The fruits of bureaucratic benevolence

From Samuel Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, London, 1898, p. 234 (a book recently cited in the Ottawa Citizen):

The system of bureaucratic despotism, elaborated finally by Diocletian and Constantine, produced a tragedy in the truest sense, such as history has seldom exhibited; in which, by an inexorable fate, the claims of fancied omnipotence ended in a humiliating paralysis of administration; in which determined effort to remedy social evils only aggravated them till they became unendurable; in which the best intentions of the central power were, generation after generation, mocked and defeated alike by irresistible laws of human nature, and by hopeless perfidy and corruption in the servants of government.

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Dill believes that socio-economic mismanagement on the part of the state was the direct cause of Rome's collapse (though he also points to a cultural malaise which might, in turn, have been the reason such mismanagement went unchecked). He argues that although there was a widespread aversion to and contempt for military service in the latter days of the Empire, what military forces the Romans did retain continued, right up to the end, to be markedly superior to their barbarian opponents, on a man-for-man basis. Rome had simply wrecked the economic foundation necessary to support an adequate military establishment.

In 356 an immense multitude of the Alemanni inundated Eastern Gaul. Julian, the future Emperor, who was then a mere youth, with no previous training in the art of war, was in command of only 13,000 men, of whom few were veteran troops. Yet in a very short time not an enemy was left in Gaul, and the victors were carrying the war far into the heart of Germany . . . .
      Of the same character were the great invasions of the opening years of the fifth century. A great army under Radagaesus, which, according to the lowest estimate, numbered 200,000 men, crossed the Alps and penetrated into Etruria. That the government regarded the danger as serious, may be inferred from the edict which called the slaves to arms. Yet Stilicho, with a force of only 30,000 regular troops, and some Hun and Alan auxiliaries, signally defeated that great host . . . .
      The invasion of Attila in 451 was probably the most appalling danger, in respect to the numbers of his motley host, which the Romans had had to face for ages. Aetius had only a handful of troops under his command, and although he was able to rally to his support Visigoths, Franks, Burgundians, and Saxons, yet the credit of defeating that fierce and crafty power, which had reduced all central Europe to vassalage, must be awarded to Roman daring and organisation. In the last days of the independence of Auvergne and of the Western Empire, a mere handful of troops under the gallant Ecdicius, and raised by his own resources, kept the Visigothic army for months at bay, and the Romans showed in this final struggle an almost contemptuous recklessness. (pp 240–242.)