Today, we often hear America’s political and economic difficulties analogized to those of the late Roman Empire. Anyone who really wants to know the extent to which our problems are similar to those of the Romans should read British historian Adrian Goldsworthy’s recent book How Rome Fell. Goldsworthy shows that the main cause of Rome’s collapse had little or no parallel in the modern United States. That cause was constant civil war. Over the last 250 years of the Western Roman Empire, more emperors were killed by rivals for the throne than died of natural causes. Even more importantly, Goldsworthy argues that more Roman soldiers were killed in civil conflict than by foreign enemies such as the Huns and Persians. Given the constant threat of a coup, most emperors had to focus their efforts on survival, often at the expense of defense against external threats. For example, military commanders and provincial governors were chosen on the basis of personal loyalty to the emperor rather than ability. In a fine application of public choice theory, Goldsworthy notes that late Roman emperors often were afraid to allow subordinates to win victories against barbarian enemies, because the successful general might then use his victories create a power base which he could use to overthrow his master. Obviously, the massive loss of life and economic resources caused by civil war undermined Rome as well. Goldsworthy is not the first scholar to point out that late imperial Rome suffered from massive civil conflict. But he makes an important contribution in emphasizing the ways in which this was the most important cause of the empire’s collapse.
Goldsworthy also considers other possible causes of Rome’s decline. For example, he effectively rebuts the traditional view that it was caused by the rise of Christianity, pointing out that Christian emperors pursued policies that were similar to those of their pagan predecessors, except on the issue of religion itself. Some of the causes that he does give credence to do have modern parallels. Thus, he notes the growth of an increasingly expensive and inefficient government bureaucracy, and burdensome taxation. Roman taxes and government bureaucracy were not onerous by modern standards; but they were a major burden on the far more limited resources of an ancient state. However, Goldsworthy stresses that these factors were far less important than the massive civil wars. Moreover, a large part of the taxation was imposed because of the need to finance civil wars, and pay for the loyalty of key generals and military units that might otherwise support usurpers.
Although I’m not an expert on the subject by any means, I have a longstanding interest in ancient Greek and Roman political history and try to keep up with the literature to the extent I can. Goldsworthy’s book is the best in this field that I have read in some time. I’m also a big fan of his earlier book on the Punic Wars, which gives the best explanation I have seen of why Rome defeated Carthage and became the dominant power in the Mediterranean.
Reader says:
Ah, but the relevant question for the United States isn’t why the Roman Empire fell, it’s why the Roman Republic fell.
:-)
December 30, 2009, 1:56 amJames N. Gibson says:
Strange, in my study of Ancient Rome the final two centuries are more punctuated by various barbarian invasions then civil wars.
I wonder what Victor Davis Hanson will say regarding this book.
December 30, 2009, 1:57 amDesiderius says:
“For example, military commanders and provincial governors were chosen on the basis of personal loyalty to the emperor rather than ability.”
This seems to be of some applicability to the present, and the preceding, administration; politics being (civil, in this case) war by other means.
December 30, 2009, 2:00 amMark N. says:
It’s interesting that this is essentially the opposite of the classic Gibbon thesis, that Rome’s later years were marked by a replacement of the martial spirit with effeminate pacifism, which made it easy to conquer.
December 30, 2009, 2:05 amBrett says:
I’d argue a lot of it was bad timing – the Romans had been improving early in the late 4th/early fifth century. Then they got hit with a gigantic population movement in the form of the Gothic Tribes moving into the Empire, coupled with some bad emperors in the Western Empire. Even then, the Eastern Empire was actually quite strong during most of this period, and grew stronger.
December 30, 2009, 2:10 amIlya Somin says:
Ah, but the relevant question for the United States isn’t why the Roman Empire fell, it’s why the Roman Republic fell.
That was even more obviously caused by civil conflict. The last 50 years of the Republic had numerous civil wars with various generals and politicians competing for power.
December 30, 2009, 2:11 amIlya Somin says:
Strange, in my study of Ancient Rome the final two centuries are more punctuated by various barbarian invasions then civil wars.
As Goldsworthy points out, the civil wars made things easier for the barbarian invaders, since the Romans (who were busy with their own infighting) often could not divert sufficient forces to counter them.
December 30, 2009, 2:13 amRP4ME says:
The main point missed by the author is that Romes internal problems were caused by constant warfare. They were hell bent on empire building. Humanity was simply not meant to mix. The ethnic and cultural differences of the conquered peoples polluted the cultural values of the conquerors. As the number of outsiders increased the moral of the natural born decreased which will always lead to problems. This is what we are seeing in America today. As history has shown us, it will end in war.
December 30, 2009, 3:50 am“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -George Santayana
Russell Dees says:
The last remark can’t be left without a response. The ‘success’ of the Roman system was founded on its willingness to absorb and tolerate other cultures – a point on which there is unanimity from Tacitus to Machiavelli to Montesquieu to Edward Luttwak. The civil wars that ultimately brought down the Republic were, for the most part, fed by the willingness of its leading politicians to exploit class differences for their own aims. It was not corrupting ‘foreign’ influence that drove the Gracchi brothers, Marius, Sulla, Cataline, Crassus or Julius Caesar.
December 30, 2009, 5:07 amAmerican Psikhushka says:
Did Goldsworthy explore the monetary angle at all? From what I recall from various sources the leadership progressively devalued the currency, massively accelerating this process towards the end. They had a gold coinage, but devalued it by adding other metals into the mix.
December 30, 2009, 5:14 amGW says:
“… main cause of Rome’s collapse had little or no parallel in the modern United States.”
With the hardening of the division of the United States into red and blue states (does anyone seriously detect any movement by the contemporary Republican Party towards any form of compromise or reconciliation? what about the all the talk of illegitimately elected presidents? or the growth of self-styled “militias”, formed not for the common defense but for local perogatives?), I would be more cautious here about excluding the possibility of a parallel.
December 30, 2009, 5:18 amRP4ME says:
As history has shown us this is always the case, in the beginning. Everyone tries real hard to get along. Laws are written to try to create peace but it ultimately fails because one group always feels that the other group/groups is being held above the rest. Those in charge love the division the differences in culture create, it allows them to get away with more and more until one, race, ethnicity, culture gets fed up and revolts. Leaders rely on many things to keep us divided including religion and politics. It always comes back to bite them in the end.
December 30, 2009, 6:05 amAnatid says:
As I understood it, the core cause of the civil wars was Hadrian’s change in managing troops. Easy to have an identity as Roman when you are born in Iberia, serve in Gaul, and retire in Carthage. But when you’re born in Iberia, serve in Iberia, and retire in Iberia, under an Iberian general with a similar background, then you’re not Roman, you’re Iberian. With the Roman identity weakened, each local army was loyal to his general, and each chose to defend his homeland against the invading Goths/etc rather than be deployed to fight wars on other fronts.
And if you want to use the Republic as an analogy instead, similar deal. An army would be loyal to their commander, fighting well for him. In turn, he would use his glory and wealth from successful campaigns to gain power back in Rome and provide pensions for his veterans.
The United States Army, on the other hand, doesn’t have these regional or personal ties. You serve with men from all parts of the country, and you fight in the name of your entire country. As a country, we have a powerful national identity.
December 30, 2009, 6:28 amTwirip says:
I don’t know whether such unanimity exists or not. Historian Byran Ward-Perkins makes a pretty good case for the opposite theory – that it was the deliberate integration into the empire of large blocs of people who were not even supposed to assimilate to Roman ideas which finaly brought down Rome.
This is not incompatible with other theories being discussed here. Sometimes one faction in a civil war would cut a deal with a barbarian tribe and offer them residency within the empire, as a tribe, in return for miliary aid.
The event normally used to mark the fall of Rome was when Odoacer, a German general in the Roman army, deposed Romulus Augustulus, the last Emperor. And did not bother to make himself Emperor in turn. When your army is run by outsiders it’s a good sign that your polity is not long for this world.
So perhaps you could say that the modern analogy is to the need for genuine assimlation of “immigrants”, with the understanding that neither the barbarian tribes entering the Empire nor the modern “illegal immigrants” are good canidates for assimilation.
December 30, 2009, 7:14 amTwirip says:
It would be a lot easier to take you seriously as a commenter if yout memory of recent history was not so …. selective. I recall a great deal of talk about an illegitimately elected president, and even a lot of talk about how it would be a good thing if one of them were assassinated. And it was all coming from people exactly like you. The Democrats sudden desire for political comity does not pass the laugh test.
December 30, 2009, 7:20 amArkady says:
Indeed. That era has always struck me as nothing so much as a bunch of Mafia dons vying for power.
December 30, 2009, 7:31 amArkady says:
Bullshit.
December 30, 2009, 7:36 amJohnKT says:
How Rome fell? The statement bothers me, because there was a Republic of some 700 years first, then an Empire of some 400 years in the West, and 1400 years in the East. Fall just isn’t the right term.
A better question would be “How did the Republic get transformed into an Empire?”
The best single history on the transformation of Republic to Empire that I can cite is Lily Ross Taylor’s Party Politics in the Age of Caesar. This is a must read. In spite of great differences with our own political system, you will recognize uncomfortable analogies.
In my words, the Republic became a military dictatorship because it was an Empire already. The loot of the Empire inflamed ambitions and rivalries among the leading citizens of the Republic that made civil government impossible. The first few Caesars sincerely hoped to somehow restore the Republic. Eventually that forlorn hope was dropped, and “restoring the Republic” became cynical words.
Is the US not an Empire today? Won’t there be inflamed rivalry for the fruits of our empire?
For all its sins, Rome had a very long existence. I fear we won’t.
December 30, 2009, 8:17 amSW says:
Its not too surprising that Santayana, a life-long Spanish citizen who grew up in Victorian Boston, would feel that way. It’s also, probably, why he initially was a supporter of Mussolini, during his later years in Rome. He disliked Anglo-American culture and thought Latins superior.
December 30, 2009, 8:38 amTamerlane says:
A couple of points [both of which should appeal to libertarians]: First, the economic “reforms” of Constantine — essentially an early attempt at centralized economic control — helped weaken the financial base of the empire just before the permanent East-West split. Second, religion played a role in the ultimate downfall of the Eastern Empire: Imperial persecution of Monophosytes is a major reason the African and Anatolian hinterland of the empire fell so easily to the Moslem conquest. [I'm remembering this off the top of my head, so I can't be more precise.]
December 30, 2009, 9:11 amTamerlane says:
I’ve always thought that the best translation of “gravitas”, as it was used in the late Republic, should have been the old street term “juice”: The more thugs you had swaggering around you as they shoved a way for you down the street, the more gravitas you had.
December 30, 2009, 9:15 amkiwi dave says:
Appropriate you should mention Bryan Ward-Perkins; in “The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization” he explained why we should be weary about simple (especially single-factor) explanations about why the Roman Empire fell: there have been literally dozens of “causes” advanced, and they’ve been used to support just about every political/social/economic/religious/ecological theory in the modern world. So we should take them with a grain of salt.
If you’re going to look at prime causes, however, you could do a lot worse than read Peter Heather’s magisterial recent work “The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians.” Heather explains that the fall had a lot to do with the population of (largely Germanic, but also Iranian [Alan and Sarmatian] and other) “Barbarians” beyond the frontiers that had massively grown in numbers and wealth over the period of Roman dominance, in no small part due to the economic growth brought by Pax Romana. These populations grew so great (and were themselves under pressure from the Huns to the East) that they flooded into the Empire at a rate that simply could not be absorbed by existing institutions. After Hadrianopolis, though, the Empire lost the military deterrant power necessary to keep the masses out.
December 30, 2009, 9:40 amgeokstr says:
Twirip, you just don’t get it, do you?
The debate is over. A concensus has been reached among all intelligent, legitimate historians which can be summarized in this scientifically proven mathematical formula:
Leftism = good. Right = evil.
The corollary that “Diversity => utopia” flows automatically from this universal truth.
What are you anyways, a denier or something?
December 30, 2009, 9:53 amWednesday Highlights | Pseudo-Polymath says:
[...] fall of Rome (the Western [...]
December 30, 2009, 10:16 amCollegeLaw says:
Those interested in this posting might find “Are We Rome?” by Cullen Murphy also of interest. A very thoughtful examination of the parallels.
December 30, 2009, 10:26 amMark Field says:
I think JohnKT’s post has the best take. It’s misleading to speak of “the” Roman Empire “falling”. The Eastern half of the Empire saw itself (and was seen at the time) as “Roman”, and it lasted nearly 1000 years beyond the abdication of Romulus Augustus. Even that incident is better seen as the latest in a struggle among elites for control of the Western half. Conditions didn’t really deteriorate until Justinian got done trashing the place.
December 30, 2009, 10:40 amMike Mahoney says:
So then, if the stability of Rome can be equated with the longevity of an emperor’s rule then it oversimplifies matters to contend the death of an emperor would be the only means to truncate his rule. Why not entertain the notion that political death or political civil war would have a similar impact on the stability of a nation? Now we see the situation in the U.S. gains some congruity with Rome according to the same forces attributed by Goldworthy in his How Rome Fell
December 30, 2009, 10:51 amOctavian says:
I am actually in the process of reading Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and am presently on page 423 of Book IV, which is focused primarily on the reign of Justinian (well after the fall of the Western Roman Empire). I’ll probably give Goldsworthy a quick read, but it sounds like he touches on many of the same points made 225 years earlier by Gibbon.
Gibbon does not necessarily attribute the fall of the Roman Empire to any one particular cause, but instead points out in excruciating detail the numerous causes that in aggregate contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire. In fact, Gibbon makes the point (I believe in Book III) how it is a wonder that the Western Roman Empire lasted as long as it did despite all of its deficiencies. Another point that Gibbon makes is that although Christianity was one of many causes leading to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the other side of the coin is that the prior conversion to Christianity of the German barbarians who ultimately overran what is now Western Europe likely prevented the wholesale death and destruction of the Roman citizens since by the 5th Century A.D. both Roman citizens and German barbarians were essentially Christian brethren.
December 30, 2009, 10:52 amnewshutz says:
But why the civil conflict in a Republic?
What was the breakdown that did not allow for peaceful dispute resolution?
December 30, 2009, 11:16 amd-berg says:
Help me out: what exactly do you have in mind here? Is it a dig at militarization of police departments with their SWAT teams, Radley Balko-style? Or you mean Black Panthers squads intimidating voters in Philadelphia?
December 30, 2009, 11:20 amkiwi dave says:
Yes and no. They were (almost) all Christians, but the Romans were predominantly orthodox Catholic Christians, and the Germanic tribes were largely followers of Arianism or other heterodox sects. This led to a lot of religious persecution, especially when the Vandals took control of North Africa.
December 30, 2009, 11:25 amkiwi dave says:
and as modern history attests (e.g. Catholics vs. Protestants; Sunni vs. Shi’ites), fighting between sects of the same religion can be far bloodier than fighting between entirely separate religions.
December 30, 2009, 11:31 amMalvolio says:
I hate to be one more person saying, “That’s not the real question”, but, that’s not the real question.
The real question is, how did the Roman Republic and its successors last so long? It govern a third of the world for almost a millennium and its law and language influence us today. Alexander and Gengis Khan are comic-book characters now, but senates and parliaments modeled after senates still govern almost every country.
If the US is “only” as successful as Rome, well, that’s damn successful.
December 30, 2009, 11:41 amlosantiville says:
All the US presidential/candidate assassins/attempted assassins so far have been Democrats (Booth), commies (most of them – Garfield’s shooter, FDR’s shooter, the PRs who attacked Truman, Oswald, The Manson Family, and Sirhan Sirhan), or clinically insane with no political agenda (attackers of Jackson, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Wallace, and Reagan).
The civil unrest of the ’60s was almost entirely of the left. Student and Urban riots. Not a lot of riots fomented by conservatives.
Not unusual since 75%+ of US murderers and other criminals are Democrats or would vote Democrat if they voted.
Disarm Democrats not Americans.
Currently, there is wide division between left and right and it is unshakable. We’ll have to see if it turns to civil conflict. Unfortunately for US Lefties, they are not as well armed as their foreign counterparts. Perhaps they should consider their tactical position.
December 30, 2009, 11:46 amOctavian says:
Well, the Republic was effectively replaced by the time of the Caesars although its institutions were continued at least in name only for several centuries thereafter. However, with respect to the Western Roman Empire, one of several contributing causes included the Praetorian Guard (located in Rome) eliminating Emperors every several months (on average) and replacing them with weaker Emperors who would serve the Praetorian Guard’s interests. These weak Emperors made a tempting target for popular generals of veteran legions guarding the provincial hinterland.
December 30, 2009, 11:51 amSyd Henderson says:
The problem is that there were a whole bunch of interlocking causes for the fall of Rome, and ultimately the reason is that multinational empires eventually fall. The crisis of the 3rd century started off with the murder of Alexander Severus and there was a series of civil wars lasting forty years, punctuated by the capture of Valerian by the Persians in 260 and his son only able to control the core of the empire.
December 30, 2009, 11:53 amOctavian says:
True. However, the bloody rivalry between Trinitarianism (Orthodox) and Arianism existed in the Western Roman Empire in the absence of the German barbarians and continued after the successful barbarian invasion.
December 30, 2009, 12:05 pmBob from Ohio says:
They fought constant wars for their entire existence as Republic and Empire. Over a thousand years.
They “fell” when they stopped winning them.
December 30, 2009, 12:05 pmpete says:
And no has mentioned the plagues (possibly measles or small pox) that weakened the empire in the west. There are lots of reasons the Empire fell, but I agree with the above posters that the questions about why the republic fell are more interesting.
December 30, 2009, 12:11 pmSarcastro says:
[Also they sweetened their wine with lead oxide. That didn't help.]
December 30, 2009, 12:15 pmChris Travers says:
I would agree. There is also evidence that this process was in place by at least the 4th century BCE. In particular the influence of the Greek colonies at Syracuse had a profound impact on developing Rome from the earliest time. (Greek and Roman cultures were quite different in a lot of ways but the Romans took a lot of things even from Greek culture quite early.)
Also you can add Cicero to the list of those touting this success.
December 30, 2009, 12:17 pmjcm says:
The roman power reached its peek after a century of civil wars. The Gracchi brothers rebellion, the Social War, the Sila- Marius war, the Pompei – Caesar war, the Marc Anthony- Octavius war, occurred between 120 and 27 bc. From then on on emperor after another was killed . They even had four emperors in a single year after the killing of Nero. But they continued to rise in power.
December 30, 2009, 12:20 pmThe keynesian explanation , inflation that ended in the outsourcing of the military. And the Zosimo´s one , Christians influence that imposed the faith unlike the traditional roman rule of tolerance weakened social cohesion and created resentment in the subjected peoples (the prosecutions of pagan by Constantin was worst than the prosecution against Christians,) ring more true.
Mark Field says:
In a nutshell, the Senatorial class became obstinate regarding its wealth and privileges and refused to share either.
December 30, 2009, 12:25 pmjcm says:
“The ‘success’ of the Roman system was founded on its willingness to absorb and tolerate other cultures — a point on which there is unanimity from Tacitus to Machiavelli to Montesquieu to Edward Luttwak.
I don’t know whether such unanimity exists or not. ”
E pluribus unum means what?
December 30, 2009, 12:26 pmCJColucci says:
the main cause of Rome’s collapse had little or no parallel in the modern United States.
December 30, 2009, 12:31 pmThis should be engraved on every page of the lesson plan of every gym teacher dragooned into teaching history who knows why Rome fell and blames it on [fill in the blank], which is just what we’re doing now.
Sammy Finkelman says:
The system broke down. Now somebody in a new book, Roman Republics by Harriet I. Flower, has argued that in fact the system broke down and was re-established five times.
From the Product Description at Amazon.com
“In Roman Republics, Harriet Flower argues for a completely new interpretation of republican chronology….Flower is the first to mount a serious argument against the idea of republican continuity that has been fundamental to modern historical study. By showing that the Romans created a series of republics, she reveals that there was much more change–and much less continuity–over the republican period than has previously been assumed.”
The book was published so recently that it has a copyright date of 2010. Now that’s another question for this blog – how vcan you copyright something with a future date. Are they reaching for 96 years, instead of just 95 years of copyright protection?
And I would say, further, The Roman Republic never really came to a time when it ended. It is just that the last time the republic broke down, with Julius Caesar and afterwards Augustus, it lasted so long that when they finally got an opportunity around the year 68 to restablish the republic, they didn’t. Nor did they in 96 after the assassination ofDomitian, instead just picking an old man to be Emperor. The lesson there is if there is too big a gap, somewhere between 75 and 100 years, people will no longer remember the old system or have any confidence in it.
But all along it was still CALLED the Roman Republic, and the Senate continued to exist.
In fact,the Byzantine Empire was not known at the time as the Byzantine Empire, it was not even known as the Roman Empire, it was known as the Roman Republic until I don’t know when.
Republica Romana was still going strong as the name in the
600s.
“Constantinople was the city at the center of the Eastern Roman Empire (called by modern Historians the Byzantine Empire, but
the Empire itself always referred to itself as the Roman Republic),”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=277×422 Post by “happyslug” writing about the Battle of Manzikert in 1171 (when control of Anatolia was lost)
Sorry I don’t have a better source right now.
This is also common in history, where the old forms maintain themselves, even though the power is somewhere else. We had that France in the 600′s and 700s with the “Mayors of the Palace” and Merovingian kings and in the Japan with the shoguns. In both those cases the offices were heritary but they weren’t called kings. We see it also now maybe in North Korea and Syria and
Libya (forthcoming)
And I think there were cases in China before the Burning of the Books, which anticipated Ray Bradbury by about 2,200 years.
December 30, 2009, 12:36 pmChris Travers says:
I haven’t been studying the question of how Rome fell, but I have been studying a lot of other Greek and Roman topics. Attributing the fall of Rome to multiculturalism raises a number of problems which I think would be difficult to solve. In particular:
1) Multiculturalism appears to have existed with regard to Greek ideas from at least the 4th century BCE. If we believe Livy, we can further see toleration of other Italic (and non-Italic, such as Etruscan) cultures present from the earliest kingdoms. Just think of all those Sabine anchor babies!
2) In the Empire, there was a fairly strong division between the culture of the Roman city and the provinces.
If multiculturalism caused the fall of the Roman empire, you really have to explain why it didn’t doom the Republic as well. Roman culture was synthetic (i.e. based on synthesis of different cultural influences) from the very beginning, and this emphasis on synthesis is what Cicero credits with the success of the Roman republic in “De Republica”.
At least, it is impossible to show a sudden move to multiculturalism given the above.
December 30, 2009, 12:38 pmChris Travers says:
Worse, they knew lead oxide was poisonous but they did it anyway.
December 30, 2009, 12:47 pmSammy Finkelman says:
Actually North Korea and Syria are cases where something that is not supposed to be hereditary is. (We don’t know what Quaddafi’s son intends to do – he might convert it into a monarchy)
They are of course examples of something else, very widespread in the world since 1917 – where on paper the system of rule is one thing but in reality is another.
There is a story to tell about this thing>
One day, in 1976 or 1977, Quaddafi got up and said his government has one word in its name which tells people it is a dictatorship. So he’s going to change that.
At that time it was called the Libyan People’s Socialist Arab Republic.
Now at that a whole bunch of dictators got worried that their cover would be blown. Fidel Castro paid a quick visit to
Quaddafi.
Now at that point Quaddafi had not yet announced WHAT that word was that said to people the country was ruled by a dictatorship.
So the day came when Quaddafi was to announce what the word was he was getting rid of and what the new name of the country would be.
So what word do you think he got rid of?
Was it People’s?
No.
Was it Socialist?
No.
Was it perhaps, Arab???
No.
Was it Libyan????
No.
Thw word was Republic!
There couldn’t be a safer choice than that.
The country was renamed The Libyan Socialist People’s Arab Jamahariyah and a whole series of chanes were made to justify that word.
And so that way, the identity of the secret word, that would reveal to any 8th grade student with an Almanac what countries were dictatorships, remained secret.
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December 30, 2009, 12:54 pmSimon says:
This points to one of the useful features of democracy, especially when it’s well entrenched in affluent societies. The stakes for the loser are far lower, so the incentives to fight in costly ways to maintain power are minimized. Even the most bitter election is far less costly in a number of ways than than any civil war. A system that keeps the destructive effects of regime change low will have more resources for everything else. How much damage would you be willing to do to to your society to keep power if losing meant you and your family being killed? Harder than if you faced a few years on the lecture/think tank circuit?
December 30, 2009, 12:56 pmathEIst says:
But why the civil conflict in a Republic?What was the breakdown that did not allow for peaceful dispute resolution?
Rome was a republic in some sort of fashion, but it wasn’t a democracy in any fashion.
December 30, 2009, 1:09 pmChris Travers says:
How does that apply to the large influx of Greek slaves in the 4th century BCE? The early Greeks in Rome basically had a status similar to Mexican housekeepers do in US. Yet one can see from this, the fact that the Romans let the Greek-speaking slaves raise their kids, meant that the kids ended up absorbing foreign ideas and very quickly you had, instead of the Greek slaves adopting Roman patterns of thought, major influence going the other way around.
Similarly in Livy, the various tribes, such as the Sabines, were not generally required to be the same as everyone else.
The problem with attributing multiculturalism to the decline of the Roman empire is that this tendency was a basic part of the fabric of Rome since its founding. One has to ask what made the Empire different in this regard than the Republic. Do you have any thoughts on this?
December 30, 2009, 1:09 pmdon smith says:
Most of the legions were positioned along the Rhine. 20 out of 22 legions I believe. In additon, the legions were desinged to defeat German Armies not Roman. Roman legions had there best troops in the front ranks to absorb the German shock assault. Think Gladiator.
2. For some reason the senate simply did not call up the legions to fight the german army, Aleric.
December 30, 2009, 1:10 pmChris Travers says:
People were still in shock over what happened when they went after Hermann the German (Arminius).
December 30, 2009, 1:13 pmSandy MacHoots says:
I probably won’t have time to read the book, but I’d be interested in why civil wars were so endemic. It seems at least possible that the problem was made worse by different generals from different ethnic groups competing for power to reward themselves and their own tribes, much as we have seen in modern Africa. The decline of “Roman” to a passal of “Romano-British” or “Romano-Anatolian” subgroups, each with its own grievances, could have made civil war much more likely.
December 30, 2009, 1:36 pmPeter says:
Americans traditionally looked at the last days of the Roman Republic as having relevance for their own experience. I think several books have been done on the Founders and their near-obsession with the events that led to the fall of the Roman Republic–that is why you have antifederalist or federalist authors (i cant remember which) adopting the names of politicians of the late republic,i.e. Cato.
Jeffersonian Republicans in particular obsessed with the events that led to the fall of Rome because they seemed to confirm their own dedication to preserving (or establishing) a largely agrarian nation and an electorate composed of self-sufficient farmers who would be immune to be bribery. The common view of the cause of the republic was this: Roman nobles and generals used their booty from overseas conquests to buy up the land around Rome (the only opportunity for investment at the time), thereby displacing farmers who poured into the city of Rome. These displaced farmers, although enfranchised, became dependents of the state and were bribed with the private wealth of politicians and with the annual distribution of grain to the poor. In sum, the Roman Republic pioneered the use of bribing voters with the proceeds of the public treasury. This situation enabled Caesar to take power when he bribed impoverished voters with public largesse–in the form of grain and public shows–as well as his own assets. Given what has happened over the last month with health care, and accumulation of a staggering national debt over the last forty years, the relevance of Rome’s experience for America is obvious. The roman republic fell due to the corruption of the electorate (a demagogue bought his way into power and then tossed it aside); and the American republic seems in danger of succumbing to a debt produced by massive entitlement spending and a bloated public establishment.
December 30, 2009, 1:40 pmOctavian says:
My vague recollection that some of the Founding Fathers had Edward Gibbon’s work in mind when they debated the merits of a federal government is what finally compelled me to take the time to read “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” The first volume was published in 1776 (Declaration of Independence) while the sixth and final volume was published in 1788 (year after the Philadelphia Convention).
Regarding the above point about the dependency of the Roman citizen upon the State was strikingly pointed out by Gibbon at the beginning of Book III when he wrote that a citizen of Rome (the City) in the last years of the Western Roman Empire was entitled to the following at no expense (to the citizen) from the State: 1) free bread, 2) free wine, 3) free oil (for household use), 4) free entertainment/circuses, 5) and subsidized public baths made of marble that would have made an oriental potentate blush with envy. Consequently, the Roman citizens spent their money and time in public taverns or brothels instead of toward improving industry or the arts. In short, the Roman citizens degenerated into wards of the state.
Gibbon also recounts how a Roman general observed with some despondency during the last years of the Western Roman Empire how his so-called Roman troops complained or whined about the armor, helmet, or weapons being too heavy and so started to shed the foregoing from regular combat use. Ironically, the barbarians began adopting such gear for their personal uses on the battlefields. Thus, barbarian merceneries became better soldiers than Roman citizens. Unfortunately, the barbarian mercenaries often turned on their Roman masters at inopportune times.
December 30, 2009, 2:04 pmdearieme says:
And no-one mentions the Climate Change. Oh dear.
December 30, 2009, 2:07 pmAllan Walstad says:
Many interesting comments on this thread. Whatever the reason for Rome’s fall, I applaud the result. Empire = oppression, no?
What concerns me more has been alluded to by others here–why did Rome degenerate into an empire? I think in part it’s because conquest brought spoils and slaves, a recurring theme throughout ancient history. So as long as you keep conquering, you bring in wealth. Rome’s early wars may have been little different from the constant contentions among city-states at the time (think Greece) but Rome seemed obsessed with destroying anyone who gave any aid to their enemies. They pressed on. They were successful in battle. And they reaped the booty.
But perhaps this takes the place of generating wealth. So eventually, if your empire stops expanding, you lose the economic base for military superiority. The Romans expanded for quite awhile, but far to the East they ran up against the Persians, and in the North they faced waves of tribes migrating from Asia. To the West and South they ran out of people to dispossess.
As the power of the state grows, another factor is the shift from wealth generation to a political struggle over the distribution of existing wealth. Society’s wealth becomes viewed as a commons and society itself degenerates into factions that contend for its exploitation. There was a book with this thesis around 30 years ago–just can’t quite recall the author’s name. In the absence of a continuing stream of spoils from external conquests, military strength depends on internal economic productivity.
December 30, 2009, 2:29 pmAnderson says:
I’d argue a lot of it was bad timing
That was Peter Heather’s thesis in a nutshell, which Goldsworthy quietly disagrees with. If not for the constant internal insecurity, he thinks, the Empire could’ve continued fighting off the barbarians as they’d done before.
Whether the insecurity was solvable is a different question. It’s difficult to imagine how the succession issue could’ve been solved. The Republic went down after Marius introduced long-term military service, so that there were always legions available to follow some rebel or other; only the ingrained political culture kept the Republic hanging on as long as it did after Marius and Sulla, but Augustus’s generation remembered nothing else.
December 30, 2009, 2:40 pmAnderson says:
Wiki’s Marius article has a nice precis:
From now on Rome’s legions would largely consist of poor citizens (the “capite censi” or “head count”) whose future after service could only be assured if their general could somehow bring about a land distribution on their behalf. Thus the soldiers had a very strong personal interest in supporting their general against the Senate (i.e., the oligarchy) and the “public interest” that was often equated with the Senate.
December 30, 2009, 3:03 pmMark Field says:
I suspect most residents of Italy (and, indeed, all of Western Europe) would have traded what followed for a return of the oppressive Empire.
In general, getting rid of Empires (especially evil ones) is a good idea. But every so often…
December 30, 2009, 3:37 pmAllan Walstad says:
Fair point, Mark.
December 30, 2009, 3:42 pmChrisTS says:
Peter Heathers also suggests that the Romans’ effectiveness in training the conquered barbarians in military tactics, along with the natural loyalty of the soldiers to their own generals, was part of the problem.
As far as Rome’s ‘denegerating’ into an empire: the Romans were always inclined towards territorial expansion and the wealth it produced. The ‘Empire’ that followed the ‘Republic’ was simply the final abandoning of any pretense to republican rule. Rome was, nearly from the start, imperialist in its ambitions.
December 30, 2009, 5:47 pmChrisTS says:
Well, these were people who ate roasted whole dormice rolled in honey as a delicacy.
December 30, 2009, 5:52 pmChris Travers says:
Dormice were eaten all across Europe. They are still eaten in Slovenia, and the Elizabethan English thought their fat was soporofic.
On the other hand, I have eaten guinea pigs…..
December 30, 2009, 6:31 pmgullyborg says:
I think the definitive text on the fall of Rome was written while Rome was falling. Check out City of God by St. Augustine.
December 30, 2009, 7:23 pmNoesis Noeseos says:
These reflections may explain two sententia by Jefferson: (1) That once we Americans begin to huddle in cities, we shall begin to lose our liberties; (2) If Washington (i.e., congress) were to mandate when to reap and when to sow [think New Deal and subsequent agricultural legislation], we shall soon want for bread.
Although the occasions for the decline of the American yeomanry differ from those of the Roman, the results with respect to the loss of vigor and liberty among the general populace are vastly the same.
December 30, 2009, 7:30 pmAllan Walstad says:
ChrisTS,
Interesting. Is there anything in particular you’d suggest to read, that makes that point? Was early Rome exceptional in that regard, or was that the common attitude among states at the time, Rome simply being more proficient or lucky?
December 30, 2009, 8:08 pmChrisTS says:
Chris Travers:
Yeah, but in one bite?
This thread inspired me to look back at some work on Roman … uh .. cuisine. I’m still trying to figure out the appeal of decomposed fish (gura). I mean, even if the main course was somewhat fetid, why add a cheese-ish decaying smell?
December 30, 2009, 8:11 pmSammy Finkelman says:
I wrote: At that time it was called the Libyan People’s Socialist Arab Republic.
Correction: It was called the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Republic.
Quaddai, after having announced that he would get rid of a word that people thought meant the country was a dictatorship, replaced Republic with Jamahiriya. In between his first and second announcements, he had been visited by Fidel Castro.
Here it is:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20F1FFC395D167493C6A91788D85F438785F9&scp=2&sq=libyan+people%27s+socialist+arab+republic&st=p
Article Preview (New York Times)
Libya Reorganizes Government, Alters Its Title to ‘Public’
March 4, 1977, Friday
Page 6, 339 words
BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 3 (UPI) The Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, with Prime Minister Fidel Castro of Cuba at his side, presided last night over the renaming of the country and a governmental shuffle, according to the Libyan press agency..
Whatever Quaddafi really was going to do, whatever telling indicatyor word in the name of the country he was going to get rid of, Fidel Castro talked him out of it, and dhe didn’t leave the country until Quaddafi had followed his advice.
Castro, by the way, had already shortly before changed his title to “president” (the title Prime Minister is an error in this article I think *) and then shortly afterward, in April met with the Soviet leaders and persuaded thjem to do the same.
Brezhnev decided to take the title of president, something which necessitated the dismissal of Podgorny.
* I checked. Castro changed his title on December 2, 1976.
December 30, 2009, 10:09 pmSammy Finkelman says:
What everyone seems to have left out of here was birth control.
Roman matrons – the real Romans – began having few children in the lst years of the republic and the first century of the empire. At first the practice was to have only one child because that gave them some legal rights but later they started having none. This was partly because of fear of death in child birth.
Soa lot of the early Roman emperors had no children. in the beginning they had nephews but later they didn;t have that either,
Hadrian had no children but he adopted successors. Then he got interested in Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius was too young so he adopted Antonius Pius, on the condition that Antonius Pius would in turn adopt his nephew, Marcus Aurelius.
And then Hadrian died.
And so Antonius Pius became Emperor and after a few yeasr put an end to the persecutions in Judea following the Br Cochba revolt, making a deal with the house of the Nasi.
Now in addition to the birth dearth there were also some epidemics which insomecases killed the few people remaining in a family.
And so the old Romans largely died out. It wasn’t thatt they assiilated foreigners, It was that there were very few old Romanss. If any of the new oeople assimilated they too would have few or no children.
So the only people left wereeople who had a somewhat different culture.
December 30, 2009, 10:20 pmGuy says:
My dad always told me it was because of all the gay sex.
December 31, 2009, 12:27 amMichael says:
This was Cicero By H.J Haskell of necessity casts a long glance at the period between the Republic and the emperors. My impression is that the problem was one of globalization and dealing with the inputs from it. The Senators profited from the wealth from trade and provincial rule. Giving land to the armies that made that possible and dealing with the deflation in the price of agricultural products, loss of opportunity for economic initiative in the not wealthy were ‘not my problem’ from the standpoint of this group. Julius Caesar was able to take the common person’s view better but his refusing to cede power, his assassination, and Augustus surprising success at replacing him led to the end of collegial power shifting.
December 31, 2009, 12:48 amDesiderius says:
MarkField,
“I suspect most residents of Italy (and, indeed, all of Western Europe) would have traded what followed for a return of the oppressive Empire.”
Rare period footage confirms your thesis!
December 31, 2009, 2:37 amOctavian says:
Sorry, but your post is full of so many errors that I feel compelled to respond. Sons of patrician families were expected to rise through the “cursus honorum” seeking successively higher political offices. However, navigating the “cursus honorum” required wealth and lots of it, which is why patrician families acquired as much property as possible to finance their sons’ political careers. Unfortunately, too many sons would divide the family estates thereby leaving each son with smaller shares of wealth to pursue the same offices. Thus, it became a practice of patrician families to keep one son (the eldest) who would inherit the entire family estate. Any additional sons were typically put up for adoption to other patrician families that needed an heir to continue the family name and political fortunes.
Daughters were a nuisance because they possessed no inheritance rights and could not hold political office. Furthermore, daughters required dowrys to be married off, which “wasted” family property that would otherwise be used to finance a son’s political aspirations. Often times, a baby daughter would be left in the countryside to die in the wild. (A practice that was ended by around the 4th Century A.D. by Christianized Romans according to Edward Gibbon.)
By the way, Julius Caesar actually had a son due to his marriage with Cleopatra. However, neither this marriage or son had legal rights under Roman law. (Octavian Caesar nevertheless took no chances and had his potential rival liquidated.)
The Roman Army required only approximately 33 legions to secure the borders of the Roman Empire. Such a number of legions only required approximately 180,000 men, which is not a particularly high number. I can assure you that there was well more than 180,000 men of good Roman or Italian stock to fill the ranks of the legions. However, Gibbon recounts from ancient sources that over time the Romans and Italians disdained military service and initially let the provincials and later the barbarian allies fill the ranks. Ultimately, having barbarian allies in the legions’ ranks proved fatally unreliable. Thus, the problem was not that the Romans “died out” as implied by the above post, but simply that they shirked their military duties and responsibilities to their country. (I do not conclude that the foregoing is the sole reason for the demise of the Western Roman Empire.)
December 31, 2009, 8:52 amTonetel says:
Very well stated.
Colleen McCullough’s “Master’s of Rome” series describes these events in vivid detail. It is some of the most compelling historical fiction I have ever read.
December 31, 2009, 10:22 amRandy says:
noesis: “Although the occasions for the decline of the American yeomanry differ from those of the Roman, the results with respect to the loss of vigor and liberty among the general populace are vastly the same.”
And yet, paradoxically, it’s too much vigor and liberty that many conservatives lament. They find that an American that allows gay people to be open and even married, movies that show too much sex and violence, drugs like pot and others that are too widely available, are causing the downfall of the American civilization, and they say that this somehow parallels ancient Rome.
December 31, 2009, 1:08 pmohwilleke says:
Rereading some of the histories of that era a couple of months ago, one of the most striking points to me was just how thinly governed (and populated) the Western Roman Empire was.
While the designation “Roman Empire” suggests that Roman was the empire’s population and economic center, it wasn’t. A heavily disproportionate share of the empire’s people and wealth was in the Byzantine part of the empire and was rural. Socially and culturally, the Western Roman empire had more in common with the milieu of the American West of cowboy movies, with one or two lone lawmen presiding over an independent and mostly lawless land controlled by bandits outside small urban settlements, than it does with the major political and economic capital cities of the world that its mention often suggests.
December 31, 2009, 4:12 pmChris Travers says:
(shrugs) I have eaten plenty of local delicacies in my travels that are likely worse than that sounds. Cuisine is also rather cultural. My wife loves to eat tripe, and like me was willing to eat guinea pigs, but the mere thought of an avocado sandwich or guacamole is more than she can take…… She tells me that avocados are fruit, for desserts and making fruit drinks, not for putting on sandwiches.
One of my favorite dishes, though it smells horrible when cooking, is a Norwegian dish called Rommegrot (most modern American versions try to make it with heavy cream before it spoils, but it really isn’t as good).
December 31, 2009, 4:37 pmThe Watcher says:
The Watcher also usually hears people comparing the late Roman Republic and the United States.
January 1, 2010, 1:48 pmone says:
classic, the fall of Rome
January 3, 2010, 12:08 amTwirip says:
I’m pretty sure that these things represent no “vigor and liberty” which would have been recognized as such in any civilization in history. They are generally accepted as signs of decadence, the mark of a civilization that has begun to rot.
January 4, 2010, 3:13 pmTwirip says:
I think it’s debatable whether and to what extent multiculturalism was a part of Rome’s fabric from the beginning. It was not Sparta, but it also was not the modern xenophiliac West with it’s love of the other. Of course it was the great economic engine of Europe for several hundred years, and Rome itself was a cosmopolitan city. But the Romans mostly regarded all other cultures as being hopelessly inferior to their own.
In any case the Roman army was not multicultural in the beginning. It remained a Roman institution all through the Republic and part way through the Empire. And, more than most great civilizations, Rome and its army were one. The state of Rome and the state of its military were always unusually tightly entwined.
There are other instances in history of wealthy peoples farming out the business of doing their fighting to hired barbarians. And they all ended as badly as when Rome did it.
January 4, 2010, 3:39 pmDavid says:
Bingo. The bureaucracy bit is spot on though. Civilization begets bureaucracy and bureaucracy destroys civilization. If you look carefully, that is the fate of all states.
January 4, 2010, 3:41 pmDavid says:
It is not too much liberty that most conservatives lament. There are people, liberal and conservative, who have a puritanical streak. From where I sit, it looks like the left has more prying busibodies than the right… its the left that seems to tell me whether to smoke in a bar, how much salt to put on my food and the left that getsd a bug up their ***** about my soda. For the sake of argument though, I agree that there are people on both sides a little too obsessed with what others do. The difference is this, I can disaprove of drug use and at the same time believe in a small and powerless government incompetent and incapable of doing anything about it and if you’re a drug user, you are at no risk from me. Once you accept the need for the great and overarching state that the left is selling though, you can never again ignore the opinions of your neighbors; whatever a majority of them think proper will soon be law.
January 4, 2010, 3:51 pmLee says:
Rome fell? When the hell did this happen?
January 4, 2010, 4:35 pmChairmanDances says:
Isn’t the more appropriate comparison between Rome and the post-enlightment “West”? Hasn’t the West’s and particularly Europe’s global dominance of the rest of the world been destroyed by a series of “civil” wars, i.e., World War II, World War I, the Franco-Prussian War, the Napoleonc Wars, etc.?
January 4, 2010, 5:03 pmDanceswithwolves says:
I think all of the arguments posited so far are excellent, so far as they go. The one point I have not heard mentioned is that Rome in fact, did not yet have the three wolf moon t-shirt. Rest assured, if they had, we’d all still be Roman subjects. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NZW3KC/thevolocons0d-20/
January 4, 2010, 5:15 pmDrShooter says:
Actually, though you may be obliquely referring to this, the rise of the Roman Republic coincided with a great warming period that provided good times everywhere Rome wanted to expand into. Similar to the Medieval Climate Optimum that most scientists and scholars accept (though they argue endlessly about how global it was).
I have read Heather’s book, and I recommend it to those interested in this period.
Cheers,
January 4, 2010, 8:15 pmKyle
Paul says:
great post, joined your rss feed. cya as I’m reading articles on forex
February 21, 2010, 3:56 am