Customer Reviews

The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

For a couple hundred years after Gibbon's time, the common wisdom was that Rome's empire in the West finally fell to overwhelming and violent barbarian invasions during the 5th century CE (although the precise date and the underlying causes were much disputed). In the 20th and 21st centuries a newer theory gained much ground, claiming that Rome did not fall but merely transitioned from a more or less unitary classical culture to a very decentralized early medieval world over perhaps 200 years (and with migrations rather than invasions). According to this view, the new rulers in the West were well-assimilated into the Roman polity and perpetuated its culture. James J. O'Donnell, author of this book, is a firm adherent of the "no fall" school, but with something of a twist. He believes that there was a fall, but one that came in the 6th century CE and later and at the hands of fellow "Romans," sent from the imperial capital of Constantinople.

Justinian I's attempt to recreate a united empire under his rule by dispossessing the "barbarian usurpers" in the West and in Africa, says O'Donnell, was not only misguided but catastrophic for both West and East. It resulted in the complete ruin of the City of Rome, the fragmentation and devastation of all Italy and the fatal crippling of all of Roman culture in the rest of Western Europe and North Africa. In the East Justinian's policy uselessly sacrificed large amounts of limited (indeed, irreplaceable) resources in pursuit of a hopeless dream while diverting imperial attention both from areas essential to the empire (the Balkans) and from critical problems (the rising power of Persia).

Justinian enjoys few modern admirers and Justinian-bashing is nothing new in historical writing. But O'Donnell has some additional charges for the indictment. O'Donnell believes that an empire (such as the Roman) centered around the Mediterranean is "artificial" while one linking the Fertile Crescent to lands both to its east and west was more natural and certainly more desirable. O'Donnell seems to believe that such a multiethnic empire had at least the potential for promoting a common polity and culture across the entire Eurasian landmass, thus promoting the possibility of future harmony for the whole human race.

O'Donnell also assails Justinian for a foolish religious bigotry. He used this benighted zeal to impose a single form of Christianity in the place of the many that had existed before him and in his own time. In his time the varying forms of Christianity sprang primarily from disputes over the precise nature of Christ: Wholly human, wholly divine or mixed. Justinian believed that a viable state was not possible if there were competing religious systems within it. He therefore set out to extirpate those beliefs that conflicted with the one that he had chosen as correct. This was a goal both within the empire that Justinian took over when he came to the throne and for the Western lands that he was trying to reconquer for that empire (the Arian "heresy" was still strong in the West). O'Donnell believes that this "poison" spread by Justinian was harmful to the development of Christianity overall and that it promoted the religious wars, struggles and attendant fanaticism within and between the major Western religions, wars and struggles that beset us still.

History is a completely contingent process, the result of literally innumerable events great and small (many of them possibly even unknown to posterity). In this respect it is similar to chaos theory in physics. Looking back we can see the result and fashion an explanation that is consistent with known evidence showing to some extent what happened, to a lesser extent how it happened and (to a lesser extent still) why it happened. We cannot be sure that this explanation is the whole story or that it even incorporates all events significant to the outcome. Trying to foresee ultimate outcomes before the various contingent events have occurred is simply impossible. There are too many events and they are too complex for any prediction to be reliable beyond a very short run. Hence I think that O'Donnell's view of what might have happened had Justinian been (as O'Donnell conceives it) both smarter and wiser is ultimately mere speculation. It may or may not be correct, but it cannot be proved (or disproved for that matter). It is, so to speak, a faith-based initiative. Justinian could have been everything that O'Donnell wished him to be and the world today could still be a major mess, perhaps even the same sort of mess that it actually is.

The book is written for a general audience. O'Donnell writes in an informal, almost conversational, style. He does not attempt much deep analysis or make formal arguments with detailed evidence in support. Instead he lightly sketches word pictures of the worlds and people that he describes with data points scattered here and there for support. Important areas (e.g. economics and trade, literacy) are touched on but lightly or not at all. The book is sparsely footnoted by scholarly standards but sufficently for what I take to be the target audience. If it were a painting, the book would be by a French Impressionist.

The writing style is quite readable and generally pleasing, although there are occasional puzzling moments such as when he describes over four lines a "sixth century monk whose views would have long influence" beginning his rule of monastic life by denouncing monks who did not live in a fixed community, but leaves the reader to figure out who this influential monk might have been (St. Benedict fits the facts given and may be the guy that O'Donnell had in mind, but who knows).

I have compared this book to an Impressionist painting. Such a book aims to interest the reader and, with luck, cause him to explore the field further. In these circumstances, suggestions for further reading are very important and offer a major opportunity to the author. The "Further Reading" section in this book is a major disappointment. Less than one page in length, it notes all of six books plus one volume of the multivolume Cambridge Ancient History then airily dismisses the reader to the "Notes beginning on page 397 [which] contain many more titles, almost [sic] all of them well worth browsing ...." This is at best a disservice to any reader who has bothered to read the entire book and reeks a bit of condescension.

This book is, however, well worth reading and will open up a world that many readers have perhaps not visited.

As the song has it, "Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down." Appropos of this book, a shovelful of bias makes the history go down. The book is essentially a review of the Roman Empire (or its remnants) in the sixth and early seventh century -- a very important and often neglected transition between the ancient and the medieval world. The author, James O'Donnell, is exceptionally learned, well-credentialed, and has all has facts straight as far as I can tell. He writes an exceptionally readable history of what often makes for boring or obscure history, but he does it by being deliberately partisan, tendentious, and funny. He makes the following exceptionally provocative claims: (a) that the rump of the Western empire under Theoderic and the Ostragoths was really only a continuation of the old Western Empire in new clothes; (b) that the Western Empire did not "fall" in the fifth century, but was ruined by Justinian's "conquests" in the sixth; (c) that Theodoric and the Ostragoths were more "Roman" than the Byzantines who "re-conquered" Italy in the mid-sixth century; (d) that Theodoric was one of the greatest men who ever lived; and (e) that Justinian, as an imperial disaster, ranks somewhere between Stalin and Bozo the Clown.

In actuality, historians are deeply divided in their evaluations of the principal personages who dot O'Donnell's pages, and the historical conclusions which abound in them. Some think Justianian was a great man, some think he was a mixture of great successes and great failures, and some think he was ultimately a failure -- though none that I am familiar with rate him as low as O'Donnell. After all, some of Justinian's achievements, such as his sponsership of the codes and digests which bear his name, and his construction of Hagia Sophia, had a long-term, beneficent effect on European history. But even here, O'Donnell makes an important point -- virtually all the things Justinian accomplished, he accomplished as a precursor of European history, not as a savior of Roman history. A person less sympathetic to Roman history than ODonnell (Sciavoni, for example) could even argue that Justinian did the West a favor by helping to clear away the detritus that was Rome.

But I will say this for O'Donnell's book -- and this is why I rate it so highly: it is compulsively readible. More balanced treatments, such as Vol. I of the Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. I or A.H.M. Jones' "The Later Roman Empire," are more responsible and ultimately more informative. But what good is a responsible treatment to the layperson if it puts him to sleep in the process of reading? O'Donnell will never do that. So I recommend reading O'Donnell, laughing with or at him, and then, when you want a more scholarly consensus where O'Donnell is being provocative or intemperate, compare his conclusions with one of the drier but less wild-eyed books on the subject.

Incidentally, I have edited this review. For some reason, in my initial review, I noted the author as "James Collins." Perhaps I was confusing the author with the publisher. Or perhaps I was just thinking of the wrong Irish revolutionary.

Most people who have read anything at all about the classical world know that Alexander the Great defended the West from Persian barbarism, that the Roman Empire collapsed because it was attacked by more barbarians, and that Justinian I was the greatest of all the Byzantine Emperors because he held back the barbarian tide. James J. O'Donnell, a classical historian, refutes these commonly held beliefs in a solid work of scholarship that is a delight to read.

O'Donnell divides his book into three parts: Theodoric's World deals with the life and times of King Theodoric, a monarch whose antecedents were from the various tribes who moved into the Roman Empire, but who came closer than many other rulers to actually restoring the Western Empire. Justinian's World examines the Byzantine Empire and the reign of the emperor usually regarded as its most successful, and finds it wanting in many respects. While Justinian is usually praised for having restored the Empire, O'Donnell presents much evidence that his ceaseless wars (usually fought by others while he remained safely in his palace) actually weakened his empire. Gregory's World examines the reign of Pope Gregory the Great and illuminates much of the shadowy years of the end of the western empire and the rise of Roman Catholicism.

O'Donnell writes vividly and elegantly, including as befits a classical scholar many long and stately sentences with multiple subordinate clauses. He has an eye for a revealing anecdote and an enviable ability to write intriguing character sketches that describe complex personalities of the ancient world in just a few paragraphs. Most enjoyably, he is able to come up with some unusual comparisons, as when he calls the Frankish culture of ancient Gaul the Tex-Mex of the day. He also has a refreshing reluctance to take himself or his subjects too seriously. I do not know of many other serious historians who could take a moment to refer to his beanie baby collection without it sounding incongruous or precious! I especially enjoyed O'Donnell's look forward from the ancient world to the present day when he traced the consequences of the fractures between Europeans, South Asians, and Central Asians from the classical era to our own time.

This is an excellent example of historical writing at its finest. Both professional and amateur historians will enjoy it and find much within it to ponder.

The publisher of a book generally determines its title with the aim of boosting sales. Since the "The Fall of the Roman Empire" has been used many times, the publisher opted to use "Ruin" instead of "Fall", but I do not think that either is very accurate for this book. I think that this book should more accurately have been titled "The Good, the Bad and the Last Consul", as it is about the reigns of three men - the good Gothic King Theoderic, the bad Emperor Justinian, and Pope Gregory, whom the author likens to the last Consul (although he was not actually a Consul).

This is a book that tends to veers off on tangents and, in my opinion, these tangents tend to obscure what is being said. As near as I can figure, the main ideas of the book are that:
1. The Gothic invasion and conquest of the Western Roman Empire did not destroy the empire. It remained Roman, but under new management - a management that produced peace and stability, and was generally better than that which it replaced.
2. Justinian ruined not only the Western empire, but also the Eastern Empire, and he was at least indirectly responsible for all of the ills that followed in the next 1500 years.

These are interesting theses, but I do not think that the text completely supports them. The author clearly shows that Justinian's conquest of North Africa was largely bloodless, but except for its effect on religion (which was accepted by most of the common people) did not alter things very much, so how did this "ruin the empire"? His invasion of the rest of the Western Empire was confined to Italy (and not all of it), so the rest of what had been the Western Empire was not even directly impacted. The 16-year guerrilla war that ensued in Italy did have a significant effect on Italy, and the fact that he overspent the treasury of the Eastern Empire was significant, but does this rise to the level of ruining the empire? I was not convinced, especially since the book clearly shows that Justinian's immediate successors and a war with Persia in the beginning of the seventh century were much more responsible for any ruining that went on.

There are spectrums of approaches to writing history books; from the academic and dry to the novelistic and lively (but often less comprehensive). This book falls in the latter camp and judging from the many favorable reviews, many people like this approach; I was less appreciative because, as stated, I found the book to be somewhat unfocused. For instance, in the beginning of chapter 4 the author states that some people hated the Eastern Emperor Anastasius, but that they were wrong to do so. He says that it is important to understand why he was hated, but then spends rest of the chapter (16 pages) rambling on about things as diverse as the myth of the founding of Rome, the prophesy of the Sibyls, the Persian Empires (from Alexander the Great through the successor state of the Ottoman Turks), and other items (including a poem by Kipling), without giving a clear answer to the question. (I suspect that his point was that the emperor was the victim of a smear campaign that employed a phony prophesy, but this is never clearly stated, and the discussion of the Sibyls and their prophesy morphs into the other items just mentioned.) In reality, I think that the point of the chapter was actually what the Emperor Justinian should have done, instead of what he did, and the question about Anastasius seems to have been forgotten along the way. If limited to just what Justinian should have done, the chapter would have been only 3 pages long; instead it was enlarged to 17 pages. I feel the most egregious enlargement occurred in the last part of the book that was devoted to "Gregory's World", which I guess is supposed to be about the ruined empire and Gregory's influence on the Catholic Church, but it is so unfocused that it is difficult to tell what point the author is trying to make. As near as I can tell, the three chapters of this part of the book were largely an excuse to discuss the meaning of Gregory's "Teachings in the Book of Job", his "Dialogs," and for a chapter-long riff on Angels, particularly the Archangel Michael. Most of the book was similarly "enlarged", requiring one to weed out the important history from that which appears to have been added for background color and to enlarge the ideas to book-length.

Don't get me wrong; there is a lot of interesting stuff included in what I would call enlargement or padding, and I understand that one man's padding is another's literary masterpiece. Another, more positive way to look at this "padding" is by analogy with jazz music. Only perhaps 10-15% of this book is focused directly on the "Ruin of Rome"; the rest can be likened to jazz riffs, which cover a multitude of topics ranging from early Christianity and the literature of the period, to analogies with 20th century history and current international politics. Professor O'Donnell is able to blend and relate the story of Cassiodorus, a sixth century Roman politician and literary figure, with that of the fictional Dr. Zhivago. Unfortunately, I would rather have had an explanation of Justinian's motivation in invading Italy than the six pages spent on the story of Cassiodorus and two of his contemporaries. I was more interested in the history of Theoderic, Justinian, and Gregory, so while interesting, I found a lot of the book to be padded.

These criticisms should not be taken as an indication that I did not find anything of use in this book. Quite the contrary - in spite of what I considered to be a very unfocused presentation, I did learn quite a bit about the 100 year period following the generally accepted fall of the western empire in 476. For instance:
1. I learned more about the kingship of Theoderic, the actions of Justinian, and early church of Pope Gregory.
2. I did not know that the Senate of Rome continued to function, at least until 578 (although since the end of the republic, it had ceased to have any real power).
3. I learned that the idea of Romanism still survived, supported by kings like Theoderic, who considered themselves to be Roman (culturally if not by lineage) and the worthy successors to the western emperors.
4. I learned that yearly Consuls were still elected, at least until 541, when the office became little more than a permanent (for his reign) title of the Eastern Emperor.
5. I learned that people still spoke Latin and that it still remained an official language of the empire, at least until the reign of the Eastern Emperor Heraclius, at the beginning of the seventh century.

I would recommend this book to those who appreciate a well-turned phrase and are more interested in the literary quality of a history book than in a more straightforward, but perhaps dry, history. The best way illustrate this is to quote a typical sentence - "The inclusion of Ireland in Roman Europe progressed slowly, not reaching stability and success until the prime ministership of Garret Fitzgerald in the 1980s, following the deposition of the last of the ancient sacred high kings, Eamon de Valera". I favor a dryer and less literary approach, but you may not, so please accept my 4-star rating accordingly.

O'Donnell attempts to tell the history of the Roman Empire through our modern multicultural sentiments. He is somewhat successful at removing the biases of the historians of antiquity - but then steers the history directly through the biases and modern day worldview.
The book's biggest downfall, however, is the lack of focus. He shows his knowledge by bringing in Wagner-playing Ipods and various Shakespeare characters. However, he fails to provide a compelling narrative. Whole sections often appear to do nothing more than show off his literary knowledge, rather than advance the narrative. With a little more focus, this book could have potential.

The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History makes an important argument, but doesn't do it very well. I've read many academic books about ancient Rome, but this is by far the least comprehensible. James J. O'Donnell, the Provost at my former university, just doesn't have a knack for good storytelling and seems to lose focus too easily. Of the book's 400 pages, only about 150 actually focus on O'Donnell's argument that Rome fell not in 476, but rather because of the failure of Theodoric and ambitions of Justinian. The rest of the book is filled with digressions and extraneous filler. In the introduction, he mentions everything from Edgar Allen Poe to Y2K (do you really have to quote Poe's statement about the "glory of Greece and grandeur of Rome"?). Later parts of the book seem more like wanderings into Christian theology, with no clear connection to the rest of the book. He also spends several paragraphs discussing modern geopolitics, including the rise of China (he says its failure would be catastrophic). Perhaps worst of all, O'Donnell makes no attempt to hide his bias. Everything Roman is bad (he actually calls Justinian "stupid") and the barbarians were all embodiments of progress and multicultural tolerance ("Theodoric and the future"). I really hope somebody else has written a better book covering this period of history - I look forward to reading Peter Heather's new Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe.

This book - which I greatly enjoyed - also roused in me some deep feelings which, at the risk of self-indulgence, I am moved to share.

As an adolescent, coming of age in a midland city in England, feeling somewhat estranged because I was not English, I became rooted in my new environment by embracing and cherishing its medieval buildings, or what the Luftwaffe had left of them. Mostly this was churches, but also street patterns and a bit of city wall. Always a rather dreamy child, not particularly disposed to work or study hard, I spent a lot of time on my bike wandering the Warwickshire countryside in the early hours of the morning (and perplexing my family by sleeping away most of the afternoon, the better to be ready to set forth again at 3:30 am), mostly drawn - again - to churches, ancient camps and the like. You get the picture.

I thought I understood the middle-ages. It was a world of faith and ignorance and bravery and adventure and romance on which I could superimpose myself being noble, brave, adventuresome and, all-in-all, cutting a fine romantic figure. The more obscure the era, the better the opportunity for superimposition, so I headed back in time past Normans and Saxons to what was then called the "dark ages," a time when pretty much anything seemed possible. My parents - to whom I owe an enormous debt of thanks - may have despaired at my odd hours, but they had promised me early that if there were books that I wanted to read they would buy them for me. This promise may have been a remnant from a time when I did not like to read, but since then I had become a voracious reader. And that brings me to H. St. L. B. Moss's book The Birth of the Middle Ages, which I found upstairs at W.H. Smith for 52 ½ p in 1974. Until this moment, when I googled him on the internet, I could not have told you his given names (Henry St.Lawrence Beaufort) and I still have no idea who he was (an academic?) but he opened a whole new world to me - who knew there was so much known about the dark ages? - and I had to know more. My late antique allegiances vacillated back and forth with my reading: post Roman Britain, the Byzantine Empire, Merovingian France, and I got to study under some great teachers at University, including a young Chris Wickham, who O'Donnell in his book does great - and deserved - honor for his Framing the Middle Ages (also a great book, but a challenging read, not to mention a daunting price tag).

Alas, my scholarly ambitions - such as they were - foundered against the rocky shores of my lack of application. But my interest in history has never waned and though my interests are now more catholic as to geography and epoch in the last year or so I have also returned to the late antique period. I was inspired after reading Wickham's book to read Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom, as I thought it would be an interesting contrast to the "material history" approach of the former, which is was. One of the persistently perplexing aspects of the late antique period is the contrast between the stories told by the archaeological and literary remnants of the time (though both have elements of continuities and discontinuities, not always congruent). O'Donnell's book, though he acknowledges a debt to Wickham, is more in the Peter Brown tradition of cultural history, with a twist - the twist being the "lessons" that O'Donnell would draw from late antiquity for application to our own time.

Historical writing is always informed by the concerns of the period in which it is written and O'Donnell has the virtue of trumpeting the moral he draws from his story rather than trying to disguise opinion as fact. But the object lessons are nevertheless a little heavy-handed. In my opinion the best parts of O'Donnell's book come early on, in the vignette descriptions of lives offered as mirrors to their times, for example Aetius and Liberius in the west and Vitalian and Anicia Juliana in the Eastern Empire. Between historians who hew close to their sources and the mindset of their sources and those who steer more theoretical courses (think Eamon Duffy versus Keith Thomas) I am more inclined to grant indulgence to the abstract musings of the former, even when I might disagree with their conclusions. I thought O'Donnell's treatment of the Italy of Odoacer and Theodoric was more closely sourced - and thus more convincing - than his more sweeping survey of Justinian, his "misguided" imperialism and the inevitable aftermath. (Towards the end O'Donnell was moving at such a breakneck pace that I was reminded of George Lucas in Star Wars III, with only 2 hours to tie up all the loose ends so that Star Wars I - or the eruption of Islam from Arabia - will make sense.)

Historians have the advantage of being able to see the long sweep of events and the obscure roots of what will become defining phenomena. The closest 6th century thinkers came to imaging the long future was in eschatology. Is it really fair to hold Justinian or any of those late Romans, including O'Donnell's favorites like Theodoric and Boethius, to a modern standard of geo-political awareness? Was Justinian really any more vainglorious than Alexander - whom O'Donnell seems to admire? With the benefit of hindsight we can see the consequence of Justinian's overreaching. Without the benefit of hindsight we might just condemn Charlemagne for overreaching when he invaded Italy in 773, or William of Normandy in 1066, or Alp Arslan in 1071, to name just a few of history's "highly aspirational" individuals. And while there is undoubtedly much blame to fix on those who would mix absolute certainty in faith with absolute power and authority, Justinian was hardly the most noxious of mixers.

It's rare to find a book that you can't find a quarrel with and puzzling out the quarrel is half the fun of reading. This was an enjoyable read. I hope someone young and impressionable reads it - like I read Henry St.Lawrence Beaufort Moss all those years ago - and is as enthralled as I was.

In this book, James J. O'Donnell argues that the Roman Empire fell during the 6th century rather than the 5th century. His ideas about Rome's fall are not revolutionary, historians have been saying similar things for decades, but he does add some new wrinkles to the debate. According to O'Donnell, the German barbarians did not cause the dissolution of empire, but rather the failed policies of the emperor Justinian caused the collapse of Mediterranean unity. His ideas are an interesting addition to late antique studies, but the book is not without its problems.

O'Donnell is most convincing when discussing the ethnic identity of the German tribes, especially Theoderic's Goths. O'Donnell demonstrates the difficulties that exist when historians try to label certain individuals and groups with an ethnicity. He concludes that Theoderic's Goths have just as much right to the name "Romans" as the Italian Romans do. This line of inquiry has merit, but O'Donnell seems to overstate his case. Some of the source material depicts Theoderic functioning as a Roman emperor, while other sources reflect his desire to be seen as a Gothic king. O'Donnell claims that the Roman episodes are the real Theoderic, and the Gothic ones are merely posturing by Theoderic. O'Donnell does not explain why the tables cannot be turned. Maybe Theoderic posed as a Roman when convenient and really did view himself as a German. The book's overarching thesis does not work if Theoderic is not a traditional Roman, and O'Donnell seems to hammer him into the mold.

The book seems to lack an obvious audience. O'Donnell repeatedly asks his readers to forget everything they know about barbarians or Christians or Romans. He assumes that his reader is familiar with the old theories of Edward Gibbon, and he will correct those outdated ideas. I have a feeling that only two types of people will read this book: those who know nothing of late antique Rome and therefore do not need O'Donnell to correct an old model and those who are already familiar with the changing attitudes towards Rome's fall. O'Donnell's contribution is worth considering, but his admonitions to "forget everything" are annoying (especially since he does not start from scratch, assuming the reader knows something about the period).

Though the book opens up some interesting (and perhaps controversial) lines of investigation, O'Donnell's political agenda distracts from the historical narrative. O'Donnell writes as if this "Ruin of Rome" can be seen as a warning to modern readers. O'Donnell values multiculturalism and religious pluralism, locates those things in the Roman empire, and mourns their passing with the empire's transition into medieval kingdoms. He tries to force this situation to resemble America's political landscape. He claims that Justinian was "surrounded by gifted men who knew only too well how to reshape their world in the image of delusion .... We may choose to call them Justinian's best and brightest or, if you prefer, his neoconservatives" (216). This statement about "neocons" comes on the same page as this description of Justinian: "A sad thing it is, to come from a distant province and achieve the heights of power, to devote yourself to such lofty principles and marmoreal ostentation, and to discover that zeal and stupidity are not enough. He was not the last ruler of a mighty realm to be so purblind." Given his earlier statements, I cannot help but read this as a veiled criticism of George W. Bush. Regardless of whether his attacks on American conservatism have merit, the manner in which he charges the history with his own political concerns damages the quality of his historical narrative. O'Donnell fails to acknowledge that the concerns of late antiquity were different from the concerns of Americans. He does not deal with these people, either politically or religiously, on their own terms. Instead, he writes as an enlightened scold, pleased with his own penetrating understanding of reality.

There's an irony in the way James O'Donnell has organized his take on the transition out of - as opposed to fall of - the Roman Empire. He sets up sections organized around three significant rulers of the era, from the late 400s to the early 600s - Theodoric, Justinian and Gregory - and weaving them in and out of his sections to make the case that you can't simply declare an end to empire with the end of the roster of emperors (which in the western empire is usually taken to be AD 476). O'Donnell's point is that, before and after those hard dates, life has pretty much tended to go on, and in more shades of gray than we generally acknowledge.

This is a highly useful history, not so much for the detailed narrative as for the perspectives. O'Donnell's story telling is plenty lively, but the real value here comes in putting the era into perspective. Long after there were no more Roman Emperors in the west, or even in the east, many people thought of themselves as carrying on the tradition. Rome itself was reduced to a minor city well before the empire is thought to have "fallen," and the oft-described barbarians were themselves heavily Romanized by the time they took over large slices of the empire.

Read this and be prepared for a change of perspective on history, and not only on late antiquity.

I started off this book with great expectations. Unfortunately, I was let down and somewhat disappointed after about the first 150 pages. Like several reviewers here, I initially found O'Donnell's prose and penchant for anecdote and story-telling appealing; when the varied stories and tales failed to coalesce eventually into some type of narrative focus (a clearly articulated thesis), I began to see them more as distractions than anything else.

I am not a Romanist. But in my view, this book attempts to revise what appears to be accepted tribal wisdom in the world of Roman history: Theodoric was a barbarian, Justinian a great emperor. O'Donnell essentially reverses these interpretations to the extreme. In this book, Theodoric's loose leadership style, unwillingness to demand conformity, and general religious views were to be commended as models of good governance. Current national leaders are, apparently, supposed to take notice. Justinian, by contrast, receives an extremely critical shellacing by O'Donnell. He is the symbol of everything wrong - he misguidedly attempts to demand religious conformity throughout the empire to the theological doctrine of the Council of Chalcedon; he is basically a weak leader who never leaves the palace; and he fails to generally understand what it means to rule over the empire. In the end, he is responsible for its unraveling.

Though there is a valuable point to this book, I found it to be a somewhat meandering read. There is a lot of detail and anecdote in the narrative that is interesting and informative, but not enough chronology at times. The author writes in a conversational style that some have found personable. I think it would have worked better in a shorter book.

Recommended, but not required in my view.