March/April 2006 • Historically Speaking 31 AN INTERVIEW WITH BRYAN WARD-PERKINS ON THE FALL OF ROME Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa “AT THE HOUR OF MIDNIGHT THE SALERIAN GATE WAS ship has drastically transformed the subject that fascinated stu- silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the dents of history for centuries, and Oxford historian Bryan Ward- tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and Perkins fears that something important is being lost. Historically sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, Speaking editor Donald Yerxa asked Ward-Perkins to speak to which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of some of his concerns, developed more fully in Ward-Perkins’s mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford University Germany and Scythia.” The emotion and drama that flowed so Press, 2005), winner of the 2006 Hessell-Tiltman Prize for eloquently from Edward Gibbons’s pen has been largely drained History. from our contemporary historical imagination. Recent scholar- Donald Yerxa: In your book you mention through to the 8th century and even beyond. that there has been a “sea change in the lan- This periodization, which is now widely fol- guage used to describe post-Roman times.” lowed, deliberately ignores the 5th-century How has the language changed? collapse of Roman power in the West and the 7th-century loss of most of the Eastern (or Bryan Ward-Perkins: There has been a very Byzantine) Empire to the Arabs, events that strong tendency recently—particularly, but conventionally were seen as heralding “dark not exclusively, among scholars working in ages” in both areas. Rather than viewing the the U.S—to play down any unpleasantness at 5th to 7th centuries as a time of crisis and rup- the end of the Roman Empire and any nega- ture, historians of “Late Antiquity” see it as a tive effects of the end of Roman power. Until period of continuous cultural growth. quite recently scholars were happy that the settlement of the Germanic peoples in the 5th- Yerxa: In what ways do you believe that the century West was the result of violent invasion current view is flawed? and viewed the next few centuries as a “Dark Age” marked by the collapse of Roman civi- Ward-Perkins: The 5th century is portrayed lization. Currently the use of such negative as a time of peaceful accommodation. It is true language is seen as very old-fashioned: that the Germanic invaders wanted reasonable “decline,” “crisis,” and “Dark Age” have dis- relations with their Roman subjects (who were appeared from the titles of academic books, always in a massive numerical majority) and conferences, and university courses. They with the remnants of independent Roman have been replaced by neutral words like power. Consequently, they were very happy to “transformation” and “transition.” For enter treaty arrangements with the empire, and instance, a recent, massive European research generally treated their own Roman subjects project on the 4th to 9th centuries A.D. was barians, and decided to let many of them into reasonably well. But the evidence is unequiv- entitled “The Transformation of the Roman the empire, in order to use them to defend it ocal that most of the empire’s territory was World,” as if Rome never really came to an against further invaders. The former poachers taken over by Germanic rulers, either by force, end, but just changed into something different became the gamekeepers. or, at best, through the threat of force. This but entirely equal. was not one of those fortunate periods in Yerxa: How has the new periodization which to be alive. Yerxa: What has happened to the Roman scheme of “Late Antiquity” changed histo- Empire’s dissolution by “hostile ‘waves’ of rians’ thinking about the fall of Rome? Yerxa: You contend that treatments of the Germanic peoples,” dare I say “barbar- cultural accommodation between invader ians”? Ward-Perkins: A groundbreaking book pub- and invaded often read like accounts of “a lished in 1971, Peter Brown’s The World of tea party at a Roman vicarage.” Ward-Perkins: Nowadays, what was once Late Antiquity, identified a cultural period seen as invasion is often interpreted as a (characterized primarily by the rise of two Ward-Perkins: While Germanic invaders and process of “accommodation,” entered into new monotheistic religions, Christianity and native Roman could sit down together and willingly by Roman hosts. The argument runs Islam, and the codification of a third, coexist, much recent scholarship makes the that the Romans got tired of fighting the bar- Judaism), stretching from the 3rd century right whole process far too genteel, as if the new 32 Historically Speaking • March/April 2006 settlers knocked politely at the door and were the later 6th- and 7th-century West, in places reconstruct with considerable accuracy chang- shown to an empty chair. The reality is that the like Rome and Visigothic Spain, are tiny in ing patterns of production, distribution, and invaders seized most of the power and much comparison to those of the 4th century or of consumption of pottery vessels. The picture of the land of the empire. Roman landed fam- the later Middle Ages. that emerges shows that in the Roman period ilies remained, and many Romans rose high in I also believe—and this seems obvious potting was highly sophisticated, and that the service of the new masters. But the from modern experience—that sophistication good-quality pots reached deep into society. It unavoidable truth is that by the end of the 5th in intellectual life generally requires solid eco- was, for instance, quite usual for a 3rd-centu- century an entirely new Germanic aristocracy nomic underpinning. In my book I attempt to ry peasant in upland central Italy to eat off a had been established, whose raison d’être was show this by focusing on the evidence of graf- fine pottery bowl manufactured in North its military might. This establishment was Africa. Virtually all this remarkable sophisti- achieved by the dispossession on a massive cation disappeared in the post-Roman period. scale of Roman landowners. Other products do not survive as well in the soil as potsherds or cannot be attributed Yerxa: Is there evidence that a civilization with such confidence to particular places or collapsed when Rome fell? centuries of manufacture. But it is, I believe, obvious that the picture provided by pottery— Ward-Perkins: This is an area where histori- of Roman sophistication, followed by almost ans seem to be decidedly myopic. In looking total collapse—can be extended to other closely at their texts, they have failed to notice goods, where the evidence survives much less that in every single area of the empire (except well, such as textiles, metal tools, and special- perhaps the Levantine provinces conquered by ized food products. Pottery offers a detailed the Arabs) there was an extraordinary fall in snapshot of the wider economy. what archaeologists term “material culture.” The scale and quality of buildings, even of Yerxa: What is fueling the revisionist views churches, shrank dramatically—so that, for of the Late Antiquity school? instance, tiled roofs, which were common in Roman times even in a peasant context, Ward-Perkins: There are probably a number became a great rarity and luxury. In the 6th- of different forces at work. Scholarship does and 7th-century West the vast majority of peo- tend to progress by a process of revision and ple lived in tiny houses with beaten earth counter-revision. It was probably time that floors, drafty wooden walls, and insect-infest- gloomy views of the end of Rome were tested; ed thatch roofs; whereas, in Roman times, and now, perhaps, it is time to return to them. people from the same level of society might This game of scholarly Ping-Pong might seem well have enjoyed the comfort of solid brick a little pointless, but I don’t think so, because View of Rome’s skyline near the Tiber River, ca. or stone floors, mortared walls, and tiled 1900. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs each time the ball is lobbed back over the net roofs. This was a change that affected not only Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-123704]. it lands in a slightly different place and has the aristocracy, but also huge numbers of peo- always acquired some of its flight from the ple in the middling and lower levels of socie- preceding debate. For instance, although I ty who in Roman times had had ready access fiti (which were very common in Roman could be termed a counter-revisionist (or a to high-quality goods. times, but virtually disappeared thereafter) in “neo-con” as one reviewer put it), I have no order to demonstrate that basic intellectual problem in recognizing that Late Antiquity has Yerxa: You discuss evidence from graffiti, skills—reading and writing—suffered as dra- opened up an extraordinarily fertile field of coins, roof tiles, and especially pottery, matic a downturn with the fall of Rome as did debate, and that, without it, my own thinking whereas scholars from the Late Antiquity the availability of high-quality material goods. would never have gone in the directions it has. school point to religious texts. Why is it A central underlying reason for the current important to pay attention to material cul- Yerxa: Why is Roman pottery such a revisionist view must be the fact that both ture and economic history? revealing source? “empires” and “civilizations” have gone out of fashion, undermining earlier assumptions that Ward-Perkins: However elevated our Ward-Perkins: The study of pottery isn’t to the Roman Empire was a high point of “civi- thoughts, we all live in a sophisticated materi- everybody’s taste, but (as a couple of review- lization.” In the modern postcolonial world al world, supported by a complex economy, ers have independently said of my book) it the very concept of “civilizations” has virtual- and we all enjoy the convenience and comfort reveals “surprisingly interesting” results.