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The factors that made the Roman Empire hard to defend were mostly based on communication and transportation. The empire sprawled from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black sea with the city of Rome roughly in the middle. If a communication were to go out from Italy to say, Egypt or Syria, it could take as long as two weeks to get there, depending on the weather, of course. The same amount of time for a return letter. The time frame was slightly better in Europe as the messages went via the roads. However no matter how good the Roman roads were, the horses could only go so fast and so far in one day. The transporting of extra troops to a trouble area was also slow and cumbersome, depending on the number of troops moved and the distance they had to travel.

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12y ago

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The Roman Empire was hard to defend because of their land was so widespread, there wasn't enough troops to cover the entire area, so they were stationed at the border. Invading Germanic tribes broke into their defenses and followed their roads to the heart of the city and took over. Not only that but there was internal rebellion from the troops because the wages of their troops weren't being paid enough and were minting lower value coins.

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9y ago
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The sheer size of the empire made it harder to defend. As Rome added more territory, it needed (obviously) more troops to defend the borders and they were forced to depend to a great extent upon auxiliaries. This worked for a while, as after serving his enlistment time, an axillary became a Roman citizen and the rewards of citizenship were, in many cases, enough to keep a man loyal to Rome. However when Roman citizenship was given to every free male in the empire it was no longer a factor in recruiting fresh troops and Rome had the problem of her troops being stretched too thin to properly defend the borders.

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11y ago
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It was an age before mechanical transport and telecommunication, so the vast distance from the Atlantic to Asia made it difficult to move armies and pass warnings and orders.

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7y ago
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Q: Why was roman empire hard to defend?
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