The fall of the Roman Empire: | ||
| A new history of Rome and the barbarians | ||
| By Peter Heather | ||
| Oxford University Press | ||
| BY RON SMITH | ||
| SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT | ||
| As we wonder today which hammer blow will -- or already has -- put the fatal cracks in | ||
| American culture, Peter Heather’s The Fall of the Roman Empire makes for sometimes | ||
| frightening but generally comforting reading. | ||
| When Rome was sacked by Goths in 410, it was the first time in 800 years that | ||
| 5 | barbarians had managed such a feat. A despairing St. Jerome wrote, “In one city, the | |
| whole world perished.” The empire had only recently adopted Christianity as its official | ||
| religion, and Romans dismissive of the Jesus cult saw it as a clear cause. One wrote, “If | ||
| Rome hasn’t been saved by its guardian deities, it’s because they are no longer there.” | ||
| At its height, the Roman way of life was the norm from the Scottish border to the Fertile | ||
| 10 | Crescent. While the republic and then the empire were pagan, they were invincible. | |
| Some 14 centuries after the traumatic sack, the 18th century historian Edward Gibbon | ||
| could be seen as agreeing with pagan commentators. His magisterial The Decline and | ||
| Fall of the Roman Empire laid the blame for the fall not only on endemic moral | ||
| corruption but also on the weakening effects of pacifistic and antisocial tendencies in | ||
| 15 | Christianity. Such claims in the fifth century moved St. Augustine to write his “The City | |
| of God” in defense of the faith. 15 , his emphasis on the relative unimportance of | ||
| earthly government actually seems to lend support to Gibbon, if not to Gibbon’s ancient | ||
| and more superstitious soulmates. | ||
| What Gibbon shared with fifth-century pagan commentators was the belief that the | ||
| 20 | collapse of the Roman system was caused by purely internal problems. Historian Peter | |
| Heather begs to differ. He rejects the view that the empire was particularly corrupt: | ||
| Barbarians destroyed it. Most of Heather’s book is concerned with tracing the complex | ||
| interaction between, on the one hand, the growing power and changing nature of | ||
| barbarian societies and, on the other, a spectacularly successful Roman system whose | ||
| 25 | massive strength was gradually sapped by external pressures. | |
| Heather is, of course, right that “the immediate emotional reaction to any great event is | ||
| rarely the best indicator of its real significance.” He says that “the sack of Rome was not | ||
| so much a symbolic blow to the Roman Empire as an admission of Gothic [diplomatic] | ||
| failure.” He refers to the sack of 410 as a cozy little sack, calling it “one of the most | ||
| 30 | civilized sacks ... ever witnessed.” Forty-five years later, the Vandals subjected Rome to | |
| the real thing. | ||
| Heather’s book is an effective, overarching narrative propelled by fascinating smaller | ||
| narratives and illuminated by memorable miniature biographies. It only occasionally | ||
| bogs down in evidentiary quagmires. Indeed, it’s generally a pleasure to watch this | ||
| 35 | level-headed historian sort evidence; he’s particularly impressive when reading between | |
| the lines of ancient spin doctors (most of them poets). His book is based on what he | ||
| convincingly claims is a “closer reading of the sources,” as well as new archeological | ||
| evidence. | ||
| How new is Heather’s view? Not so new, it seems to this general reader. The views of | ||
| 40 | the ancients and of Gibbon, for instance, always seemed simplistic. Meanwhile, the | |
| errors caused by what Heather rightly calls “the quasi-religious fervor” of 19th-century | ||
| nationalistic interpretations have long been corrected. Heather doesn’t so much | ||
| overthrow late-20th-century historians’ views as nudge them in his preferred direction. | ||
| OK, sometimes he nudges them hard. | ||
| http://www.RichmondTimes-Dispatch.com |