The “Decline and Fall” of Rome – A Dangerous Idea? | Hacker News Reader

The “Decline and Fall” of Rome – A Dangerous Idea?

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45 pointsdiodorus49 comments

This would be written by a scholar of the eastern empire, the focus on everything past when the capital wasn’t just Rome leads to lots of confusion.

If you focus on the city of Rome and the pieces of Western Europe under its power it is hard to say that there was not a serious decline and fall of civilization. Cities of tens of thousands or more reduced from a complex society to losing an order of magnitude of population (or gone completely) and reduction to mostly subsistence agriculture.

There are places where it’s hard to see anything but a thousand year gap from a peak in development to return to similar levels.

Another “dangerous idea” is trying to be profound by contradicting the prevailing thought, history is quite full of these kinds of overcorrections where in order to “fix” an idea the response is going off the deep end in the other direction.

>The Byzantines called themselves “Romans” (Rhomaioi — in Greek) right until their conquest by the Turks in 1453. Cato’s corrupt Greeks had become the saviors of the Roman Empire.

Kind of. What carried on was not the Roman Empire in toto, but the Eastern Empire. Which was placed on the ancient Greek mainland (wider than current Greece, e.g. including southern Italy and Asia minor) and the hellenistic (Greek-speaking, as a result of Alexander's conquests) areas, like Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and so on.

They called themselves Romaioi (Romans) because (aside from the peaceful state-capital transition to the east instigated by a legitimate Roman emperor himself) the first emperors and many early higher-ups were latin-speaking romans, and because, even those who weren't wanted the state influence associated with being successors to Roman empire.

As for the population, they weren't romans in the large, either by ethnicity (italic), language, or culture (hence "Cato’s corrupt Greeks"). They were "roman citizens" but this wasn't much different from "roman subjects + civic rights". Heck, the barbarians that followed Rome (Franks, Germanic tribes, etc) also called themselves "Holy Roman Empire", while having little to do with Romans, and even Mehmed the Conqueror when the ottomans conquered the eastern empire called himself "emperor of the Romans".

And while the Eastern Roman empire went on for over a millenium (with ups and downs, attacked by Persians, Arabs, and so on), Rome and the actual Roman empire did fell, and there was a very real and measurable loss of population, state function, quality of life, culture, infrastructure, and so on that lasted for many centuries.

So to say "Roman empire didn't decline, it moved east" is not really accurate.

A lot of identity politics hinge on whether the Eastern Roman Empire is considered the evolution of Rome or if the Roman Empire fell with the city of Rome. Of course this is a "Ship of Theseus" situation, so the discussion typically descend into hand-waving and vague and anachronistic notions of ethnicity.

There was no such thing as a roman ethnicity or language (perhaps latin for law? The byzantines kept latin for a very long time in this context). Rome itself was a backwater long before the western empire fell.

The difference between Byzantium and, say, the holy roman empire, was that at no point did a barbarian king declare himself the inheritor of roman tradition. The byzantine state was always the roman state, and it was the state that had continued (fitfully) since Caesar (or Romulus I guess).

>There was no such thing as a roman ethnicity or language

Romans (as in the etymology Roman Empire) originally referred to a specific cultural and ethnic group - italic, latin speaking people in Rome and Italy. Those were the only people that called themselves that at the time.

After romans built an empire that expanded to half the known world, the term "roman citizen" was expanded to cover those people as well, and they even gained civil rights). And while one can use the term roman one way or the other, the same way "british" during the height of the British empire could perhaps mean a british citizen or subject and someone of a much more narrow cultural and ethnic background (a person of the ethnicities bundled as British).

As for the official langauge of Romans, Rome and the empire at large, it was latin.

>perhaps latin for law? The byzantines kept latin for a very long time in this context

Well, they kept writing laws in latin for about 3 centuries (though even after the first century the started writing some new laws in Greek). For reference, the state was 3 centuries old at this point (when latin laws gave preference to Greek written laws), and survived about 7 more.

>The difference between Byzantium and, say, the holy roman empire, was that at no point did a barbarian king declare himself the inheritor of roman tradition. The byzantine state was always the roman state, and it was the state that had continued (fitfully) since Caesar (or Romulus I guess).

Yes. But continuation of state does not necessarily coincide with continuation of the culture the established that state. So while a transition could be violent (a barbarian declaring himself the inheritor of roman tradition), it can also happen from within, so to speak (the latin-derived tradition and Rome/italy as the focus of power giving way to the helenistic-derived tradition and Greece/eastern lands as the focus of power).

> Romans (as in the etymology Roman Empire) originally referred to a specific cultural and ethnic group - italic, latin speaking people in Rome and Italy. Those were the only people that called themselves that at the time.

It's my understanding that this was vaguely true for the brief period between the social wars and the integration of Cisalpine gaul in 42 BC. So like, 40 years. I'm not sure if it's valid then, even, because at that point the italic peoples considered themselves culturally and ethnically distinct.

To be honest, I think the whole idea of Rome as an ethnic nation-state at any point in its history is just anachronism (except, maybe, in the later byzantine era?). The path to 'everybody is a citizen', in 212 AD, is basically an extension of the social wars - a set of conflicts about who gets what rights, with no real geographical or ethnic criterion applied throughout, except for basically administrative reasons.

> Yes. But continuation of state does not necessarily coincide with continuation of the culture the established that state.

I think any reasonable definition of culture allows change. The fact is, Rome was a Hellenistic state from its very beginning - they considered themselves the descendants of a Trojan prince. There was no point in Roman history where they didn't take their cues from greek culture.

>I think any reasonable definition of culture allows change.

And any reasonable definition of a culture limits this change (after which qualitative and quantitative change becomes a new culture), else there's only one culture, under various different names.

Even more so here, where there wasn't just a culture changing by itself, but one culture focus on one locus of power (latin derived culture of italic Rome) replaced by another culture (hellenistic/Greek) when the locus of power moved to a region with a distinct (not to mention pre-existing) culture.

(Romans claiming to be "descendants of a Trojan prince" was a handy way to claim origin from an ealier empire).

The fact is there was a distinct latin roman culture, even if "taking cues from Greek culture". Americans always took cues from British culture as well, but American and British culture is hardly the same thing.

Heck, it's not like romans themselves didn't speak of Greek culture as distinct (either praising it or putting it down).

Holy Roman Empire is exactly what you're saying didn't happen - non-Romans declaring themselves the direct continuation of Roman Empire tradition.

Isn't it a bit presumptuous to declare that people who called themselves and were called by everyone else "Romans" for over a thousand years were not really Romans? By this definition 4th century emperors like Constantine the Great and Theodosius the Great were not really Romans either, since they spoke Greek and ruled from Constantinople. Heck, even in the time of Caesar the Republican elite preferred speaking Greek instead of Latin - hopefully you don't think the Roman Empire fell before it even began...

Perhaps it is. This is how they taught me at school - and we were part of HRE too.

It's definitely not about languages though. HRE switched from Latin to German like nothing happened.

It is also important to note that the people called themselves Roman/HRE in addition to their national/tribal identity, not as a replacement.

>Isn't it a bit presumptuous to declare that people who called themselves and were called by everyone else "Romans" for over a thousand years were not really Romans?

Depends. Are we talking about ethnicity? (in which they weren't italic latin-speaking Romans - Greek ethnicity and culture, for example, didn't just vanish when the italic latin-speaking Romans conquered their lands).

Or about "nationality" or statehood and claim to lands, and such? In that, they were romans, since their state was the successor to the roman state (aka the "roman empire"), and a legitimate one at that.

Mind you, they also started calling themselves Greeks later on, and we have tons of references from them (including emperors etc) writing about themselves as that.

>By this definition 4th century emperors like Constantine the Great and Theodosius the Great were not really Romans either, since they spoke Greek and ruled from Constantinople.

They were the Roman emperors during the transfer of power to the Eastern Empire - in the time of Theodosius Rome was still in place too, and East and West where ruled under the Tetrarchy.

Plus, Constantine didn't speak Greek, he spoke Latin (he used an interpreter in some cases to translate to Greek, and he knew a handful as many romans did, but he personally spoke latin). I'm pretty sure that's true for Theodosius too.

>Heck, even in the time of Caesar the Republican elite preferred speaking Greek instead of Latin - hopefully you don't think the Roman Empire fell before it even began...

That's neither here, nor there. One is an example of some elites being pretentious, and the other is a state losing its capital (the one it even took its name from), its ruiling ethnicity, moving to another region with a different cultural background and dominant ethnicities, which eventually in a couple of centruries swallowed the previous dominant language and culture -- all while the original capital and land of origin of the culture and the empire suffered devastating fall under barbarian tribes.

It's always possible to argue further, but it's not really what led to the foundation of the HRE. Rather, it was a creation of the pope Leo III which he offered to Charlemagne, as the conclusion of a long feud with the ERE and the wish of the pope to split from it.

Sorry, that was bad writing on my part. I meant that this was the distinction. In Byzantine history, transitions between one sovereign to another always consisted of a new sovereign seizing the control of the Roman state.

In the example of Charlemagne or the Turks or whatever, it's a non-roman state that replaces (or in their eyes, becomes) the roman one, rather than just a non-roman sovereign.

I have no idea how you can come to the conclusion that the ERE wasn’t the Roman Empire. It is literally a direct continuation straight from Augustus.

Really? No idea? There's a reason why we call the millenium-long state the Byzantine Empire as distinct from the Roman Empire and not just "Eastern Roman Empire" (even if its inhabitans were ok with just Roman Empire or Romania).

The state line of continuation is real and legitimate (there wasn't some invasion that started calling itself "Easter Roman Empire" for example).

But it's also real that the split of the empire to eastern and western, and then the trasnfer of the empire's capital to the East, and the fall of the western capital, also meant a transfer from the italic/latin-speaking roman core to the hellenistic/greek-speaking populations, that were not the original "romans" but conquered by them, and who eventually established their norms, culture, and language as core attributes of the new empire (not to mention this new-fangled christianity thing, which was anathema to the old empire and quite different from the pagan world).

> There’s a reason why we call the millenium-long state the Byzantine Empire as distinct from the Roman Empire and not just “Eastern Roman Empire”

Mostly, I think, rationalizations of attitudes shaped by anti-Eastern propaganda in the West, both before and especially after the East-West schism in the Church.

I'd say it's both.

There was up to the 20th century an anti-Eastern bias (as the western wannabe successors to the Roman Empire wanted no legitimate competitors and felt the presence of ERE as de-legitimizing them).

But also because the transfer from a roman/italic/latin/pagan/Rome-based to a hellenistic/greek/christian/Constantinople-based state was quite a big transition, which only legally and nominally one would accept as the same empire.

Western Europe called it the byzantine empire also to increase the legitimacy of HRE as Roman Empire successor.

The unified Roman empire effectively fell during the Crisis of the Third Century. It was too large to be ruled from a single capital. The capital would always be too far to respond effectively to threats at distant borders, or from disloyal generals ruling over distant provinces.

Diocletian eventually managed to stabilize the empire, but it was almost always split into 2-4 parts afterwards. The western capital was moved from Rome to Mediolanum, while Diocletian chose Nicomedia in the east as his capital. Rome was never a capital again, and eastern parts of the empire tended to be more important than western parts, because they were wealthier and more densely populated.

The Easterns had taken parts of Italy, and even Rome itself during Belisarius time. So there was a point of time Eastern Roman Empire expanded westwards enough to include Rome itself and beyond.

> He also examines those who built literary and political careers around jeremiads against decline alongside promises for rebirth and renewal.

I saw this as the thrust of the article. People proclaming a decline to raise a sense of crisis at their advantage, and gain a pretext to destroy anything on their path to power. This, happening at at every scale.

>I saw this as the thrust of the article.

It is indeed the thrust of the article. A pre-determined political point he wanted to make, written up as being about history.

The problem is that besides "people proclaming a decline" there are also actual declines in history, and people should be warned, prepared, and take measures against them. And this period looks like very well it could be one (for some areas).

To counter this point, he argues that there are never declines in history, going as far as to deny the very real decline of Rome.

This has huge denial and "we were always at war with Eurasia" vibes...

I can see that is like declaring there is voter-fraud everywhere therefore we must make it extra difficult for people to vote

He is claiming some new sort of Godwin's law[1], where instead of instead of Nazis and Hitler, the idea is that every polemicist or ideologue will eventually claim to explain Rome's decline and fall.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

The fall of Rome was not a fall and it didn't happen in Rome. The event of 476 AD happened in Ravenna (Rome had not been the capital for almost two centuries at that point[1]) and it was a military coup whereby the chief of the army deposed the head of government.

In a very mild development, even by modern standards, the deposed emperor was given a substantial pension and went on to live in luxury in the countryside for a few more decades [2]. The average citizen saw few if any changes in their everyday life. The Senate continued to function for over a century afterwards [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan#Prehistory_and_Roman_tim...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Augustulus#Life_in_exi...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Senate#Senate_in_the_Wes...

But it was a "fall" in the sense that the line of western Roman emperors ended then and there. Odoacer did not claim the title for himself and even sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople.

He did send the regalia to Constantinople, because he wanted Zeno to wear them. The two halves had been ruled sometimes by different emperors and at other times by a single person (Constantine, Julian etc.). As far as anyone at the time was concerned, things were legally returning to the state of 395 AD with Zeno instead of Theodosius as the joint emperor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Nepos#Exile_in_Dalmatia...

(This was no mere pretense either. When Zeno became dissatisfied with Odoacer he sent in Theodoric to depose him. When Theodoric's daughter was assassinated, the new emperor sent in the army and took back direct control of Italy.)

History is either seen as a circle or as a line.

If as a circle, then history repeats itself endlessly. The world is reborn and dies, over and over. It is seen as the lives of generations.

If as a line, then history has only one beginning and will have one ending. The world is born and will die. It is seen as the life of an individual.

The ones that adhere to the line can in turn be divided along those that see the line going up (toward a sunlit city at the top of a hill) and those that see the line going down (towards a hellish valley at the foot of a hill - Megiddo perhaps). Or rather, it's the same line, and the same hill, but they disagree on the direction they are headed.

Of course, any line is just a circle zoomed-in close enough, and any circle draws a line if it rolls on long enough. History is just another form of story, a way of seeing things. What matters is not the story, but who is telling it and why.

A philosophy professor of mine at Berkeley claimed that the fundamental difference between Eastern and Western culture is that the former is built around the concept of Saṃsāra[1] while the latter around telos[2] and the teleological[3], that Eastern religion and culture is centered on the eternal cycles (e.g. life, reincarnation) and thus the importance of peace and stability while Western religion and culture is centered on "a progression from the beginning to the end" (e.g. Genesis to Judgement Day, a teleological view of evolution) and thus oriented toward teleological change and revolution.

It's an interesting theory that provokes thought, but breaks down on analysis and reveals a deeply arrogant Eurocentric view of history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara_(disambiguation)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telos

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology

An idea may be dangerous for an unskilled mind and yet useful otherwise. Much like a knife or a car.

There isn't really any doubt that civilizational standards of the Western parts of the empire declined severely after the fifth century. Population went down, cities were abandoned, literate secular class almost disappeared (and even many priests struggled with reading and writing), the network of long distance trade was hollowed out, security situation deteriorated, even cattle became smaller as a result of subpar fodder. Many places abandoned monetary economy and reverted to barter trade; soldiers (people who were paid with money, solidus = a kind of Roman coin) gave way to aristocracy paid by land.

What is dangerous is taking this event and twisting it around to use it in contemporary political conflicts. It almost never fits. We do not have, for example, any equivalent of Attila the Hun destroying our cities by pure slaughter and terror. (Which likely contributed to the decline and later collapse, as cities housed a lot of specialized skilled workers.)

> But now there was no genuine possibility of renewal — in 1453 Rome had truly fallen.

I understand how different the Ottoman regime was, but they definitely used many of the already existing roman/byzantine power structures for their rule. Can one not view the Ottomans as another transformation within a continuum of the “Roman Empire”

After the fall of the Byzantine state in 1453, the Ottoman Turkish conqueror Sultan Mehmed II declared himself to have replaced the Byzantine ruler as the new Kayser-i Rum, literally "Caesar of the Romans”

That was just to claim the legitimacy and influence of the prior state he conquered. The western tribes that contributed to the fall of the actual Roman Empire also called themselves the "Holy Roman Empire" later.

It's not about maintaining some structures (which were widely different over time in the original Roman empire as well, e.g. from republic to divine emperor), it's about the culture.

There was nothing of the Roman culture in the Ottomans. In fact, the Eastern empire was for its better part already very different culturally from the Roman empire, and was not run by people of latin ethnicity for most of its later life.

Emperors stopped to be of latin ethnicity much earlier, not after the move of the capital to Constantinople.

Sort of. A few were (Philip the Arab, for example), but many also conflate "not being born in Rome/Italy" with not having latin ethnicity.

There were sizable pockets or latin ethnicity (including governors, nobility, and lots of commoners) established in different areas of the empire. Hispania for example was conquested and settled by romans (plus roman soldiers being send there, given land), so a "spanish" emperor is not exactly a non-roman emperor. Even Septimius Severus, which was born in Libya, had latin roman ancestry (albeit mixed with Phoenician).

A major reason, and perhaps the most important one, is that the Ottomans never claimed that their empire was the Roman Empire. They claimed they had conquered the Roman Empire and annexed it into their empire.

The Ottoman Sultan had many titles, and some of them were considered more important than "Caesar of Rome". They were the Sultan of Sultans, the Khan of Khans, and the Caliph first. They also considered Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem their most important possessions, and the Roman Empire only came after those.

Shouldn't one look at genetics as well? When a completely different ethnicity invaded and called themselves Roman, and copied the parts they wanted from Roman civilization, but without having almost any Roman ancestry, are we to consider them a continuation of the Roman civilization?

>> to consider them a continuation of the Roman civilization?

Yes. A civilization is not a race. It is something above biology. The fact that nobody running things is related to the founder of a civilization does not mean that civilization has somehow fallen and been replaced anew. It means that, at most, a particular regime has fallen from power. Civilizations are larger than their leadership, even their founders.

Would anything really change if one day we realized that nobody in the US congress was a blood relation of the founding fathers? I doubt anyone would see that as anything other than an interesting blip in a new cycle.

There should, however, be a significant continuation of the culture for that to be true. A civilisation is also not just a bunch of people living in a geographical location.

As an example, the current state of Egypt is not the heir to (or continuation of) the Egypt of the pharaohs. Instead they are the heirs to their conquerors, descended from Arab armies that conquered Hellenistic Egypt (which itself already had a dubious claim to any links with the original, pre-Greek invasion pharaohs). They speak a different language, pray to different gods, and have an altogether different culture; they just happen to live where the pharaohs once had their kingdoms.

Egyptian culture certainly evolved, but I don't see that having new gods and a new leadership cast means that the civilization is new. The basic precepts are still there. They share the same religious and technological linages.

> Hellenistic Egypt (which itself already had a dubious claim to any links with the pharaohs).

The claim that the Egypt under the Pharaohs of the 31st Dynasty had a “dubious claim to any link with the pharaohs” has some obvious logical difficulties.

I've added a clarification so people with willfully minimal reading comprehension skills can also understand what was meant.

are we to consider them a continuation of the Roman civilization?

Yes, because being Roman had nothing to do with ethnicity. Even people from Italy were not Romans at first. The Latins people allies of Romans(socii) fought wars to be recognized as fully Romans and only after winning some battles they got it.

In Jesus time only 10% of the population had Roman citizenship, like St Paul, but after some centuries everyone had it.

Something similar happened in the US, black people were certainly not fully Americans or even people at first, they were slaves, let alone native Americans, devoid of any right.

The survivors that were not exterminated(like native Americans) fought for their rights and eventually they got it, after having lots of their houses burned,their women raped and their men murdered. They were sent to World wars in the worst conditions at the most risky positions.

Rome was a way of living, way beyond ethnicity. You only understand it when you travel to places without this heritage, like China or Afghanistan.

When I traveled to China I was surprised to live in a place with no rule of law for example. The Rule is whatever the CCP leaders want today. I took so many things from the West for granted.

Well then Rome died in the 600s as the Empire abandoned Latin language and adopted the language of the majority of it's population. Greek.

If you're talking about ancestry, most Turks in Turkey are descended from Anatolian and Balkans populations so...

> many of the already existing roman/byzantine power structures for their rule

Reference to justify this? Also, what is "many"? Assuming you don't mean "most", then, no, I don't see how you could justify that claim.

I cant say most, thats hard to argue. But definitely many, i found this Turkish book published online that lists out multiple claims of Byzantine influence:

https://emagaza-ttk.ayk.gov.tr/detay/623/some-observations-o...

Im sure one can argue that this might be biased, but the influence is definitely there. Its a quick search online.

> "we read of the dangers of the suicide of the West — most often as a paean to white supremacy."

This is very interesting since typical arguments for the modern theory of "systemic racism" and "white fragility" do not generally admit that for thousands of years slavery was the only alternative to being killed post lost battle. They tend to make it seem to be an American invention. Also what relevance is a Joan Collins quote from 1984? I never heard trump talk about Rome. The article seems like a bit of a stretch.

Further, the argument seems to be "history interpretation used for political gain" which is generically true and has nothing to do with that particular history.

P.S. if you are casually interested in Rome I highly recommend Mike Duncan's "the history of Rome" podcast.

Great article but I don't like the way it ended. Needs revision :-)

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