Essay - The Ruin Of Rome

Winston Churchill once said there are two reasons for anything happening; the popularly accepted reason and the real reason(s). So here are the REAL reasons behind the Decline And Fall of the Roman Empire (as outlined by Edward Gibbon, Arnold Toynbee and other eminent historians of the classical period)

Imperial "Overstretch" : The Roman Empire at its height covered most of southern, central and western Europe (Gaul, Hispania, Italia, Britannia, parts of Germania, etc.), Asia Minor and North Africa. Centuries before the European Union, the Romans had succeeded in unifying most of Europe under the Pax Romana and instituted one currency (the Sessertii) long before the Euro. A full three-fourths of humanity lived and died under the long reign of the Caesars. All the far-flung provinces of empire were linked by the famed Roman roads ("All roads lead to Rome") and sea-going galleys in the Mediterranean sea and Atlantic ocean. Roman maritime expeditions from seaports in the Holy Land even reached as far as Malabar (Southern India) and South-East Asia.

The costs of maintaining control over an ever-expanding empire's scattered geographical possessions became too much over time. Revenue was increasingly outpaced by expenditure.  Pontius Pilate (the hapless Roman governor who famously washed his hands off Jesus Christ) got into hot water for raising an unpopular tax to build a bridge that would have helped trade. This PR disaster ensured his recall to Rome, not the execution of Christ; then an obscure religious personage of limited significance.

Chariots and ox-drawn carts had their limitations as modes of transport. The technology of the time made long-distance communications (and hence, control) tenuous, increasingly inadequate and hard to maintain. The later British, by contrast, had steamships, telegraph lines and the Suez Canal to link them to their empire in India and points farther east.

The Romans initially ruled much of their empire through proxy rulers like Togidubnus, monarch of what is now Sussex in Britain. A high-born Briton, he was educated in Rome, then brought back to Sussex and installed as a pliant client king. Togidubnus proved his loyalty to his Roman masters by ensuring Sussex did not join Boudicca’s revolt in AD 60. The revolt was eventually crushed and the Pax Romana reinstated.

However, the Romans eventually became impatient of the constraints of indirect rule through allies. In the second phase of imperial expansion, they increasingly tried to exert direct control. This proved to be the Roman’s undoing as they ended up stretching themselves thin.

As the hold of Rome loosened, the provinces began to gradually break away. The influential Governors of the more prosperous provinces even began to meddle in the politics of Rome itself. The Empire itself eventually split in two, with a western wing and an eastern wing whose capital was Constantinople (now Istanbul).

* Factionalism & Civil Strife : Rome, at its height, was a polyglot empire in which native-born Romans rapidly became a minority. The Roman Empire had to, perforce, reconcile the often divergent interests of the diverse peoples who came under it. Brute force alone could not always be relied on to suppress regional aspirations which sometimes came into conflict with the central authority.

Slave revolts, like the ill-fated one of the famed Spartacus, contributed to civil unrest and social tumult. These were eventually controlled, but at some cost. The institution of slavery, once the economic engine of empire, increasingly became a liability in later years.

In addition, politicians in the Roman Senate also had to keep their constituents happy, even under the rule of the most autocratic Emperors. Tensions between the later Emperors and factions in the Senate ensured the political scene was always on the boil. And this was even when the Senate was little more than a rubber stamp! Working modern democracies manage consensus much more successfully than the ancient Romans ever did.

The Roman Army : No finer military machine existed in its time than the Roman Army. Despite being satirized in Asterix comics, it was an organized, disciplined force employing better weapons, training, tactics and strategy than those used by its opponents. Apart from military operations against external foes, the Army was also responsible for general security and policing the Empire.

The Roman Army offered a way up to ambitious young men of ability. Military service, especially as a Tribune or military governor, paved the way to senior positions in Rome for men of ability who lacked money or connections. The Army even co-opted talented outsiders like Stilicho the Barbarian.

The Roman Army became infected with politics to the extent that cronyism and factionalism eroded its stature. The elite Praetorian Guard was used to keep military factions in check while the Emperor, in turn, kept the Praetorians on a tight leash. However, in practice, this wasn’t always possible. The reins had begun to slip.  This was detrimental to martial readiness and general professionalism. These factors also helped impede the adoption of military reforms and other innovations. These changes might have enabled the Roman Army deal better with the new guerrilla tactics evolved by the encroaching barbarian tribes of the North.

Unfortunately, the Army became a player in the power struggles that rocked Rome. In AD 193 and again in 218, the imperial guard sold the throne to the highest bidder. Between AD 253 and 284, Rome had as many as 43 emperors. Forty of these were military men, murdered in coups by their fellow Romans within months of assuming the purple. Of the remaining three, one died of plague and the other two were killed by Gothic invaders and Sassanid Persians. 

Various contenders for the post of Emperor and factions in the Senate vied with each other to woo the Army for support in their power struggles. Once a general rebelled, his army would normally abandon the frontier it was supposed to be guarding in order to wage civil war, leaving the empire open to Barbarian invaders. Participation in these civil wars didn't help morale much either. This wasn’t good for military discipline too.

Thankfully, today’s democracies have managed to insulate their armies from politics with some success. The primacy of civilian authority was recognized even then by the patrician who famously declared that war was much too serious a matter to be left to the generals.

* The Barbarians : The resurgent barbarian tribes of the North were a loose-knit confederacy of Visigoths and Vandals. Organized into roving war bands, they were a shadowy presence, adept at melting away into the great forests of northern Europe. The guerrilla tactics of the barbarian tribes were difficult to contend with. The Roman Army suffered considerable setbacks in its push deep into Germania under Varus. Subsequently, the Romans confined themselves to containing the barbarians by holding them off at the frontiers through a line of fortifications on the banks of the Rhine.

As they had no central authority as such, no meaningful treaties or universal pacts could be entered into with the barbarian tribes. Local Roman commanders made limited agreements of convenience with the reigning chieftains in their regions. These piecemeal arrangements eventually broke down, with the steady erosion of Roman military capabilities. Seizing their chance, the northern barbarians invaded.

Under Alaric the Goth, they sacked Rome itself. Such was the political vacuum caused by the collapse of the central authority that the invaders were initially welcomed as a stabilising force. Alas, it was not to be and the short-lived kingdom founded by the barbarians proved even more dysfunctional than the Roman Empire under the old Emperors. The long night of the dark ages was about to commence...

It should be noted that the barbaric Germanic tribes of the North were also facing pressure from invading Huns out of Central Asia. Attila the Hun and his successors later ravaged both Visigoths and Romans with savage impartiality.

* Economic Crisis : "Our women's fondness for costly Indian stuffs will lead to universal ruin!" - so lamented a famed Roman historian. Indian luxury goods like silk, muslin, ivory, spices, handicrafts and exotic animals were all the rage in ancient Rome. And not just with women, either. Unfortunately, the Romans had nothing that the ancient Indians were interested in, by way of reciprocal trade.

So, all these luxuries had to be paid for in gold, and later, mainly silver bullion. This initially led to a trade deficit and drain of wealth, with damaging results to the treasury of Rome. The Roman coffers were becoming increasingly empty of precious metals. Increased production from mines across the Empire helped overcome this problem and more than meet the demands of commerce.

More serious than this trade deficit was Rome’s slave-based economy. And the slaves, who were the main means of production, were always revolting or escaping. Slavery, the economic engine of empire, was breaking down. With population, agriculture and trade in free fall, cash-strapped emperors stinted on soldier’s pay or debased the coinage to make their limited stocks of silver go further. Increasingly worthless coinage set off vicious inflation, depressing the Roman economy even more.

* Morality : Sexual morality, or lack of it, definitely did NOT play a significant role in the fall of the Roman empire. This is hard to measure exactly, but the Romans were probably no more moral or immoral than many modern societies today.

The popular image of Romans engaged in widespread debauchery is misleading. Yes, a criminal underclass did exist in Rome. Yes, prostitution was prevalent in the Roman equivalent of red-light districts. And yes, sections of Roman society did have a predilection for what would be considered strange sexual practices today. Sexual abuse of domestic slaves was another vice of the times. However, the people who indulged in these were not representative of the Roman world as a whole. Available documentary evidence indicates that the Romans generally tended towards social conservatism.

The majority of Romans scraping a living did not have (a) the resources and (b) the leisure to really live it up. There were people who could not afford even the cheapest seats at the Circus Maximus to watch the gladiators. They had to simply do without. While gladiatorial combat could be very bloody, a lot of it was like today's televised wrestling - just show. A trained and experienced champion gladiator was often too valuable an investment to be lightly squandered by injury or death in the arena.

The typical Roman wife was held up to a high standard. She was expected to be a chastely faithful companion to her husband.  Manageress of her home, the Roman matron was charged with the upbringing of her children and the supervision of the domestic slaves. As traditional upholder of family custom, the Roman matriarch conducted worship of the household gods. Juno, Goddess of the Hearth, constant consort to Jupiter, patron deity of wives and mothers, was important to her. 

Most respectable Roman matrons deplored the scandalous conduct of the libertine empresses Messalina and the Augusta Julia who were notorious even in their own time. Several of the more conservative Roman emperors vainly tried to outlaw sex shows and ban gory gladiatorial contests. An official Censor of Women's Morals was even appointed to police what was considered unacceptable behaviour in public.

Austerity and social propriety were extolled as desirable virtues to the extent that many Romans felt very constrained by public morality. The Saturnalia was an annual festival designed to allow citizens to let off steam as a relief from social strait-jackets.  For just one day in the year the Roman public had official sanction to carouse, indulge in practical jokes and generally run wild. "Let us now die like Romans, as we have lived like Grecians" - a popular quote indicated that while the ancient Greeks were thought to be hedonistic and licentious, the Romans were considered to be austere, moralistic and puritanical.

The Romans got a bad press largely due to (a) themselves and (b) the prejudice of the later Christians. As the empire went deeper into political decline, more and more Roman voices chorused (wrongly but understandably) "It’s terrible what things are coming to! The Gods are surely punishing us for our wicked ways." Drawing irrational causal links between perceived immorality and adverse external events has long been a human failing. The publication of Henry Fielding's racy picaresque novel "Tom Jones" was widely held to be the cause of an earthquake that coincidentally struck 18th century London. Since then, far more lurid works of the Harold Robbins / James Hadley Chase genre have been published without attendant tremors.

The early Christians, it should be noted, were always demanding tolerance from other groups but were unwilling to extend that same tolerance to non-Christians. Their denunciation of other, competing faiths (or anyone who wasn't a Christian) did not sit well with the otherwise easygoing Romans, who, understandably, saw them as a fanatical and subversive mystery cult. The Romans were rather relaxed pagan polytheists whose universe had plenty of space for Gods of all kinds, even other people's Gods. Persecution, naturally, led the Christians to consider the Romans to be irredeemably wicked. Since the study of history has been freed from the grip of biased ecclesiastical authorities, a more balanced view of ancient Rome is becoming generally accepted.

The Sunday-school tenet of moral decline causing political decline doesn’t really hold water. Especially, after the Roman Empire adopted Christianity (and presumably, Augustinian morals as well) as its official religion under the Emperor Constantine. This espousal of the Christian religion and Christian morals did little to stave off the eventual fall of Rome as a world power in 476 AD. For that matter, two later avowedly “Christian” states, the Holy Roman Empire and the Frankish Kingdom of Spain, were also to suffer the same fate as the Roman Empire.