The last legions: The “barbarization” of military identity in the Late Roman West

Abstract

Traditional scholarship has argued that during the fourth and fifth centuries the waning Roman Empire came to rely to a large extent on recruits of foreign, barbarian origin for its defence. Such a pro-barbarian recruitment policy resulted in the weakening and collapse of Roman military capability in the West, and in the fragmentation and disappearance of the Western Roman state. The article re-examines the “barbarization” theory, following models postulated by M. J. Nicasie and Hugh Elton, as well as the recent results of identity studies focusing on the ancient world. By using the concept of the “barbarian” in political, rather than ethnic terms, the article presents the “barbarization” process not as a prime suspect for the empire’s fall, but as another way for the Roman state to maximize its resources and bolster its defences.

Keywords

• Late Roman army
• identity in Late Antiquity
• “barbarization”
• empire studies
• frontier studies