The Fall of the Roman Empire

Contents

List of Maps                                                                     
ix

Introduction                                                                     
xi

Acknowledgements                                                         
xv

Historical Survey of the Roman Empire                       
1

/ THE FAILURE OF THE ARMY

1
 
The Generals against the State                               2j

2
The People against the Army                                 
35

H   
THE GULFS BETWEEN THE CLASSES

3
  
The Poor against the State                                    
'51

4
  
The Rich against the State                                    
69

5
  
The Middle Class against the State                       80

III  THE CREDIBILITY GAP

6
  
The People against the Bureaucrats                      89

7
  
The People against the Emperor                          100

IV  THE PARTNERSHIPS THAT FAILED

8
Ally against Ally                                                     113

9
 
Race against Race                                                 124.

V  THE GROUPS THAT OPTED OUT

10
 
Drop-outs against Society                                    
145

11
The State against Free Belief                                
155

VI  THE UNDERMINING OF EFFORT

12
 
Complacency against Self-Help                            
175

13
   
The Other World against This World                  185

Appendix 1: Some Religious Disunities Appendix 2: Why Did the Eastern and

Not the Western Empire Survive? List of Emperors and Popes A Who's Who of Ancient Writers Some Books on the Decline and Fall Maps Index

List of Maps

1
  
The Western and Eastern Empires AD 395
(Inset)
Boundaries of Praetorian Prefectures

2
  
The Barbarian Invasions of the Fifth Century AD

3
  
Europe after the Fall of the Western Empire AD 476

4
 
Italy

5
  
Gaul and the Rhine

6
 
The Upper and Middle Danube

7
  
The Balkans

8
  
The East

9
 
North Africa and Spain

Introduction

The fall of the Western Roman Empire was one of the most significant transformations (a favourite word for the whole process, especially in Germany) throughout the whole of human history. A hundred years before it happened, Rome was an immense power, defended by an immense army. A hundred years later, power and army had vanished. There was no longer any Western Empire at all. Its territory was occupied by a group of German kingdoms.

Hundreds of reasons have been suggested for the collapse of the Roman West. Some indication of their variety can be obtained from reading Edward Gibbon's superb and never truly superseded
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776-88). He lists at least two dozen supposed causes of that decline and fall - military, political, economical and psychological. Many of these 'causes' will be referred to in the pages that follow. But the historian himself made no attempt to marshal them one against another, or choose between them. That is rather disconcerting for the reader who is searching for quick answers. But it also shows a good deal of prudence. For an enormous, complex institution like the Roman Empire could not have been obliterated by any single, simple cause.

It was brought down by two kinds of destruction: invasions from outside, and weaknesses that arose within. The invasions are easy to identify, and they will be described in the preliminary section of the present volume. However, they were not sufficiently formidable in themselves to have caused the Empire to perish.

It perished because of certain internal flaws which prevented resolute resistance to the invaders: and the greater part of this book will be devoted to discovering those flaws.

I have identified thirteen defects which, in my view, combined to reduce the Roman Empire to final paralysis. They display a unifying thread: the thread of
disunity.
Each defect consists of a specific disunity which split the Empire wide apart, and thereby damaged the capacity of the Romans to meet external aggressions. Heaven forbid that we ourselves should have a monolithic society without any internal disunities at all, or any differences of character or opinion. But there can arrive a time when such differences become so irreconcilably violent that the entire structure of society is imperilled. That is what happened among the ancient Romans. And that is why Rome fell.

This theme has always attracted keen interest, largely because of the guidances and warnings it is supposed to offer to later generations, and this relevance has never seemed more visible than today. Britain thinks of its own vanished empire. The United States of America think of their current leadership, and of how it might be in danger of coming to an end. The Soviet Union seems to be showing at this very moment how smaller peoples break away from empires. France is the country where, in ancient times, this first happened. Germany spans the east-west border, and is very conscious of its ancient role as the destroyer of the Western Roman Empire. Italy is the country where that empire ruled and fell. And so on. I have not, in this revised edition, attempted to flag or discuss every echo, every similarity. But one or another of them, in various parts of the world, readily leaps to the eye.

I want to thank Mr Walter Annenberg, who invited me to write the original version of this book when he was the United States Ambassador in London, for his constant help and encouragement. I am also deeply grateful to the late Mr David H. Appel for his unfailingly constructive and sympathetic aid. I wish to express my profound appreciation to Mr Christopher Falkus for a great deal of stimulating, invaluable assistance. I owe acknowledgments to Mrs Enid Gordon, Mr Peter Quennell, and Miss Susan Reynolds for help that they have given, to the Annenberg School Press for preparing the first edition, and to Miss Jocelyn Burton who has, with constructive suggestions, produced this second, revised edition. And my wife's support has been indispensable.

MICHAEL GRANT

Gattaiola 1990

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the quotation of passages from ancient authors translated by W. B. Anderson, P. Brown, J. B. Bury, O. A. W. Dilke, C. D. Gordon, A. Hawkins, H. Isbell, D. Magie, F. X. Murphy, A. F. Norman, C. Pharr, R. S. Pine-Coffin, J. C. Rolfe, E. M. Sanford, E. A. Thompson, H. G. E. White, F. A. Wright and T. A. Sinclair.

HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The Roman Empire was of enormous dimensions, extending from the Atlantic to the River Euphrates, and from Britain to the Sahara desert. It was the greatest political achievement of ancient times, and one of the very greatest of all ages. Well might one of its own writers, Pliny the elder, speak of the 'immense majesty of the Roman peace'.

The creation of this mighty organism was a slow and gradual process. In the dim, distant days of the semi-legendary past, Rome had been a small Italian city-state under the rule of kings. Then, perhaps at about the turn of the sixth century BC, the kings were overthrown and a Republic came into being. Its sovereign body was an Assembly of Roman citizens, but the real power was concentrated in the hands of a few noble families. These formed the nucleus of the Senate, which, although technically only an advisory body, in fact directed the government for generation after generation.

During the next two hundred years Roman rule was gradually built up over one region after another in Italy itself. Then, in the third century BC, Rome clashed with the sea-power of north-African Carthage and gained control of the western Mediterranean. Thereafter, up to the last years before the Christian era, this Empire was extended to the eastern Mediterranean basin as well. Under the strain of governing these vast and varied territories, the machinery of the Republic broke down, and in the time of Julius Caesar and then Augustus (31 BC-AD 14), founder of the long line of Roman Emperors, the Senate was reduced to a subservient role from which it never emerged again. Its members, the leading men of the state next to the ruler himself, retained an importance that could not be ignored. But the Emperors, however much this was concealed beneath Augustus' constitutional facade, depended for their survival on the army.

That moment when the Republic ceased and the Empire or Principate began also witnessed the breakthrough of Imperial rule to the central and northern portions of the European Continent. Caesar established his northern frontier on the Rhine, and Augustus prolonged this boundary for the whole length of the Danube. On the other side of these barriers, all the way from the Netherlands to Aquincum (Budapest), the peoples who gazed across the rivers at the Roman defences were Germans. As time went on, forcible encounters between Germans and Romans became more and more frequent.

The chief gods worshipped by the German tribes were gods of war. But the tribesmen were also familiar with agriculture and stock-breeding, and what they saw and learned of Rome's settled and prosperous provinces excited their desire for a share of these benefits. Furthermore, they themselves were under pressure from remoter peoples living further north and east. When, therefore, in the second century AD, the Germans near the frontiers began to co-ordinate their activities in larger confederations and coalitions, the Empire - which was also in confrontation with the Parthian kingdom along its eastern borders - was in trouble.