In the Aegean, this prosperity came to a sudden and very dramatic end in the years around AD 600.5 Great cities such as Corinth, Athens, Ephesus, and Aphrodisias, which had dominated the region since long before the arrival of the Romans, shrank to a fraction of their former size—the recent excavations at Aphrodisias suggest that the greater part of the city became in the early seventh century an abandoned ghost town, peopled only by its marble statues.6 The tablewares and new coins, which had been such a prominent feature of the fifth and sixth centuries, disappeared with a suddenness similar to the experience of Britain some two centuries earlier (Fig. 5.9B, C at p. 114). It is possible, for instance, that in parts of seventh-century Greece only rough hand-shaped pottery was in use.7 The imperial capital, Constantinople, may have been the only exception to this generally bleak picture. Here, for instance, new copper coins continued to be produced and to be used (Fig. 5.9D), and a new glazed tableware was developed during the seventh century to replace the fine-wares of earlier times. But even Constantinople shrank dramatically in both wealth and population from the booming centre of perhaps half-a-million people of the years around AD 500. Seventh-century Constantinople still stood out as a great city; but this was mainly thanks to buildings from its past, and because the other great cities of the Aegean, like Ephesus, had declined even more calamitously.8
6.2 Farmers’ houses of the fourth to sixth centuries, in the north Syrian village of Déhès. The walls are of carefully squared local limestone, and have often survived to their full height; the roofs, which have fallen in, are known from excavation to have been tiled. In plan and size, these are quite humble structures, the dwellings of very ‘ordinary’ farmers, with animals and storage below, and a couple of rooms for the humans above. But their solidity and functional comfort are impressive, and they must have been made by professional builders—hundreds of similar houses survive, some reroofed and reoccupied in modern times.
By AD 700 there was only one area of the former Roman world that had not experienced overwhelming economic decline—the provinces of the Levant, and neighbouring Egypt, conquered by the Arabs in the 630s and 640s. Here sophisticated potteries continued to flourish at centres like Jerash (in modern Jordan), and new copper coins were produced in quantity (Fig. 5.9E, at p. 115). Even on an inland village site, Déhès in northern Syria, copper coins and good-quality pottery were still common items throughout the seventh and eighth centuries—whereas in the contemporary Aegean and western Mediterranean they had more or less disappeared from use, even in major trading cities. In Arab Baysān, ancient Scythopolis (in modern Israel), a section of porticoed shopping street was completely rebuilt in the second quarter of the eighth century by order of the Caliph, who recorded his work in two elegant mosaic inscriptions, with Arabic letters of gold tesserae set against a deep-blue background: ‘In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Hishām, servant of Allah, Commander of the faithful, ordered this building to be built …’ (Fig. 6.3). By Roman standards Hishām’s new market building is quite small, but it suggests a level of sophistication and prosperity quite unparalleled in the rundown provinces of the rest of the old empire.9
6.3 Early eighth-century porticoed shops in the Arab city of Baysān. The mosaic inscription, set on the front of the building, recorded its construction under the Caliph Hishām in 737/8.
The End of an Empire and the End of an Economy
Even the most cursory glance at my graphs shows that there must have been a close connection between the unravelling of the Roman empire and the disintegration of the ancient economy. This link between economic and political decline has been explored by many historians over the years; but most have concentrated on the period before the fall of the empire, in order to explore whether declining prosperity weakened the Roman capacity to resist invasion. This question remains important, and I have discussed it earlier in this book (pp. 41–2). My focus here, however, will be on what happened after the invasions began. The evidence available very strongly suggests that political and military difficulties destroyed regional economies, irrespective of whether they were flourishing or already in decline.
The death of complexity in Britain in the early fifth century must certainly have been closely related to the withdrawal of Roman power from the province, since the two things happened at more or less at the same time. The only uncertainties in Britain are whether the later fourth century already saw serious economic problems developing, and exactly how fast change occurred.10 One of the characteristics of the post-Roman archaeological record, here, and elsewhere, is the disappearance of any closely datable items, such as coins, and, in an archaeological record without chronological pointers, change may seem more rapid than it actually was.
Further south, in the western Mediterranean, decline is much more gradual, and cannot be so obviously and immediately attributed to specific political and military events. My graph for Italy and North Africa shows two straight lines, turning down at the beginning of the fifth century, and thereafter heading slowly but surely downhill, implying an inexorable and steady loss of complexity, which began with the invasion of the West. In truth, the start of economic decline in Africa and Italy cannot yet be fixed with such precision, and its progress, once under way, is also open to debate. It is very possible that descent was, in reality, far from smooth, and characterized by periods of recovery and periods of steep fall.
However, if we look at the broad pattern of decline through the fifth and sixth centuries in both Africa and Italy, and particularly if we then compare this with what was happening in the eastern Mediterranean, a close link between political and economic developments seems unavoidable. In both the Aegean world and the Levant, the economy was expanding in both size and complexity through the fifth and into the sixth century, in other words moving in exactly the opposite direction to that of the West (Fig. 6.1, at p. 122). Politically and militarily, this was a period of unusual peace and stability in the East, except in the troubled north Balkans close to the Danube frontier, a peace that was seriously shattered only by a major Persian invasion in 540. It seems very much more likely than not that the different political and military histories of the East and the West played a decisive role in their divergent economic fortunes.
This supposition is confirmed by what happened in Greece at the end of the sixth century, and in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) during the first half of the seventh. East Roman military power and political control crumbled and almost disappeared, first in Greece, in the face of Slav and Avar invasions; and then in Asia Minor, before Persian and Arab invasions and raiding. In 626, and again in 674–8 and 716–18, even Constantinople itself was besieged. Unlike Rome and the West in the fifth century, the capital city and part of its empire survived, but by the skin of their teeth. It cannot be coincidence that during the troubled decades around AD 600, the sophistication of the late-antique Aegean world evaporated.11
As we have seen, the only parts of the former Roman world that still look economically developed at the end of the seventh century are the Levantine provinces (and neighbouring Egypt, whose economic history is known primarily from written sources). Yet again this suggests a close connection between stability, on the one hand, and prosperity, on the other—these regions were overrun by the Arabs without prolonged fighting, and until 750 benefited from Arab rule, as the peaceful heartlands of a new empire centred on Damascus.
All regions, except Egypt and the Levant, suffered from the disintegration of the Roman empire, but distinctions between the precise histories of different areas show that the impact of change varied quite considerably. In Britain in the early fifth century, and in the Aegean world around AD 600, collapse seems to have happened suddenly and rapidly, as though caused by a series of devastating blows. But in Italy and Africa change was much more gradual, as if brought about by the slow decline and death of complex systems.
These different trajectories make considerable sense. The Aegean was hit by repeated invasion and raiding at the ve
ry end of the sixth century, and throughout the seventh—first by Slavs and Avars (in Greece), then by Persians (in Asia Minor), and finally by Arabs (on both land and sea). On several occasions, imperial power was limited effectively to the walled area of Constantinople itself; and even this was nearly lost—in 626 the city probably survived a campaign by allied Persian and Avar armies only because the Persians were unable to cross the Bosphorus and help in a joint assault on the walls. A remarkable collection of miracle stories from Thessalonica, the second city of the empire, gives us some idea of the realities of life here during the difficult years of the seventh century. The city was repeatedly besieged by Slavs and Avars, and its territory subjected to periodic raids. According to our source, only the miraculous powers of Saint Demetrius saved Thessalonica from famine and from falling to the enemy.12 The picture is remarkably similar to that from Noricum 200 years earlier, in the Life of Severinus. It is not hard to believe that conditions like these caused economic havoc.
We know much less about exactly what happened inside fifth-century Britain, because the written record is so poor, but just the list of known troublemakers is impressive: Irish raiding and settling in the West; Picts invading from the North; Anglo-Saxons (and others) pushing inland from the South and East; as well as internal warfare between competing sub-Roman kingdoms. In these circumstances, production, transport, and marketing will all have been very seriously affected, as will the all-important spending power of the consumer. Furthermore, in Britain there were very few protracted intervals of calm, in which a recovery could get under way.
By contrast, Italy enjoyed prolonged periods of respite during the fifth and early sixth centuries, and Africa suffered comparatively little from disruption after its conquest by the Vandals in 429–39. It is, therefore, not surprising that we do not see in these regions the vertiginous drop in sophistication documented in fifth-century Britain and the seventh-century Aegean. What probably occurred in Italy and Africa was the slow unwinding of a Mediterranean-wide imperial and commercial system, hurried on its way by particular difficulties—such as the Gothic Wars and Lombard invasions in sixth-century Italy, and Berber raiding in North Africa.13 The historian of the Gothic Wars, Procopius, who was an eyewitness to much of the campaigning in Italy, gives us some indication of the harm done here by this fighting. He tells an evocative story of how the Ostrogothic king Theodahad, at the beginning of the wars, sought out a Jewish prophet to tell him how things would work out. The seer took three groups of ten pigs, assigned a group each to the Goths, the invading East Romans, and the native Italians, and shut them up in separate huts for a number of days without food. When the huts were opened, only two pigs in the Gothic hut were still alive, while only a few had died amongst the East Romans. In the Italian hut, half the pigs were dead, and the rest had lost all their bristles. We do not need to believe the literal truth of this story; but Procopius was a witness to the impact of the Gothic Wars in Italy, and his tale must at least have rung true.14
Financial and commercial links across the Mediterranean forged during the Roman period (or even earlier) meant that regions like Italy and Africa suffered not only their own parochial troubles, but also, to a more limited extent, from the problems of other areas. Italy’s connections with the rest of the Mediterranean were partly based on the peninsula’s position as the traditional heart of Roman power—a privilege that inevitably died with the empire. Italy’s aristocracy, for instance, lost a great slice of its spending power when Africa fell to the Vandals in 429–39, since many Italian landowners held extensive African estates.15 According to the Life of a pious Italian aristocrat, Melania, who gave away her wealth at the start of the fifth century, one of her African estates, near the small city of Thagaste, was ‘larger than the town itself, with a bath-building, many craftsmen (goldsmiths, silversmiths, and coppersmiths), and two bishops, one for our own faith, the other for the heretics’. With the resources from her African properties, Melania and her husband were able to build and support two large monasteries, one for 130 holy virgins, the other for 80 men.16 Wealth like this was lost to the Italian aristocracy at the Vandal Conquest, which also, of course, deprived Italy and its resident emperor of all the taxes paid by Africa, and of the substantial levy of grain used to feed the city of Rome.
The effect on Africa of the empire’s disintegration was less immediate and perhaps mainly commercial. The African provinces during the third and fourth centuries had exported large quantities of fine tablewares and olive oil throughout the western Mediterranean. This trade continued into the fifth and sixth centuries, and indeed into the seventh, and was perhaps never substantially disrupted at its African end. But the quantity of goods exported gradually shrank, until by the seventh century it was only a trickle in comparison to fourth-century levels.17 This decline is probably best explained in terms of the disintegration of a system of privileged trade, fostered by the empire, and by the gradual impoverishment of consumers on the northern shores of the Mediterranean, badly hit by the insecurity of the fifth and sixth centuries. In good times, close links between the different shores of the Mediterranean brought complexity and wealth; but in bad times, they meant that the problems of one region could have a damaging effect on the prosperity of another.
The Roman empire had encouraged and facilitated economic development in a number of different ways, both direct and indirect. The Roman state itself ordered the production and distribution of many goods; and, above all, collected and redistributed vast quantities of money raised in taxation. The demise of the state will have hit many areas directly and hard—when, for instance, the professional army along the Rhine and Danube disintegrated during the fifth century, the spending power in the frontier region of tens of thousands of soldiers (salaried with gold from all over the empire) also disappeared, as did the manufactories in areas like northern Italy that had made their equipment. Thereafter soldiers were local men, carrying their own, less extensive equipment—as a fighting force these men may or may not have been as effective as the Roman army, but they were certainly much less significant as a motor of the economy. The effect of the disintegration of the Roman state cannot have been wholly dissimilar to that caused by the dismemberment of the Soviet command economy after 1989. The Soviet structure was, of course, a far larger, more complex, and all-inclusive machine than the Roman. But most of the former Communist bloc has faced the problems of adjustment to a new world in a context of peace, whereas, for the Romans of the West, the end of the state economy coincided with a prolonged period of invasion and civil war.
The emperors also maintained, primarily for their own purposes, much of the infrastructure that facilitated trade: above all a single, abundant, and empire-wide currency; and an impressive network of harbours, bridges, and roads. The Roman state minted coins less for the good of its subjects than to facilitate the process of taxing them; and roads and bridges were repaired mainly in order to speed up the movement of troops and government envoys. But coins in fact passed through the hands of merchants, traders, and ordinary citizens far more often than those of the taxman; and carts and pack animals travelled the roads much more frequently than did the legions.18 With the end of the empire, investment in these facilities fell dramatically: in Roman times, for instance, there had been a continuous process of upgrading and repairing the road network, commemorated by the erection of dated milestones; there is no evidence that this continued in any systematic way beyond the early sixth century.19
Security was undoubtedly the greatest boon provided by Rome. Peace was not constant through the Roman period, being occasionally shattered by civil wars, and in the third century by a serious and prolonged period of Persian and Germanic invasion. However, the 500 years between Pompey’s defeat of the pirates in 67 BC and the Vandal seizure of Carthage and its fleet in AD 439 comprise the longest period of peace the Mediterranean sea has ever enjoyed. On land, meanwhile, it is a remarkable fact that few cities of the early empire were walled—a state of affairs no
t repeated in most of Europe and the Mediterranean until the late nineteenth century, and then only because high explosives had rendered walls ineffective as a form of defence. The security of Roman times provided the ideal conditions for economic growth.
The dismembering of the Roman state, and the ending of centuries of security, were the crucial factors in destroying the sophisticated economy of ancient times; but there were also other problems that played a subsidiary role. In 541, for instance, bubonic plague reached the Mediterranean from Egypt, and spread inexorably through the former Roman world, reoccurring on several occasions over subsequent decades. The historian Evagrius, a resident of Antioch in Syria, interrupted the flow of his narrative to give an account of how the disease had affected his own family. As a boy, on the plague’s first appearance in the empire, he himself had been struck down, but was lucky enough to survive. Later, however, on its return, it was to kill his first wife and several of his children, as well as other members of his wider family. Just two years before writing, when the plague visited Antioch for a fourth time, he lost both his daughter and her son. There is little reason to doubt that this occurrence and recurrence of disease were not just a personal tragedy, for people like Evagrius, but also a substantial demographic blow to the population of the empire.20
The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization Page 14
