What was Worse: the Rise or Fall of Rome

[Errnge]

To be honest, I think that this question is too simple. There are certain things that Western culture would likely have been worse off without that the Romans produced, but others that would have made life better that they destroyed.

For example: The Romans revolutionized warfare. Along with this, they created a vast network of stable roads which connected all of the Mediterranean world, and made impressive architectural achievements with the perfection of the dome and arch.

On the other hand: Greeks in Alexandria were one step away from creating steam-power before the Romans burned down the library of Alexandria, which, by the way, was the vastest assembly of knowledge in the entire world at the time. Washing on a regular basis was made taboo by Roman society after they defeated the Gauls (who invented soap) which put Western culture behind on hygiene by, oh i don't know, two thousand years. Carthage was noted as having one of the most advanced infrastructures of any city in the world, with indoor plumbing throughout the city and multistoried apartments. Carthaginian knowledge of navigation and their mapping of the coasts of Africa were also lost.

And all this is ignoring the vast genocide caused by Roman conquests.

For this reason, it seems that the scale tips in favor of Rome being more detrimental than the barbarian hordes as far as knowledge and technology are concerned.

[Errnge]

Originally Posted by The Ubbergeek

And it is to be noted, this thread could be called eurocentrist.

The east had thinkers too; indian maths, chinese techs, etc...

Only Europe mattered, it seems.

WOW, really.

Let's break this down for a second, shall we?

I don't recall anyone here saying that Indian or Chinese culture, history, or people didn't contribute to the world's technological level.

So, assuming that Western cultures contributed to the world's technology, that Western history, particularly one of if not the most powerful political entity in its history has played a role, and discussing this makes the thread Euro-centic?

If we asked this same question about the Chinese Empire, would it be considered Sino-centric?

I don't think so.

[Esopo]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

1) On the contrary, it has everything to do with it after a certain fashion. The professional standing armies that characterized Roman civilization couldn't be supported on the basis of a city state.

2) The Ottomans developed a new variant of the Roman professional army, relied heavily on Roman imperial institutions, ruled an empire which territorially had much in common with East-Rome in terms of its own biggest extent at its own height (arguably larger, as IIRC parts of Ottoman North Africa were in the Western Roman Empire pre-Vandals). They appeared roughly contemporaneously with Trebizond and the Palaeologoi, so it's not even clear that it's possible to say the last Roman dynasty is purely Roman but the Ottomans were not.

The whole patron-client system that promotes an established religion and relies on slavery reflects the original Autocracy from the Principate to Theodosius, but as most people forget about the immense importance of slavery to the Roman Empire, well.......

1) rome wasnt really a city state since when it became a real power in italy.

2) a professional army isnt roman just because it is professional. It can be argued that the modern armies are inspired by the classical concept of "state's army" but not much more. About geography, charlemagne's empire ruled several territories which romans ruled too, and conquered the city of rome itself. Still, its difficult to call it roman. The same thing is for the countless odoacer, theodoric, hohenstaufens, rum seljusk, russians and so on who wanted to be roman but werent.
Sure, the paleologi werent so roman neither, but they had in common at least with the dominatus the languages, the law, the religion, the feeling of being roman, the legitimacy of succession. The ottomans were more similar to the so many invaders which wanted to emulate rome claiming its name.

[Snake Featherston]

1) Actually it was one.....when it took power in Italy. It became an empire later, after the Punic Wars. Rome was as much a city-state as Athens was in its own imperial times. Nobody uses the Delian League to claim Athens was not, in fact, a city state. Same principle.

2) Sure, but the concept of one in the fashion that appeared from the Principate to the Janissaries very much was Roman. The form it took differed of course, because the classical Legion of heavy infantry without much in the way of cavalry grouped into self-sufficient legions wasn't going to become an eternal fossil.

[Spengler]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

I picked neither because the Roman state had its largest, wealthiest, most urbanized half do just fine into the 15th Century in a Christian form and the 20th Century in a Muslim one. Rome was the state that didn't really die until Sevres, which is a formidable achievement.

I like that you also see that the Ottamans were the inheritors of Rome. (Really they wern't much different than the ERE.

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

I'd suggest reading "History of Pi" by Petr Beckman. Sandwiched in the midst of the history, is a long diatribe on the Romans While he goes wildly overboard, he makes some good points.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by Spengler

I like that you also see that the Ottamans were the inheritors of Rome. (Really they wern't much different than the ERE.

Well, they were different in a few major senses. First and foremost they were consistently a relatively formidable military power, where the ERE's military power......ebbed and flowed. Let's leave it at that. Islam provided in one sense a means to be an actually unifying force, Christianity was as much divider as uniter. The Ottomans revived the combination of Roman-style imperialism and slavery.....

[DominusNovus]

Originally Posted by Errnge

On the other hand: Greeks in Alexandria were one step away from creating steam-power before the Romans burned down the library of Alexandria, which, by the way, was the vastest assembly of knowledge in the entire world at the time. Washing on a regular basis was made taboo by Roman society after they defeated the Gauls (who invented soap) which put Western culture behind on hygiene by, oh i don't know, two thousand years. Carthage was noted as having one of the most advanced infrastructures of any city in the world, with indoor plumbing throughout the city and multistoried apartments. Carthaginian knowledge of navigation and their mapping of the coasts of Africa were also lost.

You know, I've never heard the argument that the Romans set hygiene back two thousand years before. Very fascinating view of history.

It does, however, not take into consideration, the well known Roman aqueducts, sewers, public baths, or any other such developments. It also fails to take into consideration Galen, whose impact on medical knowledge cannot be overstated. He revolutionized surgery in Rome, particularly with the military, and spoke quite highly of the supposedly 'taboo' soap (googling the phrase Roman Taboo Soap produces only one relevant hit, btw: this very thread). Marcus Aurelius himself considered Galen to be 'the first among doctors.' In fact, the argument can be made (and has) that Roman medicine under Galen advanced so much that it hindered further medical advances, since everyone assumed that Galen had figured it all out and there was no need for further research.

All in all, I fail to see any evidence that the Romans were deficient in this particular area of expertise.

Further, other than having a truly excellent harbor, I don't think that Carthage, as a city, was all that better than Rome. Rome had its own indoor plumbing, its own apartment towers, and managed to support a population of a million. You can't do that without some sort of hydrological infrastructure and at least a bare sense of hygiene.

[Esopo]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

1) Actually it was one.....when it took power in Italy. It became an empire later, after the Punic Wars. Rome was as much a city-state as Athens was in its own imperial times. Nobody uses the Delian League to claim Athens was not, in fact, a city state. Same principle.

2) Sure, but the concept of one in the fashion that appeared from the Principate to the Janissaries very much was Roman. The form it took differed of course, because the classical Legion of heavy infantry without much in the way of cavalry grouped into self-sufficient legions wasn't going to become an eternal fossil.

1) Rome was already an extremely peculiar city state, because of the sistem of mixed citizenship, the colonies and so on.

2) I wouldnt say so. An army of drafted slaves was alien from both the -citizen-farmer-soldier republican rome and both the professional roman imperial army.
I concede that slavery was a common point among classical rome and ottoman empire.

[Armored Diplomacy]

Definetely the fall.

The rise of Rome began as a series of tribal conquests, when the small village of Rome began to expand and conquer nearby villages in 500 BC. Tribal wars are peanuts. Rome's later wars of conquest in Europe were mainly against disorganized and scattered tribesmen. Only the Punic Wars were real serious. Rome's later wars were mainly about holding on to their possessions.

The decline and fall of Rome, however, was characterized by starvation from siege, looting, rape, pillage, that happened many times.

EDIT: Oops, didn't see the technology part, thought this was about the human effect.

[Yorel]

I voted for the Third option but more because the other three do not correspond to the answer I would give to the question that a belief Rome stagnated at one point.

I don't see technologies that could have been lost during the Rise of Rome. As a matter of fact, it rather seems to me that the Romans "evolved" with each new conquest by assimilating or adapting new technologies from conquered cultures. But then again, I am no expert on Antiquity and I tend to say that History doesn't start before 753 BC for me... More due to a lack of interest of civilisations born prior to that date than anything else if you're wondering.

As for the fall of Rome, I'm not sure it was as much harmful as historiography tended to see it at one point (the fall of Rome leading to the so-called "Dark Age"). In fact, studies tend to see that the invading Germanic "Barbarians" made Rome their model: just look at the Wisigoth in Spain, the Franks starting the reign of Childeric I (Clovis' father) or the Ostrogoth. All these conserved Roman Law and I think they adopted a few technologies. And then there is also the survival of Byzantium, which is technically the Eastern Roman Empire: I doubt the Byzantines lost much of the technology Rome had discovered. If you then take into account the fact exchanged between Byzantium and the new barbarian states never stopped, I doubt you can say there was no technological exchange.

As for the "no technology lost", I simply can't vote for it because I do believe some technologies were lost and had to be rediscovered later. So to sum up, I'd rather say that the Rise of Rome wasn't worse for technology than the Fall and vice-versa.

[Mikestone8]

And maybe "stagnation" isn't really the right word.

Looking back over ancient history, I'd say that progress wasn't so much stagnant as spasmodic. Thus Julius Caesar's Rome had quite a bit (esp in the military sphere) that Periclean Athens didn't. OTOH, I'm a lot vaguer about what exactly Diocletian's Rome had that Caesar's didn't. Some advances in cavalry techniques, probably, but what otherwise?

IOW, it looks to me as if you could go centuries at a time (with or without the Empire) without all that much happening, but then something might change quite abruptly. Istr that Toynbee mentioned such a case, saying that the dress and equipment of a soldier of Emperor Otto I (mid 10C) differed little from those of a Roman soldier in the late Empire; yet those of a knight in 1066 - only a single century later - were totally different. However, I don't have my Study of History to hand just this moment, so I could be misrememebring.

[DominusNovus]

Originally Posted by Mikestone8

OTOH, I'm a lot vaguer about what exactly Diocletian's Rome had that Caesar's didn't. Some advances in cavalry techniques, probably, but what otherwise?

Beyond the various technologies (read: toys) introduced by Heron of Alexandria...

Glassworking advanced by significant degrees in the first centuries AD.
Millworks developed and grew to dramatic sizes in the same period.
Screw Presses.
*Lots* of Medical Advances (almost all centered around Galen's work)

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by Esopo

1) Rome was already an extremely peculiar city state, because of the sistem of mixed citizenship, the colonies and so on.

2) I wouldnt say so. An army of drafted slaves was alien from both the -citizen-farmer-soldier republican rome and both the professional roman imperial army.
I concede that slavery was a common point among classical rome and ottoman empire.

1) Yes, because Ancient Greeks never colonized or enslaved anyone.

2) The form the professional army took differed in both eras, but it was one built on an imperial basis through a form of conscription. Rome could not afford to permanently have its only politics be the civil wars among its generals.

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by Mikestone8

And maybe "stagnation" isn't really the right word.

Looking back over ancient history, I'd say that progress wasn't so much stagnant as spasmodic. Thus Julius Caesar's Rome had quite a bit (esp in the military sphere) that Periclean Athens didn't. OTOH, I'm a lot vaguer about what exactly Diocletian's Rome had that Caesar's didn't. Some advances in cavalry techniques, probably, but what otherwise?

IOW, it looks to me as if you could go centuries at a time (with or without the Empire) without all that much happening, but then something might change quite abruptly. Istr that Toynbee mentioned such a case, saying that the dress and equipment of a soldier of Emperor Otto I (mid 10C) differed little from those of a Roman soldier in the late Empire; yet those of a knight in 1066 - only a single century later - were totally different. However, I don't have my Study of History to hand just this moment, so I could be misrememebring.

The centralized state system that survived in modified form as the basis for East-Rome in the variant that briefly restored a Nu-Rome over the Mediterranean, for one thing.

[Esopo]

Originally Posted by Snake Featherston

1) Yes, because Ancient Greeks never colonized or enslaved anyone.

2) The form the professional army took differed in both eras, but it was one built on an imperial basis through a form of conscription. Rome could not afford to permanently have its only politics be the civil wars among its generals.

1) The difference is that greek colonies became almost immediatly separate entities, the roman republic was and remained a whole with its colonies while increasingly integrating its allies. About slavery i dont see the point.

2) The principatus roman army wasnt based on conscription. The dominatus and byzantine armies were though. I dont see how the ottomans drafting slave soldiers (as never happened in the roman empire) should mean that they are roman.

[DominusNovus]

Esopo, pet peeve: Principatus and Dominatus are nouns, not adjectives. Its kinda jarring to see one (uncommon) roman noun thrust into an otherwise english sentence. Principate/Dominate are so much better looking in English.

[Esopo]

Originally Posted by DominusNovus

Esopo, pet peeve: Principatus and Dominatus are nouns, not adjectives. Its kinda jarring to see one (uncommon) roman noun thrust into an otherwise english sentence. Principate/Dominate are so much better looking in English.

oh okay, i just didnt know how to put them in english

[Snake Featherston]

Originally Posted by Esopo

1) The difference is that greek colonies became almost immediatly separate entities, the roman republic was and remained a whole with its colonies while increasingly integrating its allies. About slavery i dont see the point.

2) The principatus roman army wasnt based on conscription. The dominatus and byzantine armies were though. I dont see how the ottomans drafting slave soldiers (as never happened in the roman empire) should mean that they are roman.

1) The degree to which Athens annihilated anyone uppity enough to want freedom from Delian League control argues otherwise.

2) Actually it was based on that, namely that the subject peoples were to provide soldiers for the army, as well as paying taxes. Those were about the only areas where the classical state touched the peasantry.

[DominusNovus]

Originally Posted by Esopo

oh okay, i just didnt know how to put them in english

Thanks. I was developing a nervous tick each time I read one of your posts, haha.