Adrian Buck’s Reviews > CORRUPTION & DECLINE OF ROME > Status Update

"putting a pecuniary value on the military service which the inhabitants of the provinces, village by village, had been accustomed to furnish....This change was the origin of many disasters to the Roman empire subsequently.

...the government was no longer [the emperors] at all. Instead it belonged to the person who had paid for a militia..

What he finds intolerable is the destruction of the patron-dependent relationship that he had for so long maintained a village under his control.

purchase of bishoprics was not uncommon in the eastern provinces...

It was thus the most natural thing in the world that the army's presence should be thus so often and universally referred to as a species of enemy occupation..

...fictitious charges almost always aimed at financial profit, whereas in the Principate they have been more often instruments or intimidation.

In the eyes of the western church, militia and morality were radically incompatible.

...there was a steady pressure across the whole front of governmental operations to introduce charges, invent fees, and generally apply the principles of private enterprise. - the UK?

In the civil service of the late empire some thirty to thirty five thousands were employed, to be set against perhaps 300 career civil servants under Caracalla.

Sheer abundance of legislation matched it's fuzziness and contradictions, and its interpreters at every level gained a corresponding increase in power. - Hungary under Orbán too?