points by lrasinen 4 days ago | 0 comments
There's the view that republican Rome's military success was due to their public career path churning out OK military commanders at a steady rate. Not necessarily great, just good enough with a solid understanding of the basics.
The fall of that system then came about when politically ambitious characters started developing more personal and long-term relations with their troops.
I'd say that's an argument for term limits: you want them to get good but not set roots permanently.
[–] wredcoll 3 days ago
[–] ethbr1 4 days ago
There's a reason the US military cycles officers to different duty postings every 2-4 years...
What it loses in efficiency, it gains in avoiding centralization, cult of personality, and encouraging standardization.
[–] TheCoelacanth 3 days ago
Efficiency is often directly opposed to resiliency. Governments and militaries should prioritize resiliency over efficiency.
"Rome's tradition of having to serve in 'lower offices' before the higher ones meant that when aristocrats inevitably ended up in charge of entire armies they had some level of practical experience and learnings to draw on while commanding".
But yes, much is made of Rome's redundancy in terms of military strength and there's a lot of states during that period that had A King who did everything and then died in a battle and then everything collapsed.