How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower Read online

  Only at the very end may we reasonably turn to some parallels and even lessons for the present. Some of these will have more to do with human nature than specific policy. I do not claim that any of these ideas are especially profound or original. That does not mean that they are not important and do not apply to any human institution, whether country or company. We should still be thankful that many aspects of the Roman experience are most definitely not mirrored in our own day. Public life is not violent and political rivalries in Western democracies do not explode into civil war.

  However, there is perhaps one lesson worth learning from our own times. On an almost nightly basis our television screens carry grim pictures of violence in Iraq and other war zones. Just a few days ago there was the especially sickening incident where initial reports suggested that two young women with Down's Syndrome were employed to carry bombs into a crowd. The explosives were detonated by remote control, murdering their bearers as well as the other victims. Inevitably with attacks where the bombers themselves die it is difficult afterwards to establish the precise facts. However, as usual, these victims were mainly ordinary civilians, not in any way connected with the government or America and its allies. Such dreadful incidents should remind us of the capacity of some human beings to slaughter people who are their neighbours.

  Media attention must inevitably focus on such atrocities. They are news, in the way that peaceful daily life is not. What we need to remember is that violence and ordinary life coexist. Frequent targets of suicide bombers or mortar and other attacks are crowded market-places, where people go to buy food and other necessaries. Just a few streets away from an attack, daily routines will be going on much as normal. People go to work and children go to school, people cook and eat, sleep in their beds and do such ordinary things as getting married. Life goes on, because there is really no alternative. Some people will flee, but for many this is not possible. Violence makes all of these things more difficult, and the threat of it spreads fear far beyond the number of direct victims. Yet life will still go on. It is well worth remembering this when we consider the collapse of Roman authority, the end of imperial rule and the barbarian invasions. Perhaps then we will be less impressed when aspects of Roman culture appear to have survived or that occupation by an invader did not result in the flight or extinction of all existing communities.

  Looking at the fall of the Roman Empire seemed the logical next project for me after completing the book on Caesar. In some ways it is a departure, for in the past I have mostly studied and written about earlier periods of Roman history. Even after spending the last few years working on this book I still see myself as something of an outsider to the field. I hope that this grants a perspective that is sometimes lost by the period specialist. The work of many others has made it possible for me to write this book. Since it became fashionable a generation or so ago the literature on the later Roman period is now vast and includes some of the most innovative and impressive scholarship seen in any aspect of the study of the ancient world. Newcomers to the field are therefore able to plunder from an array of studies into almost every aspect of the history of these centuries. From the beginning I must acknowledge my debt to these historians and archaeologists, many of whose works are listed in the notes and bibliography. At the same time, the main reason why I wanted to write this book was a dissatisfaction with quite a few of the conclusions and assumptions made in these works. There is no generally accepted explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire in the west in the fifth century. `Fall' is not a fashionable word with a surprising number of the scholars working on the period, and many talk instead of such things as `transformation', accepting that there was change, but casting it in a gentler light. A few voices have been raised against this rosy portrait, but any suggestion of decline still seems tantamount to heresy. The empire of the fourth century in particular is regularly depicted as essentially sound, perhaps even stronger and more efficient than the world of Augustus or Hadrian. I simply do not believe this, and hope to show that it makes no sense whatsoever in the light of the evidence, let alone sheer common sense. In addition, the reasons for the collapse of Roman power deserve an explanation, and oddly the most important factor tends to be dismissed.

  An academic study would summarise and list the arguments and analysis of all major contributors to the debate on a subject. Such material is meat and drink to historians and an essential tool of their trade. It is also deathly dull to everyone else. Only rarely will any scholar be mentioned by name in the main text of this book. References to their work may then be found in the endnotes. The overwhelming majority of readers will rightly ignore these, but they are there to help anyone wishing to read more or for those wishing to follow the trail that led me to the conclusions presented here. These and the bibliography are not exhaustive and, somewhat unfairly, usually list only those works in English, since many foreign texts will only be readily available to the few readers with access to a good university library.

  In the second century AD the Roman Empire was the overwhelmingly dominant power in the known world. It seems reasonable enough to call it the superpower of its time. The term is meant in only the most general sense. I do not intend to define words like `superpower', `power', or even `empire'. Such rigid labelling is common, but in my opinion rarely instructive. At the seminar mentioned above I remember one scholar for whose work I have immense admiration baldly stating that the British Empire was not really an empire. Doubtless what he meant was that it did not share all of its characteristics with other empires, but it is difficult to see what is gained by such strict definition. No such artificial labelling is necessary to show that by the end of the sixth century the power, prosperity and size of the Roman Empire had been massively reduced.

  Similarly I have made no real use of the modern terms `Byzantium' and `Byzantine', and the emperors who ruled from Constantinople are referred to as Roman even when they no longer controlled Italy and Rome itself. This was how they knew themselves. The accuracy of terms like `Germanic' and `tribe' are now hotly debated. I have made use of them because no better alternatives are available. Similarly, the word `barbarian' is sometimes convenient. None of these terms should be interpreted too rigidly.

  This book spans more than four centuries and cannot hope to describe the entire history of the period in equal detail. It would easily be possible to expand each of the chapters into a work of similar length to the entire book. Once again, more detailed studies are cited in the endnotes. I have tried to maintain a coherent narrative, although it is sometimes convenient to concentrate on events in one area before dealing with things happening elsewhere. Some issues, such as religion, law and wider society, are dealt with very briefly for reasons of space. This is not because such issues were unimportant, but simply because they were of minor significance for the slow rotting of Roman power. Avery high proportion of our surviving sources are Christian, and it would be very easy for this book to turn into a history of the Church in these centuries. Once again, this would in itself be interesting, but it would be a digression from our real theme. The focus must always be on the factors and events that led to the eventual fall of the empire, and this is the story that this book attempts to tell. It is undoubtedly one of both decline and fall.

  Before proceeding it is only right for me to thank the many people who helped me to write this book and listened patiently to my ideas. Some also read various versions of the manuscript and provided very many helpful comments. In particular I would like to thank Geoffrey Greatrex for finding the time amidst his heavy teaching and research load at the University of Ottawa to read all the chapters. Thanks to him I have been pointed to many works that I would not otherwise have found. Both Kevin Powell and Perry Gray were also kind enough to read the text. Each commented in a distinctive way and I can only regret that lack of space made it difficult to include some of their suggestions. Once again Ian Hughes has read and commented on the very first drafts of all the chapters, and has probably be
en very glad to move into a period more to his taste. Finally, I ought to thank my mother, Averil Goldsworthy, who has proofread almost all of my books in the past and become a little weary of being blanketed with a general thanks to family and friends. All of these have my thanks and have helped to make this a better book than would otherwise have been the case.

  I would also like to thank the staff at Orion Publishing, and in particular my editor Keith Lowe, for all their labours in turning a bare text into the finished book. Similar gratitude is owed to Beene Smith and the people at Yale University Press, both for their past work on Caesar and future efforts for this book. Lastly I must thank my agent, Georgina Capel, for once again creating the circumstances in which I could do justice to such a big topic.

  Introduction - The Big Question

  `The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity repined the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it lasted so long.' - Edward Gibbon.'

  n 476 the last Roman emperor to rule from Italy was deposed at Ravenna. Romulus Augustulus was in his early teens, the puppet of his father who commanded the imperial army. It was not much of an army, but then they no longer controlled much of an empire. The east was ruled by another emperor at Constantinople and he did not recognise the pretender in Italy. Most of the western provinces - Gaul, Spain and North Africa - had been carved up into kingdoms by warlords of Germanic origin. Now the same fate would befall Italy as an army officer of barbarian origin called Odoacer killed Romulus' father and deposed the emperor. The lad himself was not important enough to be worth killing and was permitted to live out the rest of his life in comfortable retirement. There was a bitter irony that he should be named Romulus after Rome's mythical founder and nicknamed `little Augustus' after the first emperor Augustus.

  It has been common to name 476 as the year when the Roman Empire ended in the west. If so, then five centuries of imperial rule ended with a whimper. The event did not seem to be of massive importance to contemporaries, and probably passed unnoticed by most of the emperor's subjects. Romulus Augustulus was just the last in a succession of puppet emperors manipulated by powerful generals. The empire had split into eastern and western halves each ruled by its own emperor near the end of the fourth century. The east remained strong, but the west had withered, its wealth and power declining under a succession of blows. By 476 the Western Empire did not have far to fall. In the next century the east Romans would attempt to regain the lost territories, occupying Italy, Africa and part of Spain. They lacked the strength and will to hold on to them in the long run.

  The eastern part of the empire - known as the Byzantine Empire to modern scholars, but Roman as far as they were concerned - was a powerful state at the end of the sixth century. Yet it was not a superpower, and its wealth and military might were a pale shadow of the united empire in its heyday, when no enemy or rival had been even remotely Rome's equal. The time when the emperors had governed most of the known world was just a distant memory. By the year boo the world was a very different place. No new superpower had emerged to take Rome's place and instead there were many smaller kingdoms and peoples. The medieval world had taken shape.

  There have been a huge number of theories to explain why the world changed in this way, and very little agreement. Many dispute the importance of 476, even as a landmark. Some argue that the empire had already fallen before this and a few, somewhat bizarrely, that it survived afterwards. Not only are the causes of Rome's fall disputed, but also how long the process took. Some, like Gibbon, see the roots deep in the earlier history of the empire, which produced a slow decline over several centuries. Others suggest a shorter time span, although virtually no one has argued that it took less than a few generations. Debate continues to rage, each age answering the question according to its own obsessions and prejudices. The fall of the Roman Empire remains one of the great mysteries of history.

  More recent empires have risen and fallen much more quickly. Hitler's thousand-year Reich' and its ally imperial Japan enjoyed spectacular success, both reaching the height of their power in 1942. Three years later they fell in blood and ruin, their power utterly broken. The Second World War also hastened the end of much older empires, whose impact on the wider world was deeper, if often more subtle. Exhausted and impoverished by war, Britain most readily acknowledged the `wind of change' and gave up its empire in just a few decades. Wars were fought to defeat groups determined to seize power by force, but the inevitability of independence was never seriously doubted. Other countries resisted the change more stubbornly, but all failed to cling on to their colonies in the long run.

  The great powers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were a spent force, but they left a deep legacy. Newly independent countries had frontiers based on the decisions of imperial administrators - dramatically so where partition was employed, but more generally and less deliberately throughout Africa and Asia. Much of the world now had English, Spanish or French as a second language, which was very often the language of government and education. Legal and political systems were also derived from European prototypes. Ironically enough Latin law in this way spread to a far wider area than the Roman Empire had ever covered. Control passed almost invariably to an elite drawn from the indigenous population, but who were educated in the European style, and often actually in the country of the colonial power. Rarely is it possible to say more than that the wider population has been no worse off since independence, but all too often the new rulers have proved considerably more corrupt and exploitative than their predecessors. Former colonies now form the bulk of the poorest countries in the world.

  Soviet Russia, which had inherited the empire and many of the ambitions of its Tsarist predecessor, survived longer than the west European powers and for forty years was one of two superpowers that dominated the world. Finally, Russia collapsed under its own weight. This happened very suddenly, surprising even its Cold War adversaries. The fate of many regions on Russia's fringes remains to be decided, but has already involved considerable bloodshed in several areas. Soviet Russia's fall left the United States of America as the sole superpower in the world, a situation that at the moment seems only likely to change if the forecasts of China's growth prove accurate. (The idea that the EC may become an equal is clearly fantasy. The periodic suggestions that it could join with Marxist China to form a counterweight to the USA are disturbing, but scarcely realistic.)

  Once a colony itself, America became a country through rebellion from Britain. Apart from the expansion westwards, it has never shown much interest in occupying overseas territories, as distinct from maintaining bases around the world. Even so, the Cold War led to fighting open wars in Korea and Vietnam, as well as covert support for combatants in many other countries. Currently, the USA and its allies have substantial forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. In each case this is intended to be a temporary operation, until the supported governments are capable of maintaining themselves without direct military aid. Opponents often dub America an empire, but this is largely rhetoric. However, it is overwhelmingly the strongest country in the world and in this sense its position mirrors that of Rome. Yet the very different experiences of other modern empires should make us cautious about pressing this too far. First we must understand the Roman experience.

  There is some irony in the coincidence that the first volume of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was released early in 1776, just a few months before the Declaration of Independence. Gibbon was an MP and had been present in the previous autumn, silently approving Parliament's decision to support the government's plan to send more troops against the rebellious colonists. By the time he had comple
ted his mammoth work, Britain had lost the war. It was a serious setback, but proved temporary and the heyday of the empire still lay in the future. The new America was tiny in comparison to today, for the great expansion to the west coast had not yet occurred, and no one would have guessed at its future prominence, although some wild claims were made. America was to have a negligible role in the affairs of the wider world for the next century.'

  In the nineteenth century it would become more and more common to compare the grandeur of Britain's empire with that of Rome. For Gibbon and contemporaries the parallel was less specific, but there were a number of reasons why he chose to look at Rome rather than any of the other great empires of the ancient world. The first was quite simply the impact of the Romans on the world, and most of all on the Western world. Their empire had been larger and lasted far longer than any of the other great nations of antiquity. As importantly, it had included Gibbon's homeland, as well as most of western Europe. Christianity emerged in the Roman period and eventually became the religion of the empire, hence a Catholic Church and pope in Rome. Gibbon had dabbled with Catholicism in his youth, before being sent away by his father for a properly Protestant re-education in Calvinist Switzerland. Yet the Catholic Church had ensured the survival of Latin - and helped to preserve Greek - as a language and made possible the rediscovery of Greek and Roman literature in the Renaissance. Men like Gibbon were comfortable in both languages, which remained in his day the central pillars of education. The Greek achievement was admired, but Athens' decline was already chronicled by Thucydides and Xenophon. Alexander's empire was vast, but failed to outlive him. The earlier empires of Persia, Assyria, Babylonia and Egypt were known largely through what the Greeks and the Bible said of them. It was still a generation before Champollion would decipher the Rosetta Stone and little was known for certain about the earliest civilisations.'