The 210 Theories Behind the Fall of Rome, Ranked: Part 1
The first part of a brief summary of the many extant scholastic theories on why Rome declined and fell, as catalogued by Alexander Demandt, ranked.
The causes for the Decline and Fall are still a hotly debated topic in the classics. Certain ideas have flourished based on the political zeitgeist of the era, while others have been completely debunked by new discoveries in archeology or the sciences. Even today, asking ten different scholars will result in ten different answers. It is difficult for the layman to formulate their own opinion on the matter without dedicating themselves to this discipline, and oftentimes this can result in them spreading secondhand information from disputed sources. Luckily for us, Alexander Demandt charted the wide and untameable jungle of differing but prominent opinions and came up with an initial list of 210 theories. Unluckily for us, it’s all in German. Rather than setting aside a whole year of my time to translate this veritable treasure trove of historical information, I thought it would be best to present his ideas in a more internet- and reader-friendly format.
The result is this: a six part series of 35(-ish) entries, each containing a page number reference, a primary proponent, and a numerical ranking. Because of the nature of the project, I plan to split the entries between my “free” articles and my “translation” articles in my schedule as well. Even though this list will be ranked on a scale of 1-10 the number of ones and tens in this list will be kept to an absolute minimum because no single factor caused the empire to fall. A majority of these theories record undeniably true facts about the state of Rome in its waning years, but the purpose of this article is to judge how much of an effect they had on its ultimate collapse. Of course, in saying that, it should be understood that these are heavily opinionated, and I welcome open discussion from different perspectives in the comments below.
One last bit of housekeeping before we begin: the 2nd edition of Demandt’s book was published in 2014 and includes an additional 17 given reasons. Instead of doctoring the list, I plan to tack them onto a “big-picture” article with an essay analyzing the project in its entirety as a bit of a bonus reward for making it all the way through. There is technically an easier way for me to structure this provided in the book, but not all chapters contain the same number of theories. Additionally I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the explanations I use will be recursive, so if entries become more sparse the longer this goes on, this will pad things out nicely at the end.
Aberglaube
Superstition (145)
Chiefly asserted by Carlo Antonio Pilati as an offshoot of Gibbon’s more famous argument. Here, it’s not reckoned that the particulars of the Christian dogma that are responsible for the fall, but the Christians themselves and their tendency to bicker and even spill blood over minor details about the nature of their savior. 6/10.
Absolutismus
Absolutism (133-137)
Favored by many for diverse reasons, but truly just a general observation that no one man should have all that power. Dividing that large an empire into tetrarchies or dyarchies or whatever else doesn’t work if all those people view themselves as having one national identity. The empire was too big to stay together, but also too unified to break apart. This explanation is sort of vaguely true about all empires, but on the other hand it doesn’t really help to identify when things began to fall apart at the times that they did. 6/10.
Ackersklaverei
Agrarian slavery (439)
One of a few causes given by Jakob Burckhardt, alongside the more general symptoms of corruption and balance of power between the classes. I’m not so sure that this ought to qualify as a “cause” in Demandt’s terminology, or whether Burckhardt meant to point out that the growing population of Roman indentured field-workers was a result of the poorer financial state. We will address Burckhardt more in-depth as his larger theory unfolds. 2/10.
Agrarfrage
The Agrarian Question (289-291, 383)
Ludo Moritz Hartmann proposed that the uprisings of the Bagaudae weakened the empire enough to cause major damage. Unlike many of the other class-/economics-centric arguments dotted throughout this list, Hartmann is much more particular with his accusation, and it gives us an easier pathway to criticize and judge his points for ourselves. Then again, Rome survived three Servile wars under the republic and countless other, smaller revolts, so who is to say exactly why these peasants were so successful, especially given that they flourished a generation or two before the traditional dates for the end of the empire. 8/10.
Akedia
Acedia (368)
One of the more recent additions to this list, to be sure. It’s hard to judge just how responsible an attitude can be for the downfall of an empire. Oftentimes this word is translated from the original Greek as “despondency,” but both Gabriele Pepe and Alexander Demandt present it in its transliterated form, so who am I to object? On the one hand, yes, it would be much more easy to conquer a population that had no interest in defending itself, but on the other hand, even in the later stages of the Western Empire it still meant something to be able to call oneself “Roman.” Moreover, it’s hard to definitively prove a single person’s emotional state at any given time, much less a whole city or empire. The proof just isn’t there. 3/10.
Anarchie
Anarchy (287, 509)
The anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin put forward that anarchism1 brought down the empire. There will be a number of political theorists that attempt to attribute the fall to modern ideas or governmental structures, but I think Kropotkin may be the only one to assert his own philosophy, rather than to denigrate someone else’s. Regardless, my initial draft of this list has all of these set at 1/10 for the simple reason that these structures did not exist, and one of them would have to move mountains to compel me to add even a single point more.1/10.
Antigermanismus
Anti-Germanism (478, 594)
Fans of Alaric must love this one. If one gives 410 as the year of the end of the empire, then it’s hard to picture anything else on this list causing more damage. Honorius killed arguably his most competent advisor in Stilicho over fears that he was a turncoat. True, he had fought alongside Alaric in previous wars, but his proposal of a sound and wise peace treaty when the Senate wanted to spill German blood was a massive political mistake. Alexander Schenk von Stauffenberg2 traced these animosities from the reign of Gallienus all the way through to the beginning of the 9th century. 9/10.
Apathie
Apathy (441)
One facet of Nikolay Danilevsky’s wider theory of historical-cultural types. The Roman civilization is said to be one that declined because of a despair-apathy, while the east’s apathy was rooted in contentedness. Like the Acedia entry, this is more of an auxiliary factor to Rome’s decline and fall than a main one, and frankly comparing this to that shows its weakness. There isn’t much to offer the reader, more than the matter-of-fact assumption that it sucks to live through the end of an empire. 2/10.
Arbeitskräftemangel
Labor inadequacy (309-310)
There are a few entries that beat around the bush of how feudalism began to develop around Europe, and how the structure of fiefdoms naturally beat out the dynamic of slavery that had been the norm on the Italian peninsula. This was first proposed by Max Weber, but popularized through the works of Perry Anderson in our time. Landowners who owned slaves had to contend with an actively hostile labor force; while those on a fief certainly were compelled to work, they often took to striking before revolution. 8/10.
Arbeitsteilung
Division of labor (130-131)
Adam Smith not only detailed the benefits of the division of labor in The Wealth of Nations, but he also showed some pitfalls where it ought not be used. As his primary example he explained that in order to advance as a civilization, Rome began to sacrifice its conscriptive service in favor of hiring mercenaries to do the fighting while citizens worked for a living. This is all well and good until those same mercenaries no longer have Rome’s best interests in mind. Asking someone to turn on their countrymen when their only allegiance to your country is as deep as your coffers is a recipe for disaster. I suspect that Machiavelli would have come to a similar conclusion in his Discourses on Livy, had he been asked. 8/10.
Aristokratie
Aristocracy (308)
Again, this is another one of those “when isn’t this the problem?” kinds of entries. The aristocracy existed all throughout the empire, and there is a need to explain why their impact made things particularly worse at the times that the empire suffered the most. M.T.W. Arnheim points specifically to the fact that senatorial expenditures that may have otherwise gone to public infrastructure instead found their ways into the hands of private estates. Though this is undeniably true, this theory definitely belongs in the auxiliary causes bucket. 2/10.
Askese
Asceticism (440)
Another facet of Burckhardt’s overarching explanation. Not only was there religious asceticism in the form of abbeys full of self-sufficient monks, but also the vast self-sufficient estates of the landed gentry. This certainly feeds into the theory of apathy, but again, isn’t enough to explain the decline or fall as a whole. 2/10.
Ausbeutung
Exploitation (296, 299)
In a sense, this is a cousin of the aristocratic theory. Instead of blaming the upper classes for having too much, Karl Kautsky saw the destruction of the empire as something coming from the lower classes possessing too little. Whatever they did earn from their labor, continued Jurgen Kuczynski, was often spent on alcohol or other vices because of the long hours and the hard work. 5/10.
Negative Auslese
Adverse Selection (370-373)
I don’t have the inclination to go into the details of the eugenicist arguments. Demandt does, as was his responsibility in being thorough in his research, but explaining why social Darwinism isn’t real is beyond the scope of these little entries. Arthur de Gobineau specifically proposed that the Jews were at fault. He developed the theory of the Aryan race that the Nazis cribbed to justify their evils, so suffice it to say this is a 1/10.
Ausrottung der Besten
Extermination of the best (375)
This is sort of an inversion of social Darwinism, in that the cowardly or otherwise vicious are more likely to survive in a society centered around war. It’s not so much the tacky “Strong men create good times” paradigm as it may originally appear, but more of a “those who fight and run away live to fight another day” paradigm. There were certainly adherents to this theory that tacked elements of racism onto it, but its originator Otto Seeck did not. It’s hard to prove conclusively, but certainly a serviceable theory. 4/10.
Autoritätsverlust
Loss of authority (412)
One of the drawbacks of having Christianity become the state religion, in the eyes of Guglielmo Ferrero, was that the working class no longer looked to earthly leadership. Worship of the gods was certainly important in the pagan religion, and members of the government were at least partially ordained by the gods, but not with the same intensity. Why would a slave worry about the repercussions of disobeying a bad master if they were promised a heavenly reward? Additionally, the constant changes in leadership from all the coups did not help to gain confidence from the common man. 6/10.
Badewesen
Bathing (366)
More specifically, hyperthermia. W.A. Krenkel proposed that the thermae would have caused infertility issues if visited too frequently. I know some of those archeological sites are contaminated with all manner of bacteria now, so I’m sure that would have also been a factor if the baths were to blame. 5/10.
Bankrott
Bankruptcy (188, 416)
This is a massive catch-all term. It’s certainly true that the empire had less money as time went on, and empires need money to continue to operate, but why were they out of money? A whole host of other entries on this list detail who is leeching the funds that would have otherwise contributed to the general welfare. Leon Homo places the blame squarely on the reforms of Diocletian and Constantine, as detailed in the Historia Augusta, but the reliability of that document is perhaps the most controversial of all Roman primary sources. 4/10.
Barbarisierung
Barbarization (300, 361, 379)
Most of this argument seems to come from a racial standpoint, which we can hopefully just accept as de facto wrong. Even the cultural elements are not all that convincing. There were many “barbarians” in Rome during the decline, and perhaps a lack of a desire to fight against countrymen contributed to the Romans losing a few key wars towards the end, but as mentioned in #7 they were just as much in their own heads with paranoia about this as a cause at that time. 3/10.
Vernichtung des Bauernstandes
Destruction of the peasant class (195)
Julius Jung compared the Bagaudae and Circumcellion revolts to the Bundschuh movement of the late middle ages. As it turns out, if you kill or imprison the people you expect to do all your manual labor, that work doesn’t get done. Such radical actions inevitably result in major historical changes; keep in mind that the latter of these events eventually culminated in the German Peasant’s War, which is how Protestantism began to take hold among the upper classes. 5/10.
Berufsarmee
Professional army (423)
This is almost a mirror image of #10. Gerold Walser believed that the strength of the structure of the professional armies worked against the overall goal of maintaining an empire. It wasn’t so much that different people were doing the jobs of fighting and farming in Walser’s mind, but that the strong army had so much independent and unchecked power that their interests were in direct opposition to the average farmer. War levies upset the taxed farmers, while excessive peacetime infuriated the people carrying the weapons, so emperors often went to war to save their own skin. I’d counter this by asking Walser why the Roman Empire crumbled while something like the Japanese Shogunate thrived, but that may be a discussion for another day. 4/10.
Berufsbindung
Career commitment (388, 486)
Herrmann Aubin named three compulsions of the state that caused the empire to collapse: tax pressure, career commitment, and depopulation. This on its own is hard to differentiate from the division of labor (i.e. #10), but it may be more focused around the burgeoning guild system and a mandatory restriction in the changing of careers rather than the general observation that workers grew to specialize their abilities for their occupation. 2/10.
Besitzunterschiede
Differences in economic class (274, 421)
The economic explanations will always be the most difficult to prove definitively because we don’t have contemporary sources for a lot of the information we’d need to truly understand those conditions. A question as simple as “how much is a denarius worth in modern day money?” has about half a dozen variables one would need to account for in order to make a determination, meaning that asking two different classical scholars can get you wildly different answers. Likewise, this “theory” is broadly accepted as true, but the way we come to the conclusion that a widening gap between the classes caused the decline of the empire depends on who you ask. Demandt divides them into three categories; the ones that came before the Russian Revolution (beginning at the French Revolution, exemplified by Sismondi), before the First World War (exemplified by Kahrstedt), and those centered around the Eastern Bloc (exemplified by Kovalev). For the purposes of this article, the result is the same; a sound basis for inquiry, but hard to prove definitively. 4/10.
Bevölkerungsdruck
Overpopulation (486)
It should come as no surprise that both overpopulation and depopulation come up at different points on this list. Of the two, I think this is a little more far-fetched. Correct or not, one of the reasons that modern sociologists even deign to think about this topic is that our world has settled borders. Ancient empires had no such constraints, and had any emperor sought to expand the territory of Rome, they were more than capable if the population had become too dense. Friedrich Vittinghoff had a similar theory of state compulsions to Herrmann Aubin as detailed in #22, but he swapped out depopulation for overpopulation and included a compulsion to stay on one’s own land to attempt to explain away the aforementioned contradiction. To be frank, I’m still not convinced. 2/10.
Bleivergiftung
Lead poisoning (365-367)
The idea that all Romans died from their lead pipes is a little bit of a pop culture misnomer. They knew generally about heavy metal toxicity, but the neurological symptoms weren’t known until Louis Tanquerel des Planches discovered them in the mid-19th century. Meyer Rosenblatt was the first to test Roman skeletons for trace amounts of lead. Yes, they had a high amount of lead in their systems (as opposed to the one Carthaginian body sampled), but not necessarily at the rate one would assume that would associate with constantly drinking contaminated water. In truth, S. Colum Gilfillan found that lead poisoning is not as severe in alkaline waters. The calcite of the marble aqueducts may have counteracted the effects of most of the lead in the pipes. Even today we treat lead absorption with calcium carbonate, so the Romans may have either known more than we give them credit for, or were incredibly lucky in their choice of building material. This isn’t to say the Romans weren’t lead poisoned; they still used the metal to sweeten their foods, most notably port wines, in place of sugar. 6/10.
Blutvergiftung
Racial miscegenation (390)
Hitler’s Mein Kampf is used here as a source. He attributes the fall of the empire to, literally, the poisoning of the blood. He certainly does compare Rome at its tipping point to contemporary Berlin, but he does so without specifying when that is or what any specific causes were. It’s a total shot in the dark with no supporting evidence whatsoever. 0/10.
Blutzersetzung
Racial blood depletion (389)
This was the initial basis for #26, which only receives a single point more because the Nazi who came up with it provided some evidence as opposed to none. Fritz Schachermeyr gave a timeline of decline starting in the 2nd century B.C., only impeded by some sort of race science done by Augustus and Trajan. Demandt points out the embarrassing contradiction in saying that the Nordic races spared the Roman world because they had an aversion to world empire, while also toeing the Nazi party line that Lebensraum was a natural biological desire for the Aryans. Really just awful stuff. 1/10.
Bodenerosion
Soil erosion (352)
There are better entries on this list to talk about the specifics of the lack of environmentalism in the Roman empire, including the following two. This entry specifically references J.Donald Hughes’ work, and the theory that exposing nutrient-rich topsoil to the elements will eventually allow water and wind to carry away all the good parts. This is evidenced by an increase in agri deserti found throughout the 3rd century. 6/10.
Bodenerschöpfung
Soil depletion (129, 348)
The extent to which ancient people knew about crop rotation is a bit of a mystery. They practiced the system of “food, feed, fallow,” but it’s hard to tell why they knew to do this. If they had kept better notes on why, then a significant number of famines in the middle ages could have been avoided. This was a piece of knowledge that fell out of practice, so it explains why the empire got progressively worse as time elapsed, unlike many other entries on this list. Justus von Liebig, the inventor of the modern fertilizer, was the first to observe this as a possibility. 8/10.
Versiegen der Bodenschätze
Depletion of natural resources (351)
We live in a world after Malthus, so it’s hard to picture exactly how the Romans viewed the world as practically infinite in its gifts to humanity. I can gesture back over to the Somnium Scipionis as a general example, but the world wasn’t viewed as a closed system for much of human history, as evidenced by the previous entry. There were always more trees to cut and tunnels to mine, and even if a convenient area ran out of resources, a nation could always trade or steal from their neighbors. That is, unless the emperor lacks the authority or the funds to do so. Oliver Davies ran with this, specifically through the lens of Roman metallurgy and tied the west’s failure directly to their ability to keep the mines open. 5/10.
Bodensperre
Land restrictions (300)
Franz Oppenheimer theorized that the monopoly that large estates possessed over arable farmland locked small holders out of the economy.3 As we have already seen, assuming all that land to be truly fertile is a bit of a mistake, and I think this one gets a little too much credit from certain pockets of historians. It’s still certainly true that this was an issue; even Italians today are struggling with a land-ownership crisis, I’m just not sure that this was a major contributing factor. 4/10.
Bolschewisation
Bolshevization (300)
Applying modern political constructions to ancient history inevitably leads to disaster. Yes, “there is nothing new under the sun,” but there’s a difference between an intentionally planned party platform or organization and a handful of loosely connected events that happen to appear to be similar to those intentions. Émile-Félix Gautier claims that the Vandal invasion of Rome turned them into the inheritors of the empire in the same way that the Bolsheviks, giving the boot to the Romanovs, became the rulers of the Russian Empire. There are some parallels between the situations if looked at from 30,000 feet, but things fall apart under further scrutiny. 3/10.
Bürgerkrieg
Civil War (412, 421, 423)
It is difficult to ascribe blame to the wars in particular; regime change, sure, but Rome had been having civil wars off and on since the time of the Gracchi. Ultimately, the frequency of these conflicts under the empire is the fault of a lack of guidelines for succession, so other theories eclipse this reason. 4/10.
Bürgerrechtsverleihung
Excessive granting of citizenship (422)
This ties into the discussion of whether the Germans were a boon or a burden on Roman society. Edward T. Salmon took note of the specific policy that allowed Roman auxiliary troops to gain citizenship upon discharge. Naturally if one believes all the barbarians north of the Danube to be dirty rotten scoundrels then it’s a clear mistake to grant them citizenship. Most of these stereotypical judgements come from an overreliance on contemporary sources written by biased elites of the time, so I don’t give this much credence. There were definitely turncoats trained by the Roman army, but not at the rates that would outweigh the other problems the empire faced. 4/10.
Bürokratie
Bureaucracy (194, 288-290, 355, 422)
It is the personal opinion of the commentator that bureaucracy can be found at the source of the end of all prosperity if historians dig deeply enough to find it. Putting feelings aside, whether the authors that Demandt cites provide that proof is a completely different question. Alfred Heuß built off Max Weber’s theories that the decline happened because of Diocletian and Constantine’s attempts to build a subsistence economy, and pointed to this as a burgeoning bureaucracy. Many others like the aforementioned Salmon (#34) use the sluggishness of paper-pushing to help explain why things get missed, or the state wastes resources, or nobody faces consequences for objectively bad actions. 8/10.
Part two is already out, you can check it out here:
N.B. this is the political philosophy of structured anarchy and not just the typical image of guys in hoodies throwing molotov cocktails. They are in practice related, but not one and the same.
If you've ever seen Valkyrie, that's Tom Cruise's lesser-known, uninvolved brother
A lot of landlords are going to get mad at me for saying this but unoccupied, unused land is a massive economic sinkhole for everyone except the owner. This is in practice why we have squatters' rights.