Adrian Goldsworthy - How Rome Fell

Adrian Goldsworthy

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Bust of Marcus Aurelius (AKG Images/Erich Lessing)

Bust of Septimius Severus (AKG Images/Erich Lessing)

Bust of Caracalla (Ferens Art Gallery, Hull City Museums and Art Galleries/The Bridgeman Art Library)

Statue of the Tetrarchs, Venice (AKG Images/Jean-Paul Dumontier)

Amphitheatre at Dougga in Tunisia (Ancient Art and Architecture Collection)

Regina tombstone (Ancient Art and Architecture Collection)

Relief of Roman soldiers from Trajan's Column (Author's collection)

Relief of Roman emperor kneeling before Shapur (Ancient Art and Architecture Collection)

Collapsed wall at Dura Europos (Dr Simon James)

Wall painting from Dura Europos (Dr Simon James)

Palmyrene gods (AKG Images/Erich Lessing)

Hadrian's Wall (Author's collection)

Fort at Qasr Bashir (Sonia Halliday Photographs)

Roman walls at Porchester castle (Author's collection)

Senate House and Arch of Septimius Severus (Author's collection)

Aurelian walls, Rome (AKG Images)

Constantine coin (Bridgeman Art Library)

Julian the Apostate (AKG Images)

Detail from Arch of Constantine (Author's collection)

Adamklissi Metope: Barbarians on the move (Author's collection)

Roman gateway at Trier (AKG Images/Hilbich)

Mosaic from Piazza Armerina, Sicily (AKG Images/Erich Lessing)

Relief from obelisk base Hippodrome, Constantinople (Chris Hellier/ Corbis)

Emperor Honorius (W&N Archive)

Flavius Stilicho (W&N Archive)

Page from the Notitia Dignitatum (Bodleian Library)

Skull from Hunnic grave (AKG Images)

Mausoleum at Ravenna (The Art Archive/Gianni Dagli Orti)

Coin of Justinian (Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge/ Bridgeman Art Library)

The walls of Constantinople (Bridgeman Art Library)

Hagia Sophia (AKG Images/Erich Lessing)

Mosaic of Justinian from Ravenna (AKG Images/Erich Lessing)

The aqueduct at Segovia (Author's collection)

f people today know anything about the Roman Empire, it is that it fell. This is without doubt the best-known `fact' about Ancient Rome, just as Julius Caesar is the most famous Roman. Rome's fall is memorable because its empire lasted for so long - more than five hundred years after Caesar's death in Italy and the western provinces, and three times as long in the east, where emperors would rule from Constantinople until the fifteenth century. The Roman Empire was also exceptionally large - no other power has ever controlled all the lands around the Mediterranean - and left traces behind in many countries. Even today its monuments are spectacular - the Colosseum and Pantheon in Rome itself, as well as theatres, aqueducts, villas and roads dotted throughout the provinces. No other state would construct such a massive network of all-weather roads until the nineteenth century, and in many countries such systems would not be built until the twentieth century. The Roman Empire is often seen as very modern and highly sophisticated - glass in windows, central heating, bath houses and the like - especially by visitors to museums and monuments. This makes Rome's fall all the more remarkable, especially since the world that emerged from its ruin appears so primitive by contrast. The Dark Ages remain fixed in the popular mind, even if the term has long since been abandoned by scholars.

Why Rome fell remains one of the great questions of history. In the English-speaking world `fall' is inevitably coupled with `decline', for the title of Edward Gibbon's monumental work has become firmly embedded in the wider consciousness. No other eighteenth-century history book has remained so regularly in print in various forms and editions until the present day. There have been plenty of other books written on the subject, and some have been more perceptive in their analysis, even if none has ever challenged The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as one of the great works of English literature. In later life Gibbon liked to believe that it was his destiny to be an historian and to chronicle the great theme of Rome's fall. He claimed a specific moment of inspiration: `It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind."

Gibbon produced several versions of this story, creating the suspicion that he embellished or even invented the memory. On the other hand it is hard for any visitor with imagination not to think similar thoughts, for past and present seem very close beside the centre of Ancient Rome. The `barefooted fryars' are no longer so obvious, and have been replaced by the ubiquitous hawkers, switching instantly from offering sunglasses to umbrellas whenever the weather changes. Even the crowds of other tourists tramping along the Sacra Via help to give a sense of the bustle and noise of the ancient city, once every bit as busy and active as the modern city that now surrounds it.

Rome is not only a museum, but also a vibrant community, the capital of a modern country and the centre of the worldwide Catholic Church. The reminders of ancient grandeur sit side by side with homes, offices and restaurants. Rome was never abandoned, although it shrank massively in population from the height of the empire in the centuries after its fall. A good number of other modern cities are also built on Roman foundations, something still visible in their grid-shaped street plans. Other Roman cities vanished altogether and those in desert areas produce some of the most romantic ruins visible today. When the Roman Empire fell, life did not simply stop in the lands it had controlled. The context of life certainly changed, sometimes dramatically and quickly, but in other cases much more gradually. As the specialists on the period have long since made clear, the Dark Ages were not wholly dark, although by any reasonable standard they were dark enough in comparison with the Roman period. Many things became more local, such as power and trade, and often the world was a more dangerous place, with raiding and warfare between nearby communities now a real possibility. Quite quickly there was no one with the money or skill to build great monuments such as theatres, aqueducts or roads. In time, it even became difficult to maintain the ones that already existed. Scholars are deeply divided about when, how and why the world changed from the Roman era to the basis of the medieval world that took shape in the following centuries. None doubt that the change occurred.

Gibbon admired the achievements of the Roman Empire at its height, as did all educated Europeans in his day. This in no way reduced his enthusiasm for the modern world, and especially for the constitution of his own country, where the monarch's power was limited and guided by the aristocracy. Gibbon knew that his own country and its neighbours across the Channel all owed their origins to the various barbarian groups that had carved up the Roman Empire. Therefore, in time, good had come from chaos and destruction, and from his perspective the world - or at least the Western world - had in the long run developed along the right lines. This mixed attitude to Rome's fall remains a central part of its fascination. It serves as a warning of mortality. The emperors who built the great arches in the Forum all died like any other human being. Eventually their empire - so rich, so powerful, so sophisticated and so utterly self-confident - also came to an end, its monuments crumbling away into ruin.