Roman Empire

VI

Decline and Fall

From the beginning of the 3rd century, the Roman Empire was on the defensive, beset by economic and social problems from inside and faced with barbarian pressure from outside. Septimius Severus (ruled 193-211), after fighting bloody civil wars to establish his power, managed to extend Roman possessions in Mesopotamia, but was occupied in turning back a tide of barbarian invaders in northern Britain when he died in York. Under his reign, Italy lost many of its privileges, and had to pay provincial taxes: this was a symptom of the pressure which the demands of a huge army and growing civil service were placing upon the empire's revenues.

The accession of Septimius Severus marked the beginning of a period in which the relatively ordered, hereditary imperial dynasties began to break down. Real power lay with the army, and it was up to the army to approve, or even to appoint, a new emperor. At times, this could reduce the succession to a squalid auction, at which the candidate who offered the greatest cash bribe to the troops was likely to take control. Costly and damaging civil wars between competing claimants became increasingly common. The effect could only be to damage the stability of the empire and to divert military attention from external threats.

In 238 came massive attacks by Germanic peoples on the Black Sea area. By 253 the Goths and the Heruli had ravaged the shores of the Aegean, and in 267 Athens was taken. At the same time, the Danube frontier came under great pressure, and the province of Dacia was effectively abandoned. In 259 the Allemanni, a huge confederacy of German peoples, attacked eastern Gaul, penetrated as far as Spain, and linked up with other Germanic groups in the west. Germans occupied northern Italy. In the east came renewed trouble with the Parthians, culminating in the ultimate humiliation of the Emperor Valerian being captured by the forces of the Parthian king, Shapur, who pushed the Roman Empire back to the Euphrates. In 270 Zenobia, queen of the formerly friendly Syrian city-state of Palmyra, invaded Egypt and adjacent territories. Some recovery from these disasters was achieved by Aurelian (ruled 270-275), who defeated both Palmyra and the German peoples, but the situation continued to be volatile, and the position of the empire precarious.

Major reorganization of the empire was undertaken by Diocletian (ruled 284-305), who formally divided Roman territory into a Western Empire and an Eastern Empire, each administered by an Augustus (senior emperor) and a junior Caesar (subordinate emperor)—a system known as the Tetrarchy. Imperial power, increasingly absolute and arbitrary, was enforced by a large secret police force (the agentes in rebus). Diocletian also undertook radical reforms of the army, and of the defences of the provinces. The twin empires were again united by Constantine (ruled 306-337), who adopted Christianity (formerly a relatively unimportant cult) and who moved the centre of imperial government from Rome to the new city of Constantinople, in Asia Minor. This last was an extraordinary move: it recognized that the empire in the east was now the primary concern, and broke a chain of historical and political continuity which had been, for immemorial ages, at the heart of Roman identity. On Constantine's death the empire was again divided formally into Eastern and Western, between his sons Constans and Constantius II.

The second half of the 4th century was a time of military reverses. Picts and Scots invaded Britain in 360 and, though the barbarians were temporarily defeated by Theodosius in 370, the legions were forced to begin their abandonment of the province in 383 (a process completed by 410) in order to reinforce the severely pressed frontiers elsewhere. Huns and Goths were invading Europe from several points, and in 378 the Emperor Valens was defeated and killed by Visigoths at Adrianople (now Edirne), in Thrace. The Emperor Theodosius (ruled 392-395) briefly reunited the empire and tried to rally Roman forces against the barbarian tide, but nothing could be done. In 396 Alaric, king of the Visigoths, began a campaign that was to sweep through Greece and the Balkans to Italy: in 410 he sacked the city of Rome itself and, though Italy was briefly to be reconquered by the Byzantine general Belisarius in 535, the ancient heartland of the empire was now lost.

Over the following century, the Western Empire fell steadily into barbarian hands. Desperately short of troops, Rome had adopted the despairing policy of allowing some Germanic foedorati (people with whom the Romans, by treaty, had agreed friendly association or alliance in perpetuity) to settle in the European provinces in return for guaranteeing the borders against other, more hostile forces: in this way, much of Europe was to fall under barbarian rule and occupation by clandestine means. Vandals were settled in Spain; Ostrogoths in Dalmatia; and Huns in Pannonia and other parts of eastern Europe. In 443, the Vandals took Rome's last possessions in northern Africa. The final end of the Western Empire came in 476 with the death of its last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, ironically named after one of the twin founders of Rome, and the proclamation of the German barbarian general Odoacer as king of Italy.

In the east, the empire was to continue, in one form or another, for many centuries, but the days were over when the empire could be called Roman: the lands governed from Constantinople are usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire, and were eventually to fall to the Muslim Turks in 1453.

The causes of the collapse of this mighty Empire are more complex than the simple series of military defeats outlined above. In essence, the empire had grown too big for its resources. Extended frontiers required a huge army, always a vast drain on revenues, and in turn generating an increasingly unwieldy bureaucracy: too many unproductive mouths were being fed by too few farmers and peasants. This situation was worsened in the areas most exposed to barbarian invasion, where conditions were most unstable. Political competition between rivals for power resulted in continual civil wars, which drained the exchequer, depleted manpower, and exhausted the countryside. Massive rates of inflation, following debasement of the coinage in order to increase the money supply to pay the army and administrators, reduced confidence in the currency and inhibited economic production. Roman society had become inflexible and fossilized, caught in a cycle of economic depression and bureaucratic stagnation. All these factors were exacerbated by the ceaseless pressure on the frontiers of the empire, and by the constant need for more troops and more taxes.

VII

The Roman Inheritance

By the Europe of the early Middle Ages, the Roman Empire was remembered, though sometimes dimly, as an age of stability, power, and achievement: it was Rome which largely shaped the culture and institutions of medieval Europe, and bestowed a lasting legacy.

The Germanic people who gained the western Roman Empire were conscious of the achievements of Rome, but were unfortunately not always organized in a way that would allow them immediately to build upon the inheritance. Their adoption of Roman culture and institutions was, therefore, far from uniform, and the lasting legacy of Rome can be difficult to perceive. In Italy, in Iberia, and to a lesser extent in France and some of the Balkan states, the language spoken is still based closely upon Latin: all the Germanic invaders were illiterate in their own tongues, and such learning and higher culture as was to survive in Europe in the centuries following the fall of the empire was conducted in Latin. Moreover, the very survival of that learning is owed to the Christian Church, itself a Roman institution which was to outlive the empire that produced it.

It was the Church, more than anything, that was the real heir of the empire, and which was able to provide a measure of continuity after the collapse of temporal power and civil administration. The papacy continued to be based in Rome and to exert enormous authority over most of Europe, keeping alive not only many of the ideas of the Roman world but also a sense of a wider community which looked to the ancient city for support and leadership.

Besides the Church, some of the most important institutions of the medieval world had their origins in the Roman Empire. The feudal system, which was to govern not only the holding and administration of land but also the web of relationships and obligations that held together medieval society, has been seen as developing from the late Roman system of land law. In places, other traditions of Roman law and administration survived, and the courts of the more sophisticated Germanic peoples—Franks, Goths, Burgundians—were modelled upon the imperial courts of Rome. Five hundred years after the fall of the city, Roman styles continued to dominate material culture, art, and, in particular, architecture. The barbarian races had coveted Rome and what the empire represented: it is true to say that they did not destroy the Roman legacy, but used it, adapted it, and integrated it into their own cultures.