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Fall of the Roman Empire

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There are many books disecting and explaining the Roman Empire's rise and fall, and many of them may indeed be more detailed than "The Fall of the Roman Empire" by Michael Grant, but none capture the actions of that age and explain it in such a manner that it is comprehensible to someone without a Harvard degree. Mr. Grant writes in a methodical and clear way that keeps the reader interested and excited. He divides his book in to thirteen chapters, each one describing thirteen points that led to the empire's downfall. He addresses issues not only of military importance, but that of the internal and social struggles, such as the slaves, peasants, generals and nobles. He also includes a series of maps one what the empire looked like at various times throughout its decline. The contents of the book are reason enough to buy it, but the introduction is a general overview of the entire empire, and is very well done. That's the positive side. However, I don't think he was quite detailed enough! I realize that the entire book was intended to be a general run over, but some areas he glazed over, and others he ignored completly. For example, he explained the Weastern Empire in depth, but almost completly ignored the Eastern. He only refered to it when it affected the other. The only other nuance I disliked was that every so often he would contradict himself, like in referece to the social impact of the poor against the state being the most important of the internal struggles that brought down the fall, while he later says the credibility gap was the cause of the decline. After weighing the pros against the cons, I believe this is a very worthwhile book to read if you are just begining a study of that era.

Grant gives a new perspective about the last century of the (western) Roman Empire. When the average layman thinks of the fall of the Roman Empire, he (or she) thinks of the Rome of the early Caesars: a libertarian, libertine kind of place, full of fun and debauchery. But Grant convincingly shows that late Rome suffered not from decadence but from puritanism, not from too much liberty but from crushing taxes. Late Rome was more like Soviet Russia than like America today: a place suffering from too much government in every sphere of life, from Christian intolerance ...to bureaucratic overregulation of the economy. The perfect gift for your libertarian friends!

The author is a schollar with a long list of published works on classical civilization, and this title didn't disappoint the reader. As a thematic overview of the subject at hand its absolutely excellent, in 13 chapters explaining each of the main reasons that weakened and finally ended with the western Roman empire (forgetting silly theories or folklore). The internal divisions and the idea that it wasn't worth defending the empire in its various battles (not only physical,but also social, theological and intelectual) is the main theme of this work.

Obviously it was the "barbarian invasions" that led to political change, but these barbarians originally worked for Rome! And in the past the Empire had survived several invasions of similar magnitude. The numbers of troops were misleading, and mostly poorly armed and motivated "limitanei", the impressive number of exemptions from military service overloaded the nonimmune classes, encouraging owners to "give" to the army the most useless workers , etc.

Economically the oppressive tax system was based on land; the small owners bearing almost the entire tax burden, eventually putting themselfes at the service of large landowners (the beginnings of feudalism), also a lot of isentions led to the breakdown of the system. The rich Senators, removed from the military commands and certain positions, moved away from the management of the state, concerning themselves only about their personal properties.

Incredibly the state also has divested the small urban middle class Curiale, forcing it to assume the roles of management and collection of taxes, subjecting them to absurd laws that included corporal punishment! The imperial bureaucracy was impressive with real armies of rogue officials and laws of dubious usefulness, causing the entire population to unite against these bureaucrats. The exaggeration of pomp, ceremony, courtesans intrigue and limited access to the sacred person of the emperor, kept him not only far from the eyes of its people, but also from their hearts.

Also of note its the failure of alliance between East and West (the help was always minimal). Racial differences and prejudices of the Germans, who at the end of the empire were the main protectors and soldiers of the empire, the lack of tolerance, integration, respect of their religion and a common sense of purpose led to the failure of the foedus experience (federated allies).

At a time of such great need of human resources for the army and tilling the land, the huge number of elements that become monks, completely dependent of other citizens, led to a worsening of the circumstances. Intolerance in religious matters and in disputes between Catholics and Aryans (among other heresies such as the donatists in Gaul) and between Christians and Pagans, has led to another huge division in society; especially when thinkers such as St. Augustine began to promote "forced" conversions. Matters of culture and ways of thinking also influenced the fall: the pagans had an excessive compliance with the whole situation, seeing it as just another hiccup in the long and endless Roman Empire, leading to an overconfidence which resulted in the lack of concerted actions that would lead to a positive change in the situation; on the other hand, the Christians often saw the situation as completelly black and as a punishment from God, being more concerned with eternal life.

The book also contains an excellent summary of events, list of rulers and popes, long bibliography and list of ancient writers (essential if you want to to know more about the subject). Highly recommended as a summary of the causes that led to the changing of the political situation in the ancient world.

The previous reviewer's analysis is correct. I would only add that eerily much of what caused Rome to dry rot and collapse is being mirrored in the USA- high taxation, large bureaucracies, the lack of desire to serve in the military, radical racial diversification, growing elements of societal drop-outs (ie. homeschoolers, Christians, environmentalists), complacency, the growing gulf between social classes. Will the USA fall like Rome? After all, there is no army of barbarians at our doorstep like Rome faced. We have no military coups unlike the dozens which took place in Rome. But there are several fits, enough to think that at the very least, America two centuries from now will be as recognizable to us as modern England would be recognizable to Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror or Richard the Lionhearted.

Michael Grant may not be the most revered classical scholar of the late twentieth century, but he just may be the most prolific. Mr. Grant published on an astonishing scale, especially for a man who spent most of his adult life in the diplomatic service of his country, Great Britain.

This piece, underscoring the many reasons contributing to the fall of Rome in the fourth century, is a lucid and broadly accessible analysis of the decline and collapse of the greatest empire in history; a "Gibbon for the common man" one might say, only without the great eighteenth century historian's reluctance to assign fault and causality.

After reading "The Fall of the Roman Empire" it is difficult to ascertain precisely how or why the imperial state lasted as long as did, precisely the question that Chester Starr examined in his 1982 monograph, "The Roman Empire, 27 BC - AD 476: A Study in Survival." Grant argues that only the internal flaws can account for the fall of Rome, which really transpired over the course of just a century; barbarian invasion was necessary, but not sufficient to explain the collapse. The author highlights no less than thirteen disunities that he claims undermined the Roman empire and led inexorably to its disintegration. Any one of them, it seems to me, were enough to seriously injure the health of the expansive polity of the Roman empire, a territory so vast, so encompassing that Starr refers to it as an "impossibility" in his piece.

To begin with, Grant highlights the failure of the Roman system to deliver a smooth and legitimate transition of power to the emperor's throne as a primary source of disunity. Indeed, this structural flaw was cited by both Machiavelli and Montesquieu as the principle reason for Rome's downfall. With each succession the empire was rocked by civil war and competing claims to the throne backed by parochial armies from the frontier. These internal conflicts resulted in the fracturing that allowed the Barbarians a frequent opening to invasion and conquest.

Moreover, Grant argues, by the end of the empire, the Romans had no real "Roman" army at all. The vast majority of the troops in the legions were conscripted or mercenary Germans -- or even Huns from the newly federated lands, autonomous swaths of territory populated and ruled by Barbarians under the ostensible rule of Rome. There were no genuine Romans left to draft, so thoroughly had the agrarian lands been denuded of small landholders, which traditionally provided the backbone of the legionnaires. And these new German legionnaires were poorly assimilated into the social body politic (more on that below).

Next, the author stresses that the Roman state needed money to pay its army, the very army it needed to survive as an empire. Yet, the collection of this revenue did much to destroy the empire by imposing a terrible tax burden (Grant claims that 90% of imperial revenues were derived from land taxes) on the foundation of citizenry, the rural farmer, the same rural farmer that traditionally provided the manpower to the legions. (Note: some recent classical historians, including Starr, have argued that the cost of supporting the imperial army was not that onerous, coming out to the modest sum of 15 sesterces per person per year, at least in the early empire. Unlike those authors, Grant never attempts to define the budget and tax rates, which undermines his argument).

In a theme that resonates today (at least for me), Grant also argues that the elite in later Roman society were far richer, relatively, than their ancestors during the Republic (five times richer, he claims), and worse yet they felt little desire or obligation to serve the state, either in politics or in the army, an undertaking once considered noble, but in the final centuries deemed beneath the highest wrung in society. So, the rich lived their lives of luxury on their estates and deprived the state of desperately needed leadership for generations, while the Emperor himself remained completely detached from his people, living increasingly outside the city of Rome in Milan, on isolated estates at Ravenna or elsewhere, often relying on pithy taglines on the ubiquitous bronze currency trumpeting an imperial glory (e.g. "Unconquered," "Perpetual") long since vanished to prop up his image across his empire. Also along this line of detachment from society, Grant describes a growing set of voluntary "drop outs" from the Roman community that further eroded manpower and general civic cohesion, monks and nuns mainly, living in remote convents who were perhaps a bit more like Hippies in the 1960s. However, the author makes no credible argument that their numbers were sufficient to actually damage the fabric or functioning of society any more than the Hippies ultimately did, although they did serve as the ultimate expression of rejecting the conventions of the hallowed past.

Finally, the Romans couldn't get along among themselves. There was a concerted effort to unify around Christian faith, but that only created deep and passionate schisms in society, resulting in efforts to deny freedom of religion, first against pagans, then against Manichaeans and Jews, and finally against Christian heretics, which Grant argues were some of the most brutal and violent persecutions. Meanwhile, the Romans failed utterly in assimilating the large numbers of Germans -- nearly all of whom converted to the Arrian brand of Christianity, a sect ultimately rejected by the mainline Roman church -- who became citizens in the later empire as former Barbarian territory was federated into the empire, an inflow of martially inclined manpower that, for a time, propped up the sagging legions.

In closing, this is a solid introduction to the many threads that in part or in concert led to the Fall of Rome, one of the most fascinating and enduring of historical subjects. It is targeted at the lay reader and Roman history novice and serves that audience well.