Topic: The Rise and decline of the Roman Empire

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The Roman Empire exhibited a great many symptoms after about 180 AD. There was statistical evidence in the declining population in addition to growing difficulties in recruiting effective armies. There was also political manifestations in the greater brutality and arbitrariness of many Roman emperors—victims, according to one commentator at the time, or “lustful and cruel habits.” Tax collection became increasingly difficult as residents of the empire fell on hard times.

The decline of Rome was more disruptive than the collapse of the classical dynasties in Asia. For this reason, and because memories of the collapse of this great empire became part of the Western tradition, the process of deterioration deserves particular attention.

The quality of both political and economic life in the Roman Empire began to shift after about 180 AD. Political confusion produced a series of weak emperors and many disputes over succession to the throne. Intervention by the army in the selection of emperors complicated political life and contributed to the deterioration of rule from the top. More important in initiating the process of decline was a series of plagues that swept over the empire.

As in China, the plagues’ source was growing international trade which brought diseases endemic in southern Asia to new areas such as the Mediterranean, where no resistance had been established even to contagions such as the measles. The resulting diseases decimated the population. The population of Rome decreased from a million people to 250,000. Economic life worsened in consequence.

Recruitment of troops became more difficult, so the empire was increasingly reduced to hiring Germanic soldiers to guard its frontiers. The need to pay troops added to the demands on the state’s budget, just as declining production cut into tax revenues.

Here, perhaps, is the key to the process of decline: a set of general problems, triggered by a cycle of plagues that could not be prevented, resulting in a rather mechanistic spiral that steadily worsened.

However, there is another side to Rome’s downfall, although whether it is a cause or result of the initial difficulties is hard to say. Rome’s upper classes became steadily more pleasure-seeking, turning away from the political devotion and economic vigor that had characterized the republic and early empire.

THE DECLINE OF CULTURE

Cultural life decayed. Aside from some truly creative Christian writers—the father of Western theology—there was very little sparkle to the art or literature or the later empire. Many Roman scholars contented themselves with writing textbooks that rather mechanically summarized earlier achievements in science, mathematics, and literary style. New knowledge or artistic styles were not being generated, and even the levels of previous accomplishment began to slip.

The later Romans wrote textbooks about rhetoric instead of displaying rhetorical talent in actual political life; they wrote simple compendiums, for example, about animals or geometry, that barely captured the essentials of what earlier intellectuals had known, and they often added superstitious beliefs that previous generations would have scored.

This cultural decline, finally, was not clearly due to disease or economic collapse, for it began in some ways before these larger problems surfaced. Something was happening to the Roman elite, perhaps because of the deadening effect of authoritarian political rule, perhaps because of a new interest in luxuries and sensual indulgence. Revealingly, the upper classes no longer produced many offspring, for bearing and raising children seemed incompatible with a life of pleasure-seeking.

Rome’s fall, in other words, can be blamed on large, impersonal forces that would have been hard for any society to control or a moral and political decay that reflected growing corruption among society’s leaders. Probably elements of both were involved. Thus, the plagues would have weakened even a vigorous society, but they would not necessarily have produced an irreversible downward spiral had not the morale of the ruling classes already been sapped by an unproductive lifestyle and superficial values.

LATE ANTIQUITY: Proto-Middle Ages

Regardless of precise causes, the course of Roman decay is quite clear. As the quality of imperial rule declined, as life became more dangerous and economic survival more precarious, many famers clustered around the protection of large landlords, surrendering full control over their plots of land in the hope of military and judicial protection.

The decentralization of political and economic authority, which was greatest in the western, or European, portions of the empire, foreshadowed the manorial system of Europe in the Middle Ages.

The agricultural estates gave great political power to landlords and provided some local stability. But, in the long run, it weakened the power of the emperor and also tended to move the economy away from the elaborate and successful trade patterns of Mediterranean civilization in its heyday.

Many estates tried to be self-sufficient. Trade and production declined further as a result, and cities shrank in size. The empire was locked in a vicious circle, in which responses to the initial deterioration merely lessened the chances of recovery.

THE DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE

Some later emperors tried vigorously to reverse the tide. Diocletian, who ruled from 284 AD to 305 AD, tightened up the administration of the empire and tried to improve tax collection. Regulation of the dwindling economy increased. Diocletian also attempted to direct political loyalties to his own person, exerting pressure to worship the emperor as god. This was what promoted him to persecute Christians with particular viciousness, for they would not give Caesar preference over their God.

The Emperor Constantine, who ruled from 312 to 337 AD, experimented with other methods of control. He set up a second capital city, Constantinople, to regulate the eastern half of the empire more efficiently. He tried to use the religious force of Christianity to unify the empire spiritually, extending its toleration and adopting it as his own faith. These measures were not without result. The Eastern empire, ruled from Constantinople, remained an effective political and economic unit. Christianity spread under his official sponsorship, although there were some new problems linked to its success.

None of these measures, however, revived the empire as a whole. Division merely made the weakness of the western half worse. Attempts to regulate the economy reduced economic initiative and lowered production; ultimately, tax revenues declined once again. The army deteriorated further.

When the Germanic invasions began in earnest in the 400 AD, there was scant basis to resist. Many peasants, burdened by the social and economic pressures of the decaying empire, actually welcomed the barbarians.

German kingdoms were established in many parts of the empire by 425 AD, and the last Roman emperor in the west was displaced in 476. The Germanic invaders numbered at most 5 percent of the population of the empire, but so great was the earlier Roman decline that this small, poorly organized force was able to put an end to one of the world’s great political structures.

The collapse of Rome echoed mightily through the later history of Europe and the Middle East. Rome’s fall split the unity of the Mediterranean lands that had been so arduously won through Hellenistic culture and then by the Roman Empire itself.

This was one sign that the end of the Roman Empire was a more serious affair than the displacement of the last classical dynasties in India and China, for Greece and Rome had not produced the shared political culture and bureaucratic traditions of China that could allow revival after a period of chaos.

Nor had Mediterranean civilization, for all its vitality, generated a common religion that appealed deep enough, or satisfied enough needs, to maintain unity amid political fragmentation, as in India. Such religions reached the Mediterranean world as Rome fell, but they came too late to save the empire and produced a deep rift in this world—between Christian and Muslim.

POST ROMAN EMPIRE WORLD

However, Rome’s collapse, although profound, was uneven. In effect, the fall of Rome divided the Mediterranean world into three zone, which formed the starting points of three distinct civilizations that developed in later centuries. The revival of Persian traditions and a Persian (Sassanid) state factored into these developments as well.

In the eastern part of the empire, centered now on Constantinople, the empire in a sense entrenched here than in some of the western European portions of the empire, and there were fewer pressures from invaders. Emperors continued to rule Greece and other parts of southeast Europe, plus the northern Middle East. This Eastern Empire--later to be known as the Byzantine Empire—was a product of late imperial Rome, rather than a balanced span of classical Mediterranean civilization. Thus, although its language was Greek, it maintained the authoritarian tone of the late Roman rulers.

But the empire itself was vibrant, artistically creative, and active in trade. Briefly, especially under the Emperor Justinian (who ruled from 527 to 565 AD), the eastern emperors tried to recapture the whole heritage of Rome. However, Justinian was unable to maintain a hold in Italy and even lost the provinces of north Africa. He did issue one of the most famous compilation of Roman law in the code that bore his name. But his was the last effort to restore Mediterranean unity.

The Byzantine Empire did not control the whole of the northern Middle East, even in its greatest days.

During the late Hellenistic periods and into the early centuries of the Roman Empire, a Parthian empire had flourished, centered in the Tigris—Euphrates region but spreading into northwestern India and to the borders of Rome’s holdings along the Mediterranean. Parthian conquerors had taken over this portion of Alexander the Great’s empire, reviving themes from Persia in the process.

They produced little culture of their own, being content to rely on Persian styles, but they long maintained an effective military and bureaucratic apparatus. Then, around 227 AD, a Persian rebellion displaced the Parthians and created a new Sassanid empire that more directly revived the glories of earlier Persian Empire.

Zoroastrianism revived, although there was some conversion to Christianity. Persian styles in art and manufacturing experienced a brilliant resurgence. Both the Parthian and Sassanid empires served as bridges between the Mediterranean and the East, transmitting goods and some artistic and literary styles between the Greek-speaking world and India and China. As the Roman Empire weakened, the Sassanids joined the attack, at times pushing into parts of southeastern Europe.

Ultimately, however, the Byzantine Empire managed to create a stable frontier. The Sassanid empire preserved the important strain of Persian culture in the eastern part of the Middle East, and this continued to influence this region as well as India. The Sassanids, however, were finally overthrown (651 AD) by the surge of Arab conquest that followed the rise of Islam in the 7th century AD.

Rome’s fall, then, did not disrupt the northern Middle East—the original cradle of civilization—as much as might have been expected. Persian rule simply continued in one part of the region, until the Arab onslaught, which itself did not destroy Persian culture.

Byzantium maintained many of the traditions of the later Roman Empire, plus Christianity, in the western part of the Middle East and in Greece and other parts of the southeastern Europe.

The second zone that devolve from Rome’s fall consisted of north Africa and the southeastern shores of the Mediterranean. Here, a number of regional kingdoms briefly succeeded the empire. While Christianity spread into the area—indeed, one of the greatest Christian theologians, Augustine, was a bishop in north Africa—its appearance was not so uniformly triumphant as in the Byzantine Empire or western Europe. Furthermore, separate beliefs and doctrines soon split north African Christianity from the larger branches, producing most notably the Coptic church in Egypt, which still survives as a Christian minority in that country. Soon this region was filled with the still newer doctrines of Islam and a new Arab empire.

WESTERN EUROPE

Finally, there was the western part of the empire—Italy, Spain, and points north. Here is where Rome’s fall not only shattered unities but also reduced the level of civilization itself. Crude regional Germanic kingdoms developed in parts of Italy, France, and elsewhere. Cities shrank still further, and, especially outside Italy, trade almost disappeared.

The only clearly vital forces in this region emanated not from Roman traditions but from the spread of Christianity. Even Christianity could not sustain a sophisticated culture of literature or art, however. In the mire of Rome’s collapse, this part of the world forgot for several centuries what it had previously known.

In this western domain, what we call the fall of Rome was scarcely noted at the time, for decay had been progressing for so many decades that the failure to name a new emperor meant little. There was some comprehension of loss, some realization that the present could not rival the past. Thus, Christian scholars were soon apologizing for their inability to write well or to understand some of the doctrines of the earlier theologians such as Augustine. This sense of inferiority to classical achievements long marked the culture of this western zone, even as times improved.