The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians Bilingual Edition

This is history as history should be written. By turns witty, incisive, and far reaching, Heather draws on his broad reservoirs of knowledge of not only of the Barbarians and Rome, but also of modern one-party states and economics--surprisingly relevant topics. I very much appreciated how Heather gave context to the motivations of the sources he quoted, taking nothing at face value and wittily translating the sense of old quotes so that the modern reader could understand them.The book's main thesis is that growing numbers of Huns armed with devilishly engineered bows caused Goths to scuttle for safety onto Roman territory, and ultimately wreak havoc. Even further havoc was wrought when the Huns themselves showed up at the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Ultimately, the Goths and the Huns proved too much for the Empire to handle, and it fell into disarray. Heather's sweeping thesis is told so plainly and well that it seems, in retrospect, to be obvious. For Heather to have come to such dramatically different, but well-grounded conclusions on such a well-explored topic is really a stunning achievement.I have only one quibble with the book, which certainly won't change my five star rating.Heather spends nearly the entire 459 pages of the book making the case for his thesis involving the domino effect of Huns and Goths that toppled the empire. However, he ends the book with a left hook you don't even see coming. The final line reads: "By virtue of its unbounded aggression, Roman imperialism was ultimately responsible for its own destruction." Why spend some 449 pages--the other 98% of the book--expounding the Barbarian domino thesis, then? In fact, earlier, Heather describes how Germania was specifically and purposefully not taken into the Roman Empire because of the logistics and economics involved (this is all described in a section beginning on page 55). Does this sound like Rome had complete and unbounded aggression? Moreover, it was precisely because Rome did not take these areas under its wing that the groups would arise that would eventually bring Rome down.Heather speaks with rightful wonder of the great technical and social advances of the Roman Empire, including everything from aqueducts to heating to roofing tiles. But, although Heather does discuss the technical innovation of the Hunnish bow that allowed the Huns to be so successful in their predations, he doesn't make the ultimate conclusion "The Fall of the Roman Empire" might quite correctly have made. That conclusion would be--it doesn't matter how many bells and whistles a society has or doesn't have. The only thing that really matters is whether a society has a war machine that provides a distinct edge. Of course, that's not a very politically correct conclusion, but it's a thesis that is nicely explored in Victor Hanson's "Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power."All in all, however, I believe Heather's "The Fall of the Roman Empire" to be a stunning achievement, and highly recommend it.

Peter Heather has written a very informative and readable book on the late Roman Empire and his take on the reasons for the fall of the Western Empire. In essence, his thesis is that the fall of the Western Empire was not due to internal imperial breakdown, but rather by the nature and extent of the impact of various groups collectively known as the Barbarians. Rome's imperial expansion, as he concludes in the last chapter, laid the seeds of its own ultimate destruction by the late fifth century AD. Heather begins by laying the groundwork for our understanding of the history and status of the Roman Empire, how it functioned and how it evolved, in other words, what Romanness was about. He also gives us a glimpse of the Barbarians who lived outside the boundaries of the Empire, in Central and Northern Europe and other locations. The great pressure points of the Roman Empire fell roughly along the Rhine and Danube Rivers and Persia to the East. Long before the great challenges during the Fourth and Fifth Centuries AD, Rome had faced the annihilation of three legions under Varus near the Teotoburg Forest in the Empire's early history. During the Third Centrury AD, the Eastern part of the Empire had been threatened and humbled by the Sasanian Dynasty of Persia, which for a time posed the greatest threat to the Empire. His descriptions of the changing nature of Rome are very good and give us a good sense of how the empire was evolving while at the same time adhering to its basic traits. The landowning classes, the military, the division of power at the top (i.e. two emperors, one East, one West), the imperial bureaucracy and other facets are all discussed. The changing nature of the Germanic speaking regions and their economy are also discussed, even with fairly limited evidence. The conflicts between Rome and those across its borders had been occurring for some time, but by the late fourth century AD, things changed in dramatic ways. In AD 376, thousands of these Barbarians sought refuge in Roman territory, a decision that would have grave consequences for Valens and his army at Hadrianople a few years later. Heather argues that it was the Huns migration westwards, in turn pushing these other groups like the Goths into Roman territory, that ultimately had more impact on the decline and fall of the Western Empire than Attila's own raid on the West in the mid fifth century. In AD 410, Alaric's Goths had sacked Rome, though Heather makes it out to be more of a symbolic blow than a life threatening blow for the Empire. There were imperial leaders like Flavius Constantius and later Aetius who managed to check and defeat numerous barbarian forces and usurpers who sought to exact more territory from the Empire, which was gradually weakening the Empire's revenue source and hence it's ability to survive. Ironically, Aetius had been able to enlist the support of Hunnic forces to confront the Visigoths at one point and later when Attila was attacking the West, Aetius employed Visigoths, including their king, Theoderic, against the Huns. The seizure of most of the Roman territory in North Africa by the Vandal-Alan coalition, including its richest provinces like Carthage, was a major blow to the Empire's revenue and supply source. Heather also argues that Attila's death in some ways precipitated the decline of the West as the Hunnic Empire would soon dissolve and the various tribes would be asserting their own desire for independent kingdoms. A final attempt to take back Carthage and Rome's former territories in North Africa with massive assistance from Constantinople in terms of their large fleet would end up in total failure by AD 468. In AD 476, the last Western Emperor was deposed, thus ending the Western Roman Empire. As Heather argues, if internal problems had been the sole reason for Rome's fall, why did the Eastern Empire continue and even flourish for some time afterwards? He also uses the later Carolingian Empire as an example of an empire possessing fatal internal problems. Heather's arguments are sound and seem to be based on pretty solid research. I still don't think there will ever be one definitive explanation for the reasons or the events that led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. I guess since I'm not an expert on it I'm taking a safe approach to this issue. Heather's book is still impressive and displays some sturdy interpretations. Of course one of the difficulties in understanding this period is the lack of surviving evidence from written sources to material remains. There will always be so many unanswered questions. Heather utilizes both the written records and archaeological evidence very effectively. Many of the historians and writers from this period I had never heard of. Overall, a very good book.

Gostei. Ainda estou lendo.

This is extremely detailed and very well written book. Heather's main thesis is that a) Roman Empire had a series of limitations by the virtue of being in the times of absolute primitiveness, and due to the peculiar nature of its political structure (succession crises; frequent civil wars etc.) b) Over the 500 years or more of ruling Gaul, Austria and other regions it had been able to 'civilise' the barbarians - their economics, armies and politics all grew a lot more complex c) there was a black swan event of Hunnic incursions from Central Asia. These incursions from Central Asia pushed the (now more advanced) barbarians into Roman Territory, which the Romans given their other geopolitical commitments couldn't battle. Slowly and steadily these incursions and barbarian settlements generated enough centrifugal forces that the Empire fell the moment Attila popped up.What I dont like about this explanation is lack of institutional arguments - why did Roman empire fall in late fifth century and not late third century. Difference in culture, army composition, political structure, level of 'venality' - such answers are only summarily attended to by the author.Regardless, Heather makes an extremely important contribution to the historiography of the Roman Empire.

Peter Heather ist nicht nur ein scharfsinniger und unglaublich breit gebildeter Historiker, sondern auch ein anschaulicher und witziger Erzähler. Anhand von kleinen historischen Begebenheiten, die besonders gut überliefert sind, beleuchtet er große Zusammenhänge: Eine Korruptionsaffäre und die Stadt Lepcis in Libyen dient zum Beispiel dazu, die Probleme der Verwaltung in einem Riesenreich aufzuzeigen, sie wird aber zugleich spannend erzählt, und mit dem Stichwort "Lepcisgate" werden augenzwinkernde Bezüge zur Gegenwart hergestellt. Der Autor verliert sich aber nicht in solchen Details, sondern ordnet sie in ein neues Gesamtbild vom Untergang des römischen Reiches und der Völkerwanderung ein. Unbedingt lesenswert!

Ayant vu ce livre cité dans un dossier du SPIEGEL (allemand) consacré à l'empire romain je me suis procuré sa version originale (le livre n'est, je crois, pas traduit en français mais il l'est en allemand) et je ne le regrette pas!Moi qui ne connaissait que fort peu de choses sur cette période historique (les 4ème et 5ème siècles de notre ère en Europe), souvent considérée comme très compliquée et illisible, je ressors de cette lecture exigeante ravi car j'ai le sentiment d'avoir compris l'essentiel sur le Chute de l'Empire Romain et d'avoir, en bonus, appris une foule d’anecdotes passionnantes.Heather s'appuie sur les sources de l’époque qu'il sait rendre attrayantes, ce qui, il faut bien l'avouer, n'est pas évident: quiconque s'est essayé à lire la Guerre des Gaules par exemple sait ce que je veux dire.Et pourtant, c'est avec un extrait de la Guerre des Gaules que l'auteur commence son livre de façon passionnante, comme dans un film, un peu à la façon du long métrage Gladiateur de Ridley Scott.J'ai particulièrement apprécié, entre autres, sa narration, appuyée sur un texte sauvé de l'oubli par l'empereur byzantin Constantin VII Porphyrogénète au Xème siècle, d'une ambassade romaine auprès d'Attila : on s'y croirait!Heather propose une explication somme toute simple de l’effondrement de l'empire romain d'occident qui ne repose pas sur une supposée "décadence" comme on le croit encore souvent. Le choc barbare et leur établissement en Espagne, en Aquitaine, en Afrique du Nord privèrent l'empire romain de sources fiscales indispensables au maintien d'une grande armée: la spirale du déclin s'enclencha alors.Ajoutez à cela le fait que les élites romaines de l’empire, tous grands propriétaires terriens, ne pouvaient pas emporter leur richesse (la terre) avec eux et devaient donc s'accommoder des nouveaux dirigeants "barbares" (Wisigoths en Gaule et en Espagne; Vandales en Afriuqe du Nord; etc.), quitte à mettre de côté une partie de leur romanité, et l'on comprend comment en une centaine d'années environ l'empire romain se démembra pour donner les ancêtres de nos états européens actuels.Un livre passionnant donc, écrit par un spécialiste qui sait , comme souvent les anglo-saxons, se mettre à la portée du grand public cultivé. Je le recommande vivement tout en regrettant qu'il ne soit pas traduit en français.

I was surprised when opening a book on the LATER Roman Empire to be confronted by an episode from Book V of Caesar's 'Gallic Wars' which took place in 54 B.C. I remembered studying this episode as part of Latin O.L. (over 50 years ago). I should add that it comes from Book V: 26-37 and NOT Book 6 as the endnote states. Even so, I realised why it was there. Peter Heather starts with what Rome once was, then passes on to what it thought it should be (e.g. the writings of Symmachus (345-404) and then examines the fall of Rome in the west.Unlike Edward Gibbon in 'The Decline & Fall...', who threw away the Western Empire for love of Byzantium, Heather remains true to his title. It is an enormous subject and, although familiar with the subject, I found myself constantly introduced to new aspects. The work ,really in a way is like a spiral in reverse. It starts at a narrow point - Caesar, SPQR, the Principate etc. - and widens out gradually. So he deals with Rome's vulnerability at three points - the Rhine, the Danube and Mesopotamia. Then pops over the borders to look at the causes of such pressure, the Sasanian dynasty in Persia, the Goths the other side of the Danube and the Germanic peoples beyond the Rhine. As relations between Rome and the barbarians are described the reader can recognise both variation and flexibility in such relations but also how so much of historical scholarship has been forced to see matters from the Roman standpoint.After looking more closely at the barbarians, Heather produces a masterly examination on 'the limits of empire'. The basic premise is that the Roman Empire had outgrown its chance of survival. So distances and shortcomings in both administration and communications undermined the effectiveness of the imperial rescript. The Emperor could only act on what he knew and the results could be modified on what both he and the locals knew. Heather dwells on the work of Tchalenko who questioned the thesis of rural decline largely due to imperial taxation after c.300 - as I'd been taught re' Roman Britain when studying AL History fifty years ago. There is a problem: evidence would indicate that the outdated image of rural decline actually persists in Italy and the northern frontiers. Heather cannot explain why? Might I suggest that a couple of factors might be that these areas were more under the imperial eye (& fiscal effectiveness); also I suspect a higher degree of 'out-sourcing' (to use a modern term) by those controlling the wheels of power at the centre. Again Heather notes the decline in 'civic display', pointing out how those with influence migrated away from local to central areas of power - e.g. the rapid rise in the numbers of upper imperial bureaucracies laying down the rules, although 'the process was taken over by locals responding to the rule changes and adapting them to their own interests' (P.117). In sum, life became too complex for central bureaucracy to handle, as contemporary governments are discovering nowadays. Heather argues that the army was neither under-manned nor under-paid when first it had to face unprecedented problems. Thankfully, he dismisses the arguments of Gibbon that the Empire was undermined by the conversion to Christianity. Apart from the theological quagmire of 'orthodoxy' during these centuries affecting the 'chattering classes' (my phrase not Heather's) the population was probably little troubled by this. Wealth granted to the Church simply replaced that granted to pagan institutions (N.B. Coptic Egypt); another point was that the numbers rushing off to a 'religious life' were a tiny minority. 'At the top end of Roman society, the adoption of Christianity made no difference to the age-old contention that the Empire was God's vehicle in the world' (P.125). He compares the system to the one-party state as seen in the Soviet Union, I would suggest Mao's China c. 1960 being a better example: however, he does describe the expansion of a legal 'apparatchik-style' privileged minority, as also seen in the contemporary growth of lawyers and accountants, dealing with the complexities central authority couldn't handle. Finally, his conclusion is quite clear: 'there is no sign in the fourth century that the Empire was about to collapse....... the late Empire was essentially a success story'(P.141). Nevertheless, within a couple of pages the reader DROPS into the section labelled 'Crisis'. May I suggest this relates to the unfashionable ideas of Arnold Toynbee regarding 'Challenge and Response' in 'A Study of History' (1934-61)?The crisis came with the intrusion of Goths across the Danube border in 375, supposedly seeking asylum from the Huns. Why this occurred is obscure. The Gothic ruler, Ermanaric, features little in Heather's work, but large in legend. Might I suggest that Ermanaric applied pressure vs. the Huns who resisted, found defences weaker than expected and overthrew Ermanaric, forcing the Goths to flee westwards. A similar situation occurred in 1219 when the Kwarizmian ruler, Ala ad-Din Muhammad, tried to apply pressure against the Mongols under Genghis Khan to the east. The Mongols struck, overthrew his kingdom and poured into Persia - following that with advances through Russia etc.Heather provides an excellent introduction to the Huns, arguing that their success depended mainly on a long, reflex bow which was asymmetric (knew to me!). Heather rejects firmly the idea that the Huns possessed stirrups, which I thought was debatable. He wades into the origins of the disaster of Adrianople (378), rejecting the usual explanation based on Roman sources. Essentially he argues the Empire was over-stretched because of tension with Persia, failed to control details of allowing the Goths into the Empire (e.g. keeping the two major groups (Tervingi and Greuthingi) apart and the treatment of the Goths by local officials) and actual strategy and tactics.Afterwards, it was a question of patching up a structure on the point of collapse. Peace was made with the Goths under the deceptive glow of a Gothic surrender. A string of Emperors came and went - Gratian (375-83), killed fighting off usurpers; Valentinian II (375-92), and Honorius (395-423), nonentities not deserving the imperial throne; a collection of semi-legitimate emperors, such as Maximus (383-88), flashing and exploding in the chaos of internecine warfare; and Theodosius I (379-95), who tried to establish order out of chaos (like predecessors Diocletian and Constantine)but lacked the time to make it firm enough to survive the next crisis.In 410 Rome fell to the Visigoths and the next 66 years was really a 'long goodbye' to borrow a title. Heather explains all this clearly and fully, with a masterly use of source material. He steps into a series of controversial topics with a sureness of touch; such topics are controversial largely because of the paucity of sources (e.g. the butchery of the work of Olympiodorus of Thebes by later writers / copyists) and their one-sidedness. He applies logic to sort out problems - certainly as a medievalist he must be well-used to such approaches. In this way he handles the gap between the Gothic victory at 'Hadrianople'(sic) and the sacking of Rome in 410; the migration of Vandals, Alans and Suevi in 406 and the early stirrings of Hunnish influence in the 'volkerwanderung' (an antiquated term he never uses). A masterly section is his description of the Vandal intrusion into North Africa. Meanwhile he tackles the infighting at the top of the Roman power structure, requiring close examination of source material, which explains partly how Roman power was swept aside.In the midst of this twilight of a millennium one man stands out in the narrative like a colossus and that is Aetius, performing miracles in restoring imperial control in Gaul and ABOUT to repeat the act in North Africa when in pour the Huns - now under the determined and opportunistic control of Attila. Heather does not hide the fact that Aetius was a fixer, a juggler keeping so many balls in the air to maintain the impossible, the survival of the Western Roman Empire.The challenge appeared to dissipate with the sudden death of Attila in 453 but it proved to be short-lived as the Western Empire was snuffed out in 476. It is no coincidence surely that Aetius was murdered(454) by Valentinian III and within six months the murderer, the last Emperor with any authority within the Western Roman Empire, was in his turn assassinated. As Heather remarks: 'Aetius's death was far more than one man's tragedy. It also marked the end of an era. The death of Attila and the end of the Hunnic Empire not only made it possible for Valentinian to contemplate life without Aetius, it also undermined the delicate balance of powers by which Aetius had kept the western Empire in business.' (PP 374-75) Thereafter heather's tale is of little men doing nasty things to each other until the dregs of a once mighty system trickled away.The book is excellently written, with good citing of sources and a useful glossary. In fact, it is the best book I've read on an important, but usually ignored, subject..One final point. My final impression is that the book should be retitled as 'The Fall of the Roman Empire: A Study in Near-Survival'. It certainly deserves 5 stars.