The Fall of the Roman Empire

by Michael Grant

  of the Italian Renaissance, and of later times, agreed that it was a major turning point.

  Since then, there has been a tendency to minimize the importance of the date, because, after all, it was only one more in a long series of disintegrations, and a somewhat unspectacular happening at that. Nevertheless the expulsion of the Emperor in 476 did signify that the last important territory of the West, and indeed its metropolitan territory, had become, for good or evil, just another German kingdom. The Western Empire was no more. That long drawn-out withdrawal from the vast Imperial spaces, which reached its end in 476, 'will ever be remembered', as Gibbon declared, 'and is still felt by the nations of the earth'.

  The French historian Andre Piganiol, writing in 1947, likened the world of the Romans to a man who has been subjected to a violent attack. Rome succumbed, he believed, because of fatal wounds from its external enemies.

  'Roman civilization,' he declared, 'did not die a natural death. It was murdered.' Yet people attacked by would-be murderers sometimes survive if they are strong enough to fight back. And the Romans could have survived, if they had possessed sufficient strength. But when the murderous blows were delivered, they could no longer muster the force to parry them.

  This was because Italy and the entire Western world were hopelessly disunited. Rome did not fall only because of attacks from outside. The attacks were certainly formidable. Yet had they been the only trouble, the Empire might still have survived, as it had survived other ferocious onslaughts in the past. But by this time it had become paralysed by its internal disunities.

  The endeavour will now be made to detect and define these disunities, in their multiple and various shapes and forms. Each one of them was damaging. In accumulation they proved fatal. By making resistance to the external onslaughts impossible, they swept the Western Roman Empire out of existence.

  I

  THE FAILURE OF THE ARMY

  1

  The Generals against the State

  Professor Arther Ferrill, in Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation (1983), has analysed the defects in the later Roman army which caused it to fail against the Germans. Another of the main reasons for the Empire's failure to resist its invaders was the total autocratic authority concentrated in the person of the Emperor. Besides cutting him off disastrously from his subjects, this absolute power created another special and perilous form of disunity. For it was a standing temptation to generals to make a violent bid for the same high stakes.

  Autocracy produces a notoriously unstable situation. Some thinking persons during the later Roman Empire were well aware of the peril. For example, the pagan writer Eunapius went out of his way to deplore this total monopoly of power in a single person. One of the Emperors of later Rome, in a legal pronouncement, refers feelingly to 'the agitations and anxieties of his Serene Mind'. Every ruler was honorifically described as His Serenity. Yet there was a bitter, unconscious irony about this choice of title, since an Emperor's agitations and anxieties were ever-present and harrowing. He has been described as the man most to be pitied in the entire Roman world.

  Moreover, very few of the monarchs during this last troubled century were impressive enough personalities to live up to these gigantic responsibilities. Leaving aside more or less transient usurpers, the last hundred and twelve years of the Western Empire produced a total of sixteen rulers, among whom the only outstanding personality was the first, Valentinian I. Theodosius I, too, was a man to be reckoned with, though some of his policies, notably his religious intolerance, were divisive and disastrous. Majorian was gifted, but came too late.

  The others were mostly insignificant, so that the actual exercise of their autocratic power fell to their generals. Two of the most insignificant Emperors of all, Honorius and Valentinian III, reigned, between them, for more than half of the total period of nearly a century and a quarter. The unworthiness of these later rulers was just one more handicap that the failing Empire had to bear. But even if they did not effectively rule, even if they were just cloistered, pampered weaklings, they were useful merely because they were there - like a constitutional monarch, however incompetent, today.

  The Roman dynastic monarchy was particularly beneficial because of a grave defect that had always weakened the roots of the Imperial system. This was the absence of a satisfactory method of ensuring the peaceful transition from one Emperor to another. When Augustus had founded the system in 31 BC, his ill-defined job had comprised an agglomeration of powers, not one of which, formally speaking, could be passed on to any heir or successor.

  That was why the greatest of all Roman historians, Tacitus, began his Annals with a detailed account of the critical tensions which arose immediately after Augustus' death. For although Augustus had in practice taken the necessary measures, over a number of previous years, to ensure a smooth succession after his death, the historian wanted to stress the potentially catastrophic perils of such moments of transition, since time after time throughout the Imperial epoch they brought crisis, revolution and civil war. 'In elective monarchies', as Gibbon pointed out, 'the vacancy of the throne is a moment big with danger and mischief.' Indeed, Machiavelli plausibly argued, without too much exaggeration, that the faulty constitutional arrangements responsible for this situation were what eventually brought the Empire down.

  It was understood that, in theory, each new ruler must be selected by the Senate. But from the very outset this proved to be a fiction. The hard fact of the matter was that all Emperors continued to owe their position to the loyalty of the army. And it was therefore the army which appointed each successive occupant of the Caesars' throne.

  In the first century AD, the Emperor-makers were often the praetorian guard - the military unit at Rome which was supposed to protect the person of the ruler, but which also possessed the opportunity to strike him down. It was an opportunity the officers of the guard all too often used. And subsequently other army units and garrisons as well, stationed in the provinces, took their turn in the making and unmaking of their supposed masters.

  The views held by the Senate and army about who the next Emperor ought to be frequently failed to coincide. This was because the Senators liked to maintain the idea that they themselves had an unrestricted initiative and choice, so that, whenever a ruler died, it was they who would be free to appoint the best man available, not necessarily from the previous Imperial house. In opposition to this desire, successive Emperors continually did their best to bequeath their powers within their own house by bringing forward a son or other relative: partly because rulers are apt to feel it safest to rely upon their families, but partly also since, in ancient Rome, there were times when this nepotism genuinely seemed to provide the best hope of a stable and non-violent hand-over.

  Furthermore, whatever constitutionalists might be saying, hereditary transmission was very often strongly favoured by the soldiers. For their loyalty to their commander-in-chief, the Emperor, was a personal sentiment which could easily be transferred to his son or other members of his family. Moreover, the Emperor was their paymaster: any break in Imperial continuity might jeopardize their wages.

  From AD 97 onwards, throughout the greater part of the second century, a new formula was tried, according to which Emperors 'adopted' and virtually nominated their successors, men from outside their own families, chosen for their suitability alone. But after that, successive rulers returned to the practice of seeking to establish their own dynasties.

  Yet each dynasty in turn, if it ever got off the ground at all, almost immediately collapsed. For, although the army favoured dynasties in theory, it very rapidly became tired of them in practice, owing to recurring discontent with the qualities of individual Emperors. And it was the army, during this entire period, which still continued to place one monarch after another on the throne.

  In 364, Valentinian 1 became yet another of these army nominees. And even Symmachus, an old-fashioned conservative aristocrat, believed, or professed to believe, that this wa
s reasonable enough. For the army, he observed in 369, is better qualified to appoint Emperors than anyone else, since 'the Senate and political institutions are slothful and disused'. The historian Ammianus also supported the army's Emperor-making role, though he liked to think, somewhat over-optimistically, that its decisions were normally preceded by a process of due deliberation among leading men.

  The unidentifiable groups of biographers who compiled the Historia Augusta disagreed, vociferously praising those rulers from the past whom they believed to have been nominated by the Senate. In consequence, these writers revived and repeated the ancient concept that Imperial rule could not be hereditary, and denied that birth should play any part whatever in determining the succession.

  Valentinian 1, like many an earlier Emperor, held the opposite view, and wanted to establish his own dynasty. Moreover, although he did not come from an Imperial family himself, he felt in a strong enough position to turn the army's preference for heredity to his own advantage. For when, in 367, he promoted his son Gratian to be co-Emperor, he was careful to stage a wholly military ceremony, at which he commended the youth to the soldiers. At this ceremony, after they had acclaimed their new ruler with loud shouts and clashing weapons, Valentinian invested him with the Imperial robes, and declared: 'Behold, my dear Gratian, you now wear, as we had all hoped, the Imperial robes, bestowed upon you under favourable auspices by my will and that of our fellow-soldiers.'

  Valentinian's attempt to found a new ruling house, with military support, proved extraordinarily successful. For this dynasty, strengthened by the inclusion of Theodosius 1 through a marriage alliance, lasted for no less than ninety-one years - one of the longest durations in Imperial history, and a remarkable example of continuity at such a disturbed period.

  By way of contrast, the death of the last representative of this house, Valentinian III, although he personally had been little better than a cypher, was followed by a period of unprecedented instability, during which, as we have seen, there was a rapid succession of transient Emperors. Indeed, the instability was final and fatal, for with the last of them the Western Empire came to an end.

  In the ancient Roman experience, the most perilous phenomenon was the constant succession of military figures who engineered revolts and coups d'etat in order to set themselves up in place of the established ruler of the day. Their uprisings produced dangerous fragmentations and breakaways of provinces. The men who at different periods and in different regions were declared Emperors by some part of the army, even if they did not usually succeed in maintaining themselves for any appreciable length of time, were lamentably numerous, continuing to erupt one after another for generation after generation. And the rivalry between these usurpers and their 'legitimate' competitors (a distinction that is not, incidentally, always easy to make) was one of the principal causes of the debilitation of Rome's authority.

  For the civil wars which resulted from such usurpations decisively undermined the internal security of the Roman world. Furthermore, on many demonstrable occasions these struggles served as an irresistible invitation to Germans and other enemies to break into the distracted provinces. From the first century AD up to the very end of the Roman Empire more than four hundred years later, scarcely a single decade passed when there was not, at some juncture, a rival Emperor in the field, and often there were more than one simultaneously.

  This state of affairs was the product of an insoluble dilemma. The army had to be strong enough to protect the frontiers. But if it was strong enough to do that, then it was also strong enough to turn against the Emperor whenever one of its generals prompted it to revolt. True, it was only due to the army that the Empire continued in existence at all. But it was also the fault of the army, and the men who commanded it, that internal peace was never achieved for very many years at a time. And because of this fatally weakening disunity, the Romans sustained huge and continuing dislocations, casualties and wastages.

  At times, the anarchy produced by this situation amounted virtually to national paralysis. For example, during the period of only a century and a half leading up to Constantine the Great (306-37), very nearly eighty generals, either in the capital or in some other part of the Empire, were hailed by the Imperial title. Between 247 and 270 alone no less than thirty such men were acclaimed. Some were too afraid to refuse the offer.

  These usurpers provide a paradise for modern numismatists, who come into their own as purveyors of historical information. For, as soon as a man declared himself Emperor, he promptly issued the money that was needed to shore up his soldiers' loyalty - and at the same time it served the purpose of spreading abroad the knowledge of his name and image. And specimens of these coins, ranging from tens of thousands in some cases to one single surviving specimen in others, have come down to us and can be seen today.

  In the last epoch of the Empire, the same destructive process went on and on, and the succession remained as turbulent and rapidly changing as before. In the time of Valentinian I'S dynasty, there were still numerous generals and others who decided to attempt these violent grasps at the throne. At least ten men made these lunges, all unsuccessfully in the end, but with varying degrees of initial acceptance. The number rises to thirteen if we include three North African troublemakers with ambiguous intentions. And perhaps there were more.

  It is evident what an additional drain the struggles to put down all these usurpers must have imposed on the already hopelessly strained resources of imperial manpower and revenue. And it becomes clearer, too, not only why Valentinian 1 was determined to guarantee a peaceful dynastic succession, but why the army and Empire as a whole still persevered with this policy of heredity throughout the long reigns of the incompetent last members of his house.

  Moreover, on the question of usurpers, if not on anything else, the Western and Eastern Emperors, who had a common interest in maintaining the dynasty to which both alike belonged, generally managed to work together - it being understood that as long as one lawful Emperor survived in any part of the Roman world, no other could be created without his agreement. This understanding was not, it is true, invariably observed. Nevertheless, as long as Valentinian I'S dynasty still occupied the thrones in West and East, not one of its rivals ever succeeded in ousting its representatives from either one of the two Empires.

  All the same, the diversion of Imperial resources necessitated by such civil wars was disastrous. And during the very last years of the West, after the dynasty of the Valentinians had finally vanished, the chaos deepened. By now most of the ostensible rulers were mere figureheads depending on powerful generals, among whom the German Ricimer (456-72) was pre-eminent. Yet these war-lords still did not venture to seize the monarchical title itself - until 476, when the last Western Emperor was removed from Ravenna, and Odoacer became King of Italy.

  Contemporary writers, throughout the entire duration of the Empire, were very well aware of the exceptional damage caused by all these rebellions. Ammianus, in particular, declared military rebels the supreme evil. He had a clear and definite sense of the mutual obligations which linked the lawful Emperor to his people, and was profoundly conscious that, if the ruler was not loyally obeyed by his subjects, the entire safety of the Roman world would collapse.

  Augustine, too, demanded 'what fury of foreign peoples, what barbarian cruelty, can be compared with the harm done by civil wars?'. And two of the most prominent among the many insurgents, Magnus Maximus (383-8) whose generals killed Gratian, and Eugenius (392-4) whose Master of Soldiers probably murdered Valentinian 11, are bracketed by the poet Claudian as a pair of truly guilty men:

  Two tyrants burst upon the western climes,

  Their savage bosoms stored with various crimes;

  Fierce Britain was to one the native earth:

  The other owed to Germany his birth,

  A banished, servile wretch: both soiled with guilt:

  Alike their hands a master's blood had split.

  Yet such a perpetrator or figurehea
d of a military revolt, while his tenure of power lasted, sometimes controlled a territory of great size. And, very often, there was no lack of people ready to flock to his colours. As the anonymous treatise On Matters of Warfare points out, the discontented poor saw no reason at all why they should not change masters and rally to such rebellions.

  The disastrous character of those movements was clearly seen by Gibbon, and by the French historian Montesquieu before him. Montesquieu identified this whole process of traitorous usurpations as one of the principal reasons for the downfall of Rome, tracing how, when once the Empire had grown to such vast dimensions, political differences that had earlier been nothing worse than healthy arguments became transformed into deadly civil wars.

  2

  The People against the Army

  We now come to the second cause of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire: the general failure of its armies to perform the tasks that were required of them. For the Roman armies collapsed, in what at first sight seems an unaccountable fashion, before foreign forces which were, in theory, much their inferiors both in numbers and equipment: the sort of enemies that Rome had often encountered before, and had defeated. In fact, faced with recalcitrant public opinion, and an almost total failure of understanding between the army and the people, Rome had allowed its armies to become fatally weakened.