When was Rome doomed?

[Raphia]

We all know Rome ended blah blah AD, but at what point was it truly finished as in never going back to its former glory?

[Olaf Blackeyes]

The final split after the death of Julian the Apostate.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

From Marius onwards at the latest I would say. Once the Principate got underway it was a permenant dive overall; with a few false rallies. Had Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Marcus Antonius, Brutus etc. all died in infancy it might have survived. The Republic required massive reform and the practical extension of enfranchisement to however, not a line of despots.

[penguinking]

I think he meant the empire and not the republic.

Rome became doomed when the Vandals conquered North Africa in 429 and Rome lost a huge portion of her revenue. From that point on, things just spiraled downhill.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I think he meant the empire and not the republic.

Rome became doomed when the Vandals conquered North Africa in 429 and Rome lost a huge portion of her revenue. From that point on, things just spiraled downhill.

You misunderstand, Rome as a nation, Republic or Empire, was doomed from the time of Marius.

The Principate never became a true monarchy and Rome never developed beyond a city state. Instead the Empire effectively became one man's private holdings and the army his personal mercenaries. Once that happened it was going to go south sooner or later.

[We shall fwee...Wodewick]

Surely all empires are destined to "go South". Name a single empire that has stood the test of time. Where is the British Empire now? Spanish? Mongol? Roman? Byzantine? Ottoman? All empires are destined to fall eventually.

[antisocialmunky]

When it stopped expanding and turned in on itself.

[Mulceber]

You misunderstand, Rome as a nation, Republic or Empire, was doomed from the time of Marius.

I disagree. Using your logic, you could argue that Rome was doomed from the time of Romulus because he founded it. All empires are doomed to eventually fall. And to say it was downhill from the time of Marius isn't even accurate either - Rome reached its peak during the late Principate, with a wonderful succession of rulers - Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, and while it had some wackos like Caligula, Nero and Domitian, the Early Principate also had some very good Emperors such as Augustus, Tiberius (or at least Tiberius in the early part of his reign), Claudius, Vespasian and Titus. No, honestly, Monarchy was a much more viable form of government than their Republic (and I mean their Republic, not ours), which was populated with traditionalists without the vision to see the inherent problem with a constitution designed to rule a city being used to rule an Empire. No, even if all the people you cited hadn't been born, the Republic would have fallen. It was inevitable.

We all know Rome ended blah blah AD, but at what point was it truly finished as in never going back to its former glory?

The Empire experienced a lot of setbacks throughout the 300's, but they also rallied a lot too. I would say that by the end of the reign of Honorius, there was no chance of them recovering - he'd inherited the western Empire in fairly good shape from his father Theodosius, but he was grossly incompetent, controlled completely by his advisers. Such incompetence didn't really inspire loyalty and a lot of usurpers and governors started revolting in the hopes of taking his throne. It was around this time that the Barbarians started invading, having been pushed out of their native lands by other barbarians, and in this time what Rome really needed was to be united in the face of this common enemy. Instead, the various Roman factions generally ignored the Barbarian threat and concentrated instead on determining who was allowed to wear a crown. By the end of Honorius' reign (which, unfortunately was a long one), Rome was completely dependent on military dictators (all of whom were either German or commanded German troops) for protection. Most of the previous setbacks were bad, but this was really the point of no return. -M

[Zues!]

Hears what I learned this year in history class:

With out details Rome was doomed when they went to war with Carthage I believe, and also when they started being ruled by poor leaders. When they split the Empire into Easterns and Western Empires Rome was already on a down fall but that made it worse....:D I know nothing compared to yall I jus like playing the game and learning about:D

[Marcus Ulpius]

First symptoms of future problems were when the army turned professional, but was bound to the commander more than to the state itself. Major problem was lack of loyalty towards Rome, not towards Caesar Pompey or Crassus. It created tons of problems later, including dismantling of the republic and in principate times - civil wars with apotheoses - the time of soldier emperors.

As for decline of the Empire, there are lots of theories for that. Some state the economic crises (as we see that the equipment of later legionnaires is worse than that of the Augustan times), the richest parts of the Roman Empire actually were at that time part of the Eastern Roman Empire, which caused bankruptcy of the treasure. This, combined with Barbarian onslaught on the Empires' western borders caused collapse.

Other theories are more controversial, like those, based on Gumilev's theory of inner energy of civilization. According to this, when the inner energy is spent we see the depopulation, sharp decline in prestige of the state (people stop asking what they can do for their country and start asking what their country can do for them), the benefits of the state are forgotten and neglected in favor of the personal gains. The loss of core ideology (such as traditional Roman paganism), which is replaced by foreign young and aggressive ideologies (like Christianity and Mythraism). According to this theory, the barbarians that attacked Rome in the 4-5th centuries were not stronger than those that Rome fought them throughout the history, it was Rome that became much weaker.

[kekailoa]

Zues!

You need a new history teacher.

[chenkai11]

Zues!

You need a new history teacher.

No, I like the idea Rome was doomed by Carthage.

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

That's what Scipio thought, apparently. By destroying Carthage unnecessarily, Rome became corrupt.

[Aper]

I think he meant the empire and not the republic.

Rome became doomed when the Vandals conquered North Africa in 429 and Rome lost a huge portion of her revenue. From that point on, things just spiraled downhill.

Pure truth. Sorry, but the rest is only the usual blabla.

[oudysseos]

Peter Heather's Excellent book The Fall of the Roman Empire proposes that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of collapse, not even into the 5th century AD. What brought it to an end were the "barbarians"- centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors it called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling the Empire. The Huns drove the Goths to seek refuge inside the Empire, but the ham-handed Roman response created a conflict which they lost. The Goths won Hadrianople in 378 and sacked Rome in 410, although in the meantime Theodosius managed to come to terms with the Goths and reunite the Eastern and Western halves of the Empire by 395. If he hadn't died relatively young then what?
But the Vandals blew through Gaul and Spain before taking North Africa in 439, denying huge resources to the Romans. Then came Attila, the Wrath of God. (I'd have loved to see Klaus Kinski do Attila). All Odoacer had to do in 476 AD is pick up the pieces.

Well worth reading.

This certainly was not the end of the Eastern Roman Empire, not for a thousand years. And I think that Justinian's ambitions were not doomed to failure: Belisarius had recovered Africa and all of Italy by 540 AD. If he had truly accepted the offer to become Emperor of the West, who knows what could have happened? And even though it didn't turn out that way, his success shows that Rome was still a viable idea even into the 6th century AD.

So I'd have to disagree with PVC: if Rome was doomed from the time of Marius, why did it take 500 more years to fall? That just doesn't make sense to me.
And as far as

The Principate never became a true monarchy and Rome never developed beyond a city state.

Rome developed so much beyond a city state that the city itself ceased to be central to the Empire: long before the Western Empire fell Rome had become an antiquated backwater. Even in Italy Ravenna and Milan were more important, not to mention Constantinople. The idea of 'Rome' had been exported, that is to say, had developed beyond the original city itself.
As far as Rome not being a true monarchy, I guess I'd have to know what is meant by 'true monarchy'. Many nations/empires/kingdoms from before Rome to after it experienced frequent dynastic changes and experimented with various ways of delegating authority. I don't see how the later Roman Empire, say from the 2nd century AD onwards, doesn't fit into that spectrum.

[Macilrille]

I can name you two empires that has stood the test of time and are still around, India and China.

As for the cause of the fall of The Roman Empire, which is what we are discussing here under the guise of chronology, I can but say that the more I learn, the more I learn I do not know. My specialisation as a historian is Danish Viking- High Middle Ages, secondarily Iron Age and Roman history (I would estimate that I have read 20k+ academic pages on Roman history), so I know a lot, but not enough to say what caused the fall of the empire. And I think that no one can ascertain it for certain, nor that it was one single cause. Nothing in history is caused by a single cause. probably internal dissention, economic weakness, demilitarisation/military weakness and some ideological changes as well that all played their role in the fall.

Were I to wager a guess about when the empire was doomed I would say 406 AD when Stilicho pulled the border garrisons away from the Rhine, allowing the Vandals, Alanss, Suebi and Burgundi to overrun the Western Empire where the Goths were already on a rampage (on New Year's Eve no less). The Empire never recovered from that, even though most of the Germanic Kings and Chieftains would gladly have settled for a high place in the Roman System and a place for their tribe to live. The Empire was deteriorating and they instead had to build new realms on its ruins, Bachrach has some insightful points about the integration of Roman and German, mostly in Gaul -> France.

[We shall fwee...Wodewick]

I'm not sure that India and China as empires have stood the test of time. India was British possession for hundreds of years and the Chinese empire fell in the early part of the 20th Century. But it's impossible to name a single factor for any empires demise. Yes there will be key factors, but it's the whole jigsaw that represents the cause. If for the sake of argument, you wished to mark a point of no return, I'd say the final split of east and west. The West didn't have the wealth of the East and slowly died. then the East lived on for centuries.

[Ibrahim]

I can name you two empires that has stood the test of time and are still around, India and China.

As for the cause of the fall of The Roman Empire, which is what we are discussing here under the guise of chronology, I can but say that the more I learn, the more I learn I do not know. My specialisation as a historian is Danish Viking- High Middle Ages, secondarily Iron Age and Roman history (I would estimate that I have read 20k+ academic pages on Roman history), so I know a lot, but not enough to say what caused the fall of the empire. And I think that no one can ascertain it for certain, nor that it was one single cause. Nothing in history is caused by a single cause. probably internal dissention, economic weakness, demilitarisation/military weakness and some ideological changes as well that all played their role in the fall.

Were I to wager a guess about when the empire was doomed I would say 406 AD when Stilicho pulled the border garrisons away from the Rhine, allowing the Vandals, Alanss, Suebi and Burgundi to overrun the Western Empire where the Goths were already on a rampage (on New Year's Eve no less). The Empire never recovered from that, even though most of the Germanic Kings and Chieftains would gladly have settled for a high place in the Roman System and a place for their tribe to live. The Empire was deteriorating and they instead had to build new realms on its ruins, Bachrach has some insightful points about the integration of Roman and German, mostly in Gaul -> France.

India only achieved full unity in 1947: before hand, there were at least 2-3 empires in India, or were ruled by the British. China was repeatedly borken up (after the Han, the Tang, and that one sung dynasty).

even at the height of the mughals mind you, southern India remained independant, even in the reign of Akbar or Aurungzeb (I misspelled I know).

[Dol Guldur]

Let's look at some quotations from historians and commentators....


"Having given up the habit of controlling their children, they let their children govern them, and took pleasure in bleeding themselves white to gratify the expensive whims of their offspring. The result was that they were succeeded by a generation of idlers and wastrels, who had grown accustomed to luxury and lost ALL sense of discipline" (Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, 78-79).

Carcopino goes on to say that at the same time there was "an epidemic of divorces," and quotes Seneca as having stated, "They marry in order to divorce" (Ibid. pp. 97, 100).

He also tells us that a strong "women's rights" movement developed in Roman society: "Some wives evaded the duties of maternity for fear of losing their good looks, some took pride in being behind their husbands in no sphere of activity, and vied with them in tests of strength which their sex would seem to forbid; some were not content to live their lives by their husband's side, but carried on another life without him ... It is obvious that unhappy marriages must have been innumerable" ( Ibid. pp. 90, 93, 95).

Regarding schools he wrote:

"They undermined instead of strengthened the children's morals, they mishandled the children's bodies instead of developing them, and if they succeeded in furnishing their minds with a certain amount of information, they were not calculated to perform any loftier or nobler task...The pupils left school with the heavy luggage of a few practical and commonplace notions, laboriously acquired, and of so little value, that in the fourth century, Vegetius could not take for granted that new recruits for the army would be literate enough to keep the books for the corps" (Ibid. pp. 106-107).

"The Roman virtues - honesty, candor, frugality, and patriotism - withered and died. What was left was a people whom neither the vices of the rulers, nor the increasingly bold attacks of foreign enemies could shake out of their apathy," Myers wrote.

"In all the great cities of the provinces, the theater held the same place of bad preeminence in the social life of the inhabitants...The Roman stage was gross and immoral. It was one of the main agencies to which must be attributed the undermining of the originally sound moral life of Roman society. So absorbed did the people become in the indecent representations on the stage, that they lost all thought and care for the affairs of real life" (Myers, Rome: Its Rise And Fail. pp. 515, 516).

Turning back to Carcopino: "The thousands of Romans who, day after day, from morning till night, could take pleasure in this slaughter, and not spare a tear for those whose sacrifice multiplied their gambling stakes, were learning nothing but contempt for human life and dignity" (Carcopino, Daily Life In Ancient Rome, pp. 238, 240, 243).

T. frank in the American Historical review wrote: "This orientalization of Rome's population had a more important bearing than is usually accorded to it, upon the larger question of why the spirit and acts of Imperial Rome are totally different from those of the Republic" (July, 1916).

Immigrants (who had influxed rapidly into the Roman Empire) "did not spring from the soil of rome, their recollections and affections were elsewhere. While the statesmen and leading men wore themselves out in trying to preserve what remained of the ancient spirit and old customs, down below, amongst those classes of the population which were constantly being recruited from slavery, there was a continual working to destroy it" (Historians History Of The World, Vol. 6, p. 365).

Government started to give out free handouts. This welfarism became a "leading fact of Roman life. The evils that resulted from this misdirected state charity can hardly be overstated. Idleness and all its accompanying vices were fostered to such a degree that we shall probably not be wrong in enumerating the practice as one of the chief causes of the demoralization of society" (Myers, Rome: Its Rise And Fall. p. 523).

So, as inevitably happens when government gets involved in what should be private matters, government got involved even more to "sort out" the problems its own interference an dpolicies had mainly caused in the first place: "There were land taxes, property taxes, occupation taxes, poll taxes." As a result, "the heart was taken out of the enterprising men."

After the tex burden became so great and the business owners descreased "the government intervened and bound the tenants to the soil [the beginning of serfdom], and the businessmen and the workmen to their occupations and trades. Private enterprise was crushed and the state was forced to take over many kinds of business to keep the machine running....This led to still further strangling taxation with repeated devaluations of the currency that fatally weakened the middle class, and decimated its natural leaders. The attempt to cure the resulting disorder with the complete regimentation of the totalitarian state merely gave a temporary check to the progressive decay. Disintegration followed the stifling of initiative .... " (Haskell, The New Deal In Old Rome, pp. 216-218, 220-21, 231-32).


So what set the rot in Rome?

The same things that have set the rot in our society.

[Aper]

I can name you two empires that has stood the test of time and are still around, India and China.

Yeah, and oriental people like all the same...

Maybe you could mind reading some basics history of that people before posting nonsense... India has never been an unified empire, the various dinasties/empires that ruled the north of the country more often than not had little in common with each other... Same for China : different dinasties, different peoples, different cultures... a lot of political instability in some ages, unification in others... and regarding today, the current regime has NOTHING in common with the ancient traditions, apart from propaganda, obviously: actually, it fought fiercely against the old chinese ways (resulting in big cultural losses for the country)

To say that the chinese empire survived the test of time because of the modern china is like to say that the European Union is the descendant of the Roman Empire...

About the reasons you posted, it's not entirely true in my view: that of 406 was one of the greatest blows Rome suffered, but not a lethal one, after that western romans achieved again the goal to become at least the dominant political power in Europe, and slowly began to regained what had lost.

The point of no return was reached first with Attila, that caused an inimmaginable havoc in roman Gaul and in the already suffering Italy, and wipe out the last valuable military forces of Aetius, then with the Vandal invasion of africa, the empire lost its cash cow = no new soldiers. After that the end was almost unavoidable... almost!

A little known emperor, Majorian, gained back a lot of territories and pacified Gaul and Spain: he assembled a great army and fleet, and when everithing was ready to reconquer Africa, the fleet's officers defected to Gensericus, leading to the assasination of the politically weakened emperor. Indeed, it was a pity, and a chance lost. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majorian

And, btw, the roman empire fell or in 1204 (4° crusade) or in 1453 (Memhet II take Costantinople) , not surely in 476... or someone still believe papist propaganda?

[bobbin]

I can name you two empires that has stood the test of time and are still around, India and China.

India was never really a political entity before modern times. It was more like what we would term Europe today ie a group of peoples who share a cultural heritage but are divided among different countries and languages.

China fits the statement a bit better but was still ruled by foreigners or divided among different empires at many points in history eg mogols, warring states peroid.

edit: bah! aper beat me to it.

[Hax]

Japan.

[Siruso]

I think it was after it stopped gaining new territory. The Roman Empire was based completely around conquering, and after they stopped gaining any new territory they began to run out of money for the armies. After Augustus, Roman territory pretty much stayed the same with a few minor increases (Trajan)

[Olaf Blackeyes]

Japan.

OWNED!!!!!

[||Lz3||]

When it was divided between 2 brothers.

[Ibrahim]

India was never really a political entity before modern times. It was more like what we would term Europe today ie a group of peoples who share a cultural heritage but are divided among different countries and languages.

China fits the statement a bit better but was still ruled by foreigners or divided among different empires at many points in history eg mogols, warring states peroid.

edit: bah! aper beat me to it.

actually, I beat Aper before he beat you. so there.

[Ludens]

Peter Heather's Excellent book The Fall of the Roman Empire proposes that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of collapse, not even into the 5th century AD. What brought it to an end were the "barbarians"- centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors it called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling the Empire.

Somehow, that sounds frighteningly familiar to me. Still, it's an argument, although I doubt that a single reason was solely responsible for the fall of the Roman empire.

[Krusader]

I can name you two empires that has stood the test of time and are still around, India and China.

Indian & Chinese culture/civilization yes, but political entity? No.

India today is united, although a few Indians might disagree with that statement as Pakistan & Bangladesh are not part of India. And Mahatma Gandhi was also very much against it.

[LordCurlyton]

Japan.

And that proves....
They've only been united for a few hundred years. Plenty of time for dissolution to set in again. Or more likely conquered by outsiders.

[Fixiwee]

My university teacher in ancient history brought us a sheet of paper which read:"Reasons for the decline and fall of the roman empire".
On that sheet of paper where about 70 to 100 terms. Economic crisis, barbarian invasion, incompetence, even weird terms like homosexuallity, but many more then I can recall right now. What she said is, that this are all terms used by historians to explain the decline of Rome. She showed us that for a simple reason, to prove that there is no exact explenation for the decline of Rome.

You people may interpret all the signs and effect, but the decline was so complexe and is far beyond grasping with the limited sources, that we will never fully understand why it happen.

Oh, and the famous historian Habsbawn made an interessting theisis about the decline. He mentions that the cours of history was often determined by civilization against barbarians. He mentions all the ancient empires that were effected by that, but only the Western Roman Empire was completley destroyed. This set out a motion throughout the history of Europe to reinvent and reconstruct the Roman Empire, most notably the Resnaissance. Thus Europe set out for a different path of history. It's a bit vague how I can discribe it, but if someone is interessted in the passage I can type it down.