The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians 1st Edition

by Peter Heather (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0195159547

ISBN-10: 0195159543

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The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a stunning new solution: Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling an Empire that had dominated their lives for so long.
A leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, Heather relates the extraordinary story of how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled the empire apart. He shows first how the Huns overturned the existing strategic balance of power on Rome's European frontiers, to force the Goths and others to seek refuge inside the Empire. This prompted two generations of struggle, during which new barbarian coalitions, formed in response to Roman hostility, brought the Roman west to its knees. The Goths first destroyed a Roman army at the battle of Hadrianople in 378, and went on to sack Rome in 410. The Vandals spread devastation in Gaul and Spain, before conquering North Africa, the breadbasket of the Western Empire, in 439. We then meet Attila the Hun, whose reign of terror swept from Constantinople to Paris, but whose death in 453 ironically precipitated a final desperate phase of Roman collapse, culminating in the Vandals' defeat of the massive Byzantine Armada: the west's last chance for survival.

Peter Heather convincingly argues that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of social or moral collapse. What brought it to an end were the barbarians.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A rich and dramatic synthesis of the latest research on Gibbon's old story....The drama of Mr. Heather's book lies not just in the world-changing story he has to tell, but in his behind-the-scenes view of how historians work. Like a master detective, Mr. Heather employs the most various techniques--everything from pollen sampling to archaeology to literary criticism--to wring the truth from the reticent past....What Mr. Heather offers is not easy analogies but a realization of the complex strangeness of the past--the achievement of a great historian."--Adam Kirsch, New York Sun

"Like a late Roman emperor, Heather is determined to impose order on a fabric that is always threatening to fragment and collapse into confusion; unlike most late Roman emperors, he succeeds triumphantly."--The Times of London

"Gibbon's 'awful revolution'--the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the West--still casts a pall. Yet, as Peter Heather's brilliant mixture of rapid flowing narrative and deeply thought analysis fully brings out, it still exerts a pull too. 'Lepcisgate', Alaric's Goths, and Attila's Huns are all thrown into Heather's melting pot along with Roman imperial aims and mismanagement. The outcome is a conclusion Heather finds pleasing--and Gibbon would not have despised--that Roman imperialism was ultimately responsible for its own demise."--Paul Cartledge, University of Cambridge

"To a period that has often appeared as impenetrable as it is momentous, Peter Heather brings a rare combination of scholarship and flair for narrative. With this book, a powerful searchlight has been shone upon the shadow-dimmed end of Rome's western empire."--Tom Holland, author of Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

"Deftly covering the necessary economic and political realities of decline and fall, Heather also presents the stories and the characters of this tumultuous epoch, in a colorful and enthralling narrative."--The Independent

"Masterful, lucid....Always rewarding."--ForeWord Magazine

About the Author

Peter Heather teaches at King's College, London. A leading authority on the barbarians, he is the author of The Goths, Goths and Romans, and The Huns.

Product details

Hardcover: 608 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press; 1 edition (December 1, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195159543
ISBN-13: 978-0195159547
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 1.9 x 6.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 173 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #95,687 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #88 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > History > Ancient
- #123 in Books > History > Ancient Civilizations > Rome
- #142 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > History > Europe

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Herbert L Calhoun

A thesis without a counter-thesis?

October 7, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Dr. Heather, in my view, makes a very plausible, though not necessarily a convincing, or compelling case that the fall of Rome was due mainly, if not entirely to the dynamics of barbarians infiltration rather than to the conventional historical wisdom of long-term internal political corruption and rot from the top.

According to what I understand about this analysis, the militarily stronger Huns stalking the borders of Rome, were literally the driving force: progressively pushing lesser tribes into Rome proper, where over time, and acting virtually independent of Roman authority itself, they combined to become internally threatening enough to undermine, and eventually to overthrow the Western arm of the empire.

What is missing from this cleanly drawn scenario of course is the other side of the story: a reasonably convincing picture of what indeed was going on within the Roman ruling circles.

Even without the well-known political intrigue, given the nature of the penetration, a unified ruling clique would have had its hands full, with many difficult balls in the air. Yet, we know from Gibbons, et. al., that Rome was far from unified in its waning years, especially in the Western part of the empire. Open internal bickering was the rule rather than the exception.

Nowhere does Professor Heather acknowledge this, leaving a gaping hole in his analysis. It simply goes mute on just what was going on among the ruling cliques in Rome proper. What about the well-known internal bickering? What were their strategies for dealing with threats to their own survival? How did they deal with the tribes within and outside of Rome's borders?

It is difficult not to see disunity among those circles increasing in the face of growing long-term uncertainty, and in the face of the emerging juggernaut of a combined internal threat. We know too that the Barbarian tribes were not political neophytes. They were keen Machiavellian players and would have exploited any dissension with Roman ranks. Thus, there obviously is more to this story.

It seems to me that at a minimum, the author should have outlined just how Rome was dealing with its internal and external threats, and how intrigue within the ruling circles affected the gathering storm. Without that, all we have here is a thesis without a counter thesis, a one-sided argument that proves itself by fiat, as all challenging hypotheses are left on the sidelines, off the playing field. Three stars.

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A richly detailed and interesting subject on the last days of Rome.

October 31, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

The sole premise of this book is that the huns moving into Western Europe totally shifted the balance of power in Western Europe to set the stage for the fall of the roman empire. I agree with Mr. Heather that the Huns caused all these various barbarian tribes (goths, alamani, vandals, alans,..etc) to come in under the pretense of refugees but ultimately slowly took away Roman land to form new empires of their own. I liked how Mr. Heather provided a rich detail of the late 4th and 5th centuries of Roman government and emperors and their various cultural and political interactions with the different barbarians. Mr. Heather also goes into detail of the decline in Roman military units and how the upper class moved from functioning as curia (city council members) to move on to function as Roman central bureaucrats when taxes were raised and it didn't pay to function as a city council member anymore. The money was now to be made as a central state administrator or bureaucratic politician. I wish Mr. Heather further pursed this angle and provided more information regarding this than fully pursuing the military angle of war with the barbarians. I also wish Mr. Heather could have provided an economic angle maybe providing information on coin debasement or Roman economic policies that were taken to counteract the decline and barbarian invasions. Note, this author is British and the colloquial expressions and vernacular of a Brit are well sprawled throughout the book. I kind of found it annoying since I'm American. Maybe the author should have written the book to be more understandable for a wider audience.

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Christopher Logan

Stresses military causes of Rome's Collapse

August 18, 2018

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Peter Heather deliberately strikes out into territory that has been somewhat discredited by recent scholarship. Tainter and others have tried to prove that diminishing returns (an abstract, like "the invisible hand of the marketplace") explain the Fall of Rome. Others have traditionally blamed: the reception of barbarians into the heart of Roman culture and government; weather; Christianity; and so forth.

Heather's thesis is, that mistakes made by Roman military leaders, and the wash of Germanic tribes with their spontaneous and primitive politics, should be noted as the primary engine of Rome's fall. He makes a good case. On p. 161:

“Valens, we are told, was filled with joy about the Goths’ arrival on the Danube. But in 376 the Roman army was demonstrably not in charge of the situation, and when things started to go wrong after the crossing, order could not be restored. Lupicinus, whatever his personal culpability for the Goths’ revolt, simply didn’t have enough troops on hand. After the banquet, he immediately rushed his available forces into battle against the rebellious Goths and was soundly defeated. In the absence of military superiority, which was central to normal Roman receptiones, it is just not credible that Valens was anything like as happy about the arrival of the Goths on the Danube as the sources claim.”

Though not having enough troops on hand might have had economic causes, the mistake of charging out with insufficient force was a consequential mistake.

I don't feel that Heather's book shows military affairs to be THE cause of Rome's fall, but he deftly re-introduces the human element into the discussion. He re-asserts individual volition as a strong influence on human events, which I consider a reasonable assumption. Leaders make very consequential decisions, such as Hitler's decision to invade Russia. It can be shown that many of these decisions were made by individuals who were free to choose, and not pushed by huge, impersonal, abstract momenta.

Heather is therefore not unreasonable to assert that Valens' behavior at Adrianople was as important to the loss of that battle, as "diminishing returns on investment", and probably more so.

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