The fall of Rome

An essay by Bill McKenna   ©2012

In the prior essay, I described how rivalry and reliance on military alliances ruined a classical age.  Tonight, we can talk about another way by which the quest for security through arms can lead to collapse, and that is the story of the death of Rome.

First, I need to say an aside on perspective.  I am reasonably well educated, and know history quite well.  However as I went to US grade school in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, and college in the early ‘80’s, my historic education was strongly skewed toward ‘western civilization’ (not always western, not always civilized… do we have an oxymoron here??).  In any case, a lot of my thesis relies on both the history and the intellectual movements of the west.  I wish I could offer a more worldwide perspective, but I’m, going to stick to what I know best.  Perhaps I should collaborate with like-minded bloggers who can widen the scope, and help in my ongoing education.  More on collaboration on another night though.

So, let us get back to Rome.  The unlikely city of Rome managed to conquer the entire Mediterranean basin.  The conquest came at a cost though.  Rome used a powerful military and innovative technology and tactics to win their empire.  That military cost Rome dearly in simple maintenance costs, but even more so in civil liberties.  The military wasn’t sufficiently reined, so over hundreds of years, Rome developed a military-based culture and emperors who were often the most ambitious of the generals.  In the long run, Rome didn’t fall, so much as rot.  The military consumed the people and wealth of the empire; remote legions became permanently established in far-flung provinces and became less Roman.  The ‘barbarians’ didn’t invade, so much as they were absorbed.  They were poorly treated immigrants and refugees who stayed together in nomadic communities.  The so-called invasions were typically from inside Roman boundaries, by these groups who were prompted to violent raiding out of desperation.  In time, the city of Rome no longer mattered; it was the capital of nothing, and the Italian Peninsula became the kingdom of the Ostrogoths.  As my friend Arkady recently reminded me, this was not the end of the empire, but the ‘Roman’ Empire no longer held Rome and gradually became something far different from its new home in Byzantium.

Rome was essentially crushed by its own military culture.  All of the popular notions of Rome’s decline:   Social malaise, fractured provinces, faltering infrastructure were all effects brought about by maintaining a military too big to support.  Mistreatment of an underclass of absorbed tribes was the end result, and the proximate cause of the long fall.

I won’t hit you over the head with comparisons to US society today.  I think were the parallels are obvious they fit.  American culture, however, is still more vibrant, our republican government still works; we’re doing a better job than Rome did, even if some days it looks like were caught in a similar trap.  So, if you think you see the later empire in America today, I would ask you to take reassurance that we have learned to govern ourselves better than they ever did, but also to take pause that we sometimes think American power alone will sustain us.