http://www.servantofmessiah.org THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE http://www.servantofmessiah.org THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE James W. Ermatinger Greenwood Guides to Historic Events of the Ancient World Bella Vivante, Series Editor GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London http://www.servantofmessiah.org Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ermatinger, James William, 1959– The decline and fall of the Roman Empire / by James W. Ermatinger. p. cm.—(Greenwood guides to historic events of the ancient world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–313–32692–4 (alk. paper) 1. Rome—History—Empire, 284–476. 2. Rome—History—Germanic Invasions, 3rd–6th centuries. I. Title. II. Series. DG311.E75 2004 937'.09–dc22 2004014674 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2004 by James W. Ermatinger All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004014674 ISBN: 0–313–32692–4 First published in 2004 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321 Copyright Acknowledgment The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission for use of the following material: From Roman to Merovingian Gaul: A Reader, edited and translated by Alexander Callander Murray (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2000). Copyright © 2000 by Alexander Callander Murray. Reprinted by permission of Broadview Press. http://www.servantofmessiah.org To Angela, Michelle, and Ian http://www.servantofmessiah.org CONTENTS Series Foreword by Bella Vivante ix Preface xv Chronology of Events xvii Introduction: Historical Overview xxi Chapter 1. Late Roman Culture (250–500 C.E.) 1 Chapter 2. Society and Economics in Late Antiquity 15 Chapter 3. Religious Conflict in Christian Rome 27 Chapter 4. Enemies of Rome 41 Chapter 5. Why and When Rome Fell 55 Chapter 6. Conclusion 67 Biographies: Principal Individuals in Late Rome 75 Primary Documents Illustrating Late Rome 107 Glossary of Selected Terms 159 Notes 165 Annotated Bibliography 167 Index 183 Illustrations follow Chapter 6. http://www.servantofmessiah.org SERIES FOREWORD As a professor and scholar of the ancient Greek world, I am often asked by students and scholars of other disciplines, why study antiquity? What possible relevance could human events from two, three, or more thou- sand years ago have to our lives today? This questioning of the contin- ued validity of our historical past may be the offshoot of the forces shaping the history of the American people. Proud of forging a new na- tion out of immigrants wrenched willingly or not from their home soils, Americans have experienced a liberating headiness of separation from traditional historical demands on their social and cultural identity. The result has been a skepticism about the very validity of that historical past. Some of that skepticism is healthy and serves constructive purposes of scholarly inquiry. Questions of how, by whom, and in whose interest “his- tory” is written are valid questions pursued by contemporary historians striving to uncover the multiple forces shaping any historical event and the multilayered social consequences that result. But the current aca- demic focus on “presentism”—the concern with only recent events and a deliberate ignoring of premodern eras—betrays an extreme distortion of legitimate intellectual inquiry. This stress on the present seems to have deepened in the early years of the twenty-first century. The cybertech- nological explosions of the preceding decades seem to have propelled us into a new cultural age requiring new rules that make the past appear all the more obsolete. So again I ask, why study ancient cultures? In the past year, after it ousted that nation’s heinous regime, the United States’ occupation of Iraq has kept that nation in the forefront of the news. The land base of Iraq is ancient Mesopotamia, “the land between the rivers” of the Tigris http://www.servantofmessiah.org x Series Foreword and Euphrates, two of the four rivers in the biblical Garden of Eden (Gen. 2). Called the cradle of civilization, this area witnessed the early devel- opment of a centrally organized, hierarchical social system that utilized the new technology of writing to administer an increasingly complex state. Is there a connection between the ancient events, literature, and art coming out of this land and contemporary events? Michael Wood, in his educational video Iraq: The Cradle of Civilization, produced shortly after the 1991 Gulf War, thinks so and makes this connection explicit—be- tween the people, their way of interacting with their environment, and even the cosmological stories they create to explain and define their world. Study of the ancient world, like study of contemporary cultures other than one’s own, has more than academic or exotic value. First, study of the past seeks meaning beyond solely acquiring factual knowledge. It strives to understand the human and social dynamics that underlie any historical event and what these underlying dynamics teach us about our- selves as human beings in interaction with one another. Study of the past also encourages deeper inquiry than what appears to some as the “quaint” observation that this region of current and recent conflict could have served as a biblical ideal or as a critical marker in the development of world civilizations. In fact, these apparently quaint dimensions can serve as the hook that piques our interest into examining the past and dis- covering what it may have to say to us today. Not an end in itself, the knowledge forms the bedrock for exploring deeper meanings. Consider, for example, the following questions. What does it mean that three major world religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—de- veloped out of the ancient Mesopotamian worldview? In this view, the world, and hence its gods, were seen as being in perpetual conflict with one another and with the environment, and death was perceived as a matter of despair and desolation. What does it mean that Western forms of thinking derive from the particular intellectual revolution of archaic Greece that developed into what is called rational discourse, ultimately systematized by Aristotle in the fourth century b.c.e.? How does this thinking, now fundamental to Western discourse, shape how we see the world and ourselves, and how we interact with one another? And how does it affect our ability, or lack thereof, to communicate intelligibly with people with differently framed cultural perceptions? What, ultimately, do http://www.servantofmessiah.org Series Foreword xi we gain from being aware of the origin and development of these fun- damental features of our thinking and beliefs? In short, knowing the past is essential for knowing ourselves in the present. Without an understanding of where we came from, and the jour- ney we took to get where we are today, we cannot understand why we think or act the way we do. Nor, without an understanding of historical development, are we in a position to make the kinds of constructive changes necessary to advance as a society. Awareness of the past gives us the resources necessary to make comparisons between our contemporary world and past times. It is from those comparisons that we can assess both the advances we have made as human societies and those aspects that can still benefit from change. Hence, knowledge of the past is crucial for shaping our individual and social identities, providing us with the re- sources to make intelligent, aware, and informed decisions for the future. All ancient societies, whether significant for the evolution of Western ideas and values, or whether they developed largely separate from the cultures that more directly influenced Western civilization, such as China, have important lessons to teach us. For fundamentally they all address questions that have faced every human individual and every human society that has existed. Because ancient civilizations erected great monuments of themselves in stone, writings, and the visual arts— all enduring material evidence—we can view how these ancient cultures dealt with many of the same questions we face today. And we learn the consequences of the actions taken by people in other societies and times that, ideally, should help us as we seek solutions to contemporary issues. Thus it was that President John F. Kennedy wrote of his reliance upon Thucydides’ treatment of the devastating war between the ancient Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta (see the volume on the Peloponnesian War) in his study of exemplary figures, Profiles in Courage. This series seeks to fulfill this goal both collectively and in the indi- vidual volumes. The individual volumes examine key events, trends, and developments in world history in ancient times that are central to the secondary school and lower-level undergraduate history curriculum and that form standard topics for student research. From a vast field of po- tential subjects, these selected topics emerged after consultations with scholars, educators, and librarians. Each book in the series can be de- scribed as a “library in a book.” Each one presents a chronological time- line and an initial factual overview of its subject, three to five topical http://www.servantofmessiah.org xii Series Foreword essays that examine the subject from diverse perspectives and for its var- ious consequences, a concluding essay providing current perspectives on the event, biographies of key players, a selection of primary documents, illustrations, a glossary, and an index. The concept of the series is to pro- vide ready-reference materials that include a quick, in-depth examina- tion of the topic and insightful guidelines for interpretive analysis, suitable for student research and designed to stimulate critical thinking.