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> What caused the collapse of the Roman Empire? More than 200 explanations have been proposed, but there is no consensus about which explanations are plausible

> What caused the collapse of the Roman Empire? More than 200 explanations have been proposed, but there is no consensus about which explanations are plausible and which should be rejected. This situation is as risible as if, in physics, phlogiston theory and thermodynamics coexisted on equal terms. (From the linked page https://www.nature.com/articles/454034a https://www.nature.com/articles/454034a). Multiple problems here. My understanding (as a pretty-well-read-for-an-amateur in the subject) is that this claim is overstated. Most historians today seem to agree that - Rome had long since stopped being the capital city of the Empire. It wasn't even the most important city in Italy in the Late Empire. - Romans at the time wouldn't have known about a "fall." It had been a long time since Italians ruled the empire. The empire simply passed from rule by Romanized-non-Italians to foreign conquerors. - The Roman empire didn't fall, it moved; it persisted in the East until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The Emperor in Constantinople would have called himself 'Roman' for those 1000 years, and the term 'Byzantine' is a later invention. - There were lots of contributing factors to the fall of the Western Empire that worked together. Some of these were external (migrations of the German tribes, invasions), some of these were internal (cultural divergence between East and West). There is some debate about the relative importance of these different factors. The question can't be answered not just because the answer itself is complicated, it's because the meaning to the question is ambiguous in a way that the questions answered by thermodynamics are not. For related, more specific questions, we actually do have consensus on the answer. It's also cherry-picking one example. There are lots of cases of historians coming to a better understanding of an event over time, and concluding earlier explanations of the event are incorrect. While I can see why it would be good to have a "science of history," we've proven largely unable to do this in much simpler areas. Analytics applied to the game of baseball, a game where we have complete information about everything that happens today, including where people are standing on the field and the ball's spin rate, has only recently gotten to the point where there's a quantitative science around it. Human history is a lot more complex than baseball.

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
> Romans at the time wouldn't have known about a "fall." The sack of Rome in 410 came as a giant shock to the Roman world, and led to debate among Romans about the cause of the crisis of the Empire. Augustine's "City of God" was written to defend Christianity from the accusation that it was the cause of Rome's decline. The Western Roman Empire did not disappear overnight after the sack of Rome, but that was clearly a sign that the Empire was badly weakened. By the late 5th Century, the Western Roman Empire had been completely taken over and divided up by rather barbarous Germans, and it would have been obvious to any Roman that the Empire was extinct in the West. The idea of a "transformation" of the Roman Empire in the West, as opposed to a collapse, really isn't tenable, in my opinion. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_God
- jkingsbery 6y ago
  It's a good point, the sack of Rome would have been a big moment. My point is that marking the end of the Roman Empire with the fall of Romulus Augustlus is an artificial crutch used by historians - from what I've read, most historians agree to this point. While Rome had been overrun by Germans by the end of the 5th century, de facto it had been ruled by Germans for a long while before then (even if none were called "king" or "emperor."). And even after the Germans controlled it, up through the reign of Justinian there was an off-again-on-again relationship in which the Eastern emperor played a role in who controlled Italy. Your "typical" Roman (whether that's a Roman on the street or a Roman in the Senate) would have seen a slow decay, but wouldn't have looked at any one particular event and said "Well, I guess that means the Roman Empire is done, let's move on to the Middle Ages!" This all speaks to how the question of "How did Rome fall?" is underspecified, because how you answer the question depends on what you mean by the question.
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    I completely agree that marking the end of the Roman Empire with the fall of Romulus Augustulus in 476 is not very meaningful. But there was a definite collapse of Roman civilization in the West, with a highly urbanized society with a sophisticated economy and an elaborate tax system funding public goods (infrastructure, the legal system, security) and a fair level of literacy being replaced by a largely de-urbanized, almost completely illiterate, and in many places de-monetized society. The collapse didn't happen instantly or at the same time everywhere, but it did take place roughly during the 5th Century, and would have been noticed by people who lived at the time. They might not have known right away that things would be different forever, but there were definite events along the way - the sack of Rome in 410, the failure of Majorian's attempts to reconquer critical territories of the Western Empire, and others. I mostly feel that there's been a trend in historiography to over-emphasize continuity, with the theory of the "transformation of the Roman Empire." It looks much less like a "transformation" of the Empire from one state into another, and much more like a civilizational collapse. I agree that why this collapse occurred is difficult to answer, but I find the argument that it didn't occur unconvincing.
mci 6y ago
My dream is a book/blog explaining historic processes with Ishikawa cause-and-effect fishbone diagrams[0]. For history, the main branches of the fishbone could be: Military, Economy, Society, Politics, and Nature. So a tentative diagram explaining the fall of the Western Roman Empire would have: * Military: weakened army (increasing dependence on mercenaries), fights with the Germanic tribes (in turn, caused by the expansion of the Huns). * Economy: inflation (debasement of currency), decline in the influx of slaves (end of expansion), lost taxation from some provinces (Germanic invasions), decline in maritime trade (Vandalic pirates), decline of agriculture (excessive taxes), drain of money (trade deficit with the Eastern Empire). * Society: decline of civic virtue (expansion of Christianity), loss of ties with Rome in the provinces. * Politics: political instability, overly powerful Praetorian Guard. * Nature: population decline (Antonine Plague, Plague of Cyprian), soil erosion (deforestation, excessive grazing, soil salinization). Improving the diagram and making similar diagrams explaining other events and processes is left as an exercise to the reader. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

> Romans at the time wouldn't have known about a "fall." The sack of Rome in 410 came as a giant shock to the Roman world, and led to debate among Romans about the cause of the crisis of the Empire. Augustine's "City of God" was written to defend Christianity from the accusation that it was the cause of Rome's decline. The Western Roman Empire did not disappear overnight after the sack of Rome, but that was clearly a sign that the Empire was badly weakened. By the late 5th Century, the Western Roman Empire had been completely taken over and divided up by rather barbarous Germans, and it would have been obvious to any Roman that the Empire was extinct in the West. The idea of a "transformation" of the Roman Empire in the West, as opposed to a collapse, really isn't tenable, in my opinion. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_of_God

jkingsbery 6y ago
It's a good point, the sack of Rome would have been a big moment. My point is that marking the end of the Roman Empire with the fall of Romulus Augustlus is an artificial crutch used by historians - from what I've read, most historians agree to this point. While Rome had been overrun by Germans by the end of the 5th century, de facto it had been ruled by Germans for a long while before then (even if none were called "king" or "emperor."). And even after the Germans controlled it, up through the reign of Justinian there was an off-again-on-again relationship in which the Eastern emperor played a role in who controlled Italy. Your "typical" Roman (whether that's a Roman on the street or a Roman in the Senate) would have seen a slow decay, but wouldn't have looked at any one particular event and said "Well, I guess that means the Roman Empire is done, let's move on to the Middle Ages!" This all speaks to how the question of "How did Rome fall?" is underspecified, because how you answer the question depends on what you mean by the question.
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  I completely agree that marking the end of the Roman Empire with the fall of Romulus Augustulus in 476 is not very meaningful. But there was a definite collapse of Roman civilization in the West, with a highly urbanized society with a sophisticated economy and an elaborate tax system funding public goods (infrastructure, the legal system, security) and a fair level of literacy being replaced by a largely de-urbanized, almost completely illiterate, and in many places de-monetized society. The collapse didn't happen instantly or at the same time everywhere, but it did take place roughly during the 5th Century, and would have been noticed by people who lived at the time. They might not have known right away that things would be different forever, but there were definite events along the way - the sack of Rome in 410, the failure of Majorian's attempts to reconquer critical territories of the Western Empire, and others. I mostly feel that there's been a trend in historiography to over-emphasize continuity, with the theory of the "transformation of the Roman Empire." It looks much less like a "transformation" of the Empire from one state into another, and much more like a civilizational collapse. I agree that why this collapse occurred is difficult to answer, but I find the argument that it didn't occur unconvincing.

mci 6y ago

My dream is a book/blog explaining historic processes with Ishikawa cause-and-effect fishbone diagrams[0]. For history, the main branches of the fishbone could be: Military, Economy, Society, Politics, and Nature. So a tentative diagram explaining the fall of the Western Roman Empire would have: * Military: weakened army (increasing dependence on mercenaries), fights with the Germanic tribes (in turn, caused by the expansion of the Huns). * Economy: inflation (debasement of currency), decline in the influx of slaves (end of expansion), lost taxation from some provinces (Germanic invasions), decline in maritime trade (Vandalic pirates), decline of agriculture (excessive taxes), drain of money (trade deficit with the Eastern Empire). * Society: decline of civic virtue (expansion of Christianity), loss of ties with Rome in the provinces. * Politics: political instability, overly powerful Praetorian Guard. * Nature: population decline (Antonine Plague, Plague of Cyprian), soil erosion (deforestation, excessive grazing, soil salinization). Improving the diagram and making similar diagrams explaining other events and processes is left as an exercise to the reader. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram