Catherine Bain

Societies destroyed by the Roman conquest may have been far more sophisticated than we realise.

It's just harder for us to find out because:-

History is written by the victors.

The losers had not developed writing. We have to rely on archaeology.

Doug Shaver

Maybe. It depends on how you're defining "sophisticated."

But if your definition treats literacy as irrelevant, then we're probably not talking about the same thing when we're talking about sophisitication.

Lucretius

While it would of course be naive to state that the Roman Empire was a totally desirable system of government it has to be said that for all it's faults slavery perhaps being the prime one it was far better for the "ordinary man in the street " than was the early Middle Ages.
While slavery is always to be abhorred how can we say that the life of a Middle Ages serf was in fact any better in any aspect.
Others have mentioned things such as plumbing ,architecture and "physical" aids to everyday life, so I won't go into those in detail however, I will say that a lot of the sciences had to be re-discovered aftet a lengthy interval in most cases, so while you could argue that the Roman Empire was in some cases a "conservative one" in terms of scientific advances ,the Dark Ages were in fact a HUGE backward step.

Also looking at the Dark Ages from a purely literary point of view imagine the huge mass of literature ,poetry & history etc etc that was lost during this time.
OK some of it may have been "bad " when compared to Virgil,Horace ,Tacitus et al but it would be great to be able to read it and make up our own minds about it's qualities and not be reliant on the whims and philosophical/religious bias of the Church and the monasteries to effectively decide what we have left to read.
I could cry at times when I think of all that lost knowledge and culture .
Regarding the idea that the collapse of the Roman Empire was "necessary " for the creation of modern Europe, while that may well be the case the foundation of "modern Europe " from it's feeble beginnings of small city states to it's greater power as nation states has in fact effectively lead to 1500 years of European Civil War,which I think anyone would find hard to class as a positive thing .
Everyone has waged war against everyone else with differing alliances being in existence from time to time,which I maintain is the result (either direct or indirect) of the collapse of civilisation that came about in the Dark Ages .

Lucretius

Having read a bit of the first chapter of James' proposed book from the link given I do have a couple of questions
Regarding Leonardo Da Vinci it has this to say James how exactly do you know that this was the reason for his secretiveness?
Are there any extant writings by Leonardo himself (in his mirror writing of course )that say this ?
Are there any written records by any of his contemporaries saying that this is the reason ?
Or is this just speculation to fit in with a pre-conceived view of the era?

Secondly regarding Saxon buildings it has this to say
What evidence do you have that the decline of stone built buildings and the increase in wooden buildings was purely a matter of "choice" by the Saxons and not just an inability to quarry stone in sufficient amount or quality?
Are there any written records of these Saxon lords saying that while they had a quarry near by the much preferred the "look" & "feel" of a wooden building ?
Or is this another "excuse" to fit in with a pre-concieved picture of the time ?

James Hannam

I think we need to be more careful when we talk about what the Roman Empire did and didn't have. We tend to look at the elite culture rather than the way the mass of people lived. One person here said Europe returned to subsistance farming when it fell. Actually, almost all Romans existed at or below subsistance level. The hungry maw of Rome itself made the situation even worse and famine was very frequent. Roman economics were extremely basic, there was no civil service in the way we mean except civilians piggybacking on the army.

The elite culture we admire was possible because there was such a huge pool of people to support it. When that pool was split up, elite culture (i.e. economically unproductive rich people) could not no longer prey on them. Hence the huge expenses of their lifestyles were rendered untenable.

I'm really not sure that this was an altogether bad thing. Today we worry about inequality, but under the Romans the gap between rich and poor was astronomically huge. Social mobility was almost nil. I agree that the fall led to a decline in culture but please don't romanticise the Roman Empire. It was not nice.

Best wishes

James

PS: Lucretius, I'll answer when I have books to hand.

Lucretius

While if course it is all too easy to "Romanticise" (pun very much intended) the Roman Empire I think that those who have studied it do have a more realistic view of it.
However an attempt to make the early Middle Ages appear more scientific and a better ,more egalitarian society risks just that ,the "Romanticisation" of a very "dark" period of history .
Of course it may never have been as dark as it was previously painted by mainly 19th century historians but neither was the period one of large scale scientific or social advances.
That did have to wait to a great extent to the Renaissance
Personally I do not think that the terms "Dark Ages" and "Renaissance" are purely arbitrary ,both of course could be "tweaked" a little but are in my opinion broadly true appelations.

PS James I have no problem if you need to refer to books on the 2 points I raised it just would have been nice if you could have at least included them as footnotes in that chapter.
As it is they give the appearance of being unsubstantiated opinion is all .

Lógos Sokratikós

I understand that a post-er here has mentioned that the average Roman plebian was better off than the medieval serf. I agree with you that the discussion shouldn't be black-and-white, all good all bad, but over all wouldn't you agree that things were better under the Romans and Byzantines than in post imperial Western Europe? (Of course things were even better for Egyptians and Hellenes than under Rome, what Romans offered was Pax Romana, common laws etc, and that's a plus).

What do you opine about the Byzantines? This discussion is one sided towards western Europe. After the fall of Rome and before the crusades, Constantinople was the best place to be (and they were Orth. Xpian BTW).

Lucretius

Just noticed this from the OP

Surely a more accurate phrase would be " the spread of what was left of that culture, after so many written works were either destroyed by the "barbarians " or ignored or surpressed by the Christian Church to the extent that we no longer even have copies of them"

James Hannam

Of course, Byzantium was the place to be 5th - 11th centuries. It is a great pity that the two most romantic settings in the world are Venice and Constantinople and that the former was pretty much responcible for the destruction of the latter.

Best wishes

James

Read chapter one of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science

James Hannam

Alas, publishers no longer allow footnotes in non-academic books and frown on endnotes too, especially to reference every point. Not that I make the rules.

Read chapter one of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science