The sun had long ago set, the newborn moon
peeked out from behind a scattering of thin, high clouds. From a vantage point atop one of seven hills
I could see glimpses of how this great city must once have looked. The mammoth buildings seem to shed their long
years and are once again as they were; huge, awe inspiring, it is as if a
portal in time had opened and I am afforded a glimpse into what was Rome. What could have caused this once master of
all cities to fall? This paper will
attempt to describe some of the explanations generally accepted, or should I
say argued, and possibly shed some light on what could have caused the fall of
what was, unquestionably, the most powerful empire in history.
I feel that I must begin with the explanations
given by Edward Gibbon. While few agree entirely with his logic, his Decline
and Fall on the Roman Empire is certainly unavoidable in a paper such as
this. His work could be best summed up
by the word confusing. According to
David Jordan, 'the causes for Rome's fall march across the pages of the Decline
and Fall, seemingly without pattern, and seemingly unrelated to each
other. This quote taken from the seventh
chapter of Jordan's Gibbon and his Roman Empire sum up my feelings concerning
the work; however, I will attempt to show some of Gibbon's Causes for this
decline.
Two of Gibbon's
causes are the political blunders of its emperors and their search for personal
glory. These are especially obvious in
his chapters on Constantine. In them
Gibbon accuses the emperor of destroying Rome for his own personal glory. Another cause would have to be the anti-Roman
nature of Christianity. Gibbons argues
that the 'insensible' penetration of
Christianity was fatal to the empire by undermining the genius of a great
people. On a pessimistic note, Gibbon
also lists as a 'causes' the inevitable collapse of all human institutions,
some arguments on the corrupting nature of luxury, and some detailed
reflections on the vanity of human wishes.
While the arguments presented are lengthily backed, they seem to fail in
explaining the true nature of the fall.
Others, many others disagree with Gibbon's
explanations and proffer their own for approval. One such author is David Woomersley who in
his work, The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ,
openly attacks Gibbon's work calling it 'a blunt instrument with which to
dissect these centuries.' That quote,
taken from chapter sixteen, is one of many which show the violent disagreement
of the two ideas. A few pages later
Woomersley refers to Gibbons works as a stumbling block to historians and again
later refers to Gibbon himself as a poet historian, caught up in the moment and
unaware of the true history of the situation.
The problem is that in the mist of these attacks, Woomersley fails to
bring to light any new and exciting information concerning the fall of Rome and
is seen as simply relying on the old standby that the cause was the corrupting
nature of luxury and power. Woomersley
argues that the Romans became so content in their superiority that they forgot
how to fight and forgot what made them great.
Another who disagrees with the premises of
Gibbon is author and historian David Jordan.
In his work, Gibbon and his Roman Empire, Jordan states that Gibbon
imposed himself on his materials and in doing so distorted the history he was
attempting to record. In Jordan's
opinion, the main cause of the decline was internal decay. Rome had taken the 'known' world and held it
for a very long time. He compares
society to a living organism in so much that if it does not grow, it dies. While it was the Germanic tribes who eventually
leveled Rome, it was Rome's own arrogance which destroyed it long before any
'enemies' entered the city.
This reasoning
certainly seems logical and fits with the political situation of the
times. At the time of the fall, state
was 'overawed' by the soldiers who were simply mercenaries. Leaders were murdered by their own troops for
the wealth they had accumulated. The
'stubborn commons' had been eliminated by the Augustan settlement and it seems
that every reign of the latter emperors finished with the same cycle of treason
and murder. The ladder history of Rome
seems to play like a badly scratched record, frozen into a groove.
One fact which
stands out in my mind is that Rome was greatest before the monarchy.
Once power became centralized, Rome was doomed. In reverse order, England did not become a
world presence until a decentralization of the power occurred, i.e. the
Parliament. The problem seems to be who
takes control when a monarch dies. It is
the internal struggle which uses up so many resources and divides a
nation. It is the losers of such a
struggle which generally cause the break up since while people who oppose a
particular ruler may be forced to live with it, they will never like it. I believe it is this inherent flaw in
monarchy which lead to the continuos cycle of betrayal and murder which marks
the ladder history of Rome.
As I hope this
paper has shown, the issue of what caused the fall of the Roman empire is a
complex one and will most probably remain unsolved for the foreseeable
future. People build on the foundations
of others; patterns form themselves.
Perhaps someday we will know the true reasons for the fall and be able
to use that knowledge to prevent the same fate from destroying our American
'empire.'
Works Cited
Gibbon, Edward.
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. New York: Random
House.
Jordan, David P.
Gibbon and his Roman Empire. Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1971.
Woomersley,
David. The Transformation of The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988.
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