The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

by Bryan Ward-Perkins

Who would have believed that Rome, which was built up from victories over the whole world, would fall; so that it would be both the mother and the tomb to all peoples.32

  Rome’s fall, however, did not bring down the empire (indeed its impact on eastern provinces like Palestine was minimal). The longer-term Christian response to the disaster therefore had to be more subtle and sustained than Jerome’s initial shock, particularly because the pagans now, not unreasonably, attributed Roman failure to the abandonment by the State of the empire’s traditional gods, who for centuries had provided so much security and success. The most sophisticated, radical, and influential answer to this problem was that offered by Augustine, who in 413 (initially in direct response to the sack of Rome) began his monumental City of God.33 Here he successfully sidestepped the entire problem of the failure of the Christian empire by arguing that all human affairs are flawed, and that a true Christian is really a citizen of Heaven. Abandoning centuries of Roman pride in their divinely ordained state (including Christian pride during the fourth century), Augustine argued that, in the grand perspective of Eternity, a minor event like the sack of Rome paled into insignificance.

  No other author remotely matched the depth and sophistication of Augustine’s solution, but many others grappled with the problem. The Spanish priest Orosius in his History against the Pagans, like Augustine, specifically refuted pagan claims that Christianity had brought about Rome’s decline. His solution, however, was very different, since he wrote in a brief period of renewed optimism, at the end of the second decade of the fifth century. Orosius looked forward to better times, hoping that some of the invaders themselves would be the restorers of Rome’s position and renown. In a rather dreary game of literary tit-for-tat, he matched every disaster of Christian times with an even worse catastrophe from the pagan past (see above, p. 21).34

  Orosius’ optimism soon proved misguided, and Christian apologists generally had to bat on a very sticky wicket, starting from the premise that secular affairs were indeed desperate. Most resorted to what rapidly became Christian platitudes in the face of disaster. The author of the Poem on the Providence of God, composed in Gaul in about 416, exhorted Christians to consider whether these troubles had been brought about by their own sins, and encouraged them to realize that earthly happiness and earthly treasures are but dust and ashes, and nothing to the rewards that await us in Heaven (lines 903–9):

  This man groans for his lost silver and gold,

  Another is racked by the thought of his stolen goods

  And of his jewellery now divided amongst Gothic brides.

  This man mourns for his stolen flock, burnt houses, and drunk wine,

  And for his wretched children and ill-omened servants.

  But the wise man, the servant of Christ, loses none of these things,

  Which he despises; he has already placed his treasure in Heaven.35

  The poem is such a powerful evocation of looting and destruction that one wonders how much consolation people would have found in it.

  In a similar vein and also in early fifth-century Gaul, Orientius of Auch confronted the difficult reality that good Christian men and women were suffering unmerited and violent deaths. Not unreasonably, he blamed mankind for turning God’s gifts, such as fire and iron, to warlike and destructive ends. He also cheerfully reminded his readers that we are all dying anyway, and that it matters little whether our end comes to us immediately and violently, or creeps up on us unseen:

  Every hour draws us a little closer to our death:

  At the very time we are speaking, we are slowly dying.36

  A little later, in the 440s, Salvian, a priest from the region of Marseille, addressed the central and difficult questions, ‘Why has God allowed us to become weaker and more miserable than all the tribal peoples? Why has he allowed us to be defeated by the barbarians, and subjected to the rule of our enemies?’ Salvian’s solution was to attribute the disasters of his age to the wickedness of his contemporaries, which had brought divine judgement down upon their own heads. In this he was on ground firmly established by the Old Testament, to explain the fluctuating fortunes of the Children of Israel. Salvian, however, gave this very traditional interpretation an interesting, but not entirely convincing, twist. Rather than depict the barbarians as mindless instruments of God, faceless scourges like the Assyrians or Philistines of old, he argued that their success was also due to their own virtue: ‘We enjoy immodest behaviour; the Goths detest it. We avoid purity; they love it. Fornication is considered by them a crime and a danger; we honour it.’37 This was an ingenious attempt to argue for the fall of the West as doubly just: the wicked (Romans) are punished; and the virtuous (Germanic invaders) are rewarded.

  By the mid-fifth century, authors in the West had no doubt that Roman affairs were in a parlous state. Salvian had this to say, albeit within the highly rhetorical context of a call to repentance:

  Where now is the ancient wealth and dignity of the Romans? The Romans of old were most powerful; now we are without strength. They were feared; now it is we who are fearful. The barbarian peoples paid them tribute; now we are the tributaries of the barbarians. Our enemies make us pay for the very light of day, and our right to life has to be bought. Oh what miseries are ours! To what a state we have descended! We even have to thank the barbarians for the right to buy ourselves off them! What could be more humiliating and miserable!

  A few years later, the so-called Chronicler of 452 summed up the situation in Gaul in very similar terms, bemoaning the spread of both the barbarians and the heretical brand of Christianity to which they adhered: ‘The Roman state has been reduced to a miserable condition by these troubles, since not one province exists without barbarian settlers; and throughout the world the unspeakable heresy of the Arians, that has become so embedded amongst the barbarian peoples, displaces the name of the Catholic church.’38

  It has rightly been observed that the deposition in 476 of the last emperor resident in Italy, Romulus Augustulus, caused remarkably little stir: the great historian of Antiquity, Momigliano, called it the ‘noiseless fall of an empire’.39 But the principal reason why this event passed almost unnoticed was because contemporaries knew that the western empire, and with it autonomous Roman power, had already disappeared in all but name. Jerome, in writing the empire’s epitaph in 410, was decidedly premature; but it is hard to dispute the gloomy picture from the 440s and 450s of Salvian and of the Chronicler. These men were well aware of the disasters that had engulfed the West; and they would have been astonished by the modern mirage of an accommodating and peaceful fifth century.

  Für den Niedergang des Römerreiches sind bisher die folgenden 210 im Register nachgewiesenen Faktoren herangezogen worden:

  Aberglaube, Absolutismus, Ackersklaverei, Agrarfrage, Akedia, Anarchie, Antigermanismus, Apathie, Arbeitskräftemangel, Arbeitsteilung, Aristokratie, Askese, Ausbeutung, negative Auslese, Ausrottung der Besten, Autoritätsverlust, Badewesen, Bankrott, Barbarisierung, Vernichtung des Bauernstandes, Berufsarmee, Berufsbindung, Besitzunterschiede, Bevölkerungsdruck, Bleivergiftung, Blutvergiftung, Blutzersetzung, Bodenerosion, Bodenerschöpfung, Versiegen der Bodenschätze, Bodensperre, Bolschewisation, Bürgerkrieg, Bürgerrechtsverleihung, Bürokratie, Byzantinismus, capillarité sociale, Charakterlosigkeit, Christentum, Convenienzheiraten, Degeneration des Intellekts, Demoralisierung, Despotismus, Dezentralisation, Disziplinlosigkeit des Heeres, Duckmäuserei, soziale Egalisierung, Egoismus, Energieschwund, Entartung, Entgötterung, Entnervung, Entnordung, Entpolitisierung, Entrechtung, Entromanisierung, Entvolkerung, Entvolkung, Entwaldung, Erdbeben, Erstarrung, unzureichendes Erziehungswesen, Etatismus, Expansion, Faulheit, Feinschmeckerei, Feudalisierung, Fiskalismus, Frauenemanzipation, Freiheit im Übermaß, Freilassungen von Sklaven, Friedensromantik, Frühreife, Führungsschwäche, Geldgier, Geldknappheit, Geldwirtschaft, Genußsucht, Germanenangriffe, Gicht, Gladiatorenwesen, Glaubenskämpfe, Gleichberechtigung, Goldabfluß, Gräzisierung, Großgrundbesitz, Halbbildung, Verlager
ung der Handelswege, Hauptstadtwechsel, Hedonismus, Homosexualität, Hunnensturm, Hybris, Hyperthermia, moralischer Idealismus, Imperialismus, Impotenz, Individualismus, Indoktrination, Inflation, Instinktverlust, Integrationsschwäche, Intellektualismus, Irrationalismus, Irreligiosität, Kapitalismus, Kastenwesen, Ketzerei, Kinderlosigkeit, Klimaverschlechterung, Kommunismus, Konservatismus, Korruption, Kosmopolitismus, Kulturneurose, Lebensangst, Lebensüberdruß, Legitimitätskrise, Lethargie, Luxus, fehlende Männerwürde, Malaria, moralischer Materialismus, Militarismus, Ruin des Mittelstandes, Mysterienreligionen, Nationalismus der Unterworfenen, Nichternst, kulturelle Nivellierung, Orientalisierung, panem et circenses, Parasitismus, Partikularismus, Patrozinienbewegung, Pauperismus, Pazifismus, Plutokratie, Polytheismus, Proletarisierung, Prostitution, Psychosen, Quecksilberschäden, Rassendiskriminierung, Rassenentartung, Rassenselbstmord, Rationalismus, Regenmangel, Reichsteilung, Angriffe der Reiternomaden, Rekrutenmangel, Rentnergesinnung, Resignation, Rhetorik, naturwissenschaftliche Rückständigkeit, Ruhmsucht, Seelenbarbarei, Selbstgefälligkeit, Semitisierung, Seuchen, Sexualität, Sinnlichkeit, Sittenverfall, Sklaverei, Slawenangriffe, Söldnerwesen, Schamlosigkeit, Schlemmerei, Schollenbindung, Staatsegoismus, Staatssozialismus, Staatsverdrossenheit, Niedergang der Städte, Stagnation, Steuerdruck, Stoizismus, Streß, Strukturschwäche, Terrorismus, fehlende Thronfolgeordnung, Totalitarismus, Traurigkeit, Treibhauskultur, Überalterung, Überfeinerung, Überfremdung, Übergröße, Überkultur, Überzivilisation, Umweltzerstorung, Unglückskette, unnütze Esser, Unterentwicklung, Verarmung, Verbastardung, Verkrankung, Vermassung, Verödung, Verpöbelung, Verrat, Verstädterung, unkluge Vorfeldpolitik, Wehrdienstverweigerung, Wehrlosmachung, Weltflucht, Weltherrschaft, Willenslähmung, Wohlstand, Zentralismus, Zölibat, Zweifrontenkrieg.

  3.1 A list of 210 reasons, from A to Z, that have been suggested, at one time or another, to explain the decline and fall of the Roman empire.

  III

  THE ROAD TO DEFEAT

  ANARCHY, ANTI-GERMANISM, APATHY … Bankruptcy, Barbarization, Bathing …’—a German scholar recently produced a remarkable and fascinating list of the 210 explanations of the fall of the Roman empire that have been proposed over the centuries (Fig. 3.1).1 In German they sound even better, and certainly more portentous: Hunnensturm, Hybris, Hyperthermia, moralischer Idealismus, Imperialismus, Impotenz. (For those who are intrigued, Hyperthermia, brought about by too many visits to overheated baths, could cause Impotenz.)

  There is therefore good reason not to enter the centuries-old debate over why Rome fell, particularly if one wants to cover the topic in one chapter. However, it would be both cowardly and unsatisfactory to write a book arguing that Rome really did fall without saying something on the subject of how and why this happened. Those who believe that the empire fell to invasion have to be able to show that this disaster was possible.2

  An Empire at Risk

  The Roman empire had always been in some danger, and had in fact almost fallen once before, during the third century, when both East and West came very close to collapse. In this period, a powerful cocktail of failure against foreign foes, internal civil wars, and fiscal crisis nearly destroyed the empire. In the fifty years between 235 and 284, the Romans suffered repeated defeats at the hands of Persian and Germanic invaders, the secession of several of its provinces, a financial crisis that reduced the silver content of the coinage to almost nothing, and civil wars that reduced the average length of an emperor’s reign to under three years. One unfortunate emperor, Valerian, spent the final years of his life as a captive at the Persian court, forced to stoop and serve as a mounting block whenever the Persian king wished to go riding—and his afterlife as a flayed skin, set up as a perpetual record of his humiliation. In the event, the Roman empire was pulled together again by a series of tough military emperors; but it was a very close-run thing.3 Since near-disaster had occurred once before, we should not be surprised that the delicate balance between success and failure happened to tip against the western empire on a second occasion, during the fifth century—though this time it was with fatal results.

  Roman military dominance over the Germanic peoples was considerable, but never absolute and unshakeable. The Romans had always enjoyed a number of important advantages: they had well-built and imposing fortifications (Fig. 3.2); factory-made weapons that were both standardized and of a high quality (Fig. 3.3); an impressive infrastructure of roads and harbours; the logistical organization necessary to supply their army, whether at base or on campaign; and a tradition of training that ensured disciplined and coordinated action in battle, even in the face of adversity. Furthermore, Roman mastery of the sea, at least in the Mediterranean, was unchallenged and a vital aspect of supply. It was these sophistications, rather than weight of numbers, that created and defended the empire, and the Romans were well aware of this fact. Vegetius, the author of a military treatise dating from the late fourth or the first half of the fifth century, opened his work with a chapter entitled ‘The Romans Conquered All Peoples Only through their Military Training’, in which he stressed that, without training, the Roman army would have achieved nothing: ‘What could small Roman forces achieve against hordes of Gauls? What could the short Roman soldier dare to do against the tall German?’4

  These advantages were still considerable in the fourth century. In particular, the Germanic peoples remained innocents at sea (with the important exception of the Anglo-Saxons in the north), and notorious for their inability to mount successful siege warfare. One Gothic leader is said to have advised his followers to concentrate on looting the undefended countryside, observing wryly that ‘he was at peace with walls’.5 Consequently, small bands of Romans were able to hold out behind fortifications, even against vastly superior numbers, and the empire could maintain its presence in an area even after the surrounding countryside had been completely overrun. For instance, in 378, despite a terrible defeat in the field, Roman forces were still able to hold the nearest town, and, most importantly of all, were able to protect the imperial city, Constantinople.6

  3.2 The greatest defensive work of all Antiquity: the land-walls of Constantinople. The first line of defence is a moat, which needed cross-dams and piped water, since it passes over a ridge; behind it runs a low wall; behind that a somewhat higher wall with towers; and, finally, a third wall reinforced with massive towers large enough to carry ballistas and other stone-throwing artillery. Until 1204, when the western ‘Crusaders’ took the city, Constantinople successfully resisted all the many attempts to capture it.

  In open battle, the advantage was lessened, but a Roman army could still be expected to triumph over a substantially larger Germanic force. In 357 the emperor Julian defeated a force of Alamans who had crossed the Rhine into Roman territory near modern Strasbourg. Our source for the battle, Ammianus Marcellinus, tells us that 13,000 Roman troops faced 35,000 barbarians. These figures are unlikely to be accurate; but they probably reflect a genuine and considerable numerical superiority on the part of the Alamans. The detailed account of the battle makes it clear that the Romans achieved their victory because of their defensive armour, their close formation behind a wall of shields, and their ability both to stand their ground and to rally when broken. Ammianus’ summary description of the two armies is similar to that of many earlier observers when discussing the difference between the Romans and the barbarians in war: ‘[In this battle] in some ways equal met equal. The Alamans were physically stronger and swifter; our soldiers, through long training, more ready to obey orders. The enemy were fierce and impetuous; our men quiet and cautious. Our men put their trust in their minds; while the barbarians trusted in their huge bodies.’7 At Strasbourg, at least according to Ammianus, discipline, tactics, and equipment triumphed over mere brawn.

  3.3 Standardized military equipment—decorated shields, spears, helmets, axes, cuirasses, greaves, scabbards, and swords—the product of state manufactories under the control of the ‘Magister Officiorum’. (From an illustrated list of the o
fficials of the early fifth-century empire.)

  However, even at the best of times, the edge that the Romans enjoyed over their enemies, through their superior equipment and organization, was never remotely comparable, say, to that of Europeans in the nineteenth century using rifles and the Gatling and Maxim guns against peoples armed mainly with spears. Consequently, although normally the Romans defeated barbarians when they met them in battle, they could and did occasionally suffer disasters. Even at the height of the empire’s success, in AD 9, three whole legions under the command of Quinctilius Varus, along with a host of auxiliaries, were trapped and slaughtered by tribesmen in north Germany. Some 20,000 men died: six years later, when a Roman army visited the area, it found whitening bones lying all over the site, skulls fastened as trophies to tree trunks, and altars where captured Roman officers had been sacrificed to the Germans’ gods. The detritus of this disaster has also been discovered by modern archaeologists, in a remarkable scatter of coins, military equipment, and personal possessions, which were lost in a battle that stretched over more than 15 kilometres, as the retreating Roman army fought desperately and in vain to escape its attackers.8

  During the fourth century, disaster on a similar scale occurred during the 378 campaign against the Goths in the Balkans. The emperor Valens and the eastern field army faced a large Gothic force near the city of Hadrianopolis (which gave its name to the subsequent battle). The emperor decided to engage the Goths alone, rather than await the arrival of further troops on their way from the West. The resulting battle was a catastrophe for the Romans: two-thirds of their force is said to have been killed; the emperor himself died in the chaotic aftermath, and his body was never recovered. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that not for some 600 years, since Hannibal’s bloody victory over the Republic at Cannae, had the Romans suffered such a terrible defeat.9