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.
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.