4 ms·
The late Roman empire, thanks to Theodosius: The Empire at Bay: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?bi=0&bx=off&ds=30&sortby=17&sts=t&tn=theodosius+e
by pg 17y ago
The late Roman empire, thanks to Theodosius: The Empire at Bay:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?bi=0&bx=off&ds=30&sortby=17&sts=t&tn=theodosius+empire+at+bay&x=0&y=0 http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?bi=0&bx=of...
I used to have very unclear picture of the late empire. Without thinking about it too much, I bought into the pervasive idea (probably due mostly to Gibbon) that the late empire had lost its Roman mojo: that it had become barbarized (what does that mean?) and worn out (why then?). Now I have a higher opinion of the late empire. They lost largely because they faced harder problems. The empire was depopulated, partly no doubt due to epidemics, and the barbarians on the frontiers were a greater threat than they had been in the time of Augustus.
I'm only half way through the book, but it's already the best thing I've read on the period. It would be worth reading for their revisionist view of Adrianople alone.
- HistoryInAction 17y agoI'm all for revisionist views of Adrianople. My best impression currently is that the ongoing schism between east and west led to bad miscommunications and the eastern emperor rushing ahead into a flanking ambush that resulted in the near-destruction of the western army of the Eastern Empire. With the late-late empire, I believe that doom came from the fall of the Libyan breadbasket to the Vandals, though that doesn't explain why Egypt (East but still Roman) couldn't provide food to Roman Italy, since it was yet to fall for another 200 years... Let's see what this book tells me... thanks for the link. The biggest question I have re: the Roman fall is how did the East stay stable while the West collapsed, though I'm also interested in the process by which a single Patriarchy in Rome managed to gain temporal authority while the Patriarchates in Constantinople, Alexandria, and Jerusalem remained bound to separate political organizations.
- eugenejen 17y agoIn "Mohammed and Charlemagne" by Henri Pirenne, the whole Mediterranean region after collapse of the Roman empire still enjoyed prosperity. The economy went down after trades in Mediterranean sea decreased due to Muslim Arabs had taken control the area.
- pg 17y agoIt's a great book, but the Pirenne thesis has since been pretty thoroughly debunked.
- bokonist 17y agoPeter Heather recently wrote a very similar history which I found to be very good: http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Roman-Empire-History-Barbarians/dp/0195159543 http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Roman-Empire-History-Barbarians/d... Heather argues that the Roman empire was still internally healthy, but that increasing pressure from the Persians and the European tribes eventually overwhelmed the empire. Archaeological evidence indicates that the population densities of the barbarian regions may have increased by a factor of two or three since the early days of the empire. The population was larger and more sophisticated, and thus harder to handle. But just this year Adrian Goldsworthy has written a book countering the new revisionist view that Heather and Williams present ( http://www.amazon.com/How-Rome-Fell-Death-Superpower/dp/0300137192/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3ANQZITBNHHWQ&colid=CGPD7EZVFNE6 http://www.amazon.com/How-Rome-Fell-Death-Superpower/dp/0300... ). Goldsworthy argues that the barbarian threat really wasn't that much greater, and that the empire collapsed from within, due to civil war and political strife. I haven't read Goldsworthy's book yet, but it's on my list.