Challenge: The Western Roman Empire falls but Rome is never sacked

The challenge here is to have the WRE still collapse, but for Rome, the city, to never be sacked or otherwise damaged by an army. Also, discuss what effects this might have.

Would Rome remain a reasonably prosperous city instead of becoming what was pretty much a glorified town in the Dark/Middle Ages?
 
Is it possible that, the Empire's coffers growing thin as the price of maintaining its far-flung provinces rises, the Emperor begins to recall a number of his militia which are stabled in further-flung provinces making it easier for those provinces to rebel and become independent? Rome would definitely need to take an economic hit, however, as they would not have the resources they had previously from those further-away provinces.
 
Perhaps if it fell apart a century or so before any Barbarians came near Rome itself? Like, around 300 AD it falls apart into separate nations, and by the time the Barbarians start invading Rome has been surpassed in greatness by another city like Constantinople, and is no longer a high profile target.
 
I don't think the idea is implausible. Pope Leo I met with Attila the Hun and reportedly negotiated his retreat (so the stories go). If you have a Barbarian and Christian King along with a strong Pope it's entirely possible some sort of compromise might be worked out. As it was that's actually what happened to an extent. Alaric agreed not to damage Christian relics and temples in 410 sacking but preventing the damage to the rest of the city is more difficult.
 
To be honest, Rome was an unusually large town for medieval Europe- a population of thirty to forty thousand is pretty notable, and is matched by few other places.

You can probably avoid the Sack of Rome (and certainly the more serious damage that went on during the war of reconquest in the 540s), I would say, but that doesn't mean Rome will continue to flourish as a mega-city, due to its dependence on grain imports from Africa and Sicily, which will obviously cease without the Western Empire in one piece. That said, Rome will still retain its aqueducts for a while longer, which would certainly help things.

A good model would probably be Constantinople in its seventh century transition from a "Roman" to a "Byzantine" city. The grain dole and aqueducts were cut off, causing a population crash, so that the City in 700 had a population that was probably at best only about a third of what it was in 600. But even if a lot was lost, a lot clearly remained, and areas like the Hippodrome and the Forums continued to be areas of imperial ceremonial. Rome in this scenario could turn out similar, although obviously with the Pope replacing the role played in Constantinople by the Emperor.
 
To be honest, Rome was an unusually large town for medieval Europe- a population of thirty to forty thousand is pretty notable, and is matched by few other places.

You can probably avoid the Sack of Rome (and certainly the more serious damage that went on during the war of reconquest in the 540s), I would say, but that doesn't mean Rome will continue to flourish as a mega-city, due to its dependence on grain imports from Africa and Sicily, which will obviously cease without the Western Empire in one piece. That said, Rome will still retain its aqueducts for a while longer, which would certainly help things.

A good model would probably be Constantinople in its seventh century transition from a "Roman" to a "Byzantine" city. The grain dole and aqueducts were cut off, causing a population crash, so that the City in 700 had a population that was probably at best only about a third of what it was in 600. But even if a lot was lost, a lot clearly remained, and areas like the Hippodrome and the Forums continued to be areas of imperial ceremonial. Rome in this scenario could turn out similar, although obviously with the Pope replacing the role played in Constantinople by the Emperor.

Constantinople during Basil II's reign had a population of around 300,000. Where do you see Rome being, then? Mind you, Rome probably wouldn't have a nice (relatively) big Empire to rule over, but it should definitely be much better than OTL.
 
Constantinople during Basil II's reign had a population of around 300,000. Where do you see Rome being, then? Mind you, Rome probably wouldn't have a nice (relatively) big Empire to rule over, but it should definitely be much better than OTL.

Do you have a decent source for that?

I have myself in the past bandied about a 300,000 figure for Constantinople in the eleventh century, but I'd probably nowadays knock a third off that if I was going to make an estimate. But it can't be disputed that Constantinople was the largest city in Europe following the sack of Cordoba in 1009, and very possibly beforehand. Nowhere came close until Constantinople's own 1204 sufferings made it just another large city instead of something special.

Rome in this scenario maybe has about double it's OTL medieval population? So you'd see a Rome of 40,000-80,000 souls in about the year 900. In terms of the broader sweep, I'm not sure this makes a huge difference to the city's position- it's still a shadow of its Augustan-era height, and it's still a very large city by medieval standards.

Although, when I say "by medieval standards", it should be remembered that very few cities of the ancient world would have had much larger populations than those of medieval Western Europe.
 
Do you have a decent source for that?

I have myself in the past bandied about a 300,000 figure for Constantinople in the eleventh century, but I'd probably nowadays knock a third off that if I was going to make an estimate. But it can't be disputed that Constantinople was the largest city in Europe following the sack of Cordoba in 1009, and very possibly beforehand. Nowhere came close until Constantinople's own 1204 sufferings made it just another large city instead of something special.

Rome in this scenario maybe has about double it's OTL medieval population? So you'd see a Rome of 40,000-80,000 souls in about the year 900. In terms of the broader sweep, I'm not sure this makes a huge difference to the city's position- it's still a shadow of its Augustan-era height, and it's still a very large city by medieval standards.

Although, when I say "by medieval standards", it should be remembered that very few cities of the ancient world would have had much larger populations than those of medieval Western Europe.

http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/cities/turkey/istanbul/istanbul.html

It claims that by the 9th - 10th century it had a population of more than 500,000, by the early 11th this would likely be even higher.

Now, this might be kind of optimistic, but I would say it probably was at least at 300,000.
 
Although, when I say "by medieval standards", it should be remembered that very few cities of the ancient world would have had much larger populations than those of medieval Western Europe.

Now, population of medieval cities were often underestimated because of "They couldn't be possibly THIS big" syndroma.

While guesstimate of ancient cities allowed all fantaisies because we don't have clear stats for population, the demographic stats for Middle-Ages are hard to interpret (as they rely on households, not individual people)

I think the numbers given there comes from Tertius Chandler estimations, that man, quite frankly, seems coming from guesswork.

Still, 300 000 people in Constantinople are a valable maximum estimate. I think we couldn't have better than 250 000 - 300 000 for now.
For Umayyad Cordoba...It was comparable to Constantinople and admittedly in the X century they would have the same : around 250 000 inhabitants.
 
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There's a late fourth century (I think) account which gives Constantinople five thousand "houses"- by this I'm going to assume it means fairly grand households with a family and their slaves and other dependents.

And a fifth century work says Alexandria had some 50,000 homes, with 1000 inns, which could be fairly suggestive as to population size for these very largest late antique cities. I would happily go with figures talking about Constantinople up until Heraclius' reign having a population of half a million plus, given the amount of grain dole and sanitised water that the city enjoyed up until the catastrophes of the 610 onward period.
 
What happened to Constantinople's population? I know it plummeted, but was there just widespread starvation in the city?
 
By the way, I should note that the aqueduct of Valens was regularly maintained until the 4th Crusade. While it was damaged by the likes of the Avars and went for a period without repair, it was certainly fully operation again by the time of Basil.
 
What happened to Constantinople's population? I know it plummeted, but was there just widespread starvation in the city?

One would imagine so- the grain dole was removed immediately, though I suppose there might have been efforts for a while to try and source grain from elsewhere by Heraclius' government. I doubt the Emperor could have survived had amenities disappeared overnight, but the simple answer is that I don't know, and I've never found a source that discusses it!

By the way, I should note that the aqueduct of Valens was regularly maintained until the 4th Crusade. While it was damaged by the likes of the Avars and went for a period without repair, it was certainly fully operation again by the time of Basil.

The aqueduct was cut by the Avars in 626, and restored by Constantine V in 767! :)
 
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