The 210 Theories Behind the Fall of Rome, Ranked: Part 2
Entries 36-70 exploring the causes for Rome's decline and fall according to the academic world.
N.B. this is the second part of my series covering Alexander Demandt’s Fall of Rome. If you’d like to start from the beginning, check it out at this link.
Byzantismus
Byzantinism (456)
If we look at things from the perspective of the end of the 5th century (i.e. post-476), then this is a self-evident theory. The Byzantine Emperor Zeno had the means and the authority to go back and claim the West to unite both sides of the empire under a single Roman banner, but declined in favor of appointing Odoacer as the leader of Italy. There was no emperor controlling Rome, and therefore the Roman Empire ceased to be. We’ve discussed why this situation isn’t so clear-cut in previous articles. Demandt cites Gustav Schnürer, who viewed the ancient Mediterranean as a single system at the height of Rome’s power, but defined his version of “Byzantinism” as a culturally isolationist movement; hyper-focused on its own success as the capital and shutting out anything that it could not extract resources from, hence Zeno’s actions. 5/10.
Capillarité sociale
Social Capillarity (509)
The German vocabulary in this book is hard enough for me; I don’t appreciate Demandt throwing this French curveball in right when I’m getting into a groove. Arséne Dumont came up with this theory to explain population decline without resorting to base eugenics. The idea behind it is that the more dense a population the harder the middle and upper-middle classes must work to make a living, and the harder they work the less time they have to raise a family. This helps to harmonize the contradicting theories of overpopulation and depopulation (#24, #57) that are found separately on this list. 5/10.
Charakterlosigkeit
Lack of character (259)
Friedrich Albert Lange’s theory supposes that the teachings of Christianity only took with the upper classes. The poor, instead, adopted all the mysticism and egoism without all the good bits. This explains why the investiture controversy got out of control all those centuries later, but I think it takes too dark a view of the dark ages to really be realistic. 3/10.
Christentum
Christianity (133, 251, 259, 412, 440)
I have recently written about my thoughts on Gibbon’s assessment for those looking to learn about him in particular, but the idea that he blamed Christianity is widely overblown in the eyes of history. Friedrich Nietzsche, on the other hand, wholeheartedly placed the fall of Rome in the hands of so-called anarchistic (#6) Christianity. He compared the early church to the teachings of Epicurean philosophy, and used Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura as the basis for an attack on a guilt-based system of control. I avoid talking about Nietzsche like the plague, partially because of my own ignorance of his entire corpus of work in context and feeling it would be in bad taste to do so, but also because the areas where I/historians tend to disagree with him come from minutiae. The issue here is that the decay of the empire begins long before Christianity takes a real hold in the Mediterranean, and his criticism doesn’t account for all the ways Christianity propped up the empire. 3/10.
Convenienzheiraten
Marriages of convenience (437)
Wilhelm Roscher has another multifaceted approach to placing the blame on different issues in the same area. We’ll meet up with him again in entries #69, #91, and #160. This is the first theory that really falls under the category of sexual debauchery; we hit most of the other major headings in the prior article. There may be an element of anti-miscegenation in this, but by-and-large it seems to be about Roman men marrying German women, or vice-versa, and muddling inheritance claims, rather than being a purely racial thing. 3/10.
Degeneration des Intellekts
Degeneration of the intellect (415)
An overly specific offshoot of #15 from the last list. Very similar to #42 as well. Harold Idris Bell blamed things on a deficiency of public spirit, as brought about by commoners modeling themselves after the emperors by becoming dumb and lazy. Say what you want about Nero cheating to win his Olympic medals, but at least he put enough value into the concepts of chariot-racing and lyre-playing to seek to be seen as a paragon. Later emperors were content to spend money on food, wine, and revelry as they saw fit, but fewer public works or celebrations came about. Bell claims that the bread and circuses that Juvenal so famously decries are necessary for an administrative state to obligate the public at large to keep corruption to a minimum. Without this reinforcement at the top, great works were less likely to be produced, and the people at the bottom became more vicious. The longer I think about this one, the more it grows on me. 6/10.
Demoraliserung
Demoralization (408, 415, 453)
An offshoot of the previous entry, specifically Otto Hintze coming to the same conclusion through a more direct avenue. Rather than attributing the social malaise to a hierarchical failure, Hintze posits that the change in attitude brought all the social classes down equally. At earlier points in Roman history, conquest was a means to thrive off the backs of other hard-working civilizations along their borders, and Romans stopped feeling “Roman” when they couldn’t go out and raid in that same way during the later empire. 5/10.
Despotismus
Despotism (401)
All autocracies are inherently despotic. Did Rome become more despotic on average as time elapsed? Most seem to associate corruption as something that rose and fell independent of the times, but Heinrich Richter counters that popular perception by arguing that “primitive” corruption was much more easy to bear than later developments. Early governments were only corrupt in particular ways, but the later ones allowed despotism to permeate every action they took like a miasma. 5/10
Dezentralisation
Decentralization (407-408)
Similar to entry #42, Hans Delbrück1 proposed that Rome no longer had a civilizational goal to look towards. The provinces of Italy started to seek to become independent from a state that provided little value to them and taxed plenty away from them. In his mind, this meant that immediate neighbors sought to distance themselves from the grip of Roman control, which in turn left them vulnerable to more directly adversarial enemies. 4/10.
Disziplinlosigkeit des Heeres
Lack of military discipline (417)
About every two centuries, Rome had had some sort of major military reform. Servius Tullius legendarily organized the military into a centurial army based on socio-economic standing during the regnal period, the manipular legion came about during the Samnite wars according to Polybius, Gaius Marius opened enrollment to the plebeian classes and instated the cohort, and Augustus created new units like the Praetorian guard. The last emperor to make a major change to the enrollment of the army was Hadrian, who loosened qualifications for the army in order to allow locals to become guards within the provinces. These people were less trained and faced less active, formal warfare, and therefore (according to Alfred Weber) they were less prepared to face the barbarian hordes that would eventually overtake them. 4/10.
Duckmäuserei
Cowardice (375)
Literally “to cower like a mouse.” Another aspect of Otto Seeck’s (i.e. #15) theory of decline. This aspect of the thesis posits that a cowardly class took over after all of the best men had been eliminated. These are two sides of the same coin. 4/10.
Soziale Egalisierung
Social equalization (454)
Andreas Alföldi proposed the idea that our perception of technological advances ought to be seen as a “flattening” between the rigid structures of class. If workers are able to access the means of production more easily (and the wealthy classes degrade into decadence), then those rigid structures begin to buckle. A system of plebeians and patricians is hard to maintain when some from the lower classes are making as much (if not more) than the higher classes. 7/10.
Egoismus
Selfishness (146)
The Count de Volney took the position that all empires fell because of political corruption, or because of weak laws that led to corruption. If those who seek power are exclusively egotists, then this will bring about two major flaws: divisions from the top leading down into smaller societies that distrust their neighbors, and consolidations of power leading up into a single figurehead that seeks to destroy “social existence.” 5/10.
Energieschwund
Deceleration (501)
This is a multi-variable theory that proposes that Rome just kind of reached the limit of advancement that it possibly could without new discoveries that could only come about after the fall of the empire. With trade no longer centralized in the west, for example, the silk road could bring goods from the east more easily. With the end of the social caste system, slavery became less profitable and social mobility increased. Demandt amalgamated a number of different sources that proposed one facet or another that fell under this larger umbrella, including Machiavelli and Bagehot (military reforms), Bodin (gunpowder), Schlosser and Roscher (Industrialization), and Roosevelt, Walbank, and Balfour (civic pride). 7/10.
Entartung
Degeneration (457-459)
Specifically the racial kind of degeneration as far as this book is concerned. Since we have mapped out the human genome and found nothing to tie “virtue” or “greatness” to, these theories have become totally archaic. The only one that has survived into academic discourse in the modern day has been Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, and then only because Francis Fukuyama cribbed his entire claim to fame off that work. 1/10.
Entgötterung
Godlessness (509)
Rudolf Steiner coined this term to discuss the lack of spirituality in the later Roman Empire. People may or may not have continued to go to church at a consistent rate, but in his mind there was less sacred ritual and therefore a deeper desire for connections to the material world. Indeed, Steiner spent most of his life trying to make spirituality as commonplace in daily life as the ancient Romans did, rather than having separate designated times of worship in the week/month as we do. Some of these things are definitely true about that period of history, but hard to attach to the decline or fall on a causal basis. 3/10.
Entnervung
Draining of character (474)
The historian Fustel de Coulanges challenged the popular perception that corruption was a cause by labeling it as a symptom of a greater problem. Life becoming too easy allowed morality to slip, and as the spirit of the collective will began to dwindle, character and strength of virtue did as well. A lack of struggling in Rome proper led all the people with stronger character that continued to struggle in and around the provinces to take over, whether by force or by corruption. 4/10.
Entnordung
Removal of Nordic characteristics (384, 579)
Walter Darré, a member of the Reichstag as a member of the Nazi party, found it difficult to square his beliefs in the greatness of Rome with his academic “theories” of Nordic supremacy. Therefore, he posited that it was actually the lack of Germans that made Rome fall. How did Rome prosper during the years when Germans were their direct enemies? By what metric did they “leave,” if we see more and more Germans joining the Roman military force during periods we associate with decline? Why does the Eastern empire continue to prosper without any Germans at all? These are questions that will be left unanswered. 0/10.
Entpolitisierung
Depoliticization (415, 418)
Though political bribery was certainly an issue in the Roman Republic, it was still ultimately up to the voter on whether those pittances distributed by candidates were enough to sway their vote for any given candidate. As soon as the empire was established, W. E. Heitland believed that the average Roman ceased to take interest in public affairs, which led to problems of corruption et al.. Later down the road, this would serve as a cause for the dissolution of national identity expressed in many other theories. 8/10.
Entrechtung
Disenfranchisement (469)
Hans Christoph Ernst von Gagern proposed a theory that directly goes against the prior entry. It wasn’t a voluntary pull-back from political life in his mind, but rather the lack of suffrage for a vast majority of subjects of Rome. This disenfranchised population became hostile and caused political turmoil. Von Gagern was a contemporary of the French Revolution and may have over-applied some lessons from his time to the ancient world. 3/10.
Entromanisierung
Removal of Roman characteristics (470)
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an early critic of Edward Gibbon. When The Decline and Fall came out, he asserted that the more plausible theory was that the quality of being an empire became more valuable than the quality of being Roman. While this is certainly a true statement, it had been true since the time of Trajan, and fails to explain why it took so long for things to get so much worse. 3/10.
Entvölkerung
Decline in birthrates (357)
Oswald Bumke posits that there were less children being born in upper-class families, which set a trend for the lower classes, which sapped the army of a standing force of infantry. Certainly interesting, and an observable phenomenon, but there would still have to be an earlier cause to explain the population decline, i.e. why less people were being born in Rome. 4/10.
Entvolkung
Depopulation of Italy (414)
Very similar to the previous entry in its phrasing, but wholly different in its conception. Informed by his own experiences in the exodus of post-Tsarist Russia, Mikhail Rostovtzeff believed that the depletion of a proletarian force in and around the city slowed economic development. According to contemporary accounts, he may have been drawing too much on his own personal experiences to form an objective thesis, but this still remains an interesting theory. 2/10.
Entwaldung
Deforestation (349)
See #30 for a broader take on this theory. Scholars mostly focus on soil quality or depletion of precious metals when discussing Rome’s depletion of natural resources. Karl Nikolaus Fraas, on the other hand, theorized that civilizations used up their supply of timber most vitally. These observations were based on his own personal experiences in Greece. 3/10.
Erdbeben
Earthquakes
Karl Gottlob Zumpt gave more of a reason for the population of the city of Rome declining than either of the prior two entries. An unprecedented number of earthquakes (along with plagues) struck the city and drove those who could afford to leave into asceticism. Certainly if we accept population decline as a major factor, then this is plausible, but Roman earthquakes were not totally uncommon. Scholars of Pompeii will note that the tremors from Vesuvius were a frequent occurrence before the disaster, and some of which could even be felt as far away as Rome. Of the two causes he cites, plagues are the more consequential. 5/10.
Erstarrung
Petrification (456)
José Ortega y Gasset described a byproduct of the acedia (#5) that overtook the empire as a sort of calcification or gridlock. Everyone, in his mind, became stuck in their ways when only the mediocre prospered. This certainly makes sense logically, but quite a lot more evidence would be necessary to prove these claims. 4/10.
Unzureichendes Erziehungswesen
Inadequate upbringing (417)
The Germans use different words to mean education than we do, so this one threw me for a loop for a little while. This is the type of education one gets in the home and on the playground, almost approaching the term “street smarts.”2 Max Cary has this manifest in a few different avenues; lack of military discipline (#45), unpreparedness of the “proper” successors (#179), and general corruption. 8/10.
Etatismus
Statism (418)
Ernest Perrot gave exactly one lecture on this subject, and published through some fascist rag. He applies the terms “capitalism” (#106) and “socialism” (#170) and “anarchism” (see #6) wholly out of context of their times, and doesn’t provide any evidence for his claims. More of a proposal for a proposal for a thesis than a real, accepted theory. 1/10.
Expansion
Expansion (98, 309, 413, 474)
The borders were too big. Every emperor after Trajan understood to some extent that Rome had hit its limit in terms of expansion, and seeking to expand one’s borders without totally stomping out their enemies is a recipe for disaster sometime down the road. If the bounds of the empire had been set at fortifiable natural landmarks like rivers and mountains that would have been one thing, but instead their neighbors were able to chip away piecemeal over the course of a century until the empire was forced to split, and even then that only created one more off-and-on enemy to contend with. This should be taken almost as a given, but scholars like Glanville Downey, Eduard Schwartz, and Felix Dahn bring it to the forefront of their own work. 9/10.
Faulheit
Laziness (154)
In an early textbook meant to teach world history to people of all ages, Matthias Schröckh summed up the failure of the Romans as the immorality of the upper-classes and the laziness of the lower-classes. This is a good way to introduce concepts like corruption, hedonism, decadence, materialism, and hyper-sexuality without having to explain them to kids. On the other hand, it does leave a lot of context out that an academic would sorely need. 5/10.
Feinschmeckerei
Gourmandism/Gluttony (458)
That old myth about Roman “vomitoriums” being places where the well off could expel food after overeating most likely came about during the period where this theory flourished. In Emil Cioran’s conception of the world, the upper classes of Rome lacked an ability to feel sated after a meal, and were “culinarily abusive” to themselves. It seems like he reached to create a metaphor and got wrapped up in one little detail so entirely that it changed his interpretation of the facts. There are better and truer expressions of decadence on this list that come far before gluttony. 2/10.
Feudalisierung
Feudalization (180-181, 228, 327-328)
Unlike some of the other attempts to apply anachronistic economic and political models (#6 et al.) onto the ancient world, this has enough justification to be openly considered. The concept of “feudalism” is difficult to pin down to a specific century in any civilization. Other eras of great transition, like the bronze or iron ages, are comparatively easy: once artifacts of those metals appear in archeological dig sites, they are in that age. The problem is that some cities around Europe adopted different aspects of the feudal system at different times, and the manorial system was part of the Roman economy through the structure of the villa as early as the Republic. Rigobert Günther was a major proponent of recognizing this economic revolution as a reason for the lower classes to reject slavery, and therefore the broader structure of the empire. 7/10.
Fiskalismus
Fiscalism (425)
Though Mario Attilio Levi erroneously calls the structure of the Late Empire “Super-Capitalism,” his observation that the state compelled small landholders to give up their lands in the economic interests of the large farms and the government itself is sound. This helped to speed along Italy’s transformation into a feudal state as outlined above. 7/10.
Frauenemanzipation
Emancipation of women (393, 437, 509)
Some of the rhetoric around the decline in birth rate (#57) blames women for choosing to have less children, but the more interesting are the theories of Eckart Knaul. He proposed that all culture is downstream from biology, and therefore any act against the “natural order” that he has myopically outlined is something that will destroy civilization. Nevermind the fact that no other member of the animal kingdom creates civilizations, of course. This is another screed against “modern times” without any real substantiation from academic or historical sources.3 0/10.
Freiheit im Übermaß
Excess of freedom (372)
Friedrich von Hellwald countered the popular perception that the government allowed people to do too little by proposing that the ancient world had too many freedoms. It seems as though he interpreted the twin threats to Rome as the Syrians and the Germans, as not being militarily better but rather having the mercantile and moral advantage, respectively. By being free to choose, the better citizens of Rome took other paths in life and left the worse to face those groups as enemies. 5/10.
Not to be mistaken with A.B. Normal.
"Erziehung,” “Pädagogie,” and “Schul/Ausbildung” all mean one form of education or another, for those curious.
I am considering picking up a copy of this book just to find out how bad it is. The longer this project goes on, the more I want to write about why the term “multidisciplinary” works to describe a donor of new knowledge and not so much as a receiver.