Not likely, what people tended to ignore was that innovation was practically at a standstill during the Roman empire, sure they "adopted" useful methods from those they conquered, but never invented much themselves.
Take for example Classical Athens, in order to create it's middle class it had roughly one slave for every two free men (note the exclusion of women). Rome was no different except in scale, it still used wooden ploughs that broke often and had to be forced down with human force, it still used the less efficient 2 crop rotation system, it never developed the overshoot or undershoot watermill, and since the default solution was to throw more slave labor at something menial labor eventually became despised and no-citizen of status was interested in productivity improvements.
The Empire was in terminal decline, it was reliant on it's military power which was only possible with the surplus slaves offered. As soon as the supply of slaves ran dry the military could no longer be supported and became mutinous (more so than usual). There's a reason it was only around the late middle ages that professional armies became possible again, Roman technology simply didn't allow for that much agricultural surplus without slavery.
This is a pretty darn daft argument. How do you factor in that most areas reached maximal productivity in the second century, long after the phase of initial conquest which brought in the real glut of slaves into the state? And, even more so, why were places like Syria and Palestine more prosperous at the start of the sixth century AD than they had been at any point in their history?
Furthermore, how do you account for the Byzantines and various Islamic states retaining paid professional armies throughout the medieval era?
Are you seriously arguing that from the late Republic right up until the Islamic conquest, the Roman state was in one long period of terminal decline? Are you a Marxist historian by any chance?
QuoProQuid said:
I would argue that the Western Roman Empire DID survive post-476. Only if you consider Rome to be the line of Emperors did it really end. Most of the barbarians tribes who settled in Roman territory assimilated extremely quickly. The Visgoths are the best example of this. They became virtually indistinguishable from the average Roman citizen within a generation.
Roman law continued to be practiced, Latin continued to be spoken and many Roman institutions remained in place. The Roman Senate continued to meet until the 600s and the Roman Catholic Church still exists today. Roman culture really only falls apart with the Islamic Conquests in 632, which killed the Roman trade network and brought on total economic collapse.
I'm not sure about this. Sure, Romans did not disappear overnight, but from 476 onward there was no Western Emperor for the new monarchies of the West to look to in their power struggles, and no Western imperial system for them to try to slot themselves into. Justinian's reconquest could not fully solve this problem.
I definitely agree that a really "Roman" state ended in the seventh century. Sure, the Byzantines were a continuation of the Roman state, but it was a Roman state that really had turned a corner and started moving in a very different direction, rather than one that had seen no major upheavals certainly since Diocletian, arguably since Augustus.
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To answer, the OP, you can probably get a viable WRE as late as the great expedition of 468. Anthemius was a proven decent general, and he had the full backing of the Eastern Empire behind his plan of reconquest.