In Ottoman Sultanate … foreigner with cannon was what happened to the Walls of Byzantium, yes 🙁
Although I’m not actually very convinced about this ‘explanation’ – Rome certainly wasn’t stagnant when it came to military technological advancements and application, across much of its history.
This is a bit of a meme-post from me, so I’m resisting the temptation to go and proffer a more comprehensive overview – but straight-up we can point toward an array of evidentiary supports to prove otherwise.
And while it is true that there was no Industrial Revolution of the kind which so comprehensively changed things up when it came to pass in Northern Europe well over a thousand years after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire … that’s kinda not the point?
As you can appreciate – the fact the Romans didn’t manage to somehow speedrun their way through to develop military technologies which wouldn’t be seen til the latter half of the next millennium … doesn’t actually tell us anything particularly meaningful as to either a) actual Roman (military) technological evolutions, and/or b) why Rome wasn’t still around to be there for when the actual Industrial Revolution hit so many centuries later.
Anyway, the guy with the maxim gun comment turns out to be a “Visiting Professor of physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation, the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University” – and what he had intended to get at, with the maxim gun (per the rest of his tweet, anyway), was that Rome failed because it hadn’t had, and I quote: “an Enlightenment.”
Which, strictly speaking, isn’t something which guaranteed the persistence of various imperial efforts who actually were around for said Capital E Enlightenment, either … but I digress.
I’m not sure what they’d (the Romans) do with Quantum Physics, either – but it does occur to me that it’s kinda interesting this guy’s chosen to tether “the Maxim Gun” to “the Enlightenment”, rather than “the Industrial Revolution”, in any case.
I guess that’s what “Enlightenment” entails, then.
Anyway …
Let’s get back to the Roman military tech
To quote Dr Kevin Greene upon the subject of Roman technological progress more generally :
“It is simply not true that literary and archaeological evidence present a picture of low technical achievement and lack of progress”
Further, from Dr J. C. N. Coulston :
“In order to study military equipment produced by any pre-industrial society, it is necessary to put aside potentially anachronistic assumptions about centralised design, uniformity and mass production based on the practices of more modern armies. However, examination of the cultural traits and components of the Late Roman army involves an additional complication. Here, the over-burden of what might be termed ‘Decline-and-Fall’ studies has caused military equipment to be linked with certain pre-suppositions of declining efijiciency and technological capacity, some-times backed by a selective reading of ancient authors, with an assumption that the army’s ‘traditional’ discipline was sapped, its culture ‘barbarised’ through an influx of mainly ‘Germanic’ personnel, and its equipment poorly supplied and maintained in comparison with previous provision.”
[…]
“The supposed decline in the use of armour by infantry has been discussed at length elsewhere, but it would seem that there was no real diminution of provision, rather the reverse, with more attention paid in the 4th c. to physical coverage.”
[…]
“Roman archery equipment was dominated by the Levantine tradition in terms of bow construction, arrow-head forms, bow-cases and quivers. Curiously, this entirely overshadowed any influence from steppe nomad archers contacted along the Danube until the appearance of the Huns in the 4th c.104 Then, new bows were introduced alongside new saddle types with a heightened emphasis on the skills of mounted archery. During the 4th-5th c., this new prevalence shifted the tactical balance away from the infantry main battle line (with cavalry wings) towards lines of armoured horse archer formations supported by infantry. Further reinforcement of the process came with the advent of the Avars in the 6th c. The development of mounted bowmen as the tactically decisive troops meant that some of the more energetic emperors and generals were lauded for their archery skills, and even occasionally depicted as horse-archers.
In a discussion of the cultural make-up of Roman military equipment, it is easy to overlook the continuity of Hellenising elements. These were present throughout in the decoration of artefacts, notably in peltaform motifs, but more functionally in the continuous development and improvement of artillery. Design theory could only really be expressed through Greek mathematics, and there was a continuous Greek literary tradition. However, within the Roman imperial army, empirical design appears to have been paramount, leading to great improvement in construction, mobility and performance, and to the development of new weapon forms, such as onagri and iron-frame ballistae. New emphasis on the mural defence of cities in the 3rd–4th c. might be represented as a return to Hellenistic period design, but, like the artillery, it actually represented a new stage of application and enhancement.”
I could, of course, go on at some length – but as i say … meme post so ‘low effort’ tonight, I’m afraid.
Perhaps I require more Enlightened Revolution.
[-C.A.R.]
arya-akasha 