Crazy AOC! Dumb as box of rocks

Seriously, where do they come up with this stuff?

Can someone please tell me what encomics are?

https://www.aeaweb.org/resources/students/what-is-economics

Yeah, but encomics?

Yes, what are ENCOMICS???

Hahahahahahaha

The Roman Empire fell to socialism? Where in actual f**k did you hear that complete bullshit?

What you haven't heard this before?
Neither had I.

Google it, interesting how so many ppl don't know history

Aye, and you're one of them.

https://fee.org/articles/will-durant-on-diocletians-socialism/

Google the fall of the roman empire, yes they were socialist apperently YOU didn't know that look it up

The Romans not only predate the invention of socialism by a considerable margin, they also wouldn't have been the least bit interested. Their legalistic obsession and military service requirements for holding public office meant that they were more than happy to preserve their oligarchic social stratification. Their reluctance to expand the scope of Roman citizenship played a much, much larger role in declining their society than any attempt they made to flatten out the social heirarchy.

https://fee.org/articles/will-durant-on-diocletians-socialism/

Perfectly honest, it's warranted. An Empire rises, and eventually it falls.
It's not a big tragedy. Sure, it's a little sad.

Oh, the Romans were genocidal corrupt dickheads! They were terrible at thinking ahead and frequently had to be brought to the brink of death just to respond to basic social issues. THAT'S what cut their tenure as leaders of the world short. No tragedy. No sadness. The world moves on.

Well, Romans could adapt. It was just Rome Roman Empire had to adapt and reinvent itself in the wake of being sacked.

Generally speaking, they actually kind of couldn't. That's why every "barbarian" from Hannibal to Alaric was able to hand their assess to them.

Constantine had something of a forward thinking mind when he started shifting the administrative power from Rome to Byzantium and you're probably right in that this single-handedly saved the existence of Rome beyond the 500's, but I do think that was more the exception of history and not the rule.

While the idea that rome fell to socialism is absurd, your total ignorance of Roman history is equally absurd. Didn't anyone ever tell you that if you don't know what you're talking about you should just keep your mouth shut?

You going to elaborate or was being pissy your only objective?

The romans are RENOWNED for being adaptable. Any time the republic or the early empire faced a major setback, they adapted to be able to overcome it the next time around. That you actually believe that "every barbarian from Hannibal to Alaric" were able to hand them their asses shows you know virtually nothing about roman history. Looking at their conquest of the italian peninsula, greece, gaul, iberia, africa, and the middle east shows they had a remarkable ability to adapt their military based on the requirements of individual campaigns. Their ability to successfully rule over those areas and make them prosperous showed a remarkable ability to adapt their administrations to local needs and assimilate the conquered territories.

Roman citizenship was expanded time and time again, so you're wrong on that point, too. They were also VERY interested in many ideas that were certainly progressive for the time, such as the MASSIVE expansion of the power imbued in tribunes of the plebs or the plebeian assemblies and in the late Empire the massive expansion of the rights of slaves.

The decline and fall of the Romans was more due to infighting and decay of their military over time, which led to them needing to hire migratory "barbarians" as front line soldiers in exchange for giving them land within the empire. They eventually brought in so many germanics with no real loyalty to Rome that the germanics brought the western empire down largely from within.

I am more than happy to defend my position but dismissing me as ignorant without specifics is not the way to do that.

The Romans were heavy infantry specialists. That should not be news to you. They excelled at conditioning their troops to be big giant tank men who could butcher people all day long and construct infrastructure on the field - and that's it. And don't get me wrong: boy could they get some mileage out of that! But they never understood cavalry, which meant that cavalry-specialist tribes like the Parthians and the Huns could make their lives miserable. They never understood ambushes, which allowed Hannibal to massacre about a fifth of the entire Roman population in one single battle. And they were TERRIBLE sailors - they didn't understand water, which gave the sea-faring Norse and Vandal tribes pretty much free reign over whatever Roman lands they wanted. The Romans were a one-trick pony that they did very very well, but when faced with an enemy that did not play by heavy-infantry rules, they were absolutely baffled - time and time again, from the days of their humble beginnings to the very last days of Constantinople. They could not adapt to different tactics. Now, where is the lie in what I wrote?

Roman citizenship could not keep up with the needs of the empire. They expanded it when politics forced them to, when they had no other choice - but when the empire stretched from Iberia to Anatolia and tribes who had been living under them for close to a millenium still could not get citizenship, then the loyalty of those tribes to do their part to keep invading raids out of Roman lands just crumbled. A small handful of Roman politicians saw value in turning that around by awarding citizenship to key tribes; famously, Julius Caesar gave the cis-Alpine Gauls their dues for supporting him in the civil war. But the reason they kept on having to hire THEIR OWN PEOPLE as mercenaries was because there was too much reluctance to grant Roman priviliges to people who were serving them but were never fully compensated for their loyalty. Now, where is the lie there?

So let me ask you this: even if you disagree with the conclusions or the perspective of what I'm writing, am I coming across as someone who just doesn't know much about Roman history? Or, wait, you said that I had a TOTAL ignorance of Roman history: am I coming across as someone with a total lack of knowledge on the subject?

The lie in what you wrote is that you completely disregard the existence of auxiliaries in the roman military - those roles that the Romans themselves did not focus on they recruited from local people who WERE proficient in it, thereby giving their army the flexibility it needed. This PROVES their tactical adaptability and their understanding of the necessity of battlefield roles that the typical legionary didn't fill. As far as navy goes, you're utterly incorrect. The roman navy was THE naval superpower in the Mediterranean for HUNDREDS of years. They had a very rough time against the Carthaginian navy and adapted their naval tactics so drastically that the next time the Roman and Carthaginian navies met, the Carthaginians were utterly demolished. The Romans continued that tradition of naval dominance from the Punic wars all the way into the late empire.

Whether or not Roman citizenship kept up with the needs of the empire is entirely a matter of conjecture. I believe that in all, the Romans were actually fairly liberal in extending citizenship. Certainly more willing to make citizens of their subjects than any of the major neighboring powers. Citizenship could be earned whereas in most places in that time period citizenship was granted by birth ONLY(in the regions where the concept of citizenship even existed at all, as there were plenty of kingdoms that had no intention of giving their people special protections or rights).

You have some knowledge on the subject, sure. I'll admit I was wrong there. But it seems like you have a very selective approach on what the Romans did or did not do or could or could not do. You seem to ignore(ignorance?) several things that even amateur historians know to be true about the Romans in order to promote the idea that they were oppressive savages who couldn't adapt to the time. Virtually the ONLY thing so far that I can agree with you on as far as your original statements goes is that the romans were corrupt and (at least by modern standards) genocidal.

I'll also throw in since I forgot to in the above post - by the late empire roman infantry was not nearly as heavy as in the days of Caesar or Aurelius, and in the eastern part of the empire(where the Romans tended to encounter the most cavalry heavy armies) there was a growing focus on heavy cavalry over infantry.

Local recruitment works great until your enemy has some kind of kinship with your auxiliaries and can convince them or bribe them to change sides. This happened many times during Roman decline and meant that uprisings were very costly. This, in no small part, motivated the Romans to be particularly heavy-handed with the way they responded to dissent to their authority, and even by the standards of the time the public often found it shocking. The Senate ate it up, but it shouldn't be news to you that the Senate did not always have their thumb on the pulse of public opinion.

The Romans were the dominant naval power because they owned the land around the waters, and because the Mediterranean was much more forgiving than the oceans. They learned naval warfare from the Carthaginians but after the Punic wars, they did not regard their navy as important until really the late Byzantine era. The post of admiral was not particularly respected; it was usually given to senior figures looking at retirement and there was something of a stigma that the admiral was long past his prime. They certainly put no work into the naval arms race, and by the time of the invasions of Britain you start to see people writing about how inadequate their naval technology really was for their needs.

"I believe that in all, the Romans were actually fairly liberal in extending citizenship." This was a hot button issue throughout the history of the empire and it comes up again and again. We could go back and forth on it all day. That said, I honestly do not think the Romans could be called liberal in their concept of citizenship. It really suited their oligarchic model of tax collection and wealth generation to have governors with inordinate powers to collect from their conquered tribes, and granting citizenship would mean they'd lose access to a lot of that ability to straight up exploit their subjugated peoples. I'm not aware that citizenship could be earned unless granted to the whole tribe.

"You seem to ignore several things that even amateur historians know to be true about the Romans" That's the thing about nuance: it doesn't care how common an idea has become embedded over time. Sometimes those are the exact narratives you have to question.

"in order to promote the idea that they were oppressive savages who couldn't adapt to the time" I hate to be the one to break this to you, but there's an entire religion based on this idea. It's massively popular - I'm sure you've heard of it.

Fake news

Another one that doesn't know history Google the fall on the Roman empire

Sir Edward Gibbons wrote the most definitive work on the subject. You have read that, haven't you?

https://fee.org/articles/will-durant-on-diocletians-socialism/

Lol. An opinion piece from an untrustowrthy source full of buzzwords, you sure showed us.

It was going to die anyways. Rome was divided over and over again, and even more so with Diocletian's splitting the Empire into 4 parts. In its dying years, the Romans had the visigoths, it couldn't maintain its land in Britain. it was time for it to end. And Rome never truly died. Romans never truly died (Byzantine was just a second Rome). It adapted.

When you don't know anything about socialism, and you don't know anything about Rome, and you don't know anything about economics, and you also don't know anything about spelling things correctly....
So you say that the roman empire fell to socialism....
Boy, what a riot.