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  • Writer's picturepeter clings

Two corridors of trade in the South Eastern Europe that caused the collapse of Rome

The Roman empire had also maintained trade relations with the Barbarians. Those contacts ensure peace and stability at the borders by encouraging the formation of the allies, called Foederati

In the Eastern Europe, the Romans created two corridors of trade that proved fatal in the end. I marked the two corridors on the map of the Roman Empire at its maximum extent below

One was on the Moldavian plains, the other was between the Danube and Tisza Rivers. It can be observed that none of the adjacent Roman Provinces to those corridors of entry were able to sustain any provincial civilization past 4th century. The map next is another view of the two corridors of trade with the connections to the Roman road system. At the corresponding ends at the bottom of those corridors were important commercial and military cities such as Sirmium (the highly contested future military capital of the Eastern Roman Empire) for the Iazyges, and Durostrorum Silistra for the Carpi. The two trading routes into the north allowed the Romans to stay informed about the movements of people to the North

Once that the Roman wealth (monetary and items of luxury) started being traded more with the Barbarians, that caused a vortex of human movement as the attraction was major. The lure of gold and Roman commodities became unstoppable and the news of wealth and easy money made by plunder went as far as Northern China. Those rumours of easy riches were the actual catalyst of the 1000 years of hoards after hoards of very primitive nomads poring down into the Balkans over those two corridors. In all cases the ultimate attraction was the Big Apple of the Antiquity called Constantinople. Nothing survived in the path of the Barbarian

Dacia was abandoned early on because the Roman Danubian border was breached severely by the Goth of the 3rd century. Under the leadership of their King Cniva

they broke into the Balkans in the 250AD only to be pushed back after 20 years. Meanwhile the robbed, killed and utterly devastated the adjacent Province of Dacia at will. It would have been illogical for Aurelian to maintain the isolate northern province in the Empire and keep two good legion out there nowhere Dacia had rapidly became rural without the legions. Even if those would have stayed I very much doubt there would have been wise for people to display Roman wealth only to attract the attention of the Barbarians and ask for trouble. I believe that the local people were not as naive to thinking that one Barbarian would have been better than the other. But that smarts was not inborn, it was selected. Only those categories of Romans that could fend for themselves by degrading they external wealth and hide when necessary did survive. Other probably were able to fight and defend against the first barbarian wave (the Goths), but the next wave (the Huns) got them for sure. That would have been the end of the story with the Romans in Dacia if not for the extraordinary topography of the region. The section of the population that could carry their possessions and wealth with them and become mobile, only those were able to survive. All the others, found themselves as fixed targets for the next barbarians to come for plunder

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