Roman Empire

VII

Fall of the Western Empire

Theodosius I (379-395) was the last ruler of the united Roman Empire. At his death in 395, he left the eastern portion of the empire to his 18-year-old son, Arcadius, and the western portion to his 10-year-old son, Honorius. Despite the nominal unity of this territory, the legacy of Theodosius was, in fact, the final division of the empire. A succession of child emperors weakened the throne, and no emperor ever again successfully controlled both east and west.

Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire remained strong, while the Western Roman Empire began a steady decline in the face of economic disintegration, weak emperors, and invading Germanic tribes. The breakdown of communications, commerce, and public order exposed the people of Gaul, Spain, and other provinces to famine and robbery. While the central government provided few services and little protection, it demanded more taxes and goods. Panic and alienation drove both peasants and city dwellers from their homes. They sought protection from powerful landlords, who controlled their own self-sufficient villas. In these heavily fortified villas, the lower classes hoped for relief from the twin predators of late antiquity: barbarians and tax collectors.

The Eastern Empire was stable and prospered. The eastern emperors were able to defend the Dardanelles, a strategic strait in northwestern Turkey (known in antiquity as the Hellespont) and to push migrating barbarian peoples to the Western Empire. The emperors of the west were often pampered and isolated, and they allowed generals and ministers to rule in their name. Declining manpower also led western emperors to recruit Germanic people for the army or even to engage entire tribes to fight on Rome’s behalf. In 410 the Goths sacked Rome. It was the first time Rome had suffered such an invasion since the Gauls had sacked the city in 390 bc—eight centuries earlier.

In ad 476 Germanic troops in Italy mutinied and elected a Gothic commander, Odoacer, as king. Odoacer, who was the first Germanic ruler of the empire, deposed the young emperor, Romulus Augustulus, gave him a generous pension, and sent his imperial regalia to Constantinople. But if the Western Empire had “fallen,” the commentators of the time barely took notice. It was not until four decades later that a Byzantine historian wrote that the imperial order initially established by Augustus had come to an end in 476. The date marked the demise of a political structure—the Western Roman Empire—but coinage, taxes, and administrators all remained in place. The exile of Romulus barely affected ordinary people.

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Several factors explain why the Roman state collapsed in the west and survived in Constantinople for another 1,000 years. The most obvious is geography, since the Western Empire had to defend a long border along the Rhine and Danube rivers. The east was far more populous—Egypt had 8 million inhabitants while Gaul had 2.5 million—and thus could provide men and supplies for a larger army. The east also had a longer tradition of urbanization, and wealthy cities in the Eastern Empire provided continuing support while cities in the Western Empire were newer and weaker. When these cities came under pressure, much of the population fled to the countryside.

The east also had a stronger economic base. The rich lands of Egypt provided wealth, and much of the east’s other territory was in the hands of productive peasant proprietors. The Eastern Empire also received a financial boost from the tradition of manufacture in eastern cities and the control of the lucrative trade with Arabia, China, and India. Ancient agricultural economies produced very little surplus, and Rome itself had long depended on the profit of conquest, which included tribute, taxes from the wealthy east, and shipments of grain from North Africa and Egypt. When the east was lost and barbarians took Africa, the desperate Western Empire raised taxes and imposed restrictive regulations. As Germanic tribes seized more taxable land and revenues fell, the west could barely support its own unproductive soldiers, civil servants, and clergy. It certainly did not have sufficient revenue for the bribes and subsidies needed to pacify the Germanic invaders.

There is no simple explanation for the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, but several interconnected elements provide some answers. The demands of the military and the growing bureaucracy forced the government to seek more income. When the elite avoided taxes, the burden fell on the peasantry, who had barely enough to feed themselves and no surplus to pay taxes. When farmers fled the land, incomes declined still further and manpower shortages forced the military to hire German mercenaries. This cycle led to a weak, impoverished central government that quietly collapsed in 476.

VIII

The Roman Legacy

Many modern historians stress the continuity between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Political structures changed and cities declined, but for the 90 percent of the population who worked on the land, life continued much as always. Roman law, the Latin language, and the Christian religion provided an enormous amount of continuity, yet there were also broad changes. Greco-Roman civilization retreated to the Mediterranean, while inland areas lost the veneer of Roman culture. Buildings collapsed, local populations revived indigenous Celtic art forms, and even Latin was slowly transformed into different languages like Provençal, French, Spanish, and Catalan. The transition proceeded gradually until local creativity shaped the Roman inheritance into the distinctive cultures of medieval Europe.

The rediscovery of Greco-Roman civilization in 15th-century Italy sparked the new era or state of mind called the Renaissance. Sculptors returned to Greco-Roman models of realism, architects copied Greek columns and Roman domes, and literary figures like English playwright William Shakespeare adapted Roman comedies. Philosophers examined the Roman legal codes, and political theorists returned to Roman discussions of freedom and tyranny. Even the Latin of Cicero was revived as a more elevated language than medieval Church Latin or everyday speech. And the fascination with Roman culture continued as revolutionaries in America and France studied Roman texts and 19th-century portraitists adopted Roman styles. The collapse of the Roman political structure in 476 did not mean that the civilization of Rome was lost.

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