Freethought & Rationalism Archive

mountainman · 12-24-2006, 11:01 PM

When did the Roman Empire actually decline & fall?
There is actually a vast range of "academic opinion".

The favorite dates are the following ...

* 431BCE Professor Arnold Toynbee (Peloponnesian War)
* 0312 - Conversion of Constantine?
* 0330 - Inauguration of Constantinople?
* 0410 - Sack of Rome by Goths?
* 0476 - Romulus Augustus lost throne (still "traditionalists")?
* 0565 - Death of Justinian ("more sophisticated researchers")?
* 0800 - Coronation of Charlemagne (2 Roman empires)
* 1453 - Fall of Constantinople, the end of the New Rome.
* 1806 - Napoleon compels Francis II to underwrite end.

These dates were extracted from the introduction
to "Pagan and Christianity in the Fourth Century",
which commences as follows ...

Quote:

Christianity and the Decline of the Roman Empire.
--- ARNALDO MOMIGLIANO (1959/60)

I may perhaps begin with a piece of good news. In this year 1959 it can still be considered an historical truth that the Roman empire declined and fell. Nobody is as yet prepared to deny that the Roman empire has disappeared. But here historians begin to disagree. When we ask them to tell us when the Roman empire
disappeared, we collect an embarrassing variety of answers. The more so because there is a tendency to identify the beginnings of the Middle Ages with the end of the Roman empire: a tendency which would have given no little surprise to medieval men who firmly believed in the continuity of the Roman empire.

There are, of course, historians who see the Middle Ages making their appearance and the Roman empire sinking into oblivion with the conversion of Constantine in 312 or with the inauguration of
Constantinople in 330. And there are historians who would delay the end of the Roman empire to that year 1806 - more precisely to that day 6 August 1806 - in which Napoleon I compelled the
Austrian emperor Francis II to underwrite the end of the Holy
Roman empire. Between these two extreme dates there are plenty
of intermediate choices.

Clivedurdle · 12-25-2006, 01:39 AM

Interestingly, the extreme sect of fundamentalist pentecostalism I was brought up in, with their belief that the Pope was the antichrist would probably argue that the Roman Empire never ended! They saw the European Union as Rome - Treaty of Rome!

And arguing that the catholic church is only spiritual is not true - the vatican is a state!

So is the vatican the rump Roman Empire?

premjan · 12-25-2006, 01:42 AM

The 'Kingdom of Heaven' was obviously a spiritual equivalent of Rome so it makes sense that the Vatican was built in Rome.

mountainman · 12-25-2006, 02:48 AM

Here is a (non contiguous) continuation of Momigliano:

Quote:

But it is obvious that the game is after all not so futile as it looks. A date is only a symbol. Behind the question of dates there is the question of the continuity of European history.

Can we notice a break in the development of the social and ntellectual history of Europe? If we can notice it, where can we place it?

Historians, theologians, and political theorists have meditated on the decline and fall of Rome for centuries. Toynbee might defend himself by saying that the ancients pondered about the decline of Rome before Rome gave any clear sign of declining. They reflected on the causes of the fall of Rome even before Rome fell in any sense.

Professor Mircea Eliade rightly observed that the Romans were continuously obsessed by the "end of Rome"'. [2] The problem of the decadence of Rome was already formulated by Polybius in the second century B.C. The idea that Rome was getting old is clearly expressed in Florus, an historian of the second century A.D. [3] After the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 the decline of Rome became the subject of the most famous of all philosophic meditations on history - St. Augustine's Civita dei. The Roman empire continued to survive, but people knew that something had happened. They spoke of translatio imperii - of the transition from the old Roman empire to the new Holy Roman empire of Charlemagne and other German emperors. Nobody doubted that the continuity of the Roman empire concealed a change.

mountainman · 03-07-2007, 05:02 AM

M's full text temporarily available from this page

figuer · 03-07-2007, 08:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

.
431BCE Professor Arnold Toynbee (Peloponnesian War)

The Roman Empire did not exist in 431BC, and Rome had no involvement in the Peloponnesian War, therefore it can not be proposed as a date for its end (Something ending before it began???).

The Peloponnesian War brought an end to the "Athenian Empire", not the Roman Empire.

gstafleu · 03-07-2007, 09:08 AM

There is a real sense in which the Roman Catholic church is the continuation of the Roman empire. It preserves the name, has its capital in the same place and pursues the same ideals. The original Roman's aim was to spread "Roman-ness" all over the world via their "pax Romana," which translates rather well as "continuous war against terrorism." The aim of the Church is to spread "Roman-ness" all over the world by converting everyone to their form of Christianity. As the inquisition shows, forceful conversion is not excluded. So, we have similar name, similar place, similar ideals and similar methods--what more do you want?

Gerard Stafleu

spin · 03-07-2007, 10:13 AM

The Roman Empire was doomed before it arrived. The miracle was that it lasted so long. What killed the republic was personal armies, Pompey's, Crassus's Caesar's and Mark Antony's. It was only through extreme nous that Octavian raised himself the way he did, with the luck of good colleagues. Tiberius held the fort until the end (though partly under the control of the Pretorian prefect), then there was a long decline to Vespasian who propped it up again after it had virtually disintegrated with Nero (and various pretenders with their own armed support), only to have it fall from underneath his son, Domitian. Rome didn't know what to do with power so it was given to an old nobody called Nerva, who chose wisely with Trajan as successor and once again empire was propped up, but the cost was frequent campaigning to keep the military occupied. It got so bad, that Marcus Aurelius spent nearly all his reign campaigning, because the empire was over-extended without the resources to give it stability. The last straw was the disastrous reign of Comodus after which the Pretorian guard sold the empire to the highest bidder. Rome was clearly on the slide then. Apart from Septimius Severus, it was all decline and fall from there. Emperors were bought and sold, installed and assassinated. The empire was held together by an unruly army and most emperors emerged from the army. It was through the occasional bout of good administration that it did last so long. It was mainly disastrous administration: soldiers knew how to use military power, but were usually clueless with political power.

(One could also argue that Roman expressive arts peaked around the time of Trajan along with painting and sculpture and then the long decline.)

spin

No Robots · 03-07-2007, 10:40 AM

Henri Pirenne's Mohammed and Charlemagne (or via: amazon.co.uk) completely revolutionized my thinking on this.

Quote:

This last work of the great Belgian scholar Henri Pirenne offered a new and revolutionary interpretation of the evolution of Europe from the time of Constantine to that of Charlemagne. Pirenne’s major thesis is that it was the advance of Islam rather than the Germanic invasions that caused the break with antiquity and the consequent decline of Western civilization in the Middle Ages.

Summary available here.

the_cave · 03-07-2007, 11:05 AM

Quote:

Pirenne’s major thesis is that it was the advance of Islam rather than the Germanic invasions that caused the break with antiquity and the consequent decline of Western civilization in the Middle Ages.

Arguably true.

I say no emperor, no empire--and emperors were crowned by the senate--so if the pope was the successor to the senate (arguable if dubious) I would have to say Charles V at the latest--he was the last HRE crowned by a pope. Everyone after him was a pretender.

But if you're going to be a stickler and limit it to emperors crowned by the Roman Senate, then it's clearly the traditional date of 476. Byzantium called itself Rome (and even had a Senate) but if you're going to include Byzantium then why not the HRE, too.

It all depends on what you mean by "Roman Empire," of course.

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12-25-2006, 01:39 AM	#2
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	Interestingly, the extreme sect of fundamentalist pentecostalism I was brought up in, with their belief that the Pope was the antichrist would probably argue that the Roman Empire never ended! They saw the European Union as Rome - Treaty of Rome! And arguing that the catholic church is only spiritual is not true - the vatican is a state! So is the vatican the rump Roman Empire?

12-25-2006, 01:42 AM	#3
premjan Obsessed Contributor Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: NJ Posts: 61,538	The 'Kingdom of Heaven' was obviously a spiritual equivalent of Rome so it makes sense that the Vatican was built in Rome.

03-07-2007, 05:02 AM	#5
mountainman Contributor Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Falls Creek, Oz. Posts: 11,192	M's full text temporarily available from this page

03-07-2007, 09:08 AM	#7
gstafleu Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: London, Ontario, Canada Posts: 1,719	There is a real sense in which the Roman Catholic church is the continuation of the Roman empire. It preserves the name, has its capital in the same place and pursues the same ideals. The original Roman's aim was to spread "Roman-ness" all over the world via their "pax Romana," which translates rather well as "continuous war against terrorism." The aim of the Church is to spread "Roman-ness" all over the world by converting everyone to their form of Christianity. As the inquisition shows, forceful conversion is not excluded. So, we have similar name, similar place, similar ideals and similar methods--what more do you want? Gerard Stafleu

03-07-2007, 10:13 AM	#8
spin Contributor Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: nowhere Posts: 15,747	The Roman Empire was doomed before it arrived. The miracle was that it lasted so long. What killed the republic was personal armies, Pompey's, Crassus's Caesar's and Mark Antony's. It was only through extreme nous that Octavian raised himself the way he did, with the luck of good colleagues. Tiberius held the fort until the end (though partly under the control of the Pretorian prefect), then there was a long decline to Vespasian who propped it up again after it had virtually disintegrated with Nero (and various pretenders with their own armed support), only to have it fall from underneath his son, Domitian. Rome didn't know what to do with power so it was given to an old nobody called Nerva, who chose wisely with Trajan as successor and once again empire was propped up, but the cost was frequent campaigning to keep the military occupied. It got so bad, that Marcus Aurelius spent nearly all his reign campaigning, because the empire was over-extended without the resources to give it stability. The last straw was the disastrous reign of Comodus after which the Pretorian guard sold the empire to the highest bidder. Rome was clearly on the slide then. Apart from Septimius Severus, it was all decline and fall from there. Emperors were bought and sold, installed and assassinated. The empire was held together by an unruly army and most emperors emerged from the army. It was through the occasional bout of good administration that it did last so long. It was mainly disastrous administration: soldiers knew how to use military power, but were usually clueless with political power. (One could also argue that Roman expressive arts peaked around the time of Trajan along with painting and sculpture and then the long decline.) spin

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