- published: 13 Apr 2012
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- author: crashcourse
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- Adrian Goldsworthy
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Alexandria
Alexandria (Arabic: الإسكندرية Al Iskandariyya, Coptic: Ⲣⲁⲕⲟⲧⲉ Rakotə, Greek: Αλεξάνδρεια Alexándria, Koine Greek: Ἀλεξάνδρεια ἡ κατ' Αἴγυπτον IPA: [ɑlɛˈksɑndɾiɑ e kɑt ˈɛʝypton] "Alexandria in Egypt", Egyptian Arabic: اسكندريه [eskendeˈrejːæ]) is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about 32 km (20 mi) along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving approximately 80% of Egypt's imports and exports. Alexandria is also an important tourist resort. It is home to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (the new Library of Alexandria). It is an important industrial centre because of its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez.
Alexandria was founded around a small pharaonic town c. 331 BC by Alexander the Great. It remained Egypt's capital for nearly a thousand years, until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641, when a new capital was founded at Fustat (Fustat was later absorbed into Cairo). Alexandria was known because of its Lighthouse of Alexandria (Pharos), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; its library (the largest library in the ancient world); and the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages. Ongoing maritime archaeology in the harbor of Alexandria, which began in 1994, is revealing details of Alexandria both before the arrival of Alexander, when a city named Rhacotis existed there, and during the Ptolemaic dynasty.
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Anatolia
Coordinates: 39°N 32°E / 39°N 32°E / 39; 32
Anatolia (from Greek Ἀνατολή Anatolē — "east" or "(sun)rise"; also Asia Minor, from Greek: Μικρὰ Ἀσία Mikrá Asía "small Asia"; in modern Turkish: Anadolu) is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea to the west. The Sea of Marmara forms a connection between the Black and Aegean Seas through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, and separates Anatolia from Thrace on the European mainland. Traditionally, Anatolia is considered to extend in the east to a line between the Gulf of Iskenderun and the Black Sea, approximately corresponding to the western two-thirds of the Asian part of Turkey. However, since Anatolia is now often considered to be synonymous with Asian Turkey, its eastern and southeastern borders are widely taken to be the Turkish borders with the neighboring countries, which are Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq and Syria, in clockwise direction.
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Antioch
Antioch on the Orontes (Greek: Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Ὀρόντου; or Ἀντιόχεια ἡ ἐπὶ Δάφνῃ, "Antioch on Daphne"; or Ἀντιόχεια ἡ Μεγάλη, "Antioch the Great"; Syriac: ܐܢܛܝܘܟܝܐ Anṭiokia; Hebrew: אנטיוכיה, antiyokhya; Georgian: ანტიოქია; Armenian: Անտիոք Antiok; Latin: Antiochia ad Orontem; Arabic:انطاکیه, Anṭākiya; also Syrian Antioch) was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.
Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the Near East and was a cradle of Christianity. It was one of the four cities of the Syrian tetrapolis. Its residents are known as Antiochenes. Once a great metropolis of half a million people, it declined to insignificance during the Middle Ages because of repeated earthquakes, the Crusaders' invasions, and a change in trade routes following the Mongol conquests, which then no longer passed through Antioch from the far east.
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Battle of Adrianople
The Battle of Adrianople (9 August 378), sometimes known as the Battle of Hadrianopolis, was fought between a Roman army led by the Roman Emperor Valens and Gothic rebels (largely Thervings as well as Greutungs, non-Gothic Alans, and various local rebels) led by Fritigern. The battle took place about 8 miles (13 km) north of Adrianople (modern Edirne in European Turkey, near the border with Greece and Bulgaria) in the Roman province of Thracia and ended with an overwhelming victory for the Goths.
Part of the Gothic War (376–382), the battle is often considered the start of the final collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Adrianople actually was fought between the Goths and the Eastern Roman Empire, which ultimately withstood the Gothic invasions and developed into the Byzantine Empire.
In 376 AD, displaced by the invasions of the Huns, the Goths, led by Alavivus and Fritigern, asked to be allowed to settle in the Roman Empire. Hoping that they would become farmers and soldiers, the emperor Valens allowed them to establish themselves in the Empire as allies (foederati). However, once across the Danube (and in Roman territory), the dishonesty of the provincial commanders Lupinicus and Maximus led the newcomers to revolt after suffering many hardships. Valens (of the Eastern Empire) then asked Gratian, the western emperor, for reinforcements to fight the Goths. Gratian sent the general Frigeridus with reinforcements, as well as the leader of his guards, Richomeres. For the next two years preceding the battle of Adrianople there were a series of running battles with no clear victories for either side.
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British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1922 the British Empire held sway over about 458 million people, one-fifth of the world's population at the time, and covered more than 33,700,000 km2 (13,012,000 sq mi), almost a quarter of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its political, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was often said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous territories.
During the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia. A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left England (and then, following union between England and Scotland in 1707, Great Britain) the dominant colonial power in North America and India. The loss of the Thirteen Colonies in North America in 1783 after a war of independence deprived Britain of some of its oldest and most populous colonies.
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Carthage
Carthage (Latin: Carthago or Karthago, Ancient Greek: Καρχηδών Karkhēdōn, Arabic: قرطاج Qarṭāj, Berber: ⴽⴰⵔⵜⴰⵊⴻⵏ Kartajen, Etruscan: *Carθaza, Modern Hebrew: קרתגו Qartágo, from the Phoenician Qart-ḥadašt meaning New City (Aramaic: קרתא חדאתא, Qarta Ḥdatha), implying it was a 'new Tyre', is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC. It is currently a suburb of Tunis, Tunisia, with a population of 20,715 (2004 Census).
The first civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence is referred to as Punic (a form of the word "Phoenician") or Carthaginian. The city of Carthage is located on the eastern side of Lake Tunis across from the centre of Tunis. According to Greek historians it was founded by Canaanite-speaking Phoenician colonists from Tyre (in modern Lebanon) under the leadership of Elissa who was renamed (Queen Dido) in Virgil's Aeneid. It became a large and rich city and thus a major power in the Mediterranean. The resulting rivalry with Syracuse, Numidia, and Rome was accompanied by several wars with respective invasions of each other's homeland.
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Constantinople
Constantinople (Greek: Κωνσταντινούπολις, Konstantinoúpolis; Latin: Constantinopolis; Ottoman Turkish: قسطنطینیه, Qostantiniyye; and modern Turkish: İstanbul) was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin and the Ottoman Empires. It was founded in AD 330, at ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Constantine I, after whom it was named. The city was the largest and wealthiest European city of the Middle Ages, and shared the glories of the Byzantine Empire, which was eventually reduced to the city and its environs.
Although besieged on numerous occasions by various peoples, it was taken only in 1204 by the army of the Fourth Crusade, in 1261 by Michael VIII, and in 1453 by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. An inner wall was erected by Constantine I, and the city was surrounded by a triple wall of fortifications, begun during the 5th century by Theodosius II. The city was built on seven hills as well as on the Bosporus, and thus presented an impregnable fortress enclosing magnificent palaces, domes and towers. The Church of Hagia Sophia, the sacred palace of the emperors, the hippodrome, and the Golden Gate were among the largest of the many churches, public edifices, and monuments lining the arcaded avenues and squares.
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Dalmatia
Dalmatia (Croatian: Dalmacija, Croatian pronunciation: [dǎlmaːt͡sija]; see names in other languages) is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, in Croatia. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south. The Dalmatian dog received its name from Dalmatia, as does the dalmatic, a Roman Catholic liturgical vestment worn by deacons and bishops.
The name Dalmatia derives from the name of the tribe of the Dalmatae, which is connected with the Illyrian word delme, dele in modern Albanian, meaning "sheep" in English.
In antiquity the Roman province of Dalmatia was much larger than the present-day Dalmatia County of Croatia, stretching from Istria in the north to historical Albania in the south. Dalmatia signified not only a geographical unit, but was an entity based on common culture and settlement types, a common narrow eastern Adriatic coastal belt, Mediterranean climate, sclerophyllous vegetation of the Illyrian province, Adriatic carbonate platform, and karst geomorphology.
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France
France (English
i/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] (
listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km2 (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km2 / 4,383,000 sq mi).
Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.
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Greece
Greecei/ˈɡriːs/ (Greek: Ελλάδα, Ellada, IPA: [eˈlaða] ( listen) historically in Katharevousa and Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάς, Hellas, IPA: [eˈlas] and [helːás] respectively), officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Elliniki Dimokratia, IPA: [eliniˈci ðimokraˈtia]), is a country in Southern Europe, politically considered part of Western Europe.Athens is the capital and the largest city in the country (its urban area also including Piraeus). The population of the country is around 11 million.
Greece has land borders with Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km (8,498 mi) in length, featuring a vast number of islands (approximately 1,400, of which 227 are inhabited), including Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, and the Ionian Islands among others. Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains, of which Mount Olympus is the highest at 2,917 m (9,570 ft).
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Han Empire
The Han Dynasty (simplified Chinese: 汉朝; traditional Chinese: 漢朝; pinyin: Hàn Cháo; Wade–Giles: Han Ch'ao; IPA: [xân tʂʰɑ̌ʊ̯]) (206 BCE – 220 CE) was an imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty (221–207 BCE) and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms (220–280 CE). It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty (9–23 CE) of the former regent Wang Mang. This interregnum separates the Han into two periods: the Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE) and Eastern Han (25–220 CE). Spanning over four centuries, the period of the Han Dynasty is considered a golden age in Chinese history. To this day, China's majority ethnic group refers to itself as the "Han people" and Chinese characters are referred to as "Han characters".
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Ostrogothic Kingdom
The Kingdom established by the Ostrogoths in Italy and neighbouring areas lasted from 493 to 553. In Italy the Ostrogoths replaced Odoacer, the de facto ruler of Italy who had deposed the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire in 476. The Gothic kingdom reached its zenith under the rule of its first king, Theodoric the Great. Most of the social institutions in the late Western Roman Empire were preserved during his rule. Starting in 535, the Byzantine Empire invaded Italy. The Ostrogothic ruler at that time, Witiges, could not defend successfully and was finally captured when the capital Ravenna fell. The Ostrogoths rallied around a new leader, Totila, and largely managed to reverse the conquest, but were eventually defeated. The last king of the Ostrogothic Kingdom was Teia. At its greatest extent the kingdom stretched from contemporary France in the west into modern Serbia in the southeast.
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Ravenna
Ravenna [raˈvenna] ( listen) (Romagnol: Ravêna) is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until that empire collapsed in 476. Afterwards, it served as the capital of the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths. The city formed the centre of the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna until the invasion of the Franks in 751, after which it became the seat of the Kingdom of the Lombards.
Although an inland city, Ravenna is connected to the Adriatic Sea by the Candiano Canal. It is the location of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The origin of the name Ravenna is unclear, although it is believed the name is Etruscan. Some have speculated that "ravenna" is related to "Rasenna" (later "Rasna"), the term that the Etruscans used for themselves, but there is no agreement on this point.[citation needed]
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Roman Kingdom
The Roman Kingdom (Latin: REGNVM ROMANVM) was the period of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by a monarchical form of government of the city of Rome and its territories.
Little is certain about the history of the Roman Kingdom, as nearly no written records from that time survive, and the histories about it were written during the Republic and Empire and are largely based on legend. However, the history of the Roman Kingdom began with the city's founding, traditionally dated to 753 BC with settlements around the Palatine Hill along the river Tiber in Central Italy, and ended with the overthrow of the kings and the establishment of the Republic in about 509 BC.
The site of the founding of the Roman Kingdom and eventual Republic and Empire had a ford where the Tiber could be crossed. The Palatine Hill and hills surrounding it presented easily defensible positions in the wide fertile plain surrounding them. All of these features contributed to the success of the city.
The traditional account of Roman history, which has come down to us through Livy, Plutarch, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and others, is that in Rome's first centuries it was ruled by a succession of seven kings. The traditional chronology, as codified by Varro, allots 243 years for their reigns, an average of almost 35 years, which, since the work of Barthold Georg Niebuhr, has been generally discounted by modern scholarship. The Gauls destroyed much of Rome's historical records when they sacked the city after the Battle of the Allia in 390 BC (Varronian, according to Polybius the battle occurred in 387/6) and what was left was eventually lost to time or theft. With no contemporary records of the kingdom existing, all accounts of the kings must be carefully questioned.
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Rome
Rome (/ˈroʊm/; Italian: Roma pronounced [ˈroːma] ( listen); Latin: Rōma) is a city and special comune ("Roma Capitale") in Italy. Rome is the capital of Italy and the capital of Lazio (Latin: Latium). With 2.8 million residents in 1,285.3 km2 (496.3 sq mi), it is also the country's largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. Between 3.2 and 3.7 million people live in the Rome metropolitan area. The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.
Rome's history spans two and a half thousand years. It was the capital city of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, which was the dominant power in Western Europe and the lands bordering the Mediterranean for over seven hundred years from the 1st century BC until the 7th century AD and the city is regarded as one of the birthplaces of western civilization. Since the 1st century AD Rome has been the seat of the Papacy and, after the end of Byzantine domination, in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. In 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic.
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Smyrna
Smyrna (Ancient Greek: Σμύρνη or Σμύρνα) was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey. The first site, probably founded indigenously, rose to prominence during the Archaic Period as one of the principal ancient Greek settlements in western Anatolia. The second, whose foundation is associated with Alexander the Great, reached metropolitan proportions during the period of the Roman Empire. Most of the present-day remains date from the Roman era, the majority from after a 2nd century AD earthquake.
In practical terms, a distinction is often made between Old Smyrna, the initial settlement founded around the 11th century BC, first as an Aeolian settlement, and later taken over and developed during the Archaic Period by the Ionians, and Smyrna proper, the new city moved into from the older one as of the 4th century BC and whose foundation was inspired, and perhaps also initiated, by Alexander the Great.
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Adrian Goldsworthy
Adrian Keith Goldsworthy (born 1969) is a British historian and author who specialises in ancient Roman history.
Goldsworthy attended Westbourne School, Penarth. After studying ancient and modern history at St John's College, Oxford, he completed a D.Phil in ancient military history from Oxford University in 1994, and then used his dissertation as the foundation of his first book, The Roman Army at War 100 BC – AD 200.
Goldsworthy was a Junior Research Fellow at Cardiff University for two years, and he has taught briefly at King's College London and was an assistant professor on the University of Notre Dame's London programme for six years. His expertise is in Roman history, but he also taught a course on the military history of the Second World War at Notre Dame University. Goldsworthy said that although he enjoyed teaching, he enjoyed writing more and now writes full-time.
Goldsworthy has appeared on History Channel documentaries and the television game show Time Commanders, serving as an expert on battles being fought by the contestants, and he gave a speech about Roman history and politics to the cast of a 2010 Liverpool production of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.
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Alans
The Alans, or the Alani, occasionally termed Alauni or Halani, were a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.
The various forms of Alan — Greek: Αλανοί, Αλαννοί; Chinese: 阿蘭聊 Alanliao (Pinyin) in the 2nd century, 阿蘭 Alan (Pinyin) in the 3rd century — and Iron (a self-designation of the Alans' modern Ossetian descendants, indicating early tribal self-designation) are Iranian dialectical forms of Aryan. These and other variants of Aryan (such as Iran), were common self-designations of the Indo-Iranians, the common ancestors of the Indo-Aryans and Iranian peoples to whom the Alans belonged.
The Alans were also known over the course of their history by another group of related names including the variations Asi, As, and Os (Bulgarian Uzi, Hungarian Jász, Russian Jasy, Georgian Osi). It is this name that is the root of the modern Ossetian.
<timeline> ImageSize = width:680 height:200 PlotArea = left:72 right:8 bottom:20 top:2 AlignBars = justify Define $wide = width:35
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Alaric I
Alaric I (Gothic: Alareiks; 370 - 410) was the King of the Visigoths from 395–410. Alaric is most famous for his sack of Rome in 410, which marked a decisive event in the decline of the Roman Empire.
Born c. 370 on Peuce Island at the mouth of the Danube in present day Romania, Alaric belonged to the noble Balti dynasty of the Tervingian Goths. After their setbacks against the Huns, Alaric was probably a child during the Goths mass-migration across the Danube and their subsequent war with Rome. Alaric's first appearance was as the leader of a mixed band of Goths and allied peoples who invaded Thrace in 391, who were stopped by the half-Vandal Roman General Stilicho. Later joining the Roman army, he began his career under the Gothic soldier Gainas. In 394 Alaric led a Gothic force of 20,000 that helped the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius defeat the Frankish usurper Arbogast at the Battle of Frigidus. Despite sacrificing around 10,000 of his men, Alaric received little recognition from the Emperor. Disappointed, he left the army and was elected chief of the Visigoths in 395, and marched toward Constantinople until he was diverted by Roman forces. He then moved southward into Greece, where he sacked Piraeus (the port of Athens) and destroyed Corinth, Megara, Argos, and Sparta. As a response, the Eastern emperor Flavius Arcadius appointed Alaric magister militum (“master of the soldiers”) in Illyricum.
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Alexander Demandt
Alexander Demandt (born 1937 in Marburg, Hesse) is a German historian. He was professor of ancient history at the Free University of Berlin from 1974 to 2005. Demandt is a renowned expert of the History of Rome.
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Anthemius
Procopius Anthemius (c. 420 – 11 July 472) was Western Roman Emperor from 467 to 472.
Perhaps the last capable Western Roman Emperor, Anthemius attempted to solve the two primary military challenges facing the remains of the Western Roman Empire: the resurgent Visigoths, under Euric, whose domain straddled the Pyrenees; and the unvanquished Vandals, under Geiseric, in undisputed control of North Africa. He was killed by Ricimer, his own general of German descent, who contested power with him.
Anthemius belonged to a noble family, the gens Procopia, which gave several high officers, both civil and military, to the Eastern Roman Empire. His mother Lucina,[citation needed] born c. 400,[citation needed] descended from Flavius Philippus, Praetorian prefect of the East in 346, and was the daughter of the influential Flavius Anthemius, Praetorian prefect of the East (404–415) and Consul in 405. His father was Procopius, magister militum per Orientem from 422 to 424, who was descended from the Procopius who had been a nephew of Emperor Constantine I and a usurper against the Eastern Emperor Valens (365–366).
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Apuleius
Apuleius (
/ˌæpjʉˈliːəs/; sometimes called Lucius Apuleius; c. 125 – c. 180) was a Latin prose writer. He was Numidian Berber, from Madaurus (now M'Daourouch, Algeria). He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the attentions (and fortune) of a wealthy widow. He declaimed and then distributed a witty tour de force in his own defense before the proconsul and a court of magistrates convened in Sabratha, near Tripoli. This is known as the Apologia.
His most famous work is his bawdy picaresque novel, the Metamorphoses, otherwise known as The Golden Ass. It is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. It relates the ludicrous adventures of one Lucius, who experiments with magic and is accidentally turned into a donkey.
Apuleius was born in Madaurus (now M'Daourouch, Algeria), a Roman colony in Numidia on the North African coast, bordering Gaetulia, and he described himself as "half-Numidian half-Gaetulian." Madaurus was the same colonia where Saint Augustine later received part of his early education, and, though located well away from the Romanized coast, is today the site of some pristine Roman ruins. As to his first name, no praenomen is given in any ancient source; late-medieval manuscripts began the tradition of calling him Lucius from the name of the hero of his novel. Details regarding his life come mostly from his defense speech (Apology) and his work Florida, which consists of snippets taken from some of his best speeches.
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Arbogastes
Flavius Arbogastes (died September 8, 394), or Arbogast was a Frankish general in the Roman Empire. It has been stated by some ancient historians that he was the son of Flavius Bauto, Valentinian II's former magister militum and protector before Arbogast, but modern scholars largely discount this claim.
Flavius Arbogastes, or simply Arbogast, was the nephew of the great Frankish General Flavius Richomeres and resided within the Frankish domain as a native of Galatia Minor until he was expelled in the later 370s CE. It was at this point when Arbogast joined the Roman imperial military service under the command of the emperor Gratian, son of Valentinian I and elder brother to Valentinian II, in the Western Roman Empire. Shortly after his inclusion into the Roman military, Arbogast had made a name for himself as being an extremely efficient and loyal field-commander. So much so, in fact, that in 380 CE Gratian sent Arbogast along with his magister militum Bauto to aid Theodosius I against the Goths and their leader Fritigern after they had pillaged and plundered areas of Macedonia and Thessaly that year and the year before. The Western armies, commanded by Bauto and Arbogast, and those from Theodosius I in the East, were successful in pushing Fritigern out of Macedonia and Thessaly towards Thrace in lower Moesia where their raids had begun, and ultimately established a peace treaty with the Visigoths in 382 CE.
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Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH (14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global perspective. A religious outlook permeates the Study and made it especially popular in the United States, for Toynbee rejected Greek humanism, the Enlightenment belief in humanity's essential goodness, and what he considered the "false god" of modern nationalism. Toynbee in the 1918-1950 period was a leading British consultant to the government on international affairs, especially regarding the Middle East.
Toynbee was the son of Harry Valpy Toynbee, grandson of Joseph Toynbee, and nephew of the economic historian Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883), with whom he is sometimes confused. His sister was noted archaeologist and art historian Jocelyn Toynbee.
Born in London on 14 April 1889, Arnold J. Toynbee was educated at Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford.
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Attila the Hun
Attila ( /ˈætɨlə/ or /əˈtɪlə/; ?–453), more frequently referred to as Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453. He was leader of the Hunnic Empire, which stretched from the Ural River to the Rhine River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea.
During his reign he was one of the most feared enemies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. He crossed the Danube twice and plundered the Balkans, but was unable to take Constantinople. He also attempted to conquer Roman Gaul (modern France), crossing the Rhine in 451 and marching as far as Aurelianum (Orléans) before being defeated at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.
Subsequently he invaded Italy, devastating the northern provinces, but was unable to take Rome. He planned for further campaigns against the Romans but died in 453.
There is no surviving first-person account of Attila's appearance. There is, however, a possible second-hand source, provided by Jordanes, who cites a description given by Priscus. It suggests a person of Asian features.
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Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo ( /ɒˈɡʌstɨn/ or /ˈɔːɡəstɪn/;Latin: Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; November 13, 354 – August 28, 430), also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin,St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius (present-day Annaba, Algeria). He was a Latin philosopher and theologian from Roman Africa. His writings were very influential in the development of Western Christianity.
According to his contemporary, Jerome, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith." In his early years he was heavily influenced by Manichaeism and afterward by the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. After his conversion to Christianity and baptism in AD 387, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and different perspectives. He believed that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, and he framed the concepts of original sin and just war.
When the Western Roman Empire was starting to disintegrate, Augustine developed the concept of the Catholic Church as a spiritual City of God (in a book of the same name), distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. Augustine's City of God was closely identified with the Church, the community that worshipped God.
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Augustus
Augustus ( /ɔːˈɡʌstəs/;Classical Latin: [awˈɡʊstʊs]; Latin: Imperator Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD. Born Gaius Octavius Thurinus, he was adopted posthumously by his great-uncle Gaius Julius Caesar in 44 BC via his last will and testament, and between then and 27 BC was officially named Gaius Julius Caesar. In 27 BC the Senate awarded him the honorific Augustus ("the revered one"), and thus consequently he was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus.
The young Octavius came into his inheritance after Caesar's assassination in 44 BC. In 43 BC, Octavian joined forces with Mark Antony and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus in a military dictatorship known as the Second Triumvirate. As a triumvir, Octavian ruled Rome and many of its provinces. The triumvirate was eventually torn apart under the competing ambitions of its rulers: Lepidus was driven into exile, and Antony committed suicide following his defeat at the Battle of Actium by Octavian's fleet under the command of Agrippa in 31 BC.
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Augustus Caesar
Augustus ( /ɔːˈɡʌstəs/;Classical Latin: [awˈɡʊstʊs]; Latin: Imperator Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD. Born Gaius Octavius Thurinus, he was adopted posthumously by his great-uncle Gaius Julius Caesar in 44 BC via his last will and testament, and between then and 27 BC was officially named Gaius Julius Caesar. In 27 BC the Senate awarded him the honorific Augustus ("the revered one"), and thus consequently he was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus.
The young Octavius came into his inheritance after Caesar's assassination in 44 BC. In 43 BC, Octavian joined forces with Mark Antony and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus in a military dictatorship known as the Second Triumvirate. As a triumvir, Octavian ruled Rome and many of its provinces. The triumvirate was eventually torn apart under the competing ambitions of its rulers: Lepidus was driven into exile, and Antony committed suicide following his defeat at the Battle of Actium by Octavian's fleet under the command of Agrippa in 31 BC.
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Barbarian
Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage. In idiomatic or figurative usage, a "barbarian" may also be an individual reference to a brutal, cruel, warlike, insensitive person.
The term originates from the Greek civilization, meaning "anyone who is not Greek". In ancient times, Greeks used it for the people of the Persian Empire; in the early modern period and sometimes later, they used it for the Turks, in a clearly pejorative way. Comparable notions are found in non-European civilizations. In the Roman empire, barbarian was meant as "anyone not educated in Roman ways".
The Ancient Greek word βάρβαρος (barbaros), "barbarian", was an antonym for πολίτης (politis) "citizen," from polis "city-state." The sound of barbaros onomatopoetically evokes the image of babbling (a person speaking a non-Greek language). The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek pa-pa-ro, written in Linear B syllabic script.
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Barbarian invasions
The Migration Period, also known as the Barbarian Invasions (German: Völkerwanderung "migration of peoples"), was a period of intensified human migration in Europe from about 400 to 800 AD. This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Migrations were catalyzed by profound changes within the Roman Empire and on its "barbarian frontier". The migrants who came first were Germanic tribes such as the Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Suebi, Frisii and Franks; they were later pushed westwards by the Huns, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars and Alans. Later migrations (such as the Arab conquest and Viking, Magyar, Moorish, Turkic, and Mongol invasions) also had significant effects (especially in North Africa, the Iberian peninsula, Anatolia and Central and Eastern Europe); however, they are outside the scope of the Migration Period.
Germanic peoples moved out of southern Scandinavia, Denmark and adjacent lands between the Elbe and Oder rivers after 1000 BC. The first wave moved westward and southward (pushing the resident Celts west to the Rhine River by about 200 BC) and moving into southern Germany up to the Roman province of Gaul by 100 BC, where they were stopped by Gaius Marius and Julius Caesar. It is this western group who was described by the Roman historian Tacitus (56 – 117 AD) and Julius Caesar (100 - 44 BC). A later wave of German tribes migrated eastward and southward from Scandinavia between 600 and 300 BC to the opposite coast of the Baltic Sea, moving up the Vistula near the Carpathians. During Tacitus' era they included lesser-known tribes such as the Tencteri, Cherusci, Hermunduri and Chatti; however, a period of federation and intermarriage resulted in the familiar groups known as the Alamanni, Franks, Saxons, Frisians and Thuringians.
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Basiliscus
Basiliscus (Latin: Flavius Basiliscus Augustus; Greek: Βασιλίσκος) (d. 476/477) was Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Emperor from 475 to 476. A member of the House of Leo, he came to power when Emperor Zeno had been forced out of Constantinople by a revolt.
Basiliscus was the brother of Empress Aelia Verina, the wife of Emperor Leo I (457–474). His relationship with the Emperor allowed him to pursue a military career that, after minor initial successes, ended in 468, when he led the disastrous Roman invasion of Vandal Africa, in one of the largest military operations of Late Antiquity.
Basiliscus succeeded in seizing power in 475, exploiting the unpopularity of Emperor Zeno, the "barbarian" successor to Leo, and a plot organised by Verina that had caused Zeno to flee Constantinople. However, during his short rule, Basiliscus alienated the fundamental support of the Church and the people of Constantinople, promoting the Miaphysite christological position in opposition to the Chalcedonian faith. Also, his policy of securing his power through the appointment of loyal men to key roles antagonised many important figures in the imperial court, including his sister Verina. So, when Zeno tried to regain his empire, he found virtually no opposition, triumphantly entering Constantinople, and capturing and killing Basiliscus and his family.
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Bruce Bartlett
Bruce Reeves Bartlett (b. October 11, 1951, in Ann Arbor, Michigan) is an American historian whose area of expertise is supply-side economics. He served as a domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and as a Treasury official under President George H. W. Bush.
Bartlett has written several books and magazine articles critical of the Bush Administration, whose economic policies he believes significantly depart from traditional conservative principles.
Bartlett was educated at Rutgers University (B.A., 1973) and Georgetown University (M.A., 1976). He originally studied American diplomatic history under Lloyd Gardner at Rutgers and Jules Davids at Georgetown. He did much work on the origins of the Pearl Harbor attack, doing a master's thesis on the topic at Georgetown, the substance of which was later published as "Coverup: The Politics of Pearl Harbor, 1941-1946". He was closely advised by Percy Greaves, who had been Republican counsel to the congressional committee investigating the Pearl Harbor attack in 1946.
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Bryan Ward-Perkins
Bryan Ward-Perkins is an archaeologist and historian of the later Roman Empire and early Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the transitional period between those two eras, an historical sub-field also known as Late Antiquity. His published work has focused primarily on the urban and economic history of the Mediterranean and western Europe during Late Antiquity. The son of historian John Bryan Ward-Perkins, he was born and raised in Rome and is currently a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.
His 2005 book, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, included statements addressing what he saw as an over-correction in the approaches of modern historiography to late Roman history. Using primarily archaeological evidence, Ward-Perkins takes issue with what he says is the "fashionable" idea-–that the western Roman Empire did not actually fall but instead experienced a mostly-benign transformation into the Christian kingdoms of medieval Europe. In his contrasting view, "the coming of the Germanic peoples was very unpleasant for the Roman population, and the long-term effects of the dissolution of the empire were dramatic."
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Carolingian
The Carolingian dynasty (known variously as the Carlovingians, Carolings, or Karlings) was a Frankish noble family with origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The name "Carolingian", Medieval Latin karolingi, an altered form of an unattested Old High German *karling, kerling (meaning "descendant of Charles", cf. MHG kerlinc), derives from the Latinised name of Charles Martel: Carolus. The family consolidated its power in the late 7th century, eventually making the offices of mayor of the palace and dux et princeps Francorum hereditary and becoming the de facto rulers of the Franks as the real powers behind the throne. By 751, the Merovingian dynasty which until then had ruled the Franks by right was deprived of this right with the consent of the Papacy and the aristocracy and a Carolingian, Pepin the Short, was crowned King of the Franks.
Traditional historiography has seen the Carolingian assumption of kingship as the product of a long rise to power, punctuated even by a premature attempt to seize the throne through Childebert the Adopted. This picture, however, is not commonly accepted today. Rather, the coronation of 751 is seen typically as a product of the aspirations of one man, Pepin, and of the Church, which was always looking for powerful secular protectors and for the extension of its spiritual and temporal influence.
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Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (ca. 84 BC – ca. 54 BC) was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.
Catullus came from a leading equestrian family of Verona in Cisalpine Gaul, and according to St. Jerome, he was born in the town. The family was prominent enough for his father to entertain Caesar, then proconsul of both Gallic provinces. In one of his poems Catullus describes his happy return to the family villa at Sirmio on Lake Garda near Verona. The poet also owned a villa near the fashionable resort of Tibur (modern Tivoli);; his complaints about his poverty described in his works do not reflect his life.
The poet appears to have spent most of his young adult years in Rome. His friends there included the poets Licinius Calvus, and Helvius Cinna, Quintus Hortensius (son of the orator and rival of Cicero) and the biographer Cornelius Nepos, to whom Catullus dedicated the extant libellus which is the basis of his fame. He appears to have been acquainted with the poet Marcus Furius Bibaculus. A number of prominent contemporaries appear in his poetry, including Cicero, Caesar and Pompey. According to an anecdote preserved by Suetonius, Caesar did not deny that Catullus's lampoons left an indelible stain on his reputation, but when Catullus apologized, he invited the poet for dinner the very same day.
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Charlemagne
Charlemagne ( /ˈʃɑrlɨmeɪn/ or /ˈʃɑrləmeɪn/; French pronunciation: [ʃaʁ.lə.maɲ]; c. 742 – 28 January 814), also known as Charles the Great (Latin: Carolus Magnus or Karolus Magnus), was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800 in Rome.
His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the European Middle Ages. He is numbered as Charles I in the regnal lists of Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and France.
The son of King Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, a Frankish queen, he succeeded his father in 768 and was initially co-ruler with his brother Carloman I. It has often been suggested that the relationship between Charlemagne and Carloman was not good, but it has also been argued that tensions were exaggerated by Carolingian chroniclers.
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Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( /ˈsɪsɨroʊ/; Classical Latin: [ˈkɪkɛroː]; January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC; sometimes anglicized as Tully), was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, political theorist, Roman consul and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.
He introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary (with neologisms such as humanitas, qualitas, quantitas, and essentia) distinguishing himself as a linguist, translator, and philosopher.
Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance. According to Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński, "Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity." The peak of Cicero's authority and prestige came during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and his impact on leading Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, David Hume, and Montesquieu was substantial. His works rank among the most influential in European culture, and today still constitute one of the most important bodies of primary material for the writing and revision of Roman history, especially the last days of the Roman Republic.
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Constantine I
Constantine the Great (Latin: Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus; c. 27 February 272 – 22 May 337), also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all religions throughout the empire.
The foremost general of his time, Constantine defeated the emperors Maxentius and Licinius during civil wars. He also fought successfully against the Franks, Alamanni, Visigoths, and Sarmatians during his reign—even resettling parts of Dacia which had been abandoned during the previous century. Constantine built a new imperial residence in place of Byzantium, naming it New Rome. However, in Constantine's honour, people called it Constantinople, which would later be the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for over one thousand years. Because of this, he is thought of as the founder of the Eastern Roman Empire.
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Constantius III
Flavius Constantius (died 2 September 421), commonly known as Constantius III, was Western Roman Emperor for seven months in 421. A prominent general and politician, he was the power behind the throne for much of the 410s, and in 421 briefly became co-emperor of the Western Empire with Honorius.
Constantius was born in Naissus (modern-day Niš, Serbia) and was probably a career soldier, who reached the rank of magister militum under Honorius.
In 411 he defeated Gerontius, the general of usurper Maximus, and Constantine III, another usurper, in Arles. Constantine had revolted against Honorius (407), but then he had broken his relationship with general Gerontius, who had proclaimed Maximus Emperor in opposition to both Honorius and Constantine (409). Gerontius had then besieged Constantine in the city of Arles (411), but the arrival of the troops of Constantius from Italy had put him in serious trouble, being at the same time a besieger and a besieged. Gerontius was abandoned by his troops and then killed in Hispania.
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Diocletian
Diocletian (Latin: Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus; c. 22 December 244 – 3 December 311), was a Roman Emperor from 284 to 305. Born to a family of low status in the Roman province of Dalmatia, Diocletian rose through the ranks of the military to become cavalry commander to the Emperor Carus. After the deaths of Carus and his son Numerian on campaign in Persia, Diocletian was proclaimed Emperor. The title was also claimed by Carus' other surviving son, Carinus, but Diocletian defeated him in the Battle of the Margus. With his accession to power, Diocletian ended the Crisis of the Third Century. He appointed fellow officer Maximian Augustus his senior co-emperor in 285.
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Donald Kagan
Donald Kagan (born May 1, 1932) is an American historian at Yale University specializing in ancient Greece, notable for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War. 1987-1988 Acting Director of Athletics, Yale University. He was Dean of Yale College from 1989 to 1992. He formerly taught in the Department of History at Cornell University. In a review in The New Yorker, critic George Steiner said of Kagan's seminal four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War: "The temptation to acclaim Kagan's four volumes as the foremost work of history produced in North America in this century is vivid." At present, Kagan is considered among the foremost scholars of Ancient Greek history.
Born into a Jewish family from Kuršėnai, Kagan grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York, where his family emigrated when he was two years old, shortly after the death of his father. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1954, received an MA from Brown University in 1955 and a PhD from the Ohio State University in 1958.
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Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon (27 April 1737 – 16 January 1794) was an English historian and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. The Decline and Fall is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its open criticism of organized religion.
Edward Gibbon was born in 1737, the son of Edward and Judith Gibbon at Lime Grove, in the town of Putney, Surrey. He had six siblings: five brothers and one sister, all of whom died in infancy. His grandfather, also named Edward, had lost all of his assets as a result of the South Sea Bubble stock market collapse in 1720, but eventually regained much of his wealth, so that Gibbon's father was able to inherit a substantial estate.
As a youth, his health was under constant threat. He described himself as "a puny child, neglected by my Mother, starved by my nurse." At age nine, Gibbon was sent to Dr. Woddeson's school at Kingston upon Thames (now Kingston Grammar School), shortly after which his mother died. He then took up residence in the Westminster School boarding house, owned by his adored "Aunt Kitty," Catherine Porten. Soon after she died in 1786, he remembered her as rescuing him from his mother's disdain, and imparting "the first rudiments of knowledge, the first exercise of reason, and a taste for books which is still the pleasure and glory of my life." By 1751, Gibbon's reading was already extensive and certainly pointed toward his future pursuits: Laurence Echard's Roman History (1713), William Howel(l)'s An Institution of General History (1680–85), and several of the 65 volumes of the acclaimed Universal History from the Earliest Account of Time (1747–1768).
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Ennius
Quintus Ennius (c. 239 BC – c. 169 BC) was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent. Although only fragments of his works survive, his influence in Latin literature was significant.
Ennius was born at Rudiae, an old Italian (predominantly Oscan) town historically founded by the Messapians. Here Oscan, Greek, and Latin languages were in contact with one another; according to Aulus Gellius 17.17.1, Ennius referred to this heritage by saying he had "three hearts" (Quintus Ennius tria corda habere sese dicebat, quod loqui Graece et Osce et Latine sciret).
Ennius continued the nascent literary tradition by writing praetextae, tragedies, and palliatae, as well as his most famous work, a historic epic called the Annales. Other minor works include the Epicharmus, the Euhemerus, the Hedyphagetica, and Saturae.
The Epicharmus presented an account of the gods and the physical operations of the universe. In it, the poet dreamed he had been transported after death to some place of heavenly enlightenment.
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Flavius Aetius
Flavius Aëtius (c. 396–454), dux et patricius, was a Roman general of the closing period of the Western Roman Empire. He was an able military commander and the most influential man in the Western Roman Empire for two decades (433-454). He managed policy in regard to the attacks of barbarian peoples pressing on the Empire. Notably, he gathered a large Roman and barbarian army to win the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, ending the famous Hunnic invasion of Attila in 451.
Along with his rival Count Boniface, he has often been called "the last of the Romans". Edward Gibbon refers to him as "the man universally celebrated as the terror of Barbarians and the support of the Republic" for his victory at the Catalaunian Plains.
Aëtius was born at Durostorum in Moesia Inferior (modern Silistra, Bulgaria), around 390. His father was Flavius Gaudentius, a known Roman soldier of Scythian extraction, and his mother, whose name is unknown, was a wealthy aristocratic woman of Italian ancestry. Before 425 Aëtius married the daughter of Carpilio, who gave him a son, also named Carpilio. Later he married Pelagia, widow of Bonifacius, from whom he had a son, Gaudentius. It is possible that he had also a daughter, wife of Thraustila who avenged Aëtius' death by killing emperor Valentinian III.
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Frankish Empire
Francia or Frankia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks or Frankish Kingdom (Latin: regnum Francorum), Frankish Realm or occasionally Frankland, was the territory inhabited and ruled by the Franks from the 3rd to the 10th century. Under the nearly continuous campaigns of Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne—father, son, grandson—the greatest expansion of the Frankish empire was secured by the early 9th century.
The tradition of dividing patrimonies among brothers meant that the Frankish realm was ruled, nominally, as one polity subdivided into several regna (kingdoms or subkingdoms). The geography and number of subkingdoms varied over time, but the particular term Francia came generally to refer to just one regnum, that of Austrasia, centred on the Rhine and Meuse rivers in northern Europe; even so, sometimes the term was used as well to encompass Neustria north of the Loire and west of the Seine. Eventually, the singular use of the name Francia shifted towards Paris, and settled on the region of the Seine basin surrounding Paris, which still today bears the name Île-de-France, and which region gave its name to the entire Kingdom of France.
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Fustel de Coulanges
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (18 March 1830 - 12 September 1889) was a French historian.
Born in Paris, of Breton descent, after studying at the École Normale Supérieure he was sent to the French School at Athens in 1853, he directed some excavations in Chios, and wrote an historical account of the island.
After his return he filled various educational offices, and took his doctorate with two theses, Quid Vestae cultus in institutis veterum privatis publicisque valuerit and Polybe, ou la Grèce conquise par les Romains (1858). In these works his distinctive qualities were already revealed. His minute knowledge of the language of the Greek and Roman institutions, coupled with his low estimate of the conclusions of contemporary scholars, led him to go directly to the original texts, which he read without political or religious bias. When, however, he had succeeded in extracting from the sources a general idea that seemed to him clear and simple, he attached himself to it as if to the truth itself.
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G.E.M. de Ste. Croix
Geoffrey Ernest Maurice de Ste. Croix (8 February 1910 – 5 February 2000) ("Croicks" as he called himself) was a British historian who specialised in examining the classical era from a historical materialist perspective.
de Ste. Croix was born in Macau and was educated at Clifton College, in Bristol. He left school at the age of 15 and become an articled clerk, which allowed him to train as a solicitor, without a degree in law. In 1926-40, de Ste. Croix practised as a solicitor.
He had a strong physique and was a talented tennis player, who once defeated Fred Perry. de Ste. Croix competed at Wimbledon in 1929.
During World War II he joined the Royal Air Force, and was stationed for a time in Egypt, where he had the opportunity to expand his knowledge of ancient languages.
After the war ended, de Ste. Croix studied ancient history at University College, London. In 1950-53 he taught at the London School of Economics and Birkbeck College, before being appointed a fellow of New College, Oxford. He lived at Oxford for the rest of his life.
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Germania
Germania (Greek: Γερμανία) was the Greek and Roman geographic term for the geographical regions inhabited mainly by peoples considered to be Germani. It was most often used to refer especially to the east of the Rhine and north of the Danube. The areas west of the Rhine were mainly Celtic (specifically Gaulish) and had become part of the Roman Empire.
Some Germani, perhaps the original people to have been referred to by this name, had lived on the west side of the Rhine. At least as early as the 2nd century BC. This area was considered to be in "Gaul", and became part of the Roman empire. These were the so-called germani cisrhenani, who in modern terms lived in the region of modern eastern Belgium, the southeastern Netherlands, and stretching into Germany towards the Rhine. During the period of the Roman empire, more tribes were settled in areas of the empire near the Rhine, in territories controlled by the Roman Empire. Eventually these areas came to be known as Lesser Germania, while Greater Germania (Magna Germania) was the larger territory east of the Rhine.
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Germanic peoples
The Germanic peoples (also called Teutonic or Gothic in older literature) are an Indo-European ethno-linguistic group of Northern European origin, identified by their use of the Germanic languages which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age.
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Goths
The Goths (Gothic: *Gut-þiuda, *Gutans; Old Norse: Gutar/Gotar; German: Goten; Latin: Gothi; Greek: Γότθοι, Gótthoi) were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe.
The most important source is Jordanes' 6th-century, semi-fictional Getica which describes a migration from southern Scandza (Scandinavia), to Gothiscandza, believed to be the lower Vistula region in modern Pomerania, and from there to the coast of the Black Sea. The Pomeranian Wielbark culture and the Chernyakhov culture northeast of the lower Danube are archaeological traces of this migration. In the 3rd century, either through crossing the lower Danube, or travelling by sea, the Goths ravaged the Balkan Peninsula and Anatolia as far as Cyprus, sacking Athens, Byzantium, Sparta. By the fourth century, the Goths conquered Dacia, and were divided into at least two distinct groups separated by the Dniester River, the Thervingi, led by the Balti dynasty, and the Greuthungi, led by the Amali dynasty. Centered around their capital at the Dnieper, the Goths ruled a vast area which at its peak under the Kings Ermanaric and Athanaric stretched from the Danube to the Volga river, and from the Black to the Baltic Sea.
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Henri Pirenne
Henri Pirenne (23 December 1862 - 25 October 1935) was a Belgian historian. A medievalist of Walloon descent, he wrote a multivolume history of Belgium in French and became a national hero. He also became prominent in the nonviolent resistance to the Germans who occupied Belgium in World War I.
Henri Pirenne's reputation today rests on three contributions to European history: for what has become known as the Pirenne Thesis, concerning origins of the Middle Ages in reactive state formation and shifts in trade; for a distinctive view of Belgium's medieval history; and for his model of the development of the medieval city.
Pirenne argued that profound social, economic, cultural, and religious movements in the long-term resulted from equally profound underlying causes, and this attitude influenced Marc Bloch and the outlook of the French Annales School of social history. Though Pirenne had his opponents, notably Alfons Dopsch who disagreed on essential points, recent historians of the Middle Ages usually take Pirenne's main theses, however much they are modified, as starting points.
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Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintillian regarded his Odes as almost the only Latin lyrics worth reading, justifying his estimate with the words: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."
Horace also crafted elegant hexameter verses (Sermones and Epistles) and scurrilous iambic poetry (Epodes). The hexameters are playful and yet serious works, leading the ancient satirist Persius to comment: "as his friend laughs, Horace slyly puts his finger on his every fault; once let in, he plays about the heartstrings". Some of his iambic poetry, however, can seem wantonly repulsive to modern audiences.
His career coincided with Rome's momentous change from Republic to Empire. An officer in the republican army that was crushed at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavian's right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas, and became something of a spokesman for the new regime. For some commentators, his association with the regime was a delicate balance in which he maintained a strong measure of independence (he was "a master of the graceful sidestep") but for others he was, in John Dryden's phrase, "a well-mannered court slave".
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Hunnic Empire
The Hunnic empire was formed under the reign of Attila, centered in present-day Hungary; its territory included parts of Germany, the Balkans, and Ukraine. It bordered the Eastern Roman Empire to the southeast and the Western Roman Empire to the west and southwest; its other boundaries are uncertain. The empire dissolved after Attila's death in 453 as a result of struggles over succession and leadership, finally disappearing around 469.
The origins of the Huns that swept through Europe during the 4th Century remain unclear; they may have been connected with the Xiongnu and the later Northern Xiongnu, defeated and dispersed by China some three centuries before. However, most mainstream historians consider them as a group of nomadic tribes from Central Asia with mixed origin.[citation needed] There was a Hunnic language, and Gothic seems also to have been used as a lingua franca.
European accounts first mention the Huns in the lands north-west of the Caspian Sea about 370, when they conquered a tribe of Alans to their west. Pushing further westward, the Huns subjugated many Ostrogoths. In 395, a Hun raid across the Caucasus mountains devastated Armenia, then captured Erzurum, besieged Edessa and Antioch, and even reached Tyre.
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Huns
The Huns were a group of nomadic people who, appearing from east of the Volga River, migrated into Europe c. AD 370 and established the vast Hunnic Empire there. Since de Guignes linked them with the Xiongnu, who had been northern neighbours of China 300 years prior to the emergence of the Huns, considerable scholarly effort has been devoted to investigating such a connection. However, there is no scholarly consensus on a direct connection between the dominant element of the Xiongnu and that of the Huns.Priscus mentions that the Huns had a language of their own; little of it has survived and its relationships have been the subject of debate for centuries. Most authorities suppose that it may have been a member of the Oghuric branch of the Turkic language family, with the languages Bulgar, Khazar, Turkic Avar and Chuvash. Numerous other languages were spoken within the Hun pax including East Germanic, which was widely used as a lingua franca in the Hunnic territories. Their main military technique was mounted archery.
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Jared M. Diamond
Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American scientist and author best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee, Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Originally trained in physiology, Diamond's work is known for drawing from a variety of fields, and he is currently Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Diamond was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Bessarabian Jewish family. His father Louis K. Diamond was a physician and his mother Flora Kaplan a teacher, musician, and linguist. He attended the Roxbury Latin School and earned an A.B. from Harvard College in 1958 and a Ph.D. in physiology and membrane biophysics from the University of Cambridge in 1961.
After graduating from Cambridge, Diamond returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow until 1965, and, in 1968, became Professor of Physiology at UCLA Medical School. While in his twenties, he developed a second, parallel, career in ornithology and ecology, specialising in New Guinea and nearby islands. Then in his fifties, Diamond developed a third career in environmental history and became Professor of Geography at UCLA, his current position. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1999 and an honorary doctorate by Westfield State University in 2009.
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Joseph Tainter
Joseph A. Tainter (born December 8, 1949) is an American anthropologist and historian.
Joseph Tainter was born on December 8, 1949. He was married to Sarah Tainter and they had four children. Two of the children were Elizabeth and Jacob.
Tainter studied anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and Northwestern University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1975. He is currently a professor in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University. His previous positions include Project Leader of Cultural Heritage Research, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Albuquerque, New Mexico and professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico.
Tainter is the author or editor of many articles and monographs. His best-known work is The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), which examines the collapse of Maya and Chacoan civilizations, and the Roman Empire, in terms of network theory, energy economics and complexity theory. Tainter argues that sustainability or collapse of societies follow from the success or failure of problem-solving institutions and that societies collapse when their investments in social complexity and their "energy subsidies" reach a point of diminishing marginal returns. He recognizes collapse when a society rapidly sheds a significant portion of its complexity.
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Julian the Apostate
Julian (Latin: Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus, Greek: Φλάβιος Κλαύδιος Ἰουλιανός Αὔγουστος; 331/332 – 26 June 363), commonly known as Julian the Apostate, or also Julian the Philosopher, was Roman Emperor from 361 to 363 and a noted philosopher and Greek writer.
A member of the Constantinian dynasty, he was made Caesar over the western provinces, by Constantius II in 355, where he campaigned successfully against the Alamanni and Franks. Most notable was his crushing victory over the Alamanni in 357 at the Battle of Argentoratum - despite being outnumbered. In 360 he was acclaimed Augustus by his soldiers, sparking a civil war between Julian and Constantius. However, Constantius died before the two could face each other in battle, naming Julian as his rightful successor. In 363, Julian embarked on an ambitious campaign against the Sassanid Empire. Though initially successful, Julian was mortally wounded in battle and died shortly after.
Julian was a man of unusually complex character: he was "the military commander, the theosophist, the social reformer, and the man of letters". He was the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire and it was his desire to bring the Empire back to its ancient Roman values in order to save it from dissolution. He purged the top-heavy state bureaucracy and attempted to revive traditional Roman religious practices at the cost of Christianity. His rejection of Christianity in favour of Neoplatonic paganism caused him to be called Julian the Apostate (Ἀποστάτης or Παραβάτης "Transgressor") by the church. He was the last emperor of the Constantinian dynasty, the empire's first Christian dynasty.
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Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (Classical Latin: [ˈɡaː.i.ʊs ˈjuː.lɪ.ʊs ˈkaj.sar], July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.
In 60 BC, Caesar, Crassus and Pompey formed a political alliance that was to dominate Roman politics for several years. Their attempts to amass power through populist tactics were opposed by the conservative elite within the Roman Senate[citation needed], among them Cato the Younger with the frequent support of Cicero. Caesar's conquest of Gaul, completed by 51 BC, extended Rome's territory to the English Channel and the Rhine. Caesar became the first Roman general to cross both when he built a bridge across the Rhine and conducted the first invasion of Britain.
These achievements granted him unmatched military power and threatened to eclipse Pompey's standing. The balance of power was further upset by the death of Crassus in 53 BC. Political realignments in Rome finally led to a standoff between Caesar and Pompey, the latter having taken up the cause of the Senate. Ordered by the Senate to stand trial in Rome for various charges, Caesar marched on Rome with one legion—legio XIII—from Gaul to Italy, crossing the Rubicon in 49 BC. This sparked a civil war from which he emerged as the unrivaled leader of the Roman world.
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Julius Nepos
Julius Nepos (c. 430 – 480) was Western Roman Emperor de facto from 474 to 475 and de jure until 480. Some historians consider him to be the last Western Roman Emperor, while others consider the western line to have ended with Romulus Augustulus in 476.
In contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire, and its line of Emperors, survived this historical period relatively intact.
Nepos, already the ruler of Roman Dalmatia, was nominated by the Eastern Roman Emperor Leo I in early 474, to replace the Western Emperor Glycerius, who was regarded as a usurper. It was probably Nepos' marriage to the emperor Leo's wife's niece which earned him the agnomen of "Nepos" (nephew).
Glycerius surrendered in June 474, shortly after Nepos' arrival in Italy. Nepos spared Glycerius' life, and appointed him bishop of Salona. After this Nepos ruled, briefly, over the whole of the remaining Western Roman Empire; still centered on Italy, the Empire's heartland, and including his native Dalmatia, and the remaining parts of Roman Gaul. Nepos' rule in Italy ended in 475, when he was deposed by his magister militum, Orestes. After fleeing from Italy and Orestes without opposition, Nepos returned to Dalmatia, over which he retained control.
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Justinian I
Justinian I ( /dʒʌˈstɪniən/) (Latin: Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus Augustus, Ancient Greek: Φλάβιος Πέτρος Σαββάτιος Ἰουστινιανός) (c. 482 – 14 November 565), commonly known as Justinian the Great, was Byzantine Emperor from 527 to 565. During his reign, Justinian sought to revive the Empire's greatness and reconquer the lost western half of the classical Roman Empire.
One of the most important figures of Late Antiquity and the last Roman Emperor to speak Latin as a first language, Justinian's rule constitutes a distinct epoch in the history of the Eastern Roman Empire. The impact of his administration extended far beyond the boundaries of his time and domain. Justinian's reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized renovatio imperii, or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was expressed by the partial recovery of the territories of the defunct Western Roman Empire. His general Belisarius swiftly conquered the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, extending Roman control to the Atlantic Ocean. Subsequently Belisarius, Narses, and other generals conquered the Ostrogothic Kingdom, restoring Dalmatia, Sicily, Italy, and Rome to the Empire after more than half a century of barbarian control.
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Juvenal
Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, known in English as Juvenal, was a Roman poet active in the late 1st and early 2nd century AD, author of the Satires. The details of the author's life are unclear, although references within his text to known persons of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD fix his terminus post quem (earliest date of composition).
In accord with the manner of Lucilius—the originator of the genre of Roman satire—and within a poetic tradition that also included Horace and Persius, Juvenal wrote at least 16 poems in dactylic hexameter covering an encyclopedic range of topics across the Roman world. While the Satires are a vital source for the study of ancient Rome from a vast number of perspectives, their hyperbolic, comedic mode of expression makes the use of statements found within them as simple fact problematic. At first glance the Satires could be read as a critique of pagan Rome, perhaps ensuring their survival in Christian monastic scriptoria, a bottleneck in preservation when the large majority of ancient texts were lost.
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Last of the Romans
The description Last of the Romans (Ultimus Romanorum) has historically been given to any man thought to embody the values of Ancient Roman civilization - values which, by implication, became extinct on his death. It has been used to describe a number of individuals. The first recorded instance was Julius Caesar's description of Marcus Junius Brutus as the one with whom the old Roman spirit would become extinct.
Many people have been called "Last of the Romans":
In a more literal sense, it could also refer to:
A different list, "Last of the Romans," was offered in E. Cobham Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898):
In the United States, the "last of the Romans" may mean the last of the Founding Fathers.
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Leo I (emperor)
Leo I (Latin: Flavius Valerius Leo Augustus) (401 – 18 January 474) was Byzantine Emperor from 457 to 474. A native of Dacia Aureliana near historic Thrace, he was known as Leo the Thracian (Greek: Λέων ο Θράξ).
Ruling the Eastern Empire for nearly 20 years from 457 to 474, Leo proved to be a capable ruler, overseeing many ambitious political and military plans, aimed mostly for the aid of the faltering Western Roman Empire and recovering its former territories. He is notable for being the first Eastern Emperor to legislate in Greek rather than Latin.
Born as Leo Marcellus in the year 401 to a Thraco-Roman family (of the Daci or Bessi tribe), he served in the Roman army, rising to the rank of comes. He was the last of a series of emperors placed on the throne by Aspar, the Alan serving as commander-in-chief of the army, who thought Leo would be an easy puppet ruler. Instead, Leo became more and more independent from Aspar, causing a tension that would have culminated in the assassination of the barbarian.
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Livy
Titus Livius Patavinus (59 BC – AD 17) — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Books from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own time. He was on familiar terms with the Julio-Claudian family, advising Augustus's grandnephew, the future emperor Claudius, as a young man not long before 14 AD in a letter to take up the writing of history. Livy and Augustus's wife, Livia, were from the same clan in different locations, although not related by blood.
Livy was born as Titus Livius in Patavium in northern Italy, now modern Padua. There is a debate about the year of Titus Livius' birth, 64 BC or more likely 59 BC. At the time of Livy’s birth, his home city of Patavium was the second wealthiest city in the Italian peninsula. Patavium was a part of the province of Cisalpine Gaul at the time. In his works, Livy often expressed his deep affection and pride for Patavium, and the city was well known for its conservative values in morality and politics.
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Lucan
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (November 3, 39 AD – April 30, 65 AD), better known in English as Lucan, was a Roman poet, born in Corduba (modern-day Córdoba), in the Hispania Baetica. Despite his short life, he is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial Latin period. His youth and speed of composition set him apart from other poets.
Three brief ancient lives, the earliest attributed to Suetonius, another to an otherwise unknown Vacca, and the third anonymous and undated, along with references in Martial, Cassius Dio, Tacitus's Annals, and one of Statius's Silvae, allow for the reconstruction of a modest biography. Lucan was the grandson of Seneca the Elder and grew up under the tutelage of his uncle Seneca the Younger. Born into a wealthy family, he studied rhetoric at Athens and was probably provided with a philosophical and Stoic education by his uncle.
He found success under Nero, became one of the emperor's close friends and was rewarded with a quaestorship in advance of the legal age. In 60 AD, he won a prize for extemporizing Orpheus and Laudes Neronis at the quinquennial Neronia, and was again rewarded when the emperor appointed him to the augurate. During this time he circulated the first three books of his epic poem, Pharsalia (labelled De Bello civili in the manuscripts), which told the story of the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey.
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Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BC – ca. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem De rerum natura about the beliefs of Epicureanism, and which is translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe".
Virtually nothing is known about the life of Lucretius. Jerome tells how he was driven mad by a love potion and wrote his poetry between fits of insanity, eventually committing suicide in middle age; but modern scholarship suggests this account was likely an invention. The De rerum natura was a considerable influence on the Augustan poets, particularly Virgil (in his Aeneid and Georgics, and to a lesser extent in his Eclogues) and Horace. It virtually disappeared during the Middle Ages, but was rediscovered in a monastery in Germany in 1417, by Poggio Bracciolini, and played an important role both in the development of atomism (Lucretius was an important influence on Pierre Gassendi) and the efforts of various figures of the Enlightenment era to construct a new Christian humanism.
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Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (German pronunciation: [ˈluːtvɪç fɔn ˈmiːzəs]; September 29, 1881 – October 10, 1973) was a philosopher, Austrian School economist, and classical liberal. He became a prominent figure in the Austrian School of economic thought and is best known for his work on praxeology. Fearing a Nazi takeover of Europe, Mises emigrated to the United States in 1940. Mises had a significant influence on the libertarian movement in the United States in the mid-20th century.
Ludwig von Mises was born to wealthy Jewish parents in the city of Lemberg, in Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv in Ukraine). The family of his father Arthur Edler von Mises had been elevated to the Austrian nobility in the 19th century, and was involved in building and financing railroads. Ludwig's mother, Adele (née Landau), was a niece of Dr. Joachim Landau, a Liberal Party deputy to the Austrian Parliament. Arthur was stationed there as a construction engineer with Czernowitz railway company. At the age of twelve Ludwig spoke fluent Yiddish, German, Polish, and French, read Latin, and could understand Ukrainian. Mises was the older brother of the famous applied physicist Richard von Mises, a member of the Vienna Circle. Another brother, Karl von Mises, died as a child from scarlet fever.[citation needed] When Ludwig and Richard were children, his family moved back to their ancestral home of Vienna.
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Majorian
Majorian (Latin: Flavius Julius Valerius Majorianus Augustus; ca. 420 – August 7, 461), was the Western Roman Emperor from 457 to 461.
A prominent general of the Late Roman army, Majorian deposed Emperor Avitus in 457 and succeeded him. Majorian was one of the last emperors to make a concerted effort to restore the Western Roman Empire. Possessing little more than Italy, Dalmatia, and some territory in northern Gaul, Majorian campaigned rigorously for three years against the Empire's enemies.
After defeating a Vandal attack on Italy, Majorian launched a campaign against the Visigothic Kingdom in southern Gaul. Defeating king Theodoric II at the Battle of Arelate, Majorian forced the Goths to abandon their possessions in Septimania and Hispania and return to federate status immediately. Majorian then attacked the Burgundian Kingdom, defeating them at the Siege of Lugdunum, expelling them from the Rhone valley and reducing them to federate status.
In 460, Majorian left Gaul to consolidate his hold on Hispania. His generals launched a campaign against the Suebic Kingdom in northwest Hispania, defeating them at the battles of Lucus Augusti and Scallabis and reducing them to federate status as well. His fleet for his campaign to restore Africa to the empire from the Vandals was destroyed due to treachery.
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Martial
Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial) (March 1, 40 AD – between 102 and 104 AD), was a Latin poet from Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the emperors Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. In these short, witty poems he cheerfully satirises city life and the scandalous activities of his acquaintances, and romanticises his provincial upbringing. He wrote a total of 1,561, of which 1,235 are in elegiac couplets. He is considered to be the creator of the modern epigram.
Knowledge of his origins and early life are derived almost entirely from his works, which can be more or less dated according to the well-known events to which they refer. In Book X of his Epigrams, composed between 95 and 98, he mentions celebrating his fifty-seventh birthday; hence he was born on March 1 (x. 24) 38, 39, 40 or 41 AD, under Caligula or Claudius. His place of birth was Augusta Bilbilis (now Calatayud) in Hispania Tarraconensis. His parents, Fronto and Flaccilla, appear to have died in his youth.
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Merobaudes (general)
Flavius Merobaudes (died 383 or 388) was a Roman general of Frankish origin.
Merobaudes was an official of Roman Emperor Julian (361-363). He was entrusted with the transportation of the corpse of the Emperor when Julian died during his military campaign against the Sasanids.
Around 375, Emperor Valentinian I appointed Merobaudes magister militum. After Valentinian I's death in that same year, Merobaudes stated that he could control the army only if Valentinian's son, Valentinian II, was to be appointed Emperor. Valentinian II ruled together with his brother Gratian, and Merobaudes influenced both of them.
Merobaudes was twice consul, in 377 with Gratian and in 383 with Saturninus. This is a sign of great honour, as multiple consulates have been reserved to members of the imperial family since Constantine I's time. Merobaudes probably supported the corrupt governor Romanus, and Romanus was found not guilty.
In 378 Merobaudes disobeyed Gratian, as he did not send his troops to help Eastern Emperor Valens when he was defending the frontier from the Alemanni attack; Valens then died in the Battle of Adrianople.
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Migration period
The Migration Period, also known as the Barbarian Invasions (German: Völkerwanderung "migration of peoples"), was a period of intensified human migration in Europe from about 400 to 800 AD. This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Migrations were catalyzed by profound changes within the Roman Empire and on its "barbarian frontier". The migrants who came first were Germanic tribes such as the Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Suebi, Frisii and Franks; they were later pushed westwards by the Huns, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars and Alans. Later migrations (such as the Arab conquest and Viking, Magyar, Moorish, Turkic, and Mongol invasions) also had significant effects (especially in North Africa, the Iberian peninsula, Anatolia and Central and Eastern Europe); however, they are outside the scope of the Migration Period.
Germanic peoples moved out of southern Scandinavia, Denmark and adjacent lands between the Elbe and Oder rivers after 1000 BC. The first wave moved westward and southward (pushing the resident Celts west to the Rhine River by about 200 BC) and moving into southern Germany up to the Roman province of Gaul by 100 BC, where they were stopped by Gaius Marius and Julius Caesar. It is this western group who was described by the Roman historian Tacitus (56 – 117 AD) and Julius Caesar (100 - 44 BC). A later wave of German tribes migrated eastward and southward from Scandinavia between 600 and 300 BC to the opposite coast of the Baltic Sea, moving up the Vistula near the Carpathians. During Tacitus' era they included lesser-known tribes such as the Tencteri, Cherusci, Hermunduri and Chatti; however, a period of federation and intermarriage resulted in the familiar groups known as the Alamanni, Franks, Saxons, Frisians and Thuringians.
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Migration Period
The Migration Period, also known as the Barbarian Invasions (German: Völkerwanderung "migration of peoples"), was a period of intensified human migration in Europe from about 400 to 800 AD. This period marked the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Migrations were catalyzed by profound changes within the Roman Empire and on its "barbarian frontier". The migrants who came first were Germanic tribes such as the Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Suebi, Frisii and Franks; they were later pushed westwards by the Huns, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars and Alans. Later migrations (such as the Arab conquest and Viking, Magyar, Moorish, Turkic, and Mongol invasions) also had significant effects (especially in North Africa, the Iberian peninsula, Anatolia and Central and Eastern Europe); however, they are outside the scope of the Migration Period.
Germanic peoples moved out of southern Scandinavia, Denmark and adjacent lands between the Elbe and Oder rivers after 1000 BC. The first wave moved westward and southward (pushing the resident Celts west to the Rhine River by about 200 BC) and moving into southern Germany up to the Roman province of Gaul by 100 BC, where they were stopped by Gaius Marius and Julius Caesar. It is this western group who was described by the Roman historian Tacitus (56 – 117 AD) and Julius Caesar (100 - 44 BC). A later wave of German tribes migrated eastward and southward from Scandinavia between 600 and 300 BC to the opposite coast of the Baltic Sea, moving up the Vistula near the Carpathians. During Tacitus' era they included lesser-known tribes such as the Tencteri, Cherusci, Hermunduri and Chatti; however, a period of federation and intermarriage resulted in the familiar groups known as the Alamanni, Franks, Saxons, Frisians and Thuringians.
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Nero
Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus); 15 December 37 – 9 June 68) was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death. During his reign, Nero focused much of his attention on diplomacy, trade, and enhancing the cultural life of the Empire. He ordered theaters built and promoted athletic games. During his reign, the redoubtable general Corbulo conducted a successful war and negotiated peace with the Parthian Empire. His general Suetonius Paulinus crushed a revolt in Britain and also annexed the Bosporan Kingdom to the Empire, beginning the First Roman–Jewish War.
In 64, most of Rome was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome, which many Romans believed Nero himself had started in order to clear land for his planned palatial complex, the Domus Aurea. In 68, the rebellion of Vindex in Gaul and later the acclamation of Galba in Hispania drove Nero from the throne. Facing assassination, he committed suicide on 9 June 68. His death ended the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, sparking a brief period of civil wars known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Nero's rule is often associated with tyranny and extravagance. He is known for many executions, including those of his mother and the probable murder by poison of his stepbrother, Britannicus.
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Odoacer
Flavius Odoacer (433–493), also known as Flavius Odovacer, was a barbarian soldier, who after 476 became the first barbarian King of Italy. His reign is commonly seen as marking the end of the Western Roman Empire. Though the real power in Italy was in his hands, he represented himself as the client of Julius Nepos and, after Nepos' death in 480, of the Emperor in Constantinople. Odoacer generally used the Roman honorific patrician, granted by the Emperor Zeno, but is referred to as a king (Latin rex) in many documents and he himself used it at least once and on another occasion it was used by the consul Basilius. Odoacer introduced few important changes into the administrative system of Italy. He had the support of the Senate at Rome and was able to distribute land to his followers without much opposition. Unrest among his warriors led to violence in 477–478, but no such disturbances occurred during the later period of his reign. Although Odoacer was an Arian Christian, he rarely intervened in the affairs of the Orthodox Church.[citation needed]
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Ostrogothic Kingdom
The Kingdom established by the Ostrogoths in Italy and neighbouring areas lasted from 493 to 553. In Italy the Ostrogoths replaced Odoacer, the de facto ruler of Italy who had deposed the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire in 476. The Gothic kingdom reached its zenith under the rule of its first king, Theodoric the Great. Most of the social institutions in the late Western Roman Empire were preserved during his rule. Starting in 535, the Byzantine Empire invaded Italy. The Ostrogothic ruler at that time, Witiges, could not defend successfully and was finally captured when the capital Ravenna fell. The Ostrogoths rallied around a new leader, Totila, and largely managed to reverse the conquest, but were eventually defeated. The last king of the Ostrogothic Kingdom was Teia. At its greatest extent the kingdom stretched from contemporary France in the west into modern Serbia in the southeast.
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Ostrogoths
The Ostrogoths (Latin: Ostrogothi or Austrogothi) were a branch of the Goths (the other branch being the Visigoths), a Germanic tribe who developed a vast empire north of the Black Sea in the 3rd century AD and, in the late 5th century, under Theodoric the Great, established a Kingdom in Italy.
Invading southward from the Baltic Sea, the Ostrogoths, at the time known as the Greuthungi, built up a huge empire stretching from the Dniester to the Volga river and from the Black Sea to the Baltic shores. The Ostrogoths were probably literate in the 3rd century, and their trade with the Romans was highly developed. Their Danubian kingdom reached its zenith under King Ermanaric, who is said to have committed suicide at an old age when the Huns attacked his people and subjugated them about 370.
After their subjugation by the Huns, little is heard of the Ostrogoths for about 80 years, after which they reappear in Pannonia on the middle Danube River as federates of the Romans. However, a pocket remained behind in the Crimea when the bulk of them moved to central Europe, and these Crimean Ostrogoths existed until at least the 16th century. After the collapse of the Hun empire after the Battle of Nedao (453), the Ostrogoths under Theodoric the Great first moved to Moesia (c. 475–488) and later conquered the Italian Kingdom of the German warrior Odoacer. Theodoric became King of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in 493 and died in 526. A period of instability then ensued, tempting the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian to declare war on the Ostrogoths in 535 in an effort to restore the former western provinces of the Roman Empire. Initially, the Byzantines were successful, but under the leadership of Totila, the Goths reconquered most of the lost territory until Totila's death at the Battle of Taginae. The war lasted for almost 20 years and caused enormous damage and depopulation of Italy. The remaining Ostrogoths were absorbed into the Lombards who established a Kingdom in Italy in 567 AD.
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Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria, and of the Metamorphoses, a mythological hexameter poem. He is also well known for the Fasti, about the Roman calendar; and the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, two collections of poems written in exile on the Black Sea. Ovid was also the author of several smaller pieces, the Remedia Amoris, the Medicamina Faciei Femineae, and the long curse-poem Ibis. He also authored a lost tragedy, Medea. He is considered a master of the elegiac couplet, and is traditionally ranked alongside Virgil and Horace as one of the three canonic poets of Latin literature. The scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the canonical Latin love elegists. His poetry, much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, decisively influenced European art and literature and remains as one of the most important sources of classical mythology.
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Peter Heather
Peter Heather is a historian of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, currently Professor of Medieval History at King's College London. He has held appointments at University College London and Yale University and was Fellow and Tutor in Medieval History at Worcester College, Oxford until December 2007. He joined the History Department of King's College London in January 2008. Heather was born in Northern Ireland in 1960. He was educated at Maidstone Grammar School and New College, Oxford (MA, DPhil).
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Petronius
Gaius Petronius Arbiter (ca. 27–66 AD) was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.
Tacitus, Plutarch and Pliny the Elder describe Petronius as the elegantiae arbiter (also phrased arbiter elegantiarum), "judge of elegance" in the court of the emperor Nero. He served as consul in the year AD 62. Later, he became a member of the senatorial class who devoted themselves to a life of pleasure, whose relationship to Nero was apparently akin to that of a fashion advisor. Tacitus gives this account of Petronius in his historical work the Annals:
He spent his days in sleep, his nights in attending to his official duties or in amusement, that by his dissolute life he had become as famous as other men by a life of energy, and that he was regarded as no ordinary profligate, but as an accomplished voluptuary. His reckless freedom of speech, being regarded as frankness, procured him popularity. Yet during his provincial government, and later when he held the office of consul, he had shown vigor and capacity for affairs. Afterwards returning to his life of vicious indulgence, he became one of the chosen circle of Nero's intimates, and was looked upon as an absolute authority on questions of taste (elegantiae arbiter) in connection with the science of luxurious living.
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Pirenne thesis
Henri Pirenne (23 December 1862 - 25 October 1935) was a Belgian historian. A medievalist of Walloon descent, he wrote a multivolume history of Belgium in French and became a national hero. He also became prominent in the nonviolent resistance to the Germans who occupied Belgium in World War I.
Henri Pirenne's reputation today rests on three contributions to European history: for what has become known as the Pirenne Thesis, concerning origins of the Middle Ages in reactive state formation and shifts in trade; for a distinctive view of Belgium's medieval history; and for his model of the development of the medieval city.
Pirenne argued that profound social, economic, cultural, and religious movements in the long-term resulted from equally profound underlying causes, and this attitude influenced Marc Bloch and the outlook of the French Annales School of social history. Though Pirenne had his opponents, notably Alfons Dopsch who disagreed on essential points, recent historians of the Middle Ages usually take Pirenne's main theses, however much they are modified, as starting points.
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Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254–184 BC), commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus. The word Plautine ( /ˈplɔːtaɪn/) refers to both Plautus's own works and works similar to or influenced by his.
Not much is known about Titus Maccius Plautus' early life. It is believed that he was born in Sarsina, a small town in Umbria in central Italy, in around 254 BC. According to Morris Marples, Plautus worked as a stage-carpenter or scene-shifter in his early years. It is from this work, perhaps, that his love of the theater originated. His acting talent was eventually discovered; and he adopted the names "Maccius" (a clownish stock-character in popular farces) and "Plautus" (a term meaning either "flat-footed" or "flat-eared," like the ears of a hound). Tradition holds that he made enough money to go into the nautical business, but that the venture collapsed. He is then said to have worked as a manual laborer and to have studied Greek drama—particularly the New Comedy of Menander—in his leisure. His studies allowed him to produce his plays, which were released between c. 205 and 184 BC. Plautus attained such a popularity that his name alone became a hallmark of theatrical success.
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Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (23 AD – August 25, 79 AD), better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian. Spending most of his spare time studying, writing or investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field, he wrote an encyclopedic work, Naturalis Historia, which became a model for all such works written subsequently. Pliny the Younger, his nephew, wrote of him in a letter to the historian Tacitus:
Pliny is referring to the fact that Tacitus relied on his uncle's now missing work on the History of the German Wars. Pliny the Elder died on August 25, 79 AD, while attempting the rescue by ship of a friend and his family from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that had just destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The prevailing wind would not allow his ship to leave the shore. His companions attributed his collapse and death to toxic fumes; but they were unaffected by the fumes, suggesting natural causes.
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Pliny the Younger
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo (61 AD – ca. 112 AD), better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him. They were both witnesses to the eruption of Vesuvius on 24 August 79 AD.
Pliny is known for his hundreds of surviving letters, which are an invaluable historical source for the time period. Many are addressed to reigning emperors or to notables such as the historian, Tacitus. Pliny himself was a notable figure, serving as an imperial magistrate under Trajan (reigned AD 98–117). Pliny was considered an honest and moderate man, consistent in his pursuit of suspected Christian members according to Roman law, and rose through a series of Imperial civil and military offices, the cursus honorum (see below). He was a friend of the historian Tacitus and employed the biographer Suetonius in his staff. Pliny also came into contact with many other well-known men of the period, including the philosophers Artemidorus and Euphrates during his time in Syria.[citation needed]
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Quintilian
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. 35 – c. 100) was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing. In English translation, he is usually referred to as Quintilian, although the alternate spellings of Quintillian and Quinctilian are occasionally seen, the latter in older texts.
Quintilian was born ca. 35 in Calagurris (Calahorra, La Rioja) in Hispania. His father, a well-educated man, sent him to Rome to study rhetoric early in the reign of Nero. While there, he cultivated a relationship with Domitius Afer, who died in 59. "It had always been the custom … for young men with ambitions in public life to fix upon some older model of their ambition … and regard him as a mentor" (Kennedy, 16). Quintilian evidently adopted Afer as his model and listened to him speak and plead cases in the law courts. Afer has been characterized as a more austere, classical, Ciceronian speaker than those common at the time of Seneca, and he may have inspired Quintilian’s love of Cicero.
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Ricimer
Flavius Ricimer (c. 405 – August 18, 472) Latin pronunciation: [ˈrɪkɪmɛr]) was a Romanized Germanic general who effectively ruled the remaining territory of the Western Roman Empire from 456 until his death in 472. Deriving his power from his position as magister militum of the Western Empire, Ricimer exercised political control through a series of puppet emperors.
Ricimer's military office and his dominance over the Empire led to historians such as J.B. Bury to conclude that he was a link between previous magistri militum, such as the Vandal Stilicho, and the Germanic king of Italy, Odoacer. Odoacer deposed Western Emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476, in an act often considered to mark the fall of the Roman Empire.
Ricimer was the son of Rechila, the Suevic King of Galicia, and a daughter of the Visigothic king Wallia. , an Arian Christian, the son of Rechila, the Suevic King of Galicia. His mother was the daughter of Wallia, king of the Visigoths. It has been surmised that such an alliance between the Suevi and the Visigoths would have been made before Wallia's death in 418, after which Wallia's successors may have become hostile toward the family members of the deceased king. As entry into the Western Empire's military was a frequently-used option for "losers of struggles for leadership among the barbarians", and Ricimer's family would have thus entered the service of Rome.
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Roman Emperor
The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period (starting at about 27 BC). The Romans had no single term for the office although at any given time, a given title was associated with the emperor. If a man was "proclaimed emperor" this normally meant he was proclaimed augustus, or (for generals) imperator (from which English emperor ultimately derives). Several other titles and offices were regularly accumulated by emperors, such as caesar, princeps senatus, consul and Pontifex Maximus. The power of emperors was generally based on the accumulation of powers from republican offices and the support of the army.
Roman emperors refused to be considered "kings", instead claiming to be leaders of a republic, however nominal. The first emperor, Augustus, resolutely refused recognition as a monarch. Although Augustus could claim that his power was authentically Republican, his successor, Tiberius, could not convincingly make the same claim. Nonetheless, the Republican institutional framework (senate, consuls, magistracies etc.) was preserved until the very end of the Western Empire.
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Roman Emperors
The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period (starting at about 27 BC). The Romans had no single term for the office although at any given time, a given title was associated with the emperor. If a man was "proclaimed emperor" this normally meant he was proclaimed augustus, or (for generals) imperator (from which English emperor ultimately derives). Several other titles and offices were regularly accumulated by emperors, such as caesar, princeps senatus, consul and Pontifex Maximus. The power of emperors was generally based on the accumulation of powers from republican offices and the support of the army.
Roman emperors refused to be considered "kings", instead claiming to be leaders of a republic, however nominal. The first emperor, Augustus, resolutely refused recognition as a monarch. Although Augustus could claim that his power was authentically Republican, his successor, Tiberius, could not convincingly make the same claim. Nonetheless, the Republican institutional framework (senate, consuls, magistracies etc.) was preserved until the very end of the Western Empire.
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Sara C. Bisel
Dr. Sara C. Bisel (1932 - 1996) was a physical anthropologist and classical archaeologist who played a prominent role in early scientific research at Herculaneum, a Mediterranean coastal town destroyed by the 72 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Her pioneering work in the chemical and physical analysis of skeletons yielded new insights into the nutrition and health of ancient populations. This was considered ground-breaking and helped advance the field of paleodemography.
Born Sara Louise Clark on May 13, 1932, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Dr. Bisel grew up in western Pennsylvania. She graduated from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh with a Bachelor's degree in nutrition and biochemistry. She married Harry Bisel, a Mayo Clinic medical oncologist, and lived in Rochester, Minnesota from 1963.
At the University of Minnesota, she earned a Master's degree in classical area studies, with a specialization in Greek archaeology, and a Ph.D. in physical anthropology. She was awarded a fellowship by the Smithsonian Institution in 1977 and conducted independent research funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic Society from 1981 to 1988. She was a Visiting Scientist at the Mayo Clinic, and a Research Associate and Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution.
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Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca; ca. 4 BC – AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. While he was later forced to commit suicide for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors, he may have been innocent. His father was Seneca the Elder and his elder brother was Gallio.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born in Cordoba, in the Baetica, the southern highly romanized province of Spain. One of his revisionist modern biographers, however, Miriam Griffin says in her biography of Seneca that "the evidence for Seneca's life before his exile in 41 is so slight, and the potential interest of these years, for social history as well as for biography, is so great that few writers on Seneca have resisted the temptation to eke out knowledge with imagination." Griffin also states, apparently inferring from ancient sources, that Seneca was born in either 8, 4, or 1 BC. She thinks he was born between 4 and 1 BC and was a resident in Rome by AD 5. Seneca says that he was carried to Rome in the arms of his mother's stepsister. Griffin says that, allowing for rhetorical exaggeration, means "it is fair to conclude that Seneca was in Rome as a very small boy." Be that as it may, it is clear that he was in Rome at a relatively early stage in his life.
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Sextus Propertius
Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium and died shortly after 15 BC.
Propertius' surviving work comprises four books of Elegies. He was friends with the poets Gallus and Virgil, and with them had as his patron Maecenas, and through Maecenas the emperor Augustus.
Very little information is known about Propertius outside of his own writing. His praenomen "Sextus" is mentioned by Aelius Donatus, a few manuscripts list him as "Sextus Propertius", but the rest of his name is unknown. From numerous references in his poetry it is clear he was born and raised in Umbria; modern Assisi claims for itself the honor of his birthplace. As a boy his father died and the family lost land as part of a confiscation, probably the same one which reduced Virgil's estates when Octavian alloted lands to his veterans in 41 BC. Combining this with cryptic references in Ovid implying he was younger than his contemporary Tibullus, a birthdate in the early 40s seems appropriate.
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Statius
Publius Papinius Statius (c. 45, Naples – c. 96 AD, Naples) was a Roman poet of the 1st century CE (Silver Age of Latin literature). Besides his poetry in Latin, which include an epic poem, the Thebaid, a collection of occasional poetry, the Silvae, and the unfinished epic, the Achilleid, he is best known for his appearance as a major character in the Purgatory section of Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy.
Information about Statius' life is almost entirely drawn from his Silvae and a mention by the satirist Juvenal. He was born to a family of Graeco-Campanian origin; his Roman cognomen suggests that at some time an ancestor of his was freed and adopted the name of his former master, although neither Statius nor his father were slaves. The poet's father (whose name is unknown) was a native of Velia but later moved to Naples and spent time in Rome where he taught with marked success. From boyhood to adulthood, Statius' father proved himself a champion in the poetic contests at Naples in the Augustalia and in the Nemean, Pythian, and Isthmian games, which served as important events to display poetic skill during the early empire. Statius declares in his lament for his father (Silv. 5.3) that his father was in his time equal to any literary task, whether in prose or verse. He mentioned Mevania, and may have spent time there, or been impressed by the confrontation of Vitellius and Vespasian in 69. Statius' father was a Roman eques, but may have lost his status because of money troubles. At Naples, he was a teacher of Greek and Roman literature who attracted many pupils who were destined for religious offices in Rome. He died in 79 CE.
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Stilicho
Flavius Stilicho (occasionally written as Stilico) (ca. 359–408) was a high-ranking general (magister militum) who was, for a time, the most powerful man in the Western Roman Empire. Half Vandal and married to the niece of the Emperor Theodosius, Stilicho’s regency for the underage Honorius marked the high point of German advancement in the service of Rome. After many years of victories against a number of enemies, both barbarian and Roman, a series of political and military disasters finally allowed his enemies in the court of Honorius to remove him from power, culminating in his arrest and subsequent execution in 408. Known for his military successes and sense of duty, Stilicho was, in the words of the great historian Edward Gibbon, “the last of the Roman generals.”
Stilicho was the son of a Vandal father and a Roman mother. Despite his father's origins there is little to suggest that Stilicho considered himself anything other than a Roman, and his high rank within the Empire suggests that he was probably not Arian like many Germanic Christians but rather a Nicene Christian like his patron Theodosius I, who declared Nicene Christianity the official religion of the Empire.
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Suebi
The Suebi or Suevi (from Proto-Germanic *swēbaz based on the Proto-Germanic root *swē- meaning "one's own" people, from an Indo-European root *swe-, the third person reflexive pronoun) were a group of Germanic peoples who were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with Ariovistus' campaign, c. 58 BC;
Some Suebi remained a periodic threat against the Romans on the Rhine, until, toward the end of the empire, the Alamanni, including elements of Suebi, brushed aside Roman defenses and occupied Alsace, and from there Bavaria and Switzerland. A pocket remained in Swabia (an area in southwest Germany whose modern name derives from the ancient name), whereas migrants to Gallaecia (modern Galicia, in Spain, and Northern Portugal) established a kingdom there which lasted for 170 years until its integration into the Visigothic Kingdom.
In the classical sources, the ethnonym Suebi is used with two different meanings: the specific tribe of Caesar's campaign, "dwelling on the Main", and "broadly, to cover a large number of tribes in central Germany." The broad view is expressed in Tacitus's Germania, a basic written source for the Suebic peoples that states:
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Suetonius
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius[pronunciation?] (ca. 69/72 – after 130), was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era.
His most important surviving work is a set of biographies of twelve successive Roman rulers, from Julius Caesar to Domitian, entitled De Vita Caesarum. He recorded the earliest accounts of Julius Caesar's epileptic seizures. Other works by Suetonius concern the daily life of Rome, politics, oratory, and the lives of famous writers, including poets, historians, and grammarians. A few of these books have partially survived, but many have been lost.
Suetonius was born the son of Suetonius Laetus, who probably came from Hippo Regius (Annaba, Algeria). Laetus was an equestrian who served and took part in the first Battle of Bedriacum for the Emperor Otho and against the future Emperor Vitellius in AD 69.
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Tacitus
Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (AD 56 – AD 117) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors. These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus in AD 14 to (presumably) the death of emperor Domitian in AD 96. There are substantial lacunae in the surviving texts, including one four books long in the Annals.
Other writings by him discuss oratory (in dialogue format, see Dialogus de oratoribus), Germania (in De origine et situ Germanorum), and the life of his father-in-law Agricola, mainly focusing on his campaign in Britannia (see De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae).
Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians. He lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature, and as well as the brevity and compactness of his Latin prose, he is known for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics.
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Terence
Publius Terentius Afer (195/185–159 BC), better known in English as Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic, of North African descent. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on, impressed by his abilities, freed him. Terence apparently died young, probably in Greece or on his way back to Rome. All of the six plays Terence wrote have survived.
One famous quotation by Terence reads: "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto", or "I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me." This appeared in his play Heauton Timorumenos.
Terence's date of birth is disputed; Aelius Donatus, in his incomplete Commentum Terenti, considers the year 185 BC to be the year Terentius was born;Fenestella, on the other hand, states that he was born ten years earlier, in 195 BC.
He may have been born in or near Carthage or in Greek Italy to a woman taken to Carthage as a slave. Terence's ethnonym Afer suggests he lived in the territory of the Libyan tribe called by the Romans Afri near Carthage prior to being brought to Rome as a slave. This inference is based on the fact that the term was used in two different ways during the republican era: during Terence's lifetime, it was used to refer to non-Carthaginian Libyco-Berbers, with the term Punicus reserved for the Carthaginians. Later, after the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, it was used to refer to anyone from the land of the Afri (Tunisia and its surroundings). It is therefore most likely that Terence was of Libyan descent, considered ancestors to the modern-day Berber peoples.
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Theodoric the Great
Theoderic the Great (Gothic: Þiudareiks; Latin: Flāvius Theodericus; Greek: Θευδέριχος, Theuderikhos; Old English: Þēodrīc; Old Norse: Þjōðrēkr, Þīðrēkr; 454 – August 30, 526) was king of the Ostrogoths (471–526), ruler of Italy (493–526), regent of the Visigoths (511–526), and a viceroy of the Eastern Roman Empire. His Gothic name Þiudareiks translates into "people-king" or "ruler of the people".
A son of King Theodemir, an Amali nobleman, Theoderic was born in Pannonia, after his people had defeated the Huns at the Battle of Nedao. Growing up as a hostage in Constantinople, Theoderic received a privileged education, and succeeded his father as leader of the Pannonian Ostrogoths in 471 AD. Settling his people in lower Moesia, Theoderic came in conflict with Thracian Ostrogoths led by Theoderic Strabo, whom he eventually supplanted, uniting the peoples in 484.
Subsequently, Byzantine Emperor Zeno gave him the title of Patrician and the office of Magister militum (master of the soldiers), and even appointed him as Roman Consul. Trying to achieve further aims, Theoderic frequently ravaged the provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire, eventually threatening Constantinople itself. In 488, Emperor Zeno ordered Theoderic to overthrow the German usurper Odoacer, who had established himself as King of Italy. After a victorious three-year long war, Theoderic killed Odoacer with his own hands, settled his 100,000 to 200,000 people in Italy, and founded a Kingdom based in Ravenna. Although promoting separation between the Arian Ostrogoths and the Roman population, Theoderic stressed the importance of racial harmony. Seeking to restore the glory of Ancient Rome, he ruled Italy in its most peaceful and prosperous period since Valentinian, until his death in 526. Memories of his reign made him a hero of Germanic legend as Dietrich von Bern.
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Theodosius I
Theodosius I (Latin: Flavius Theodosius Augustus; 11 January 347 – 17 January 395), also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire. During his reign, the Goths secured control of Illyricum after the Gothic War, establishing their homeland south of the Danube within the empire's borders. He also issued decrees that effectively made Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire.
He is recognized by the Eastern Orthodox Church as Saint Theodosius. He defeated the usurpers Magnus Maximus and Eugenius and fostered the destruction of some prominent pagan temples: the Serapeum in Alexandria, the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, and the Vestal Virgins in Rome. After his death, Theodosius' sons Arcadius and Honorius inherited the East and West halves respectively, and the Roman Empire was never again re-united.
Theodosius was born in Cauca or Italica, Hispania, to senior military officer Theodosius the Elder. He accompanied his father to Britannia to help quell the Great Conspiracy in 368. He was military commander (dux) of Moesia, a Roman province on the lower Danube, in 374. However, shortly thereafter, and at about the same time as the sudden disgrace and execution of his father, Theodosius retired to Spain. The reason for his retirement, and the relationship (if any) between it and his father's death is unclear. It is possible that he was dismissed from his command by the emperor Valentinian I after the loss of two of Theodosius' legions to the Sarmatians in late 374.
wn.com/Theodosius_I -
Valens
Valens ([pronunciation?]; Latin: Flavius Julius Valens Augustus; 328 – 9 August 378) was the Eastern Roman Emperor from 364 to 378. He was given the eastern half of the empire by his brother Valentinian I after the latter's accession to the throne. Valens, sometimes known as the Last True Roman, was defeated and killed in the Battle of Adrianople, which marked the beginning of the collapse of the decaying Western Roman Empire.
Valens and his brother Valentinian were both born in Cibalae (in present-day Croatia) into an Illyrian family in 328 and 321 respectively. They had grown up on estates purchased by their father Gratian the Elder in Africa and Britain. While Valentinian had enjoyed a successful military career prior to his appointment as emperor, Valens apparently had not. He had spent much of his youth on the family's estate and only joined the army in the 360s, participating with his brother in the Persian campaign of Emperor Julian.
In February 364, reigning Emperor Jovian, while hastening to Constantinople to secure his claim to the throne, was asphyxiated during a stop at Dadastana, 100 miles east of Ankara. Among Jovian's agents was Valentinian, a tribunus scutariorum. He was proclaimed Augustus on 26 February, 364. Valentinian felt that he needed help to govern the large and troublesome empire, and, on 28 March of the same year, appointed his brother Valens as co-emperor in the palace of Hebdomon. The two Augusti travelled together through Adrianople and Naissus to Sirmium, where they divided their personnel, and Valentinian went on to the West.
wn.com/Valens -
Vandals
The Vandals were an East Germanic tribe who in 429 under king Genseric entered Africa and by 439 established a kingdom which included the Roman Africa province, besides the islands of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta and the Balearics. In 455, they sacked the city of Rome. Their kingdom collapsed in the Vandalic War of 533–4, in which Justinian I managed to reconquer the Africa province for the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.
Renaissance and Early Modern writers characterized the Vandals as barbarians, "sacking and looting" Rome. This led to the use of the term "vandalism", to describe any senseless destruction, particularly the "barbarian" defacing of artworks. However, modern historians tend to regard the Vandals during the transitional period (from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages) as perpetuators, not destroyers, of Roman culture.
The name of the Vandals has often been connected to that of Vendel,[citation needed] the name of a province in Uppland, Sweden, which is also eponymous of the Vendel period of Swedish prehistory, corresponding to the late Germanic Iron Age leading up to the Viking Age. The connection would be that Vendel is the original homeland of the Vandals prior to the Migration Period, and retains their tribal name as a toponym.
wn.com/Vandals -
Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro[pronunciation?] (116 BC – 27 BC) was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus.
Varro was born in or near Reate (now Rieti) to a family thought to be of equestrian rank, and always remained close to his roots in the area, owning a large farm in the Reatine plain, probably near Lago di Ripa Sottile, till his old age.[citation needed]
Politically, he supported Pompey, reaching the office of praetor, after having been tribune of the people, quaestor and curule aedile. He was one of the commission of twenty that carried out the great agrarian scheme of Caesar for the resettlement of Capua and Campania (59 BC).
During the civil war he commanded one of Pompey's armies in the Ilerda campaign. He escaped the penalties of being on the losing side in the civil war through two pardons granted by Julius Caesar, before and after the Battle of Pharsalus. Caesar later appointed him to oversee the public library of Rome in 47 BC, but following Caesar's death Mark Antony proscribed him, resulting in the loss of much of his property, including his library. As the Republic gave way to Empire, Varro gained the favour of Augustus, under whose protection he found the security and quiet to devote himself to study and writing.
wn.com/Varro -
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil /ˈvɜrdʒəl/ in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, are sometimes attributed to him.
Virgil is traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets. His Aeneid has been considered the national epic of ancient Rome from the time of its composition to the present day. Modeled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid follows the Trojan refugee Aeneas as he struggles to fulfill his destiny and arrive on the shores of Italy—in Roman mythology the founding act of Rome. Virgil's work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most notably the Divine Comedy of Dante, in which Virgil appears as Dante's guide through hell and purgatory.
Virgil's biographical tradition is thought to depend on a lost biography by Varius, Virgil's editor, which was incorporated into the biography by Suetonius and the commentaries of Servius and Donatus, the two great commentators on Virgil's poetry. Although the commentaries no doubt record much factual information about Virgil, some of their evidence can be shown to rely on inferences made from his poetry and allegorizing; thus, Virgil's biographical tradition remains problematic.
wn.com/Virgil -
Visigothic Kingdom
The Visigothic Kingdom was a kingdom which occupied what is now southwestern France and the Iberian Peninsula from the 5th to 8th century AD. One of the Germanic successor states to the Western Roman Empire, it was originally created by the settlement of the Visigoths under King Wallia in the province of Aquitaine in south-west France by the Roman government and then extended by conquest over all of the Iberian peninsula. The Kingdom maintained independence from the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, the attempts of which to re-establish Roman authority in Iberia were only partially successful and short-lived. By the early 6th century, the Kingdom's territory in Gaul had been lost to the Franks, save the narrow coastal strip of Septimania, but the Visigoth control of Iberia was secured by the end of that century with the submission of the Suebi and the Basques. The ethnic distinction between the indigenous Hispano-Roman population and the Visigoths had largely disappeared by this time (the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language when the Visigoths converted to Catholicism in 589).Liber Iudiciorum (completed in 654) abolished the old tradition of having different laws for Romans and for Visigoths. Most of the Visigothic Kingdom was conquered by Islamic troops from Morocco in 711 AD, only the northern reaches of Spain remaining in Christian hands. These gave birth to the medieval Kingdom of Asturias when a local landlord called Pelayo, most likely of Gothic origin, was elected Princeps by the Astures.
wn.com/Visigothic_Kingdom -
Visigoths
The Visigoths (Latin: Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, or Wisi) were one of two main branches of the later Goths, the Ostrogoths being the other. These tribes were among the Germanic peoples who spread through the late Roman Empire during Late Antiquity or the Migration Period. The Visigoths emerged out of the Gothic groups who entered the Roman Empire in and after 376 and defeated the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. The Visigoths invaded Italy under Alaric I and famously sacked Rome in 410 AD, eventually settling in Spain and Portugal, where they founded a powerful Kingdom.
After numerous years of migration, which led the Visigoths to compare themselves to the Biblical Hebrew people wandering for 40 years in the Sinai Desert, the Visigoths settled in southern Gaul as foederati of the Romans in 418. For unknown reasons, they soon fell out with their hosts and established their own kingdom with its capital at Toulouse. Extending their authority into Hispania at the expense of the Vandals, their rule in Gaul was ended by the Franks under Clovis I at the Battle of Vouillé in 507. Thereafter the only territory north of the Pyrenees that the Visigoths held was Septimania, such that their kingdom became limited to Hispania. The province came to be dominated by the Visigothic small governing elite at the expense of the Byzantine province of Spania and the Suebic Kingdom of Galicia.
wn.com/Visigoths -
Vitruvius
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (born c. 80–70 BC, died after c. 15 BC) was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ("On Architecture").
By his own description Vitruvius served as a ballista (artilleryman), the third class of arms in the military offices. He likely served as chief of the ballista (senior officer of artillery) in charge of doctores ballistarum (artillery experts) and libratores who actually operated the machines.
Little is known about Vitruvius' life. Most inferences about him are extracted from his only surviving work De Architectura. His first name Marcus and his cognomen Pollio are uncertain. He was possibly a praefectus fabrum during military service or praefect architectus armamentarius of the apparitor status group. Cetius Faventinus speaks of "Vitruvius Polio aliique auctores" in his epitome; it is possible that the cognomen derives from this mention by Cetius, meaning Vitruvius, Polio, and others - further confusing the cognomen, an inscription in Verona names Lucius Vitruvius Cordo and an inscription from Thilbilis North Africa (near Guelma) names Marcus Vitruvius Mamurra. From this inscription the archaeologist Dr. G. Q. Giglioli nearly concludes that Vitruvius and Mamurra are from the same family.
wn.com/Vitruvius -
William H. McNeill
William Hardy McNeill (born October 31, 1917) is an American world historian and author and is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1947.
McNeill was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the son of theologian and educator John T. McNeill.
He was educated at the University of Chicago, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in 1938, and Master of Arts (M.A.) in 1939. He obtained his PhD at Cornell University in 1947.
McNeill's most popular work, completed early in his career, is The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (University of Chicago Press, 1963). The book explored world history in terms of the effect of different old world civilizations on one another, and especially the dramatic effect of Western civilization on others in the past 500 years. It had a major impact on historical theory, especially its emphasis on cultural fusions, in contradistinction to Oswald Spengler's view of discrete, independent civilizations. Rise of the West won the 1964 U.S. National Book Award in History and Biography.
wn.com/William_H._McNeill -
Zeno (emperor)
Zeno ([pronunciation?]; Latin: Flavius Zeno Augustus; Greek: Ζήνων) (c. 425 – 9 April 491), originally named Tarasis, was Byzantine Emperor from 474 to 475 and again from 476 to 491. Domestic revolts and religious dissension plagued his reign, which nevertheless succeeded to some extent in foreign issues. His reign saw the end of the Western Roman Empire under Julius Nepos, but he contributed much to stabilizing the eastern Empire.
In ecclesiastical history, Zeno is associated with the Henotikon or "instrument of union", promulgated by him and signed by all the Eastern bishops, with the design of solving the monophysite controversy.
Zeno's original name was Tarasis. Tarasis was born in Isauria, at Rusumblada, later renamed Zenonopolis in Zeno's honour. His father was called Kodisa (as attested by his patronimic "Tarasicodissa"), his mother Lallis, his brother Longinus. Tarasis had a wife, Arcadia, whose name indicates a relationship with the Constantinopolitan aristocracy, and whose statue was erected near the Baths of Arcadius, along the steps that led to Topoi. According to a Near Eastern Christian legend, Zeno had two daughters, Hilaria and Thaopesta, who followed a religious life, but historical sources attest the existence of only one son by Arcadia, called Zenon. Tarasis was probably related to the Isaurian general Zeno, who had fought against Attila in 447 to defend Constantinople and had been consul the following year.
wn.com/Zeno_(emperor)
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Fall of The Roman Empire...in the 15th Century: Crash Course World History #12
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 12:44
- Updated: 17 Dec 2012
In which John Green teaches you about the fall of the Roman Empire, which happened considerably later than you may have been told. While the Western Roman Empire fell to barbarians in 476 CE, the Byzantines in Constantinople continued the Eastern Empire nicely, calling themselves Romans for a further 1000 years. Find out what Justinian and the rest of the Byzantine emperors were up to over there, and how the Roman Empire dragged out its famous Decline well into medieval times. In addition to all this, you'll learn about ancient sports riots and hipster barbarians, too. Follow us! @thecrashcourse @realjohngreen @raoulmeyer @crashcoursestan @saysdanica @thoughtbubbler Like us! www.facebook.com Follow us again! thecrashcourse.tumblr.com
http://wn.com/Fall_of_The_Roman_Empirein_the_15th_Century_Crash_Course_World_History_12
In which John Green teaches you about the fall of the Roman Empire, which happened considerably later than you may have been told. While the Western Roman Empire fell to barbarians in 476 CE, the Byzantines in Constantinople continued the Eastern Empire nicely, calling themselves Romans for a further 1000 years. Find out what Justinian and the rest of the Byzantine emperors were up to over there, and how the Roman Empire dragged out its famous Decline well into medieval times. In addition to all this, you'll learn about ancient sports riots and hipster barbarians, too. Follow us! @thecrashcourse @realjohngreen @raoulmeyer @crashcoursestan @saysdanica @thoughtbubbler Like us! www.facebook.com Follow us again! thecrashcourse.tumblr.com
The Decline and Fall of Roman Empire
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:33
- Updated: 16 Dec 2012
Some reasons for the "fall" of the Western Roman Empire. Graphics courtesy of mappinghistory.uoregon.edu
http://wn.com/The_Decline_and_Fall_of_Roman_Empire
Some reasons for the "fall" of the Western Roman Empire. Graphics courtesy of mappinghistory.uoregon.edu
- published: 01 Jan 2010
- views: 62088
- author: johnmb76
THE ROMAN EMPIRE - FALL OF THE WEST 1 OF 5
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:35
- Updated: 25 Nov 2012
For more information of the Military Campaigns of the Roman Empire visit. www.greatmilitarybattles.com
http://wn.com/THE_ROMAN_EMPIRE_FALL_OF_THE_WEST_1_OF_5
For more information of the Military Campaigns of the Roman Empire visit. www.greatmilitarybattles.com
- published: 14 May 2011
- views: 9519
- author: GREATMILITARYBATTLES
Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire by Joseph R. Peden Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:18
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
mises.org guardofliberty.blogspot.com An interesting Mises article I came across today that I thought I'd share with you all. History seems to be repeating itself doesn't it? I've also written a similar article on my blog early in the year, check it out. This is a good look at what happens when extortion rackets monopolize money.
http://wn.com/Inflation_and_the_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire_by_Joseph_R_Peden_Part_1
mises.org guardofliberty.blogspot.com An interesting Mises article I came across today that I thought I'd share with you all. History seems to be repeating itself doesn't it? I've also written a similar article on my blog early in the year, check it out. This is a good look at what happens when extortion rackets monopolize money.
- published: 08 Sep 2009
- views: 14377
- author: GuardofLiberty
The Judge on the Decline and Fall of Roman Empire and Future of America
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:35
- Updated: 12 Nov 2012
Judge Andrew Napolitano gives a history lesson to the American people on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Captions were added.
http://wn.com/The_Judge_on_the_Decline_and_Fall_of_Roman_Empire_and_Future_of_America
Judge Andrew Napolitano gives a history lesson to the American people on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Captions were added.
- published: 03 Oct 2011
- views: 2720
- author: KramerDSP
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 1 Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:46
- Updated: 13 Nov 2012
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. This is the first of a series of videos I am producing that will feature the audio version of this immense work in its entirety. Make sure to have captions and annotations active while viewing this video to get the full benefit. I have the entire text fully captioned so you can follow along.
http://wn.com/The_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire_Chapter_1_Part_1
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. This is the first of a series of videos I am producing that will feature the audio version of this immense work in its entirety. Make sure to have captions and annotations active while viewing this video to get the full benefit. I have the entire text fully captioned so you can follow along.
- published: 21 Feb 2010
- views: 15452
- author: gbrb2010
The Roman Empire's Collapse in the 5th century
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 28:12
- Updated: 02 Nov 2012
The causes and events of the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. With guests Richard Alaston, Charlotte Roueché and David Womersely.
http://wn.com/The_Roman_Empire's_Collapse_in_the_5th_century
The causes and events of the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. With guests Richard Alaston, Charlotte Roueché and David Womersely.
- published: 11 Feb 2012
- views: 3440
- author: Gottfried Leibniz
Fall of Rome
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:14
- Updated: 09 Dec 2012
The Fading of the Roman Spirit and the Fall of the Western Empire.
http://wn.com/Fall_of_Rome
The Fading of the Roman Spirit and the Fall of the Western Empire.
- published: 02 Jan 2010
- views: 39594
- author: NXSchell
Augustine: The Decline of the Roman Empire
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:09
- Updated: 14 Nov 2012
Trailer for the new Lux Vide Miniseries, "Augustine: The Decline of the Roman Empire," on the life of St. Augustine of Hippo. More information here: www.luxvide.it
http://wn.com/Augustine_The_Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire
Trailer for the new Lux Vide Miniseries, "Augustine: The Decline of the Roman Empire," on the life of St. Augustine of Hippo. More information here: www.luxvide.it
- published: 04 Sep 2009
- views: 34806
- author: Teófilo de Jesús
Fall of the roman empire (prelude to documentary)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:31
- Updated: 02 Nov 2012
The start of a documentary that im going to ake on the fall of Rome - might as well put my degree to use. If its fun I'll do it on other stuff as well.
http://wn.com/Fall_of_the_roman_empire_prelude_to_documentary
The start of a documentary that im going to ake on the fall of Rome - might as well put my degree to use. If its fun I'll do it on other stuff as well.
- published: 05 Jun 2007
- views: 109201
- author: Nick Ward
"All About The Decline of The Roman Empire" by Papa Razzi and The Photogs
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:06
- Updated: 23 Jan 2012
Papa Razzi teaches the people all about the decline of the Roman Empire. Wow! What a wonderful story!
http://wn.com/All_About_The_Decline_of_The_Roman_Empire_by_Papa_Razzi_and_The_Photogs
Papa Razzi teaches the people all about the decline of the Roman Empire. Wow! What a wonderful story!
- published: 08 Dec 2011
- views: 14
- author: MoternMedia
Barbarian Emperor: Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 7 Part 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:29
- Updated: 16 Nov 2012
See historybooksreview.co.uk for more information about how the brutal tyrant Maximin came to the throne and the violence that this caused.
http://wn.com/Barbarian_Emperor_Gibbon's_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire_Chapter_7_Part_1
See historybooksreview.co.uk for more information about how the brutal tyrant Maximin came to the throne and the violence that this caused.
- published: 07 Nov 2010
- views: 578
- author: historyscientist
The Collapse of the Occidental Roman Empire (476 CE)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:48
- Updated: 13 Nov 2012
(By Conrad Jalowski) All polities undergo a beginning phase and ascend to a particular height of power. During the apogee of the state, there is a great degree of prosperity with leaps in the economic productivity and military power of the particular nation with a flourishing of the arts and culture. The state then undergoes a period of stagnation which then makes the transition to a full and rapid decline and deterioration. The state then descends to its nadir and collapses. For the Romans, the general outline of rise and decay consists of the Pax Romana from 27 BCE-180 CE which represented the apogee of Roman power and the territorial zenith of the empire while during the Third Century Crisis from 235-284 CE, the Roman state underwent stagnation with a contraction and recession of Roman influence. The Romans experienced a brief recovery under the soldier-emperors Claudius II Gothicus, Aurelian, Marcus Claudius Tacitus and Probus but then irreversibly sunk into further decay due to the usurpation of Carus and the corrupt and decadent Carinus. The Tetrarchy of Diocletian (293-313 CE) divided the empire into four domains led by two senior co-emperors or the Augusti and two junior co-emperors or the Caesars and attempted to ease the burden of the imperial administration. Instead, the Tetrarchy of Diocletian dissolved due to internal competition and rivalries set between the ruling figures (Constantius Chlorus and Galerius). With the permanent and final split of the Roman ...
http://wn.com/The_Collapse_of_the_Occidental_Roman_Empire_476_CE
(By Conrad Jalowski) All polities undergo a beginning phase and ascend to a particular height of power. During the apogee of the state, there is a great degree of prosperity with leaps in the economic productivity and military power of the particular nation with a flourishing of the arts and culture. The state then undergoes a period of stagnation which then makes the transition to a full and rapid decline and deterioration. The state then descends to its nadir and collapses. For the Romans, the general outline of rise and decay consists of the Pax Romana from 27 BCE-180 CE which represented the apogee of Roman power and the territorial zenith of the empire while during the Third Century Crisis from 235-284 CE, the Roman state underwent stagnation with a contraction and recession of Roman influence. The Romans experienced a brief recovery under the soldier-emperors Claudius II Gothicus, Aurelian, Marcus Claudius Tacitus and Probus but then irreversibly sunk into further decay due to the usurpation of Carus and the corrupt and decadent Carinus. The Tetrarchy of Diocletian (293-313 CE) divided the empire into four domains led by two senior co-emperors or the Augusti and two junior co-emperors or the Caesars and attempted to ease the burden of the imperial administration. Instead, the Tetrarchy of Diocletian dissolved due to internal competition and rivalries set between the ruling figures (Constantius Chlorus and Galerius). With the permanent and final split of the Roman ...
- published: 27 Nov 2010
- views: 5998
- author: PyrrhusofEpirus
06. Transformation of the Roman Empire
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 49:22
- Updated: 07 Sep 2012
The Early Middle Ages, 284--1000 (HIST 210) The Roman Empire in the West collapsed as a political entity in the fifth century although the Eastern part survived the crisis.. Professor Freedman considers this transformation through three main questions: Why did the West fall apart -- because of the external pressure of invasions or the internal problems of institutional decline? Who were these invading barbarians? Finally, does this transformation mark a gradual shift or is it right to regard it as a cataclysmic end of civilization? Professor Freedman, as a moderate catastrophist, argues that this period marked the end of a particular civilization rather than the end of civilization in general. 00:00 - Chapter 1. Introduction 05:43 - Chapter 2. Catastrophe 18:43 - Chapter 3. The Roman Army and the Visigoths 28:25 - Chapter 4. Another Kind of Barbarian: The Huns 34:19 - Chapter 5. Accomodation 38:55 - Chapter 6. Decline Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: oyc.yale.edu This course was recorded in Fall 2011.
http://wn.com/06_Transformation_of_the_Roman_Empire
The Early Middle Ages, 284--1000 (HIST 210) The Roman Empire in the West collapsed as a political entity in the fifth century although the Eastern part survived the crisis.. Professor Freedman considers this transformation through three main questions: Why did the West fall apart -- because of the external pressure of invasions or the internal problems of institutional decline? Who were these invading barbarians? Finally, does this transformation mark a gradual shift or is it right to regard it as a cataclysmic end of civilization? Professor Freedman, as a moderate catastrophist, argues that this period marked the end of a particular civilization rather than the end of civilization in general. 00:00 - Chapter 1. Introduction 05:43 - Chapter 2. Catastrophe 18:43 - Chapter 3. The Roman Army and the Visigoths 28:25 - Chapter 4. Another Kind of Barbarian: The Huns 34:19 - Chapter 5. Accomodation 38:55 - Chapter 6. Decline Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: oyc.yale.edu This course was recorded in Fall 2011.
- published: 05 Apr 2012
- views: 9177
- author: YaleCourses
The Fall Of The Roman Empire Trailer
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:03
- Updated: 28 Sep 2012
Action-packed look at the beginnings of the fall of the Roman Empire. Here is the glory, the greed and grandeur that was Rome. Here is the story of personal lust for power, and the shattering effects of that power's loss. Here is the tale of the plight of a people living on the brink of a political abyss.
http://wn.com/The_Fall_Of_The_Roman_Empire_Trailer
Action-packed look at the beginnings of the fall of the Roman Empire. Here is the glory, the greed and grandeur that was Rome. Here is the story of personal lust for power, and the shattering effects of that power's loss. Here is the tale of the plight of a people living on the brink of a political abyss.
- published: 21 May 2011
- views: 8972
- author: AnchorBayUK
Gladiator: Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 4 Part 2
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:14
- Updated: 16 Nov 2012
Commodus shocked the Romans by appearing in the arena himself as a gladiator. This is part of a video series following Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. More at historybooksreview.co.uk
http://wn.com/Gladiator_Gibbon's_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire_Chapter_4_Part_2
Commodus shocked the Romans by appearing in the arena himself as a gladiator. This is part of a video series following Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. More at historybooksreview.co.uk
- published: 15 Sep 2010
- views: 521
- author: historyscientist
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 1 Part 2
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:30
- Updated: 10 Nov 2012
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. This is the second of a series of videos I am producing that will feature the audio version of this immense work in its entirety. Make sure to have captions and annotations active while viewing this video to get the full benefit. I have the entire text fully captioned so you can follow along.
http://wn.com/The_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire_Chapter_1_Part_2
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. This is the second of a series of videos I am producing that will feature the audio version of this immense work in its entirety. Make sure to have captions and annotations active while viewing this video to get the full benefit. I have the entire text fully captioned so you can follow along.
- published: 24 Feb 2010
- views: 5909
- author: gbrb2010
TrailersFromHellXtra - The Fall of the Roman Empire
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:14
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
Trailers From Hell Xtra showcases classic previews of coming movie attractions. They don't make 'em like this anymore: those huge sets and cast of thousands from 1964 aren't computer-generated but absolutely real, and those sixties-era actors are a darn sight more interesting than a lot of those we have on hand today.
http://wn.com/TrailersFromHellXtra_The_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire
Trailers From Hell Xtra showcases classic previews of coming movie attractions. They don't make 'em like this anymore: those huge sets and cast of thousands from 1964 aren't computer-generated but absolutely real, and those sixties-era actors are a darn sight more interesting than a lot of those we have on hand today.
- published: 16 Jan 2009
- views: 12427
- author: trailersfromhellxtra
Commodus - Chapter 4 Part 1 of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:19
- Updated: 16 Nov 2012
Commodus was a very poor successor to Marcus Aurelius as emperor. An assassination attempt made him paranoid, and his tolerance of corruption led to revolt. This is part of a video series following Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. For more information see historybooksreview.co.uk
http://wn.com/Commodus_Chapter_4_Part_1_of_Gibbon's_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire
Commodus was a very poor successor to Marcus Aurelius as emperor. An assassination attempt made him paranoid, and his tolerance of corruption led to revolt. This is part of a video series following Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. For more information see historybooksreview.co.uk
- published: 11 Apr 2010
- views: 3022
- author: historyscientist
Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire by Joseph R. Peden Part 2
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:45
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
mises.org guardofliberty.blogspot.com An interesting Mises article I came across today that I thought I'd share with you all. History seems to be repeating itself doesn't it? I've also written a similar article on my blog early in the year, check it out. This is a good look at what happens when extortion rackets monopolize money.
http://wn.com/Inflation_and_the_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire_by_Joseph_R_Peden_Part_2
mises.org guardofliberty.blogspot.com An interesting Mises article I came across today that I thought I'd share with you all. History seems to be repeating itself doesn't it? I've also written a similar article on my blog early in the year, check it out. This is a good look at what happens when extortion rackets monopolize money.
- published: 08 Sep 2009
- views: 5338
- author: GuardofLiberty
The Fall of The Roman Empire FART (1964)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:02
- Updated: 11 Dec 2012
Anthony Mann is my new favorite director. Most of his films examine the exhausted hero. I re-edited the end of the film. It's a masterpiece of filmmaking. I can relate to its fall.FART
http://wn.com/The_Fall_of_The_Roman_Empire_FART_1964
Anthony Mann is my new favorite director. Most of his films examine the exhausted hero. I re-edited the end of the film. It's a masterpiece of filmmaking. I can relate to its fall.FART
- published: 21 Jul 2008
- views: 45356
- author: Mark Toscani
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 1 Part 3
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:40
- Updated: 12 Aug 2012
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. This is the third of a series of videos I am producing that will feature the audio version of this immense work in its entirety. Make sure to have captions and annotations active while viewing this video to get the full benefit. I have the entire text fully captioned so you can follow along.
http://wn.com/The_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire_Chapter_1_Part_3
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. This is the third of a series of videos I am producing that will feature the audio version of this immense work in its entirety. Make sure to have captions and annotations active while viewing this video to get the full benefit. I have the entire text fully captioned so you can follow along.
- published: 04 Mar 2010
- views: 2397
- author: gbrb2010
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Chapter 1 Part 4
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:54
- Updated: 17 Feb 2012
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. This is the fourth in a series of videos I am producing that will feature the audio version of this immense work in its entirety. Make sure to have captions and annotations active while viewing this video to get the full benefit. I have the entire text fully captioned so you can follow along.
http://wn.com/The_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire_Chapter_1_Part_4
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. This is the fourth in a series of videos I am producing that will feature the audio version of this immense work in its entirety. Make sure to have captions and annotations active while viewing this video to get the full benefit. I have the entire text fully captioned so you can follow along.
- published: 07 Mar 2010
- views: 3262
- author: gbrb2010
photo: AP / Jason DeCrow
16 Dec 2012
Why did his mother, a well-to-do suburban divorcee, keep a cache of high-power weapons in the house? What experience did Lanza have with those guns? And, above all, what set him on a path to go classroom-by-classroom, massacring 6- and 7-year-olds? ... All the victims at the school were shot with a rifle, at least some of them up close, and all were apparently shot more than once, Chief Medical Examiner Dr....(size: 8.8Kb)
photo: AP / Guang Niu, Pool
16 Dec 2012
Viktor Yesin yesterday wrapped up a visit to the United States during which he met with officials at the Pentagon, State Department as well as members of Congress warning about underestimating China’s tactical nuclear weapons buildup ... Yesin is a retired flag officer of the Russian military; a man who rose up the ranks during the Soviet Era ... The Soviet Union is no more of course, but in its place is the Russian Federation and Mr....(size: 4.0Kb)
photo: AP / David Goldman
17 Dec 2012
WASHINGTON—Democrats say meaningful action in the wake of last week's elementary school shooting must include a ban on military-style assault weapons and a look at how the nation deals with individuals suffering from serious mental illness ... David Gregory, the host of "Meet the Press," said NBC invited all 31 "pro-gun" senators to appear on Sunday's show, and all 31 declined....(size: 5.3Kb)
photo: AP / Newtown Bee, Shannon Hicks
15 Dec 2012
The massacre of 26 children and adults at an elementary school in the US state of Connecticut elicited horror and soul-searching around the world even as it raised more basic questions about why the gunman, a 20-year-old described as brilliant but remote, would have been driven to such a crime and how he chose his victims ... Brett Wilshe, a friend of Ryan Lanza's, said Lanza told him the gunman may have had his identification....(size: 8.8Kb)
photo: AP / Jessica Hill
15 Dec 2012
Newtown, Connecticut (CNN) -- The bodies of children and educators lay where they fell in a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school -- in classrooms and hallways -- as investigators worked to identity the dead early Saturday while piecing together the path of the gunman ... Distraught people leave the fire station after hearing news of their loved ones from officials on Friday ... Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church in Newtown....(size: 24.9Kb)
This article is about the historiography of the decline of the Roman Empire. For a description of events, see Roman Empire. For the book by Edward Gibbon, see The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. For the film, see The Fall of the Roman Empire (film).
The decline of the Roman Empire refers to the gradual societal collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Many theories of causality prevail, but most concern the disintegration of political, economic, military, and other social institutions, in tandem with foreign invasions and usurpers from within the empire. The English historian Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) made this concept part of the framework of the English language, but he was not the first to speculate on why and when the Empire collapsed. "From the eighteenth century onward," Glen W. Bowersock has remarked,[1] "we have been obsessed with the fall: it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears." It remains one of the greatest historical questions, and has a tradition rich in scholarly interest. In 1984, German professor Alexander Demandt published a collection of 210 theories on why Rome fell, and new theories have emerged since then.[2][3]
This slow decline occurred over a period of four centuries, culminating on September 4, 476, when Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was deposed by Odoacer, a Germanic chieftain. Some modern historians question the significance of this date,[4] and not simply because Julius Nepos, the legitimate emperor recognized by the East Roman Empire, continued to live in Salona, Dalmatia, until he was assassinated in 480. The Ostrogoths who succeeded considered themselves upholders of the direct line of Roman traditions. The Eastern Roman Empire was going from strength to strength and continued until the Fall of Constantinople on May 29, 1453, or even later if such entities as the Despotate of the Morea (until somewhere between 1453 and 1460, depending on definitions) or the Empire of Trebizond (until August 15, 1461) are considered part of its continuity.
Many events throughout the empire's history are considered to have worsened the empire's so-called "decline". The Battle of Adrianople in 378, the death of Theodosius I in 395 (the last time the Roman Empire was politically unified), the crossing of the Rhine in 406 by Germanic tribes, the execution of Stilicho in 408, the sack of Rome in 410, the death of Constantius III in 421, the death of Aetius in 454, the second sack of Rome in 455, and the death of Majorian in 461 are all macrohistorical events concerning the decline of the Western Roman Empire.
Many scholars maintain that rather than a "fall", the changes can more accurately be described as a complex transformation.[5]
Contents |
Overview[link]
See also: Late Antiquity and Migration Period
The decline of the Roman Empire is one of the events traditionally marking the end of Classical Antiquity and the beginning of the European Middle Ages. Throughout the 5th century, the Empire's territories in western Europe and northwestern Africa, including Italy, fell to various invading or indigenous peoples in what is sometimes called the Migration period. Although the eastern half still survived with borders essentially intact for several centuries (until the Muslim conquests), the Empire as a whole had initiated major cultural and political transformations since the Crisis of the Third Century, with the shift towards a more openly autocratic and ritualized form of government, the adoption of Christianity as the state religion, and a general rejection of the traditions and values of Classical Antiquity. While traditional historiography emphasized this break with Antiquity by using the term "Byzantine Empire" instead of Roman Empire, recent schools of history offer a more nuanced view, seeing mostly continuity rather than a sharp break. The Empire of Late Antiquity already looked very different from classical Rome.
The Roman Empire emerged from the Roman Republic when Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar transformed it from a republic into a monarchy. Rome reached its zenith in the 2nd century, then fortunes slowly declined (with many revivals and restorations along the way). The reasons for the decline of the Empire are still debated today, and likely multiple. Historians infer that the population appears to have diminished in many provinces—especially western Europe—from the diminishing size of fortifications built to protect the cities from barbarian incursions from the 3rd century on. Some historians even have suggested that parts of the periphery were no longer inhabited because these fortifications were restricted to the center of the city only. Tree rings suggest "distinct drying" beginning in 250.[6]
By the late 3rd century, the city of Rome no longer served as an effective capital for the Emperor and various cities were used as new administrative capitals. Successive emperors, starting with Constantine, privileged the eastern city of Byzantium, which he had entirely rebuilt after a siege. Later renamed Constantinople, and protected by formidable walls in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, it was to become the largest and most powerful city of Christian Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Since the Crisis of the Third Century, the Empire was intermittently ruled by more than one emperor at once (usually two), presiding over different regions. At first a haphazard form of power sharing, this eventually settled on an East-West administrative division between the Western Roman Empire (centered on Rome, but now usually presided from other seats of power such as Trier, Milan, and especially Ravenna), and the Eastern Roman Empire (with its capital initially in Nicomedia, and later Constantinople). The Latin-speaking west, under dreadful demographic crisis, and the wealthier Greek-speaking east, also began to diverge politically and culturally. Although this was a gradual process, still incomplete when Italy came under the rule of barbarian chieftains in the last quarter of the 5th century, it deepened further afterward, and had lasting consequences for the medieval history of Europe.
Throughout the 5th century, Western emperors were usually figureheads, while the Eastern emperors maintained more independence. For most of the time, the actual rulers in the West were military strongmen who took the titles of magister militum, patrician, or both, such as Stilicho, Aetius, and Ricimer. Although Rome was no longer the capital in the West, it remained the West's largest city and its economic center. But the city was sacked by rebellious Visigoths in 410 and by the Vandals in 455, events that shocked contemporaries and signaled the disintegration of Roman authority. Saint Augustine wrote The City of God partly as an answer to critics who blamed the sack of Rome by the Visigoths on the abandonment of the traditional pagan religions.
In June 474, Julius Nepos became Western Emperor but in the next year the magister militum Orestes revolted and made his son Romulus Augustus emperor. Romulus, however, was not recognized by the Eastern Emperor Zeno and so was technically an usurper, Nepos still being the legal Western Emperor. Nevertheless, Romulus Augustus is often known as the last Western Roman Emperor. In 476, after being refused lands in Italy, Orestes' Germanic mercenaries under the leadership of the chieftain Odoacer captured and executed Orestes and took Ravenna, the Western Roman capital at the time, deposing Romulus Augustus. The whole of Italy was quickly conquered, and Odoacer was granted the title of patrician by Zeno, effectively recognizing his rule in the name of the Eastern Empire. Odoacer returned the Imperial insignia to Constantinople and ruled as King in Italy. Following Nepos' death Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths, conquered Italy with Zeno's approval.
Meanwhile, much of the rest of the Western provinces were conquered by waves of Germanic invasions, most of them being disconnected politically from the East altogether and continuing a slow decline. Although Roman political authority in the West was lost, Roman culture would last in most parts of the former Western provinces into the 6th century and beyond.
The first invasions disrupted the West to some degree, but it was the Gothic War launched by the Eastern Emperor Justinian in the 6th century, and meant to reunite the Empire, that eventually caused the most damage to Italy, as well as straining the Eastern Empire militarily. Following these wars, Rome and other Italian cities would fall into severe decline (Rome itself was almost completely abandoned). Another blow came with the Persian invasion of the East in the 7th century, immediately followed by the Muslim conquests, especially of Egypt, which curtailed much of the key trade in the Mediterranean on which Europe depended.
The Empire was to live on in the East for many centuries, and enjoy periods of recovery and cultural brilliance, but its size would remain a fraction of what it had been in classical times. It became an essentially regional power, centered on Greece and Anatolia. Modern historians tend to prefer the term Byzantine Empire for the eastern, medieval stage of the Roman Empire.
Highlights[link]
The decline of the Roman Empire was a process spanning many centuries; there is no consensus when it might have begun but many dates and time lines have been proposed by historians.
- 3rd century
- The Crisis of the Third Century (234 - 284), a period of political instability.
- The reign of Emperor Diocletian (284 - 305), who attempted substantial political and economic reforms, many of which would remain in force in the following centuries.
- 4th century
- The reign of Constantine I (306 - 337), who built the new eastern capital of Constantinople and converted to Christianity, legalizing and even favoring to some extent this religion. All Roman emperors after Constantine, except for Julian, would be Christians.
- The first war with the Visigoths (376 - 382), culminating in the Battle of Adrianople (August 9, 378), in which a large Roman army was defeated by the Visigoths, and Emperor Valens was killed. The Visigoths, fleeing a migration of the Huns, had been allowed to settle within the borders of the Empire by Valens, but were mistreated by the local Roman administrators, and rebelled.
- The reign of Theodosius I (379 - 395), last emperor to reunite under his authority the western and eastern halves of the Empire. Theodosius continued and intensified the policies against paganism of his predecessors, eventually outlawing it, and making Nicaean Christianity the state religion.
- 5th century
- The Crossing of the Rhine: on December 31, 406 (or 405, according to some historians), a mixed band of Vandals, Suebi and Alans crossed the frozen river Rhine at Moguntiacum (modern Mainz), and began to ravage Gaul. Some moved on to the regions of Hispania and Africa. The Empire would never regain control over most of these lands.
- The second war with the Visigoths, led by king Alaric, in which they raided Greece, and then invaded Italy, culminating in the sack of Rome (410). The Visigoths eventually left Italy and founded the Visigothic Kingdom in southern Gaul and Hispania.
- The rise of the Hunnic Empire under Attila and Bleda (434-453), who raided the Balkans, Gaul, and Italy, threatening both Constantinople and Rome.
- The second sack of Rome, this time by the Vandals (455).
- Failed counterstrikes against the Vandals (461 - 468). The Western Emperor Majorian planned a naval campaign against the Vandals to reconquer northern Africa in 461, but word of the preparations got out to the Vandals, who took the Roman fleet by surprise and destroyed it. A second naval expedition against the Vandals, sent by Emperors Leo I and Anthemius, was defeated in 468.
- Deposition of the last Western Emperors, Julius Nepos and Romulus Augustus (475 - 480). Julius Nepos, who had been nominated by the Eastern Emperor Zeno, was deposed by the rebelled magister militum Orestes, who installed his own son Romulus in the imperial throne. Both Zeno and his rival Basiliscus, in the East, continued to regard Julius Nepos, who fled to Dalmatia, as the legitimate Western Emperor, and Romulus as an usurper. Shortly after, Odoacer, magister militum appointed by Julius, invaded Italy, defeated Orestes, and deposed Romulus Augustus on September 4, 476. Odoacer then proclaimed himself ruler of Italy and asked the Eastern Emperor Zeno to become formal Emperor of both empires, and in so doing legalize Odoacer's own position as Imperial viceroy of Italy. Zeno did so, setting aside the claims of Nepos, who was murdered by his own soldiers in 480.
- Foundation of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy (493). Concerned with the success and popularity of Odoacer, Zeno started a campaign against him, at first with words, then by inciting the Ostrogoths to take back Italy from him. They did as much, but then founded an independent kingdom of their own, under the rule of king Theodoric. Italy and the entire West were lost to the Empire.
Theories of a fall, decline, transition and continuity[link]
The various theories and explanations for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West may be very broadly classified into four schools of thought, although the classification is not without overlap:
The tradition positing general malaise goes back to Edward Gibbon who argued that the edifice of the Roman Empire had been built on unsound foundations to begin with. According to Gibbon, the fall was - in the final analysis - inevitable. On the other hand, Gibbon had assigned a major portion of the responsibility for the decay to the influence of Christianity, and is often, though perhaps unjustly, seen as the founding father of the school of monocausal explanation.
On the other hand, the school of catastrophic collapse holds that the fall of the Empire had not been a pre-determined event and need not be taken for granted. Rather, it was due to the combined effect of a number of adverse processes, many of them set in motion by the Migration of the Peoples, that together applied too much stress to the Empire's basically sound structure.
Finally, the transformation school challenges the whole notion of the 'fall' of the Empire, asking to distinguish between the fall into disuse of a particular political dispensation, anyway unworkable towards its end, and the fate of the Roman civilisation which under-girded the Empire. According to this school, drawing its basic premise from the Pirenne thesis, the Roman world underwent a gradual (though often violent) series of transformations, morphing into the medieval world. The historians belonging to this school often prefer to speak of Late Antiquity instead of the Fall of the Roman Empire.
Decay owing to general malaise[link]
Edward Gibbon[link]
In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88), Edward Gibbon famously placed the blame on a loss of civic virtue among the Roman citizens. They gradually entrusted the role of defending the Empire to barbarian mercenaries who eventually turned on them. Gibbon held that Christianity contributed to this shift by making the populace less interested in the worldly here-and-now because it was willing to wait for the rewards of heaven. "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight," he wrote. "In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome."
Vegetius on military decline[link]
Writing in the 5th century, the Roman historian Vegetius pleaded for reform of what must have been a greatly weakened army. The historian Arther Ferrill has suggested that the Roman Empire – particularly the military – declined largely as a result of an influx of Germanic mercenaries into the ranks of the legions. This "Germanization" and the resultant cultural dilution or "barbarization" led not only to a decline in the standard of drill and overall military preparedness within the Empire, but also to a decline of loyalty to the Roman government in favor of loyalty to commanders. Ferrill agrees with other Roman historians such as A.H.M. Jones:
...the decay of trade and industry was not a cause of Rome’s fall. There was a decline in agriculture and land was withdrawn from cultivation, in some cases on a very large scale, sometimes as a direct result of barbarian invasions. However, the chief cause of the agricultural decline was high taxation on the marginal land, driving it out of cultivation. Jones is surely right in saying that taxation was spurred by the huge military budget and was thus ‘indirectly’ the result of the barbarian invasion.[7]
Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke[link]
In contrast with the declining empire theories, historians such as Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke argue that the Roman Empire itself was a rotten system from its inception, and that the entire Imperial era was one of steady decay of institutions founded in Republican times. In their view, the Empire could never have lasted longer than it did without radical reforms that no Emperor could implement. The Romans had no budgetary system and thus wasted whatever resources they had available. The economy of the Empire was a Raubwirtschaft or plunder economy based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything new. The Empire relied on booty from conquered territories (this source of revenue ending, of course, with the end of Roman territorial expansion) or on a pattern of tax collection that drove small-scale farmers into destitution (and onto a dole that required even more exactions upon those who could not escape taxation), or into dependency upon a landed élite exempt from taxation. With the cessation of tribute from conquered territories, the full cost of their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry.
An economy based upon slave labor precluded a middle class with buying power. The Roman Empire produced few exportable goods. Material innovation, whether through entrepreneurialism or technological advancement, all but ended long before the final dissolution of the Empire. Meanwhile the costs of military defense and the pomp of Emperors continued. Financial needs continued to increase, but the means of meeting them steadily eroded. In the end, due to economic failure, even the armor of soldiers deteriorated and the weaponry of soldiers became so obsolete that the enemies of the Empire had better armor and weapons as well as larger forces. The decrepit social order offered so little to its subjects that many saw the barbarian invasion as liberation from onerous obligations to the ruling class.
By the late 5th century the barbarian conqueror Odoacer had no use for the formality of an Empire upon deposing Romulus Augustus and chose neither to assume the title of Emperor himself nor to select a puppet, although legally he kept the lands as a commander of the Eastern Empire and maintained the Roman institutions such as the consulship. The formal end of the Roman Empire on the West in AD 476 thus corresponds with the time in which the Empire and the title Emperor no longer had value.
Michael Rostovtzeff, Ludwig von Mises, and Bruce Bartlett[link]
Historian Michael Rostovtzeff and economist Ludwig von Mises both argued that unsound economic policies played a key role in the impoverishment and decay of the Roman Empire. According to them, by the 2nd century AD, the Roman Empire had developed a complex market economy in which trade was relatively free. Tariffs were low and laws controlling the prices of foodstuffs and other commodities had little impact because they did not fix the prices significantly below their market levels. After the 3rd century, however, debasement of the currency (i.e., the minting of coins with diminishing content of gold, silver, and bronze) led to inflation. The price control laws then resulted in prices that were significantly below their free-market equilibrium levels. It should, however, be noted that Constantine initiated a successful reform of the currency which was completed before the barbarian invasions of the 4th century, and that thereafter the currency remained sound everywhere that remained within the empire until at least the 11th century - at any rate for gold coins.
According to Rostovtzeff and Mises, artificially low prices led to the scarcity of foodstuffs, particularly in cities, whose inhabitants depended on trade to obtain them. Despite laws passed to prevent migration from the cities to the countryside, urban areas gradually became depopulated and many Roman citizens abandoned their specialized trades to practice subsistence agriculture. This, coupled with increasingly oppressive and arbitrary taxation, led to a severe net decrease in trade, technical innovation, and the overall wealth of the Empire.[8]
Bruce Bartlett traces the beginning of debasement to the reign of Nero. He claims that the emperors increasingly relied on the army as the sole source of their power, and therefore their economic policy was driven more and more by a desire to increase military funding in order to buy the army's loyalty. By the 3rd century, according to Bartlett, the monetary economy had collapsed. But the imperial government was now in a position where it had to satisfy the demands of the army at all costs. Failure to do so would result in the army forcibly deposing the emperor and installing a new one. Therefore, being unable to increase monetary taxes, the Roman Empire had to resort to direct requisitioning of physical goods anywhere it could find them - for example taking food and cattle from farmers. The result, in Bartlett's view, was social chaos, and this led to different responses from the authorities and from the common people. The authorities tried to restore order by requiring free people (i.e. non-slaves) to remain in the same occupation or even at the same place of employment. Eventually, this practice was extended to force children to follow the same occupation as their parents. So, for instance, farmers were tied to the land, and the sons of soldiers had to become soldiers themselves. Many common people reacted by moving to the countryside, sometimes joining the estates of the wealthy, and in general trying to be self-sufficient and interact as little as possible with the imperial authorities. Thus, according to Bartlett, Roman society began to dissolve into a number of separate estates that operated as closed systems, provided for all their own needs and did not engage in trade at all. These were the beginnings of feudalism.[9]
Joseph Tainter[link]
In his 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies, American anthropologist Tainter presents the view that for given technological levels there are implicit declining returns to complexity, in which systems deplete their resource base beyond levels that are ultimately sustainable. Tainter argues that societies become more complex as they try to solve problems. Social complexity can include differentiated social and economic roles, reliance on symbolic and abstract communication, and the existence of a class of information producers and analysts who are not involved in primary resource production. Such complexity requires a substantial "energy" subsidy (meaning resources, or other forms of wealth). When a society confronts a "problem", such as a shortage of or difficulty in gaining access to energy, it tends to create new layers of bureaucracy, infrastructure, or social class to address the challenge.
For example, as Roman agricultural output slowly declined and population increased, per-capita energy availability dropped. The Romans solved this problem in the short term by conquering their neighbours to appropriate their energy surpluses (metals, grain, slaves, etc.). However, this solution merely exacerbated the issue over the long term; as the Empire grew, the cost of maintaining communications, garrisons, civil government, etc., increased. Eventually, this cost grew so great that any new challenges such as invasions and crop failures could not be solved by the acquisition of more territory. At that point, the Empire fragmented into smaller units.
We often assume that the collapse of the Roman Empire was a catastrophe for everyone involved. Tainter points out that it can be seen as a very rational preference of individuals at the time, many of whom were better off (all but the elite, presumably.)[citation needed] Archeological evidence from human bones indicates that average nutrition improved after the collapse in many parts of the former Roman Empire[citation needed]. Average individuals may have benefited because they no longer had to invest in the burdensome complexity of empire.
In Tainter's view, while invasions, crop failures, disease or environmental degradation may be the apparent causes of societal collapse, the ultimate cause is diminishing returns on investments in social complexity.[10]
Adrian Goldsworthy[link]
In The Complete Roman Army (2003) Adrian Goldsworthy, a British military historian, sees the causes of the collapse of the Roman Empire not in any 'decadence' in the make-up of the Roman legions, but in a combination of endless civil wars between factions of the Roman Army fighting for control of the Empire. This inevitably weakened the army and the society upon which it depended, making it less able to defend itself against the growing of numbers of Rome's enemies. The army still remained a superior fighting instrument to its opponents, both civilized and barbarian; this is shown in the victories over Germanic tribes at the Battle of Strasbourg (357) and in its ability to hold the line against the Sassanid Persians throughout the 4th century. But, says Goldsworthy, "Weakening central authority, social and economic problems and, most of all, the continuing grind of civil wars eroded the political capacity to maintain the army at this level."[11]
Monocausal decay[link]
Disease[link]
William H. McNeill, a world historian, noted in chapter three of his book Plagues and Peoples (1976) that the Roman Empire suffered the severe and protracted Antonine Plague starting around 165 AD. For about twenty years, waves of one or more diseases, possibly the first epidemics of smallpox and/or measles, swept through the Empire, ultimately killing about half the population. Similar epidemics, such as the Plague of Cyprian, also occurred in the 3rd century. McNeill argues that the severe fall in population left the state apparatus and army too large for the population to support, leading to further economic and social decline that eventually killed the Western Empire. The Eastern half survived due to its larger population, which even after the plagues was sufficient for an effective state apparatus.
Archaeology has revealed that from the 2nd century onward, the inhabited area in most Roman towns and cities grew smaller and smaller. Imperial laws concerning "agri deserti", or deserted lands, became increasingly common and desperate. The economic collapse of the 3rd century may also be evidence of a shrinking population as Rome’s tax base was also shrinking and could no longer support the Roman Army and other Roman institutions.
Rome's success had led to increased contact with Asia though trade, especially in a sea route through the Red Sea that Rome cleared of pirates shortly after conquering Egypt. Wars also increased contact with Asia, particularly wars with the Persian Empire. With increased contact with Asia came increased transmission of disease into the Mediterranean from Asia. Romans used public fountains, public latrines, public baths, and supported many brothels all of which were conducive to the spread of pathogens. Romans crowded into walled cities and the poor and the slaves lived in very close quarters with each other. Epidemics began sweeping though the Empire.
The culture of the German barbarians living just across the Rhine and Danube rivers was not so conducive to the spread of pathogens. Germans lived in small scattered villages that did not support the same level of trade as did Roman settlements. Germans lived in single-family detached houses. Germans did not have public baths nor as many brothels and drank ale made with boiled water. The barbarian population seemed to be on the rise. The demographics of Europe were changing.
Economically, depopulation led to the impoverishment of East and West as economic ties among different parts of the empire weakened. Increasing raids by barbarians further strained the economy and further reduced the population, mostly in the West. In areas near the Rhine and Danube frontiers, raids by barbarians killed Romans and disrupted commerce. Raids also forced Romans into walled towns and cities furthering the spread of pathogens and increasing the rate of depopulation in the West. A low population and weak economy forced Rome to use barbarians in the Roman Army to defend against other barbarians.
Culturally, the decline of Roman urban life and of the Roman educational system made it prohibitively difficult for rulers to maintain Roman civilization in its various manifestations. German barbarians were more easily able to integrate into the uneducated Roman aristocracy and demand land and, later, demand kingdoms of their own.
This theory can also be extended to the time after the fall of the Western Empire and to other parts of the world. Similar epidemics caused by new diseases may have weakened the Chinese Han Empire and contributed to its collapse. This was followed by the long and chaotic episode known as the Six Dynasties period. Later, the Plague of Justinian may have been the first instance of bubonic plague. It, and subsequent recurrences, may have been so devastating that they helped the Arab conquest of most of the Eastern Empire and the whole of the Sassanid Empire. Archaeological evidence is showing that Europe continued to have a steady downward trend in population starting as early as the 2nd century and continuing through the 7th century. The European recovery may have started only when the population, through natural selection, had gained some resistance to the new diseases. See also Medieval demography.
Environmental degradation[link]
Further information: Deforestation during the Roman period
Another theory is that gradual environmental degradation caused population and economic decline. Deforestation and excessive grazing led to erosion of meadows and cropland. Increased irrigation without suitable drainage caused salinization, especially in North Africa. These human activities resulted in fertile land becoming nonproductive and eventually increased desertification in some regions. Many animal species become extinct.[12] This theory was explored by Jared M. Diamond in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Also, high taxes and heavy slavery are another reason for decline as they forced small farmers out of business and into the cities, which became overpopulated. Roman cities were only designed to hold a certain amount of people, and once they passed that, disease, water shortage and food shortage became common[citation needed].
Lead poisoning[link]
See also: Lead poisoning
Jerome Nriagu, a geochemist, argued in a 1983 book that "lead poisoning contributed to the decline of the Roman empire." His work centred on the level to which the ancient Romans, who had few sweeteners besides honey, would boil must in lead pots to produce a reduced sugar syrup called defrutum, concentrated again into sapa. This syrup was used to some degree to sweeten wine and food.[13] If acidic must is boiled within lead vessels the sweet syrup it yields will contain a quantity of Pb(C2H3O2)2 or lead(II) acetate.[13] Lead was also leached from the glazes on amphorae and other pottery, from pewter drinking vessels and cookware, and from lead piping used for municipal water supplies and baths.[14] Note that the atomic symbol for lead is Pb, from the Latin word "plumbum", of which plumbing is also derived.
The main culinary use of defrutum was to sweeten wine, but it was also added to fruit and meat dishes as a sweetening and souring agent and even given to food animals such as suckling pig and duck to improve the taste of their flesh. Defrutum was mixed with garum to make the popular condiment oenogarum and as such was one of Rome's most popular condiments. Quince and melon were preserved in defrutum and honey through the winter, and some Roman women used defrutum or sapa as a cosmetic. Defrutum was often used as a food preservative in provisions for Roman troops.[15]
Nriagu produced a table showing his estimated consumption of lead by various classes within the Roman Empire. However, to produce the table Nriagu assumes all of the defrutum/sapa consumed to have been made in lead vessels:[14][16]
| Population | Source | Lead level in source | Daily intake | Absorption factor | Lead absorbed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aristocrats | |||||
| Air | 0.05 µg/m3 | 20 m3 | 0.4 | 0.4 µg/day | |
| Water | 50 (50-200) µg/l | 1.0 liter | 0.1 | 5 (5-20) µg/day | |
| Wines | 300 (200-1500) | 2.0 liters | 0.3 | 180 (120-900) µg/day | |
| Foods | 0.2 (0.1-2.0) µg/g | 3 kg | 0.1 | 60 (30-600) µg/day | |
| Other/Misc. | 5.0 µg/day | ||||
| Total | 250 (160-1250) µg/day | ||||
| Plebeians | |||||
| Less food, same wine consumption. | 35 (35-320) µg/day | ||||
| Slaves | |||||
| Still less food, more water, 0.75 liters wine | 15 (15-77) µg/day | ||||
Lead is not removed quickly from the body. It tends to form lead phosphate complexes within bone.[17] This is detectable in preserved bone.[18] Chemical analysis of preserved skeletons found in Herculaneum by Dr. Sara C. Bisel from the University of Minnesota indicated they contained lead in concentrations of 84 parts per million (ppm),[18] whereas skeletons found in a Greek cave had lead concentrations of just 3ppm. However, the lead content revealed in many other ancient Roman remains have been shown to have been less than half that of modern Europeans[19] which have concentrations between 20-50ppm.[18]
Criticism of lead poisoning theory[link]
The role and importance of lead poisoning in contributing to the fall of the Roman Empire is the subject of controversy and its importance and validity is discounted by many historians.[13] John Scarborough, a pharmacologist and classicist, criticized Nriagu's book as "so full of false evidence, miscitations, typographical errors, and a blatant flippancy regarding primary sources that the reader cannot trust the basic arguments."[20] He concluded that ancient authorities were well aware of lead poisoning and that it was not endemic in the Roman empire nor caused its fall.
Although defrutum and sapa prepared in leaden containers would indubitably have contained toxic levels of lead, the use of leaden containers, though popular, was not the standard and copper was used far more generally. The exact amount of sapa added to wine was also not standardised and there is no indication how often sapa was added or in what quantity.
Additionally, Roman authors such as Pliny the Elder[21] and Vitruvius recognised the toxicity of lead. Vitruvius, who flourished during Augustus' time, writes that the Romans knew very well of the dangers.
Water conducted through earthen pipes is more wholesome than that through lead; indeed that conveyed in lead must be injurious, because from it white lead [cerussa, lead carbonate, PbCO3] is obtained, and this is said to be injurious to the human system. This may be verified by observing the workers in lead, who are of a pallid colour; water should therefore on no account be conducted in leaden pipes if we are desirous that it should be wholesome (VIII.6.10-11).
Catastrophic collapse[link]
J. B. Bury[link]
J. B. Bury's History of the Later Roman Empire (1889/1923) challenged the prevailing "theory of moral decay" established by Gibbon as well as the classic "clash of Christianity vs. paganism" theory, citing the relative success of the Eastern Empire, which was resolutely Christian. He held that Gibbon's grand history, though epoch-making in its research and detail, was too monocausal. His main difference from Gibbon lay in his interpretation of facts, rather than disputing any facts. He made it clear that he felt that Gibbon's thesis concerning "moral decay" was viable — but incomplete. Bury's judgment was that:[22]
The gradual collapse of the Roman power … was the consequence of a series of contingent events. No general causes can be assigned that made it inevitable.
Bury held that a number of crises arose simultaneously: economic decline, Germanic expansion, depopulation of Italy, dependency on Germanic foederati for the military, the disastrous (though Bury believed unknowing) treason of Stilicho, loss of martial vigor, Aetius' murder, the lack of any leader to replace Aetius — a series of misfortunes which, in combination, proved catastrophic:
The Empire had come to depend on the enrollment of barbarians, in large numbers, in the army, and … it was necessary to render the service attractive to them by the prospect of power and wealth. This was, of course, a consequence of the decline in military spirit, and of depopulation, in the old civilised Mediterranean countries. The Germans in high command had been useful, but the dangers involved in the policy had been shown in the cases of Merobaudes and Arbogastes. Yet this policy need not have led to the dismemberment of the Empire, and but for that series of chances its western provinces would not have been converted, as and when they were, into German kingdoms. It may be said that a German penetration of western Europe must ultimately have come about. But even if that were certain, it might have happened in another way, at a later time, more gradually, and with less violence. The point of the present contention is that Rome's loss of her provinces in the fifth century was not an "inevitable effect of any of those features which have been rightly or wrongly described as causes or consequences of her general 'decline'". The central fact that Rome could not dispense with the help of barbarians for her wars (gentium barbararum auxilio indigemus) may be held to be the cause of her calamities, but it was a weakness which might have continued to be far short of fatal but for the sequence of contingencies pointed out above.[22]
Peter Heather[link]
Peter Heather, in his The Fall of the Roman Empire (2005), maintains the Roman imperial system with its sometimes violent imperial transitions and problematic communications notwithstanding, was in fairly good shape during the first, second, and part of the 3rd centuries AD. According to Heather, the first real indication of trouble was the emergence in Iran of the Sassanid Persian empire (226–651). Heather says:
The Sassanids were sufficiently powerful and internally cohesive to push back Roman legions from the Euphrates and from much of Armenia and southeast Turkey. Much as modern readers tend to think of the "Huns" as the nemesis of the Roman Empire, for the entire period under discussion it was the Persians who held the attention and concern of Rome and Constantinople. Indeed, 20–25% of the military might of the Roman Army was addressing the Persian threat from the late third century onward … and upwards of 40% of the troops under the Eastern Emperors.[23]
Heather goes on to state — in the tradition of Gibbon and Bury — that it took the Roman Empire about half a century to cope with the Sassanid threat, which it did by stripping the western provincial towns and cities of their regional taxation income. The resulting expansion of military forces in the Middle East was finally successful in stabilizing the frontiers with the Sassanids, but the reduction of real income in the provinces of the Empire led to two trends which, Heather says, had a negative long term impact. First, the incentive for local officials to spend their time and money in the development of local infrastructure disappeared. Public buildings from the 4th century onward tended to be much more modest and funded from central budgets, as the regional taxes had dried up. Second, Heather says "the landowning provincial literati now shifted their attention to where the money was … away from provincial and local politics to the imperial bureaucracies." Having set the scene of an Empire stretched militarily by the Sassanid threat, Heather then suggests, using archaeological evidence, that the Germanic tribes on the Empire's northern border had altered in nature since the 1st century. Contact with the Empire had increased their material wealth, and that in turn had led to disparities of wealth sufficient to create a ruling class capable of maintaining control over far larger groupings than had previously been possible. Essentially they had become significantly more formidable foes.
Heather then posits what amounts to a domino theory — namely that pressure on peoples very far away from the Empire could result in sufficient pressure on peoples on the Empire's borders to make them contemplate the risk of full scale immigration to the empire. Thus he links the Gothic invasion of 376 directly to Hunnic movements around the Black Sea in the decade before. In the same way he sees the invasions across the Rhine in 406 as a direct consequence of further Hunnic incursions in Germania; as such he sees the Huns as deeply significant in the fall of the Western Empire long before they themselves became a military threat to the Empire. He postulates that the Hunnic expansion caused unprecedented immigration in 376 and 406 by barbarian groupings who had become significantly more politically and militarily capable than in previous eras. This impacted an empire already at maximum stretch due to the Sassanid pressure. Essentially he argues that the external pressures of 376–470 could have brought the Western Empire down at any point in its history.
He disputes Gibbon's contention that Christianity and moral decay led to the decline. He also rejects the political infighting of the Empire as a reason, considering it was a systemic recurring factor throughout the Empire's history which, while it might have contributed to an inability to respond to the circumstances of the 5th century, it consequently cannot be blamed for them. Instead he places its origin squarely on outside military factors, starting with the Sassanids. Like Bury, he does not believe the fall was inevitable, but rather a series of events which came together to shatter the Empire. He differs from Bury, however, in placing the onset of those events far earlier in the Empire's timeline, with the Sassanid rise.
Bryan Ward-Perkins[link]
Bryan Ward-Perkins's The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (2005) takes a traditional view tempered by modern discoveries, arguing that the empire's demise was caused by a vicious circle of political instability, foreign invasion, and reduced tax revenue. Essentially, invasions caused long-term damage to the provincial tax base, which lessened the Empire's medium- to long-term ability to pay and equip the legions, with predictable results. Likewise, constant invasions encouraged provincial rebellion as self-help, further depleting Imperial resources. Contrary to the trend among some historians of the "there was no fall" school, who view the fall of Rome as not necessarily a "bad thing" for the people involved, Ward-Perkins argues that in many parts of the former Empire the archaeological record indicates that the collapse was truly a disaster.
Ward-Perkins' theory, much like Bury's, and Heather's, identifies a series of cyclic events that came together to cause a definite decline and fall.
Transformation[link]
Henri Pirenne[link]
In the second half of the 19th century, some historians focused on the continuities between the Roman Empire and the post-Roman Germanic kingdoms rather than the rupture. In Histoire des institutions politiques de l'ancienne France (1875–89), Fustel de Coulanges argued that the barbarians simply contributed to an on-going process of transforming Roman institutions.
Henri Pirenne continued this idea with the "Pirenne Thesis", published in the 1920s, which remains influential to this day. It holds that even after the barbarian invasions, the Roman way of doing things did not immediately change; barbarians came to Rome not to destroy it, but to take part in its benefits, and thus they tried to preserve the Roman way of life. The Pirenne Thesis regards the rise of the Frankish realm in Europe as a continuation of the Roman Empire, and thus validates the crowning of Charlemagne as the first Holy Roman Emperor as a successor of the Roman Emperors. According to Pirenne,[4] the real break in Roman history occurred in the 7th and 8th centuries as a result of Arab expansion. Islamic conquest of the area of today's south-eastern Turkey, Syria, Palestine, North Africa, Spain and Portugal ruptured economic ties to western Europe, cutting the region off from trade and turning it into a stagnant backwater, with wealth flowing out in the form of raw resources and nothing coming back. This began a steady decline and impoverishment so that by the time of Charlemagne western Europe had become almost entirely agrarian at a subsistence level, with no long-distance trade. Pirenne's view on the continuity of the Roman Empire before and after the Germanic invasion has been supported by recent historians such as François Masai, Karl-Ferdinand Werner, and Peter Brown.
Some modern critics have argued that the "Pirenne Thesis" erred on two counts: by treating the Carolingian realm as a Roman state and by overemphasizing the effect of the Islamic conquests on the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. Other critics have argued that while Pirenne was correct in arguing for the continuity of the Empire beyond the sack of Rome, the Arab conquests in the 7th century may not have disrupted Mediterranean trade routes to the degree that Pirenne argued. Michael McCormick in particular has argued that some recently unearthed sources, such as collective biographies, describe new trade routes. Moreover, other records and coins document the movement of Islamic currency into the Carolingian Empire. McCormick has concluded that if money was coming in, some type of goods must have been going out – including slaves, timber, weapons, honey, amber, and furs.
Lucien Musset and the clash of civilizations[link]
In the spirit of "Pirenne thesis", a school of thought pictured a clash of civilizations between the Roman and the Germanic world, a process taking place roughly between 3rd and 8th century.
The French historian Lucien Musset, studying the Barbarian invasions, argues the civilization of Medieval Europe emerged from a synthesis between the Graeco-Roman world and the Germanic civilizations penetrating the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire did not fall, did not decline, it just transformed but so did the Germanic populations which invaded it. To support this conclusion, beside the narrative of the events, he offers linguistic surveys of toponymy and anthroponymy, analyzes archaeological records, studies the urban and rural society, the institutions, the religion, the art, the technology.
Late Antiquity[link]
Historians of Late Antiquity, a field pioneered by Peter Brown, have turned away from the idea that the Roman Empire fell at all - refocusing instead on Pirenne's thesis. They see a transformation occurring over centuries, with the roots of Medieval culture contained in Roman culture and focus on the continuities between the classical and Medieval worlds. Thus, it was a gradual process with no clear break. Brown argues in his book that,
Factors we would regard as natural in a 'crisis' - malaise caused by urbanization, public disasters, the intrusion of alien religious ideas, and a consequent heightening of religious hopes and fears--may not have bulked as large in the minds of the men of the late second and third centuries as we suppose... The towns of the Mediterranean were small towns. For all their isolation from the way of life of the villagers, they were fragile excresences in a spreading countryside."[24]
Historiography[link]
Historiographically, the primary issue historians have looked at when analyzing any theory is the continued existence of the Eastern Empire or Byzantine Empire, which lasted almost a thousand years after the fall of the West. For example, Gibbon implicates Christianity in the fall of the Western Empire, yet the eastern half of the Empire, which was even more Christian than the west in geographic extent, fervor, penetration and vast numbers continued on for a thousand years afterwards (although Gibbon did not consider the Eastern Empire to be much of a success). As another example, environmental or weather changes affected the east as much as the west, yet the east did not "fall."
Theories will sometimes reflect the particular concerns that historians might have on cultural, political, or economic trends in their own times. Gibbon's criticism of Christianity reflects the values of the Enlightenment; his ideas on the decline in martial vigor could have been interpreted by some as a warning to the growing British Empire. In the 19th century socialist and anti-socialist theorists tended to blame decadence and other political problems. More recently, environmental concerns have become popular, with deforestation and soil erosion proposed as major factors, and destabilizing population decreases due to epidemics such as early cases of bubonic plague and malaria also cited. Global climate changes of 535-536, perhaps caused by the possible eruption of Krakatoa in 535, as mentioned by David Keys and others,[25] is another example. Ideas about transformation with no distinct fall mirror the rise of the postmodern tradition, which rejects periodization concepts (see metanarrative). What is not new are attempts to diagnose Rome's particular problems, with Satire X, written by Juvenal in the early 2nd century at the height of Roman power, criticizing the peoples' obsession with "bread and circuses" and rulers seeking only to gratify these obsessions.
One of the primary reasons for the vast number of theories is the notable lack of surviving evidence from the 4th and 5th centuries. For example there are so few records of an economic nature it is difficult to arrive at even a generalization of the economic conditions. Thus, historians must quickly depart from available evidence and comment based on how things ought to have worked, or based on evidence from previous and later periods, on inductive reasoning. As in any field where available evidence is sparse, the historian's ability to imagine the 4th and 5th centuries will play as important a part in shaping our understanding as the available evidence, and thus be open for endless interpretation.
The end of the Western Roman Empire traditionally has been seen by historians to mark the end of the Ancient Era and beginning of the Middle Ages. More recent schools of history, such as Late Antiquity, offer a more nuanced view from the traditional historical narrative.
See also[link]
- Last of the Romans
- Legacy of the Roman Empire
- Plague of Justinian
- Rise of Christianity during the Fall of Rome
- Roman-Persian Wars
- G.E.M. de Ste. Croix
- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
General:
Notes[link]
- ^ Bowersock, "The Vanishing Paradigm of the Fall of Rome" Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 49.8 (May 1996:29-43) p. 31.
- ^ Alexander Demandt: 210 Theories, from Crooked Timber weblog entry August 25, 2003. Retrieved June 2005.
- ^ Alexander Demandt: 210 Theories, Source: A. Demandt, Der Fall Roms (1984) 695. See also: Karl Galinsky in Classical and Modern Interactions (1992) 53-73.
- ^ Arnaldo Momigliano, echoing the trope of the sound a tree falling in the forest, titled an article in 1973, "La caduta senza rumore di un impero nel 476 d.C." ("The noiseless fall of an empire in 476 AD").
- ^ Hunt, Lynn; Thomas R. Martin, Barbara H. Rosenwein, R. Po-chia Hsia, Bonnie G. Smith (2001). The Making of the West, Peoples and Cultures, Volume A: To 1500. Bedford / St. Martins. p. 256. ISBN 0-312-18365-8.
- ^ Kinver, Mark (14 January 2011). "Roman rise and fall 'recorded in trees'". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12186245. Retrieved 24 March 2011.
- ^ Arther Ferrill, The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation (New York: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1986),
- ^ See, for instance, "How Excessive Government Killed Ancient Rome", by Bruce Bartlett, and "The Rise and Decline of Civilization", by Ludwig von Mises
- ^ "How Excessive Government Killed Ancient Rome", by Bruce Bartlett
- ^ Tainter, Joseph (1988) "The Collapse of Complex Societies" (Princeton Uni Press)
- ^ The Complete Roman Army (2003) p. 214 Adrian Goldsworthy
- ^ Lunds universitet
- ^ a b c Milton A. Lessler. "Lead and Lead Poisoning from Antiquity to Modern Times". https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/23252/1/V088N3_078.pdf. Retrieved 11 JAN 2009.
- ^ a b Nriagu JO (March 1983). "Saturnine gout among Roman aristocrats. Did lead poisoning contribute to the fall of the Empire?". N. Engl. J. Med. 308 (11): 660–3. DOI:10.1056/NEJM198303173081123. PMID 6338384.
- ^ Director: Chris Warren (2004). Tales of the Living Dead: Poisoned Roman Babies (television). Brighton TV for National Geographic.
- ^ Mark E. Anderson MD FAAP (22 AUG 2007). "Children’s Environmental Health: Tribal Nations CEH Summit". ftp://ftp.epa.gov/r8/ceh/2007/Anderson.pdf. Retrieved 11 JAN 2009.
- ^ "Metabolism of Lead". http://www.trace-elements.org.uk/leadmet.htm. Retrieved 11 JAN 2009.
- ^ a b c "A Clue to the Decline of Rome". The New York Times. 31 MAY 1983. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9D04E3DE163BF932A05756C0A965948260. Retrieved 11 JAN 2009.
- ^ Drasch 1982:199-231
- ^ Scarborough, John (1984). The Myth of Lead Poisoning Among the Romans: An Essay Review
- ^ (Historia Naturalis1 xxxiv.50.167)
- ^ a b Bury, J.B. History of the Later Roman Empire • Vol. I Chap. IX
- ^ Albion's Seedlings: Heather - The Fall of the Roman Empire
- ^ Peter Brown, "The Making of Late Antiquity" (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978), 2-3
- ^ Winchester, Simon (2003). Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-621285-5.
References[link]
- Alexander Demandt (1984). Der Fall Roms: Die Auflösung des römischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt. ISBN 3-406-09598-4
- Edward Gibbon,[1] "General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West", from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook. Brief excerpts of Gibbon's theories.
- William Carroll Bark (1958). Origins of the Medieval World. ISBN 0-8047-0514-3
- Drasch, G A (1982). Lead burden in prehistorical, historical and modern human bodies. The Science of the Total Environment
- Scarborough, John (1984). The Myth of Lead Poisoning Among the Romans: An Essay Review
- The movie "476 A.D. (2012)" about Romulus Augustus's deposition by Odoacer, and the End of the Roman Empire, will be released in 2012, by Ivan Pavletic.
Further reading[link]
- Robert J. Antonio. "The Contradiction of Domination and Production in Bureaucracy: The Contribution of Organizational Efficiency to the Decline of the Roman Empire," American Sociological Review Vol. 44, No. 6 (Dec., 1979), pp. 895–912 in JSTOR
- Arther Ferrill The Fall of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation" 0500274959 (1998) supports Vegetius' theory.
- Adrian Goldsworthy. How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower(2009); published in Britain as The Fall of the West: The Death of the Roman Superpower (2010)
- Guy Halsall. Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West (Cambridge U.P., 2007) excerpt and text search
- Peter Heather. "The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe," '"English Historical Review Vol. 110, No. 435 (Feb., 1995), pp. 4-41 in JSTOR
- Peter Heather. Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe (Oxford University Press; 2010); 734 pages; Examines the migrations, trade, and other phenomena that shaped a recognizable entity of Europe in the first millennium. excerpt and text search
- Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire, 2005, ISBN 0-19-515954-3, offers a narrative of the final years, in the tradition of Gibson or Bury, plus incorporates latest archaeological evidence and other recent findings.
- A. H. M. Jones. The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey (2 Vol. 1964) excerpt and text search
- Donald Kagan, ed. The End of the Roman Empire: Decline or Transformation?, ISBN 0-669-21520-1 (3rd edition 1992) – excerpts from historians
- Mitchell, Stephen, ;;A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-641: The Transformation of the Ancient World (2006)
- "The Fall of Rome – an author dialogue" Part I and Part 2: Oxford professors Bryan Ward-Perkins and Peter Heather discuss The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization and The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians.
- Jeanne Rutenburg and Arthur M. Eckstein, "The Return of the Fall of Rome," International History Review 29 (2007): 109-122, historiography
Foreign language[link]
- Lucien Musset, Les Invasions : Les vagues germaniques, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1965 (3rd ed. 1994, ISBN 2-13-046715-6)
External links[link]
- Fall of Rome – Decline of the Roman Empire – Lists many possible causes with references
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Related pages:
http://it.wn.com/Caduta dell'Impero romano d'Occidente
http://cs.wn.com/Úpadek Říma
http://es.wn.com/Decadencia del Imperio romano
http://ru.wn.com/Падение Западной Римской империи
http://nl.wn.com/Val van het West-Romeinse Rijk
http://pt.wn.com/Queda do Império Romano
http://pl.wn.com/Przyczyny upadku zachodniego cesarstwa rzymskiego
http://fr.wn.com/Déclin de l'Empire romain d'Occident
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| Roman Empire Senatvs PopvlvsQve Romanvs (SPQR) "The Senate and People of Rome" [nb 1] |
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| Capital | Rome was the sole political capital until AD 286 There were several political centres during the Tetrarchy while Rome continued to be the nominal, cultural, and ideological capital. Constantine re-founded and established the city of Constantinople as the new capital of the empire in 330.[2] Mediolanum (Milan) was its western counterpart during the increasingly frequent East/West divisions. The western imperial court was later relocated to Ravenna. |
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| Language(s) | Latin - only official until 620 AD, Greek - official in the Eastern empire after 620 AD |
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| Religion | Roman paganism - until 380 AD, Christianity - state religion after 380 AD |
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| Government | Autocracy | |||
| Emperor | ||||
| - 27 BC–AD 14 | Augustus | |||
| - 378–395 | Theodosius I | |||
| - 475–476 / 1449–1453 | Romulus Augustus / Constantine XI | |||
| Legislature | Roman Senate | |||
| Historical era | Classical antiquity | |||
| - Battle of Actium | 2 September 31 BC | |||
| - Octavian proclaimed Augustus | 27 BC | |||
| - Diocletian splits Imperial administration between East and West | 285 | |||
| - Constantine the Great establishes Constantinople as a new imperial capital | 330 | |||
| - Death of Theodosius the Great, followed by permanent division of the Empire into eastern and western halves | 395 | |||
| - Deposition of Western Emperor Romulus Augustus/Fall of Constantinople * | AD 476/1453 | |||
| Area | ||||
| - 25 BC[3][4] | 2,750,000 km2 (1,061,781 sq mi) | |||
| - 50[3] | 4,200,000 km2 (1,621,629 sq mi) | |||
| - 117[3] | 6,500,000 km2 (2,509,664 sq mi) | |||
| - 390 [3] | 4,400,000 km2 (1,698,849 sq mi) | |||
| Population | ||||
| - 25 BC[3][4] est. | 56,800,000 | |||
| Density | 20.7 /km2 (53.5 /sq mi) | |||
| - 117[3] est. | 88,000,000 | |||
| Density | 13.5 /km2 (35.1 /sq mi) | |||
| Currency | (a) 27 BC – AD 212: 1 gold aureus (1/40 lb. of gold, devalued to 1/50 lb. by 212) = 25 silver denarii = 100 bronze sesterces = 400 copper asses. (b) 294–312: 1 gold aureus solidus (1/60 lb. of gold) = 10 silver argentei = 40 bronze folles = 1,000 debased metal denarii (c) 312 onwards: 1 gold solidus (1/72 lb.) = 24 silver siliquae = 180 bronze folles |
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| Today part of |
Countries today
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| * These events marked the end of the Western Roman Empire (286–476)[5] and of the Eastern Roman Empire (330–1453), respectively. | ||||
The Roman Empire (Latin: IMPERIVM ROMANVM) was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean.[6]
The 500-year-old Roman Republic, which preceded it, had been weakened and subverted through several civil wars.[nb 2] Several events are commonly proposed to mark the transition from Republic to Empire, including Julius Caesar's appointment as perpetual dictator (44 BC), the Battle of Actium (2 September 31 BC), and the Roman Senate's granting to Octavian the honorific Augustus (16 January 27 BC).[nb 3]
Roman expansion began in the days of the Republic, but the Empire reached its greatest extent under Emperor Trajan: during his reign (98 to 117 AD) the Roman Empire controlled approximately 6.5 million km2[7] of land surface. Because of the Empire's vast extent and long endurance, the institutions and culture of Rome had a profound and lasting influence on the development of language, religion, architecture, philosophy, law, and forms of government in the territory it governed, particularly Europe, and by means of European expansionism throughout the modern world.
In the late 3rd century AD, Diocletian established the practice of dividing authority between four co-emperors (known as the tetrarchy) in order to better secure the vast territory, putting an end to the Crisis of the Third Century. During the following decades the Empire was often divided along an East/West axis. After the death of Theodosius I in 395 it was divided for the last time.[8]
The crumbling Western Roman Empire ended in 476 when Romulus Augustus was forced to abdicate to the Germanic warlord Odoacer.[9] The Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire ended in 1453 with the death of Constantine XI and the capture of Constantinople by Mehmed II, leader of the Ottoman Turks.[10]
Contents |
Government[link]
Main articles: Roman Emperor, Praetorian Guard, Sacramentum (oath), Donativum, Constitution of the Roman Empire, Constitution of the Late Roman Empire, and Executive Magistrates of the Roman Empire
Emperor[link]
The powers of an emperor (his imperium) existed, in theory at least, by virtue of his "tribunician powers" (potestas tribunicia) and his "proconsular powers" (imperium proconsulare).[11] In theory, the tribunician powers (which were similar to those of the Plebeian Tribunes under the old republic) made the Emperor's person and office sacrosanct, and gave the Emperor authority over Rome's civil government, including the power to preside over and to control the Senate.[12]
The proconsular powers (similar to those of military governors, or Proconsuls, under the old Republic) gave him authority over the Roman army. He was also given powers that, under the Republic, had been reserved for the Senate and the assemblies, including the right to declare war, to ratify treaties, and to negotiate with foreign leaders.[13]
The emperor also had the authority to carry out a range of duties that had been performed by the censors, including the power to control Senate membership.[14] In addition, the emperor controlled the religious institutions, since, as emperor, he was always Pontifex Maximus and a member of each of the four major priesthoods.[13] While these distinctions were clearly defined during the early Empire, eventually they were lost, and the emperor's powers became less constitutional and more monarchical.[15]
Realistically, the main support of an emperor's power and authority was the military. Being paid by the imperial treasury, the legionaries also swore an annual military oath of loyalty towards him, called the Sacramentum.[16]
The death of an emperor led to a crucial period of uncertainty and crisis. In theory the Senate was entitled to choose the new emperor, but most emperors chose their own successors, usually a close family member. The new emperor had to seek a swift acknowledgement of his new status and authority in order to stabilize the political landscape. No emperor could hope to survive, much less to reign, without the allegiance and loyalty of the Praetorian Guard and of the legions. To secure their loyalty, several emperors paid the donativum, a monetary reward.
Senate[link]
Main article: Senate of the Roman Empire
While the Roman assemblies continued to meet after the founding of the Empire, their powers were all transferred to the Roman Senate, and so senatorial decrees (senatus consulta) acquired the full force of law.[17]
In theory, the Emperor and the Senate were two equal branches of government, but the actual authority of the Senate was negligible and it was largely a vehicle through which the Emperor disguised his autocratic powers under a cloak of republicanism. Although the Senate still commanded much prestige and respect, it was largely a glorified rubber stamp institution. Stripped of most of its powers, the Senate was largely at the Emperor's mercy.
Many emperors showed a certain degree of respect towards this ancient institution, while others were notorious for ridiculing it. During Senate meetings, the Emperor sat between the two consuls,[18] and usually acted as the presiding officer. Higher ranking senators spoke before lower ranking senators, although the Emperor could speak at any time.[18] By the 3rd century, the Senate had been reduced to a glorified municipal body.
Senators and equestrians[link]
Main articles: Equestrian order and Cursus honorum
No emperor could rule the Empire without the Senatorial order and the Equestrian order. Most of the more important posts and offices of the government were reserved for the members of these two aristocratic orders. It was from among their ranks that the provincial governors, legion commanders, and similar officials were chosen.
These two classes were hereditary[citation needed] and mostly closed to outsiders. Very successful and favoured individuals could enter, but this was a rare occurrence. The career of a young aristocrat was influenced by his family connections and the favour of patrons. As important as ability, knowledge, skill, or competence, patronage was considered vital for a successful career and the highest posts and offices required the Emperor's favour and trust.
Senatorial order[link]
The son of a senator was expected to follow the Cursus honorum, a career ladder, and the more prestigious positions were restricted to senators only. A senator also had to be wealthy; one of the basic requirements was the wealth of 12,000 gold aurei[19] (about 100 kg of gold), a figure which would later be raised with the passing of centuries.
Equestrian order[link]
Below the Senatorial order was the Equestrian order. The requirements and posts reserved for this class, while perhaps not so prestigious, were still very important. Some of the more vital posts, like the governorship of Egypt (Latin Aegyptus), were even forbidden to the members of the Senatorial order and available only to equestrians.[citation needed]
Military[link]
Legions[link]
During and after the civil war, Octavian reduced the huge number of the legions (over 60)[20] to a much more manageable and affordable size (28).[20] Several legions, particularly those with doubtful loyalties, were simply disbanded. Other legions were amalgamated, a fact suggested by the title Gemina (Twin).[20]
In AD 9, Germanic tribes wiped out three full legions in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. This disastrous event reduced the number of the legions to 25. The total of the legions would later be increased again and for the next 300 years always be a little above or below 30.[21]
Augustus also created the Praetorian Guard: nine cohorts ostensibly to maintain the public peace which were garrisoned in Italy. Better paid than the legionaries, the Praetorians also served less time; instead of serving the standard 25 years of the legionaries, they retired after 16 years of service.[22]
Auxilia[link]
While the auxilia (Latin: auxilia = supports) are not as famous as the legionaries, they were of major importance. Unlike the legionaries, the auxilia were recruited from among the non-citizens. Organized in smaller units of roughly cohort strength, they were paid less than the legionaries, and after 25 years of service were rewarded with Roman citizenship, also extended to their sons. According to Tacitus[23] there were roughly as many auxiliaries as there were legionaries. Since at this time there were 25 legions of around 5,000 men each, the auxilia thus amounted to around 125,000 men, implying approximately 250 auxiliary regiments.[24]
Navy[link]
The Roman navy (Latin: Classis, lit. "fleet") not only aided in the supply and transport of the legions, but also helped in the protection of the frontiers in the rivers Rhine and Danube. Another of its duties was the protection of the very important maritime trade routes against the threat of pirates. Therefore it patrolled the whole of the Mediterranean, parts of the North Atlantic (coasts of Hispania, Gaul, and Britannia), and had also a naval presence in the Black Sea. Nevertheless the army was considered the senior and more prestigious branch.[25]
Provinces[link]
Main articles: Roman province, Senatorial province, Imperial province, and Grain supply to the city of Rome
Until the Tetrarchy (296 AD) Roman provinces (lat. provincae) were administrative and territorial units of the Roman Empire outside of Italy. In the old days of the Republic the governorships of the provinces were traditionally[26] awarded to members of the Senatorial Order. Augustus' reforms changed this policy.
Imperial provinces[link]
Augustus created the Imperial provinces.[26] Most, but not all, of the Imperial provinces were relatively recent conquests and located at the borders. Thereby the overwhelming majority of legions, which were stationed at the frontiers, were under direct Imperial control. Very important was the Imperial province of Egypt, the major breadbasket of the Empire, whose grain supply was vital to feed the masses in Rome. It was considered the personal fiefdom of the Emperor, and Senators were forbidden to even visit this province. The governor of Egypt and the commanders of any legion stationed there were not from the Senatorial Order, but were chosen by the Emperor from among the members of the lower Equestrian Order.
Senatorial provinces[link]
The old traditional policy continued largely unchanged in the Senatorial provinces. Due to their location, away from the borders, and to the fact that they were under longer Roman sovereignty and control, these provinces were largely peaceful and stable. Only a single legion was based in a Senatorial province: Legio III Augusta, stationed in the Senatorial province of Africa (modern northern Algeria).
The status of a province was subject to change; it could change from Senatorial towards Imperial, or vice-versa. This happened several times [26] during Augustus' reign. Another trend was to create new provinces, mostly by dividing older ones, or by expanding the Empire.
Religion[link]
Main articles: Religion in ancient Rome, Imperial cult (ancient Rome), and Persecution of religion in ancient Rome
As the Empire expanded, and came to include people from a variety of cultures, the worship of an ever increasing number of deities was tolerated and accepted. The Imperial government, and the Romans in general, tended to be very tolerant towards most religions and cults, so long as they did not cause trouble. This could easily be accepted by other faiths as Roman liturgy and ceremonies were frequently tailored to fit local culture and identity. Since the Romans practiced polytheism they were also able to easily assimilate the gods of the peoples the Empire conquered.[27]
An individual could attend to both the Roman gods representing his Roman identity and his own personal faith, which was considered part of his personal identity. There were periodic persecutions of various religions at various points in time, most notably that of Christians. Most of the recorded histories of Christian persecutions come to us through the Christian church, which, according to historian Edward Gibbon, had an incentive to exaggerate the degree to which the persecutions occurred. Some non-Christian contemporary sources only mention the persecutions passingly and without assigning great importance to them.
Imperial cult[link]
In an effort to enhance loyalty, the inhabitants of the Empire were called to participate in the Imperial cult to revere (usually deceased) emperors as demigods. Few emperors claimed to be Gods while living, with the few exceptions being emperors who were widely regarded at the time to be insane (such as Caligula). Doing so in the early Empire would have risked revealing the shallowness of what the Emperor Augustus called the "restored Republic" and would have had a decidedly eastern quality to it. Since the tool was mostly one the Emperor used to control his subjects, its usefulness would have been greatest in the chaotic later Empire, when the emperors were often Christians and unwilling to participate in the practice.
Usually, an emperor was deified after his death by his successor in an attempt by that successor to enhance his own prestige. This practice can be misunderstood, however, since "deification" was to the ancient world what canonization is to the Christian world. Likewise, the term "god" had a different context in the ancient world. This could be seen during the years of the Roman Republic with religio-political practices such as the disbanding of a Senate session if it was believed the gods disapproved of the session or wished a particular vote. Deification was one of the many honors a dead emperor was entitled to, as the Romans (more than modern societies) placed great prestige on honors and national recognitions.
The importance of the Imperial cult slowly grew, reaching its peak during the Crisis of the Third Century. Especially in the eastern half of the Empire, imperial cults grew very popular. As such it was one of the major agents of romanization. The central elements of the cult complex were next to a temple; a theatre or amphitheatre for gladiator displays and other games and a public bath complex. Sometimes the imperial cult was added to the cults of an existing temple or celebrated in a special hall in the bath complex.
The seriousness of this belief is unclear. Some Romans ridiculed the notion that a Roman emperor was to be considered a living god, or would even make fun of the deification of an emperor after his death. Seneca the Younger parodied the notion of apotheosis in his only known satire The Pumpkinification of Claudius, in which the clumsy and ill-spoken Claudius is transformed not into a god, but a pumpkin or gourd. An element of mockery was present even at Claudius's funeral,[28] and Vespasian's purported last words were Væ, puto deus fio, "Oh dear! I think I'm becoming a god!".[29]
Absorption of foreign cults[link]
Since Roman religion did not have a core belief that excluded other religions, several foreign gods and cults became popular.
The worship of Cybele was the earliest, introduced from around 200 BC. Isis and Osiris were introduced from Egypt a century later. Bacchus and Sol Invictus were quite important and Mithras became very popular with the military. Several of these were Mystery cults. In the 1st century BC Julius Caesar granted Jews the freedom to worship in Rome as a reward for their help in Alexandria.
Controversial religions[link]
Druids[link]
Druids were considered as essentially non-Roman: a prescript of Augustus forbade Roman citizens to practice "druidical" rites. Pliny reports[30] that under Tiberius the druids were suppressed—along with diviners and physicians—by a decree of the Senate, and Claudius forbade their rites completely in AD 54.[31]
Judaism[link]
While Judaism was largely accepted, as long as Jews paid the Jewish Tax after AD 70, there was anti-Judaism in the pre-Christian Roman Empire and there were several Jewish-Roman wars.
The Crisis under Caligula (AD 37–41) has been proposed as the "first open break between Rome and the Jews", even though problems were already evident during the Census of Quirinius in AD 6 and under Sejanus (before AD 31).[32]
Until the rebellion in Judea in AD 66, Jews were generally protected. To get around Roman laws banning secret societies and to allow their freedom of worship, Julius Caesar declared Synagogues were colleges. Tiberius[33] forbade Judaism in Rome but they quickly returned to their former protected status. Claudius expelled Jews from the city; however, the passage of Suetonius is ambiguous: "Because the Jews at Rome caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus he [Claudius] expelled them from the city."[31] Chrestus has been identified as another form of Christus; the disturbances may have been related to the arrival of the first Christians, and that the Roman authorities, failing to distinguish between the Jews and the early Christians, simply decided to expel them all.
Historians debate whether or not the Roman government distinguished between Christians and Jews prior to Nerva's modification of the Fiscus Judaicus in 96. From then on, practising Jews paid the tax; Christians did not.[34]
Christianity[link]
Further information: Early Christianity and State church of the Roman Empire
Christianity emerged in Roman Judea as a Jewish religious sect in the 1st century AD. The religion gradually spread out of Jerusalem, initially establishing major bases in first Antioch, then Alexandria, and over time throughout the Empire as well as beyond.
For the first two centuries of the Christian era, Imperial authorities largely viewed Christianity simply as a Jewish sect rather than a distinct religion. No emperor issued general laws against the faith or its Church, and persecutions, such as they were, were carried out under the authority of local government officials.[35] A surviving letter from Pliny the Younger, governor of Bythinia, to the Emperor Trajan describes his persecution and executions of Christians; Trajan notably responded that Pliny should not seek out Christians nor heed anonymous denunciations, but only punish open Christians who refused to recant.[36]
Suetonius mentions in passing that during the reign of Nero "punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition" (superstitionis novae ac maleficae).[37] He gives no reason for the punishment. Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, some among the population held Nero responsible and that the emperor attempted to deflect blame onto the Christians.[38]
One of the earliest persecutions occurred in Gaul at Lyon in 177. Persecution was often local and sporadic, and some Christians welcomed martyrdom as a testament of faith.[39] The Decian persecution (246–251) was a serious threat to the Church, but while it potentially undermined the religious hierarchy in urban centers, ultimately it served to strengthen Christian defiance.[40] Diocletian undertook what was to be the most severe and last major persecution of Christians, lasting from 303 to 311. Christianity had become too widespread to suppress, and in 313, the Edict of Milan made tolerance the official policy. Constantine I (sole ruler 324–337) became the first Christian emperor, and in 380 Theodosius I established Christianity as the official religion.
By the 5th century Christian hegemony had rapidly changed the Empire's identity even as the Western provinces collapsed.[41] Those who practiced the traditional polytheistic religions were persecuted, as were Christians regarded as heretics by the authorities in power.
Languages[link]
Main articles: Latin, Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, Greek language, Koine Greek, Phoenician language, Aramaic language, Syriac language, Coptic language, and Celtic languages
The language of Rome before its expansion was Latin, and this became the empire's official language. By the time of the imperial period Latin had developed two registers: the "high" written Classical Latin and the "low" spoken Vulgar Latin. While Classical Latin remained relatively stable, even through the Middle Ages, Vulgar Latin as with any spoken language was fluid and evolving. Vulgar Latin became the lingua franca in the western provinces, later evolving into the modern Romance languages: Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, etc. Greek and Classical Latin were the languages of literature, scholarship, and education.
Although Latin remained the most widely spoken language in the West, through to the fall of Rome and for some centuries afterwards, in the East the Greek language was the literary language and the lingua franca.[42] The Romans generally did not attempt to supplant local languages. They generally left established customs in place and only gradually introduced typical Roman cultural elements including the Latin language.[43] Along with Greek, many other languages of different tribes were used but almost without expression in writing.
Greek was already widely spoken in many cities in the east, and as such, the Romans were quite content to retain it as an administrative language there rather than impede bureaucratic efficiency. Hence, two official secretaries served in the Roman Imperial court, one charged with correspondence in Latin and the other with correspondence in Greek for the East.[44] Thus in the Eastern Province, as with all provinces, original languages were retained.[45][46]
Moreover, the process of hellenisation widened its scope during the Roman period, for the Romans perpetuated "Hellenistic" culture,[47][48][nb 4] but with all the trappings of Roman improvements.[49][50][51] This further spreading of "Hellenistic" culture (and therefore language) was largely due to the extensive infrastructure (in the form of entertainment, health, and education amenities, and extensive transportation networks, etc.) put in place by the Romans and their tolerance of, and inclusion of, other cultures, a characteristic which set them apart from the xenophobic nature of the Greeks preceding them.[43]
Since the Roman annexation of Greece in 146 BC, the Greek language gradually obtained a unique place in the Roman world, owing initially to the large number of Greek slaves in Roman households.[43] In Rome itself Greek became the second language of the educated elite.[43][52] It became the common language in the early Church (as its major centers in the early Christian period were in the East), and the language of scholarship and the arts.
However, due to the presence of other widely spoken languages in the densely populated east, such as Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Aramaic and Phoenician (which was also extensively spoken in North Africa), Greek never took as strong a hold beyond Asia Minor (some urban enclaves notwithstanding) as Latin eventually did in the west. This is partly evident in the extent to which the derivative languages are spoken today. Like Latin, the language gained a dual nature with the literary language, an Attic Greek variant, existing alongside spoken language, Koine Greek, which evolved into Medieval or Byzantine Greek (Romaic).[53]
By the 4th century AD, Greek no longer held such dominance over Latin in the arts and sciences as it had previously, resulting to a great extent from the growth of the western provinces. This was true also of Christian literature, reflected, for example, in the publication in the early 5th century AD of the Vulgate Bible, the first officially accepted Latin Bible. As the Western Empire declined, the number of people who spoke both Greek and Latin declined as well, contributing greatly to the future East–West / Orthodox–Catholic cultural divide in Europe.
Important as both languages were, today the descendants of Latin are widely spoken in many parts of the world, while the Greek dialects are limited mostly to Greece, Cyprus, and small enclaves in Turkey and Southern Italy (where the Eastern Empire retained control for several more centuries). To some degree this can be attributed to the fact that the western provinces fell mainly to "Latinised" Christian tribes whereas the eastern provinces fell to Muslim Arabs and Turks for whom Greek held less cultural significance.
Culture[link]
Main articles: Culture of ancient Rome and Social class in ancient Rome
Life in the Roman Empire revolved around the city of Rome, and its famed seven hills. The city also had several theatres,[54] gymnasia, and many taverns, baths and brothels. Throughout the territory under Rome's control, residential architecture ranged from very modest houses to country villas, and in the capital city of Rome, to the residences on the elegant Palatine Hill, from which the word "palace" is derived. The vast majority of the population lived in the city centre, packed into apartment blocks.
Most Roman towns and cities had a forum and temples, as did the city of Rome itself. Aqueducts were built to bring water to urban centres[55] and served as an avenue to import wine and oil from abroad. Landlords generally resided in cities and their estates were left in the care of farm managers. To stimulate a higher labour productivity, many landlords freed a large numbers of slaves. By the time of Augustus, cultured Greek household slaves taught the Roman young (sometimes even the girls). Greek sculptures adorned Hellenistic landscape gardening on the Palatine or in the villas.
Many aspects of Roman culture were taken from the Etruscans and the Greeks.[56] In architecture and sculpture, the difference between Greek models and Roman paintings are apparent. The chief Roman contributions to architecture were the arch and the dome.
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The centre of the early social structure was the family,[57] which was not only marked by blood relations but also by the legally constructed relation of patria potestas.[58] The Pater familias was the absolute head of the family; he was the master over his wife, his children, the wives of his sons, the nephews, the slaves and the freedmen, disposing of them and of their goods at will, even putting them to death.[59] Originally, only patrician aristocracy enjoyed the privilege of forming familial clans, or gens, as legal entities; later, in the wake of political struggles and warfare, clients were also enlisted. Thus, such plebian gentes were the first formed, imitating their patrician counterparts.[60]
Slavery and slaves were part of the social order; there were slave markets where they could be bought and sold. Many slaves were freed by the masters for services rendered; some slaves could save money to buy their freedom. Generally mutilation and murder of slaves was prohibited by legislation. It is estimated that over 25% of the Roman population was enslaved.[61][62] Professor Gerhard Rempel from the Western New England College claims that in the city of Rome alone, during the Empire, there were about 400,000 slaves.[63]
The city of Rome had a place called the Campus Martius ("Field of Mars"), which was a sort of drill ground for Roman soldiers. Later, the Campus became Rome's track and field playground. In the campus, the youth assembled to play and exercise, which included jumping, wrestling, boxing and racing. Riding, throwing, and swimming were also preferred physical activities.[64]
In the countryside, pastimes also included fishing and hunting. Board games played in Rome included Dice (Tesserae or Tali), Roman Chess (Latrunculi), Roman Checkers (Calculi), Tic-tac-toe (Terni Lapilli), and Ludus duodecim scriptorum and Tabula, predecessors of backgammon.[64] There were several other activities to keep people engaged like chariot races, musical and theatrical performances,
Clothing, dining, and the arts[link]
Main articles: Ancient Roman cuisine, Latin literature, Roman art, Music of ancient Rome, and Roman architecture
Roman clothing fashions changed little from the late Republic to the end of the Western empire 600 years later.[65] The cloth and the dress distinguished one class of people from the other class. The tunic worn by plebeians (common people) like shepherds and slaves was made from coarse and dark material, whereas the tunic worn by patricians was of linen or white wool.[66] A magistrate would wear the tunica augusticlavi; senators wore a tunic with broad stripes, called tunica laticlavi. Military tunics were shorter than the ones worn by civilians. Boys, until the festival of Liberalia, wore the toga praetexta, which was a toga with a crimson or purple border. The toga virilis, (or toga pura) was worn by men over the age of 16 to signify their citizenship in Rome.[67]
The toga picta was worn by triumphant generals and had embroidery of their skill on the battlefield. The toga pulla was worn when in mourning. Even footwear indicated a person's social status: patricians wore red and orange sandals, senators had brown footwear, consuls had white shoes, and soldiers wore heavy boots. Men typically wore a toga, and women a stola. The woman's stola looked different from a toga, and was usually brightly coloured. The Romans also invented socks for those soldiers required to fight on the northern frontiers, sometimes worn in sandals.[67]
In the later empire after Diocletian's reforms, clothing worn by soldiers and non-military government bureaucrats became highly decorated, with woven or embroidered strips, clavi, and circular roundels, orbiculi, added to tunics and cloaks. These decorative elements usually consisted of geometrical patterns and stylised plant motifs, but could include human or animal figures.[68] The use of silk also increased steadily and most courtiers of the later empire wore elaborate silk robes. Heavy military-style belts were worn by bureaucrats as well as soldiers, revealing the general militarization of late Roman government. Trousers—considered barbarous garments worn by Germans and Persians—were only adopted partially near the end of the empire in a sign for conservatives of cultural decay.[69] Early medieval kings and aristocrats dressed like late Roman generals, not like the older toga-clad senatorial tradition.[70]
Romans had simple food habits. Staple food was simple, generally consumed at around 11 o'clock, and consisted of bread, salad, cheese, fruits, nuts, and cold meat left over from the dinner the night before. The Roman poet, Horace mentions another Roman favourite, the olive, in reference to his own diet, which he describes as very simple: "As for me, olives, endives, and smooth mallows provide sustenance."[71] The family ate together, sitting on stools around a table. Fingers were used to eat solid foods and spoons were used for soups.
Wine was considered a staple drink,[72] consumed at all meals and occasions by all classes and was quite cheap. Many types of drinks involving grapes and honey were consumed as well. Drinking on an empty stomach was regarded as boorish and a sure sign for alcoholism, whose debilitating physical and psychological effects were known to the Romans. An accurate accusation of being an alcoholic was an effective way to discredit political rivals.
Roman literature was from its very inception influenced heavily by Greek authors. Some of the earliest works we possess are of historical epics telling the early military history of Rome. As the empire expanded, authors began to produce poetry, comedy, history, and tragedy. Virgil represents the pinnacle of Roman epic poetry. His Aeneid tells the story of flight of Aeneas from Troy and his settlement of the city that would become Rome. The genre of satire was common in Rome, and satires were written by, among others, Juvenal[73] and Persius. Many Roman homes were decorated with landscapes by Greek artists. Portrait sculpture[74] during the period utilized youthful and classical proportions, evolving later into a mixture of realism and idealism. Advancements were also made in relief sculptures, often depicting Roman victories.
Music was a major part of everyday life. The word itself derives from Greek μουσική (mousike), "(art) of the Muses".[75] Many private and public events were accompanied by music, ranging from nightly dining to military parades and maneuvers. In a discussion of any ancient music, however, non-specialists and even many musicians have to be reminded that much of what makes our modern music familiar to us is the result of developments only within the last 1,000 years; thus, our ideas of melody, scales, harmony, and even the instruments we use would not be familiar to Romans who made and listened to music many centuries earlier.
Over time, Roman architecture was modified as their urban requirements changed, and the civil engineering and building construction technology became developed and refined. The Roman concrete has remained a riddle, and even after more than 2,000 years some Roman structures still stand magnificently.[76] The architectural style of the capital city was emulated by other urban centres under Roman control and influence.
Education[link]
Main article: Education in Ancient Rome
Following various military conquests in the Greek East, Romans adapted a number of Greek educational precepts to their own system.[77] Home was often the learning centre, where children were taught Roman law, customs, and physical training to prepare the boys for eventual recruitment into the Roman army. Conforming to discipline was a point of great emphasis. Girls generally received instruction[78] from their mothers in the art of spinning, weaving, and sewing.
Education nominally began at the age of six. During the next six to seven years, both boys and girls were taught the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. From the age of twelve, they would be learning Latin, Greek, grammar and literature, followed by training for public speaking. Oratory was an art to be practised and learnt, and good orators commanded respect. To become an effective orator was one of the objectives of education and learning. In some cases, services of gifted slaves were utilized for imparting education.[78]
Economy[link]
Industry[link]
Main article: Roman metallurgy
The invention and widespread application of hydraulic mining, namely hushing and ground-sluicing, aided by the ability of the Romans to plan and execute mining operations on a large scale, allowed various base and precious metals to be extracted on a proto-industrial scale.[79]
The annual total iron output is estimated at 82,500 t,[80] assuming a productive capacity of c. 1.5 kg per capita.[81] Copper was produced at an annual rate of 15,000 t,[82] and lead at 80,000 t,[83] both production levels not to be paralled until the Industrial Revolution;[84] Spain alone had a 40% share in world lead production.[85] The high lead output was a by-product of extensive silver mining which reached an amount of 200 t per annum.[86] At its peak around the mid-2nd century AD, the Roman silver stock is estimated at 10,000 t, five to ten times larger than the combined silver mass of medieval Europe and the Caliphate around 800 AD.[87] Any one of the Imperium's most important mining provinces produced as much silver as the contemporary Han empire as a whole, and more gold by an entire order of magnitude.[88]
The high amount of metal coinage in circulation meant that more coined money was available for trading or saving in the economy (monetization).[89]
Currency[link]
Main articles: Roman currency and Roman Imperial currency
The imperial government was, as all governments, interested in the issue and control of the currency in circulation. To mint coins was an important political act: the image of the ruling emperor appeared on most issues, and coins were a means of showing his image throughout the empire. Also featured were predecessors, empresses, other family members, and heirs apparent. By issuing coins with the image of an heir his legitimacy and future succession was proclaimed and reinforced. Political messages and imperial propaganda such as proclamations of victory and acknowledgements of loyalty also appeared in certain issues.
Legally only the emperor and the Senate had the authority to mint coins inside the empire.[90] However the authority of the Senate was mainly in name only. In general, the imperial government issued gold and silver coins while the Senate issued bronze coins marked by the legend "SC", short for Senatus Consulto "by decree of the Senate". However, bronze coinage could be struck without this legend. Some Greek cities were allowed to mint[91] bronze and certain silver coins, which today are known as Greek Imperials (also Roman Colonials or Roman Provincials). The imperial mints were under the control of a chief financial minister, and the provincial mints were under the control of the imperial provincial procurators. The Senatorial mints were governed by officials of the Senatorial treasury.
GDP[link]
Main article: Roman economy
In recent years, economic historians have turned their attention to the size and structure of the Roman economy.[92]
| Unit | Goldsmith 1984[93] |
Hopkins 1995/6[94] |
Temin 2006[95] |
Maddison 2007[96] |
Bang 2008[97] |
Scheidel/Friesen 2009[98] |
Lo Cascio/Malanima 2009[99] |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GDP per capita | Sesterces | HS 380 | HS 225 | HS 166 | HS 380 | HS 229 | HS 260 | HS 380 |
| Wheat equivalent | 843 kg | 491 kg | 614 kg | 843 kg | 500 kg | 680 kg | 855 kg | |
| 1990 international dollars | – | – | – | $570 | – | $620 | $940 | |
| Population (Approx. year) |
55m (14 AD) |
60m (14 AD) |
55m (100 AD) |
44m (14 AD) |
60m (150 AD) |
70m (150 AD) |
– (14 AD) |
|
| Total GDP | Sesterces | HS 20.9bn | HS 13.5bn | HS 9.2bn | HS 16.7bn | HS 13.7bn | ~HS 20bn | – |
| Wheat equivalent | 46.4 Mt | 29.5 Mt | 33.8 Mt | 37.1 Mt | 30 Mt | 50 Mt | – | |
| 1990 international dollars | – | – | – | $25.1bn | – | $43.4bn | – | |
1) Decimal fractions rounded to the nearest tenth. Cursive numbers not directly given by the authors; they are obtained by multiplying the respective value of GDP per capita by estimated population size.
Italia is considered the richest region, due to tax transfers from the provinces and the concentration of elite income in the heartland; its GDP per capita is estimated at having been around 40%[99] to 66%[100] higher than in the rest of the empire.
Demography[link]
Main article: Classical demography
In recent years, questions relating to ancient demographics have received increasingly more scholarly attention,[101] with estimates of the population size of the Roman empire at its demographic peak now varying between 60 and 70 million ("low count") and over 100 million ("high count").[102] Adhering to the more traditional value of 55 million inhabitants, the Roman Empire constituted the most populous Western political unity until the mid-19th century and remained unsurpassed on a global scale through the first millennium.[103]
History[link]
Augustus (27 BC–AD 14)[link]
Further information: Praetorian Guard, Roman triumph, Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, Arminius, and Publius Quinctilius Varus
Octavian, the grandnephew and heir of Julius Caesar, had made himself a central military figure during the chaotic period following Caesar's assassination. In 43 BC at the age of twenty he held his first consulship and became one of the three members of the Second Triumvirate, a political alliance with Lepidus, and Mark Antony. In 36 BC, he was given the power of a Plebeian Tribune, which gave him veto power over the Senate and the ability to control the Plebeian Council, the principal legislative assembly. These powers made himself and his position sacrosanct. The triumvirate ended in 32 BC, torn apart by the competing ambitions of its members: Lepidus was forced into exile and Antony, who had allied himself with his lover Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, committed suicide in 30 BC following his defeat at the Battle of Actium (31 BC) by the fleet of Octavian commanded by his general Agrippa. Octavian subsequently annexed Egypt to the empire.
Now sole ruler of Rome, Octavian began a full-scale reformation of military, fiscal and political matters. In 29 BC, he was given the authority of a Roman Censor and thus the power to appoint new senators.[104] The senate also granted him a unique grade of Proconsular imperium, giving him authority over all proconsuls, the military governors of the Empire.[105] The powers had he now secured for himself were in effect those that his predecessor Julius Caesar had secured for himself years earlier as Roman Dictator. The provinces at the frontiers where the vast majority of legions were stationed, newly classified as imperial provinces, were now under the control of Octavian. The peaceful provinces were given to the authority of the Senate and were classified as senatorial provinces. The legions, which had reached an unprecedented number of around fifty because of the civil wars, were concentrated and reduced to twenty-eight. Octavian also created nine special cohorts to maintain peace in Italy, keeping at least three stationed in Rome. The cohorts in the capital became known as the Praetorian Guard.
In 27 BC, Octavian offered to transfer control of the state back to the senate.[104] The Senate refused the offer, which in effect was a ratification of his position within the state. Octavian was also granted the title of "Augustus" by the Senate,[106] and took the title of Princeps or "first citizen".[105] As the adopted heir of Julius Caesar, Octavian, now referred to as "Augustus", took Caesar as a component of his name. By the time of the reign of Vespasian, the term Caesar had evolved from a family name into a formal title.
Augustus completed the conquest of Hispania, while subordinate generals expanded Roman possessions in Africa and Asia Minor. Augustus' final task was to ensure an orderly succession of his powers. His greatest general and stepson Tiberius had conquered Pannonia, Dalmatia, Raetia, and temporarily Germania for the Empire, and was thus a prime candidate. In 6 BC, Augustus granted tribunician powers to his stepson,[107] and soon after he recognized Tiberius as his heir. In 13 AD, a law was passed which extended Augustus' powers over the provinces to Tiberius,[108] so that Tiberius' legal powers were equivalent to, and independent from, those of Augustus.[108] In 14 AD Augustus died at the age of seventy-five, having ruled the empire for forty years.
Tiberius to Alexander Severus (14–235)[link]
Augustus was succeeded by his stepson Tiberius, the son of his wife Livia from her first marriage. Augustus was a scion of the gens Julia (the Julian family), one of the most ancient patrician clans of Rome, while Tiberius was a scion of the gens Claudia. Their three immediate successors were all descended from the gens Claudia, through Tiberius's brother Nero Claudius Drusus. They also descended from the gens Julia, emperors Caligula and Nero through Julia the Elder, Augustus's daughter from his first marriage, and emperor Claudius through Augustus's sister Octavia Minor. Historians refer to their dynasty as the "Julio-Claudian Dynasty".
The early years of Tiberius's reign were relatively peaceful. However, his rule soon became characterised by paranoia. He began a series of treason trials and executions, which continued until his death in 37. The logical successor to the much hated Tiberius was his 24-year-old grandnephew Caligula. Caligula's reign began well, but after an illness he became tyrannical and insane. In 41 Caligula was assassinated, and for two days following his assassination, the senate debated the merits of restoring the Republic.[109]
Due to the demands of the army, however, Claudius was ultimately declared emperor. Claudius was neither paranoid like his uncle Tiberius, nor insane like his nephew Caligula, and was therefore able to administer the Empire with reasonable ability. In his own family life he was less successful, as he married his niece, who may very well have poisoned him in 54. Nero, who succeeded Claudius, focused much of his attention on diplomacy, trade, and increasing the cultural capital of the Empire. Nero, though, is remembered as a tyrant, and was forced to commit suicide in 68.
Nero was followed by a brief period of civil war, known as the "Year of the Four Emperors". Augustus had established a standing army, where individual soldiers served under the same military governors over an extended period of time. The consequence was that the soldiers in the provinces developed a degree of loyalty to their commanders, which they did not have for the emperor. Thus the Empire was, in a sense, a union of inchoate principalities, which could have disintegrated at any time.[110] Between June 68 and December 69, Rome witnessed the successive rise and fall of Galba, Otho and Vitellius until the final accession of Vespasian, first ruler of the Flavian dynasty. These events showed that any successful general could legitimately claim a right to the throne.[111]
Vespasian, though a successful emperor, continued the weakening of the Senate which had been going on since the reign of Tiberius. Through his sound fiscal policy, he was able to build up a surplus in the treasury, and began construction on the Colosseum. Titus, Vespasian's successor, quickly proved his merit, although his short reign was marked by disaster, including the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii. He held the opening ceremonies in the still unfinished Colosseum, but died in 81. His brother Domitian succeeded him. Having exceedingly poor relations with the Senate, Domitian was murdered in September 96.
The next century came to be known as the period of the "Five Good Emperors", in which the successions were peaceful and the Empire was prosperous. Each emperor of this period was adopted by his predecessor. The last two of the "Five Good Emperors" and Commodus are also called Antonines. After his accession, Nerva, who succeeded Domitian, set a new tone: he restored much confiscated property and involved the Senate in his rule.
Starting with 101 Trajan undertook two military campaigns against the gold rich Dacia, which he finally conquered in 106 (see Trajan's Dacian Wars). In 112, Trajan marched on Armenia and annexed it to the Roman Empire. Then he turned south into Parthia, taking several cities before declaring Mesopotamia a new province of the Empire, and lamenting that he was too old to follow in the steps of Alexander the Great. During his rule, the Roman Empire expanded to its largest extent, and would never again advance so far to the east. Hadrian's reign was marked by a general lack of major military conflicts, but he had to defend the vast territories that Trajan had acquired.
Antoninus Pius's reign was comparatively peaceful. During the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Germanic tribes launched many raids along the northern border. The period of the "Five Good Emperors" also commonly described as the Pax Romana, or "Roman Peace" was brought to an end by the reign of Commodus. Commodus was the son of Marcus Aurelius, breaking the scheme of adoptive successors that had turned out so well. Commodus became paranoid and slipped into insanity before being murdered in 192.
The Severan Dynasty, which lasted from 193 until 235, included several increasingly troubled reigns. A generally successful ruler, Septimius Severus, the first of the dynasty, cultivated the army's support and substituted equestrian officers for senators in key administrative positions. His son, Caracalla, extended full Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire. Increasingly unstable and autocratic, Caracalla was assassinated by Macrinus, who succeeded him, before being killed and succeeded by Elagabalus. Alexander Severus, the last of the dynasty, was increasingly unable to control the army, and was assassinated in 235.
Crisis of the Third Century and the later emperors (235–395)[link]
The Crisis of the Third Century is a commonly applied name for the near-collapse of the Roman Empire between 235 and 284. During this time, 25 emperors reigned, and the empire experienced extreme military, political, and economic crises. Additionally, in 251, the Plague of Cyprian broke out, causing large-scale mortality which may have seriously affected the ability of the Empire to defend itself.[112] This period ended with the accession of Diocletian, who reigned from 284 until 305, and who solved many of the acute problems experienced during this crisis.
However, the core problems would remain and cause the eventual destruction of the western empire. Diocletian saw the vast empire as ungovernable, and therefore split the Roman Empire in half and created two equal emperors to rule under the title of Augustus. In doing so, he effectively created what would become the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. In 293 authority was further divided, as each Augustus took a junior Emperor called a Caesar to provide a line of succession. This constituted what is now known as the Tetrarchy ("rule of four"). The transitions of this period mark the beginnings of Late Antiquity.
The Tetrarchy effectively collapsed with the death of Constantius Chlorus, the first of the Constantinian dynasty, in 306. Constantius's troops immediately proclaimed his son Constantine the Great as Augustus. A series of civil wars broke out, which ended with the entire empire being united under Constantine, who legalised Christianity definitively in 313 through the Edict of Milan.
In 361, after further episodes of civil war, Julian became emperor. His edict of toleration in 362 ordered the reopening of pagan temples, and, more problematically for the Christian Church, the recalling of previously exiled Christian bishops. Julian eventually resumed the war against Shapur II of Persia, although he received a mortal wound in battle and died in 363. His officers then elected Jovian as emperor. Jovian ceded territories won from the Persians as far back as Trajan's time, and restored the privileges of Christianity, before dying in 364.
Upon Jovian's death, Valentinian I, the first of the Valentinian dynasty, was elected Augustus, and chose his brother Valens to serve as his co-emperor. In 365, Procopius managed to bribe two legions, who then proclaimed him Augustus. War between the two rival Eastern Roman Emperors continued until Procopius was defeated, although in 367, eight-year-old Gratian was proclaimed emperor by the other two. In 375 Valentinian I led his army in a campaign against a Germanic tribe, but died shortly thereafter. Succession did not go as planned. Gratian was then a 16-year-old and arguably ready to act as Emperor, but the troops proclaimed his infant half-brother emperor under the title Valentinian II, and Gratian acquiesced.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Roman Empire faced its own problems with Germanic tribes. One tribe fled their former lands and sought refuge in the Eastern Roman Empire. Valens let them settle on the southern bank of the Danube in 376, but they soon revolted against their Roman hosts. Valens personally led a campaign against them in 378. However this campaign proved disastrous for the Romans. The two armies approached each other near Adrianople, but Valens was apparently overconfident of the numerical superiority of his own forces over the enemy. Valens, eager to have all of the glory for himself, rushed into battle, and on 9 August 378, the Battle of Adrianople resulted in a crushing defeat for the Romans, and the death of Valens.
Contemporary historian Ammianus Marcellinus estimated that two-thirds of the Roman soldiers on the field were lost in the battle. The battle had far-reaching consequences, as veteran soldiers and valuable administrators were among the heavy casualties, which left the Empire with the problem of finding suitable leadership. Gratian was now effectively responsible for the whole of the Empire. He sought however a replacement Augustus for the Eastern Roman Empire, and in 379 chose Theodosius I.
Theodosius, the founder of the Theodosian dynasty, proclaimed his five-year-old son Arcadius an Augustus in 383 in an attempt to secure succession. Hispanic Celt general Magnus Maximus, stationed in Roman Britain, was proclaimed Augustus by his troops in 383 and rebelled against Gratian when he invaded Gaul. Gratian fled, but was assassinated. Following Gratian's death, Maximus had to deal with Valentinian II, at the time only twelve years old, as the senior Augustus. Maximus soon entered negotiations with Valentinian II and Theodosius, attempting and ultimately failing to gain their official recognition. Theodosius campaigned west in 388 and was victorious against Maximus, who was captured and executed. In 392 Valentinian II was murdered, and shortly thereafter Arbogast arranged for the appointment of Eugenius as emperor.
The eastern emperor Theodosius I refused to recognise Eugenius as emperor and invaded the West again, defeating and killing Arbogast and Eugenius. He thus reunited the entire Roman Empire under his rule. Theodosius was the last Emperor who ruled over the whole Empire. As emperor, he made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. After his death in 395, he gave the two halves of the Empire to his two sons Arcadius and Honorius. The Roman state would continue to have two different emperors with different seats of power throughout the 5th century, though the Eastern Romans considered themselves Roman in full. The two halves were nominally, culturally and historically, if not politically, the same state.
Decline of the Western Roman Empire (395–476)[link]
Main articles: Decline of the Roman Empire and Migration Period
After 395, the emperors in the Western Roman Empire were usually figureheads, while the actual rulers were military strongmen. In 475 Orestes had revolted against Emperor Julius Nepos, causing him to flee to Dalmatia. Orestes then proclaimed his own son Romulus Augustus to be emperor, but could not get sanction from the Eastern Empire nor homage from scattered remnants of the Western Empire outside Italy (which was under his immediate military control.) A few months later, in 476 Orestes refused to honor his promises to the Foederati, (Germanic mercenaries in the service of the empire) who had supported his revolt against Nepos, for lands in Italy. The dissatisfied mercenaries, led by Odoacer, revolted, killing Orestes and removing Romulus Augustus. Odoacer ruled Italy as a king and refused imperial titulature, so the year 476 is generally used to mark the end of the Western Roman Empire.
Odoacer quickly conquered the remaining provinces of Italy, and was greeted as a liberator by the Roman Senate. Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno. Zeno soon received two deputations. One was from the Senate returned the Imperial regalia and requested that the division of the empire be formally abolished and Zeno reign alone, and endorsing Odoacer's governance of Italy. The second deputation was from Nepos, asking for military support to regain control of the Italian Peninsula. Zeno declined to abolish the Western Empire, but acceded to the requests to legitimize Odoacer's, nameing him patrician. He urged the Odoacer and the Senate, however, to recognize Nepo's authority and invite him to return to Italy. Nepos was not invited back, but Odoacer was careful to observe the formalities of the exiled emperor's titular status, often invoking his name and even minting coins with his image. Upon Nepos' death in 480, Zeno claimed Dalmatia for the East, but Odoacer, claiming his duty as vassal to arrest and punish the killers of the Western Emperor, invaded and took control of the country. He also did try and execute the assassins. When Odoacer supported the revolt of Illus and Leonitus (484-488), Zeno responded by declaring his own menacing ally Theodoric the Great, Ostrogoths, to be King of Italy. Theodoric invaded, crushed Odoacer, and took possession of Italy in 489.
The Empire became gradually less Romanised and increasingly Germanic in nature: although the Empire buckled under Visigothic assault, the overthrow of the last Emperor Romulus Augustus was carried out by federated Germanic troops from within the Roman army rather than by foreign troops. In this sense had Odoacer not renounced the title of Emperor and named himself "King of Italy" instead, the Empire might have continued in name. Its identity, however, was no longer Roman—it was increasingly populated and governed by Germanic peoples long before 476.
The Roman people were by the 5th century "bereft of their military ethos"[113] and the Roman army itself a mere supplement to federated troops of Goths, Huns, Franks and others fighting on their behalf. Many theories have been advanced in explanation of the decline of the Roman Empire, and many dates given for its fall, from the onset of its decline in the 3rd century[114] to the fall of Constantinople in 1453.[115]
Militarily, however, the Empire finally fell after first being overrun by various non-Roman peoples and then having its heart in Italy seized by Germanic troops in a revolt. The historicity and exact dates are uncertain, and some historians do not consider that the Empire fell at this point. Disagreement persists since the decline of the Empire had been a long and gradual process rather than a single event.
Eastern Roman Empire (476–1453)[link]
Main article: Byzantine Empire
As the Western Roman Empire declined during the 5th century, the richer Eastern Roman Empire would be relieved of much destruction, and in the mid 6th century the Eastern Roman Empire (generally today called the Byzantine Empire) under the emperor Justinian I reconquered Italy and parts of Illyria from the Ostrogoths, North Africa from the Vandals, and southern Hispania from the Visigoths. The reconquest of southern Hispania was somewhat ephemeral, but North Africa served the Byzantines for another century, parts of Italy for another five centuries, and parts of Illyria even longer.
Of the many accepted dates for the end of the classical Roman state, the latest is 610. This is when the Emperor Heraclius made sweeping reforms, forever changing the face of the empire. Greek was readopted as the language of government and Latin influence waned. By 610, the Eastern Roman Empire had come under definite Greek influence, and could be considered to have become what many modern historians now call the Byzantine Empire. However, the Empire was never called thus by its inhabitants, who used terms such as Romania, Basileia Romaion or Pragmata Romaion, meaning "Land of the Romans" or "Kingdom of the Romans", and who still saw themselves as Romans, and their state as the rightful continuation of the ancient empire of Rome.
During the Muslim conquests in the 7th century, the Empire lost its possessions in Africa and the Levant to the Arab-Islamic Caliphate, reducing Byzantine lands to Anatolia, the Balkans and southern Italy. The sack of Constantinople at the hands of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 is sometimes used to date the end of Eastern Roman Empire: the destruction of Constantinople and most of its ancient treasures, total discontinuity of leadership, and the division of its lands into rival states with a Catholic-controlled "Emperor" in Constantinople itself was a blow from which the Empire never fully recovered.
Nevertheless, the Byzantines recovered Constantinople itself and reestablished the Empire in 1261, and continued to call themselves Romans until their fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. That year the eastern part of the Roman Empire was ultimately ended by the Fall of Constantinople. Even though Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, declared himself the Emperor of the Roman Empire (Caesar of Rome / Kayser-i Rum), and even though this capture was in some ways far less catastrophic than the sack, Constantine XI is usually considered the last Roman Emperor. The Greek ethnic self-descriptive name "Rhomios" (Roman) survives to this day.
Military history[link]
Main article: Campaign history of the Roman military
Principate (27 BC–AD 235)[link]
Main article: Principate
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Between the reigns of the emperors Augustus and Trajan, the Roman Empire achieved great territorial gains in both the East and the West. In the West, following several defeats in 16 BC,[116] Roman armies pushed north and east out of Gaul to subdue much of Germania. Despite the loss of a large army almost to the man in Varus' famous defeat in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9,[117][118][119]
Rome recovered and continued its expansion up to and beyond the borders of the known world. The Romans invaded Britain in AD 43,[120] forcing their way inland,[121] and building two military bases to protect against rebellion and incursions from the north, from which Roman troops built and manned Hadrian's Wall.[122]
Emperor Claudius ordered the suspension of further attacks across the Rhine,[123] setting what was to become the permanent limit of the Empire's expansion in this direction.[124] Further east, Trajan turned his attention to Dacia.[125][126][127] Following an uncertain number of battles, Trajan marched into Dacia,[128] besieged the Dacian capital and razed it to the ground.[129] With Dacia quelled, Trajan subsequently invaded the Parthian empire to the east, his conquests taking the Roman Empire to its greatest extent.
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In AD 69, Marcus Salvius Otho had the Emperor Galba murdered[130][131] and claimed the throne for himself,[132][133] but Vitellius had also claimed the throne.[134][135] Otho left Rome, and met Vitellius at the First Battle of Bedriacum,[136] after which the Othonian troops fled back to their camp,[137] and the next day surrendered to the Vitellian forces.[138] Meanwhile, the forces stationed in the Middle East provinces of Judaea and Syria had acclaimed Vespasian as emperor.[136] Vespasians' and Vitellius' armies met in the Second Battle of Bedriacum,[136][139] after which the Vitellian troops were driven back into their camp.[140] Vespasian, having successfully ended the civil war, was declared emperor.
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The First Jewish-Roman War, sometimes called The Great Revolt, was the first of three major rebellions by the Jews of Judaea Province against the Roman Empire.[141] Earlier Jewish successes against Rome only attracted greater attention from Emperor Nero, who appointed general Vespasian to crush the rebellion. By the year 68, Jewish resistance in the northern region, the Galilee, had been crushed[142][143] and in the year 70, Jerusalem was captured and the Second Temple destroyed. In 115, revolt broke out again in the province, leading to the second Jewish-Roman war known as the Kitos War, and again in 132 in what is known as Bar Kokhba's revolt. Both were brutally crushed.
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Due in large part to their employment of powerful heavy cavalry and mobile horse-archers, the Parthian Empire was the most formidable enemy of the Roman Empire in the east. Trajan had campaigned against the Parthians and briefly captured their capital, putting a puppet ruler on the throne, but the territories were abandoned. A revitalised Parthian Empire renewed its assault in 161, and defeated two Roman armies. General Gaius Avidius Cassius was sent in 162 to counter the resurgent Parthia. The Parthian city of Seleucia on the Tigris was destroyed, and the Parthians made peace but were forced to cede western Mesopotamia to the Romans.[144]
In 197, Emperor Septimius Severus waged a brief and successful war against the Parthian Empire, during which time the Parthian capital was sacked, and the northern half of Mesopotamia was restored to Rome. Emperor Caracalla marched on Parthia in 217 from Edessa to begin a war against them, but he was assassinated while on the march.[145] In 224, the Parthian Empire was crushed not by the Romans but by the rebellious Persian vassal king Ardashir, who revolted, leading to the establishment of Sassanid Empire of Persia, which replaced Parthia as Rome's major rival in the East.
Barracks and Illyrian emperors (235–284) and Dominate (284–395)[link]
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Although the exact historicity is unclear, some mix of Germanic peoples, Celts, and tribes of mixed Celto-Germanic ethnicity were settled in the lands of Germania from the 1st century onwards. The essential problem of large tribal groups on the frontier remained much the same as the situation Rome faced in earlier centuries; the 3rd century saw a marked increase in the overall threat.[146][147]
The assembled warbands of the Alamanni frequently crossed the border, attacking Germania Superior such that they were almost continually engaged in conflicts with the Roman Empire. However, their first major assault deep into Roman territory did not come until 268. In that year the Romans were forced to denude much of their German frontier of troops in response to a massive invasion by another new Germanic tribal confederacy, the Goths, from the east. The pressure of tribal groups pushing into the Empire was the end result of a chain of migrations with its roots far to the east.[148]
The Alamanni seized the opportunity to launch a major invasion of Gaul and northern Italy. However, the Visigoths were defeated in battle that summer and then routed in the Battle of Naissus.[149] The Goths remained a major threat to the Empire but directed their attacks away from Italy itself for several years after their defeat.
The Alamanni on the other hand resumed their drive towards Italy almost immediately. They defeated Aurelian at the Battle of Placentia in 271 but were beaten back for a short time, only to reemerge fifty years later. In 378 the Goths inflicted a crushing defeat on the Eastern Empire at the Battle of Adrianople.[150][151]
At the same time, Franks raided through the North Sea and the English Channel,[152] Vandals pressed across the Rhine, Iuthungi against the Danube, Iazyges, Carpi and Taifali harassed Dacia, and Gepids joined the Goths and Heruli in attacks round the Black Sea.[153] At the start of the 5th century AD, the pressure on Rome's western borders was growing intense.
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A military that was often willing to support its commander over its emperor meant that commanders could establish sole control of the army they were responsible for and usurp the imperial throne. The so-called Crisis of the Third Century describes the turmoil of murder, usurpation and in-fighting that is traditionally seen as developing with the murder of the Emperor Alexander Severus in 235.[154]
Emperor Septimius Severus was forced to deal with two rivals for the throne: Pescennius Niger and then Clodius Albinus. Severus' successor Caracalla passed uninterrupted for a while until he was murdered by Macrinus,[155] who proclaimed himself emperor in his place. The troops of Elagabalus declared him to be emperor instead, and the two met in battle at the Battle of Antioch in AD 218, in which Macrinus was defeated.[156]
However, Elagabalus was murdered shortly afterwards;[156] Alexander Severus was proclaimed emperor, and at the end of his reign was murdered in turn.[156] His murderers raised in his place Maximinus Thrax. However, just as he had been raised by the army, Maximinus was also brought down by them and was murdered[157] when it appeared to his forces as though he would not be able to best the senatorial candidate for the throne, Gordian III.
Gordian III's fate is not certain, although he may have been murdered by his own successor, Philip the Arab, who ruled for only a few years before the army proclaimed another general as emperor, this time Decius, who defeated Philip and seized the throne.[158] Gallienus, emperor from AD 260 to 268, saw a remarkable array of usurpers. Diocletian, a usurper himself, defeated Carinus to become emperor. Some small measure of stability again returned at this point, with the empire split into a tetrarchy of two greater and two lesser emperors, a system that staved off civil wars for a short time until AD 312. In that year, relations between the tetrarchy collapsed for good. From AD 314 onwards, Constantine the Great defeated Licinius in a series of battles. Constantine then turned to Maxentius, beating him in the Battle of Verona and the Battle of Milvian Bridge.
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After overthrowing the Parthian confederacy,[159][160] the Sassanid Empire that arose from its remains pursued a more aggressive expansionist policy than their predecessors[161][162] and continued to make war against Rome. In 230, the first Sassanid emperor attacked Roman territory,[162] and in 243, Emperor Gordian III's army defeated the Sassanids at the Battle of Resaena.[163]
In 253 the Sassanids under Shapur I penetrated deeply into Roman territory, defeating a Roman force at the Battle of Barbalissos[164] and conquering and plundering Antioch.[159][164] In 260 at the Battle of Edessa the Sassanids defeated the Roman army[165] and captured the Roman Emperor Valerian.[159][162]
There was a lasting peace between Rome and the Sassanid Empire between 297 and 337 following a treaty between Narseh and Emperor Diocletian. However, just before the death of Constantine I in 337, Shapur II broke the peace and began a twenty-six-year conflict, attempting with little success to conquer Roman fortresses in the region. Emperor Julian met Shapur in 363 in the Battle of Ctesiphon outside the walls of the Persian capital. The Romans were victorious but were unable to take the city and were forced to retreat. There were several later wars.
Collapse of the Western Empire (395–476)[link]
Main article: Decline of the Roman Empire
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After the death of Theodosius I in 395, the Visigoths renounced their treaty with the Empire and invaded northern Italy under their new king Alaric, but were repeatedly repulsed by the Western commander-in-chief Stilicho. However, the limes on the Rhine had been depleted of Roman troops, and in early 407 Vandals, Alans, and Suevi invaded Gaul en masse and, meeting little resistance, proceeded to cross the Pyrenees, entering Spain in 409.
Stilicho became a victim of court intrigues in Ravenna (where the imperial court resided since 402) and was executed for high treason in 408. After his death, the government became increasingly ineffective in dealing with the barbarians, and in 410 Rome was sacked by the Visigoths.
Under Alaric's successors, the Goths then settled in Gaul (412–418) as foederati and for a while were successfully employed against the Vandals, Alans, and Suevi in Spain. Meanwhile, in the turmoil of the preceding years, Roman Britain had been abandoned.
After Honorius' death in 423, the Eastern empire installed the weak Valentinian III as Western Emperor in Ravenna. After a violent struggle with several rivals, Aetius rose to the rank of magister militum. Aetius was able to stabilize the empire's military situation somewhat, relying heavily on his Hunnic allies. With their help he defeated the Burgundians, who had occupied part of southern Gaul after 407, and settled them as Roman allies in the Savoy (433). Later that century, as Roman power faded away, the Burgundians extended their rule to the Rhone valley.
Meanwhile, pressure from the Visigoths and a rebellion by the governor of Africa, Bonifacius, had induced the Vandals under their king Gaiseric to cross over from Spain in 429. After capturing Carthage, they established an independent state with a powerful navy (439), which was officially recognised by the Empire in 442. The Vandal fleet from then on formed a constant danger to Roman seafare and the coasts and islands of the Western and Central Mediterranean.
In 444, the Huns, who had been employed as Roman allies by Aetius, were united under their king Attila, who invaded Gaul and was only stopped with great effort by a combined Roman-Germanic force led by Aetius in the Battle of Châlons (451). The next year, Attila invaded Italy and proceeded to march upon Rome, but he halted his campaign and died a year later in 453.
Aetius was murdered by Valentinian in 454, who was then himself murdered by the dead general's supporters a year later. With the end of the Theodosian dynasty, a new period of dynastic struggle ensued. The Vandals took advantage of the unrest, sailed up to Rome, and plundered the city in 455. As the barbarians settled in the former provinces, nominally as allies but de facto operating as independent polities, the territory of the Western Empire was effectively reduced to Italy and parts of Gaul.
From 455 onward, several emperors were installed in the West by the government of Constantinople, but their authority only reached as far as the barbarian commanders of the army and their troops (Ricimer (456–472), Gundobad (473–475)) allowed it to. In 475, Orestes, a former secretary of Attila, drove Emperor Julius Nepos out of Ravenna and proclaimed his own son Romulus Augustus as emperor.
In 476, Orestes refused to grant Odoacer and the Heruli federated status, prompting the latter to kill him, depose his son and send the imperial insignia to Constantinople, installing himself as king over Italy. Although isolated pockets of Roman rule continued even after 476, the city of Rome itself was under the rule of the barbarians, and the control of Rome over the West had effectively ended. The Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire ended in 1453 with the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks led by Mehmed II.
Legacy[link]
Blue – French; Green – Spanish; Orange – Portuguese; Yellow – Italian; Red – Romanian
Main article: Legacy of the Roman Empire
The American magazine National Geographic described the legacy of the Roman Empire in The World According to Rome:
The enduring Roman influence is reflected pervasively in contemporary language, literature, legal codes, government, architecture, engineering, medicine, sports, arts, etc. Much of it is so deeply embedded that we barely notice our debt to ancient Rome. Consider language, for example. Fewer and fewer people today claim to know Latin — and yet, go back to the first sentence in this paragraph. If we removed all the words drawn directly from Latin, that sentence would read; "The."[166][nb 5]
Several states claimed to be the Roman Empire's successors after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire, an attempt to resurrect the Empire in the West, was established in 800 when Pope Leo III crowned Frankish King Charlemagne as Roman Emperor on Christmas Day, though the empire and the imperial office did not become formalised for some decades. After the fall of Constantinople, the Russian Tsardom, as inheritor of the Byzantine Empire's Orthodox Christian tradition, counted itself the Third Rome (Constantinople having been the second). These concepts are known as Translatio imperii.
When the Ottomans, who based their state on the Byzantine model, took Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II established his capital there and claimed to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. He even went so far as to launch an invasion of Italy with the purpose of "re-uniting the Empire", although Papal and Neapolitan armies stopped his march on Rome at Otranto in 1480. Constantinople was not officially renamed Istanbul until 28 March 1930.
Excluding these states claiming its heritage, if the traditional date for the founding of Rome is accepted as fact, the Roman state can be said to have lasted in some form from 753 BC to the fall in 1461 of the Empire of Trebizond (a successor state and fragment of the Byzantine Empire which escaped conquest by the Ottomans in 1453), for a total of 2,214 years. The Roman impact on Western and Eastern civilisations lives on. In time most of the Roman achievements were duplicated by later civilisations. For example, the technology for cement was rediscovered 1755–1759 by John Smeaton.
The Empire contributed many things to the world, such as a calendar with leap years, the institutions of Christianity and aspects of modern neo-classicistic and Byzantine architecture. The extensive system of roads that was constructed by the Roman Army lasts to this day. Because of this network of roads, the time necessary to travel between destinations in Europe did not decrease until the 19th century, when steam power was invented. Even modern astrology comes to us directly from the Romans.
The Roman Empire also contributed its form of government, which influences various constitutions including those of most European countries and many former European colonies. In the United States, for example, the framers of the Constitution remarked, in creating the Presidency, that they wanted to inaugurate an "Augustan Age". The modern world also inherited legal thinking from Roman law, fully codified in Late Antiquity. Governing a vast territory, the Romans developed the science of public administration to an extent never before conceived or necessary, creating an extensive civil service and formalised methods of tax collection.
While in the West the term "Roman" acquired a new meaning in connection with the church and the Pope of Rome the Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greek-speaking Christian population of the Eastern Roman Empire and is still used by Greeks in addition to their common appellation.[169]
The Roman Empire's territorial legacy of controlling the Italian peninsula would serve as an influence to Italian nationalism and the unification (Risorgimento) of Italy in 1861.
Notes and references[link]
Notes:
References:
- Footnotes
- ^ Since classical and modern concepts of state do not coincide, other possibilities include Res publica Romana, Imperium Romanum or Romanorum (also in Greek: Βασιλείᾱ τῶν Ῥωμαίων – Basileíā tôn Rhōmaíōn – ["Dominion (Literally 'kingdom') of the Romans"]) and Romania. Res publica, as a term denoting the Roman "commonwealth" in general, can refer to both the Republican and the Imperial era, while Imperium Romanum (or, sometimes, Romanorum) is used to refer to the territorial extent of Roman authority. Populus Romanus, "the Roman people", is often used for the Roman state dealing with other nations. The term Romania, initially a colloquial term for the empire's territory as well as the collectivity of its inhabitants, appears in Greek and Latin sources from the fourth century onward and was eventually carried over to the Byzantine Empire. (See Wolff, R.L. "Romania: The Latin Empire of Constantinople". In: Speculum, 23 (1948), pp. 1–34 (pp. 2–3).)
- ^ During the struggles of the Late Republic hundreds of senators were killed or died, and the Roman Senate had been refilled with supporters of the First Triumvirate and later those of the Second Triumvirate.
- ^ Octavian/Augustus officially proclaimed that he had saved the Roman Republic and carefully disguised his power under republican forms; consuls continued to be elected, tribunes of the plebeians continued to offer legislation, and senators still debated in the Roman Curia. However, it was Octavian, and every effective emperor thereafter, who influenced everything and controlled the final decisions, and in final analysis, had the legions to back him up, if it ever became necessary.
- ^ This is somewhat simplistic as the Romans did not simply adopt/copy Greek or other cultures. See, for example, Freeman, C. The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World (New York: Penguin, 1999) for a more detailed description of how the Romans interacted with Greek (and other) cultures.
- ^ The final statement is not entirely accurate (in terms of the linguistic etymology): many words with Latin roots, such as engineering and sports, were borrowed from French[167][168] and were thus derived indirectly, while the main verb and the preposition in the first sentence are native English (Germanic) forms, though with close Latin parallels (est, in) due to shared Indo-European history. However, the point pertaining to the pervading influence is valid.
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- ^ a b c d Taagepera, Rein (1979). "Size and Duration of Empires: Growth-Decline Curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D.". Social Science History (Duke University Press) 3 (3/4): 125. DOI:10.2307/1170959. JSTOR 1170959.
- ^ John D. Durand, Historical Estimates of World Population: An Evaluation, 1977, pp. 253–296.
- ^ "Roman Empire – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". www.britannica.com. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/507739/Roman-Empire. Retrieved 2008-07-09.
- ^ "Roman Empire", Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2008
- ^ Parker, Philip, "The Empire Stops Here". p.2.
- ^ Chester G. Starr, A History of the Ancient World, Second Edition. Oxford University Press, 1974. pp. 670–678.
- ^ Isaac Asimov. Asimov's Chronology of the World. Harper Collins, 1989. p. 110.
- ^ Asimov, p. 198.
- ^ Abbott, 342
- ^ Abbott, 357
- ^ a b Abbott, 345
- ^ Abbott, 354
- ^ Abbott, 341
- ^ Goldsworthy, Adrian (2003). "The Life of a Roman Soldier". The Complete Roman Army. London: Thames & Hudson. p. 80. ISBN 0-500-05124-0.
- ^ Abbott, 385
- ^ a b Abbott, 383
- ^ Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Life of Augustus paragraph 41
- ^ a b c The complete Roman army by Adrian Goldsworthy, 2003 chapter The Army of the Principate, p.50; ISBN 0-500-05124-0
- ^ The complete Roman army by Adrian Goldsworthy, 2005 chapter The Army of the Principate, p.183; ISBN 0-500-05124-0
- ^ Rome and her enemies published by Osprey, 2005 part 3 Early Empire 27BC — AD 235, chapter 9 The Romans, section Remuneration, p.183; ISBN 978-1-84603-336-0
- ^ Tacitus Annales IV.5
- ^ Goldsworthy (2003) 51
- ^ The complete Roman army by Adrian Goldsworthy 2003, chapter After Service, p.114; ISBN 0-500-05124-0
- ^ a b c Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Life of Augusts paragraph 47
- ^ Farber, Allen. "Early Christian Art: An Introduction". http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Early-Christian-Art-An-Introduction.pdf. Retrieved 23 January 2012.
- ^ On Claudius's funeral, see Tacitus, Ann. 12.69 and 13.3–4.
- ^ Cassius Dio Roman History 66.1
- ^ Pliny's Natural History xxx.4.
- ^ a b Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Life of Claudius paragraph 25
- ^ H.H. Ben-Sasson, A History of the Jewish People, Harvard University Press, 1976, ISBN 0-674-39731-2, The Crisis Under Gaius Caligula, pages 254-256: "The reign of Gaius Caligula (37-41) witnessed the first open break between the Jews and the Julio-Claudian empire. Until then—if one accepts Sejanus' heyday and the trouble caused by the census after Archelaus' banishment—there was usually an atmosphere of understanding between the Jews and the empire ... These relations deteriorated seriously during Caligula's reign, and, though after his death the peace was outwardly re-established, considerable bitterness remained on both sides. ... Caligula ordered that a golden statue of himself be set up in the Temple in Jerusalem. ... Only Caligula's death, at the hands of Roman conspirators (41), prevented the outbreak of a Jewish-Roman war that might well have spread to the entire East."
- ^ Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Life of Tiberius paragraph 36
- ^ Wylen, Stephen M., The Jews in the Time of Jesus: An Introduction, Paulist Press (1995), ISBN 0-8091-3610-4, Pp 190–192.; Dunn, James D.G., Jews and Christians: The Parting of the Ways, A.D. 70 to 135, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (1999), ISBN 0-8028-4498-7, Pp 33–34.; Boatwright, Mary Taliaferro and Gargola, Daniel J and Talbert, Richard John Alexander, The Romans: From Village to Empire, Oxford University Press (2004), ISBN 0-19-511875-8, p. 426.;
- ^ Graeme Clarke, "Third-Century Christianity," in Cambridge Ancient History: The Crisis of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2005), vol. 12, p. 616; W.H.C. Frend, "Persecutions: Genesis and Legacy," Cambridge History of Christianity: Origins to Constantine (Cambridge University Press, 2006), vol. 1, p. 510. See also: Timothy D. Barnes, "Legislation Against the Christians," Journal of Roman Studies 58 (1968) 32–50; G.E.M de Sainte-Croix, "Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?" Past & Present 26 (1963) 6–38; Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. lviii–lxii; and A.N. Sherwin-White, "The Early Persecutions and Roman Law Again," Journal of Theological Studies 3.2 (1952) 199–213.
- ^ Pliny, Epistle to Trajan on the Christians, http://www.mesacc.edu/~tomshoemaker/handouts/pliny.html
- ^ Suetonius, Life of Nero 16.2: afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficae.
- ^ Tacitus, Annals XV.44
- ^ Entry on "martyrdom," The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 411f.
- ^ W.H.C. Frend, "The Failure of the Persecutions in the Roman Empire," Past and Present 16 (1959) 10–30.
- ^ Ekelund, Robert Burton; Hébert, Robert F.: The Marketplace of Christianity, pg. 60, The MIT Press, Nov. 2006, ISBN 978-0-262-05082-1
- ^ Fergus Millar, A Greek Roman Empire: Power and Belief under Theodosius II (408–450). Sather Classical Lectures, Vol. 64. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Pp. 279. ISBN 0-520-24703-5; Warren Treadgold "A Concise History of Byzantium" (New York: St Martin's Press, 2001); Warren Treadgold "A History of the Byzantine State and Society" (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997)
- ^ a b c d Freeman (1999), pp.389–433
- ^ Lee I. Levine Jerusalem see page 154
- ^ "Judaea - Palaestina - Province of the Roman Empire". Unrv.com. http://www.unrv.com/provinces/judaea.php. Retrieved 2010-04-27.
- ^ Social and Economic Conditions of the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century by Paul Vinogradoff, 1911, Cambridge Medieval History, Volume One, pp. 542–567
- ^ Lee I. Levine Jerusalem p. 154
- ^ Andrew Sherratt (Ed.) "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archeology" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 242–243. ISBN 0-521-22989-8
- ^ Religiousstudies.uncc.edu
- ^ Jstor.org
- ^ Andrew Sherratt (Ed.) "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archeology" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 240–244. ISBN 0-521-22989-8
- ^ McDonnell/MacDonnell, Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic[unreliable source?]
- ^ Greek Language, Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ Jones, Mark Wilson Principles of Roman Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
- ^ Kevin Greene, "Technological Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World: M.I. Finley Re-Considered", The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 53, No. 1. (Feb., 2000), pp. 29–59 (39)
- ^ Scott, 404
- ^ Abbott, 1
- ^ Abbott, 2
- ^ Abbott, 6
- ^ Social History of Rome By Géza Alföldy, David Braund, 1985
- ^ "Resisting Slavery in Ancient Rome". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/slavery_01.shtml. Retrieved 2008-06-20.
- ^ "Slavery in Ancient Rome". http://www.dl.ket.org/latinlit/mores/slaves/. Retrieved 2008-06-20.
- ^ The Romans at Work and Play. Western New England College.
- ^ a b Austin, Roland G. "Roman Board Games. I", Greece & Rome 4:10, October 1934. pp. 24–34.
- ^ The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire, Nigel Rodgers, Lorenz Books, ISBN 978-0-7548-1911-0 (page 490)
- ^ Pliny the Elder's Natural History, book 12 pp. 38
- ^ a b "Romans' crimes of fashion revealed". BBC. 2003-08-26. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3181443.stm. Retrieved 2008-06-19.
- ^ Sumner and D'Amato, G. and R. (2002). Roman Military clothing (2) AD 200 to 400. ISBN 18417655970, 7–9
- ^ Rodgers, p.491
- ^ The Inheritance of Rome, Chris Wickham, Penguin Books Ltd. 2009, ISBN 978-0-670-02098-0 (page 106)
- ^ "Me pascunt olivae, me cichorea levesque malvae." Horace, Odes 1.31.15, ca 30 BC
- ^ Phillips pp 46–56
- ^ Lucilius—the acknowledged originator of Roman Satire in the form practiced by Juvenal—experimented with other meters before settling on dactylic hexameter.
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- ^ Healy, John F. (1978): Mining and Metallurgy in the Greek and Roman World, Thames and Hudson, London, ISBN 0-500-40035-0, p. 196
- ^ Hong, Sungmin; Candelone, Jean-Pierre; Patterson, Clair C.; Boutron, Claude F. (1996): "History of Ancient Copper Smelting Pollution During Roman and Medieval Times Recorded in Greenland Ice", Science, Vol. 272, No. 5259, pp. 246–249 (366–369); cf. also Wilson, Andrew (2002): "Machines, Power and the Ancient Economy", The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 92, pp. 1–32 (25–29)
- ^ Hong, Sungmin; Candelone, Jean-Pierre; Patterson, Clair C.; Boutron, Claude F. (1994): "Greenland Ice Evidence of Hemispheric Lead Pollution Two Millennia Ago by Greek and Roman Civilizations", Science, Vol. 265, No. 5180, pp. 1841–1843; Callataÿ, François de (2005): "The Graeco-Roman Economy in the Super Long-Run: Lead, Copper, and Shipwrecks", Journal of Roman Archaeology, Vol. 18, pp. 361–372 (361–365); Settle, Dorothy M.; Patterson, Clair C. (1980): "Lead in Albacore: Guide to Lead Pollution in Americans", Science, Vol. 207, No. 4436, pp. 1167–1176 (1170f.); cf. also Wilson, Andrew (2002): "Machines, Power and the Ancient Economy", The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 92, pp. 1–32 (25–29)
- ^ Callataÿ, François de (2005): "The Graeco-Roman Economy in the Super Long-Run: Lead, Copper, and Shipwrecks", Journal of Roman Archaeology, Vol. 18, pp. 361–372 (361–369); Hong, Sungmin; Candelone, Jean-Pierre; Patterson, Clair C.; Boutron, Claude F. (1996): "History of Ancient Copper Smelting Pollution During Roman and Medieval Times Recorded in Greenland Ice", Science, Vol. 272, No. 5259, pp. 246–249 (247, fig. 1 and 2; 248, table 1); Hong, Sungmin; Candelone, Jean-Pierre; Patterson, Clair C.; Boutron, Claude F. (1994): "Greenland Ice Evidence of Hemispheric Lead Pollution Two Millennia Ago by Greek and Roman Civilizations", Science, Vol. 265, No. 5180, pp. 1841–1843; Settle, Dorothy M.; Patterson, Clair C. (1980): "Lead in Albacore: Guide to Lead Pollution in Americans", Science, Vol. 207, No. 4436, pp. 1167–1176 (1170f.)
- ^ Hong, Sungmin; Candelone, Jean-Pierre; Patterson, Clair C.; Boutron, Claude F. (1994). "Greenland Ice Evidence of Hemispheric Lead Pollution Two Millennia Ago by Greek and Roman Civilizations". Science 265 (5180): 1841–1843. DOI:10.1126/science.265.5180.1841. PMID 17797222.
- ^ Patterson, C. C. (1972): "Silver Stocks and Losses in Ancient and Medieval Times", The Economic History Review, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 205–235 (228, table 6); Callataÿ, François de (2005): "The Graeco-Roman Economy in the Super Long-Run: Lead, Copper, and Shipwrecks", Journal of Roman Archaeology, Vol. 18, pp. 361–372 (365f.)
- ^ Patterson, C. C. (1972): "Silver Stocks and Losses in Ancient and Medieval Times", The Economic History Review, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 205–235 (216, table 2); Callataÿ, François de (2005): "The Graeco-Roman Economy in the Super Long-Run: Lead, Copper, and Shipwrecks", Journal of Roman Archaeology, Vol. 18, pp. 361–372 (365f.)
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- ^ Scheidel, Walter: "The Monetary Systems of the Han and Roman Empires", in: Scheidel, Walter, ed. (2009): Rome and China. Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires, Oxford University Press, New York, ISBN 978-0-19-533690-0, pp. 137–207 (205)
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- ^ Temin, Peter (2006): "Estimating GDP in the Early Roman Empire", Lo Cascio, Elio (ed.): Innovazione tecnica e progresso economico nel mondo romano, Edipuglia, Bari, ISBN 978-88-7228-405-6, pp. 31–54
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- ^ a b Abbott, 267
- ^ a b Abbott, 269
- ^ Abbott, 268
- ^ Abbott, 272
- ^ a b Abbott, 273
- ^ Abbott, 293
- ^ Abbott, 296
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- ^ Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 244
- ^ Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 245
- ^ Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 159
- ^ Clunn, In Quest of the Lost Legions, p. xv
- ^ Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, p. 4
- ^ Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, p. 5
- ^ Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, p. 10
- ^ Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 269
- ^ Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 38
- ^ Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 322
- ^ Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 213
- ^ Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 215
- ^ Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 222
- ^ Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 223
- ^ Tacitus, The Histories, Book 1, ch. 41
- ^ Plutarch, Lives, Galba
- ^ Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 51
- ^ Lane Fox, The Classical World, p. 542
- ^ Tacitus, The Histories, Book 1, ch. 57
- ^ Plutarch, Lives, Otho
- ^ a b c Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 52
- ^ Tacitus, The Histories, Book 1, ch. 44
- ^ Tacitus, The Histories, Book 1, ch. 49
- ^ Tactitus, The Histories, Book 3, ch. 18
- ^ Tactitus, The Histories, Book 3, ch. 25
- ^ Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome, p. 294
- ^ Santosuosso, Storming the Heavens, p. 146
- ^ Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 3
- ^ Grant, The History of Rome, p. 273
- ^ Grant, The History of Rome, p. 279
- ^ Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 146
- ^ Grant, The History of Rome, p. 282
- ^ Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 624
- ^ Grant, The History of Rome, p. 285
- ^ Ammianus Marcellinus, Historiae, book 31.
- ^ Jordanes, The Origins and Deeds of the Goths, 138.
- ^ Grant, The History of Rome, p. 284
- ^ Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 149
- ^ Grant, The History of Rome, p. 280
- ^ Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 129
- ^ a b c Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 130
- ^ Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 131
- ^ Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 135
- ^ a b c Grant, The History of Rome, p. 283
- ^ Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 128
- ^ Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 234
- ^ a b c Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 151
- ^ Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 235
- ^ a b Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 236
- ^ Matyszak, The Enemies of Rome, p. 237
- ^ Reid (1997), p. 54.
- ^ "Online Etymology Dictionary". Etymonline.com. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=engineer. Retrieved 2010-04-27.
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- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, History of Europe, The Romans, 2008, O.Ed.
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- Goldsworthy, Adrian. The Complete Roman Army, Thames and Hudson, 2003, ISBN 0-500-05124-0
- Michael Grant, The History of Rome, Faber and Faber, 1993, ISBN 0-571-11461-X
- Benjamin Isaac, "The Limits of Empire: the Roman Army in the East" Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-19-814926-3
- Andrew Lintott, Imperium Romanum: Politics and administration, 1993, ISBN 0-415-09375-9
- Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0-8018-2158-4
- Reid, T. R. (1997). "The World According to Rome". National Geographic 192 (2): 54–83. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/.
- Antonio Santosuosso, Storming the Heavens: Soldiers, Emperors and Civilians in the Roman Empire, Westview Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8133-3523-X
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- Adena, L. The 'Jesus Cult' and the Roman State in the Third Century, Clio History Journal, 2008.
- Roman battlefield unearthed deep inside Germany
- BBC Romans for Children
- Classics Unveiled
- Complete map of the Roman Empire in year 100
- Detailed history of the Roman Empire
- Historical Atlas (Swedish)
- Roman Numismatic Gallery
- The Celts and Romans
- The Roman Empire
- The Roman Empire in the First Century from PBS
- UNRV Roman History
- The Romans
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http://wn.com/Roman_Empire
Related pages:
http://de.wn.com/Römische Kaiserzeit
http://es.wn.com/Imperio romano
http://ru.wn.com/Римская империя
http://cs.wn.com/Starověký Řím Císařství
http://pt.wn.com/Império Romano
http://pl.wn.com/Cesarstwo rzymskie
http://hi.wn.com/रोमन साम्राज्य
http://it.wn.com/Impero romano
http://id.wn.com/Kekaisaran Romawi
http://nl.wn.com/Romeinse Keizerrijk
http://fr.wn.com/Empire romain
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
