Reading histories of Rome's collapse mainly taught me to be skeptical of historians. At every period Rome's collapse was attributed to the cause du jour ignoring all the contrary evidence.
However, there is a very strong demand for popular history that is not commonly found in science. Your average lay person is much more interested in, say, the fall of Rome rather than asking what dark matter is, and so you'll see a lot more books purporting to explain the fall of Rome. Furthermore--and this is especially true for people who write to a popular audience--most authors aren't exactly interested in discovering the unvarnished truth of the world, but rather have a particular narrative that they want to push. Again especially true for writing about history: if you're crusading against lead, Christianity, multiculturalism, etc., then being able to explain the fall of Rome as being mostly or entirely caused by lead, Christianity, multiculturalism, etc. bolsters your argument tremendously. And the people who instead write "it's actually a complex, multifaceted process that involves things that take me 50 pages to even list out" (the kind of answer an academic historian is wont to give) tend to lose in popularity to those who have simple explanations.
Pretty much every bogeyman is on there.
Even by the low standards of this list, that one’s a bit out there.
What does this mean?
I see the recent fad is arguing that they weren't multicultural enough (nevermind that each stage of assimilation - when the Roman Empire 'worked' - was preceded by Romans beating up their enemies and that didn't quiet happen the last few times).
Case in point, the aftermath of Trajan's Dacian Wars [1]:
> One hundred thousand male slaves were sent back to Rome
Prior to that (think 1st century AD) they had most probably ethnically cleansed the entire area 50-to-100 kms North of the Danube, because for that period and area there are very few material/archeological remains.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan%27s_Dacian_Wars#Conclus...
I don't really understand the obsession with Gibbon. Most fields have some "foundational" scholarship that is now considered outmoded thanks to more recent evidence. Speaking specifically to the history of late antiquity, a lot of archaeological evidence has come to light in the past century which has greatly augmented the textual evidence that we have. And, speaking of textual evidence, what we do have for the period is pretty poor: not only are the sources not very good/don't survive/were written hundreds of years later, but the "reliable" ones were written at a time when the Roman empire's decline was restricting the flow of information. (Sidonius Apollinarus is a great example of this.) Add to all this that we're talking about a pretty complicated subject, and it's no wonder that there are lots of historians positing different factors involved in what was a centuries-long process.
> I see the recent fad is arguing that they weren't multicultural enough (nevermind that each stage of assimilation - when the Roman Empire 'worked' - was preceded by Romans beating up their enemies and that didn't quiet happen the last few times).
The thing is, the people who were doing the "beating up" by and large weren't "Romans" per se. During the empire, and especially after the crisis of the third century, Roman armies were actually pretty synonymous with barbarian foreigners - those groups who lived in border regions would often join the army and fight, perhaps remaining inside the empire after their terms of service, and perhaps going back home. Especially when discussing late antiquity, I think it's pretty misleading to draw a hard line between "Romans" and "barbarians" - it was simply much more fungible than that.
That being said, if you look at things from a political perspective, the inability of the Romans to assimilate barbarian armies in the way they had been so competent at for so long (mostly because emperors and armies became so occupied with an endless string of assassinations and usurpations) led to some pretty crippling Roman losses at Adrianople and the Frigidus which the empire never really recovered from. So in that sense, multiculturalism does play a role.
Gibbon is a pretty famous example which most readers would be familiar with. His Catholic counterparts were less famous but not better...
>Most fields have some "foundational" scholarship that is now considered outmoded thanks to more recent evidence.
The issue isn't so much evidence but ignoring the obvious counterpoints possibly due to the prevailing trends of the time, and in case of Rome's history this keeps happening over the centuries.
>the inability of the Romans to assimilate barbarian armies in the way they had been so competent at for so long (mostly because emperors and armies became so occupied with an endless string of assassinations and usurpations)... So in that sense, multiculturalism does play a role.
When people talk about 'failures of multiculturalism' they usually either blame the 'locales' for being too discriminatory or the 'foreigners' for 'not really wanting to assimilate'. 'It didn't work out because rulers kept being assassinated and overthrown' usually points to an entirely different kind of failure.
But when people criticize bad psychology research, they don't mention Freud or Jung (even though they're famous) because obviously their methods have little to do with how psychology is conducted today. The same goes for the history of late antiquity; I think it's better to point out more recent (and better regarded) research before making the bold claim that a long line of scholars impute today's hot-button issues as the cause of the fall of Rome.
> The issue isn't so much evidence but ignoring the obvious counterpoints possibly due to the prevailing trends of the time, and in case of Rome's history this keeps happening over the centuries.
I just don't think Gibbon (and late 18th century history scholarship in general) is remotely comparable to modern history scholarship.
> When people talk about 'failures of multiculturalism' they usually either blame the 'locales' for being too discriminatory or the 'foreigners' for 'not really wanting to assimilate'. 'It didn't work out because rulers kept being assassinated and overthrown' usually points to an entirely different kind of failure.
I would love to read some of this research. Most of the scholarship that I've encountered speaks of these so-called "failures of multiculturalism" as an effect of the empire's decline, not a cause. For example, take the Visigothic kingdom (generally considered the earliest of the successor states): the reason why the Visigoths were to some degree able to maintain their own identity was the weak negotiating position of the Western empire, which allowed them to operate with more independence than previous settlements of barbarians.
But they might start with Freud and end up at the replication crisis, while pointing out there's too much focus on W.E.I.R.D people[0]. They could even point out some of the 60s research was obviously more meant to prove a point than be proper research (e.g. Zimbardo). It won't be a strike against psychology as a whole at all, just a warning to use caution and proper research methods.
[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/non-weird-science/20...
> I think it's better to point out more recent (and better regarded) research before making the bold claim that a long line of scholars impute today's hot-button issues as the cause of the fall of Rome.
Just read the linked article, which is actually quite good but a bit too busy stretching out arguments in order to argue against some imagined alt-right antagonist. It's trivial to show that Rome wasn't homogeneous ethnically, but he stretches some things more than they're worth (Rome treating its Italian subjects arguably better isn't 'diversity'. We don't really know how Carthago treated its subjects - Numidia jumped when Carthago was obvious losing, Greek polis citizenship isn't a good model for how the Hellenic Empires ran, etc.).
>I would love to read some of this research. Most of the scholarship that I've encountered speaks of these so-called "failures of multiculturalism" as an effect of the empire's decline, not a cause.
I was referring to the word's definition as used by ordinary people rather than research. My point was that the research you're describing doesn't really refer to so-called "failures of multiculturalism" as a cause, and you're confirming it.
[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/non-weird-science/20...
I take your point fairly. I don't know nearly as much about psych as I do about history.
> Just read the linked article, which is actually quite good but a bit too busy stretching out arguments in order to argue against some imagined alt-right antagonist. It's trivial to show that Rome wasn't homogeneous ethnically, but he stretches some things more than they're worth (Rome treating its Italian subjects arguably better isn't 'diversity'. We don't really know how Carthago treated its subjects - Numidia jumped when Carthago was obvious losing, Greek polis citizenship isn't a good model for how the Hellenic Empires ran, etc.).
I read the linked post's point as more of a pushback against depictions of Rome in modern culture. And Rome's conceptualization of citizenship was radically expansionist compared to that of the Greek states which were flourishing at the same time. As for, say, the Hellenistic kingdoms, I think it's clear that the ability of the Romans to actually absorb those kingdoms and have them come to see themselves as "Romans" (a trick the Seleucids/Antigonids/etc. never pulled off) speaks to a real and meaningful difference here.
Agreed.
> As for, say, the Hellenistic kingdoms, I think it's clear that the ability of the Romans to actually absorb those kingdoms and have them come to see themselves as "Romans" (a trick the Seleucids/Antigonids/etc. never pulled off) speaks to a real and meaningful difference here.
There's something here, but it's not appropriate to generalize from the polis to the Hellenic Empires and I'm not sure it's so clear cut. Greek culture spread widely. For example, the Maccabeean Revolt shows they were Hellenized Jews willing to go pretty far to partake of Greek culture, especially if you take the modern view that assigns the Hellenized most of the responsibility for the policies sparking the revolt.
* There's an unfortunate paucity of sources, that is just about none, on the Hellenistic side of the revolt, so we can't rule out the traditional account. Either way these Jews clearly existed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_jure
>De jure >From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia >Not to be confused with du jour.
When you look at the edge of an axe at a microscope, you'll see a very ragged, uneven, broken and weak boundary. What gives the axe its cutting capacity is all the iron bulk behind it.