Rome.. after Rome

[Fierro]

Something that I've always wondered about was life in Rome after its fall. Obviously talking about the western half, and although I'm more specifically interested in the city itself and surrounding areas information about other former areas of the empire would be interesting also. Basically, I'm interested in Rome during the dark ages. Unfortunately I've had trouble finding much information about this.
There are so many things which I wonder. For example, how did the new barbarians mix with the Romans? Did the barbarians settle down in the Roman cities? How were they ruled? I'm not going to ask every question I have here since with each question I type I will probably think of another one.
So if anybody could point me in the direction of some good sources I would appreciate it greatly.

[Teucer]

I know that at least in Italy, the 'barbarian' successor kingdom was pretty much just a change of leadership at the top. The Gothic king replaced the Roman emperor, but many governmental posts were still held by ethnic Italians. If fact, the Ostrogothic Kingdom was quite eager to adopt all things Roman (by this I mean LATE Roman, of course, which is a far cry from the culture of Caesar and Augustus). There continued to be Consuls (although I'm not sure about their power), and the Pope in Rome continued to exert significant influence.

Rome and Italy were exhausted by decades of war and the ravages of migratory peoples, but it wasn't until the Lombards invaded Italy some time later that the old Roman system really began to break down.

You might want to look at the life and works of Ancius Manlius Severinus Boethius, to get an example of how an upper class Roman lived during the time of the Ostrogoths. Boethius himself was a philosopher as well as a politician. He was Consul in 510 CE and apparently lived to see his two sons hold the same office.

Gregory of Tours' 'History of the Franks,' might also be worth looking at as a document describing the conditions in post-Roman Gaul (but remember, his facts arn't particularly reliable).

[Krusader]

Quick rundown from what I remember from memory:

City populations went drastically down as trade diminished, notably food shipments. Rural populations increased. Barbarians settled down "everywhere", but I seem to remember that upper classes resided in countryside villas and manors, although others ofc took control of cities. During the 800s the only two cities in Europe that had a population above 100 000 were Constantinople and Cordoba (Al-Qurtubah in Arabic).

It seems most barbarians treated the previous Roman populations well enough, although a set of laws written by Salian Franks makes it clear that Franks had more legal rights than Romans and were legally worth more (with fines for example; harming a Roman person incurred a smaller fine than harming a Frankish person.)

Regarding treatment, when the Eastern Romans/Byzantines recaptured North Africa from the Vandals, the local Romanized population welcomed them at first, but just a decade later wanted the Vandals back as the taxes were much harsher under Justinian.

Rome itself had a significant population during Belisarius' age (although a far cry from Rome of earlier centuries) as it had Gothic garrison which left when Belisarius entered the city and there followed a lengthy siege a year later when the Goths returned. Although the wars between the Easten Romans, Ostrogoths and later the Lombards devastated Italy. I think one writer even said it was the worst devastation the Italian peninsula was subjected to as cities swapped hands, people were killed and farmlands destroyed/left unattended.

[Macilrille]

Bernard S Bachrach has written extensively on how the Franks integrated the old Roman administration and citizens of Gaul.

[Lovejoy]

The western part and especially Rome itself had already suffered large population drops thanks to pandemics long before the Barbarian invasions. As far as I know, not much changed at start, trade continued and things seemed normal. "Barbarian" influences in the Italian language is really limited, which suggest a quick assimilation of the Barbarians, at least in Italy.

I am by NO means an expert, the little knowledge I posses comes mostly from a teaching company lecture-set about the early dark ages.

[Teucer]

Hah! I took a seminar with good ol' Berny Bachrach last year at the U. of Minnesota. That guy was really smart but a terrible teacher

[kurt190]

If I remember correctly the most drastic changes came with the wars of Justinian and the Ostrogoths. These led to the situation where public buildings could no longer be maintained and many of the aquaducts and drainage systems were destroyed. This effectively limited the size of population what was left of the city could support. Population was probably below 50,000.

kurt

[Macilrille]

Hah! I took a seminar with good ol' Berny Bachrach last year at the U. of Minnesota. That guy was really smart but a terrible teacher

That is unfortunately the case with many good scholars.

In order to be a good teacher you have to be extroverted and like attention, storytelling, eyc.

In order to be a good scholar you have to be somewhat introverted and a stickler for details.

Personally I am mostly the former, but can and has forced myself to do scholarship, but notice that the introverted scholar-type student starting a few years after me, read my Ma dissertation and decided to write a Ph D thesis about essentially the same... I could not be bothered, he could...

[G. Septimus]

Something that I've always wondered about was life in Rome after its fall. Obviously talking about the western half, and although I'm more specifically interested in the city itself and surrounding areas information about other former areas of the empire would be interesting also. Basically, I'm interested in Rome during the dark ages. Unfortunately I've had trouble finding much information about this.
There are so many things which I wonder. For example, how did the new barbarians mix with the Romans? Did the barbarians settle down in the Roman cities? How were they ruled? I'm not going to ask every question I have here since with each question I type I will probably think of another one.
So if anybody could point me in the direction of some good sources I would appreciate it greatly.

Justinian defeats the otrogoths because they killed hi emmisary of Ravvena,then maybe italy was attacked after belisaurius returns to constantinople. I think the population sees hatred in each other. maybe riots somtimes occured

[Fixiwee]

That question has always been going on in my mind. How did a city shrink from a million to some ten thousand. What happened with all the buildings? Was Rome a city of ruins?

[Subotan]

I'm guessing most of the buildings weren't very substansial, and either slowly collpased into the ground, or were broken up to make new building projects.

[Fixiwee]

Which new building projects? A shrinking citiy that builds 1000 new homes for people who are leaving the area?

[Subotan]

Walls, defences maybe. Or, perhaps some of the stone was exported back to Byzantium.

[Lovejoy]

Building material to nearby villages I guess.

[antisocialmunky]

It was probably find until Justinian showed up and wrecked Italy for 20 years straight.

[The General]

It was probably find until Justinian showed up and wrecked Italy for 20 years straight.

Not really, Rome depended on grain imports, and even though the population of Rome had sunk from about a million (or two) to somewhere around half a million by the 5th century the rapid loss of inhabitants started after the rich North African provinces were lost (and the nobles lost estates/income with territorial losses). A hundred thousand people or more still lived in the city (in certain parts, with others being abandoned) until the fall of city in 476 and the following sack when the population fell to tens of thousands. In medieval times the population remained relatively small, with several invasions sweeping Italy (after Goths Lombards, then (Eastern) Roman Empire, Arabs, Normans...), plagues (Plague of Justinian, Black Death, etc.) and medieval hygiene (or lack thereof) and agricultural output.

[Uticensis]

Yay, I love when medieval topics come up. Even though I love EB, I’m a medievalist (in grad school for medieval history) so I feel like I can contribute something (though Italy is by no means my area of expertise, I guess that is what you want to know about, with a focus on Rome):

As people have mentioned, Rome probably lost a good deal of population when the Vandals cut off their supply of North African grain. And being sacked didn’t help, either. But the city continued to function, and flourished again under the Ostrogoths, who were eager to imitate Roman government and did a pretty good job. The Senate continued to function, and probably became more powerful (there was no emperor, and so the Gothic king governed the Goths, while the Senate took a lot of the responsibility for governing the native Roman population). The Gothic “barbarians” and Romans seemed to have gotten along alright, with the Goths provided the military of the kingdom I(native Romans were barred from military service under the Ostrogoths), and the Romans providing the civil administrators (thus, Cassiodorus, a Roman senator, was king Theodoric’s right-hand man). There were some issues though: Boethius, a Roman consul who had served under the Goths (and was highly respected by both Goths and Romans) was suspected of plotting to overthrow them and executed, which angered many native Romans. Also, the Roman population tended to be Catholic Christians, while the Goths were Arians, but there was general tolerance and there were not nearly as many problems in Italy as elsewhere (like Spain and North Africa, where Catholics were persecuted by the Arians). In fact, Catholic and Arian churches were usually built next to each other. Also, the Goths settled a little in cities, but they were mostly given land confiscated from Roman, especially in Northern Italy, to build their own estates on. The Gothic forces were probably not that huge, and so they did not have a massive impact on the demographics of Italy, but they did build a peaceful and prosperous kingdom.

However, Justinian’s invasion was incredibly devastating: Rome changed hands four or five times, and a lot of infrastructure was destroyed, most notably the aqueducts. Plus, at this time, a very bad plague moved through the Mediterranean, and devastated the populations of many cities, probably including Rome. When the war was over, the senate ceased to exist and most of Rome was war torn and abandoned. And so after, the Lombards invaded. They never really took Rome, but they did settle much of Italy. Their power base was in the north around Pavia, and they ruled in a similar, though less “enlightened” manner as the Goths. As has been mentioned, weregild (fine for harming someone) was lower for native Romans, implying that Romans were less valuable. But this was probably because, like in the Ostrogothic kingdom, the Lombards were the soldiers, and the Romans the civilians. At this time, many new cities became important, like Pavia, Spoleto, Beneventium, Salerno, Amalfi, ect. And the Lombards governed these through dukes.

The Lombard invasion did serve to increase the population of Rome again because many refugees fled to Rome from the north, so it was no longer a ghost town. It was under these conditions that the papacy really took over running the city, and even though it got sacked by the Arabs, it did slowly recover. The church built a number of areas for the distribution of food and money for the poor, not unlike Classical Rome’s annona system (the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, one such distribution point, was actually built from the ruins of an old Roman statio annonae). In the meantime, Byzantine soldiers from the Exarchate of Ravenna guarded the city (it would be under Byzantine military protection until the Popes, in the eighth century, decided that the Franks would do a better job, and turned to Charlemagne and his father). Also, the papacy owned a good deal of the farm land in Italy, and so they were able to allocate enough food for Rome: more efficient farming methods discovered in the early middle ages helped feed the city, instead of being reliant, as the Roman empire was, on grain imported from overseas.

The biggest help to Rome, though, was probably loss of the Holy Land to the Arabs in the seventh century: pilgrims who could no longer hope to visit Jerusalem settled for the next best thing, Rome. Traffic from pilgrims really boosted the population and economy of the city, and areas that actually had been sparsely populated in Roman times, like the Campus Martius, developed as tourist centers (thus, the very medieval, and not classical, influence on that part of the city). Many foreign leaders sponsored the building of hostels in Rome for visiting pilgrims from their countries (the Schola Saxonum, built by the Anglo-Saxons was the first, but they were followed by the Franks, Alamanni, and Frisians), and many of these visitors no doubt stayed in Rome permanently.

At the same time, a lot of the buildings in the rest of the city were turned into private residences: one of the noble families in Rome eventually turned the Markets of Trajan into their own fortress/house, and built a big tower on it to defend it (the nobles in the city often fought with each other). Hadrian’s mausoleum was turned into a private castle (and is still known as the Castel Sant’Angelo). Some houses built in the ninth century actually were designed to look like Roman ruins (like the Casa dei Crescenzi ) because it was fashionable to live in the ruins of old Roman civic buildings. Some areas of the city were completely abandoned though, and became farm or grazing land. As has been mentioned, some architectural elements were indeed exported to Byzantium: the bronze roof tiles of the Pantheon (which was now a church) for one come to mind. So, by the time Charlemagne invaded took Italy in 800, Rome had changed a lot, it had a much smaller population than in classical times and much was in ruins, but it was also on its way to recovery.

[-Praetor-]

Really nice review, Uticencis. I enjoyed reading that.

[Uticensis]

Thanks! I did not mean to write something that long, but I got a little carried away (the natural result of being in the library trying to study for an exam I don't want to study for).

Fierro:
On the subject of good sources, Procopius' History of the Wars is good for the Ostrogothic kingdom/Justinian's invasion, as is the work of Jordanes. For later events there is Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum, which is a fun source, but you have to take what he says with a grain of salt. Also, the letters of Pope Gregory the Great, one of the most influencial popes, survive, and give some good insight into what life was like it Rome itself.

The best secondary source I can think of is Christopher Wickham's "Early Medieval Italy." It's about thirty years old, so its a little out-dated, but its the classic in the field.