The 210 Theories Behind the Fall of Rome, Ranked: Part 6
Entries 176-210 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.
Streß
Stress (393, 510)
This is another contributing factor in Eckart Knaul’s overall theory regarding the fall. The piece we covered before in entry #69 was a sort of standalone component, but the majority of his thoughts on the subject revolve around the negatives of what we associate with living in big cities. The stress he describes comes from a lack of space or housing, insomnia, debauchery, and noise pollution. Most major civilizations have maintained a locus of control in areas that dealt with similar problems, so it’s a little nonsensical to single it out as Rome’s failure in particular. 2/10.
Strukturschwäche
Weakened structure of governance (308)
M.T.W. Arnheim believed that the development of the senatorial aristocracy shifted the balance of power squarely in the hands of the large landholders (#86). In his view, senatorial power had been in decline throughout the Roman principate, but this all changed minorly during the reign of Diocletian, and then majorly under Constantine. The former made the practice of appointing people with little experience in government to high governmental positions that had previously gone to senators. The latter, through the desire to see an all-Christian government, made it impossible for someone outside his circle to move up the ladder of power at all. Granting titles to vast swaths of people, and leaving all the work of running a government to inexperienced and self-interested people clogged up the gears of power with ignorance and corruption. 7/10.
Terrorismus
Terrorism (160, 463)
Chester G. Starr, following the theories of Ludwig Wachler, proposed the idea that the army became more barbarous along similar lines to entry #197. As standards became more lax for both national origin and sense of discipline among the troops, the army turned into a barbaric force. Not only does that mean excessive drink and laziness in the off-hours at the camps, but on the battlefield the reputation of Rome was further tarnished as a band of bloodthirsty marauders. 6/10.
fehlende Thronfolgeordnung
A lack of a plan for succession (407-409, 413, 417, 443)
This is the root cause of theory #118. Without a defined path for aspiring leaders and courtiers to keep track of, anyone with sufficient charisma, money, or power could cause a lot of trouble for Rome in order to see themselves on the throne. Hereditary monarchy poses its own problems (e.g. murdering one’s way up the ladder), but there is an expected pool of a dozen people that ought to be trained to lead their country in any given decade. If the Romans had developed any path to succession, as they had with the cursus honorum under the Republic, then a whole host of the issues on this list would have been eradicated. 9/10.
Totalitarismus
Totalitarianism (192, 266, 303)
The differences between this term and despotism (#43) are minute but important enough to draw the distinction. An individual leader can be a despot, but a totalitarian system of governance has to be all-encompassing. Charles Norris Cochrane saw Rome’s transition from the principate to the dominate under Diocletian to exhibit the characteristics of totalitarianism. 6/10.
Traurigkeit
Sadness (416)
I have addressed the problems with the attribution of terms on the emotional spectrum to the fall of the Roman Empire ad nauseam. Even if the people experienced some shared miasma of negative feelings, there isn’t really any way to assess the dependent conditions through the records that have survived to the current day. P.J. Hughesdon lists this as an auxiliary factor from the general loss of civil and public duty, or national spirit of any kind. 1/10.
Treibhauskultur
Greenhouse-like conditions (159, 443-444)
According to Johannes von Müller, the Romans operated in a sort of greenhouse-like environment and were able to grow throughout the period of the republic unbothered by many other European forces because of their geographical advantages. As technology began to shift and the centers of the empire left the Italian peninsula, Rome became weaker. Kurt Breysig expanded on these ideas, furthering the metaphor that the stronger winters of northern Europe made the Germanic tribes into a hardier crop of men. 5/10.
Überalterung
Over-aged population (359)
Corrado Gini took the standard anti-immigration “barbarians destroyed Rome from the inside” line (#185) and gave it a coat of polish by arguing that the workforce had to hire from outside the borders. Even if those Germans were destroying Rome from the inside out (an awfully short-sighted way to be out of a job at a moment’s notice), the “cause” is rooted back further in a number of different ways. The animosity between the Germans and Romans is an obvious one, and there had to have been a driving force for young people in the city to stop doing those jobs. 2/10.
Überfeinerung
Over-refinement (255)
This factor is only nominally different from decadence or luxury (#120) or gluttony (#66). Friedrich Kortüm himself only lists it as a result of the empire’s despotism and vice. It’s better covered elsewhere. 1/10.
Überfremdung
Foreign infiltration (358-359, 373)
Many different scholars have proposed justifications for why so many Germans were able to pass through Roman territories armed and unmolested, even as they were nominally enemies. Some, like Corrado Gini (#183), blame the Roman slave class for allowing them safe havens, supplies, and even auxiliary support. Others, like Heinrich Nissen (#73), blame racial miscegenation with outsiders and theorize about a hypothetical crisis of loyalty. Either way the theory discredits how strong the German tribes were and how many other problems Rome had with its own army internally. 1/10.
Übergroße
Overexpansion (133, 359, 396)
Hadrian saw the empire he inherited from Trajan and knew it wasn’t meant to last. Had Trajan been able to finish his campaigns in the east then maybe things would have turned out differently, but the distance from the locus of power to the empire’s furthest borders proved to be too much to handle. Hadrian gave land back, then Diocletian split control, and as the borders got smaller and smaller, the longevity of Rome was able to be preserved for a few more centuries than it would have otherwise. E.F. Gautier blamed both Rome’s largeness and its complexity for these necessary changes. 4/10.
Überkultur
Over-culture (262, 456)
We already covered Gustav Schnürer’s broader thoughts on Rome’s fall in entry #103. Intellectualism and over-culture are practically synonymous, but the former is a problem in the short term and the latter is built up over generations of snobbiness. 3/10.
Überzivilisation
Over-civilization (398)
Friedrich Rühs believed that the Roman state had turned into a machine that consumed resources quicker than they could be produced. Both Germanicism and Christianity were tempering influences that, in his mind, made the empire less defensible as a civilization but easier to live under. 3/10.
Umweltzerstörung
Environmental destruction (352, 510)
We in the modern world better understand the limits of the natural world and how important it can be to take care of the environment. Most ancient civilizations polluted the land around their cities, but the Romans used up natural resources at such an alarming rate that they needed to source them further and further from the city. J. Donald Hughes saw their lack of insight into ecology as their ultimate flaw. 6/10.
Unglückskette
Chain of misfortunes (291)
J. Bury believed that it was not any specific factor that caused the Roman Empire to fall, but rather it was the number and frequency of tragic events in a short period of time that brought it to its end. Not only did they have to deal with rampant governmental incompetence and corruption, but such poor leadership led them to have to fight wars on two different fronts (#210). In particular, Bury names 376, 378, 382 and 395 as keystone years that had cracked from the faults of the civilization at large. 9/10.
Unnütze Esser
Severe disability (487, 562)
Literally, “useless eaters.” The modern rhetoric of “makers” vs. “takers” is downstream from this kind of thinking. The classical scholar A. H. M. Jones in particular refers to them as “idle mouths,” but every society quibbles over what to do with the bottom percentage of unemployed people. Bong Joon-ho’s award-winning movie Parasite (2019) acts as a fabulized counterargument to this theory across all forms of historiography. Jones claims that Christianity was the root cause of the number of non-working citizens, and according to Demandt he backs it up with substantial methodological evidence, but I would have to look into his claims in particular before I felt more comfortable with giving a higher rating than this. 3/10.
Unterentwicklung
Under-development (486)
According to theorists like S.N. Eisenstadt and Paul Petit, it wasn’t so much that Rome fell, but rather that neighboring civilizations developed too quickly for them to catch up. The east withdrew to focus on its own technological development while Rome itself continued onto a path of barbarization. 4/10.
Verarmung
Impoverishment (294, 297)
Ettore Ciccotti blamed the growing impoverishment in the city on the taxes levied against the poor to pay for the luxuries of the rich. There were small adjustments to the regressive tax system in the last decades of the empire’s existence, but the effort was too little, too late. The poor either fled the city for better pay or worked on manors or revolted against the state, all culminating in a loss of faith in the government when it came time to beat back external enemies. 8/10.
Verbastardung
Fathering of children out of wedlock (161, 369, 382, 389)
The topic of inheritance can cause even secure and loving families to bicker and jam up the legal system with petty squabbles. By-and-large, though, theorists like Ernst Moritz Arndt took this term as an adulteration of the bloodline from a racial perspective. Again, one has to look at the fact that all the eugenicist arguments against bastard children were outdated even by eugenics standards before the mapping of the human genome. Marriage status has no bearing on the qualities or attributes of one’s offspring. 0/10.
Verkrankung
Disease (367)
This is a much broader form of entry #159 without all the baggage associated with the chronology of when epidemics plagued the city. Fritz Kaphahn proposed that even the slightest case of sniffles would have had a significant impact on the mood and wellbeing of the city. Germ theory was thousands of years away, so some basic precautions that we now take towards illness would seem foreign to the average Roman. Population density also would have caused the disease to spread among a larger portion of the population. Combine this with the picture of their general attitudes toward the economy and whatever else troubled them emotionally, and the feeling must have been exponentially worse. 6/10.
Vermassung
Appeal to the majority (417, 419, 456, 510)
Literally, “massification.” Alfred Weber believed that the transition from republic to empire was a fatal blow to Rome’s existence as a civilization. Without a proper social contract or general structure to adhere to in the minutiae of government, the foundations of society could have bottomed out at any time. What allowed them to survive for so long was control over so much capital. Vertical migration in the social classes as new lands were conquered brought about a less educated leadership class, similar to entry #177, which further rotted the city out from the inside. 5/10.
Verödung
Desolation (372-373)
The desolation abroad also brought desolation at home. Heinrich Nissen believed that the aims of world domination and the consequent bloodthirstiness ultimately worked against their long-term goals. Destroying their enemies so completely meant that their birthplaces were unlivable. Roman governors had the cash and the power to rebuild over the course of years, but those former citizens were displaced at best and enslaved at worst. The most likely place for them to end up was back in the city. There is an unfortunate element of racial miscegenation to this theory, but the broader observation of desolation backfiring on the city is sound. 4/10.
Verpöbelung
Rabble-rousing (359)
Andreas Thomsen believed that a sort of mob rule developed in Rome in protest against the more civilized forces at play, and reactionary politics prevailed over cooler heads. This proved to be disastrous for international relations, especially with the eastern half of the empire. 4/10.
Verrat
Treason (460-461, 476)
The role that Germanic peoples with some level of civic participation in Rome played is a recurring theme in discussions about the military aspects of the civilization’s fall. In the eyes of Arnold Toynbee, Rome’s fall was tantamount to a suicide, rather than a murder. There had to be collective complicity in the destruction of the city across economic and racial lines. The few holdouts were the ones at the extreme top with political power to speak for, and because of their standing we hear their opinions most loudly in written sources. 5/10.
Verstädterung
Urbanization (202, 461-462, 510, 516)
Christopher Dawson believed that the mere act of turning from a farming community into a city was an existential threat to the culture of a civilization. It certainly may have been true that “Rome” looked more like a series of interconnected farms than what we would call a city for most of its early existence (even by ancient standards), but this still doesn’t explain how it survived for so long after undergoing a more formal urban development. 2/10.
Unkluge Vorfeldpolitik
Foolish policies of military advancement (483)
Franz Altheim saw some of the tactical choices in the military to be imprudent. By weakening their immediate neighbor-states, they left themselves open to attacks by the people who bordered their enemies. 5/10.
Wehrdienstverweigerung
Conscientious objection (36, 39, 130, 273)
The rise of Christianity in the city of Rome also led to a reluctance to go to war for parts of the population. Some people took that whole “thou shalt not kill” commandment very seriously, which hampered military operations. Rome did broadly cease to be a conquest-centric civilization under Hadrian, but I suppose this would have also had a significant impact after the edict of Milan. 4/10.
Wehrlosmachung
Defenselessness (413, 482, 510)
Because of departures from the city and the aforementioned factor of conscientious objection, Rome needed people to defend its borders. Some military-minded theorists like Ernst Kornemann believed ancient civilizations to be in decline by definition if they were not expanding their borders. 4/10.
Weltflucht
Fleeing from the world (438)
Bruno Bauer saw the city of Rome being undermined by the forces of Christianity, Orientalization, and Barbarism. If they had pulled out of the broader European economy, in a sort of Tokugawa/Sakoku policy, then many of the troubles Rome faced in dealing with these factors may have been avoided. It’s a bit strange and highly hypothetical, but I can generally see the outline of where he’s coming from. Still, I doubt they would have been able to defend their civilization from the problems that Japan faced during the aforementioned period. 2/10.
Weltherrschaft
World domination (389)
Fritz Schachermeyr took inspiration from the Nazis when he proposed his theory on world domination. He believed that the Romans had some innate instinct to conquer, but that racial miscegenation had left them unable to fulfill this desire. 0/10.
Willenslähmung
Paralysis of the will (367)
A byproduct of Fritz Kaphahn’s theory (#195) about disease causing the end of the empire was that people were more hesitant to take decisive action to fix things. 3/10.
Wohlstand
Prosperity (211, 464, 474)
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges claimed that the twilight years of Rome’s existence were marked by a nervousness of character and weakness of political spirit. Prosperity and religion both made them blind to the ground crumbling out under them. Some of this so-called “prosperity” can be measured through their luxury goods and increased rate of consumption, but generally speaking the conditions in the city were not so good for the majority of the population. 2/10.
Zentralismus
Centralism (355, 403, 417)
Arsène Dumont blamed the fall on Diocletian’s desire for ubiquitous control over the empire. This may at first seem to be counterintuitive; splitting the empire into halves (or quarters depending on how one sees it) may lessen control, but in truth it can also be interpreted as a desire to have more cognizant control over the daily activities of that territory. He began the administrative state. Victor Duruy expanded on this idea, calling the despotism learned from the East another factor in undermining morale. 3/10.
Zölibat
Celibacy (487)
There have been a handful of theories that deal with the diminished human presence in and around the Italian peninsula. Some (#12, #159, #162) claim that the departure was at least somewhat voluntary, in order to avoid the physical, spiritual, or emotional decay present inside the walls of the city. Others (#58, #97, #107) believe it had something to do with birth rates. This theory attempts to bridge the gap between the two schools of thought on this aspect of the period. A. H. M. Jones (#191) Saw the rise of celibacy in monks and priests as a burden on both the tax system and on the overall workforce. The timeline works out as well; towards the end of the 4th century abstinence became a hot-button issue in the church, with the Council of Carthage and Pope Siricus both laying down the law on the issues of priestly unchastity. 5/10.
Zweifrontenkrieg
War on two fronts (489)
Winning a two-front war isn’t impossible, but dividing resources along the “correct” lines to maintain a defensive position has been too difficult for even great tactical minds like Napoleon. Christian Meier saw the attacks by the Persians and the Germans at the same time throughout the 3rd century as the beginning of an end that Rome could not recover from. 5/10.
