The 210 Theories Behind the Fall of Rome, Ranked: Part 4

Entries 106-140 exploring the causes for Rome's decline and fall according to the academic world.

N.B. this is the fourth 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.

106. Kapitalismus

     1. Capitalism (193, 294, 295)

     2. Again, it’s unfair to blame modern day economic structures for the failures of the ancient world (#6). Karl Kautsky proposed this, but the Romans had no conception of Capitalism, so it is flatly ridiculous to suggest it had an effect on their downfall. 0/10. 

107. Kastenwesen

     1. The caste system (408, 413, 425)

     2. Ernst Kornemann believed that the way Romans were sorted by birth eventually led to their downfall. Yes, this did exist to some extent under the Republic, but we see figures like Cato the Elder and Cicero rise up the ranks to become novi homines every so often. Separation between the classes eventually makes such actions impossible, and an expanding empire needs more members of a higher caste trusted by Rome to run their affairs. 6/10.

108. Ketzerei

     1. Heresy (189)

     2. The 15th century theologian Joseph Volotsky believed that heretical beliefs caused the western empire to fall while the eastern empire continued to flourish. It’s hard to find an objective metric to measure a civilization’s heresy with, and history tends to mix poorly with dogma, so we’ll leave this one up to the theologians to argue over. 2/10.

109. Kinderlosigkeit

     1. Childlessness (352-354)

     2. Similar to #57, #58, and #107. J.R. Seeley claimed that the empire perished due to a lack of children. The distinction from earlier entries is that this happened as a result of centuries of a culture of maintaining small families, rather than an acute problem of depopulation. Even as far back as Tacitus, Roman historians comment on the relatively large families of who they would consider to be barbarians. 5/10.

110. Klimaverschlechterung

     1. Global warming (338, 350, 417, 576)

     2. An early proponent of the climate’s impact on Rome’s ability to thrive was Ellsworth Huntington, but these discussions have been re-invigorated by contemporaries much more recognizable to the modern ear like Jared Diamond or Kyle Harper. Some of the evidence I’ve seen in support of this is very intriguing, but it hasn’t been explained to me in a way I consider conclusive. Even if all the dendrochronological proof showed a correlation between prosperity and temperature, it doesn’t explain why this doesn’t happen at other cities along the same lines of latitude. 4/10.

111. Kommunismus

     1. Communism (268, 282)

     2. Again, it’s unfair to blame modern day economic structures for the failures of the ancient world (#6). Karl Rodbertus proposed this, but the Romans had no conception of Communism, so it is flatly ridiculous to suggest it had an effect on their downfall. 0/10.

112. Konservatismus

     1. Conservatism (424)

     2. Jacques Moreau proposed that the narrow-mindedness of conservatism caused the leaders to only behave with trepidation around any problem that could not be solved by someone acting in the role of a father-figure, and enough problems outside that category built up until the empire fell. 3/10.

113. Korruption

     1. Corruption (397, 401)

     2. Corruption was rampant throughout the Roman Empire. Corruption was rampant throughout the Roman Republic. Hey, I’m sure that if we had primary sources on the kingdom, it’d be plenty corrupt as well. I find it difficult to believe that corruption alone played a major factor in the downfall of the empire, but it certainly didn’t help things. As an auxiliary factor, it certainly made things like exploitation (#13), bankruptcy (#18), demoralization (#42), deceleration (#49), weak leadership (#74), greed (#75), and shortage of money (#76) worse, among even later entries. Even figures as far back as Voltaire gave this as a reason for the fall of the empire, but for our purposes Heinrich Richter does the best job at delving into the particulars of Roman corruption. 5/10.

114. Kosmopolitismus

     1. Cosmopolitanism (256, 259, 376, 382, 418)

     2. Willy Strehl, among others, observed the loss of the value of being a Roman citizen as more of a transition to some thinking of themselves as members of the world at large. Some of this had to do with the doctrine of the church, in addition to the adoption of the manorial system. It’s more of a symptom than a cause. 4/10.

115. Kulturneurose

     1. Cultural neurosis (357-358)

     2. There are a number of early psychiatrists who have attempted to make diagnoses of the entire population of Rome. Oswald Bumke (#57) was among the ones that explained the fall of Rome away with some sort of cultural malaise that broke everyone’s brain, and says it just happens across civilizations sometimes. Since then, psychiatry has become more rigorous in its standards and expects its practitioners to actually meet patients before diagnosing them. 2/10.

116. Lebensangst

     1. Fear of life (367)

     2. This is hardly different from Acedia (#5), except that that theory has a history of textual evidence in primary sources. Fritz Kaphahn’s work suggests a deeper religious aspect, in that they had something to look forward to in the afterlife, but overall I’d still put Acedia forward as the more plausible factor. 2/10.

117. Lebensüberdruß

     1. Weariness of life (376)

     2. A later addition to Otto Seeck’s (#15) overall theory is that the lack of freedom inherent to a system like the later empire’s led to people plainly not caring a whit about who controlled them or why. It’s almost like a mirror image of #114. 4/10. 

118. Legitimitätskrise

     1. Crisis of legitimacy (412, 415)

     2. For my money, this is the best you can do with a single explanation for everything. The foundation of the empire came from the power gap left after Julius Caesar was assassinated and left no true heir. Augustus took the crown by force and claimed it to be his birthright, which gave some legitimacy to hereditary claimants for a few generations, but none of which would have been the first in line if not for a number of mysterious murders having taken place across their lifetime. After Nero’s famously disastrous reign, it basically became a free-for-all. It also seems as though the more prosperous the reign of an individual emperor, the more likely there would be a crisis for succession after his death. The most ambitious generals and members of court would have preferred to take credit for a short period of success riding the coattails of their predecessor than they would actually have Rome continue to prosper. W.E. Heitland and Guglielmo Ferrero each made this a core aspect of their theories behind Rome’s fall. 9/10.

119. Lethargie

     1. Lethargy (401, 419, 422, 452)

     2. Rarely is lethargy considered to be a cause in and of itself, but more of a symptom brought on by other problems. Illnesses (#122) can cause lethargy, but so can the additional heat of hot summers (#110). There can also be deeper spiritual (#116) or emotional (#8, #65) causes that make people become lethargic. The greatest proponent of this as a cause was Mikhail Rostovtzeff (#58), who even saw it as downstream from greed. 2/10.

120. Luxus

     1. Luxury (354, 358, 528)

     2. Does an excess of luxurious resources cause greed (#75), or does greed cause the hoarding of luxurious resources? I think most people would say the latter without question, but there is an argument for the former perspective as well. Walter Otto (the one from Breslau, not the one with the middle initial F.) used the “unnerving luxury” as a factor in addition to the invasion from the east and the mass proletarization of the lower classes. 8/10.

121. Fehlende Männerwurde

     1. Lack of male dignity (407)

     2. Hans Delbrück (#44) listed this as a consequence of the failures of multiple institutions that would have also stopped inflation from running rampant on the economy. In his mind, if Rome had figured out a way to maintain a level head about its masculine dignity through things other than warfare and gluttony, it may very well have weathered the storm of all the other factors seeking to bring it down. Certainly related to #38. 5/10.

122. Malaria

     1. Malaria (350, 356, 360)

     2. Oftentimes the climate change theories like those of Ellsworth Huntington (#110) will throw these in as a bonus. Higher temperatures means more mosquitos hatch, after all. For someone treating malaria as a major factor, we must turn to W.H.S. Jones. Even he does not pretend to insist that it is the primary cause, but blames it for turning the Romans bloodthirsty and the Greeks inefficient. 6/10.

123. Moralischer Materialismus

     1. Materialism (413, 418, 556)

     2. Armand Albert-Petit saw Rome at the end of the third century as a civilization that would either fall on its own to Christian asceticism or the greedy materialism as discussed in #120 et al.. Forces invading from the east hastened these causes in his mind, and allowed different people under the empire to fall in different directions, rather than making it a race to the bottom. 3/10.

124. Militarismus

     1. Militarism (423)

     2. The Roman civilization has always been recognized for its military prowess, but Gerold Walser (#21) believed it to be the ultimate cause of their downfall. We have seen many theories suggest that the upper classes in Rome had been suffering, but he suggested that they were at their strongest at the end of the empire, not their weakest. Indeed, the transition into the manorial system supports this observation. It was contradictory, in Walser’s mind, for the army to be paid by the local civilian population to go to war if it was always in their interest to be at war. Had the Romans objected to frivolous military spending, their debts may have not sunk them. 5/10.

125. Ruin des Mittelstandes

     1. Destruction of the middle class (417, 422, 445, 474)

     2. William Chase Greene seemed to believe in things like climate change and soil depletion causing the end of the empire, but that with a better education system and a more robust middle class, all the issues could have been weathered. 4/10.

126. Mysterienreligionen

     1. Mystery cults (381-382)

     2. Any discussion of mystery cults has to include the fact that the empire under pagan rule could live with them, while under Christian rule it could not. Tenney Frank, instead, approached this topic from the perspective that Christianity was an undeniable positive and any religion that challenged it was a corruption. This, of course, does not explain how the empire prospered under paganism. 2/10.

127. Nationalismus der Unterworfenen

     1. Nationalism of the subjugated (104, 262, 504)

     2. B.R. Reynolds points to the (somewhat anachronistic) longevity of Rome’s greatest enemies in the eyes of their respective modern-day countrymen. Napoleon III erected a statue of Vercingetorix in France, the Belgians have done the same with Ambiorix, and Boudicca’s iron gaze still paralyzes any Italians traversing through English woods. Whether the periods of each figure’s glorification are unbroken since ancient times is dubious, but the overall point that Rome’s allowing her subjects to maintain their foreign identities crippled the image of their civilization. We’ll touch more on this in #143. 7/10.

128. Nichternst

     1. Triviality (457)

     2. We will get to the specific role that specific idle distractions played in the downfall of Rome in entry #131. Johan Huizinga suggested more broadly that taking away Rome’s role as a cultural, economic, or religious capital of the world allowed it to attract only those who sought the fun and games that it could provide. Different entries list different times that each of these titles were stripped away from the city, but it’s easiest to think about the cities of Ravenna, Constantinople, and Antioch/Jerusalem as examples, respectively. At the same time, Rome could still delight its citizens with the Colosseum and any number of hippodromes around the seven hills. Those pleasure-seekers, though temporary economic boons, would ultimately scatter and hollow out the city the second that trouble arose. 8/10.

129. Kulturelle Nivellierung

     1. Cultural leveling (359, 412, 414, 438, 450, 452)

     2. This most often appears as a subset of the broader theories regarding Christianity’s role in Rome’s downfall like Ferrero’s (#16), but to a certain extent the economic downturn also leveled the class system to a fairer playing field, like Rostovtzeff’s (#58). Certainly there was a bit of equalization among the classes, but not enough to prevent farmer’s rebellions and the like. The potency is certainly in question here. 4/10.

130. Orientalisierung

     1. Orientalization (458)

     2. After Diocletian split the empire into different governing bodies, the half with the seat of power in the city of Byzantium began to change culturally. These adaptations appear most strikingly in art, which tends to be how we metonymize the whole situation, but leadership philosophies change as well. When Constantine comes to power and shifts the “real” capital from Italy to Constantinople, eastern leaders begin to try to rule the western half of the empire under eastern terms. Franz Borkenau’s cultural cycle theory posits that all conflicts can be boiled down to an east-west conflict, which is a little cracked in and of itself, but it’s based on a solid foundation in Roman history. 6/10.

131. Panem et circenses

     1. Bread and circuses (402, 457)

     2. This was touched on through one scholar’s perspective in #128, but Thomas Hodgkin invokes the line from Juvenal to specifically call attention to the way that the games put excessive tax pressure on an impoverished society. In the sense that all corruption centered around the games (rather than how in #128 the games were the only thing left after the other characteristics of Rome had been stripped away), this could be said to be Juvenal’s own opinion of why the city fell. 7/10.

132. Parasitismus 

     1. Parasitism (293)

     2. Ettore Ciccotti proposed this exactly in the same way that the 2019 Academy Award-winning film meant it. The landed gentry lived off the backs of the hard-working lower classes, but would have absolutely no idea how to get by without them. This is a little more intense than some other earlier condemnations of land-owners (#68, #86, etc.) but not unfairly either, because Ciccotti’s explanation is dependent on one’s opinion on the move away from traditional Roman slavery. 8/10.

133. Partikularismus

     1. Sectionalism (297, 407, 414)

     2. Arthur Rosenberg argued, similarly to Hans Delbruck, that the army’s lack of money caused the downfall of the empire. Instead of blaming either the townspeople or the state of the economy or the army itself, Rosenberg found that the issue came from the senate simply expecting too much in their share of taxes. The ensuing tensions between military and local political leaders over budgetary concerns ultimately crushed the empire. 5/10.

134. Patrozinienbewegung

     1. Patronage movement (463)

     2. Chester G. Starr lists this as a factor in his overall belief that Rome was in decay long before the barbarians came. This is similar to any of the theories that blame feudalism, but more inclusive of the church and politics, and less about economic systems. It’s not exactly corruption, but the harm it had on the system of governance in aggregating power was close enough that the distinctions hardly mattered. 5/10. 

135. Pauperismus

     1. Pauperism (281)

     2. Duke Albert de Broglie claimed that after the various economic reforms of Diocletian and Constantine, enriching work became hard to find under the empire. This is effectively the reverse of theories like #86, in that it correctly identifies the source of an issue, but labels the cause as a symptom and vice versa. The “pauperism” came from a lack of competition for freely workable land, and the state upheld the rights of the wealthy to keep their holdings unused. 2/10.

136. Pazifismus

     1. Pacifism (271)

     2. Peter Brown views “pacifism” not in the hippy-dippy terms of protesting any military action in particular, but rather that the church and the senate sought to take in as much money from the broader population as possible, so little was left for offensive expeditions. 4/10.

137. Plutokratie

     1. Plutocracy (384)

     2. Walter Darré (#53) again shows his lack of critical thinking inherent to his movement. This, like aristocracy (#11), is difficult to dispute the existence of at any point in Roman history, but the issue arises when a historian is asked to prove why such a factor caused the fall. No such facts worth consideration are provided here. 0/10.

138. Polytheismus

     1. Polytheism (251, 572)

     2. Vladimir Solovyiev attempted to counter Nietzche’s (#39) overall theory regarding Christianity with the explanation that the pagan order beforehand was so morally rotten that any constitution made under its moral system would naturally fail. There are a number of little problems with this that erode away at its overall credibility depending on when we label the beginning of the period of decline (especially if it’s within pagan times), but suffice it to say that any Christian Roman empire, as an autocrat, was freely able to rewrite their constitution at a moment’s notice. 2/10.

139. Proletarisierung

     1. Proletarianization (257, 298, 358)

     2. Adolf von Harnack listed this as one of three factors, alongside the removal of national characteristics (#56) and Orientalization (#130), that the transition from paganism to Christianity brought with it. As opposed to Nietzsche’s (#39) views, this was a feature of Christian rule, not a ruinous byproduct. In Harnack’s mind the fall of Rome promoted the next steps of human development rather than plunging it into a dark age, which is a conversation for a whole different time. The church in some regards empowered the workers to coalesce into one body of proletariat, but not into further economic development, so this is certainly plausible. 5/10.

140. Prostitution

     1. Prostitution (356, 378, 386, 437)

     2. Some, like Wilhelm Schallmayer, tie the availability of sex-for-pleasure into the various population crisis theories (#57, #91, etc.), but again this fails to account for the fact that the tolerance of prostitution is independent among emperors from the state of decline. If anything, more women seeking independent employment as prostitutes ought to be a marker of economic decline as a sign that single-income families were no longer possible. Poorly thought out. 2/10.