BudW

George Bush-he gets the blame for every thing.

lwarmonger

I think your synthesis is a pretty good start, but it doesn't really address the root causes of the fall. From all the historians have been able to determine, the barbarian hordes that invaded the Empire in the 5th Century were very small (although somewhat larger than they had been in the past due to larger and larger tribal federations forming). As for the Sassanids, given the resources available to the respective Empires there really shouldn't have been too great a difficulty in holding them more or less indefinitely. And the borders had been more or less the same length for the past 300 years or so... meaning imperial overstretch was nothing new.

I think every one of your points is valid, but only in conjunction with certain elements of internal decay which many historians have tried to address but most of which you have already debunked.

Personally, I believe the cause for internal decay stemmed from three major sources.:

First, the shift in the 3rd and 4th centuries from an urban society of citizens to an agrarian society of peasants. That reduced the majority of the populations stake in society, and led to an aristocratic landed elite resting atop a mass of easily conquerable peasants... as well as reducing taxable revenues because the landed elite were better able to evade taxes than individual freeholders and urban merchants.

Second was the increasing separation of the military from the population as a whole. With the majority of the Empire's citizens turned into serfs it became increasingly difficult to recruit from people within the empire... which meant that the Empire turned to Germans from outside the Empire or from the frontier areas (Dalmatia, the empire's prime recruitment ground, was nearly the source of a war between the Western minister Stilcho and his Byzantine equivalent as late as 410). That meant that the military, while not suffering from having Germans in it per se(it wasn't until tribes were incorporated into the Roman army wholesale that reliability problems occurred with the Germans acting for themselves), became far less attached to the state. Without the prospect of land or citizenship at the end (since citizenship was automatic after the 3rd century and who wanted to be a serf?) the long service professional army looked only to itself and whomever it could put in charge in exchange for the money that came with coronations and plunder that came with campaigning in civil war.

Third, was the lack of a clear line of succession and the fact that no regime could be completely legitimized. In the Roman Empire might made right... if you commanded an army you could take a shot at the imperial purple, and if you won than you were legitimate... until someone stronger came along. Now granted that this problem pre-dated the Empire, however it became far more pronounced as the population became more separated from the military.

astralis

lwarmonger,

thanks for spelling it out- i actually had been thinking about it as part of imperial overstretch (as emperors would give out large parcel of conquered lands to their favorites, thus causing the landed aristocratic elite).

on another note, the byzantine empire (eastern roman empire) suffered through exactly the same problem later on in its history, both in this problem of the aristocratic elite, the serfs, and the line of succession problem.

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lwarmonger

Indeed, although interestingly enough the multiple rounds of civil war that ultimately caused the fall of Constantinople were among the same family (and occasionally among those already in the line of succession).

Ironduke

The Byzantines brought the Turks into their empire just as the Romans did -- to fight for them as mercenaries.

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lwarmonger

However at the 11th century they hit a peak (after the dark ages of the 7th-10th centuries) and it was not that practice that caused them to decline from that peak. The battle of Manzikert was the disastrous culmination of a concerted campaign to keep the Turks out of Anatolia (they had been filtering in since the devastation of Armenia by the Turkish migration that was deflected by the Seljuks), and it wasn't until the middle of the 14th century that the Byzantines started using entire Turkish tribes in their internal politics.. and by that point it was only a matter of time anyways.

Ironduke

Not really... we're the largest exporter of agricultural goods in the world, we produce far in excess than what we consume. Manufacturing output hasn't fallen in the United States, it's continually grown strongly due to increases in productivity. Granted comparative advantage dictates that it's better to have some manufactured goods made elsewhere.

Merovee

Immigration is the foremost reason Rome fell.

Sledhead

In addition, a lot of the so called barbarians wanted to become simple roman citizens. It was so un-roman of the time to do this that they simply invaded and lay siege to the city of Rome itself. Their simple demand was entrance into roman society. This was flatly refused and so the city was sacked and the citizens were taught a lesson.
The decline and fall of the roman empire is a long but great read.

Merovee

It is surprising the role of the Huns and Goths has not been further discussed in this thread. The Huns displaced the Goths further to the East causing the Goths to spill over the Danube. Originally the Goths asked Rome for permission to settle within Roman territory south of the Danube.

The Romans allowed many of the Goths to enter under deals that promised them food. When the food never came and the Goths were landlocked and starved, they simply rioted, packed up and went where the food was, deeper within the empire.

This culminated with Odoacer finally sacking Rome and displacing the last Roman Emperor and the floodgates of Rome for other Germanic and Hunnish tribes to invade.

ba1025

In part the west declined once it stopped expanding. Rome was a slave economy. No more new subject peoples no more new sources of slaves

In the east I'd have to say equal parts a blind venetian Doge and the 4th crusade and a family that fought itself when it should of been securing it's frontier int eh 14th century. After all who invited the Ottomans into Galliopoli? They squabbled while Nicea fell and the ultimate insult had to partake in the siege of Philadelphia and were STILL squabbling. if the Palaiologos had spent there energy in Aisa minor instead of fighting each other and actually PAID the Catalan mercenaries their state might of survived till a great power rose in the East or West instead of being the birth mother of the power that replaced it.

Merovee

I would disagree in that the primary cause of the downfall of the western portion, and the center, of the Roman Empire was not due to a lack of slaves but rather an over reliance on them. Many legions were not of solid Roman stock and had no binding loyalties to Rome.

JAD_333

You hit the nail almost squarely on the head. If you did away with attributing decay to the "certain elements" you cited you would be dead on. The examples you gave, such as the growth of a landed aristocrasy adept at evading taxes, indicate that decay had already begun. They're symptoms not illnesses. In fact there is no illness behind the fall of the Roman Empire. It simply followed the natural progression of every state that succeeds in growing into a great empire; it's citizens, from leaders to beggers, go through an evolution of perspective caused by the changing focus of the state. In the beginning the focus is on conquest; pride soars as successes come one after the other; then the focus changes necessarily to administration and the struggle of conquest gives way to a struggle for power and status; then the focus splits between administration and the need to defend the whole structure against external threats. But rather than uniting as one to defend the state, political and personal interests split on what to do. This is always how it comes to be and it is how the US will go in a hundred or several hundred years. Even now there are signs of it.

So, if we want to know how the Roman Empire fell, or rather, petered out, we don't have to look farther than man's nature. We can flesh it out with all sorts of apparent causes, but none of them is ever conclusive. If you doubt that, look at how many different scenarios have been laid out in this thread without a consensus forming. All the explanations for the fall are just symptoms of man's inability to control his social environment. But I really enjoy reading this thread...lot's of interesting history.

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ba1025

# Ward-Perkins cautions that the economy of the Eastern Mediterranean remained robust, and that the "the jury should remain out on the important question of whether the overall economy of the Western Empire, and hence its military strength, was in decline before it was hit by the problems of the early fifth century."

But that is like saying that the jury should remain out as to whether the economy of New Orleans was in decline before the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. The levees holding back Lake Ponchartrain could not withstand a storm of that magnitude. The complex Roman economy depended on masses of slave labor, and it was the Roman social system that could not withstand the barbarian storm.
# Rome's economy worked its slaves to death and required a constant new supply (unlike the American South, where the slave population grew through natural increase). It already was under stress due to diminishing returns of conquest and a high proportion of the slaves recently captured coming from the same barbarian tribes that were about to invade.
# "Even as early as 376-8 discontents and fortune-seekers were swelling Gothic ranks soon after they had crossed into the empire - the historian Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that their numbers were increased significantly, not only by fleeing Gothic slaves, but also by miners escaping the harsh conditions of the state's gold mines and by people oppressed by the burden of imperial taxation."
# During the Goths' siege of Rome in the winter of 408-409, a contemporary source reported, "Almost all the slaves who were in Rome, poured out of the city to join the barbarians."
# In 399-400, the Germanic general Tribigild revolted in Asia Minor and was joined "by such a mass of slaves and outcasts that the whole of Asia was in grave danger".

Asia Times Online :: Asian News, Business and Economy.


A few blurbs

ba1025

MMMM wealth was land in those times. What's it in our times and is there any lessons to be learned here about hedge funds and other tax shelters or is tax avoidance not an issue today. I wonder if the landed Aristocracy argued they needed those tax breaks to buy slaves and seeds to work the land to feed the masses? All tongue in cheek btw