I think there was a general decline of civilization, both in the east and the west of the Roman Empire, for centuries before the Western Empire’s collapse. You talk about that here in military and administrative terms, but I think it was cultural too.
I’m under the impression that mathematics peaked with Archimedes. I think proto-science peaked a century or two after that. Realistic art died in the 5th century. This is also when the vast majority of pagan Greco-Roman literature was lost. I’ve read that the loss represented 99.9% of what was available in the big libraries of antiquity.
The state didn’t collapse in the east, yet the Byzantine Empire was far less civilized than the early Roman Empire or the late Republic or the Hellenistic states that preceded it, or the Greek poleis that preceded those.
Why was the state more durable in the east? Probably because it had deeper roots there. In the western provinces state structures were a Roman, Med imposition onto tribal societies. A thin veneer. That contrasted with the situation in Egypt, Greece, Anatolia, the Levant.
Why did civilisation gradually decline? Some people point to the dysgenic nature of cities. They were always population sinks. They attracted talent from the countryside, then burned it. Contagious diseases were deadlier in cities. Urban decadence lowered birth rates, as today.
During the Persian wars the Greeks saw the older Middle Eastern civilization as more decadent than theirs. By the late 5th century BC Athenians were sure that they were more decadent than their Persian-Wars-era grandfathers. Spartans were seen as less decadent because they were less urbanized. Athenians’ loss to them in the Peloponnesian War was explained through this difference in decadence level. Willingness to fight, endure hardships.
Macedonians’ conquest of core Greece was explained through their low level of decadence. Unspoiled hicks from the hinterland. The Roman conquest of the Hellenistic world was seen in a similar light. Cato the Elder was appalled by Greek decadence. Wanted to safeguard Rome from it. By the time of Tacitus the Romans marveled at how unspoiled the Germanics were compared to them.
The Hellenistic, Spartan, Macedonian and Roman conquests of old, decadent centers of civilization didn’t destroy them. New peoples joined civilisation, learned from their predecessors, replaced them to some extent. Why did so little of that occur at the transition from late antiquity to the Dark Ages? Why didn’t Germanics replace Gallo-Romans in the cities of the Western Empire? Why did those cities decline instead, disappearing in many cases? That I can’t explain. Big mystery. Especially considering that their descendants advanced civilisation enormously a thousand years later. So they had a large potential.
The Germanics arrived too late, when the cities were already gone? Well, Rome, Ravenna and some others didn’t disappear completely. And there was a long period before the final collapse when Germanics served the empire as mercenaries. Why didn’t they pick up more of classical civilisation then?
The pickup of civilisation by Arab speakers from Greek speakers in the early Islamic period was more successful, but still very incomplete. The classical Greek, Hellenistic and Roman worlds were far more developed than the Islamic one. And culturally the Islamic world declined after 1000 AD.
One of the theories of Roman decline is concerned with the slave trade. The Romans imported free Middle Eastern labor to Italy. I have a special interest in this historical process because I’m likely a product of it. :-)
A recent genetic study seemed to confirm this. With time Rome’s political culture moved from the typical European setup to a typical Middle Eastern one (the worship of the ruler as a God). That seems to corroborate the slave trade theory.
Razib wrote a big substack post against the slave trade/population replacement theory of Roman decline. The opponents of that theory say that slaves tended to die childless. Yet Roman literature is full of mentions of freedmen. And there’s that recent genetic study.
My problem with the "decadence" explanation for the Roman Empire is that, as explained here, Roman decadence had been ongoing for quite a while before the empire encountered any serious civilizational decline or military trouble.
The Roman army arguably peaked with the Battle at the Harzhorn in the 230s; Gaul in c. 400 was far less urbanized than Gaul c. 200 (IDK about the Balkans, where the majority of Roman emperors following Gallienus seem to have come from). I think the "decadence" explanation actually does apply to the Vandals, Visigoths, and Franks, though.
"This is also when the vast majority of pagan Greco-Roman literature was lost."
I think the vast majority of pagan Graeco-Roman literature was lost during the seventh century, with the Arab conquest of Egypt and the shift of the Roman Empire away from Latin.
"Why did so little of that occur at the transition from late antiquity to the Dark Ages?"
Some of it did. The Visigothic, Ostrogothic, and Vandal kingdoms conquered southern Gaul, Italy, and Tunisia largely intact. However, Southern Gaul tended to decay over the course of the sixth through seventh century; Italy and Tunisia decayed under restored Byzantine rule (see Wickham, "Framing the Early Middle Ages" on this). State structures in Gaul and Hispania declined due to the replacement of traditionally Roman institutions with barbarian ones. In Britain, they were gone by the time the Saxons came.
Middle Easterners and Greeks seem to have become more prominent in Italy during the Early Empire, but the Late Empire generally sees a replacement of Greek and Semitic cultural influences with Latin and Germanic ones.
Wat tribes? Rome did decline in population during the 5th century, but Italy as a whole fared decently by Western standards until the wars of Justinian.
Trying to express this more clearly. Cities were always population sinks. In some cases the talent that they burned through was sufficiently replaced. By the surrounding countryside or by wild, high-potential barbarians. But in some cases Dark Ages began.
There were definitely wild, unspoiled, high-potential barbarians around during the decline of the Greco-Roman world. Why didn’t they pick up the slack? That’s probably the most mysterious thing for me here.
Ostrogothic Italy might have picked up the slack had it not been destroyed by the Romans. The Vandal kingdom during the fifth and early sixth centuries was degenerating and was content to allow many parts of Africa to fall into Moorish hands. The Franks and Visigoths did not pick up the slack in the areas they ruled, as they replaced Roman state institutions with ones based on the rule of a small landed armed group. Halsall, Kulikowski, and Wickham have all written about this.
Around 1000 BC the Zhou overthrew the Shang in China. The Zhou were half-barbarian. They were Chinese mixed with a people related to modern Tibetans. They had a simpler material culture, as revealed by archeology. And no writing. The explained their victory through the decadence of the Shang.
Instead of destroying the civilization developed by the Shang the Zhou picked it up and extended it over a much wider area.
Similar things happened many times in many regions of the world.
But a worse outcome also happened many times. The Gutians caused a dark age in Mesopotamia, the Sea Peoples caused a dark age in Greece and Anatolia, the Mongols caused a Dark Age in the Middle East.
Why do barbarian invasions cause dark ages in some cases but not in others? Why does the replenishment of urban population sinks sometimes fail? Interesting questions.
Agreed; it's smart to compare the barbarian kingdoms in the Roman West to those in northern China in the fourth through sixth century (which seem to have preserved state institutions better).
I think there was a general decline of civilization, both in the east and the west of the Roman Empire, for centuries before the Western Empire’s collapse. You talk about that here in military and administrative terms, but I think it was cultural too.
I’m under the impression that mathematics peaked with Archimedes. I think proto-science peaked a century or two after that. Realistic art died in the 5th century. This is also when the vast majority of pagan Greco-Roman literature was lost. I’ve read that the loss represented 99.9% of what was available in the big libraries of antiquity.
The state didn’t collapse in the east, yet the Byzantine Empire was far less civilized than the early Roman Empire or the late Republic or the Hellenistic states that preceded it, or the Greek poleis that preceded those.
Why was the state more durable in the east? Probably because it had deeper roots there. In the western provinces state structures were a Roman, Med imposition onto tribal societies. A thin veneer. That contrasted with the situation in Egypt, Greece, Anatolia, the Levant.
Why did civilisation gradually decline? Some people point to the dysgenic nature of cities. They were always population sinks. They attracted talent from the countryside, then burned it. Contagious diseases were deadlier in cities. Urban decadence lowered birth rates, as today.
During the Persian wars the Greeks saw the older Middle Eastern civilization as more decadent than theirs. By the late 5th century BC Athenians were sure that they were more decadent than their Persian-Wars-era grandfathers. Spartans were seen as less decadent because they were less urbanized. Athenians’ loss to them in the Peloponnesian War was explained through this difference in decadence level. Willingness to fight, endure hardships.
Macedonians’ conquest of core Greece was explained through their low level of decadence. Unspoiled hicks from the hinterland. The Roman conquest of the Hellenistic world was seen in a similar light. Cato the Elder was appalled by Greek decadence. Wanted to safeguard Rome from it. By the time of Tacitus the Romans marveled at how unspoiled the Germanics were compared to them.
The Hellenistic, Spartan, Macedonian and Roman conquests of old, decadent centers of civilization didn’t destroy them. New peoples joined civilisation, learned from their predecessors, replaced them to some extent. Why did so little of that occur at the transition from late antiquity to the Dark Ages? Why didn’t Germanics replace Gallo-Romans in the cities of the Western Empire? Why did those cities decline instead, disappearing in many cases? That I can’t explain. Big mystery. Especially considering that their descendants advanced civilisation enormously a thousand years later. So they had a large potential.
The Germanics arrived too late, when the cities were already gone? Well, Rome, Ravenna and some others didn’t disappear completely. And there was a long period before the final collapse when Germanics served the empire as mercenaries. Why didn’t they pick up more of classical civilisation then?
The pickup of civilisation by Arab speakers from Greek speakers in the early Islamic period was more successful, but still very incomplete. The classical Greek, Hellenistic and Roman worlds were far more developed than the Islamic one. And culturally the Islamic world declined after 1000 AD.
One of the theories of Roman decline is concerned with the slave trade. The Romans imported free Middle Eastern labor to Italy. I have a special interest in this historical process because I’m likely a product of it. :-)
Here’s a 100-year old article about that theory:
https://archive.org/stream/jstor-1835889/1835889_djvu.txt
A recent genetic study seemed to confirm this. With time Rome’s political culture moved from the typical European setup to a typical Middle Eastern one (the worship of the ruler as a God). That seems to corroborate the slave trade theory.
Razib wrote a big substack post against the slave trade/population replacement theory of Roman decline. The opponents of that theory say that slaves tended to die childless. Yet Roman literature is full of mentions of freedmen. And there’s that recent genetic study.
"Realistic art died in the 5th century"
Earlier; early 4th or late 3rd.
My problem with the "decadence" explanation for the Roman Empire is that, as explained here, Roman decadence had been ongoing for quite a while before the empire encountered any serious civilizational decline or military trouble.
https://acoup.blog/2020/01/30/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-ii-water-spilled-on-the-sand/
The Roman army arguably peaked with the Battle at the Harzhorn in the 230s; Gaul in c. 400 was far less urbanized than Gaul c. 200 (IDK about the Balkans, where the majority of Roman emperors following Gallienus seem to have come from). I think the "decadence" explanation actually does apply to the Vandals, Visigoths, and Franks, though.
"This is also when the vast majority of pagan Greco-Roman literature was lost."
I think the vast majority of pagan Graeco-Roman literature was lost during the seventh century, with the Arab conquest of Egypt and the shift of the Roman Empire away from Latin.
"Why did so little of that occur at the transition from late antiquity to the Dark Ages?"
Some of it did. The Visigothic, Ostrogothic, and Vandal kingdoms conquered southern Gaul, Italy, and Tunisia largely intact. However, Southern Gaul tended to decay over the course of the sixth through seventh century; Italy and Tunisia decayed under restored Byzantine rule (see Wickham, "Framing the Early Middle Ages" on this). State structures in Gaul and Hispania declined due to the replacement of traditionally Roman institutions with barbarian ones. In Britain, they were gone by the time the Saxons came.
Middle Easterners and Greeks seem to have become more prominent in Italy during the Early Empire, but the Late Empire generally sees a replacement of Greek and Semitic cultural influences with Latin and Germanic ones.
did rome/italy fair better than the tribes? its literally where it all started
Wat tribes? Rome did decline in population during the 5th century, but Italy as a whole fared decently by Western standards until the wars of Justinian.
Trying to express this more clearly. Cities were always population sinks. In some cases the talent that they burned through was sufficiently replaced. By the surrounding countryside or by wild, high-potential barbarians. But in some cases Dark Ages began.
There were definitely wild, unspoiled, high-potential barbarians around during the decline of the Greco-Roman world. Why didn’t they pick up the slack? That’s probably the most mysterious thing for me here.
Ostrogothic Italy might have picked up the slack had it not been destroyed by the Romans. The Vandal kingdom during the fifth and early sixth centuries was degenerating and was content to allow many parts of Africa to fall into Moorish hands. The Franks and Visigoths did not pick up the slack in the areas they ruled, as they replaced Roman state institutions with ones based on the rule of a small landed armed group. Halsall, Kulikowski, and Wickham have all written about this.
Around 1000 BC the Zhou overthrew the Shang in China. The Zhou were half-barbarian. They were Chinese mixed with a people related to modern Tibetans. They had a simpler material culture, as revealed by archeology. And no writing. The explained their victory through the decadence of the Shang.
Instead of destroying the civilization developed by the Shang the Zhou picked it up and extended it over a much wider area.
Similar things happened many times in many regions of the world.
But a worse outcome also happened many times. The Gutians caused a dark age in Mesopotamia, the Sea Peoples caused a dark age in Greece and Anatolia, the Mongols caused a Dark Age in the Middle East.
Why do barbarian invasions cause dark ages in some cases but not in others? Why does the replenishment of urban population sinks sometimes fail? Interesting questions.
Agreed; it's smart to compare the barbarian kingdoms in the Roman West to those in northern China in the fourth through sixth century (which seem to have preserved state institutions better).