Customer Reviews

The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

"The invaders were not guilty of murder, but they had committed manslaughter." So says Bryan Ward-Perkins in an entertaining and stimulating historical monograph. He attacks, among other things the post- World War II politically correct thesis that the Germans reached as easy accomodation with the Romans and together they worked hand-in-hand to transform Europe into the 6th century version of a "Brave New World".

He gives substantial proof for the declining quality of life in the 5th century, and bases his work primarily on archaeologial remains and pottery studies that are often ignored by the text-centered classical scholar. It had never really occurred to me think of the significance of the lack of copper coins after the decline of the Empire, or the change in pottery finds. My doctorate is on the fall of Rome, and I plan to use this as a text the next time I teach the course. It is well illustrated, written with great wit and is brief enough to hold the interest of any student. The only odd thing about this book is that it does not mention the 80 year old "Pirenne Thesis" on the collapse of Mediterranean trade; he does however, give Peter Brown and the contemporary American "spiritual enlightenment and rebirth" school a good thrashing!

Bryan Ward-Perkins is concerned with impact of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire on the standard of living, or what he calls "the loss of comfort."

Seen from this standpoint, the end of Rome was the end of the world's first complex, specialised economy.

He is careful to explain that the end of the Roman Empire was not a uniform process, and that the Eastern half of the empire continued to flourish until the time of the Arab attacks in the seventh century AD.

He uses three instances: pottery, roof tiles, and coinage, to demonstrate the material changes which took place.

The use of pottery was widespread throughout the Empire, it was not solely the preserve of the elite, its manufacture was industrial, and its quality was excellent.

In provinces like Britain the availability of sophisticated, mass produced, quality pottery simply disappeared.
The skills and technology were lost. (Well the German invaders never had them!)

Tiled roofs do not catch fire, they do not attract insects, and they do not need replacing every thirty years. In Britain, " ... the quarrying of building stone, preparation of mortar, manufacture and use of bricks and tiles ... " all ceased.

Coins are the hallmark of economic sophistication: in Roman times they were "a standard feature of everyday
life ... " Their disappearance meant the disappearance of economic complexity, and in the West this was "almost total".

These three instances highlight the loss of specialisation, and as the author points out, specialisation depends on
"a sophisticated network of transport and commerce ... in order to distribute ... goods efficiently and widely."

But the frontiers were no longer secure, the countryside was more dangerous, and walls started to re-appear round cities. Traders who would have journeyed safely along the empire's highways find them no longer secure. The world's first intricate interlocking economy was unravelling.

In this situation, specialization actually posed a serious danger: " ... its very sophistication rendered it ... less adaptable to change." Indeed, the author argues that countries like Britain went back to less-sophisticated levels that those which had existed before the Roman invasion:

"It took centuries for people in the former empire to reacquire the skills and regional networks that would
take them back to these pre-Roman levels of sophistication. Ironically, viewed from the perspective of fifth-century Britain and of most of the sixth- and seventh-century Mediterranean, the Roman experience had been highly damaging."

Did the population also decline? Here the author admits that evidence is hard to find, since poorer communities leave little if any trace of their existence. However, the he uses evidence from Syria to argue that as farming became less specialist, and only local needs could be met, there was a decline in acreage cultivated.

He cites the remarkable shrinkage in the average size of cattle, from a growth in size between the Iron Age and the Roman period, to a decline below the size of Iron Age cattle afterwards.

The last section examines the differing historical interpretations of the end of the Roman Empire, and the way in which they are linked to the world-view of their protagonists.

First there is the Marxist view. The collapse of the Roman Empire marked the end of the imperial exploitation of the lower classes, and slaves.

Whilst not denying the huge differences in wealth - such as there are in Western countries today! - he believes that "basic good-quality items (were) available right down the social scale."

He further points out that Anglo-Saxon England, for example, was manifestly not an egalitarian paradise.

Then there is the intriguing case of the European Union, which appears to need the end of Rome to have been a peaceful transition. The German 'invaders' of the fifth century AD are no longer allowed to be the barbarians "assassinating" the empire, rather a Romano-German world came peacefully into existence. Hence the hallowed place of Charlemagne in the EU's pantheon.

The 'fall' of Rome also coincided with the rise of Christianity, therefore the so-called "Dark Ages" were not 'dark' at all. This was the period when the western `invaders' were converted. This was the age of saints, like St Bede, an age of spirituality.

Lastly, all cultures are now equal, so the notion that Rome "fell" implies its superiority: Roman = Civilised, Barbarian = Uncivilised. Cultures should not be judged in that way.

Bryan Ward-Perkins acknowledges these problems, and reiterates that he is writing from a material standpoint.

What this book does not set out to discuss is why the Empire fell, but it offers a prescient warning to a later more complex world: its citizens could not entertain the idea that its collapse was possible.

The author has combined his scholarship with a passion and commitment to his subject: this is one of the most stimulating history books I have read in a very long time.

This book is, quite simply, one of the finest history books I have ever read (and I am an avid history fan). I wish more academic writers had both the will and the ability to write as clearly and with as much flaire as Bryan Ward Perkins in this book. Sadly, it is a skill that is lacked by many of them; yet this only makes the author's achievement all the greater. Perkins does not go in for the obfuscating style that sometimes plagues academic writing. He does not need to hide behind dense terminology - he explains his ideas confidently and in plain English. I truly believe that this excellent book deserves a five star review rating.

In short, I urge you with all possible enthusiasm to buy this book today!

I came to Bryan Ward-Perkins' work indirectly, through reading Rodney Stark's "The Victory of Reason." Stark argues the reason for the superiority of Western culture is the Christian religion, especially the Catholic Christian religion with its emphasis on the (alleged) rationality of God and on the goodness of creation.

Stark's Christian triumphalism requires him to attack the classic account of the "Decline and Fall" of Western Roman Civilization by Edward Gibbion. Gibbon argued (in 1776) that the "useless" activities of the monasteries and churches in the 5th Century required so much labor and wealth that little was left over to fend off the barbarians. The fall of Rome, Gibbon concluded, "was a triumph of barbarism and religion." (Amazon sells a nice little summary of Gibbon's views entitled "Christians and the Fall of Rome.")

Stark dissents from Gibbon's view, arguing that there had been no "fall" of civilization in the 5th Century. There had simply been a cultural segue from one type of social organization (Roman) to another (feudal society featuring monasteries and local castles).

I had never heard anyone seriously deny there had been a "fall" of Roman civilization in the 5th Century, and I did not know enough at that time to contest his ideas. Then while in a waiting room, I came across an article by Ward-Perkins in the magazine "History Today" (as I recall its title). Ward-Perkins briefly laid out the issue between the defenders of the "discontinuity thesis" (like Gibbon) and the defenders of the "continuity thesis" (which included historians like the Oxford historian Peter Brown and of course Rodney Stark).

Bryan Ward-Perkin's book, "The Fall of Rome," is a compact and easily understood exposition of this issue, along with some very solid archaeological evidence that the classical "discontinuity" thesis of Eduard Gibbon is much more nearly correct than is the continuity thesis of historians like Stark and Peter Brown.

Ward-Perkins pokes gentle fun at the continuity theorists. He writes (p. 82) that "recent literature on the Germanic settlements reads like ... a tea party at the Roman vicarage. A shy newcomer to the village, who is a useful prospect for the cricket team, is invited in. There is a brief moment of awkwardness, while the host finds an empty chaor and pours a fresh cup of tea; but the conversation, and the village life, soon flows on."

Ward-Perkins has engaged in archeological excavations in Roman sites (near Pisa in Italy), where he has been able to trace the material bases of life (such as pottery and home construction) from the 4th to the 6th Centuries. There is plainly a collapse in the quality of life available to those living there during the time of the Germanic invasions. These barbarian invasions were no tea party.

There was a recovery beginning in the 6th Century, after the Germanic and Roman populations had fused into new people called "the Franks". But the quality of life available for ordinary persons did not equal that of the citizens of the late Roman Empire until the 17th Century. There really was a "fall" from the status of civilized existence in 5th Century Italy. And contrary to Stark, one can still build a substantial case that Christianity was one of the contributing causes.

I wish all historians were as easy to read and understand as is Bryan Ward-Perkins.

Almost from the first page, I realized I was reading on of the best-argued and influential books I've ever read on the end of the Roman Empire and its culture. This book is not a history of one of the most massive dislocations in human history, but it does elucidate that history while taking issue with trends in recent scholarship which have, apparently, led historians somewhat away from what the facts provide about the fall of the West. This book will help you get historically back on track on this magnificent but frightening subject.

Ward-Perkins is lucid, occasionally endearing, fair-minded but determined to use the evidence not only of archeology, and literature, but of economics, to prove that the current trend in pretending that, somehow, all those 'barbarians' just wandered in, settled down, and got along with the inhabitants of Rome's Empire is a wishful misreading of the facts. He does it with wit and grace and inarguable sources ranging from one side of the Mediterranean to the other, from the studies of coinage, trade and trade-goods, the kinds of buildings being built, and more. He manages to do so without disparaging other scholars, but taking issue with some of their conclusions. If anyone has, as I have, met history buffs who insist that the Fall of Rome never happened and that the cultures of the Germanic/Gothic and other tribes who took over the western world had cultures equal to anything in the late-Roman period, Mr. Ward-Perkins has provided a clear, cogent and convincing rebuttal. He also is entirely persuasive in proving how changes in 20th century understanding can influence, and even undermine, our understanding of ancient cultures, not always to the benefit of the truth. Scholars can be influenced by this as much as their vulnerable readers, and while it is perhaps currently fashionable to pretend that great cultures fall without much noise and fuss, it is also rather dangerous.

Most highly recommended. This is one book I plan to read more than once as an excellent reminder of how great cultures can actually 'fall.' As Ward-Perkins notes with striking effect in his last sentences, "Romans before the fall were as certain as we are today that their world would continue for ever substantially unchanged. They were wrong. We would be wise not to repeat their complacency."

If you are a Roman history buff, this is an excellent book to read in conjunction with Peter Heather's "The Fall of The Roman Empire." The two books cover very different territory despite their similar titles.

I liked Ward-Perkins' book for a number of reasons. First, I'm an engineer, so I have a secret attraction for hard data. Ward-Perkins' book provides that. I never realized you could analyze the numbers of coins and roof tiles and such from a given time frame and get some kind of sense of the complexity of a society. Not to worry, though--the type of immense data-crunching Ward-Perkins does actually results in a few easy-to-understand graphs that clearly illustrate sharp decreases in various manufactured materials as the empire collapsed. As a telling illustration of how personal and conversation a tone he sets in the book, he opens by telling of his childhood growing up around the ruins of Rome. Neat! And the many thoughtfully-selected pictures are a real plus. Ward-Perkins does them just the way I like--interspersed all through the text, instead of wadded up in the middle.

Also, since I'm not a professional historian, I hadn't realized that historians from geographic areas like to view history in certain ultimately self-gratifying ways. Academicians on the east and west coasts of the United States, for example, apparently like to view Roman history through a prism of new age religion. Yikes! It may float their boat, but give me number crunching any day. Along those lines, I hadn't realized how the study of Roman history was becoming so politically correct that bloody head-bashing battles were somehow being explained away by some historians (who have deeply vested interests) as a sort of mild Vulcan mind-meld. Ward-Perkin's explanations, for example, of how a new faux-history is being created to support the concept of the European Union was quite enlightening. I also greatly appreciated his explanation of complexity in a civilization. Complexity is a widely used concept in biology and engineering design, but I'd never realized that the same concept could be profitably applied to history or society.

All in all, a wonderful book that gave me much more insight not only into Roman history, but into the politics and mindset of historians.

In this book which challenges the 'new historians' who have tried to rephrase the word 'barbrian' and make it anew and make the barbarians the decent ones and Rome the 'real barbarian' by rewriting history, we are one again given the traditional story, closer to Gibbon(who has never been surpassed) but with a new twist using modern discoveries and a new take.

In a village called Tsipori in Palestine of the 4th century there was a colluseum, as there was in Philelphia(Amman), and there was an acqueduct. The Byzantines in the 6th century set themselves to maintaining these gifts of Rome. In 1947 the people were drawing water from a dirty well a mile from the village. The fall of Rome actually did mean an end to many ways f lfie across Europe and the East. Everywhere that Rome receded the people lost technology, new religious fercor and lack of logical thought took away learning, disorganized armies looted the people.

These are facts. Pottery did disappear in many places, innovations stopped. To be sure Rome was an ill civilization using mercenaries to do its work, enslaving whole nations and slaughtering others, labelling those it fought 'barbarians'. However the conquest of the barbarians may have brought a blendng of the new Christianity with these pagan nomadic people bursting forth from Germania. However the fall of Rome was a cataclysm not seen since in Europe. The destruction wrought by World War Two was far worse, but the pieces left over were such that civilization could re-assert istself. The process of the fall of ROme truly did most acts of learning, science, discovery, and simple things like the lavatory disappeared from the continent. People in many places didnt recover that standard of living for more than 1000 years.

A great and fascnatng revisionist account that turns on the head must of he scholarship of the 1980s and 1990s. Beyond this an important message for those today who wonder about the current crises of the west and the fact that sometimes a 'terrorist' really is a 'terrorist'.

Seth J. Frantzman

Professor Ward-Perkins has done an interesting, if short, book on a majestic theme - the fall of one of history's greatest empires, and its aftermath.

His main concern is to debunk a notion, apparently fashionable among historians, which I'm not sure many other people ever shared - the idea that the Fall of Rome wasn't such a big deal. Apparently, there is an historical school which regards the whole business as a mostly peaceful transition from the tail end of the Ancient World into the beginning of Medieval Europe. He collects an impressive pile of evidence that it was far from peaceful, and was indeed pretty catastrophic for many of those who had to live through it. Roman civilisation did not die of natural causes. It was killed, and mainly by the military force of the Barbarians.

Well, so far, so good. I doubt if the inhabitants of Italy, Gaul and Spain, who spent most of the years from 405 to 420 having one set of barbarians after another marching and counter-marching all over their homelands, would have any trouble agreeing with Ward-Perkins. Over the next couple of centuries many others would have cause to feel the same way. Nor was this temporary. For several centuries more, comforts that the Romans took for granted would become available only to a tiny few, and sometimes not at all. Pottery making virtually died out in Britain until about 700, tiled roofs, previously common, were little-known in the Middle Ages, and even coinage gave way to barter over wide areas. In short, standards of living, as usually measured, took a prolonged nosedive.

And yet - -. This is all very well, but if the Empire's fall was such a terrible loss to those who lived in it, how come it was never restored? The Chinese Empire "fell" lots of times, but was always rebuilt. When Rome fell, it stayed fallen, and its people seem to have soon become reconciled to doing without it.

Nor can the Barbarians be held solely responsible for what happened. In Asia Minor, which was virtually untouched by barbarian invasion, Colin McEvedy's "New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History" shows four cities - Ephesus, Miletus, Sardis, Smyrna - of between 15,000 and 50,000 people in AD 528. On the map for AD737, not one of them remains. Here at least, the Barbarians were not to blame for the decline, and other factors need to be considered.

At times, Ward-Perkins himself gives significant hints at this. He quotes ancient sources to the effect that, during Alaric's siege of Rome in 408/9, "almost all the slaves that were in Rome poured out of the city to join the Barbarians". And nine years earlier, when the rebel general Tribigild marched across Asia Minor, then a peaceful and prosperous region, his force was soon swelled by "such a mass of slaves and outcasts that the whole of Asia was in great danger, while Lydia was in utter confusion, with almost everyone fleeing to the coast and sailing across to the islands or elsewhere with their whole families". Clearly not all the Empire's subjects loved it.

But perhaps the most revealing incident is from 393, when "the Roman aristocrat Symmachus brought a group of Saxon prisoners to Rome, intending them to slaughter each other in gladiatorial games in honour of his son. However, before they were publicly exhibited twenty-nine of them committed suicide by the only means available to them - by strangling each other with their bare hands! For us, their terrible death represents a courageous act of defiance, but Symmachus viewed their suicide as the action of "a group of men viler than Spartacus", which had been sent to test him. With the self-satisfaction of which only Roman aristocrats were capable, he compared his own philosophical response to the event to the calm of Socrates when faced with adversity."

If Symmachus was at all representative of its ruling class, one can easily get an inkling of why the Empire failed, and see why not only the Barbarians, but many of its own less privileged subjects, might not have been sorry to see it go. One man's civilisation can all too easily be another man's "Third Reich", and one may suspect that many were ready enough to try and get along without the Roman State, even if it did mean having to make their own pottery.

This was a very good analysis of the later Roman Empire and it's 'fall'...yes fall....not transformation!!

Before reading Ward-Perkins' slim text [less than 200 pages](it could have been twice the size and still too short) I had not realized the revisionists, postmodernists, post-structuralists, relativists [ists, ists, ists...ahhhhhh!!!!!], had made their way into this field...but it hasn't surprised me. Yet, rumors, indirect and vague, have been surfacing about the elevation of Germanic Europe over, at least, the last 10 to 15 years.

Well, back to the book. Ward-Perkins looks at the material aspects of civilization (another word he rescues from the 'accommodators') such as pottery, economics, writing, trade, etc. Items/things that may be measured, weighed, tested...the quantifiable in our lives and the lives of a complex society and the things it makes. The book and its analyses were very good and I would higly recommend it as a brilliant respite from the metaphysics of the revisionists and their tortured logic (if you want to think of their rationalisations as such).

There is only one negative that weaken's the author's thesis and that is he has been too 'open' to the position(s) of the 'Other'. One of the hallmarks of a strong and compelling thesis is a bold and provocative stance on an issue. It makes for a more compelling and thought-provoking read. Ward-Perkins is here rather weak...most especially in his final chapter (All for The Best In The Best Of All Possible Worlds?). Here he wants to argue, to a greater or lesser extent, both sides. When, in point of fact, he needs, in his conclusion, to take the revisionists out behind the woodshed for a mighty good thrashing. It was an interesting chapter but too watered down...too nice...too understanding.

The book's language and style are accessible and the pace set by the author is brisk, smooth, and knits together, well, the disparate threads of late antiquity (especially in the Western Empire).

Highly recommended. Misses out on a 5th star because he is too accommodating of the revisionists.

With this volume Bryan Ward-Perkins seeks to dispel the myth that the end of the Roman Empire and the subsequent rise to prominence in Western Europe of the Barbarians was a relatively peaceful transition, without a large level of violence, or even major disruption. In this area he is successful, however this does not change my opinion that this is, overall, a weak book.

Ward-Perkins begins by discussing how recent works discussing the Fall of Rome and the Rise of the Barbarian West have dispelled the notion that this transformation was violent, or largely disruptive. IMO this is one of his weakest arguments. I have read dozens of books discussing this era and in none of these have I seen anything to support his claim that this is the current trend in the field. All works I have read speak of death, enslavement, destruction, the sack of cities, the displacement of thousands of people, etc. These works have taken differing views on whether this was a good or bad thing, or whether it was necessary, or, above all, just what it was that caused the end of the Western Empire, but in none of these have I read an argument put forward that the period was relatively painless. One text which he specifically takes exception to is Peter Brown's "The World of Late Antiquity" (1971). While I have not read this, I do have Brown's "The Rise of Western Christendom" (1996). In it, I do not see an argument for a peaceful transformation. While one may argue over his characterization of conflicts as being generally small and localized rather than large-scale in nature, Brown refers to the "end of Roman Peace" p 56 and the "grim glimpse of the human cost" p 78.

In addition, Ward-Perkins is given to over-exaggeration. Nowhere is this more evident than in his assertion that the Post-Roman West had fallen to a level of economic prosperity "back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times." p 183 or that "It took centuries for people in the former empire to reacquire the skills and the regional networks that would take them back to these pre-Roman levels of sophistication." p 137

I certainly have no argument with anyone who says that overall standards of living, levels of trade, cultural sophistication and complexity, etc., fell and fell radically following the end of the Roman Empire in the West. But to argue that these fell to below pre-Roman levels over anything close to the entire region is beyond belief, particularly when these assertions are not supported. Ward-Perkins appears to ignore the Visigothic taxation system established by Euric in Spain and Southern Gaul immediately following its seccession from the Empire, or that evidence exists for a vigorous (if less extensive) maritime trade continuing throughout the Mediterranean. He himself states that "Once the violence was over, in large parts of the former western empire a great deal of the social structure, and much of the administrative and cultural framework of imperial times, re-emerged and flourished." p 63 I do not see how this statement can be reconciled with an argument for society to have fallen below pre-Roman standards. Certainly this may be argued for small areas, or for brief periods of time, and I would hesitate even to argue against him for the whole of Britain. But overall, this outlook is insupportable.

I will not say that this book is without worth. For much of it, I found myself agreeing with Ward-Perkins, only to revert back to the thought, "Who is arguing anything else?" In particular, his discussion of pottery and what archaeological evidence can reveal is very instructive. To his credit, Ward-Perkins admits to being "conditioned by a very 'Roman' upbringing and early experience" p 169. I believe that while much of what he says is supportable, much is overblown. If there are works extant that argue for a relatively pain-free ending to the Roman Empire (rather than simply utilizing terminology which Ward-Perkins disagrees with), these are certainly misrepresentations of the evidence, however this is no reason to provide a work which misrepresents matters in the opposite direction.

Ultimately, this reads more as a 200-page editorial than a scholarly historical work. I would not argue against someone purchasing it, but if you do, please purchase other companion volume or volumes covering the same period to help provide a more balanced view.