Gothic settlement essay

[Erpingham]

Academia flagged this essay for me.  It's only an undergraduate work, so I doubt it contains anything original, but I know it is a topic area of interest to several forum members.

[aligern]

It is very interesting . The author sees a long process of the Roman aristocracy preferring to pay a replacement tax in gold rather than provide men for the army . This is in the context of a severe shortage of manpower ( Which is assumed, but not fully explored) . However, if soldiers serve for 20 years and there are roughly half a million in the Empire then all that is needed each year is 25,000 men across the whole Empire which is not a huge amount from a population of 60 million or so , nor is the arrival of 20 to 40,000 Gothic warriors going to solve the problem if the losses at Adrianople were 20,000 Roman soldiers.
Members will likely  be most doubtful that the Roman army became mainly staffed by barbarians. Work on the names of Roman officers has shown that there were many barbarians in the upper echelons, but  not that they were dominant, there is also the question as the whether a third generation laeti  settler is any less Roman than a reluctantly drafted coloni farmer.