The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

by Bryan Ward-Perkins

  It has also been argued recently, on the evidence of both written accounts and of tree-ring data, that for over a year in 536–7 the sun was obscured, perhaps as the result of an asteroid strike, with disastrous consequences for the growing season.21 Disasters like these certainly did happen, with terrible consequences for many individuals; but it is probably right to see them as subsidiary, rather than primary, causes of the decline of the ancient economy. Acts of God tend to occur in all periods of history, but their effects are generally long-lasting only when an economy is already in trouble. Stable economies can survive intermittent crises, even on a grand scale, because they seldom affect the underlying structures of society.22 For instance, the Black Death in fourteenth-century England is known to have killed between a third and half the total population, which is an extraordinarily high figure. But it did not destroy the structures of English life, and therefore did not in fact blow later medieval England’s economy substantially off course. The Roman world could have recovered from acts of God; what it could not survive were the prolonged troubles of the end of the empire, and the definitive dissolution of the Roman state.

  It was, as we have seen, the fifth-century invasions that caused these difficulties, and brought down the ancient economy in the West. However, this does not mean that the death of the sophisticated ancient world was intended by the Germanic peoples. The invaders entered the empire with a wish to share in its high standard of living, not to destroy it; and we have met, earlier in this book, people like the Ostrogoths living in marble palaces, minting imperial-style coins, and being served by highly educated Roman ministers. But, although the Germanic peoples did not intend it, their invasions, the disruption these caused, and the consequent dismembering of the Roman state were undoubtedly the principal cause of death of the Roman economy. The invaders were not guilty of murder, but they had committed manslaughter.

  Experiencing Collapse

  The Life of Saint Severinus, with its detailed testimony to the fall of Noricum (see pp. 17–20 and Fig. 2.2, at p. 18), provides some eloquent examples of how the daily lives of people in a frontier province were affected by the disintegration of Roman power. It tells of the numerous acts of violence, which made life difficult for producers, distributors, and consumers alike, and it also provides a few snippets of more specific information. At one point, the unfortunate citizens of Batavis begged the saint to intercede with the king of a local Germanic tribe, so that they might be allowed to trade. Even local exchange had apparently been made impossible. Unsurprisingly, the import of goods into Noricum from afar had also become very difficult. At one point, aided by a miracle, Severinus distributed to the poor of Lauriacum a dole of olive oil, which, our source tells us, was brought by merchants to the province only with the greatest of difficulty. For oil to reach Noricum, it had to travel by a dangerous overland route from Italy or hundreds of miles up the highly disturbed lower Danube. In these circumstances, it is more surprising that the poor of late-fifth-century Noricum still hoped to be given imported olive oil—rather than use animal fat as their lighting, cooking, and washing medium—than to hear that supply had been severely disrupted.23

  The disappearance of the Roman state meant that the Noricans no longer enjoyed the security they needed to benefit from trade; but it also had another immediate and important impact. The Life tells us that, even before Severinus arrived in the province in the 450s, defence had become almost entirely a local responsibility. Only one garrison, that of Batavis, was still receiving pay from the imperial government in Ravenna for its work on the Danube. But, as we have already seen, this was not for long. The pay had to be collected in person by a detachment of the soldiery, who made the round trip, across dangerous countryside and over the Alps, to Ravenna. One year, these voyagers were attacked and slaughtered.24 No more gold ever reached Noricum from the imperial government. This fascinating story documents the very end of the redistributive process that for centuries had pumped gold from the prosperous and peaceful provinces of the interior of the empire to the frontier regions that bore the brunt of barbarian attack, but thereby also enjoyed the principal fruits of the army’s spending.

  These stories illustrate disruption, but they also show that economic structures can be very resilient—the citizens of Batavis sought the permission of the local Germanic king to go on trading; some olive oil was still reaching Lauriacum, and even the poor still expected it; and the soldiery of one city were prepared to make a long and dangerous journey to collect their wonted pay. But, in the face of repeated difficulties, even resilient structures will crumble. A period of prolonged respite, helped by neighbouring economies in better shape, might well have led to recovery in Noricum (and elsewhere). But periods of prolonged respite were rare, and no provinces in the West were entirely unaffected by troubles. In these circumstances, the western provinces got caught in a vicious circle of economic decline, from which it would take centuries to regain Roman levels of sophistication.

  The Danger of Specialization

  I have argued that the end of the ancient economy, and the timing of its collapse, were closely linked to the demise of the Roman empire. However, to understand the full and unexpected scale of the decline—turning sophisticated regions into underdeveloped backwaters—we need to appreciate that economic sophistication has a negative side. If the ancient economy had consisted of a series of simple and essentially autonomous local units, with little specialization of labour within them and very little exchange between them, then parts of it would certainly have survived the troubles of post-Roman times—dented perhaps, but in an essentially recognizable form. However, because the ancient economy was in fact a complicated and interlocked system, its very sophistication rendered it fragile and less adaptable to change.25

  For bulk, high-quality production to flourish in the way that it did in Roman times, a very large number of people had to be involved, in more-or-less specialized capacities. First, there had to be the skilled manufacturers, able to make goods to a high standard, and in a sufficient quantity to ensure a low unit-cost. Secondly, a sophisticated network of transport and commerce had to exist, in order to distribute these goods efficiently and widely. Finally, a large (and therefore generally scattered) market of consumers was essential, with cash to spend and an inclination to spend it. Furthermore, all this complexity depended on the labour of the hundreds of other people who oiled the wheels of manufacture and commerce by maintaining an infrastructure of coins, roads, boats, wagons, wayside hostelries, and so on.

  Economic complexity made mass-produced goods available, but it also made people dependent on specialists or semi-specialists—sometimes working hundreds of miles away—for many of their material needs. This worked very well in stable times, but it rendered consumers extremely vulnerable if for any reason the networks of production and distribution were disrupted, or if they themselves could no longer afford to purchase from a specialist. If specialized production failed, it was not possible to fall back immediately on effective self-help.

  Comparison with the contemporary western world is obvious and important. Admittedly, the ancient economy was nowhere near as intricate as that of the developed world in the twenty-first century. We sit in tiny productive pigeon-holes, making our minute and highly specialized contributions to the global economy (in my case, some teaching, and a bit of writing about the end of the Roman world), and we are wholly dependent for our needs on thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands, of other people spread around the globe, each doing their own little thing. We would be quite incapable of meeting our needs locally, even in an emergency. The ancient world had not come as far down the road of specialization and helplessness as we have, but it had come some way.

  The enormity of the economic disintegration that occurred at the end of the empire was almost certainly a direct result of this specialization. The post-Roman world reverted to levels of economic simplicity, lower even than those of immediately pre-Roman times, with little movement of goods, poo
r housing, and only the most basic manufactured items. The sophistication of the Roman period, by spreading high-quality goods widely in society, had destroyed the local skills and local networks that, in pre-Roman times, had provided lower-level economic complexity. It took centuries for people in the former empire to reacquire the skills and the regional networks that would take them back to these pre-Roman levels of sophistication. Ironically, viewed from the perspective of fifth-century Britain and of most of the sixth- and seventh-century Mediterranean, the Roman experience had been highly damaging.

  VII

  THE DEATH OF A CIVILIZATION?

  THE POTS, TILES, AND COINS that are the protagonists of the last two chapters are not always seen as central to the core of human existence. Indeed, in the rich developed world (where historians flourish), well-made objects have become so much an accepted part of existence that their importance tends to be overlooked, particularly by intellectuals, who often see themselves as somewhat above such mundane things. However, these same high-minded intellectuals record their elevated thoughts on the latest laptop, in a weatherproof room, comfortably clothed, and surrounded by those mass-produced items known as ‘books’. Our own experience should teach us every minute of every day how important high-quality functional objects are to our well-being.

  So far we have looked at manufactured goods, but the benefits of a sophisticated economy can also be seen at a ‘lower’, even more basic, level—the production of food—and in the ‘higher’ reaches of human achievement, such as the spread of literacy and the construction of monumental buildings.

  A Vanishing Population

  Although we cannot be certain, it is likely that the end of the ancient economy had an impact that was greater even than a dramatic regression in manufacturing. Food production may also have slumped, causing a steep drop in the population. Almost without exception, archaeological surveys in the West have found far fewer rural sites of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries AD than of the early empire.1 In many cases, the apparent decline is startling, from a Roman landscape that was densely settled and cultivated, to a post-Roman world that appears only very sparsely inhabited (Fig. 7.1a, b). Almost all the dots that represent Roman-period settlements disappear, leaving only large empty spaces. At roughly the same time, evidence for occupation in towns also decreases dramatically—the fall in the number of rural settlements was certainly not produced by a flight from the countryside into the cities.

  At first sight this evidence seems to point clearly and unequivocally to a massive drop in population in the post-Roman centuries, to half or perhaps even a quarter of Roman levels. However, as so often, the picture is not quite as clear as it at first appears. Archaeologists can find people of the past only if they left behind them durable material remains. If these people belonged to a culture like that of Roman times, which produced large quantities of solid building materials and shiny pottery, then their settlements show up very clearly in the modern plough soil, as readily identifiable concentrations of broken tile, fragments of mortar, and potsherds. But, unfortunately, the same is not true of settlements from periods with very few durable objects; and, as we have seen, this is exactly what the post-Roman centuries were like. Wooden houses and thatched roofs predominated, which left no tile and mortar fragments, while early medieval pottery is not only much scarcer than its Roman equivalent, but is also generally a dull brown or grey in colour, and therefore difficult to spot in the plough soil. Post-Roman sites, and thus post-Roman people, are often very difficult to find.

  Unfortunately, material remains, although a good index of economic sophistication, are not necessarily a reliable index of levels of population. This important point can be illustrated by comparing a Roman with a post-Roman site in Britain. The small fourth-century Roman farmstead at Bradley Hill in Somerset had a partially tiled roof, and on excavation produced nearly 3,500 sherds of Roman pottery, and, as we have already seen, even seventy-eight coins. Although it may have been inhabited by only two or three families of farmers (perhaps twenty people), for as little as fifty years, they left behind them a lot of archaeological evidence. Even a casual modern observer, walking over the site of this farm, might well have noticed its remains on the surface. By contrast, Yeavering, the great royal estate centre of the sixth- and seventh-century Northumbrian kings, may well have been used for over a century by more than 100 people, including men and women from the very highest ranks of society. But its buildings were constructed entirely of perishable materials, which left no trace in the topsoil; and its pottery was not only very scarce, but also extremely friable and hence liable to fall into dust under the plough (Fig. 5.7, at p. 105). Even a very thorough archaeological field survey could have walked right over Yeavering without noticing any trace of settlement. The site was in fact discovered only because local conditions allowed the post-holes of its timber buildings to be visible from the air.2 Bearing the example of Yeavering in mind, it is almost certain that, lurking in the large empty spaces of distribution maps like Fig. 7.1b, were a lot of people who are, at present, archaeologically invisible. They were there, but we cannot find them.

  7.1 Disappearing people. Rural settlements north of the city of Rome, in Roman and post-Roman times, as revealed by field survey.

  (a) Sites occupied in the period around AD 100.

  (b) Sites revealed by pottery of the fifth to eight centuries AD.

  Because of these problems with the evidence, we cannot take the apparent lack of post-Roman sites at face value, as unequivocal evidence for a cataclysmic collapse of population in post-Roman times. But, of course, this same evidence does not compel us to assume that population levels remained constant. It is entirely possible that the difficulty we have in finding post-Roman people is due to their being substantially fewer in number, as well as to their leaving fewer material traces. While maintaining a healthy scepticism over the impression of emptiness given by maps like Fig. 7.1b, we should also beware of filling the gaps with fictitious people. Some of the people we cannot see may well never have been there in the first place.

  Since economic complexity definitely increased the quality and quantity of manufactured goods, it is more likely than not that it also increased production of food, and therefore the number of people the land could feed. Archaeological evidence, from periods of prosperity, does indeed seem to show a correlation between increasing sophistication in production and marketing, and a rising population. For instance, as we have seen, the fifth and early sixth centuries in the eastern Mediterranean saw expansion in the production and export of fine pottery, as well as of wine and oil carried in amphorae; in the very same period, there was a rash of new settlements in the East, even in areas where agriculture is difficult, like the limestone hills of northern Syria—where much of the cultivable soil is confined to tiny pockets in the bare rock (Fig. 7.2).3 Furthermore, as we can tell from the material remains they left behind, the people who inhabited this unpromising terrain were far from scraping a miserable existence on the very edge of subsistence. They had the resources to invest in a spectacular series of rural churches, and in some very solid and impressive domestic housing (Fig. 6.2, at p. 125).

  7.2 Prosperity in a difficult landscape. The ancient village of Bamuqqa in the north-Syrian limestone hills. Around the settlement (in black) are shown (in grey) the pockets of cultivable soil, most of them tiny.

  In the West, earlier evidence—from first-century Italy, first- and second-century Gaul and Spain, and third- and fourth-century North Africa—all suggests a similarly close link between the development of a market-oriented economy and an increasing density and spread of settlement. For instance, the Roman peasant family near Luna in northern Italy, whom we have already met eating from imported pottery dishes, was living on top of a steep ridge, very ill-suited to conventional agriculture. The successful cultivation of the hillside, and hence the well-being of this peasant household, were almost certainly made possible by the development and export of a prestigious local
wine, for which terraced hillside production was perfectly suited.4

  If we ask ourselves exactly how a complex economy could produce more food than a very basic one, and thereby feed more mouths, two closely related answers can be offered. First, if agricultural products could be readily exported and sold (whether in a regional or an international market), then farmers could specialize in producing those crops for which local conditions were particularly well suited. For instance, the cultivators of the north Syrian hills would be able to exploit the small and unpromising pockets of soil around their villages to grow many more olive trees than they themselves actually needed (Fig. 7.2). The surplus oil could be sold within the wider region, and in the fifth to seventh centuries it could even be exported overseas—as shown by the discovery of amphorae from Syria and its neighbouring provinces throughout the Mediterranean, and even beyond it. Meanwhile, foodstuffs that could not be cultivated locally in quantity, like grain, could be brought in from nearby areas with better arable cultivation, such as the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia. In this way, specialization, coupled with exchange, could markedly increase the productivity of the soil, by allowing it to be used for the crops best suited to local climatic and geological conditions.

  Secondly, specialization and the ability to turn crops into cash allowed farmers to invest in improvements, that in turn increased productivity yet further. For instance, the Syrian cultivators of the limestone hills built a large number of solid olive presses around their villages, the remains of which are still standing there today, which allowed them to extract their oil efficiently and locally. At the same time, their counterparts on the plains were able to extend and intensify their arable cultivation by building complex irrigation and water-management systems, involving dams, underground channels, and reservoirs, as well as conventional irrigation ditches.5 Through capital investment, farmers were able to get much more out of their land.