How long could Roman Empire survive with improved infrastructure

GdwnsnHo

Banned
Hey all,

Thought that just occurred to me, what would the effect be on the longevity of the Roman Empire if it had improved communication and transportation infrastructure (or faster armies)?

Ignoring the costs right now, what would you say are the most plausible improvements that could be implemented after (to choose a spot) Diocletian takes the throne?

Currently, I have

- Naval Capacity : Improve the use of coastal transport to move soldiers
- Canals : It doesn't seem unreasonable to see the Romans build canals to improve the transport of goods
- 'Mounted Legions' : Essentially having the entire legion capable of moving at a vastly faster rate - which would require inventing the stirrup, or at least the Leather Stirrup and a better saddle. Whilst this would increase the movement speed of the legions, it may be expensive.

Communication-wise, considering they already had a pony-express system, I'm not sure what else the Romans could do
- they aren't exactly going to invent the telegraph.
- Caravanserai - I don't know if the Romans used anything like this, but could the increased security strengthen the provinces?

So what other potential developments could be used in terms of mobility and infrastructure?

Thanks!
 
Thought that just occurred to me, what would the effect be on the longevity of the Roman Empire if it had improved communication and transportation infrastructure (or faster armies)?

Actually the army was one of the major problems, the romans had. Do you really like to move this problem even faster?

Regarding ships: the romans already mainly used ships for their logistics and had buildt lots of channels where needed.
Regarding mounts: the romans improved the percentage of cavalry already from 10% in the late republic to over 20% in late empire. More was not feasible. The roman saddle was fully appropriate for heavy cavalry and no stirrups were needed.
Regarding pony-express: The romans had the cursus vehiculorum. A very well implemented and capable transportation system for goods and messages all over the ancient world. Horse-Relay was just used temporarily in emergency case. The romans were convinced, that a normal courier-system works well and is superior.

The romans had no technological problem, but a structural and political one. According to Peter Heather and other "shock-theorists" there even were no major problems at all in late empire. Just a lot of bad luck.

If you like to improve the performance of the roman army, start with answering just one simple question: How to avoid usurpations?
 
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jahenders

Banned
Agreed. Applying technology is unlikely to solve your problems if one of your biggest problems is that you can't trust your senior military/political leaders to not try to seize the throne or set up their own separate empire in whatever area you have them controlling.

Part of the problem stems from the way Rome often deployed armies/legions/soldiers -- you'd have a legion, and it's soldiers, assigned to an area for years/decades, such that it became associated with that area and that the soldiers had more affinity for that area and their legion commander than they did for Rome. If, instead, they had a centralized, professional system that allowed them to rotate their soldiers and leaders between legions and areas, you'd have less localized, and more centralized, loyalty. For example, a soldier might be assigned to Legion A in Gaul for 3-4 years, then be sent to Legion B in Illyria for 3-4 years, then Legion C in Britain, etc. This could either be done at the individual level or at a platoon-equivalent level. The senior leaders could be shuffled around similarly.

Actually the army was one of the major problems, the romans had. Do you really like to move this problem even faster?
If you like to improve the performance of the roman army, start with answering just one simple question: How to avoid usurpations?
 
Part of the problem stems from the way Rome often deployed armies/legions/soldiers -- you'd have a legion, and it's soldiers, assigned to an area for years/decades, such that it became associated with that area and that the soldiers had more affinity for that area and their legion commander than they did for Rome. If, instead, they had a centralized, professional system that allowed them to rotate their soldiers and leaders between legions and areas, you'd have less localized, and more centralized, loyalty. For example, a soldier might be assigned to Legion A in Gaul for 3-4 years, then be sent to Legion B in Illyria for 3-4 years, then Legion C in Britain, etc. This could either be done at the individual level or at a platoon-equivalent level. The senior leaders could be shuffled around similarly.

Frequent rotation of soldiers and/or units sounds very obvious. But I have read an article lately, which covers the costs of moving legions. They must have been significantly higher than with a static legion. If you rotate all legions every 3 years this costs a lot. Regardless if you rotate by legio, by cohors or by centuria. Actually, the officers starting with the centuriones rotated pretty often.

Furthermore the soldiers have been against it. They complained a lot about a lot of things and were often near to a revolt. So the emperors thought that some goodies like less movement (Hadrian) or marriage (Severus) would be no harm. Oh man, they have been soo wrong. And of course local recruitment was so cheap and convenient. Which led to the situation, that the local veteran society of the province had a lot of influence to the army.

Therefore the late roman system with locally recruited border troops and mobile fieldarmies wasn't that bad. But the Comitatenses had heavy recruitement problems due to this mobility requirement.
 
Agreed. Applying technology is unlikely to solve your problems if one of your biggest problems is that you can't trust your senior military/political leaders to not try to seize the throne or set up their own separate empire in whatever area you have them controlling.

Part of the problem stems from the way Rome often deployed armies/legions/soldiers -- you'd have a legion, and it's soldiers, assigned to an area for years/decades, such that it became associated with that area and that the soldiers had more affinity for that area and their legion commander than they did for Rome. If, instead, they had a centralized, professional system that allowed them to rotate their soldiers and leaders between legions and areas, you'd have less localized, and more centralized, loyalty. For example, a soldier might be assigned to Legion A in Gaul for 3-4 years, then be sent to Legion B in Illyria for 3-4 years, then Legion C in Britain, etc. This could either be done at the individual level or at a platoon-equivalent level. The senior leaders could be shuffled around similarly.
Actually, the Romans did this a lot. Detachments of legions would often end up sent to other parts of the empire, so you might have the bulk of, say, Legio X in Germania Superior, a vexellatio in Britannia, and a vexellatio in Syria. This was especially true by the third century. Say, Marcus Aurelius is planning a campaign in Dacia. He needs forces. So he takes a detachment from Legio X in Germania, takes a few vexellatio's from Legio XII and Legio VI in Syria (I'm making these legion numbers up, I'm not entirely sure which legion was stationed where), and takes a vexellatio from Legio III in Hispania. This is a major reason why, when Diocletian reorganized the legions, he made vexellatio's more or less the standard combat unit. Because vexellatio's of a legion were spread out all across the empire, it just made sense from an efficiency standpoint.
 
There are several reasons, why roman armies usurped. Sometimes driven by the legates, sometimes by the soldiers or both.

One reason was a mix based on homeland, emperor cult and war on multiple fronts.

The mess started during Marcus Aurelius reign, when the romans were fighting the parthians while the marcomanns started to attack Pannonia. This should become an usual situation in the 3rd century after the more aggressive Sassanids kept the romans busy in the East, which opened up opportunities for the new and bigger german confederations to cross the border and plunder the western provinces.

The roman army had changed over the first two centuries. They were more and more recruited locally. The legionairs often were the sons of veterans which settled near to the location of their former legion in the province. That means, the legionair of the 3rd century, was not just serving the emperor, they also defended their homeland. And this homeland was first the province not the empire.

As Slydessertfox mentioned above, vexillationes moving all around the empire were very usual from the 2nd century on and such a rather small weakening of the province homeforces was quite accepted. But if the shit hits the fan, the emperor asked for more troops and was willing to danger one front in order to win a war elsewhere.

Now the soldiers revolted. But how to win a war against an emperor or even win a war against germans without an emperor? As the very succesful roman propaganda teached every inhabitant of the empire over centuries, the emperor is superman. Just the godly emperor himself is invinvible. He can do everything and solve every problem, the emperor cult said. Actually this was proven right often. Whenever the emperor personally took care about an unsolvable problem in the provinces of administrative or military nature, it was solved.

So if an army revolted, they were conviced to have just a chance, if acclaiming their own emperor. Also from a legates point of view, it was pretty clear, that revolting against the emperor means his death. The only chance to survive was killing the emperor and replace him.

Interestingly, the same soldiers, which declined to march from the Danube to the Euphrat and leave their homeland unguarded, were very willing to march to Rome after the initial danger was removed. So it is a good guess, that homeland was not the only reason for usurpation from a soldiers point of view. Greed (donatives, service conditions, status, ...) came directly after this initial reason.

Actually I have no easy answer, how to solve that problem with the roman army in this huge empire. Diocletian and Constantine tried to counteract with their military reform. But there were still more than enough civil wars in the late empire, to weaken it.

Technology will not help. That's for sure!
 
While we're at it, does a fully mounted army really move faster than a foot one, over strategic distances? I have my doubts about this, especially if the general wants to keep enough horses in good shape for the end of the journey. But I'm genuinely asking.
 
While we're at it, does a fully mounted army really move faster than a foot one, over strategic distances? I have my doubts about this, especially if the general wants to keep enough horses in good shape for the end of the journey. But I'm genuinely asking.

It depends.

There is an article of an US cavalry officer in the 19th century. He proofed, that infantry will overtake cavalry after around 4 days.

This is, if no supply points for the horses are prepared in advance. If the horses have to graze frequently, they waste a lot of time and the small amount of extra food they can carry give them just an advantage for a few days.

The romans used perhaps pack mule accompanying the cavalry. But that will extend the range just for a few days. So planning and logistics is key for the range of a fast cavalry army. Inside of the empire, that was usually no problem for the romans.

Another issue was raised by M. Junkelmann, who rode with his team some 100 miles thru Europe during an archeological experiment with equipment and horses as close as possible to the ancient ones ("Die Reiter Roms", Vol I-III). He mentioned that without horse-shoes the range of a horse is limited to some hundred miles, before they have to rest for months to rebuildt the hooves. Especially, if the cavalry uses roman streets. Perhaps they rode beside the streets on a kind of unpaved shoulder? I have no clue, how the romans managed to move an ala from the Rhine to the Euphrat in a reasonable timeframe. Perhaps they used mainly ship-transport for the cavalry?

On the other hand I lately heard about some horse races which have much more stressable hoves than others. I guess it was a spanish race. So who knows how far a roman horse could really walk?
And finally the romans had horse-shoes. But these things really looked like shoes and were just fixed loosely to the horses hooves. So with these ancient horse-shoes a horse can just walk with infantry speed and never go fast without a high risk of iniury.

So I guess, that roman cavalry rode beside the roads with special races and ancient horse shoes. Which gave their horses the maximum range, but just infantry speed on longer distances. Don't get me wrong. 500 km with cavlry speed was possible. But 500km means nothing looking to the size of the roman empire. I also have read, that 80 km per day is a reasonable speed for cavalry. But how many days in a row without resting? Infantry usually marched 4 days in a row with about 30km per day before they rested a day.
 
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