The 210 Theories Behind the Fall of Rome, Ranked: Part 5
Entries 141-175 exploring the causes for Rome's decline and fall according to the academic world.
N.B. this is the fifth 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.
Psychosen
Psychosis (367-368)
This is downstream from a number of other theories, especially things that cause mental illness issues like #25, or attitude issues like #5. This is too broad a label to do anyone any real good in research or understanding, but is certainly an issue present in the late empire. 2/10.
Quecksilberschäden
Mercury poisoning (352)
The symptoms of mercury poisoning and lead poisoning (#25) often overlap, and we lack access to medical records for the vast majority of the subjects of the Roman empire, so it’s difficult to say which metal did the most damage. On the one hand, they understood how toxic mercury could be and made convicted criminals mine the ore, but on the other hand they used that cinnabar to paint their houses all throughout their history. Generally speaking, lead became more prevalent in Roman life the later the empire existed. 6/10.
Rassendiskriminierung
Racial discrimination (420-421)
Many other entries focus on the racial makeup of the city of Rome as a negative, but they fail to consider how the Romans may have brought things upon themselves. Consider the fact that in Cicero’s time, he himself was considered an “outsider” to the Romans even though he had been born on the Italian peninsula. If Rome had considered its subjects to be participants in its empire, rather than second- or third-class inhabitants of its land, then a significant portion of the tension that led to wars against barbarians on multiple fronts at the end of the empire could have been avoided. William Seston specifically calls attention to anti-Germanic sentiments in the courts of Milan and Ravenna as the nails in the coffin of support that Rome needed to continue to exist, but did not receive. 9/10.
Rassenentartung
Racial degeneration (182, 265, 349, 368, 556)
The broader category of theories that claim that there was a genetic component to Rome’s downfall. Some believe it to be along Goddard-like lines of “bad” genes, others claim the problem to come through racial miscegenation; all are debunked by the mapping of the human genome and the end of the eugenics movement. Unfortunately, we must continue to talk about these chapters in the history of this discipline because scholars like Burckhardt (#3), Nissen (#73), and Seeck (#15) also made valid and upstanding contributions to the study of classical antiquity. 0/10.
Rassenselbstmord
Racial suicide (358, 381, 510, 563)
Madison Grant believed that the racial qualities of the east and south destroyed the greatness of the Roman race. Also, he believed that the racial qualities of the north were able to extend the length of Roman rule. It’s typical guesswork from the eugenicist camp, what more do you expect? 0/10.
Rationalismus
Rationalism (352, 380, 385, 446)
Paul Diepgen was another eugenicist who believed that rationalism, through his perspective in the field of medicine, ignored the supposed issues of racial miscegenation. 0/10.
Regenmangel
Droughts (462)
The droughts of the 3rd and 4th centuries caused the Huns to venture further west and south in their search for food and plunder. When they came into conflict with Rome, they won a number of decisive victories and showed Rome’s vulnerabilities, especially at Adrianople. Carroll Quigley believed this to be a major turning point in the fidelity of Rome’s existence. 3/10.
Reichsteilung
Division of the Empire (149, 218, 338-339)
Theodosius I was the last emperor to preside over a “unified” Rome (i.e. both east and west). Had he appointed one strong successor to take the reins of the empire rather than splitting it like an inheritance, would it have fared all the storms that we have covered so far? Johann Hübner was the first to list 395 as the end of the epoch, and scholars like Alfred Heuss and László Várady have used it as a jumping off point for further discussion ever since. The latter figure in particular viewed it through the lens of the individual problems that each half faced uniquely throughout their existence since Diocletian’s separation, and Rome couldn’t fare the barbarians or maintain the economic routes necessary to be a major player in the world. 6/10.
Angriffe der Reiternomaden
Invasion by nomadic horsemen (483)
Franz Altheim pointed to the eastern cavalries of the Hunnic invasions and compared them to the trouble that the Romans had always notoriously had with dealing with the Parthians, Scythians, et al.. It’s a fairly reasonable conclusion to come to, but the conclusion becomes troubled by the fact that they didn’t make it into Rome proper in the same way that the Burgundians, Goths, or Vandals did. 3/10.
Rekrutenmangel
Lack of military recruits (422)
Edward T. Salmon (#34) posits that, because Caracalla offered equal rights to all citizens regardless of military service, the risks began to outweigh the benefits. He compared this to the British policy of “Home Rule” during his own time, and could easily be compared to contemporary stances on higher education in America, even though those people insist we aren’t an empire. 7/10.
Rentnergesinnung
Retiree mentality (303)
This is exactly what it sounds like. The bourgeoisie attitudes towards the affairs of the Roman Empire as a whole were, according to F. W. Walbank, that of someone on a pension. As long as their stream of revenue was unaffected by the issue at hand, they were slow to action. 5/10.
Resignation
Resignation (367, 472)
Heinrich von Sybel presented this as an auxiliary factor that exacerbated the excesses of luxurious living and the problems of the increasing disparity between the poor and the rich. It’s a lot like #8 in practice; it’s highly dependent on assuming the emotional state of the Roman people, but certainly plausible given the conditions of their world at the time. 4/10.
Rhetorik
Rhetoric (443)
We'll talk more about Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff at entry #166, but this was his later, more simplified opinion on the matter. The Roman leadership talked a big game but when people expected them to follow up, they failed to deliver. It’s similar in principle to #128. 7/10.
Naturwissenschaftliche Rückständigkeit
Reversal in scientific development (348, 441)
We touched on this topic briefly in entry #29, but crop rotation was only one of a few ways that Rome failed to learn from its forebears. The aeolipile is another famous example of their opportunity to develop rudimentary steam power, but a lack of wisdom or understanding or desire to experiment left the discovery as a children’s curio and a historical footnote. Some point the finger at Christianity being an external force that sated the curious with the answer of “God” to all the questions of the universe they had been asking. Emil du Bois-Reymond treated it as a cultural failure, and saw Roman victories against Germanic tribes as a negative because their specific warlike mentality may have been more open to the development of rudimentary firearms. 5/10.
Ruhmsucht
Thirst for glory (457)
Johan Huizinga (#128) claimed that the Romans lived in order to achieve lifelong fame and fun, and put long-term inter-generational prosperity on the backburner. This is more broadly explained in his previously covered factor, but this still holds water as well. 7/10.
Seelenbarbarei
Barbaric souls (377)
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the son-in-law of Richard Wagner, believed that racial miscegenation was at the core of Rome’s problems. Somehow, he got it in his head that the Germanic barbarian tribes that sacked Rome actually weren’t barbarians (because they were racially pure), but the Roman peoples who had come from mixed origin had the souls of barbarians. 0/10.
Selbstgefälligkeit
Self-satisfaction (426)
In essence, this is individualism gone wrong. Theodor Schieffer saw some of the elements presented in entry #151 as vices of pride, not sloth. If some problem was an issue for their neighbors but not them, then why should they lift a finger? If people became self-absorbed and egotistical then the effect would be the same, albeit harder to prove on an emotional level. 4/10.
Semitisierung
Semitization (367, 380, 406)
Yes, there were many antisemites in the classical studies like David Starr Jordan who proposed conspiracies about Jews ruining Rome from the inside, but frankly we’ve spent too much time covering such droll for this project already. Alfred von Domaszewski, on the other hand, viewed Septimius Severus’ attitudes towards the Jews as an excuse to move towards despotism in a way that crushed the soul. 5/10.
Seuchen
Epidemics (353, 361, 578)
I can’t help but wonder whether my reaction to this theory would have been different had I begun this project in 2019. The epidemic that we have all faced targeted a much more specific subset of the population than the myriad illnesses that the Roman empire faced throughout its existence. On the other hand, we did survive. One can chalk this up to developments in medicine or economic preparedness (i.e. the strategic reserves), but the result is that we had a way to combat the illness within two years. The Antonine Plague, meanwhile, took around 15 years to peter out. I’ve read some theories like Kyle Harper’s work that deal with the topic of disease in Rome that came out after Demandt’s book, but he cites Barthold Georg Niebuhr as a proponent of the theory of population decline through plague. 4/10.
Sexualität
Sexuality (444)
We will cover some more specifics in a future entry (#166), but a facet of Kurt Breysig’s theory of the decline was that a lack of sexual inhibition caused the deepest corruption of morals, which led to political corruption and all the other problems of decadence. 3/10.
Sinnlichkeit
Sensuality (160, 372, 443)
This is another factor in Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff’s overall theory (#166). Of the aspects of Rome’s downfall he enumerates, this is by far the weakest. It reads like a high school football coach giving advice to his star quarterback before the big game, if you catch my drift. The ultimate fault of all of these theories regarding sexual debauchery is that Rome’s health as a civilization was independent from how legal or publicly acceptable sex was throughout its history. 3/10.
Sittenverfall
Moral decay (356, 358, 367, 372, 401, 418, 582)
Prior to Gibbon, this was the chief cause behind the fall of the empire in its broadest terms. A majority of these theories boil down to one group or another inside the city breaking one social more or another; each of the seven deadly sins finds itself represented somewhere on this list. Even still others suggest that the paragons of the community retreated to an ascetic life in the countryside. It’s a common cognitive bias to believe that the period before one’s own life was filled with virtuous figures, and the youth of the next generation is ruining the legacy that those great men had left behind. While it is true that the late empire was full of people we would generally consider to be immoral, was this decay consistently worse than the rest of the ancient world, and was it enough to bring down the Empire? In the opinions of scholars like Pontus Fahlbeck, Gabriele Pepe, and Heinrich Richter, it was. 5/10.
Sklaverei
Slavery (296, 327-328, 408, 413, 439-440)
This is a broad umbrella term used to cover a variety of different topics regarding the Roman class system that we’ve already discussed. Some scholars like Jakob Burckhardt have suggested that the Roman system of slavery became obsolete (#9) with the introduction of manorialism and early feudalism (#67), while others saw the exploitation of labor as leading to class conflict (#3, #13, #107). 7/10.
Slawenangriffe
Slavic invasion (317, 324-325, 327)
A. I. Sidorov presented the theory that a Slavic uprising helped to end the empire. The inspiration for this came from an offhanded line in a speech delivered by Josef Stalin, and didn’t have much merit even at that time. The Slavic states had long been a province of Rome before its downfall, and any involvement they had with its ultimate end would have taken place during any other slave revolt, and not along racial lines. 2/10.
Söldnerwesen
Institutional reliance on mercenaries (375, 403, 406, 411)
Macchiavelli believed that the Roman military’s reliance on patriotic mercenaries acted to its benefit during the early years of its existence, but much of that patriotism had waned by the late empire. Theorists like Otto Seeck and Julius Hatschek saw the mercenaries as working against the Roman establishment because the recruitment pool came from the same races of people that they were fighting. 6/10.
Schamlosigkeit
Shamelessness (443)
Eagle-eyed readers will notice that the next three entries are out of alphabetical order. This is Demandt’s error, not mine, but I’m maintaining it for consistency’s sake. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (#153) proposed this as a catch-all for the behavior covered in entries like #160 and #161. Presumably the distinction here is that the vices were out in the open rather than hidden behind closed doors, which is a better argument than the others, but still hardly powerful enough to bring down an empire. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff also viewed the lack of education (#41/#62), patriotism (#127), and the pleasures of the thermal baths (#17) as major factors in the decline and fall. 3/10.
Schlemmerei
Gluttony (128, 256)
Edward Wortley Montagu was of the opinion that the vice that troubled the Roman empire most of all was the amount of food they ate. He distinguishes this from what we have listed as entry #66 by the quantity rather than quality of the consumption. 2/10.
Schollenbindung
Binding citizens to the land (486)
Friedrich Vittinghoff believed that the state’s hostilities against the Germanic tribes to the north turned their citizens into subjects, and led to the formation of a totalitarian government. This is eerily similar to Domaszewski’s (#158) theory, but avoids the topic of antisemitism in the empire and makes the Germans look stronger, perhaps because Vittinghoff was a member of the Nazi party. 2/10.
Staatsegoismus
Egotism of the state (406)
Wilhelm Liebenam believed that the cause of Rome’s decline was the development of the state into an egotistical body, in its relationship to the city of Rome, more than a corrupt one. Christianity (#39) and depopulation (#57) each act as auxiliary factors in his theory, but the overall conclusion is that it pitted two governmental bodies against each other in a deleterious way. 5/10.
Staatssozialismus
State socialism (193, 301, 418)
Much like all the other political theories (starting with #6), socialism was a proposed system developed and laid out centuries after the fall of Rome. Theorists like Ernest Perrott and Corrado Barbagallo put it forward as a potential factor because they wanted to compare some contemporary issues to the fall of Rome in order to score political points. 0/10.
Staatsverdrossenheit
Dissatisfaction with the state (313)
Inversely related to entry (#169). Blaming the state for being arrogant is one thing, but what role does the public’s faith in the system play in its downfall? If we accept that all civilizations deal with corruption, then is the wider reaction from the citizenry the real independent variable that causes them to decline? Werner Raith believed that the system only benefitted those willing to exploit the avenues of corruption, and everyone else with privilege resigned (#12) from public life. That way, the state burnt itself out with all its problems, and left all the “good” moneyed Romans to operate their farms, developing into manorialism. This is a bit more poetic than what the actual historical record reflects, but it paints a pretty picture of economic development. 4/10.
Niedergang der Städte
Decline of “the state” as a concept (235, 270, 441)
Josef Ceska, by way of an earlier theory proposed by Georgy Kurbatov, represented the Roman state in the late 5th century as an obsolete concept. Most citizens of the time viewed themselves as Christians first and Romans second, which also plays into the factor of Apathy (#8). 5/10.
Stagnation
Stagnation (159, 312, 330)
There are a few different kinds of stagnation that come into play when discussing the fall of Rome: economic stagnation, birthrate stagnation, and moral stagnation are all theories that we have already covered in one way or another. Rigobert Günther (#67) saw technological stagnation as the great flaw of a system based on slavery. The efficiency of feudalism certainly permitted greater efficiency and prosperity, but this factor doesn’t tell the whole story of why things became stagnant. 4/10.
Steuerdruck
Tax pressure (282, 422, 452, 487, 510)
Karl Rodbertus saw the Roman tax system as all sorts of messed up. The frequency that tax collectors would accept in-kind favors instead of cold, hard cash left an avenue for easy corruption open to anyone. The benefits that naturally come from liquidity (like for instance being able to pay an army) became closed to the government the worse this problem got. The regressive system also put the lower classes at odds with anything the government did. 8/10.
Stoizismus
Stoicism (409, 412, 509)
I have my own personal opinions on the shortcomings of Stoic philosophy, but it’s hard to argue that it had much to do with the fall of Rome. Some policies of austerity may have caused the poor to tighten their belts a little too much for their comfort, as R.V. Pöhlmann and Guglielmo Ferrero proposed, but on the whole it’s difficult to fault Stoicism alone. The latter also looped in Christianity, and blamed their shared principle of equality among men as a downside. The problem boils down to the fact that Roman leadership was not principled enough by the end of the empire to claim to follow any school of philosophy. 2/10.