I think the weight of scholarship supports the "decentralized" position for the Western Empire. A lot of the later Emperors did come from the peripheries. Some of them ruled only very briefly. The amount of control that Rome, including an Emperor, could ever exert over the provinces was very low compared to a modern or even an early modern state. In and around Rome a later Emperor who could command the loyalty of the Praetorian Guard was, in modern terms, a dictator. Outside a day's march of the Guard, what Rome could do, and this would decrease with distance, was basically raise or lower taxes, which might or might be enforced or enforceable, levy some men for troops, requisition some grain or livestock, maybe issue a more ore less enforceable demand for regular supplies, and occasionally replace the provincial bureaucracy. The slide from late Rome to the early Middle Ages was, as Henri Perienne has argues, just a matter of degree.
--- "Steven L. Robinson" <srobin21 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> But wasn't the ruling of the late Empire, under
> Diocletian. centralized, with the power increasing
> vested in the hands of the Emperors and military
> commanders, and taken away from the traditional
> rulers, like the Senatorial class?
>
> In one area, the late Empire was NOT integrated.
> This was with regard to the Germanic peoples of
> Europe. Although the Empire relied on Gernam foot
> soldiers, there were few Roman leaders who were
> German - Stilicho being an exception, and my
> understanding is that they were excluded from the
> elite generally. SR
> -------------- Original message --------------
> From: "Jerry Monaco" <monacojerry at gmail.com>
>
>
> But Chris's original question was how "integrated"
> was the elite in the late empire. My impression is
> that most of the elite rulers at the center of the
> empire, by the time of late empire, came from the
> "periphery". Is this true? Justin, do you know?
> But also it seems to me that the real day to day
> running of the empire was done by local elites,
> while the military "center" of the empire was run by
> the dynasts.
>
> Jerry> From: "Jerry Monaco" <monacojerry at gmail.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Query on Roman Empire
> Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 18:06:52 +0000
>
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