What caused the fall of the (Western) Roman Empire?

First there are a couple of ideas that are thrown around above, that have largely been rejected by modern scholarship.

Christianity: Gibbon is the most famous proponent of this argument (so its an old argument). There are a couple of key problems with this argument. First the timing does not really work. The Empire largely recovered from the crisis of the 3rd century at the same time it rapidly Christianized. Further, the Eastern Empire continued for another thousand years.

Debasement of Coinage
: This is a superficially plausible theory but here the timing really does not work. The debasement occurred in the middle of the third century. The coinage was restructured in the time of Diocletian and the Empire survived for another 2 centuries or so. Further there is little evidence that trade declined during this time. In the same way Diocleatian's edict on maximum prices does not work in terms of explanation.

Moreover, most evidence suggests it was not really followed.

A few things:

  • In The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation, historian Bryan Ward Perkins presents evidence that trade activity did indeed decline markedly in the Late Empire compared to the period 0 to c.200AD. The evidence from shipwrecks and coin finds IIRC shows a significant reduction. It wasn't limited to the third century.
  • You are right about Diocletian's edict, that it was too early on its own to account for Rome's fall, and that it wasn't followed/could not be enforced. However, Diocletian's edict was a symptom of an ongoing problem, namely inflation and debasement. Looking into this a little more, it seems Rome didn't have sufficient sources of silver, although the reasons why the coinage was continually debased are not fully understood. One possible explanation is an imbalance of trade. As time progressed, the trade deficit of the west, because of its buying of grain and other commodities, led to a currency drainage in Rome. It's certainly a topic that merits further research, but I don't believe one can dismiss it as a factor. Unless drastic evidence has come to light since I last looked at this, around 2006. ;)
  • Christianity is probably the weakest explanation for the fall of Rome of them all. The simple fact of the survival of the Eastern Roman Empire easily disproves this one. That said, the role of Christianity in changing the character of the empire may not be totally irrelevant. For instance, Christianity certainly didn't help the Byzantines in the early 7th century, when Byzantine religious persecution of Monophysite Christians and Jews played a role in the permanent loss of the entire east and south, including Egypt, Syria, Palestine and North Africa.
Did the Western Empire Fall: This remains a popular idea amongst some academic historians. The basic idea is that the Western Empire did not really fall; rather it transformed into something different (medieval civilization or something). I will admit that I do not have deep expertise in this strain of thought but its strikes me as profoundly implausible... The sense I get is that this idea is declining in popularity in academic circles.

Oh god I hope so. This one was one of the theories that I found ridiculous when I was a student. That silly Peter Brown and his theories of 'gradual transformation and change'. What a load of nonsense! I hope you are right. It would please me greatly to see this revisionist garbage consigned to the dustbin of history. I am totally in the Bryan Ward Perkins "The barbarians invaded, it was bloody and brutal" camp. It wasn't all a process of peaceful accommodation and change (though obviously that sounds nice). The reality was surely much worse (sadly).
 
I wonder to what level the East's bureaucracy helped keep them chugging along. Even if the Emperor was bad, there were still civil servants to collect taxes, make sure food was being imported into the cities, and (especially) make sure the army was being paid.
 
Is this not because there was antagonism between the two sides? Once more, we are assuming the empire attempts to survive, I cannot imagine the Vandals gifting a real threat if the Western Empire is able to stand on its feet for a few decades.

The Vandals had been raiding the seas for decades, the empire could defeat them, provided the employment of sufficient resources, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t a force to be reckoned with.
 
Further there emerged at this time an intense suspicion of people with barbarian ancestry. For this reason many competent men (Stilicho for example) could not rise to the purple. This actually marks a sharp departure from traditional Roman practice. Why was Stilicho less Roman than the Illyrian emperors (i.e. Aurelian, Dicoletian, Constantine). Strong German Emperors may have made a difference.

By Jupiter, no. The last thing the Empire needs is yet more military strongmen fighting to become Emperor. Much better to keep the person of the Emperor inviolable, and have competition be limited to palace intrigues over who gets to be the Emperor's chief advisor.
 
I don't think one can pin-point a primary cause of Rome's collapse, apart from entropy. The Romans did an excellent job of saving the state from numerous calamitous events that threatened to destroy it, such as civil wars, despotic reigns, and barbarian invasions, but each reform sowed the seeds of further troubles. What's interesting is that Rome never truly "collapsed" in the eyes of the Romans. Even after the sack of 410, the Romans consoled themselves with the fact that there was still an emperor. When the Western emperor was gone, at least the barbarians were abiding by the Roman Constitution under the theoretical auspices of the Emperor in Constantinople. It wasn't until generations later, if not centuries later, that people realized that the Roman Empire was gone.
 
I don't think one can pin-point a primary cause of Rome's collapse, apart from entropy. The Romans did an excellent job of saving the state from numerous calamitous events that threatened to destroy it, such as civil wars, despotic reigns, and barbarian invasions, but each reform sowed the seeds of further troubles. What's interesting is that Rome never truly "collapsed" in the eyes of the Romans. Even after the sack of 410, the Romans consoled themselves with the fact that there was still an emperor. When the Western emperor was gone, at least the barbarians were abiding by the Roman Constitution under the theoretical auspices of the Emperor in Constantinople. It wasn't until generations later, if not centuries later, that people realized that the Roman Empire was gone.

...and then they spent a thousand years trying to rebuild it, in a certain sense. While I agree with you that the "idea" of Rome never really fell, the socioeconomic and political structures of Rome certainly did, de facto if not de jure.
 
I don't know how much this will help in this discussion, but I remember reading something in Google books (I can't remember the title of the book and it was a long time ago) concerning fifth century Gaul. While fourth century Gaul saw a recovery from the third century woes, things went downhill fast with barbarian incursions during the last century of the Western Empire's existence. According to the text which I read, priority was given to Italy and Dalmatia, which meant that whenever there was some trouble, legions would be taken from Gaul to protect those regions. Of course, the barbarian raids would cause the Gallic population to support imperial candidates which would promise help, and be seen as 'usurpers' by Rome (or Ravenna at this point). The emperor would intervene - against the Romano-Gauls, but do nothing to protect them from the Germanic hordes. and then 410 came along...
I would say extremely poor leadership in a very problematic time caused the fall, but that's a cliché.
 
Didn't Constantine issue a new, non-debased currency, backed by the precious metals confiscated from the pagan temples?

Not really. He issued new coins called solidi, made of gold instead of silver, but debased currency was still being minted for small transactions.

The Solidus, surprisingly enough, managed to escape debasement until the mid-Byzantine period IIRC. However, I would guess it was a rather large coin for day-to-day matters, so it might have enabled the Empire to pay for armies but wouldn't have done much to streamline trade. In addition to the impacts of inflation you'll learn about in any intro econ class, there was also the fact that it was impractical to pay for goods by carrying several pounds of base metal veneered in a couple ounces of silver. Thus, barter economies re-emerged, which is better than nothing but makes it hard to facilitate long-term trade.
 
In defense of Stilicho, his main objective was to put pressure on the Eastern court so that he would be recognized as “parens” for both emperors. Having both halves in his control would have consistently helped him in better defending the empire. His scheme failed repeatedly, however, and over the years he was lacking more and more in manpower and money, so eventually he attempted to seize the whole prefecture of Illyria in a quick campaign out of desperation. Ignoring Constantine III for that was a blunder with catastrophic results, but I can sympathize.

Hey, I'll defend Stilicho all day. He was a patriot, a statesman, and one of the last capable strategists the WRE ever saw. Even when faced with execution, he accepted his sentence rather that start a destabilizing insurrection against Honorius, even though that was certainly within his power to do. But it is worth noting that his period of regency is pretty much the only point in the 5th century where the WRE and ERE were hostile toward one another, and this was at a time when a huge and mobile army of Goths was running around under the capable leadership of Alaric. Was his plan fundamentally flawed? No, he just failed to account for the huge invasion of Vandals and Alans that coincided with his attempt to seize Illyria. Some historians believe that the Western court knew that a situation was developing across the Rhine and Stilicho chose to ignore it (or at least underestimated it). We'll never know for sure of course, but it is worth thinking about.
 
Most historians think the Western army was tougher than the eastern one,

Under Stilicho yes but not after 408....

....and they didn't have to deal with the Persian empire.


The WRE was still the ultimate target of most barbarian groups and the Sassanids were pretty quiet in the fifth century.

Here were the four big problems with the West compared to the East:

1. Weak Emperors, much worse leadership. The Roman (and later Byzantine) system could not handle several weak and/ or short-lived Emperors in a row, as had been demonstrated in the crisis of the third century. Over the course of the fifth century, the leadership of the Eastern Empire tended to improve while that of the West deteriorated.

Western emperors may have ben weak, but western leadership was often excellent--Stilicho, Constantius, Aetius, Majorian. The problem was the chronic weakness of the WRE especially after 408.

2. Climate change and plagues probably played a much better role than has been recognized.

I doubt it. Plague was a terrible problem in the time of Aurelius and even worse in the mid third century. I'm not aware of any plague in the fifth century west.

4. The rulers of the East massacred their German mercenaries and found other sources of manpower for their army. The ones in the West wouldn't or couldn't do this.

Lol, they sure massacred their women and children. Apparently the WRE wasn't able to find nonbarbarian manpower for its army, except by sending an SOS to the ERE.
 
First there are a couple of ideas that are thrown around above, that have largely been rejected by modern scholarship.
Christianity: Gibbon is the most famous proponent of this argument (so its an old argument). There are a couple of key problems with this argument. First the timing does not really work.

Yes it does.

The Empire largely recovered from the crisis of the 3rd century at the same time it rapidly Christianized.


No. The Empire recovered from the third century crises from c 268-98 CE, while it was still almost entirely pagan. From what I've read, Christians made up only about 10% of the population in 300 CE. Really rapid christianization didn't occur until c 370, after Julian.
There's no doubt the WRE fell because of military weakness. The new christian pop[ulation evidently didn't want to fight and few barbarians would serve in the regular Roman army after 408.


Further, the Eastern Empire continued for another thousand years.

First it survived the fifth century largely because of good luck. The Huns may have ravaged the balkans in the 440s but the West was where nearly all barbarians ultimately targeted and settled, causing permanent losses of land and revenue.
Because the ERE survived the fifth century it was able to get past the period of vulnerability caused by the unwillingness of most christians to serve. Eventually it seems, Augustine's notion of a just war spread so christians could fight.
Of course it's possible that the ERE being more christian friendly from the start always had a bit more support from its citizens, even in the 400s.


The Climate Change/Barbarian Invasion Hypothesis (most often associated with Peter Heather) does seem to have some plausible elements. In particular the timing works well. The Huns pushed the Visigoths into the empire. The Visigoths destroyed the army of Valens in 378 at Adrianople. The Visigoths sacked Rome in 410. The Rhine froze in 406 and allowed the Vandals to cross and eventually take North Africa. Ultimately, however, I find the explanation insufficient. For example, it ignores the question of why the Empire (or earlier the Republic) was able to deal with large barbarian invasions (e.g the Marcomani in the time of Marcus Aurelius, the Germans in the time of Gaius Marius).

Exactly!! The problem wasn't really external but internal and psychological. For centuries the Romans were identified strongly with their country and were willing to do anything to ensure survival and success. By about 400 CE the bulk of (now christian) Romans could no longer relate strongly to the Empire and weren't willing to fight like crazy for it, if at all.
 
I've seen it argued that the Christianization of the Empire was what rendered it unable to survive, making the argument that Christians were less willing to fight for the Empire or otherwise. However, I don't buy this for several reasons. Firstly, the East--the most heavily Christian part of the Empire--survived much, much longer.

Because relatively good luck enabled it to get past the period of vulnerability, when christians wouldn't serve. It's also likely they were willing to support it more than the WRE.


Secondly, the Barbarians who set up successor kingdoms (rather than transitory peoples like the Huns) were almost always Christian, with the exception (the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes) colonizing an extremely peripheral province that Rome made essentially no effort to defend in the V century.

Well, for one thing I don't think the barbarians were much influenced by the admonitions of the early church fathers, if they had even heard of them. Also the Roman Empire, particularly the WRE, was at a much worse disadvantage in attracting christian support, because of the enormous amount of historical baggage. Romans had crucified christ and persecuted christians for centuries. Every time a christian saw a passion scene he was reminded that Roman soldiers killed jesus--and we know that fourth century passion scenes made this obvious. Naturally this made christians very reluctant to fight for Rome in particular. Barbarian groups didn't have this all this baggage. Even early christians had no problem with fighting provided it was something they could relate to.

It has been found by modern scholarship that there was a major cool period between roughly the Fifth and Eighth centuries CE. This may have played a role in precipitating the Migrations,

They were underway before the fifth century in part due to pressure from Huns. Btw I don't know of any ancient historian who identified cooling and agricultural collapse as a serious problem after 400.

bTo counter this, later emperors began introducing the Colonate and other early forms of serfdom,

This also preceded the fifth century.

both binding Citizens to the land (and thus preventing them from being soldiers)

But landowners had to provide recruits, and sons had to become soldiers if their fathers were.
The problem was not that society was "preventing" citizens from becoming soldiers, but that the citizens themselves didn't want to fight. In the fourth century men cut off their thumbs to avoid service. Desertion was such a problem recruits had to be locked up en route to bases....Since citizens generally wouldn't fight anymore, the State evidently gave up on them and just recruited barbarians. But the WRE then stupidly alienated them in 408.....
Yet another point: Binding of people to the land occurred around the time of Diocletian yet the Roman army remained strong down to c 363 CE--when pagans were still numerous and in charge. Serious weakness didn't set in until the late fourth century when christianity had won out....
 
Because relatively good luck enabled it to get past the period of vulnerability, when christians wouldn't serve. It's also likely they were willing to support it more than the WRE.




Well, for one thing I don't think the barbarians were much influenced by the admonitions of the early church fathers, if they had even heard of them. Also the Roman Empire, particularly the WRE, was at a much worse disadvantage in attracting christian support, because of the enormous amount of historical baggage. Romans had crucified christ and persecuted christians for centuries. Every time a christian saw a passion scene he was reminded that Roman soldiers killed jesus--and we know that fourth century passion scenes made this obvious. Naturally this made christians very reluctant to fight for Rome in particular. Barbarian groups didn't have this all this baggage. Even early christians had no problem with fighting provided it was something they could relate to.



They were underway before the fifth century in part due to pressure from Huns. Btw I don't know of any ancient historian who identified cooling and agricultural collapse as a serious problem after 400.



This also preceded the fifth century.



But landowners had to provide recruits, and sons had to become soldiers if their fathers were.
The problem was not that society was "preventing" citizens from becoming soldiers, but that the citizens themselves didn't want to fight. In the fourth century men cut off their thumbs to avoid service. Desertion was such a problem recruits had to be locked up en route to bases....Since citizens generally wouldn't fight anymore, the State evidently gave up on them and just recruited barbarians. But the WRE then stupidly alienated them in 408.....
Yet another point: Binding of people to the land occurred around the time of Diocletian yet the Roman army remained strong down to c 363 CE--when pagans were still numerous and in charge. Serious weakness didn't set in until the late fourth century when christianity had won out....

Christians had no problem to fight for the empire. I doubt they would see the empire that allowed their religion to thrive as the enemy, there were many Christian generals and many Christian soldiers, who had been fighting for the empire for centuries. Xiphilinus mentions in his epitome of Dio’s history that a whole legion prayed so that a storm might come up and save Marcus Aurelius and the rest of them. Now we know that’s not true, but the very fact that a Christian would report that means that it was completely believable that Christians would fight for the empire in the second century.

When Christians thought of Jesus’ death, I’m rather more inclined to believe they saw it the way Christians see it now. It wasn’t the Romans who killed Jesus, it was men, in general, because Jesus needed to bear the burden of all men’s sin for them on the cross. Plus, the Romans rarely actively persecuted Christians. There’s just a handful of emperors who did that, namely Decius, Valerian, Diocletian, Galerius and Maximinus Daia. All the rest merely reacted to local and sporadic problems related to Christians. As Lactantius, Eusebius and most Christian chroniclers prove, they never harbored any grudge against the empire, only against emperors who, in their view, had mistreated them. Fourth century passion scenes made obvious the wickedness of those emperors, not of the empire as a whole.

The increase in desertion wasn’t due to conflict of faiths, people cut their own thumbs because they didn’t want to leave their homes, same as soldiers used to raise unwilling men to the purple so that they wouldn’t have to move away from the provinces were they had already settled. It was as simple as that. Then civil wars increased the loss of manpower, the great estate owners decided it was better to pay the government rather than give up their workers for conscription, and suddenly the WRE found itself without men for the army. It had nothing to do with faith, at least for the great majority of them.
 
Under Stilicho yes but not after 408....

Really? I take it Flavius Aetius never won a battle then...

The WRE was still the ultimate target of most barbarian groups and the Sassanids were pretty quiet in the fifth century.

Ummm…no? The Huns and Goths, by far the two most destructive groups, first entered the East before moving west. The Huns were paid off, but the economic means to pay tribute does constitute the socioeconomic ability to "handle" the barbarians in the 5th Century.

I doubt it. Plague was a terrible problem in the time of Aurelius and even worse in the mid third century. I'm not aware of any plague in the fifth century west.

But diseases don't just go away. Sure, they stop being epidemics, but when the economy collapses as it did in the 5th Century WRE, it decreases nutrition availability and thus makes plagues more deadly.

No. The Empire recovered from the third century crises from c 268-98 CE, while it was still almost entirely pagan. From what I've read, Christians made up only about 10% of the population in 300 CE. Really rapid christianization didn't occur until c 370, after Julian.

First of all, the Empire's recovery was by no means complete until Constantine came along. It was Constantine who worked out the kinks in the Tetrarchy system, for one thing. Furthermore, the endemic problem of inflation wasn't really solved until Constantine issued the Solidus, which was possible by confiscating the gold of Pagan temples (oh, look, Christianity helping the Empire). And Christianization occurred rapidly following Constantine's rule, not Julian's, by every metric I've ever seen, once it became obvious that Christians would be in the Emperor's good books.

First it survived the fifth century largely because of good luck. The Huns may have ravaged the balkans in the 440s but the West was where nearly all barbarians ultimately targeted and settled, causing permanent losses of land and revenue.
Because the ERE survived the fifth century it was able to get past the period of vulnerability caused by the unwillingness of most christians to serve. Eventually it seems, Augustine's notion of a just war spread so christians could fight.
Of course it's possible that the ERE being more christian friendly from the start always had a bit more support from its citizens, even in the 400s.

There's no reason to believe Christians wouldn't fight at this period, as @Sertorius126 pointed out already. Also, if you want proof that the ERE could objectively deal with Barbarians better than the WRE, I point you to the fact that it managed to survive the combined Slavic and Arab conquests, though it was greatly diminished.

The new christian pop[ulation evidently didn't want to fight

Exactly!! The problem wasn't really external but internal and psychological. For centuries the Romans were identified strongly with their country and were willing to do anything to ensure survival and success. By about 400 CE the bulk of (now christian) Romans could no longer relate strongly to the Empire and weren't willing to fight like crazy for it, if at all.

I find it amazing how you overlook all manner of political, sociological, and economic factors relating to their unwillingness to fight for an Empire that couldn't grant them the same benefits it once had and was increasingly forcing them into bondage based on the interpretations of a largely illiterate population of the finer points of scripture. As @Sertorius126 has mentioned, the church fathers were more than willing to admonish people to fight.

In any case, I think it likelier that people turned to doctrines that gave them an excuse not to fight than that they all woke up one day and decided to become pacifistic Christians. Whether/what branch of Christianity people followed was highly dependent on local socioeconomic and political factors as is shown by the strong correlation between various heresies and various regions in the East.

In the fourth century men cut off their thumbs to avoid service. Desertion was such a problem recruits had to be locked up en route to bases....Since citizens generally wouldn't fight anymore, the State evidently gave up on them and just recruited barbarians. But the WRE then stupidly alienated them in 408.....
Well, for one thing I don't think the barbarians were much influenced by the admonitions of the early church fathers, if they had even heard of them. Also the Roman Empire, particularly the WRE, was at a much worse disadvantage in attracting christian support, because of the enormous amount of historical baggage. Romans had crucified christ and persecuted christians for centuries. Every time a christian saw a passion scene he was reminded that Roman soldiers killed jesus--and we know that fourth century passion scenes made this obvious. Naturally this made christians very reluctant to fight for Rome in particular. Barbarian groups didn't have this all this baggage. Even early christians had no problem with fighting provided it was something they could relate to.

Yes, but it was socioeconomic much more than religious factors which lead people to stop relating to the Empire.

Because relatively good luck enabled it to get past the period of vulnerability, when christians wouldn't serve. It's also likely they were willing to support it more than the WRE.

Orthodox Christians, maybe. Anything other than Orthodox, and you were in for a world of hurt. Religiously speaking, once most of the Empire was Christianized, the East was more divided than the West, not less.

They were underway before the fifth century in part due to pressure from Huns. Btw I don't know of any ancient historian who identified cooling and agricultural collapse as a serious problem after 400.

Kyle Harper, for one.

Yet another point: Binding of people to the land occurred around the time of Diocletian yet the Roman army remained strong down to c 363 CE--when pagans were still numerous and in charge. Serious weakness didn't set in until the late fourth century when christianity had won out....

I think you mean "when the declining economy and fracturing social institutions meant that people couldn't even be guaranteed security in their bondage any more."
 
Yes it does.




No. The Empire recovered from the third century crises from c 268-98 CE, while it was still almost entirely pagan. From what I've read, Christians made up only about 10% of the population in 300 CE. Really rapid christianization didn't occur until c 370, after Julian.
There's no doubt the WRE fell because of military weakness. The new christian pop[ulation evidently didn't want to fight and few barbarians would serve in the regular Roman army after 408.




First it survived the fifth century largely because of good luck. The Huns may have ravaged the balkans in the 440s but the West was where nearly all barbarians ultimately targeted and settled, causing permanent losses of land and revenue.
Because the ERE survived the fifth century it was able to get past the period of vulnerability caused by the unwillingness of most christians to serve. Eventually it seems, Augustine's notion of a just war spread so christians could fight.
Of course it's possible that the ERE being more christian friendly from the start always had a bit more support from its citizens, even in the 400s.




Exactly!! The problem wasn't really external but internal and psychological. For centuries the Romans were identified strongly with their country and were willing to do anything to ensure survival and success. By about 400 CE the bulk of (now christian) Romans could no longer relate strongly to the Empire and weren't willing to fight like crazy for it, if at all.


Your arguments do not seem to be based on analysis but rather on conjecture. For example, you speculate that Christians were skeptical of the empire and did not want to fight for it. However, this argument ignores the fact that the sack of Rome in 410 CE caused profound theological problems for Christians. Basically, the common strain of Christian thought in say 400 CE was that the conversion of the empire was all part of God's plan to bring salvation to the whole world. After all, bringing salvation through the empire is a pretty efficient way of doing this. The sack of Rome (and the implication that the empire might not be eternal) caused profound problems with this argument. Addressing this issue was the main reason why Augustine wrote The City of God which developed the notion that the City of God was eternal but the City of Man was ephemeral.
 

Hecatee

Donor
I'm probably (certainly in fact) repeating myself on such topic, but I do think that the economic troubles of the Han in the late second century were probably one of the factors that contributed to destabilize the Roman empire by changing its external trade pattern and collapsing its tax structure, leading to a search for new financing solutions which fell on the people which was just recovering from the 180's plagues (the 212 Caracalla edict on citizenship for instance, which is mainly about extending the tax bases and making the status of people in the empire more uniform) and led in part to the instability of the third century, alongside climatological elements which impacted food production.
From then on internal strife and the other factors mentioned played a role that would, despite the Constantinian interlude, lead to the gradual weakening of the empire.
 
I'm probably (certainly in fact) repeating myself on such topic, but I do think that the economic troubles of the Han in the late second century were probably one of the factors that contributed to destabilize the Roman empire by changing its external trade pattern and collapsing its tax structure, leading to a search for new financing solutions which fell on the people which was just recovering from the 180's plagues (the 212 Caracalla edict on citizenship for instance, which is mainly about extending the tax bases and making the status of people in the empire more uniform) and led in part to the instability of the third century, alongside climatological elements which impacted food production.
From then on internal strife and the other factors mentioned played a role that would, despite the Constantinian interlude, lead to the gradual weakening of the empire.

That is a really interesting idea. That said, I would want evidence of a change in trade patterns between say 150 CE and 250 CE. From my limited understanding there is evidence that a few Roman merchants made it to China and a few Chinese merchants made it to the Empire but that is unlikely to be enough to have any impact. How extensive were the trade networks at the height of both empires?
 
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