Late stage western roman empire

I have some questions about how the late, late roman empire "was"

I was listening to the last episodes of The History of Rome podcast today and was trying to visualize how it all looked. It was the mid 400's, so it had to have looked different than the "height" of the roman empire, right? Things develop over 300 years, right?

I understand that Rome was a shithole by this point. Was there any new architecture? Was Ravenna distinctly "modern" in a sense compared to Rome of old?

In terms of military, what did the legions look like physically? How were the roman uniforms different from 300 years ago? Were the "foederati" romanized enough or did they retain their "barbaric" look in the legions? Same with all the late stage leaders that were Germanic or otherwise barbarian in origin... were they "romanized" in look?

Did the barbarians just eventually destroy all the roman and romanized stuff?

Other urls found in this thread:

thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Which podcast was that?

>Was there any new architecture?
Yes, plenty. A good example is the Mausoleum of Galla Palcidia, which is absolutely gorgeous inside.
>In terms of military, what did the legions look like physically? How were the roman uniforms different from 300 years ago?
Pic related
>Were the "foederati" romanized enough or did they retain their "barbaric" look in the legions? Same with all the late stage leaders that were Germanic or otherwise barbarian in origin... were they "romanized" in look?
No, they were pretty thoroughly Romanised. There was a lot of guff in the 19th century where people speculated that the Roman army was Germanisied, but more recent scholarship is turning that on its head. Roman gear was the best stuff you could get, everyone wanted it, from the Franks to the Goths to the Huns, so Roman arms factories were popular targets for raids and Rome's enemies generally looked more like Romans than most people think. People picture the Huns running around in lamellar wearing those furry hats, but a lot of them were probably armed and armored very similarly to the Romans.
>Did the barbarians just eventually destroy all the roman and romanized stuff?
No, that's stupid. Most of the barbarians had a hard-on for everything Roman. Alaric, the very man who sacked Rome, Latinised his name and styled himself as a Roman General.

That image is by no means comprehensive so I'll dump some more Late Roman stuff just because I like it

...

...

...

...

...

...