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For casual readers unfamiliar, what is happening is typical of what is happening in other corners of university history departments: less factual history and mo
by malchow 5y ago
For casual readers unfamiliar, what is happening is typical of what is happening in other corners of university history departments: less factual history and more politicized interpretive dance. Typical young classical historians reject the idea of a "fall" of Rome. That basic long-arc story is now rejected. Rome simply evolved.
Most of us read Gibbon and later popular historians, thus we are familiar with the "fall" story. The clash between academic and popular Roman history makes for a lot of articles about how you, the layman, misunderstand Rome.
In short, you don't misunderstand Rome. For a very good riposte to these arguments, see Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, Oxford University Press 2005.
- scarmig 5y agoOf course, if you bothered to read the posted article, the author takes the "decline of Rome" perspective and rejects medievalists' "change and continuity" perspective.
- malchow 5y agoWhy do you say that's a "medievalist" perspective? The "change and continuity" perspective is endemic to an array of interpretive schools.
- jcranmer 5y agoIf you had read the article, you would have learned that Devereaux contends that the "change and continuity" is promulgated primarily by historians studying the Medieval period, and not those studying Classical Antiquity.
- malchow 5y agoIt isn't promulgated primarily by historians studying the Middle Ages. It's promulgated primarily by classicists, and in truth held by the majority of academic historians, and I'm willing to believe widely by medievalists. The author shouldn't have made such a pat assignation of blame. But, erm, I was supposed to subsume his (in my view flawed) sorting argument into my thinking, and not having done so shows I didn't read the piece? How odd.
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