A 1600th Anniversary Question: Why Did Rome Fall?

[Spengler]

A 1600th Anniversary Question: Why Did Rome Fall? on the Spengler Blog


by David P. Goldman


Although it lingered another sixty years, the Sack of Rome by Alaric the Visigoth in 410 marked the downfall of the empire. Gustav Niebuhr, writing in the Washington Post, finds hope in the fact that the Christian religion survived the destruction of its first state sponsor. That, says Niebuhr, shows why Americans should allow the Ground Zero Islamic Center to proceed:

The empire, since the conversion of Emperor Constantine nearly a century earlier, had gradually been bringing its official might to bear in support of Christianity, the very faith its rulers once persecuted. The old, pagan religions suffered greatly. And then, in 410, that remarkable Roman state suffered a mortal wound. At the time, Christians expressed enormous fear for the future.

But their faith would not only survive, but also grow, vastly (well before subsequent European states emerged again to support it).

Is there evidence here for the benefit of keeping religion separate from government power--for the good of both--so that neither meddles in the other's affairs, such that no religionist tells a political leader what to say, and no political leader tells religionists where they might and might not build their houses of worship? One might so argue.

Bringing up the Sack of Rome in the context of the attack on the World Trade Center is not a reassuring argument. After all, that is what barbarians do when they sack imperial capitals: they destroy important symbols of power. Alaric's men did not rape and murder and random, but desecrated public buildings and imperial mausoleums in particular.

A more interesting question is: why did a small number of barbarian invaders bring down the densely-populated Roman Empire? As Brian Ward-Perkins reports in his superb book on the Fall of Rome, "A large Germanic group probably numbered a few tens of thousands, while regions like Italy and Roman Africa had populations of several millions," supporting a standing army of 600,000 during the 4th century.

But Rome was a slave empire. A contemporary source reported that when Alaric besieged the city,  "Almost all the slaves who were in Rome, poured out of the city to join the barbarians."

Ward-Perkins adds, "Even as early as 376-8 discontents and fortune-seekers were swelling Gothic ranks soon after they had crossed into the empire - the historian Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that their numbers were increased significantly, not only by fleeing Gothic slaves, but also by miners escaping the harsh conditions of the state's gold mines and by people oppressed by the burden of imperial taxation."

Rome, in short, was a state very similar to what Hitler would have built had he conquered Europe: incorporate some nations into the empire (e.g., Northern Europeans), enslave others, and exterminate yet others. The Gothic invasion by itself would not have brought Rome down without the slave revolt that it helped to trigger.

I am very glad that Christianity survived the Fall of Rome. But the lesson to be drawn from the 1600th anniversary of the Sack of 410 C.E. is that predatory empires premised on conquest will get what they deserve. And that thought makes me consider the proposed monument to Muslim triumphalism in a different light.

[Michael]

From the early days of the Republic, the Roman army had included auxilliaries. that is contingents of troops, under their own officers, but overall Roman command, supplied by those subjugated cities of the Latin League and pther conquered towns, who enjoyed a degree of autonomy as "Friends & Allies of the Roman people"

So far from wanting independence, these cities actually fought the Social War (91-88 BCE) to gain full Roman citizenship.

Under the empire, the same system was continued, with the block recruitment of troops from tribes allowed to settle within the frontiers of the empire, under the command of their hereditary chiefs. The so-called "Reges barbarorum" were, in fact, generals of auxilliaries and, as time went on, auxilliaries made up the bulk of the Roman army.

As the cenral government broke down and, with it trade, taxes were collected in kind and the local military commanders became, increasingly, independent rulers. Such was Alaric; unlike men like Clovis and Theodoric, he was a first-generation auxilliary general.. The idea that barbarian hoards of 5,000 or 10,000 men could conquer Roman provinces, whose inhabitants numbered millions is simply absurd. A change of ruler probably had little effect on the mass of the population, who had for centuries left fighting to the professionals.

The empire in the West certainly declined, but (except for outlying provinces like Britain) it never actually fell.

[total issues]

We are a parochial lot in the West, and attach too much importance to the Roman Empire's loss of the relatively unimportant Western provinces, even if it included the Italian homeland . The Arab conquests of the 7th century were much more devastating, but even so the Empire was a serious going concern until the loss of Anatolia to the Seljuks in 1071. In the wider world the so called dark ages saw the civilisational peaks of the Caliphate and Tang China.

However Rome was clearly in retreat after the Antonines in the second century, and although there are no accurate figures it does seem to be largely due to depopulation. This was largely not because of vice and infertility (that only affected the upper classes) but because of disease. A whole succession of plagues starting in Marcus Aurelius' time hit the cities particularly hard while leaving the barbarians less affected, thus altering the balance of power. It is a wonder that the empire survived the mid 3rd century crisis, when the Goths and Persians nearly divided it between them, and only by becoming a grim and oppressive military dictatorship under Aurelian and Diocletian. Interestingly the Han empire in China fell at this time to barbarians from the steppe for the same reasons.

The death knell of the ancient world came with the (bubonic) plague of Justinian in the 540s. This may have halved the population of Europe, in other words worse than the Black Death, and except in Constantinople urban life virtually disappeared. Without the plague it is almost certain that Justinian or one of his successors would have reconquered the West - in China, which was not hit by the plague, the Sui and Tang did reunite the empire.

Instead the plague sounded the death knell of slavery (no thanks to the Church), and its replacement by more benign serfdom. People were scarce, and could demand some rights - similar depopulation after the Black Death in the 1300s finished off Western European serfdom.

So for our liberties, we should thank that little bacillus, grim though the process was.

[cassowary]

I have come across many theories why Rome fell. The germ theory is the latest one. For what its worth, the theories I came across were:

1)Change of weather. It got cooler and crop production fell leaving the agrarian based civilization weaker. Rome could not collect enough taxes to sustain a disciplined army. Global warming has historically been good for Europe. Global cooling on the other hand led to things like the Viking attacks because there was not enough food.
2)Decline in patriotism and Roman virtues following the demise of the Roman republic and the subsequent expansion of citizenship to include non-Italic peoples. Don't forget most of the Roman conquests were made by the Republic because people believed they were fighting for themselves and they shared the same language and culture. Why fight for a bad and mad emperor from a far flung province? The lesson is to maintain democracy and be careful about who can immigrate to your country.
3)Instability of the political system following the demise of the Roman Republic. Half of Roman emperors were murdered.
4)Too much state controls and taxes which stifled commerce. At the same time too much 'welfare' Roman style - bread and circuses to keep the people from rioting. Obuma take note. Taxpayers fled the cities to the rural areas to better avoid taxes. Nowadays, they migrate to places like Singapore where taxes are low.
5)Lead in the wine and food. Lead was used for common utensils like cups. This led to madness in some of the Roman leaders which led to instability at the top. See 3. The modern equivalent would be the drug problem.
6)Benign Christian values made it hard to be ruthless enough to keep the empire. Eg. Theodosius's slaughter of the rebellious city of Thessalonica was condemned by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. Theodosius had to do penance for doing something that Roman emperors had regularly done in the past to rebellious subjects.

Maybe its all of the above?

[total issues]

Yes, probably all of the above, circles can be vicious as well as virtuous. I don't think that emperors became soft when Christian - Theodosius persecuted pagans with vigour with Ambrose's support and plenty of Byzantine emperors were ruthless bastards; it is more that many capable and intelligent citizens became less committed to the state and focussed on hopes of heavenly life. There was little resistance to barbarian rule because in most cases it may have been an improvement, less oppressive and rapacious; Theodoric the Ostrogoth was one of Italy's better rulers. The absorption of the invaders is shown by the fact that France, Italy and Spain still speak Latin languages (Britain was the exception, but only lightly Romanised in the first place)

Global cooling seems to have dried out the Eurasian steppe and pushed the nomads outwards towards both Rome and China.

Fact remains, though, that the Black Death in 1347-50 killed a third of Europeans and was followed by the Little Ice Age, yet Europe surged to global leadership and even the population recovered quickly, for a whole host of reasons which consistute a virtuous circle. One of those was that it did not face powerful barbarian enemies, instead the last and greatest of these (the Mongols) had devastated competing civilisations in the previous century.

[Michael]

The role of the Antonine plagues is a very interesting and much neglected one. As Total Issues rightly points out, the affected both ends of the Silk Road simultaneously and are thought to have been viral infections that leapt the species barrier amongst herd animals on the steppe.

They are generally believed to have been measles, smallpox and whooping cough.

Infection, where it is not fatal, confers long-lasting immunity and, where populations are dense enough for them to become endemic, they become diseases of childhood, with most of the adult population more or less immune. Sporadic outbreaks amongst more isolated, rural populations could still result in a mortality rate of around a third. The loss of a third of the women of child-bearing age often meant the population took a century to recover. In towns, on the other hand, a similar mortality rate amongst children, who could be quickly replaced, slowed population growth, rather than precipitating a decline.

The results of these diseases becoming endemic throughout the more populated areas of the Eurasian land mass can be seen, when Europeans with immunity began to penetrate into the New World and Sub-Saharan Africa, among populations that had none, more than a millennium later.

Total Issues is right, too, about the growth of serfdom, where the tenants on state lands and the slaves working the land attached to villas merged into a new class, whom the lawyer, at first had difficulty in describing, the adscriptae glebae, personally free, but bound to the soil by hereditary tenure.

I think Cassowary over-estimates the stability of Republican government. Probably more citizens were put to death in the proscriptions of Marius and Sulla, and in the Civil War between Pompey and Caesar, than by all the emperors from Augustus to Romulus Augustulus put together,

The decay of small farmers, after the Second Punic War, unable to compete with the industrial-scale agriculture f the latifundiae worked by slaves, many of the war-captives, led, in turn to the professionalization of the Roman Army by Gaius Marius spelt the death of the Republic. The Empire was a military dictatorship and its instrument of government was the army. No wonder the Praetorian Guard became its electoral college.

[Pastaneta]

While the role of plagues and epidemics in the fall of civilization is well-known (see McNeill Plagues and People for instance), the rise of the feudal system was a consequence of the insecurity caused by the decline of the Roman Empire. The feudal system was quite different from slavery and was a kind of insurance system against the insecurity. The book to read is Marc Bloch, Feudal Society to see how it came to pass.

As to the lead theory: I have read this theory but don't forget that you had mad emperors even among the Augustine (Tiberius, Nero and Caligula come to mind). This didn't lead to a decline then.

[Michael]

While the role of plagues and epidemics in the fall of civilization is well-known (see McNeill Plagues and People for instance), the rise of the feudal system was a consequence of the insecurity caused by the decline of the Roman Empire. The feudal system was quite different from slavery and was a kind of insurance system against the insecurity. The book to read is Marc Bloch, Feudal Society to see how it came to pass.

As to the lead theory: I have read this theory but don't forget that you had mad emperors even among the Augustine (Tiberius, Nero and Caligula come to mind). This didn't lead to a decline then.

I think the change from gangs of slaves to villages of serfs, paying customary dues and services is pre-feudal. In Justinian's Digest, we already see Emphyteusis, or perpetual leases, orginally a tenure of public lands, is being used by private landlords. The breakdown of commerce and, with it, the slave trade, probably played a major role, particularly in the West.

This also led to taxes being collected in kind and it became easier for a military commander (almost always a barbarian general of auxilliaries) to assign the rents/taxes and profits of a particular district to each of his subordinates (the origin of the Carolingian beneficium. There is a relic of this that still persists in the Scottish Kirk, where the minister has his manse (house) and glebe (farml land) and, until the middle of the last century, the relics of the teind (tithe), a rentcharge on certain lands. It was really only in the 9th century that the beneficium became the hereditary feu, although, there was probably a tendency for son to succede father long before that.

I think the village community was already in place, when this process began, You can see this very clearly in Britain, where, in the most Romanised parts of the country (the South and East) the pattern was one of villages, with people cultivating strips in the surrounding open fields. As one moves North and West, the pattern changes to one of isolated farmsteads and much more individual ownership.

In my part of Scotland, the farms still have summer grazing rights over the unenclosed upland pastures or muirs and they pay a single shepherd to look after the sheep. We can pasture as many sheep and their lambs, as winter on our holdings. This, too, I think, is pre-feudal; all disputes were decided, not by the Superior or his bailie, but by the homage, that is, the vassals, themselves. The timber and mineral rights belomg to the feudal superior, but I believe that came later. It also confuses the bureaucrats in Brussles, who run the Common Agricultural Policy, no end, when it comes to alloting subsidies.

[Pastaneta]

I don't know about Britain, but in France (sorry in Gaul) there was a reversion to non free status of freeman because of the insecurity, especially in the North, during the high Middle Ages...

A lot of the customs about village organization are not as old as people think. The settlement of Normandy by the Vikings brought Vikings customs in this part of the world. Probably the same is true of the rest of the invaders. The lack of written record may be a problem...

[Michael]

I don't know about Britain, but in France (sorry in Gaul) there was a reversion to non free status of freeman because of the insecurity, especially in the North, during the high Middle Ages...

A lot of the customs about village organization are not as old as people think. The settlement of Normandy by the Vikings brought Vikings customs in this part of the world. Probably the same is true of the rest of the invaders. The lack of written record may be a problem...

Well, it certainly is true that the clear-cut distinction between two classes, slave and free, broke down and was replaced by a pyramid of Superiors and vassals, with the King at the apex and the serfs at the bottom. Between these, there were many gradations.

When the courts, in the 13th century had to draw a line (for rather complicated reasons around jurisdiction) they eventually held that a man who had to do so many days of general labouring a year was unfree, but a man who had to do so many days of a particular kind of work (ploughing, carting) was free. The difference is so artificial, that there was obviously a very real blurring, like the difference between, say, red and orange.

Tenures in chivalry (miltary service) were not merely free, but noble and, eventualy the boundry-line between noble (gentilhomme) and commoner was more marked than that between free and unfree.

But, that said, I agree with your point about a lot of free men becoming the dependents of some powerful noble for protection and ccomin to be treated as holding their land from him. The thing about the feudal system is that it was terribly unsystematic - A bit like an old gothic church with bits added at different periods by different people and no clear, underlying plan.

[PaulR]

4)Too much state controls and taxes which stifled commerce. At the same time too much 'welfare' Roman style - bread and circuses to keep the people from rioting. Obuma take note. Taxpayers fled the cities to the rural areas to better avoid taxes. Nowadays, they migrate to places like Singapore where taxes are low.

You are correct. My favorite theory of Roman Decline is that as the size, sumptuousness and power of the Roman State and its elites grew, the obvious needs for funds for war, Government, bread & circuses, and welfare all grew out of control. The continuous decline of gold and silver content of Roman coinage over its last centuries trace the ravages of inflation and "money printing." Writing at the time of Diocletian, Lactantius commented that Rome had more bureaucrats on the public payroll than people actually paying tax. Diocletian's failed attempt at price-controls are the most well-known, but he was not the only one to try them, as the Roman state bought and distributed wheat, as a part of its social policy (particularly in Rome) for many years. Price-controls always fail, and as a natural result, when inflation and shortages become chronic, the state resorted to payment-in-kind, corvee labor, and forcing farmers and tradesmen into a feudalistic system whereby they could not move from that job or place. Roman citizens' rights to property and their person were destroyed. Who would not welcome the barbarians in such a case?

Also, the late Roman Emporers did not necessarily fall in love with Christ, but simply tried to co-opt the Church. To say the Roman Empire promoted the Church is a vast over-simplification. Even after Constantine, there were Emporers (Julian, for example) who tried to re-instate worship of Jupiter and Paganism. In those troubled and violent times, the Church became the main social-support and protection network, particularly for women. The Romans saw that the old Paganism held no attraction, society was collapsing, their own Government was failing - so what was left but to try and graft the young and energetic Church onto the dying body of the Roman Government?

[Michael]

4)Too much state controls and taxes which stifled commerce. At the same time too much 'welfare' Roman style - bread and circuses to keep the people from rioting. Obuma take note. Taxpayers fled the cities to the rural areas to better avoid taxes. Nowadays, they migrate to places like Singapore where taxes are low.

You are correct. My favorite theory of Roman Decline is that as the size, sumptuousness and power of the Roman State and its elites grew, the obvious needs for funds for war, Government, bread & circuses, and welfare all grew out of control. The continuous decline of gold and silver content of Roman coinage over its last centuries trace the ravages of inflation and "money printing." Writing at the time of Diocletian, Lactantius commented that Rome had more bureaucrats on the public payroll than people actually paying tax. Diocletian's failed attempt at price-controls are the most well-known, but he was not the only one to try them, as the Roman state bought and distributed wheat, as a part of its social policy (particularly in Rome) for many years. Price-controls always fail, and as a natural result, when inflation and shortages become chronic, the state resorted to payment-in-kind, corvee labor, and forcing farmers and tradesmen into a feudalistic system whereby they could not move from that job or place. Roman citizens' rights to property and their person were destroyed. Who would not welcome the barbarians in such a case?

Also, the late Roman Emporers did not necessarily fall in love with Christ, but simply tried to co-opt the Church. To say the Roman Empire promoted the Church is a vast over-simplification. Even after Constantine, there were Emporers (Julian, for example) who tried to re-instate worship of Jupiter and Paganism. In those troubled and violent times, the Church became the main social-support and protection network, particularly for women. The Romans saw that the old Paganism held no attraction, society was collapsing, their own Government was failing - so what was left but to try and graft the young and energetic Church onto the dying body of the Roman Government?

In the West, especially, some of the bishops simply proved to be better administrators that the crumbling town authorities or the local military commander. It is no accident that the bishop's residence came to be called the palatium or palace, the old name for the governor's mansion (Originally named from Caesar's family home on the Palatine) It was increasingly the real centre of administration.