>>17852072>1.You have not given a single evidence as to why relying on those actually degraded the military capabilities of Rome. I can give you one, a geopolitical one, in that those same foederatis could demand and did demand physical compensation for their work - which roman soldiers already did in the form of salary instead of land and titles - but those aren't MILITARY deficiencies
>2. [About bloodsport]The point is that our high entertainment still relies on bloodsport, if only illusionary. Rome severely regulated that type of entertainment in the same way we regulate media in order to avoid IRL gore and abuse. The most they could do to satisfy the public's craving for bloodsport, unlike US with digital media, is that they either had to use slaves, or purely volunteers. By the time of the splitting on the empire after Theodosius, the fights were also phased out by massive donations instead for racing, which was tremendously popular in the Eastern Roman Empire.
>2. [About culture]Rome's cultural sophistication often is lauded for their authorships in historical treatises, poetry, political apologies, and legal sciences. You just nitpick the elements of "culture" which are or are not laudable in your eyes arbitrarily. Authors like Ovid are still studied to this day for a reason.
>3.You have not given a reason why exactly Rome's economy needed to skyrocket. I could argue "soldier's wage", but again the military switched models to instead - theoretically, Theodosius did my boy Alaric dirty - granting fiefdoms and positions in the hierarchy to their mainly foederati-heavy armies.
>4.AI slop repeating itself due to its pea-brained language model
>5. Rome didn't "move on" because the Western Half collapsed before it did, and Diocletian basically already did most of the legwork by developing manorial serfdom in the first place as an alternative economic model for the development of the coloniae.
Slavery was to be slowly phased out but the Empire died before.
