Slitherine

Foederati and the Roman army of the C5th are a very tricky subject IMO as we just have so little information to go on. Even something like the oft mentioned (in modern works) Gothic settlement of 382AD is something we know virtually nothing about other than Goths settled within the empire - there are no real records of what the settlement actually was and what it entailed despite what is written in a lot of modern books.

Richard has given what you might call the top down view of how the list was done, and we decided to stick to a fairly traditional approach.

If I were to write the list again I'd probably do it differently (Richard might not though ) and also probably change the cut off date between the Dominate and Foederate - I'd also be tempted to include Alaric's "Gothic" army and its successors to 419AD in the Foederate list. But that is rather hypothetical.

I'd make one comment on the original post on this topic in relation to:

Barbarian Armies in this period (AD 451) like Early Ostrogothic, Later Visigothic and Gepides can already field 'armored' Cavalry!

In that those Germanic armies mentioned have a very limited number of Armoured cavalry which, if we are being honest, are pretty speculative for a mass battle situation.

Out of interest, what would you change the transition date to?

Death of Theodosius I.

Ah! Considerably earlier than I was thinking, but now you mention it it makes a lot of sense!

At the Frigidus we hear of a couple of large traditional style Roman armies, albeit with significant numbers of Goths and Franks assisting...after that I'm not sure we hear an awful lot about achievements of "native" Roman forces? Plus 395 is quite symbolic as the last time the Empire was unified.

I was thinking maybe 405/406, based on it being the point at which the wheels visibly started to come off, rather than just wobbling quietly under the bonnet (excuse the rather dodgy mix of metaphors): before that the Empire still seemed to be reasonably in control of things and with expectations of getting back to full control at some point, after that the illusion of military strength was destroyed, the western empire was much reduced by conquest and rebellion.

ShrubMiK wrote:Ah! Considerably earlier than I was thinking, but now you mention it it makes a lot of sense!

At the Frigidus we hear of a couple of large traditional style Roman armies, albeit with significant numbers of Goths and Franks assisting...after that I'm not sure we hear an awful lot about achievements of "native" Roman forces? Plus 395 is quite symbolic as the last time the Empire was unified.

It was the symbolic aspect that attracted rather than anything based on hard evidence.

I was thinking maybe 405/406, based on it being the point at which the wheels visibly started to come off, rather than just wobbling quietly under the bonnet (excuse the rather dodgy mix of metaphors): before that the Empire still seemed to be reasonably in control of things and with expectations of getting back to full control at some point, after that the illusion of military strength was destroyed, the western empire was much reduced by conquest and rebellion.

You could quite easily argue for many other dates - which could be different between the two halves of the empire if you wanted, but I'd probably keep it the same date for ease. The fall of Stilicho could be another good date.

FWIW here is an updated Foederate list I played around with some time ago. Split over 3 image files.

Wholly Unofficial

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/7 ... directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/5 ... directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/A ... directlink

So what constitutes a "Gothic" army for this list? Eastern and Western seem clear enough.

Chris

batesmotel wrote:So what constitutes a "Gothic" army for this list? Eastern and Western seem clear enough.

Chris

Alaric's army from when the Romans posted him to Illyricum with a magister rank and access to the Roman military infrastructure (possibly). Also his successors until the settlement in Gaul. The blurb would make this clear if this was an official list