Ancient Rome

The wars, the reforms, and the increase in the number of officials were costly, and inflation reduced the resources of the state. The annona, set up by Septimius Severus, had proved imperfect, and Diocletian now reformed it through the jugatio-capitatio system: henceforth, the land tax, paid in kind by all landowners, would be calculated by the assessment of fiscal units based on extent and quality of land, type of crops grown, number of settlers and cattle, and amount of equipment. The fiscal valuation of each piece of property, estimated in juga and capita (interchangeable terms whose use varied by region and period of time), required a number of declarations and censuses similar to those practiced long before in Egypt. Each year, the government established the rate of tax per fiscal unit; and every 15 years, beginning in 312, taxes were reassessed. This complicated system was not carried out uniformly in every region. Nevertheless, it resulted in an improved accounting of the empire’s resources and a certain progress in fiscal equity, thus making the administration’s heavy demands less unbearable. In addition, Diocletian wished to reorganize the coinage and stabilize inflation. He thus minted improved sterling coins and fixed their value in relation to a gold standard. Nevertheless, inflation again became disturbing by the end of the century, and Diocletian proclaimed his well-known Edictum de Maximis Pretiis, fixing price ceilings for foodstuffs and for goods and services, which could not be exceeded under pain of death. The edict had indifferent results and was scarcely applied, but the inscriptions revealing it have great economic interest.

Diocletian’s reforms adumbrated the principal features of late Roman society: a society defined in all parts that could be useful to the state by laws fixing status and, through status, responsibility. The persons owning grain mills in Rome were (to anticipate developments that continued to unfold throughout the next two or three generations) responsible for the delivery of flour for the dole and could not bequeath or withdraw any part of their capital from their enterprise. Several other labour groups were similarly restricted, such as owners of seagoing vessels that served the supply of Rome, bargees in the Tiber, Ostian grain handlers, distributors of olive oil and pork for the dole, bath managers, and limeburners. A ban on moving to some other home or job along with production quotas were placed on people in trades serving state factories that made imperial court and army garments, cavalry equipment, and arms. Diocletian built a number of such factories, some in his capital Nicomedia, others in cities close to the groups whose needs they served. The laws imposing these obligations affected only labour groups serving the army and the capital (or capitals, plural, after the promotion of Constantinople); and, to identify them, induce them to serve, and hold them in their useful work, emperors as early as Claudius had offered privileges and imposed controls. Diocletian, however, greatly increased the weight and complexity of all these obligations.

Diocletian also changed the administrative districts in Egypt, in keeping with the model found elsewhere, by designating in each a central city to take responsibility for the whole. The last anomalous province was thus brought into line with the others. Everywhere, the imperial government continued to count on the members of the municipal senate to serve it, above all in tax collection but also in the supply of recruits, in rural police work, billeting for troops, or road building. As had been the case for centuries, they had to have a minimum of landed property to serve as surety for the performance of their administrative duties as well as to submit to nomination as senator, if it was so determined by the Senate. There had never been any one law to that effect, but by Diocletian’s time the emperor had at his command a body of long-established custom and numerous imperial decisions that served just as well. Local elites were thus hereditary, compulsory agents of his purpose, exactly like the Tiber bargees.

Two other groups were frozen into their roles in the same fashion: soldiers and farmers. The sons of soldiers were required to take up their fathers’ occupation (a law to that effect was in operation at least by 313); and the natural tendency of tenant farmers (coloni) to renew their lease on land that they, and perhaps their fathers and grandfathers, had worked was confirmed by imperial decisions—to such effect that, in 332, Constantine could speak of tenants on his Sardinian estates as bound to the acres they cultivated. This is the earliest explicit pronouncement on what is called the “colonate.” Soon the institution was extended beyond imperial estates to tie certain categories of tenants to private estates as well. The emperors wanted to ensure tax revenue and, for that, a stable rural labour supply.

The empire, as it is seen in abundant legislation for the period of Diocletian and beyond into the 5th century, has been called a “military dictatorship” or even a sort of totalitarian prison, in which every inhabitant had his own cell and his own shackles. This may well have been the rulers’ intent. By their lights, such a system was needed to repair the weaknesses revealed in the 3rd-century crisis. The principle of hereditary obligations was not, after all, so very strange, set against the natural tendencies of the economy and the practices that had developed in earlier, easier times. Yet Diocletian’s intentions could not be fully realized, given the limits on governmental effectiveness.

After a period of initial indifference toward the Christians, Diocletian ended his reign by unleashing against them, in 303, the last and most violent of their persecutions. It was urged on him by his Caesar Galerius and prolonged in the East for a decade (until 311) by Galerius as Augustus and by other emperors. As in earlier persecutions, the initiative arose at the heart of government; some emperors, as outraged by the Christians as many private citizens, considered it their duty to maintain harmony with the gods, the pax deorum, by which alone the empire flourished. Accordingly, Decius and Valerian in the 250s had dealt severely with the Christians, requiring them to demonstrate their apostasy by offering sacrifice at the local temples, and for the first time had directly struck the church’s clergy and property. There were scores of Christians who preferred death, though the great majority complied or hid themselves. Within a matter of months after he had begun his attacks, however, Decius had died (251), and the bloody phase of Valerian’s attacks also lasted only months (259/260). His son Gallienus had issued an edict of tolerance, and Aurelian was even appealed to by the church of Antioch to settle an internal dispute. Christianity had now become open and established, thanks to the power of its God so often, it seemed, manifested in miraculous acts and to the firmness with which converts were secured in a new life and community. The older slanders—cannibalism and incest—that had troubled the Apologists in the 2nd century no longer commanded credence. A measure of respectability had been won, along with recruits from the upper classes and gifts of land and money. By the end of the 3rd century Christians actually predominated in some of the smaller Eastern towns or districts, and they were well represented in Italy, Gaul, and Africa around Carthage; all told, they numbered perhaps as many as 5 million out of the empire’s total population of 60 million. Occasional meetings on disputed matters might bring together dozens of bishops, and it was this institution or phenomenon that the Great Persecutions sought to defeat. The progress of a religion that could not accept the religious basis of the tetrarchy and certain of whose members were imprudent and provocative, as in the incidents at Nicomedia (where a church was built across from Diocletian’s palace), finally aroused Galerius’ fanaticism. In 303–304 several edicts, each increasingly stringent, ordered the destruction of the churches, the seizure of sacred books, the imprisonment of the clergy, and a sentence of death for all those who refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods. In the East, where Galerius was imposing his ideas more and more on the aging Diocletian, the persecution was extremely violent, especially in Egypt, Palestine, and the Danubian regions. In Italy, Maximian, zealous at the beginning, quickly tired; and in Gaul, Constantius merely destroyed a few churches without carrying reprisals any further. Nevertheless, Christianity could no longer be eradicated, for the people of the empire and even some officials no longer felt the blind hatred for Christians that had typified previous centuries. Struggle for power

The first tetrarchy had ended on May 1, 305; the second did not last long. After Constantius died at Eboracum in 306, the armies of Britain and Gaul, without observing the rules of the tetrarchic system, had hastened to proclaim Constantine, the young son of Constantius, as Augustus. Young Maxentius, the son of Maximian (who had never wanted to retire), thereupon had himself proclaimed in Rome, recalled his father into service, and got rid of Severus. Thus, in 307–308 there was great confusion. Seven emperors had, or pretended to have, the title of Augustus: Maximian, Galerius, Constantine, Maxentius, Maximinus Daia, Licinius (who had been promoted Augustus in 308 by Galerius against Constantine), and, in Africa, the usurper Domitius Alexander.

This situation was clarified by successive eliminations. In 310, after numerous intrigues, old Maximian was killed by his son-in-law Constantine, and in the following year Alexander was slain by one of Maxentius’ praetorian prefects. In 311 Galerius died of illness a few days after having admitted the failure of his persecutions by proclaiming an edict of tolerance. There remained, in the West, Constantine and Maxentius and in the East, Licinius and Maximinus Daia. Constantine, the best general, invaded Italy with a strong army of faithful Gauls and defeated Maxentius near the Milvian Bridge, not far from Rome. While attempting to escape, Maxentius drowned. Constantine then made an agreement with Licinius, and the two rallied the Eastern Christians to their side by guaranteeing them religious tolerance in the Edict of Milan (313). This left Maximinus Daia, now isolated and regarded as a persecutor, in a weak position; attacked by Licinius near Adrianople, he fell ill and died soon afterward, in 313. This left the empire with two leaders, Constantine and Licinius, allied in outward appearances and now brothers-in-law as a result of Licinius’ marriage to Constantine’s sister. The reign of Constantine

Constantine and Licinius soon disputed among themselves for the empire. Constantine attacked his adversary for the first time in 316, taking the dioceses of Pannonia and Moesia from him. A truce between them lasted 10 years. In 316 Diocletian died in Salona, which he had never felt a desire to leave despite the collapse of his political creation. Constantine and Licinius then reverted to the principles of heredity, designating three potential Caesars from among their respective sons, all still infants, with the intention of securing their dynasties (two sons of Constantine and one of Licinius). The dynastic concept, however, required the existence of only a single emperor, who imposed his own descendance. Although Constantine favoured the Christians, Licinius resumed the persecutions, and in 324 war erupted once again. Licinius, defeated first at Adrianople and then in Anatolia, was obliged to surrender and, together with his son, was executed. Next, Constantine’s third son, Constantius, was in turn named Caesar, as his two elder brothers, Crispus and Constantine the Younger, had been some time before. The second Flavian dynasty was thus founded, and Constantine let it be believed that his father, Flavius Constantius (Chlorus), was descended from Claudius Gothicus.

Constantine’s conversion to Christianity had a far-reaching effect. Like his father, he had originally been a votary of the Sun; worshiping at the Grand Temple of the Sun in the Vosges Mountains of Gaul, he had had his first vision—albeit a pagan one. During his campaign against Maxentius, he had had a second vision—a lighted cross in the sky—after which he had painted on his men’s shields a figure that was perhaps Christ’s monogram (although he probably had Christ confused with the Sun in his manifestation as summa divinitas [“the highest divinity”]). After his victory he declared himself Christian. His conversion remains somewhat mysterious and his contemporaries—Lactantius and Eusebius of Caesarea—are scarcely enlightening and even rather contradictory on the subject. But it was doubtless a sincere conversion, for Constantine had a religious turn of mind. He was also progressive and greatly influenced by the capable bishops who surrounded him from the very beginning.

Until 320–322 solar symbols appeared on Constantine’s monuments and coins, and he was never a great theologian. Yet his favourable policy toward the Christians never faltered. Christianity was still a minority religion in the empire, especially in the West and in the countryside (and consequently within his own army), thus excluding the possibility of any political calculation on his part. But it was enthusiastically welcomed in the East, and thanks to Constantine the new religion triumphed more rapidly; his official support led to the conversion of numerous pagans, although with doubtful sincerity because they were indifferent in their moral conviction.

The church, so recently persecuted, was now suddenly showered with favours: the construction of magnificent churches (Rome, Constantinople), donations and grants, exemptions from decurial duties for the clergy, juridical competences for the bishops, and exceptional promotions for Christian officials. Pagans were not persecuted, however, and Constantine retained the title of pontifex maximus. But he spoke of the pagan gods with contempt and forbade certain types of worship, principally nocturnal sacrifices. In 331 he ordered an inventory of pagan property, despoiled the temples of their treasure, and finally destroyed a few Eastern sanctuaries on the pretext of immorality.

The churches were soon to feel the burden of imperial solicitude: the “secular arm” (i.e., the government) was placed at the service of a fluctuating orthodoxy, for the emperor was impressionable to arguments of various coteries and became quite lost in theological subtleties. In 314 the Council of Arles had tried in vain to stop the Donatist schism (a nationalistic heretical movement questioning the worthiness of certain church officials) that arose in Africa after Diocletian’s persecutions. The Arian heresy raised even more difficulties: Arius, an Alexandrian priest and disciple of Lucian of Antioch, questioned the dogma of the Trinity and of the Godhead of Christ, and his asceticism, as well as the sharpness of his dialectics, brought him many followers; he was convicted several times, but the disorders continued. Constantine, solicited by both sides and untroubled by doctrinal nuances that were, moreover, foreign to most believers in the West, wished to institute a universal creed; with this in mind he convened the general Council of Nicaea, or Nicene Council, in 325. He condemned Arius and declared, in spite of the Easterners, that Jesus was “of one substance” with God the Father. Nevertheless, the heresy continued to exist, for Constantine changed his mind several times; he was influenced by Arian or semi-Arian bishops and was even baptized on his deathbed, in 337, by one of them, Eusebius of Nicomedia.

Between 325 and 337 Constantine effected important reforms, continuing Diocletian’s work. The division between the limitanei border troops and the tactical troops (comitatenses and imperial guard) led by magistri militum was clarified, and military careers became independent of civil careers. At the same time, however, he lodged an increasing number of troops in or next to cities, a process whose objective was ease and economy of supply; however, training and discipline were harder to enforce because of it, and the men hung about in idleness. It was also under Constantine that a barbarian commander in the Roman army attained a historical significance. He was Crocus the Alaman, who led the movement among the troops that resulted in Constantine’s seizure of the rank of Augustus in 306 immediately after his father Constantius’ death. A similar figure was the great commander Bonitus, a Frank, in the years 316–324; and Constantine credited his victories against Maxentius in 311–312 principally to his barbarian troops, who were honoured on the triumphal Arch of Constantine in Rome. In opposition to him, Licinius mustered drafts of Goths to strengthen his army. Goths were also brought in by Constantine, to the number of 40,000, it is said, to help defend Constantinople in the latter part of his reign, and the palace guard was thenceforward composed mostly of Germans, from among whom a great many high army commands were filled. Dependence on immigrants or first-generation barbarians in war was to increase steadily, at a time when conventional Roman troops were losing military value.

Constantine raised many equestrians to senatorial rank, having in his earlier reign the still rapidly increasing ranks of the civil service to fill—it was at least 50 times the size of the civil service under Caracalla—and having in his later reign a second senate to fill, in Constantinople (see below). A rapid inflation in titles of honour also took place. As a result of these several changes, the equestrian order ceased to have meaning, and a new nobility of imperial service developed. Constantine gave first rank in the central administration to the palace quaestor, the magister officiorum, and the counts of finance (comes sacrarum largitionum, comes rei privatae). The diocesan vicars were made responsible to the praetorian prefects, whose number was increased and whose jurisdictions were now vast territories: the prefectures of Gaul, Italy, Illyricum, and the East. The unification of political power brought with it a corresponding decentralization of administration.

In order to reorganize finances and currency, Constantine minted two new coins: the silver miliarensis and, most importantly, the gold solidus, whose stability was to make it the Byzantine Empire’s basic currency. And by plundering Licinius’ treasury and despoiling the pagan temples, he was able to restore the finances of the state. Even so, he still had to create class taxes: the gleba for senators, and the chrysargyre, which was levied in gold and silver on merchants and craftsmen in the towns.

Constantine’s immortality, however, rests on his founding of Constantinople. This “New Rome,” established in 324 on the site of Byzantium and dedicated in 330, rapidly increased in population as a result of favours granted to immigrants. A large number of churches were also built there, even though former temples were not destroyed; and the city became the administrative capital of the empire, receiving a senate and proconsul. This choice of site was due not to religious considerations, as has been suggested, but rather to reasons that were both strategic (its proximity to the Danube and Euphrates frontiers) and economic (the importance of the straits and of the junction between the great continental road, which went from Boulogne to the Black Sea, and the eastern commercial routes, passing through Anatolia to Antioch and Alexandria). Constantine died on May 22, 337. The Roman Empire under the 4th-century successors of Constantine The rule of Constantine’s sons

After some months of confusion, Constantine’s three surviving sons (Crispus, the eldest son, had been executed in mysterious circumstances in 326), supported by the armies faithful to their father’s memory, divided the empire among themselves and had all the other members of their family killed. Constantine II kept the West, Constantius the East, and Constans, the youngest brother, received the central prefecture (Italy, Africa, and Illyricum). In 340 Constantine II tried to take this away from Constans but was killed. For the next 10 years there was peace between the two remaining brothers, and Constans won acceptance for a religious policy favourable to the Nicaeans, whose leader, Athanasius, had received a triumph in Alexandria. In 350 a mutiny broke out in Autun; Constans fled but was killed in Lugdunum by Magnentius, a usurper who was recognized in Gaul, Africa, and Italy. Constantius went out to engage Magnentius, and the Battle of Mursa (351) left the two strongest armies of the empire—those of Gaul and of the Danube—massacred, thus compromising the empire’s defense. Magnentius retreated after his defeat and finally committed suicide in 353.

Thenceforth, Constantius reigned alone as Augustus, aided by a meddlesome bureaucracy in which mission deputies (agentes in rebus), informers, and spies played an important role. He named two Caesars in succession, his two young surviving cousins, Gallus in the East and Julian in Gaul. Constantius eventually had to get rid of Gallus, who proved incompetent and cruel and soon terrorized Antioch. Julian, however, was a magnificent success, a fact that aroused Constantius’ jealousy and led to Julian’s usurpation; for the latter was proclaimed Augustus, in spite of Constantius’ opposition, at Lutetia in 361. Civil war was averted when Constantius died in November 361, leaving the empire to Julian, the last ruler of the Constantinian family.

At the time of his death in 337 Constantine had been preparing to go to war against the Persians. This legacy weighed heavily on the shoulders of Constantius, a military incompetent when compared to the energetic Sāsānian king Shāpūr II. Nearly every year the Persians attacked and pillaged Roman territory; the Mesopotamian towns were besieged, and Nisibis alone resisted. There was a lull between 350 and 357, while Shāpūr was detained by troubles in the eastern regions of his own kingdom. The war resumed, however, and Mesopotamia was partly lost when the emperor had to leave in order to fight Julian. Constantius had fought Shāpūr conscientiously, but his generals were mediocre, except for Urisicinus, and he himself was clumsy. In the meantime, the Rhine and Danube were threatened frequently, because the troops had been withdrawn from there and sent to the East. Constantius, moreover, had made a mistake in sending Chnodomar, the Alemannic king, against Magnentius in 351, for his tribes had gone on to ravage Gaul. Julian, however, soon revealed himself to be a great military leader by winning several well-fought campaigns between 356 and 361, most notably at Strasbourg in 357, and by restoring approximately 70 plundered villages. His abandonment, in 358, of the district of Toxandria, roughly equivalent to modern Belgium, to its barbarian squatters, on condition of their defending it against other invaders, was no doubt a realistic decision. Constantius defeated the Quadi and the Goths on the Danube in 359, but court intrigues, Magnentius’ usurpation, and the interminable war against the Persians allowed the barbarians to wreak great havoc.

Constantius was primarily interested in religious affairs. His interventions created a “caesaro-papism” that was unfavourable to the church, for after the Battle of Mursa the emperor had become violently Arian. The Christological problem had moved to the forefront. In 360 Constantius obtained a new creed by force from the Council of Constantinople, which, rejecting the notion of “substance” as too risky, declared only that the Son was like the Father and thus left the problem unresolved. Pagans as well as orthodox Nicaeans (Homoousians) and extremist Arians (Anomoeans) were persecuted, for in 356–357 several edicts proscribed magic, divination, and sacrifices and ordered that the temples be closed. But when Constantius visited Rome in 357, he was so struck by its pagan grandeur that he apparently suspended the application of these measures. The reign of Julian

Julian, who had been spared because of his tender age from the family butchering in 337, had been brought up far from the court and was undoubtedly intended for the priesthood. Nevertheless, he had been allowed to take courses in rhetoric and philosophy at Ephesus and later at Athens; he developed a fondness for Hellenic literature, and he secretly apostatized around 351. When he became sole emperor at the end of 361, he proclaimed his pagan faith, ordered the restitution of the temples seized under Constantius, and freed all the bishops who had been banished by the Arians, so as to weaken Christianity through the resumption of doctrinal disputes. The religion he himself espoused was compounded of traditional non-Christian elements of piety and theology, such as might have been found in any fairly intellectual person in the preceding centuries, along with elements of Neoplatonism developed by Porphyry and Iamblichus of two or three generations earlier, and, finally, much of the organization and social ethic of the church. From Neoplatonism he learned the techniques of direct communication with the gods (theurgy) through prayer and invocation; from the church he adopted, as the church itself had adopted from the empire’s civil organization, a hierarchy of powers: provincial, metropolitan, urban, with himself as supreme pontiff. His deep love of traditional higher culture, moreover, provoked his war on Christian intellectuals and teachers who, he protested, had no right to Homer or Plato. Many Christians both before and later concurred with him, being themselves troubled by the relation between Christianity and inherited literature and thought, steeped as both were in pagan beliefs.

In the latter part of his 18-month reign, Julian forbade Christians from teaching, began the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, restored many pagan shrines, and displayed an exaggerated piety. Whereas Constantine (and his sons to a lesser degree) had introduced a huge number of coreligionists into the upper ranks of the army and government, achieving a rough parity between the members of the two religions, Julian began to reverse the process. Within a short while Julian was successful enough in his undertaking to have aroused the fear and hatred of the Christians, who for a long time thought of him as the Antichrist.

In the political realm, Julian wished to return to the liberal principate of the Antonines—to a time before the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine, whom he detested. He put an end to the terrorism of Constantius’ eunuchs and agentes in rebus and reduced the personnel and expenditures of the court, while he himself lived like an ascetic. In the provinces he lightened the financial burden on individuals by reducing the capitatio, and on cities, by reducing the aurum coronarium and restoring the municipal properties confiscated by Constantius. On the other hand, he increased the number of curiales by reinstating numerous clerks in an attempt to return the ancient lustre to municipal life. Thus, he earned the gratitude of pagan intellectuals, who were enamoured of the past of free Greece; and Ammianus made him the central hero of his history.

Taking up Trajan’s dream, Julian wished to defeat Persia definitively by engaging the empire’s forces in an offensive war that would facilitate a national reconciliation around the gods of paganism. But his army was weak—corrupted perhaps by large numbers of hostile Christians. After a brilliant beginning, he was defeated near Ctesiphon and had to retrace his steps painfully; he was killed in an obscure encounter on June 26, 363.

Julian’s successor, Jovian, chosen by the army’s general staff, was a Christian, but not a fanatic. He negotiated a peace with Shāpūr, by which Rome lost a good part of Galerian’s conquests of 298 (including Nisibis, which had not surrendered) and abandoned Armenia. He also restored tolerance in religious affairs, for he neither espoused any of the heresies nor persecuted pagans. In February 364 he died accidentally. The reign of Valentinian and Valens

Once again the general staff unanimously chose a Pannonian officer—Valentinian, an energetic patriot and, like Jovian, a moderate Christian—but he had to yield to the rivalry of the armies by dividing authority. Taking the West for himself, Valentinian entrusted the East to his brother Valens, an inexperienced man whom he raised to the rank of Augustus. For the first time the two parts of the empire were truly separate, except for the selection of consuls, in which Valentinian had precedence.

Although he served the state with dedication, Valentinian could be brutal, choleric, and authoritarian. His foreign policy was excellent: all the while he was fighting barbarians (the Alemanni in Gaul, the Sarmatians and Quadi in Pannonia) and putting down revolts in Britain and Africa (notably that of the Berber Firmus) with the aid of his top general, Theodosius the Elder, he was taking care to improve the army’s equipment and to protect Gaul by creating a brilliant fortification. His domestic measures favoured the curiales and the lower classes: from then on, taxes would be collected exclusively by officials; the protection of the poor was entrusted to “defenders of the plebs,” chosen from among retired high officials (honorati). Nevertheless, needs of state obliged him to accentuate social immobility, to reinforce corporation discipline and official hierarchization, and to demand taxes ruthlessly. At first he was benevolent to the Senate of Rome, supervised the provisioning of the city, and legislated in favour of its university, the nursery of officials (law of 370). But beginning in 369, under the influence of Maximin, the prefect of Gaul, he initiated a period of terror, which struck the great senatorial families. Meanwhile, religious peace reigned in the West, tolerance was proclaimed, and after some difficulty, Rome found a great pope in Damasus, who, beginning in 373, actively supported the new bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose, an ardent defender of orthodoxy.

In the East, Valens, who was incapable and suspicious, had fallen under the influence of legists, such as the praetorian prefect Modestus. The beginning of Valens’ reign was shadowed by the attempted usurpation of Procopius (365–366), a pagan relative of Julian’s who failed and was killed by the army, which remained faithful to Valens. Modestus instituted harsh persecutions in Antioch of the educated pagan elite. Valens was a fanatic Arian, who exiled even moderate Nicaean bishops and granted to Arians favours that aroused violent reactions from the orthodox, whose power had increased in the East. Valens’ policies made the East prey to violent religious passions.

On the Danube, Valens fought the Visigoths and made a treaty with their king, Athanaric, in 369; but in 375 the Ostrogoths and the Greutingi appeared on the frontiers, pushed from their home in southern Russia by the powerful Huns. In 376 Valens authorized the starving masses to enter Thrace; but, being exploited and mistreated by the officials, they soon turned to uncontrollable pillaging. Their numbers continually increased by the addition of new bands, until finally they threatened Constantinople itself. Valens sent for aid from the West, but without waiting for it to arrive he joined battle and was killed in the Adrianople disaster of 378, which to some critics foreshadowed the approaching fall of the Roman Empire.

The Goths, who were also stirring up Thrace and Macedonia, could no longer be driven out. The provinces subject to their pillaging soon included Pannonia farther up the Danube, where Gratian agreed with a cluster of three tribal armies to settle them as a unit under their own chiefs on vacant lands (380). By a far more significant arrangement of the same sort two years later, Theodosius assigned to the Goths a large area of Thrace along the Danube as, in effect, their own kingdom; there they enjoyed autonomy as well as a handsome subsidy from the emperor, exactly as tribes beyond the empire had done in previous treaties. They were expected to respond to calls on their manpower if the Roman army needed supplementing, as it routinely did. Although the Goths considered this treaty ended with Theodosius’ death and resumed their lawless wanderings for a while, it nevertheless represented the model for subsequent ones, again struck with the Goths under their king Alaric (from 395; see below) and with later barbarian tribes. The capture of the empire had begun. The reign of Gratian and Theodosius I

Following Valentinian’s sudden death in 375, the West was governed by his son Gratian, then 16 years old, who had been given the title of Augustus as early as 367. The Pannonian army, rife with intrigue, quickly proclaimed Gratian’s half-brother, Valentinian II, only four years old. The latter received Illyricum under his older brother’s guardianship, and this arrangement satisfied everybody. Valentinian’s advisers were executed: Maximian was sacrificed to the spite of the Senate, and Theodosius the Elder became the victim of personal jealousies. Gratian announced a liberal principate, supported in Gaul by the wealthy family of the Bordeaux poet Ausonius and in Rome by the Symmachi and the Nicomachi Flaviani, representatives of the pagan aristocracy. His generals defeated the Alemanni and the Goths on the Danube but arrived too late to save Valens.

On January 19, 379, before the army, Gratian proclaimed Theodosius, the son of the recently executed general, as Eastern emperor. Theodosius was chosen for his military ability and for his orthodoxy (Gratian, extremely pious, had come under the influence of Damasus and Ambrose). The East was enlarged by the dioceses of Dacia and Macedonia, taken from Valentinian II. Gratian and Theodosius agreed to admit the Goths into the empire, and Gratian applied the policy also to the Salian Franks in Germany. Theodosius soon dominated his weak colleague and entered the battle for the triumph of orthodoxy. In 380 the Arians were relieved of their churches in Constantinople, and in 381 the Nicaean faith was universally imposed by a council whose canons established the authority of the metropolitan bishops over their dioceses and gave the bishop of the capital a primacy similar to that of the bishop of Rome.

In ecclesiastical affairs, the separation between East and West was codified. The Westerners bowed to this policy, satisfied with the triumph of orthodoxy. Gratian then permitted Ambrose and Damasus to deal harshly with the Arians, with the support of the state. Paganism also was hounded: following Theodosius’ lead, Gratian refused the chief priesthood, removed the altar of Victory from the hall of the Roman Senate, and deprived the pagan priests and the Vestal Virgins of their subsidies and privileges. The pagan senators were outraged, but their protests were futile because Gratian was watched over by Ambrose.

This militantly orthodox policy aroused the displeasure of the pagans and of the Western Arians: thus, when Gratian left Trier for Milan, the army of Gaul and Britain proclaimed its leader, Maximus, in 383. He conquered Gaul without difficulty, and Gratian was killed in Lyons. Maximus, who, like Theodosius, was Spanish and extremely orthodox, was recognized by the latter. In the meantime, the third Augustus, Valentinian II, had taken refuge in Milan after suffering defeat in Pannonia. He was effectively under the domination of his mother, Justina, an Arian who sought support for her son among the Arians and pagans of Rome and even among the African Donatists (a Christian heresy). In 388 Maximus, after arriving in Italy, first expelled Valentinian and then prepared to attack Theodosius. The latter, accepting the inevitability of war, strengthened his resolve and gained several victories. Maximus was killed at Aquileia in 388, and thenceforth Theodosius ruled both West and East; he was represented in the East by his son Arcadius, an Augustus since 383. Valentinian II was sent to Trier, accompanied by the Frankish general Arbogast to control him.

After a few years’ respite, during the prefectureships of Nicomachus Flavianus in Rome and Tatian in the East, paganism waged its last fight: Theodosius, influenced by Ambrose, who had dared to inflict public penance on him in 390 after the massacre at Thessalonica, had determined to eliminate the pagans completely. After a few hostile clashes, the law of November 8, 392, proscribed the pagan religion. Then Arbogast, after Valentinian II’s death in 392 under shadowy circumstances, proclaimed as emperor the rhetorician Eugenius. When Theodosius refused to recognize him, Eugenius was thrown into the arms of the pagans of Rome. But this last “pagan reaction” was short-lived; in 394, with his victory at the Frigidus (modern Vipacco) River, between Aquileia and Emona, Theodosius put an end to the hopes of Eugenius and his followers. His intention was to place his son Honorius, proclaimed Augustus in 393, over the West, while returning his eldest son, Arcadius, to the East. But Theodosius’ sudden death in January 395 precipitated the division of the empire.

Theodosius had successfully dealt with the danger of the Goths, although not without taking risks, and had both established a dynasty and imposed the strictest orthodoxy. A compromise peace with the Persians had given Rome, in 387, a small section of Armenia, where he had founded Theodosiopolis (Erzurum). He had survived two pretenders in the West. These military successes were, however, won with armies in which barbarians were in the majority, which was not a good sign. The barbarian presence is reflected in the names of his commanding officers, including such Franks as Richomer, Merovech, and Arbogast, and the half-Vandal Stilicho, who through his marriage to Serena, Theodosius’ niece, had entered the imperial family. Social and economic conditions

During the 4th century the emperor’s power was theoretically absolute, the traditions of the principate having given way to the necessities of defense.

The emperor was both heir to the Hellenistic basileus (absolute king) and the anointed of the deity. Pagans and Christians alike considered him “emperor by the grace of God,” which, strictly speaking, rendered the imperial cult unnecessary. Indeed, he hardly needed the ceremonies and parade of god-awfulness with which Diocletian and his successors were surrounded. Yet imperial authority had actually lost much of its effectiveness due to the growth and nature of late Roman government. Its ranks can be estimated at more than 30,000 men—perhaps an insignificant number compared with that of modern governments but gigantic when set against the total of only a few hundred a century earlier. The problem, however, lay not in numbers but in the assumption, held throughout both bureaucracy and army, that a position of power ex officio entitled the holder to a rake-off of some sort, to be extracted both from the citizenry with whom he came in contact and from fellow members of the service in ranks below his own. This ethos was not new; but during the principate it had been restrained by higher officers and officials, who operated according to a different, essentially aristocratic, code expressed in patron-dependent relations and mutuality. Its currency was not money but favours and services. Such a code was swept away by the rapid increase in the size of government in the later 3rd century and the rise to high civil and military posts by men recruited from the ranks rather than from the upper classes. As they had bought their own promotions or appointments, so they expected to recoup their expenses (and more besides) by such means as selling exemptions and extortion. The more intrusive and demanding the military tax collection or the state’s control of the rosters of city senates, the more profit there was for a pervasively corrupt administration. Persons close to the emperor could, for a price, generally screen him from knowledge of what was going on. Constantine, for example, complained quite in vain—and the complaint was endlessly repeated by his successors—that the city senates were being “emptied of persons obligated to them by birth, who yet are asking for a government post by petition to the emperor, running off to the legions or various civil offices.” Such posts could easily be bought. A great deal of imperial planning was thus vitiated by sale. Many of the profiteers started life in the urban upper classes, but, as nouveaux riches, they joined the older landed nobility after a term in the emperor’s service.

In a few areas where measurement is possible, one can see that a process of consolidation of landownership had been going on for a long time, bringing the rural population increasingly into dependence on the larger property holders. Diocletian’s new system of property assessment accelerated this process; it was more thorough and thus exposed the poor and ignorant to exploitation by local officialdom. In response, they sought the protection of some influential man to ward off unfair assessments, selling their land to him and becoming his tenants. In areas disturbed by lawlessness, a large landowner offered them safety as well. The strength of rural magnates in their formidable, even fortified, dwellings, with a dependent peasantry of 100 or even 1,000 around them made much trouble for tax collectors, and landowners thus became the target of many laws. Consolidation of ownership, however, was not apparent in northern Africa, and the reverse process has been established for a carefully researched area of Syria.

Regional differences cannot be disregarded. They were responsible for guiding the development of the later empire along quite varied paths. The archaeological data, which reflect these developments most clearly, register such changes as the degree of wealth in public buildings and the use and elegance of carved sarcophagi or of mosaics in private houses. Broadly speaking, a decline is noticeable throughout the European provinces; it tends to affect the cities earlier than the rural areas and is detectable sometimes by 350, generally by 375. In the Danube provinces, the evidence fits neatly with political history following the Battle of Adrianople in 378, after which their condition was continually disturbed by the Visigothic immigrants. There is, however, no such obvious explanation for areas such as Spain or central Gaul. Italy of the 3rd and 4th centuries was not perceptibly worse off than before, though wealth in the Po region was more concentrated in the cities north of the river. Northern Africa seems to have maintained nearly the same level of prosperity as in earlier centuries, if proper weight is given to ecclesiastical building after Constantine. For Egypt, no clear picture emerges; but all the other Eastern provinces enjoyed in the later empire the same level of economic well-being as before or a still higher one, with more disposable wealth and an increasing population. These conditions continued into the 5th century.

The vast differences between the European and the Eastern provinces are best explained by the shifting focus of imperial energies. It can be traced in the locus of heaviest military recruitment, in the lower Danube, as the 3rd century progressed; in the consequent concentration of military expenditure there; and in the siting of the emperors’ residence as it was moved from Rome to Milan in the 260s, then to the lower Danube later in the 3rd century (where much fighting occurred), and subsequently to Nicomedia (Diocletian’s capital). None of the Tetrarchs chose Rome—its days as the imperial centre were over—and when, from among various Eastern cities he considered, Constantine decided on Byzantium as his permanent residence, he simply made permanent a very long-term development. Meanwhile the Rhine frontier and the upper Danube were repeatedly overrun. As can be inferred from the signs of fortification in Pannonia, Gaul, Britain, and Spain, internal policing was neglected. Commercial intercourse, which had been the key to raising the economy and the level of urbanization, became less safe and easy. Villas turned into self-sufficient villages, and the smaller towns also reverted to villages. Only the larger towns, such as Bordeaux, Arles, or Cartagena, maintained their vitality.

Although there was considerable inflation (culminating under Theodosius), in spite of a deflationary fiscal policy, commercial transactions ignored barter and were based instead on currency throughout the empire at the end of the century. The economy was partially under state direction, which was applied to agriculture through bias toward the settler system on imperial estates and to industry through the requisitioning of corporations (artisans, merchants, carriers) and the creation of state workshops (especially for manufacturing military goods). Opinions differ on the intensity of trade, but there was certainly clear progress in comparison to the 3rd century. The remnants of pagan culture

The spread of Christianity in no way harmed the flourishing of pagan literature. Instruction in the universities (Rome, Milan, Carthage, Bordeaux, Athens, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria) was still based on rhetoric, and literature received the support of senatorial circles, especially in Rome (for example those of the Symmachi and the Nicomachi Flaviani). Latin literature was represented by Symmachus and the poet Ausonius. The last great historian of Rome was Ammianus Marcellinus, a Greek who wrote in Latin for the Roman aristocracy; of his Res gestae, the most completely preserved part describes the period from 353 to 378. The works of Sextus Aurelius Victor and Eutropius, who ably abridged earlier historical works, are fairly accurate and more reliable than the Scriptores historiae Augustae, a collection of imperial biographies of unequal value, undoubtedly composed under Theodosius but for an unknown purpose. Erudition was greatly prized in aristocratic circles, which, enamoured of the past, studied and commented on the classic authors (Virgil) or the ancestral rites (the Saturnalia of Macrobius). Greek literature is represented by the works of philosophers or sophists: Themistius, a political theoretician who advocated absolutism; Himerius of Prusias; and above all Libanius of Antioch, whose correspondence and political discourses from the Theodosian period bear witness to his perspicacity and, often, to his courage. The Christian church

In the last decade of the 4th century the harsh laws against the perpetuation of the old pieties promulgated by Theodosius gave impetus and justification to waves of icon and temple destruction, especially in the East. It is, nonetheless, likely that a majority of the population was still non-Christian in 400, although less so in the cities and in the East and more so in rural and mountainous areas and the West. Efforts by the church to reach them were intermittent and lacked energy. Bishops generally expected rural magnates to do their job for them; and the church leadership was, in any case, of a social class that viewed the peasantry from a great distance and wanted to keep it that way. Except by such unusual figures as Martin of Tours or Marcellus of Apamea, little effort was made to convert people who were hard to reach. As always in antiquity, it was in the cities where changes occurred—with the exception of monasticism.

Only in the reign of Constantine, and about simultaneously in Egypt and Palestine, had monasticism, a religious movement whose followers lived as hermits and pursued a life of extreme asceticism, become more than the little-regarded choice of rare zealots. Near Gaza and in the desert along the eastern side of Jerusalem a number of tiny clusters of cells had been made from caves and taken as residence by ascetics, from whose fame and example that way of life later spread to many other corners of the Levant. The bishop of Jerusalem, Cyril, by mid-century could speak of “regiments of monks.” But it was in the desert on both sides of the Nile that similar ascetic experiments of much greater importance were made, by the hero of the movement, St. Anthony, and others. True monasticism, tempered only by weekly communal worship and organizing, established itself on Anthony’s model and under his inspiration in the first decade of the 4th century; it took root above all in the desert of Scete just west of the base of the Nile delta. Coenobitism, joint life in enclosed communities, was the model preferred by St. Pachomius around 330, vigorously directed and diffused by him until mid-century, when both he and Anthony died. Basil of Caesarea was to establish monastic communities in Cappadocia under the influence of what he saw in Egypt on his visit there in the year of Anthony’s death; and Athanasius was shortly to write a biography of that saint of enormous influence and to carry word of his life to Italy and Gaul during his own exile there. The biography was soon translated into Latin and inspired a scattering of experiments in asceticism or coenobitism in the West—in Vercellae in Italy, for example, by 330, and at Tours in the 370s under Martin’s direction. Tours became the first monastery in the West comparable to those in the East, but development subsequently was slow compared to the 10,000 or more monasteries founded in Egypt by 400.

The most distinct and well-reported phenomenon during the century after the conversion of Constantine was the continued religious rioting and harrying in the cities, both in all the major ones and in dozens of minor ones. The death toll exceeded the toll among Christians at the hands of pagans in earlier persecutions. It was rarely of Jews or pagans at the hands of Christians or of Christians at the hands of pagans, but ordinarily of Christians at each others’ hands in the course of sectarian strife. For a time, no one sect enjoyed a majority among Homoousians, Arians, Donatists, Meletians, and many others. Bishoprics were fiercely contested and appeals often made to armed coercion. The emperors had assumed the right to interfere and often did so; but under Theodosius, Pope Damasus and St. Ambrose reacted: the state was to restrict itself to furnishing the “secular arm,” while the church, in the name of evangelical ethics, claimed the right to judge the emperors, a policy that had grave implications for the future. The “caesaro-papism” of Constantius later gained adherents under the Byzantine emperors. In the meantime, the Goths had been converted to Arianism by Ulfilas during the period of Constantius and Valens, thus presaging conflicts that were to come after the great invasions. Orthodox missionaries had converted Osroëne, Armenia, and even some countries on the Red Sea.

The Christian literature of the 4th century is remarkable. Its first representative is Eusebius of Caesarea, a friend and panegyrist of Constantine and a church historian whose creation of a “political theology” sealed the union between the Christian emperor and the church. St. Athanasius wrote apologetic works and a life of St. Anthony. Also prominent were the great Cappadocians: St. Basil of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. John Chrysostom of Antioch, the greatest preacher of his time. The Westerners, too, had great scholars and brilliant writers: St. Hilary of Poitiers, enemy of the Arians and of Constantius; St. Ambrose, administrator and pastor, whose excessive authority was imposed on Gratian and even on Theodosius; and St. Jerome, a desert monk and confessor of upper-class Roman ladies, a formidable polemicist who knew Greek and Hebrew and made the first faithful translation of the Old and New Testaments (the Vulgate) as well as of a chronicle of world history, which was a translation and continuation of the work of Eusebius. Finally, St. Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, was a great pastor, a vigorous controversialist, a sensitive and passionate writer (the Confessions), and the powerful theologian of The City of God. The century that developed these great minds cannot be considered decadent. The eclipse of the Roman Empire in the West (c. 395–500) and the German migrations Invasions in the early 5th century

After the death of Theodosius the Western empire was governed by young Honorius. Stilicho, an experienced statesman and general, was charged with assisting him and maintaining unity with the East, which had been entrusted to Arcadius. The Eastern leaders soon rejected Stilicho’s tutelage. An antibarbarian reaction had developed in Constantinople, which impeded the objectives of the half-Vandal Stilicho. He wanted to intervene on several occasions in the internal affairs at Constantinople but was prevented from doing so by a threat from the Visigoth chieftain Alaric, whom he checked at Pollentia in 402, then by the Ostrogoth Radagaisus’ raid in 406, and finally by the great invasion of the Gauls in 407. The following year he hoped to restore unity by installing a new emperor in Constantinople, Theodosius II, the son of Arcadius, who had died prematurely; but he succumbed to a political and military plot in August 408. The division of the two partes imperii was now a permanent one.

The barbarian invasions.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Honorius, seated in Ravenna, a city easier to defend than Milan, had only incompetent courtiers surrounding him, themselves animated by a violent hatred of the barbarians. Alaric soon reappeared, at the head of his Visigoths, demanding land and money. Tired of the Romans’ double-dealing, he descended on Rome itself. The city was taken and pillaged for three days, thus putting an end to an era of Western history (August 410). An Arian, Alaric spared the churches. He died shortly thereafter in the south; his successor, Athaulf, left the peninsula to march against the Gauls.

Fleeing from the terrifying advance of the Huns, on December 31, 406, the Vandals, Suebi, and Alani, immediately followed by the Burgundians and bands of Alemanni, crossed the frozen Rhine and swept through Gaul, effortlessly throwing back the federated Franks and Alemanni from the frontiers. Between 409 and 415 a great many of these barbarians arrived in Spain and settled in Lusitania (Suebi) and in Baetica (Vandals, whence the name Andalusia). As soon as Gaul had become slightly more peaceful, Athaulf’s Visigoths arrived, establishing themselves in Narbonensis and Aquitania. After recognizing them as “federates,” Honorius asked them to go to Spain to fight the Vandals. Meanwhile, the Roman general Constantius eliminated several usurpers in Gaul, confined the Goths in Aquitania, and reorganized the administration (the Gallic assembly of 418). But he was unable to expel the Franks, the Alemanni, and the Burgundians, who had occupied the northern part of the country, nor to eliminate the brigandage of the Bagaudae. He was associated with the empire and was proclaimed Augustus in 421, but he died shortly afterward. His son, Valentinian III, succeeded Honorius in 423 and reigned until 455. The beginning of Germanic hegemony in the West

During the first half of the 5th century the barbarians gradually installed themselves, in spite of the efforts of the Roman general Aetius at the head of a small army of mercenaries and of Huns. Aetius took back Arles and Narbonne from the Visigoths in 436, either pushed back the Salian and Ripuarian Franks beyond the Rhine or incorporated them as federates, settled the defeated Burgundians in Sapaudia (Savoy), and established the Alani in Orléans. The other provinces were lost: Britain, having been abandoned in 407 and already invaded by the Picts and Scots, fell to the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes; a great Suebi kingdom, officially federated but in fact independent, was organized in Spain after the departure of the Vandals, and it allied itself to the Visigoths of Theodoric I, who were settled in the country around the Garonne.

In 428 the Vandal Gaiseric led his people (80,000 persons, including 15,000 warriors) to Africa. St. Augustine died in 430 in besieged Hippo, Carthage fell in 435, and in 442 a treaty gave Gaiseric the rich provinces of Byzacena and Numidia. From there he was able to starve Rome, threaten Sicily, and close off the western basin of the Mediterranean to the Byzantines.

Shortly afterward, in 450, Attila’s Huns invaded the West—first Gaul, where, after having been kept out of Paris, they were defeated by Aetius on the Campus Mauriacus (near Troyes), then Italy, which they evacuated soon after having received tribute from the pope, St. Leo. Attila died shortly afterward; and this invasion, which indeed left more legendary memories than actual ruins, had shown that a solidarity had been created between the Gallo-Romans and their barbarian occupiers, for the Franks, the Alemanni, and even Theodoric’s Visigoths had come to Aetius’ aid.

After the death of Aetius, in 454, and of Valentinian III, in 455, the West became the stake in the intrigues of the German chiefs Ricimer, Orestes, and Odoacer, who maintained real power through puppet emperors. In 457–461 the energetic Majorian reestablished imperial authority in southern Gaul until he was defeated by Gaiseric and assassinated shortly afterward. Finally, in 476, Odoacer deposed the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, had himself proclaimed king in the barbaric fashion, and governed Italy with moderation, being de jure under the emperor of the East. The end of the Roman Empire of the West passed almost unperceived. Barbarian kingdoms

Several barbarian kingdoms were then set up: in Africa, Gaiseric’s kingdom of the Vandals; in Spain and in Gaul as far as the Loire, the Visigothic kingdom; and farther to the north, the kingdoms of the Salian Franks and the Alemanni. The barbarians were everywhere a small minority. They established themselves on the great estates and divided the land to the benefit of the federates without doing much harm to the lower classes or disturbing the economy. The old inhabitants lived under Roman law, while the barbarians kept their own “personality of laws,” of which the best-known is the judicial composition, the Wergild. Romans and barbarians coexisted but uneasily. Among the obstacles to reconciliation were differences in mores; social and political institutions (personal monarchies, fidelity of man to man); language, although Latin was still used in administration; and above all religion: the Arianism of the barbarians permitted the Roman Catholic bishops to retain their hold over their flocks. The only persecution, however, was under the Vandals, whose domination was the harshest.

Two great kingdoms marked the end of the 5th century. In Gaul, Clovis, the king of the Salian Franks (reigned 481/482–511), expelled Syagrius, the last Roman, from Soissons, took Alsace and the Palatinate from the Alemanni (496), and killed Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, at Vouillé (507). His conversion to Catholicism assured him the support of the bishops, and Frankish domination was established in Gaul. At the same time, Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, reigned in Italy. He had been charged by the emperor Zeno to take back Italy from Odoacer in 488, and in 494 he had himself proclaimed king at Ravenna. His Goths, few in number, were established in the north; elsewhere he preserved the old imperial administration, with senators as prefects. Externally, he kept Clovis from reaching the Mediterranean and extended his state up to the valley of the Rhône. Theodoric died in 526. Ten years later Justinian charged his general Belisarius with the reconquest of Italy, a costly, devastating, and temporary operation that lasted from 535 to 540. Analysis of the decline and fall

The causes of the fall of the empire have been sought in a great many directions and with a great deal of interest, even urgency, among historians of the West; for it has been natural for them to see or seek parallels between Rome’s fate and that of their own times. In any choice of explanations there is likely to be a hidden sense of priorities determining the definition of “civilization,” or specifically the civilization of “Rome” or of “the classical world.” If, for example, classical civilization is identified with the literature of the ancients at what one conceives to be its best, then “the end” of this civilization has to be set at some point of decline and explanations for its coming to be sought in the preexisting conditions; or if not on literature but on political domination, then some other point in time must be chosen and explained in terms of what seems to have led up to it. There have been endless variations on this search, and there will continue to be more, no doubt, since it is agreed that literature did, in fact, diminish in quality, as did jurisprudence, although at a different date, and oratory, and vigorous political debate in the capital, and powerfully innovative philosophy, and sculpture, and civic patriotism, and the willingness to die for one’s country. “Civilization” turns out to be not one single entity but a web of many strands, each of its own length.

Perhaps the view attracting the most adherents, however, has focused on the ability of the empire to maintain its political and military integrity—that being the strand apparently most central and significant—and the juncture at which that ability is most dramatically challenged and found wanting—the period of “the barbarian invasions,” meaning 407 and roughly the ensuing decade. If this juncture in turn is examined and the antecedents of the empire’s weakness sought in internal developments, they can only be found in the government. Belief in and obedience to the monarch was not lacking, nor military technology at least matching that of the invaders, nor a population large enough to field a large force, nor the force itself (on paper, at least), nor the economic potential adequate to the arming of it. Particular defeats described by contemporaries in reasonable detail are almost uniformly attributable to the rottenness of government as described above, rendering soldiers undisciplined, untrained, frequently on indefinite leave, and without good morale or proper equipment. Soldiers were unpaid because of various abuses in the collection and delivery of supplies and money from taxpayers, and they were distracted from their proper duties by their own and their officers’ extortionate habits in contact with their civilian hosts. For the same basic reason—that is, abuse of power wielded through service in the army or bureaucracy—the administration of the cities no longer enjoyed the efforts of the urban elites, who by 407 had long since fled from active service to some exempt government post or title. For the same reason, finally, corrective measures needed against these systemic weaknesses could not be developed by enlightened men at the centre because they were screened from the truth of things, were at the mercy of incompetent or venal agents, or were unable to maintain themselves in power against the plotters around them. The details of all these charges that can be made against late Roman government are writ large in the great collection of imperial edicts published in 438, the Theodosian Code, as well as in the works of roughly contemporary writers from East and West, such as Synesius, Augustine, Libanius, Themistius, Chrysostom, Symmachus, Bishop Maximus of Turin, and, above all, Ammianus Marcellinus. An empire that could not deliver to a point of need all the defensive force it still possessed could not well stand against the enemy outside. Paul Petit Ramsay MacMullen

Citation Information

Article Title: Ancient Rome

Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Date Published: 02 August 2019

URL: https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Rome

Access Date: August 25, 2019

Additional Reading General works

A wealth of information on ancient Roman civilization is provided by the volumes in The Cambridge Ancient History (1923– ), some in newer 2nd and 3rd editions; by N.G.L. Hammond and H.H. Scullard (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1970, reprinted 1984); and by John Boardman, Jasper Griffin, and Oswyn Murray (eds.), The Oxford History of the Classical World (1986). Michael Grant and Rachel Kitzinger (eds.), Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome, 3 vol. (1988), discusses the geography, inhabitants, arts, language, religion, politics, technology, and economy of the area from the early 1st millennium bc to the late 5th century ad. Broad coverage of the physical and cultural settings and of archaeological discoveries is also provided by Tim Cornell and John Matthews, Atlas of the Roman World (1982); and Nicholas G.L. Hammond (ed.), Atlas of the Greek and Roman World in Antiquity (1981). Overviews of the histories of Roman civilization include M. Cary and H.H. Scullard, A History of Rome Down to the Reign of Constantine, 3rd ed. (1975); and Michael Vickers, The Roman World (1977, reissued 1989). Many ancient historical sources are available in The Loeb Classical Library series, with original text and parallel English translation; in the series Translated Documents of Greece and Rome; and in Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold (eds.), Roman Civilization: Selected Readings, 3rd ed., 2 vol. (1990). Emily D. Townsend Vermeule Simon Hornblower John Ferguson Nancy Thomson de Grummond Gary Edward Forsythe Richard P. Saller Ramsay MacMullen Rome from its origins to 264

Archaeological evidence on early Rome is discussed and analyzed by Raymond Bloch, The Origins of Rome, rev. ed. (1963; originally published in French, 1946); T.J. Cornell, “Rome and Latium Vetus,” Archaeological Reports, 26:71–88 (1979–80); and Robert Drews, “The Coming of the City to Central Italy,” American Journal of Ancient History, 6:133–165 (1981). The archaeology of early Italy in general is covered in David Trump, Central and Southern Italy Before Rome (1966). Livy’s work on early Rome is carefully annotated and commented on in part by R.M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy, Books 1–5 (1965, reissued 1984). A good survey of Livy’s annalistic predecessors is E. Badian, “The Early Historians,” in T.A. Dorey (ed.), Latin Historians (1966), pp. 1–38. The single best modern treatment of the regal period and the early republic is Jacques Heurgon, The Rise of Rome to 264 B.C. (1973; originally published in French, 1969). A complete chronological listing of all known magistrates of the Roman Republic with full ancient citations can be found in T. Robert S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, 2 vol. and a supplement (1951–60, reprinted 1984–86). A collection and modern analysis of ancient sources concerning Rome’s economic development is Tenney Frank (ed.), An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, 6 vol. (1933–40, reprinted 1975). The legal evidence from early Rome is treated by Alan Watson, Rome of the XII Tables: Persons and Property (1975).

The evolution of Rome’s foundation myth is discussed by E.J. Bickerman, “Origines Gentium,” Classical Philology, 47(2):65–81 (April 1952). Bickerman treats a number of important methodological questions on early Rome in “Some Reflections on Early Roman History,” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica, 97:393–408 (1969). Richard I. Ridley, “Fastenkritik: A Stocktaking,” Athenaeum, 58(3–4):264–298 (1980), surveys various modern views on the reliability of the consular fasti. The single best treatment of the Roman ruling class is Matthias Gelzer, The Roman Nobility (1969; originally published in German, 1912). The Roman assemblies and voting procedures are thoroughly examined by George Willis Botsford, The Roman Assemblies from Their Origin to the End of the Republic (1909, reprinted 1968); and Lily Ross Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies from the Hannibalic War to the Dictatorship of Caesar (1966). Taylor has also carefully studied the origin and development of the 35 urban and rural voting tribes in The Voting Districts of the Roman Republic (1960). E. Stuart Staveley, “Forschungsbericht: The Constitution of the Roman Republic 1940–1954,” Historia, 5:74–122 (1956), surveys modern scholarship on a number of important constitutional problems of early Roman history. Staveley has discussed the problem of the distinction between patricians and plebians in “The Nature and Aims of the Patriciate,” Historia, 32:24–57 (1983). A collection of essays by different scholars addressing this same problem is Kurt A. Raaflaub (ed.), Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders (1986), which contains an excellent bibliography on early Rome. A detailed and novel approach to the problem of patricians and plebeians is Richard E. Mitchell, Patricians and Plebeians: The Origin of the Roman State (1990). The single best treatment of the military tribunes with consular power and related questions is Kurt von Fritz, “The Reorganization of the Roman Government in 366 B.C. and the So-called Licinio-Sextian Laws,” Historia, 1:3–44 (1950).

The best modern discussion of Roman imperialism is William V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327–70 B.C. (1979). Harris’ Rome in Etruria and Umbria (1971), examines Rome’s relations with those two regions. Other informative works on Roman expansion include R.M. Errington, The Dawn of Empire: Rome’s Rise to World Power (1971); Erich S. Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, 2 vol. (1984); and E. Badian, Foreign Clientelae, 264–70 B.C. (1958). E.T. Salmon, Roman Colonization Under the Republic (1969), surveys the methods, aims, and consequences of Roman colonization. Gary Edward Forsythe The middle republic (264–133 bc)

H.H. Scullard, A History of the Roman World: 753–146 BC, 4th ed. (1980), provides a reliable narrative. Gaetano de Sanctis, Storia dei Romani, 4 vol. (1907–65), is more detailed. The standard reference work on Polybius is F.W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, 3 vol. (1957–79). On the wars with Carthage, Ulrich Kahrstedt, Geschichte der Karthager von 218–146 (1913, reprinted 1975), provides source criticism. Military aspects of this period are presented in Johannes Kromayer and Georg Veith, Antike Schlachtfelder, vol. 3 in 2 parts (1912); Johannes Kromayer and Georg Veith (eds.), Schlachten-Atlas zur antiken Kriegsgeschichte, 5 parts (1922–29); J.H. Thiel, A History of Roman Sea-power Before the Second Punic War (1954), and Studies on the History of Roman Sea-power in Republican Times (1946); J.F. Lazenby, Hannibal’s War: A Military History of the Second Punic War (1978); and H.H. Scullard, Scipio Africanus: Soldier and Politician (1970). Stéphane Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l’Afrique du Nord, 3rd ed., 8 vol. (1928); and B.H. Warmington, Carthage, rev. ed. (1969), deal with Carthage. Works on the provinces include David Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor to the End of the Third Century After Christ, 2 vol. (1950, reissued 1988); G.H. Stevenson, Roman Provincial Administration till the Age of the Antonines (1939, reprinted 1975); and C.H.V. Sutherland, The Romans in Spain, 217 B.C.–A.D. 117 (1939, reprinted 1982). The transformation of Rome and Italy during the middle republic

Citizenship, constitution, and politics are discussed in Theodor Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, 3rd ed., 3 vol. in 5 (1887–88, reprinted 1969); A.N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship, 2nd ed. (1973, reissued 1987); and C. Nicolet, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome (1980; originally published in French, 1976). Arnold J. Toynbee, Hannibal’s Legacy: The Hannibalic War’s Effects on Roman Life, 2 vols. (1965); P.A. Brunt, Italian Manpower, 225 B.C.–A.D. 14 (1971, reprinted 1987); and Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (1977), explore the social and economic consequences of Rome’s victories. P.A. Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (1971, reissued 1986), presents an excellent brief account. Many important aspects of second-century politics and culture are covered in Alan E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus (1967). The late republic (133–31 bc)

The best outline in English for the late republic is the first half of H.H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero, 5th ed. (1982), with excellent notes and bibliography. The classic reference work is W. Drumann, Geschichte Roms in seinem Übergange von der republikanischen zur monarchischen Verfassung, 2nd ed. edited by P. Groebe, 6 vol. (1899–1929), giving biographies (with full source material) of all prominent figures of the period, arranged by families. Classic interpretations of the fall of the republic are Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (1939, reissued 1987); P.A. Brunt, The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays (1988); Lily Ross Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (1949, reissued 1975); Erich S. Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (1974); and Matthias Gelzer, Caesar: Politician and Statesman (1968; originally published in German, 1940). The army and expansion are analyzed in Emilio Gabba, Republican Rome, the Army, and the Allies (1976; originally published in Italian, 1973); and E. Badian, Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic, 2nd ed. (1968). Aspects of public and social life are dealt with in T.P. Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate, 139 B.C.–A.D. 14 (1971); Israël Shatzman, Senatorial Wealth and Roman Politics (1975); Susan Treggiari, Roman Freedmen During the Late Republic (1969); A.W. Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome (1968); and E. Badian, Publicans and Sinners: Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic (1972, reissued 1983). On cultural development, the standard work is Elizabeth Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (1985); it may be supplemented by J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (1979); Bruce W. Frier, The Rise of the Roman Jurists (1985); and George Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 300 B.C.–A.D. 300 (1972). Richard P. Saller The early Roman Empire (31 bc–ad 193)

Colin Wells, The Roman Empire (1984), is an intelligent short history up through the Severi. The history is carried further by Michael Grant, The Climax of Rome: The Final Achievements of the Ancient World, A.D. 161–337 (1968). Donald Earl, The Age of Augustus (1968, reissued 1980), is useful in providing a little more depth. As to governmental institutions, Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World, 31 BC–AD 337 (1977), offers a monumentally detailed study of the ruler in his capacity as civil governor up through Constantine; and Richard J.A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (1984), describes the role and actions of the ruler’s partner. On provincial government, as well as much else, Fergus Millar (ed.), The Roman Empire and Its Neighbours, 2nd ed. (1981; originally published in German, 1966), is informative and readable. Commentary on the economy is supplied by Kevin Greene, The Archaeology of the Roman Economy (1986). Géza Alföldy, The Social History of Rome (1985), on the structure of society; and Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (1974), on the feelings uniting or dividing groups or strata, are complementary works. Provincial history broadly interpreted may be sampled in Sheppard Frere, Britannia: A History of Roman Britain, 3rd ed. rev. (1987); Paul MacKendrick, The North African Stones Speak (1980); and A.H.M. Jones, The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (1940, reissued 1979), still useful, since archaeology has little touched the eastern end of the Mediterranean world. Bernard Andreae, The Art of Rome (1977; originally published in German, 1973), a large, luxuriously illustrated work with an equally rich scholarly text; and Niels Hannestad, Roman Art and Imperial Policy (1986; originally published in Danish, 1976), deal with their material in quite different ways: the former is conventionally art-historical, the latter uses his material to illuminate its context. Architecture is best approached through W.L. MacDonald, The Architecture of the Roman Empire, rev. ed., 2 vol. (1982–86), a well-written, imaginative account; and through such specialized studies as John Percival, The Roman Villa: An Historical Introduction (1976, reissued 1988). Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby (eds.), A History of Private Life, vol. 1, From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, ed. by Paul Veyne (1987; originally published in French, 1985), is a social history in an old-fashioned sense by a master of the most up-to-date approaches. The importance of emperor worship is well argued in the detailed work by Duncan Fishwick, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West, vol. 1 in 2 vol. (1987); and, with more interpretation and for the other half of the empire, by S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (1984). Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (1981), provides a comprehensive view. Military history is made accessible through G.R. Watson, The Roman Soldier (1969, reissued 1985). An explication of a major aspect of culture may be found in the latter half of a work by a notable historian, H.I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (1956, reprinted 1982; originally published in French, 1948). Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature (1966; originally published in German, 2nd ed., 1963), may be paired with H.J. Rose, A Handbook of Latin Literature, from the Earliest Times to the Death of St. Augustine, 3rd ed. (1966); and with the more elegant study by Gordon Williams, Change and Decline: Roman Literature in the Early Empire (1978). On the church, W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (1984), is readable and comprehensive up through the 6th century. The later Roman Empire

André Piganiol, L’Empire chrétien (325–395), 2nd ed. updated by André Chastagnol (1972), offers an exceptionally rich and informative narrative among modern works. Diana Bowder, The Age of Constantine and Julian (1978), is good on those two reigns. A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey, 2 vol. (1964, reprinted 1986), is extraordinarily clear and detailed on these topics. On a major development, monasticism, Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism Under the Christian Empire (1966, reissued 1977), is highly readable. Ramsay MacMullen, Corruption and the Decline of Rome (1988), includes an up-to-date survey of evidence for decline, and also argues a thesis. Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths (1988; originally published in German, 2nd ed., 1980), is a superb study of a crucial player in the 4th to 6th centuries. Walter Goffart, Barbarians and Romans, A.D. 418–584: The Techniques of Accommodation (1980), carries the account further. Ramsay MacMullen