The Later Roman Empire and the Barbarian Kingdoms (AD 300 - 600)

  1. Fall of empire as a historical problem. There is no end to historical speculation about the why the Roman Empire "fell", but all agree on the following:
    1. The real issue is not why the Empire fell when it did but rather why it lasted so long?
    2. Not all elements of "classical" civilization disappear at same time; not all elements of "medieval" civilization appear at one time. The shift was slow (over centuries) and reached a critical mass in different places at different times; Western Europe appears "medieval" at the latest at the end of the 6th Century, AD.
  2. Stages in the 'Fall'
  3. So...to return to our problem: how to explain the fall of the Roman Empire in the West? Note that Empire does not "fall" in the eastern Mediterranean where it continues as the "Byzantine Empire". Moreover, the concept of Rome persists long after the collapse of the West. More acutely our issue now is what were the factors in the barbarization of the West:
    1. Internal problems
      1. Internal population decline (?) due to:
        1. Plague One such disease, known as the Antonine plague, occurred during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.). It was brought back by soldiers returning from the Middle East, and before it abated, it had affected Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, and Italy.  The plague destroyed as much as one-third of the population in some areas, and decimated the Roman army. In 180, Marcus Aurelius caught some type of infection and died in his army camp. There has been some speculation that this infection an earlier variant of the bubonic plague / black death that ravaged Europe a millenium later. Other plagues occurred during the reigns of Decius (249-251 A.D.) and Gallus (251-253 A.D.). Its mortality rate severely depleted the ranks of the army, and caused massive labor shortages. The plague was still raging in 270, when it caused the death of the emperor Claudius Gothicus (268-270).
        2. Plagues made a difference, but there was also a failure to raise children. Note even with higher rates of infant mortality, the "replacement" rate was not reached at this one town in Greece.
          Families
          children
          boys
          girls
          128
          109
          82
          27

      2. Rise of military monarchy. The Augustan Principate was a disguised military monarchy. The facade could be maintained only so long as the soldiers and their commanders shared the values articulated by Vergil, Augustus himself, and Marcus Aurelius (to name but a few) about the value of urbanization/civilization. As the armies absorbed an increasing number of barbarians those values were lost.
        1. return of private armies (plural!!); army commanders (both Roman and barbarian) compete with one another to buy loyalty of soldiers and to challenge one another for the imperial power. Anticipates the medieval pattern. Then ensured a most disgraceful business...For, just as if it had been in some market or auction room both the City and the entire Empire were auctioned off...the sellers [Roman soldiers, the imperial guard] were the very ones who had just slain their emperor, Dio, Roman History.
        2. recruits to those armies, the emperors themselves, and the barbarian kings were less literate, less engaged in Roman culture and less commitment to 'idea of Rome'. The Romans and the Vandals came to an agreement and a treaty was drawn up. Thereafter 2000 Vandal cavalrymen would serve with the Romans ...and as many voluteers undertaking military service with the Romans of their own accord Dexippus
        3. emerging regionalism ('Gallic Empire') due to failure of central authority to protect.
      3. To understand the problem correctly (in my opinion) one must understand that the "Roman Empire " was fundamentally an alliance of cities. That is, only insofar as cities prospered can one speak of imperial prosperity. When the residents of cities became alienated by oppressive taxes and the failure of the central authority to provide for security, the system broke down and cities were abandoned. Note that even in the 3rd Century a Roman army sacked a Roman city The army of the emperor marched on the city, destroyed the vines and thriving countryside, attacked the Aquileia [a major Roman city], broke in sacked everything, and razed the city.
    2. External Pressures -- barbarian invasions were devastating in many areas; not only the sack of Rome and other major cities, but not also "the ruin of Britain". Note the misleading, yet conventional view of barbarians.
      1. Hence, by the end of the 4th cent., the West, always less intensely urbanized and with her cities (especially on the Rhine) most exposed to invaders, first acquired a separate government (Diocletian and the tetrarchy) and eventually having became such a fiscal drain, the imperial (Byzantine aka "Roman") government was replaced by barbarian kingdoms. Map exercise: Europe in 530.
      2. The Eastern Roman Empire, aka: Byzantine Empire, survived because urbanization (and wealth) were more intense and cities more protected.
  4. The Status in the 6th Century: recall the situation in the 2nd century
    1. the pax Romana had been shattered. No Roman army for the defense of the civilized and urban centers of the West. Instead we find a collection of unstable, competitive barbarian kingdoms; more during the next lecture.
    2. Roman law no longer universal. Barbarian communities followed their own traditional law; Roman law disappears in the West. Why did it no lomger attract?
      1. There was no critical mass of barbarians ready to support Roman law;
      2. differences too profound in life-style (level of education, semi nomadic character, etc), language (did not know Latin), and religion (most were polytheist or even worse, followed the Arian heresy).
    3. Instead of inclusion and tolerance, we find many distinctive barbarian communities, each with its own system, namely a dominant illiterate, non-orthodox and warrior class ruling over a settled more literate, orthodox, Roman population.
    4. Rather than encouraging integration and assimilation, the barbarians rigorously enforced formal separation, e.g., no legal marriage between groups was possible.
    5. Urbanization = civilization = Romanization? In fact the barbarians preferred to sack cities and to live instead in fortified castles. Cities decline. Aqueducts not maintained; theaters become fortresses, law courts become churches
    6. In brief the number of barbarians was too great to be absorbed; they remain too different and too powerful and too unstable to be assimilated.
  5. Conclusions: NOTE THAT EVIDENCE FOR THESE CONCLUSIONS IS ABOVE.
    1. the fall of the Roman Empire in the West is best understood as the collapse of urban culture.
    2. during the two centuries following Augustus, Roman policy had:
      1. encouraged Romanization through a conscious policy of peace and urbanization;
      2. this process led to a growth in the domestic product--cities thrived as storehouses of wealth and expertise
      3. In the 3rd Century,
        1. the 'secret of the empire' was manifest, namely soldiers made the emperors and the former demanded an ever greater share of imperial resources. To meet the soldiers' demands, Roman emperors devalued the silver content of the coinage ==> producing a fiduciary crisis
        2. as the armies fought one another, the empire was exposed to barbarian pressure from the outside.
        3. the soldiers of the 3rd Century Roman army were increasingly recruited from barbarian units and did not share Roman values about the importance of protecting the urban infrastructure, indeed they were as likely to sack a Roman city as they were to fight another and rival Roman armies or barbarians.
        4. Heavy taxation and insecurity undermined the fiscal health of cities; urban amenities (e.g. cleaning / mainaining the sewars) could not be sustained. ==> plague and depopulation resulted.
      4. by the end of the 4th Cent., the security of the cities broke down altogether as one after another was sacked.
      5. by the 5th Century, the enfeebled cities , now siginificantly reduced in size and wealth, hired barbarian armies to defend themselves; but this too failed as the employees turned on their employers.