The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

by Bryan Ward-Perkins

  10. The ‘waves’ (vagues) are from the title of L. Musset, Les Invasions: Les Vagues germaniques (Paris, 1965).

  11. J. G. Herder, Outlines of a Philosophy of History, trans. T. Churchill (London, 1800), 421.

  12. An interesting exception, anticipating recent thinking, was Alfons Dopsch, The Economic and Social Foundations of European Civilization (London, 1937).

  13. E. A. Freeman, Old English History for Children (London, 1869), 28–9.

  14. See pp. 173–4.

  15. The title is from the English edition of Musset’s Les Invasions (of 1965): L. Musset, The Germanic Invasions: The Making of Europe AD 400–600, trans. E. and C. James (London, 1975).

  16. W. Goffart, Barbarians and Romans AD 418–584: The Techniques of Accommodation (Princeton, 1980). Two important supplementary articles are: W. Goffart, ‘Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians’, American Historical Review, 86 (1981), 275–306; and Goffart ‘The Theme of “the Barbarian Invasions”’, in E. Chrysos and A. Schwarcz (eds.), Das Reich und die Barbaren (Veröffentlichungen des Istituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 29; Vienna, 1989), 87–107; both in Goffart, Rome’s Fall and After (London and Ronceverte, 1989), 1–32, 111–32, the pagination cited in each case.

  17. Goffart, ‘The Theme’, 132.

  18. The quotations are from: Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, 230, 35 (see also Goffart, ‘The Theme’, 130).

  19. W. Pohl (ed.), Kingdoms of the Empire: The Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity (Leiden, New York, and Cologne, 1997). Despite its title, the volume contains articles both for and against the Goffart line.

  20. R. W. Mathisen and D. Shanzer (eds.), Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul: Revisiting the Sources (Aldershot, 2001), 1–2. For similar views: P. Amory, ‘The Meaning and Purpose of Ethnic Terminology in the Burgundian Laws’, Early Medieval Europe, 2 (1993), 1–28, at 1–2; B. D. Shaw, ‘War and Violence’, in Late Antiquity: A Guide, 130–69, at 152–3, 163; G. W. Bowersock, ‘The Vanishing Paradigm of the Fall of Rome’, in G. W. Bowersock, Selected Papers on Late Antiquity (Bari, 2000), 187–97.

  Chapter II. The Horrors of War

  1. Leo, Epistolae XII.viii and xi (Migne, Patrologia Latina LIV, coll. 653–5).

  2. P. Heather, The Goths (Oxford, 1996), 181–91; H. Wolfram, History of the Goths, trans. T. J. Dunlop (Berkeley and Los Angeles, and London, c. 1988), 172–89.

  3. Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters, VII.7.3. For the defence of Clermont: J. Harries, Sidonius Apollinaris and the Fall of Rome, AD 407–485 (Oxford, 1994), 224–9, 235–6.

  4. Hydatius, Chronicle; entries 39 [47] for the scourges; 196 [201], 202 [207] for his capture and eventual release.

  5. For events in 406–9: C. Courtois, Les Vandales et l’Afrique (Paris, 1955), 42–51; P. Courcelle, Histoire littéraire des grandes invasions germaniques (Paris, 1948), 58–79. For Visigothic devastation in 413: Wolfram, History of the Goths, 162.

  6. Goths in Italy: J. Matthews, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court A.D. 364–425 (Oxford, 1975), 284–306; Wolfram, History of the Goths, 150–62. Tax remissions: Theodosian Code XI.28.7 (8 May 413), XI.28.12 (15 November 418).

  7. Progressive starvation: Zosimus, New History, V.39 (trans. Ridley). The surrender of Rome: Olympiodorus, History, fragment xi.3 (trans. Blockley, pp. 168–9).

  8. For the Vandals and the sack of 455: Courtois, Les Vandales et L’Afrique, 194–6; Victor of Vita, Vandal Persecution, I.25.

  9. Eugippius, Life of Severinus. There is a useful discussion of the Life, on which I am in part dependent, in E. A. Thompson, Romans and Barbarians: The Decline of the Western Empire (Madison, 1982), 113–33.

  10. Hydatius, Chronicle, entries 83 [93], 85 [95]; Sidonius Apollinaris, Poem VII, line 233.

  11. Eugippius, Life of Severinus, ch. 20.

  12. Rural insecurity: the soldiers in ibid., ch. 20; also ibid., chs. 4.1–5, 10.1 (the incident outside Favianis), 25.3.

  13. Ibid., ch. 30 (defence of Lauriacum); chs. 5, 8, 19 (dealings with kings; 19 recounts the Alaman royal visit).

  14. Ibid., chs. 17.4 (Tiburnia), 1.2–5 (Asturis); 24.1–3 (Ioviaco); 22.4–5, 27.3 (Batavis).

  15. Ibid., chs. 27 (movement of the people of Quintanis), 31 (surrender of Lauriacum).

  16. Ibid., ch. 31.6.

  17. Ibid., chs. 1.4, 2.1–2. The troops are described as ‘barbarians … who had entered a treaty with the Romans’. It is possible that the ‘Romans’ who made this treaty were not the townspeople themselves (as I have supposed), but the imperial government in Italy.

  18. Hydatius, Chronicle, entries 188–91 [193–6].

  19. Orosius, History against the Pagans, VII.39, II.19 (for more detail of the Gaulish sack).

  20. Sack of Rome: Jordanes, Gothic History, 156 (’spoliant tantum, non autem, ut solent gentes, igne supponunt …’). Alliance of 451: ibid. 185–218.

  21. Gildas, The Ruin of Britain, ch. 24.3–4 (quotation from Winterbottom’s translation); Victor of Vita, Vandal Persecution, I.7.

  22. Vandals: Possidius, Life of Augustine, 28.5, Gaul: Orientius of Auch, Commonitorium, in Poetae Christiani Minores, ed. R. Ellis (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, XVI; Vienna, 1888), lines 179–84—‘uno fumavit Gallia tota rogo’.

  23. First, in the sixth century, by Jordanes, Gothic History, 219–22.

  24. Leo, Epistolae CLIX (Migne, Patrologia Latina LIV, coll. 1136–7).

  25. C. R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire: A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore and London, 1994), 194–200; A. Chauvot, Opinions romaines face aux barbares au IVe siècle ap. J.-C. (Paris, 1998).

  26. Symmachus, Letters, II.46 (Symmachi Opera, ed. O. Seeck (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, VI.1; Berlin, 1885)).

  27. Orosius, History against the Pagans, VII.35.19 (trans. Deferrari). Salvian, The Governance of God, IV.13.60, V.5.21. During the fifth century, attitudes to barbarians did slowly change: J. Moorhead, The Roman Empire Divided 400–700 (Harlow, 2001), 13–24; P. Heather, ‘The Barbarian in Late Antiquity: Image, Reality and Transformation’, in R. Miles (ed.), Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity (London, 1999), 234–58, at 242–55.

  28. Priscus, History, fragment 22.3 (trans. Blockley, pp. 314–15). Who knows if Attila really had such a painting made? The iconography described is not implausible, since it can be found on late Roman consular diptychs.

  29. Orosius, History against the Pagans, VII.37.

  30. Stilicho: Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, 3 vols. in 4 parts, ed. A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris (Cambridge, 1971–92), I, ‘Stilicho’; Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, VI, 1731. Pogrom of 408: Zosimus, New History, V.35.5–6 (numbering the soldiers who deserted at 30,000). Slaves from Rome joining Alaric: ibid. V.42.3.

  31. The classic work on this topic, on which I have depended heavily, is Courcelle, Histoire littéraire.

  32. Jerome, In Ezekiel, I Praef. And III Praef. (Migne, Patrologia Latina XXV, coll. 15–16, 75D): ‘in una Urbe totus orbis interiit.’

  33. Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, trans. H. Bettenson (Harmondsworth, 1972).

  34. Orosius, History against the Pagans. His optimism was shared, in this same period, by the pagan aristocrat and poet Rutilius Namatianus: J. Matthews, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court A.D. 364–425 (Oxford, 1975), 325–8. Rutilius looked forward to the day when ‘fearful Goths will bow their perfidious necks’ before the renewed might of Rome: Rutilius Namatianus, A Voyage Home, I, line 142.

  35. The Carmen de Providentia Dei, attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine, ed. and trans. M. P. McHugh (Washington, 1964), lines 903–9.

  36. Orientius of Auch, Commonitorium (as cited in n. 22), lines 195–6.

  37. Salvian, The Governance of God, IV.12.54, VII.6.24, and passim for similar passages.

  38. Ibid. VI. 18. 98–9. Chronicle of 452, entry 138, p. 662.

  39. A. Momigliano, ‘La caduta senza rumore di un impero nel 476 d.C’, Annali d
ella Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, ser. III, vol. III.2 (1973), 397–418 (repr. in his collected essays Sesto contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, i (Rome, 1980), 159–79).

  Chapter III. The Road to Defeat

  1. A. Demandt, Der Fall Roms: Die Auflösung der römischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt (Munich, 1984).

  2. As rightly stressed by Goffart on several occasions: ‘Rome, Constantinople’; ‘The Theme’ (especially at 7–17,125–32); Barbarians and Romans, 3–35.

  3. F. Millar, The Roman Empire and its Neighbours (London, 1981), 239–48. For Valerian’s skin: Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, ed. and trans. J. L. Creed (Oxford, 1984), 1.5.6 (pp. 10–11).

  4. Vegetius, Epitome I.1.

  5. Sea power: there was no repeat in our period of the daring seaborne raids, carried out across the Black Sea by Goths in the 250s and 260s, on the north coast of Asia Minor. Walls: Ammianus Marcellinus, History, XXXI.6.4: ‘pacem sibi esse cum parietibus memorans.’

  6. Ammianus Marcellinus, History, XXXI.15.

  7. Ibid. XVI.12 for the whole battle (XVI.12.47 for the quoted passage).

  8. Tacitus, Annals 1.61–2, in Tacitus, iii (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1931), 346–9; W. Schlüter, ‘The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest: Archaeological Research at Kalkreise near Osnabrück’, in J. D. Creighton and R. J. A. Wilson (eds.), Roman Germany: Studies in Cultural Interaction (Portsmouth, RI, 1999), 125–59.

  9. Ammianus Marcellinus, History, XXXI.13. There were, in the third century, other notable defeats, such as that which led to the death of the Emperor Decius (in 251) at the hands of the Goths. But the poor quality of our sources for the period makes it impossible to estimate the scale of the military losses.

  10. See p. 24.

  11. Regular use of Germanic and Hunnic mercenaries: J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Barbarians and Bishops (Oxford, 1991), 33–6. Their loyalty to Rome: A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284–602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey (Oxford, 1964), 621–3.

  12. Theodosius: In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini, ed. and trans. C. E. V. Nixon and B. S. Rodgers (Berkeley and Los Angeles, and London, 1994), panegyric II, chs. 32–3. 405–6 invasion: Zosimus, New History, V.26.4 (for the Huns and Alans); Theodosian Code, VII.13.16 of April 406 (for the recruiting of slaves).

  13. Claudian, Works, trans. M. Platnauer, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1922), De Bello Getico, lines 423–9 (414–22 for the detail of where the troops were drawn from).

  14. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The quotation is from the ‘General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West’, which close volume iii (1781).

  15. The classic discussion of army numbers remains Jones, Later Roman Empire, 679–86. R. MacMullen, Corruption and the Decline of Rome (New Haven and London, 1988) argues for growing corruption, and hence inefficiency, in the chain of supply between taxed citizen and paid soldier. He does show, very effectively, that the chain was inefficient; but I am not convinced that the problem was worsening (or worse than that found in all pre-modern states, and many modern ones).

  16. For older views of economic decline, see the careful discussion in Jones, Later Roman Empire, 812–23, 1039–45. More recent appraisals: R. Duncan-Jones, in S. Swain and M. Edwards (eds.), Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire (Oxford, 2004), 20–52; B. Ward-Perkins, ‘Specialized Production and Exchange’, in Cambridge Ancient History, xiv. Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600, ed. Averil Cameron, B. Ward-Perkins, and M. Whitby (Cambridge, 2000), 346–91, at 350–61. For more detail, see Ch. VI.

  17. Theodosian Code, XI.28.7 (8 May 413). See p. 16.

  18. Theodosian Code, VII.13.16 (slaves), 17 (those to be paid in full ‘rebus patratis’), both of April 406.

  19. 413 and 418 tax remissions: p. 16. Law of 444: Nov. Val. 15.1, in Theodosian Code. I cannot agree with H. Elton, Warfare in Roman Europe AD 350–425 (Oxford, 1996), who argues for a decline of the western army only well into the fifth century (e.g. at pp. 265–8).

  20. Narratio de imperatoribus domus Valentinianae et Theodosianae, in Chronica Minora Saec. iv. v. vi. vii, ed. T. Mommsen (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, IX; Berlin, 1891–2), 630. Orosius, History against the Pagans, VII.42, makes the same point from a more sympathetic angle. For the civil wars: J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire (2nd edn., London, 1923), i. 187–96; Goffart, ‘Rome, Constantinople’, 17–18; Goffart ‘The Theme’, 126–7; P. Heather, ‘The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe’, English Historical Review, 110 (1995), 4–41, at 23–5.

  21. Zosimus, New History, VI.8.2 (eastern troops), V.50.1 (Huns), VI.1.2 (unavailability of the Gallic, Iberian, and British armies).

  22. Thanks to the full account given by Zosimus (based on the lost History of Olympiodorus), we are comparatively well informed on all these events: Zosimus, New History, VI.I–6.

  23. Eudoxius, ‘arte medicus’, a leader in 448: Chronicle of 452, p. 662, entry 133 (we do not know the status of Tibatto, the other named leader). The slaves of Gaul (in 435): Chronicle of 452, p. 660, entry 117 (for 435): ‘omnia paene Galliarum servitia in Bacaudam conspiravere.’ I. N. Wood, ‘The North-Western Provinces’, in Cambridge Ancient History, xiv. 497–524, at 502–4, provides a general discussion of the Bacaudae.

  24. Rome: Zosimus, New History, V.42. Bazas: Paulinus of Pella, Thanksgiving, lines 333–6.

  25. Goffart, ‘Rome, Constantinople’, 18–19.

  26. The 399–400 revolt and the commemorative column are discussed, described, and illustrated in Liebeschuetz, Barbarians and Bishops, 100–3, 111-25, 273–8, and plates 1–7. Slaves and outcasts: Zosimus, New History, V.13 (trans. Ridley, lightly adapted).

  27. Spain: Orosius, History against the Pagans, VII.40.6; Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, II, ‘Didymus 1’ and ‘Verenianus’. Italy: Nov. Val. 9, in Theodosian Code. Clermont: Sidonius Apollinaris, Letters, III.3.3–8. Soissons: Gregory of Tours, Histories, II.27.

  28. Tacitus, Germania 33, in Tacitus, i (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1914), 182–3; Seneca, De Ira I.xi.3–4, in Seneca, i (The Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1928), 132–5.

  29. Increasing Germanic unity: Heather, Goths, 51–65. Recruits to the Gothic force in 376–8: Ammianus Marcellinus, History, XXXI.6.5–6. W. Pohl, ‘Conceptions of Ethnicity in Early Medieval Studies’, in L. K. Little and B. H. Rosenwein (eds.), Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings (Oxford, 1998), 15–24, is a useful introduction in English to the recent debate on ‘ethnogenesis’ (the process whereby disparate groups slowly formed into single ‘peoples’).

  30. Goffart, ‘The Theme’, 112–13. See, for instance, the Visigoths’ campaigns against the Siling Vandals and Alans in Spain ‘on behalf of the Roman name’ (Hydatius, Chronicle, entries 55 [63], 59 [67], 60 [68]).

  31. Paulinus of Pella, Thanksgiving, lines 383–5.

  32. Hydatius, Chronicle, entry 60 [68]: ‘oblito regni nomine Gunderici regis Vandalorum … se patrocinio subiugarent.’

  33. ‘Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum’: A. Gillett (ed.), On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2002), 109 n. 30. The Latin poet Dracontius, at the court of the Vandal king Gunthamund (484–96), included the Alans in a disparaging list of barbarian peoples (while, of course, omitting the Vandals), which suggests a degree of Vandal disdain for their Alan partners: Dracontius, Romulea V, lines 34–5 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, XIV, ed. F. Vollmer, Berlin, 1905, p. 141).

  34. Possidius, Life of Augustine, 28.4.

  35. Goffart, ‘The Theme’; Goffart, ‘Rome, Constantinople’.

  36. Matthews, Western Aristocracies, 284–306; Wolfram, History of the Goths, 117–81; Heather, Goths, 130–51,181–7.

  37. For the treaties of 435 and 442: Cour
tois, Les Vandales et L’Afrique, 169–75.

  38. Visigoths: Hydatius, Chronicle, entry 61 [69]; Prosper, Epitoma Chronicon, in Chronica Minora Saec. iv. v. vi. vii, ed. T. Mommsen (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, ix; Berlin, 1891–2), p. 469, entry 1271. Burgundian and Alan grants: Chronicle of 452, entries 124, 127, 128 (p. 660). Location of Burgundian settlement: P. Duparc, ‘La Sapaudia’, Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1958), 371–83.

  39. For the distinction between imperial and local interests: M. Kulikowski, ‘The Visigothic Settlement in Aquitaine: The Imperial Perspective’, in Mathisen and Shanzer (eds.), Society and Culture, 26–38. For possible reasons behind the 419 settlement: I. N. Wood, ‘The Barbarian Invasions and First Settlements’, in Cambridge Ancient History, xiii. The Late Empire, A.D. 334–425, ed. Averil Cameron and P. Garnsey (Cambridge, 1998), 516–37, at 531–2.