the Iranians (Parthians and Sassanids)in the East became Rome's most feared enemies.
In the Vth Century, Western Europe fragmented into Germanic style sub-kingdoms while the Eastern Romans exhausted themselves for centuries fighting the Iranians who exhausted themselve likewise fighting the Eastern Romans.
In the VIIth century AD the followers of one Mohammed were thus able to conquer an exhausted Persia single handedly. They eventually took Constantinople as well.
Thus were closed "the two eyes of the world".

[varistus]

Think fellow Romans might have killed more Romans than anyone else. However, if we say who killed the most Romans with a smaller field of soldiers, we would have much difficulty. Hannibal did a couple of times, Parthians perhaps , but I think the Jews did a lot of havoc man for man. Other groups had huge numberical advantages against the Romans it seems but not the Jews. Think I read about a massacre the Jews did on Cyprus against the Roman civilian population and military there , just cannot remember where I read that.

[Robert Vermaat]

Ralph, sources please.

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

Christianity

for it destroyed the classic Roman world.

M.VIB.M.