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Sunday Morning Decline and Fall
It’s a Ricochet tradition — or mine, anyway – to reserve Sundays for the discussion of religion, the arts, letters, history, philosophy, and science. We need a break once a week; otherwise, we should go quite mad. Thus I offer as a topic for today’s discussion the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. I have no idea why I was prompted to think of the subject. It came to me unbidden. I must take up the question with my unconscious mind.
In 1984, Alexander Demandt enumerated 210 theses variously advanced to account for the collapse in Der Falls Rom:
Abolition of gods, abolition of rights, absence of character, absolutism, agrarian question, agrarian slavery, anarchy, anti-Germanism, apathy, aristocracy, asceticism, attacks by Germans, attacks by Huns, attacks by nomads on horseback.
Backwardness in science, bankruptcy, barbarization, bastardization, blockage of land by large landholders, blood poisoning, bolshevization, bread and circuses, bureaucracy, Byzantinism.
Capitalism, change of capitals, caste system, celibacy, centralization, childlessness, Christianity, citizenship (granting of), civil war, climatic deterioration, communism, complacency, concatenation of misfortunes, conservatism, corruption, cosmopolitanism, crisis of legitimacy, culinary excess, cultural neurosis.
Decentralization, decline of Nordic character, decline of the cities, decline of the Italic population, deforestation, degeneration, degeneration of intellect, demoralization, depletion of mineral resources, despotism, destruction of environment, destruction of peasantry, destruction of political process, destruction of Roman influence, devastation, differences in wealth, disarmament, disillusion with state, division of empire, division of labour.
Earthquakes, egoism, egoism of the state, emancipation of slaves, enervation, epidemics, equal rights (granting of), eradication of the best, escapism, ethnic dissolution, excessive aging of population, excessive civilization, excessive culture, excessive foreign infiltration, excessive freedom, excessive urbanization, expansion, exploitation.
Fear of life, female emancipation, feudalization, fiscalism, gladiatorial system, gluttony, gout, hedonism, Hellenization, heresy, homosexuality, hothouse culture, hubris, hyperthermia.
Immoderate greatness, imperialism, impotence, impoverishment, imprudent policy toward buffer states, inadequate educational system, indifference, individualism, indoctrination, inertia, inflation, intellectualism, integration (weakness of), irrationality, Jewish influence.
Lack of leadership, lack of male dignity, lack of military recruits, lack of orderly imperial succession, lack of qualified workers, lack of rainfall, lack of religiousness, lack of seriousness, large landed properties, lead-poisoning, lethargy, levelling (cultural), levelling (social), loss of army discipline, loss of authority, loss of energy, loss of instincts, loss of population, luxury.
Malaria, marriages of convenience, mercenary system, mercury damage, militarism, monetary economy, monetary greed, money (shortage of), moral decline, moral idealism, moral materialism, mystery religions, nationalism of Rome’s subjects, negative selection.
Orientalization, outflow of gold, over-refinement, pacifism, paralysis of will, paralysation, parasitism, particularism, pauperism, plagues, pleasure-seeking, plutocracy, polytheism, population pressure, precociousness, professional army, proletarization, prosperity, prostitution, psychoses, public baths.
Racial degeneration, racial discrimination, racial suicide, rationalism, refusal of military service, religious struggles and schisms, rentier mentality, resignation, restriction to profession, restriction to the land, rhetoric, rise of uneducated masses, romantic attitudes to peace, ruin of middle class, rule of the world.
Semi-education, sensuality, servility, sexuality, shamelessness, shifting of trade routes, slavery, Slavic attacks, socialism (of the state), social tensions, soil erosion, soil exhaustion, spiritual barbarism, stagnation, stoicism, stress, structural weakness, superstition.
Taxation, pressure of terrorism, tiredness of life, totalitarianism, treason, tristesse, two-front war, underdevelopment, useless diet, usurpation of all powers by the state, vaingloriousness, villa economy, vulgarization.
I couldn’t say why I find myself so fascinated by that list today. I must take it up with my unconscious mind. For those of you inclined to take up that question with your own unconscious minds, I commend to your attention this passage from Civilization and Its Discontents, in which Sigmund Freud compares the mind to a city with an ancient history:
Now let us make the fantastic supposition that Rome were not a human dwelling-place, but a mental entity with just as long and varied a past history: that is, in which nothing once constructed had perished, and all the earlier stages of development had survived alongside the latest. This would mean that . . . where the Palazzo Caffarelli stands there would also be, without this being removed, the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. … Where the Coliseum stands now, we could at the same time admire Nero’s Golden House. … And the observer would need merely to shift the focus of his eyes, perhaps, or change his position, in order to call up a view of either the one or the other.
Adam Kirsch begins with that allusion in an interesting review of new works about the Roman Empire and the long tradition of seeing America both in and as Rome:
The comparison is necessarily a loose one, but it preserves the customary understanding of the Roman Empire as a peak of human civilization, a fragile accomplishment that could all too easily be undermined by its own hubris. But this season brings a number of new works on Roman history that focus not on the glories of Roman culture but on its notorious brutalities. The perspective is, in its own way, just as unsettling as any apocalyptic fantasy of decline and fall. What if the true meaning of Rome is not justice but injustice, not civilization but institutionalized barbarism? What if, when you look back as Freud did at the Eternal City — a sobriquet that Rome had already earned two thousand years ago — you find at the bottom of all its archeological strata not a forum or a palace but a corpse?
What if, indeed.
Now, it’s surely true that there’s a Rorschach-test aspect to the question, “Why do you believe the Roman Empire collapsed?” It’s possible to construct many plausible theories, and if any event seems (retrospectively) over-determined, it’s the fall of Rome. Wikipedia’s account of the historiography of the period looks to me a sound and comprehensive review for those of you who need a refresher (I did); and we have among us a number of classicists who will surely have more thoughts to add. Suffice to say, there’s a vast reading list to master. A great deal of powerful human intellect has been applied to this question: There’s a compellingly-argued thesis to please all tastes.
It’s true that the theories about the fall of Rome that seem most persuasive to historians tend to be the ones that confirm their contemporary political beliefs. For example, Bruce Bartlett of the Cato Institute does a fine job of attributing Rome’s demise to its failure to adopt the Cato Institute’s policy recommendations. (That’s not sarcasm, by the way: It’s an outstanding piece, and really well worth reading.) Historians are human.
That said, none of us here, I assume, ascribe to the postmodern thesis that our interpretation of history is of necessity an entirely subjective matter. Some historical explanations are better and more plausible than others. Objectively.
So, Ricochet, what do you hold to be the top five — objective — causes of the collapse of the Roman Empire? Why do you think them more important than the others?
And don’t you find it relaxing to take a day away from contemplating current affairs? I don’t know why thinking about this subject hasn’t relaxed me yet, but I’m sure it will as I meditate upon it more deeply.
Published in General
Entirely possible, except that wasn’t the Roman character (more in the Carthaginian character, for what it’s worth). Part of the difference with the Eastern half of the Empire is that in many ways, it was more Greek and Phoenician (or, their descendants) than purely Roman, and that difference in population makeup served it well.
Even when Rome stabilized itself in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries, it was under a very top-down, centralized planning type of approach conceived by Diocletian. That character does not easily lend itself well to a laissez-faire approach to economics.
Claire,
I’d be delighted to comment. Why not make it an epic.
PERVERSITY SHOWS ITS TRUE COLORS
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THE POLITICS OF SUPREME AUTHORITY IS A ROLLER COASTER (timer function is not working start at 42:00)
https://youtu.be/u8I8J9bT3dk?t=42m2s
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NEVER UNDERESTIMATE CLAW CLAW (timer function is not working start at 38:00)
https://youtu.be/Kh9Urtz6wxc?t=38m
I have always felt that Rome fell because it destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. The loss of the one Gd belief undermined the moral authority of the Republic. About 150 years later Emperor Antoninus Pius (a Stoic of course) made a deal with Judah the Prince (He had the Mishnah redacted from the Torah). The practice of Judaism was made legal again. The Emperor had only one purpose for this. He wished the return of the Republic. Unfortunately, he did not get his wish.
Regards,
Jim
We must ban this book in order to suppress the dangerous ideas it contains.
Thank me later — I just saved the Republic.
I suspect it’s a good thing that few of us will immediately read it. This thread could become tricky to moderate if everyone did.
Interesting reference, GG, thanks. Good book. Not much inclined to any monocausal theory of history myself, but some of our hedgehogs will love it.
I agree with you intuitively in the way only someone who’s spent a lot of time in contemporary Italy and Turkey would. I’d swear you can still feel it.
Anyone that would like a free in depth look at this should listen to the History of Rome podcast. There are about 175 podcasts that run from 20-30 min that are quite good.
http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/the_history_of_rome/page/2/
That’s one of the cornerstones of conservative thought, isn’t it? That human populations aren’t nearly as pliable as one might wish.
The East had big advantages. A vastly superior defensive position with regard to the capital city combined with foes who could not contest control of the seas and who didn’t possess effective siege weaponry bought time for cutthroat diplomacy (literally, at times) to keep the anklebiters at bay. And when none of that worked, they would throw money at them.
1. Success (leading inevitably to political and social decadence)
2. Constantine establishing the new capital of the Empire at Byzantium in early fourth century, followed, at the end of that century, by the division of the Empire into East and West, thereby formalizing historic tensions between the Greek east and the Roman west.
3. Vast influx of marauding peoples from the far north to what we now call Germany and France, England, north Africa, etc., in the fourth and fifth centuries
4. Inability to police far-flung borders, resulting in virtually constant civil wars that fractured provinces, thus exacerbating civil and social impact of no. 2.
5. Battle between paganism and Christianity and the latter’s eventual hegemony enabling the now-established Church to take on the role of guardian and ruler and allowing for the emergence of the West
Oh I don’t think I can build up the endurance to write about the top five, but to me it seems the overriding cause was continuous foreign invasions that could not be repelled. The failure to stop these invasions precipitated the fall of the Western Empire. In the East where they were able to blunt and deflect the invaders the Empire went strong for another 600 years and then limped along for another 400. I think had Western Rome not been over run by Goths, Vandals, Huns, etc. they would have kept going, but those invasions shattered them. Once it broke apart no one had the power to put it back together.
Certainly one can argue a whole host of other issues left them vulnerable to being broken apart by invaders, but it was the invasions that finally did them in. At least in a strict clinical sense.
Hyperthermia was the closest thing to Climate change I saw on the list.
The short and not very satisfying answer is, no human instution is eternal. Entropy will have its way. No one person, or group is wise enough to see into the future and account for chance. Our founders, at least, tried to build in some resilience. But they were also modest enough to recognize their limitations and build in mechanisms to update our organizing software. Sadly, their construction of divided powers presumed that factions would always be jealous of their powers and prerogatives. Little did they realize that the fruits of office would be more attractive than the currency of reputation.
What others have said is good. How I teach it -admittedly a short part of a lecture on the development of democracy -is that Rome didn’t fall so much as break up. The Roman Republic had governed a massive area with a very small democracy founded in Rome herself. The wealth that Rome expropriated from the provinces angered the provinces providing a flow of soldiers to generals -Caesar, Sulla, even Crassus -who promised them money and citizenship. Civil War pulled the Republic apart. Augustus actually decentralizes Rome and makes the provinces much more self-sufficient, and starts building a Rome that extends to all corners of the Empire. Later emperors would continue the decentralization -often in self-serving ways. Hadrian gave more power to his home in Hispania, Septimus Severus to his home in Gaul, et cetera.
This process continued into the separation between East and West, where the new Emperors of the East were Greeks who focused on building up the Hellenistic part of the Empire, and the Westerners were, increasingly, barbarian allies, and the Emperors kept giving their friends more power. Eventually, the barbarian allies realized that Rome (Constantinople) was too far away to keep them in line, so they didn’t need the pretense of an Western Emperor, so they stopped appointing one.
I guess that puts me solidly in the “lack of assimilation” camp, but not just of the later barbarian invaders.
Sabrdance, would you say then that we in America today are living out the break up phase of the British Empire?
Haven’t read the comments so I’m not sure if this has been mentioned. Apparently the country was covered in fog. Climate change is one possibility but another is all the limb gesticulations while talking combined with tears from the beauty of life’s poignant moments (like the last scene in The Bicycle Thief where the boy takes his disgraced father’s hand…always chokes me up ). I came by this theory from listening to an Italian priest discuss this very topic. He kept going on about sexual immorality during Roman times as a warning to us all and he finally pounded the table and said,”because they was a bigamist”.
Despite sharing a name, the British and Roman empires were fundamentally different in their organization. The United States is closer to the Roman Empire, but even we are different in important ways. Not least of which, Roman provinces held power under a Duc (Duke) who held position because he was selected by his people and confirmed by the Emperor (the system would then transfer to the Holy Roman Emperor -selected by the Electors, confirmed by the Pope). American states don’t answer to DC -at least not officially, and if we’re breaking up, I’m not sure it’s going to be along state lines.
That’s a convoluted way of saying “not a clue.”
These are my earlier ruminations.
Michael Grant’s succinct work, The Fall of the Roman Empire, lists about a dozen societal fault-lines in the Empire, the cumulative effect of which was to bring it crashing down, in slow motion. It is difficult to narrow these fault-lines down to five, and I encourage interested readers to pick up a copy of the book. My preferred fault-line is ‘The Generals against the State,’ and all of its ramifications. Discipline was Rome’s greatest strength for years, but discipline’s eventual subordination to personal ambition left Rome and all of its institutions vulnerable to all the lesser ills.
Winning requires having and maintaining an edge. You need Vince Lombardis for leaders, Bart Starrs on the field and role players who understand their role. It’s easier to go from the top than people think. I suspect complacency was the main reason.
From the Journal of the Blindingly Obvious:
Side note: We are endlessly fascinated by the fall of the Roman Empire and don’t nearly spend as much time discussing the fall of the Roman Republic. The last days of men like Cato and Cicero should evoke more from us than the end of a system more than 400 years past its prime. I can’t change the emphasis of generations of scholarship…but I’m just saying…
1) The Romerican empire suffered from an entrenched and corrupted political establishment that was unresponsive to citizens over many decades.
2) The New Roman Deal and Great Roman Society programs put in place institutions that eventually hollowed out society, destroyed education and concentrated power in the imperial government.
3) After generations of fighting a Cold War with the Soviet Visigoths, the empire became weakened and lacked the political will to push back on the JV Vandals before they acquired nuclear ordinance.
4) The primary process for selecting emperors had become corrupted by the political establishment and the media… So outside reformers had difficulty competing against the bottomless resources of the ruling elite.
5) And most importantly, the empire’s conservative media had become undermined, co-opted or duped by the political establishment to the point where incumbents had approval ratings in single digits, yet they kept getting reelected. The conservative Roman media had clearly dropped the ball in the post-Ronaldus Magnus era.
Sadly, even the publisher of Imperial Review, a once-great institution led by Buckley the Younger, actually came out against Magnus’ torchbearer in those fateful 2012 AD primaries… which marked the end of the republic and thrust civilization into a prolonged dark age.
Back around 2000 I was fascinated by the parallels between the late Roman Republic and the United States of that time. I was wondering whether we would see the American Republic go the way of the Roman Republic.
Today I am also seeing parallels between the United States and the Fifth Century Roman Empire, and beginning to wonder if the United States will update the fall of the Roman Republic and the fall of the Roman Empire compressed into a single 21st century event.
Seawriter
Does the Journal of the Blindingly Obvious come in bold type braille?
I’m no expert on Rome. Other than the movies, my entire education on the subject is the result of listening to about a hundred twenty podcasts called the History of Rome. so I’m not smart enough to pin it down to five causes, especially since it seems that the decline and fall of Rome occurred over many centuries. When did the fall of Rome even occur?
Between 378 AD and 1452 AD.
Seawriter
Exactly. I think the 210 theses quoted by Claire pinned down the causes pretty well. Broad and contradictory as they are.
I think there are a lot of correct causes listed above. But I also think they play a part in a larger and more simple rule. Things expand or contract, they never stay static. The causes listed above follow this rule. The Roman Empire was built on conquest. When you are expanding, there are plenty of new lands to plunder and tax, new slaves captured, loot and booty to send back to the Capital. When you run out of lands to conquer, this flow stops. And then all the causes discussed above set the fault lines leading to contraction and the inevitable fall.
America has run out of lands to settle and stopped expanding geographically. But our population has grown regardless so we have thrived. When that stops, growth will disappear, and decay will accelerate. I think in many ways we are seeing this in an advanced stage today in Europe. Mark Steyn has it right.
I agree with the proposition that the Roman Empire did not fall but broke up. This was due to an economic shift to the east and the decline of the city, Rome, as a capital.
No comment I’ve read here has referred to the evidence suggesting that Rome was devastated by the arrival of a virulent strain of malaria imported from Africa, along with the grain and olive oil, that not only wiped out a huge proportion of the city’s population but also left the survivors debilitated to various degrees and women unable to carry pregnancies to full term.
One historian has suggested that Constantine’s motive for adopting (appropriating?) Christianity was a hope that Christianity’s attitude toward infanticide (by exposure) would arrest population decline in the Empire. Those who don’t mind an anachronism can call it “choice.”
Barbarian invaders had a role in the break up of the Western Empire but they were innocent of the destruction of Roman civilisation in the west. What the Barbarians wanted was in. The successor kingdoms they created maintained a fiction of the Empire long after it made sense to do so. Typically the kings wore two hats, they were king of their tribe and Duke (governor) of a Roman province and obtained the imprimatur of the Eastern Emperor. Barbarian takeover caused a sharp economic and cultural decline which was quickly recovered from.
The Dark Ages were created by Islam, which is now trying to do it again.
To a certain extent this is very true. “Roman”, as time went on, included people that were born far away from the City (or anywhere near it), had never even been there, and barely spoke Latin (or didn’t speak it at all). In a real sense, most “Romans” as time went on were never Roman at all. Look at how many Emperors near the end were born in places like the Balkans. And of course, the biggest example: “Rome” moving its capital to a city hundreds of miles away, the empire taking on a different language, and beginning the abandonment of the city of Rome itself. It’d be like the United States of America moving it’s capital and territory to Siberia (Obamanople?), speaking Russian, but continuing to call the nation the United States of America.