How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower

This was an excellent book, describing the history of the Roman Empire from the latter part of the reign of Marcus Aurelius (from say 170 CE) to the reign of Heraclius (610-641), although events after the reign of Justinian are covered very briefly. (Heraclius isn't even mentioned by name in the main text, though he is in an appendix giving the chronology of the period.) Goldsworthy in general echoes Gibbon's comment that perhaps the real question isn't why Rome fell, but how it lasted so long. The real problem is glaringly obvious when you read a relatively condensed history like this one: from roughly 100 BCE through the reign of Justinian Rome, whether republic or empire, rarely went through a period of as much as 50 years without a civil war where Romans were fighting Romans, from the ones between Marius (and his successors) and Sulla in 88-82 BCE through Caesar and Pompey in 49-4 and Octavian and Mark Antony in 31-30; then an unusual 71-year period of stability under Octavian/Augustus and Tiberius until the overthrow of Caligula in 41 CE (one of the exceptions), the "year of four emperors" in 69, and then the second and longest (124 years) period of stability from the accession of Vespasian in 69 through the Flavian and Antonine dynasties (Domitian was assassinated, but there was no civil war) until the overthrow of Commodus and the "year of five emperors" in 193. After that not a decade went by without Romans fighting Romans until the latter part of the reign of Diocletian, and even then there was only one decade without fighting. And as it became more and more common for emperors to be forcibly overthrown, they more and more became concentrated on survival rather than ruling the empire. Finally, by the fifth century in the West, nobody really wanted to be emperor, so the nominal emperors were basically puppets of one strong man or another. The east, with better communications and a serious enough external threat in Sassanid Persia to concentrate the attention of the generals, managed to muddle through, but the west was essentially done by the mid-5th century. Goldsworthy is an excellent writer and knows his material very well.

I admire this author and enjoy reading his books, even when some of his arguments are basically built around a “Europe as the standard of the world” standpoint. Some discussions are extremely lengthy and refers back (without actually repeating) to previous arguments several times, which may be somewhat tiring. Even then the rich and well presented and written discussions are worthy a close reading. All in all I recommend this book and all of the author’s other books as well.

I want to start off by noting that any book dealing with the fall of the Roman Empire will be unsatisfactory to some because an author has only two choices: 1) cram as much info into a set amount of space to make the book marketable or 2) publish an academic treatise. In this regard, any commercial work on the subject will not be fully complete. Operating within these confines, this is a good book. To answer another commentator, this book is intended for the serious amateur or armchair historian and provides a great narrative of the last centuries of the glory that was Rome and a convincing explanation for the primary cause of its collapse. This book is also clearly meant to refute Peter Heather's work, which claims that Rome fell not because of internal weakness, but because of the superiority of newly formed barbarian supergroups. What I find fascinating is that both authors use the same evidence to reach drastically different conclusions. For instance, a cache of weapons found in a lake in Northern Europe is used by Heather to demonstrate that the Germanic tribes had achieved a new level of sophistication and material wealth, as well as weapons equal to that of Rome. Goldsworthy uses the same find to conclude that only the top echelon of Germanic tribes had access to such weapons. Although I believe the truth lies somewhere in the middle, I believe Goldsworthy has the better argument. Although I do not find Goldworthy's assessment that the Germanic tribes were no different than those facing Caesar to be persuasive (on this point Heather wins), at the same time I cannot accept Heather's conclusion that Rome post-3rd century crises was as vibrant and stable as before. Here is where Goldsworthy really shines. To me, it seems a matter of common sense that the main contributing factor to the demise of the Roman Empire was the almost constant civil wars from the beginning of the third century. Almost everything else--debased currency, changed social order, new religious beliefs--all flows from the fact that beginning in the 3rd century, the Roman Empire was operated essentially as a logistics base for the army. The wealth of Rome was based on looting and demolishing of other societies and civilizations. Once Rome stopped expanding, the wealth stopped coming in and the enemies of Rome were no longer worth conquering. However, the army still needs to be paid, and the generals still needed to find glory. As such, Rome went from conquering other peoples to conquering itself. Unlike past civil wars, these conflicts were not about ideology or social issues--the were purely about money and power. Whereas the troops in Caesar's time were fighting for land grants and citizenship, by the time of Diocletian, citizenship was universal, money was worthless, and land ownership on a small scale was cost-prohibitive due to high taxation. In every civil war more and more Roman troops were killed, more cities were looted, more land was devastated, more "ordinary" people began to see the imperial power as oppressive and turned to new religion. The coinage was debased because emperors needed to pay (bribe) the troops to pay for wars against contenders for the throne; the senatorial order was destroyed to prevent usurpations; resources previously used to build civic monuments and facilities were instead used to build walls and fortify cities; the middle class was destroyed by oppressive taxation, etc. In the end all of Roman society was reorganized for a singular purpose: to provide resources for emperors to fight each other. Here is where Goldsworthy could have offered more detail and analysis and really thrown a knock-out punch so-to-speak. However, the narrative takes up so much space, that there is little time left for analysis and empirical study. Also, while Goldsworthy should be praised for indicating areas where the historical and archeological records are incomplete (or not known at all), I would have liked Goldsworthy to attempt to fill-in-the blanks using available sources and logical deduction. However, Goldsworthy's thesis is ultimately sound: For three centuries emperors and so-called usurpers fought over the same pie of resources. After each civil war the pie got smaller and smaller and yet the fighting continued. "Barbarians" were only dealt with once the new Augustus had secured his place (usually by wiping out a significant portion of Rome's available manpower). Eventually, Rome became too weak fighting itself to fight others. I give this book four stars instead of five because Goldsworthy should have shortened the narrative and expanded his discussion and analysis of the real economic and social effects of constant civil warfare. Also, the "modern analysis" at the end was quite unnecessary and felt like a scrap thrown to the table to appease fellow academics. What I would really like to see is a book that combines Goldsworthy's narrative and thesis with an economic and sociological analysis of the effects of the three centuries of constant warfare both internally and how this affected Rome's foreign policy. Maybe Goldsworthy, Heather and Brian Ward-Perkins can team up to write such a book. Long story short (too late, I know)--this is a good book that provides a compelling narrative, but falls short of greatness.

With the death of the last of the 5 good emperors, Marcus Aurelius, becoming Emperor was a fatal profession. The western empire never recovered and this is a detailed look at its implosion. Did take 250 years to end due built up synergy of the empire.

Great history delving into the reasons Rome declined.

Brilliant. Exceptionally well written and one of the most well researched and objective history books Ive ever read. There's no question the author knows his stuff, but the way he puts it all into context for the reader and really sucks him into that timeframe. My one qualm was an insufficient analysis at the end of the causes of Rome's fall. While he chronicles the history of the empire through until its end, some more analysis and thought at the end wouldve been nice. As it is, he leaves it to the reader to draw his/her own conclusions.

The book arrived on time and in perfect condition

I had high hopes when I began to read this book. It makes, no doubt, a contribution to our knowledge of the Roman Empire in its latter years. Regrettably, I found it dry and more like a text for a graduate level course in Roman history. The facts, name, and dates are all there, but their sheer numbers make reading the book like trying to drink from a fire hose. I bogged down and lost interest about two thirds of the way through the book.