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The Fall of the Roman Empire

The title kind of gives it away, but Michael Grant’s The Fall of the Roman Empire was still interesting for me and at 235 pages a hell of a lot shorter than Gibbons’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I guess the decline makes up for the difference in page count.

I bought this one at Half Price Books many years ago, when I was first teaching Caesar and wanted to refresh my memory of all things Roman. Except for the three years in Naples when school trips took us regularly to Pompeii and various other relics of Rome, I haven’t really given the Romans much thought.

Interestingly, Grant’s book made me think less about the Romans and more about the fall of empire in general. What really interested me was Grant’s examination not so much of the outside forces – barbarians, huns and Germans – that destroyed the Western Roman Empire, but the internal forces that brought it down.

The unwillingness of most Romans to serve in the army, the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, many of whom found themselves crushed under unpayable debts, the squeezing of the middle class, mistrust of the emperor, racial tensions and animosity towards immigrants, increasing numbers of people dropping out of society, increasing demands for theological conformity, and an amazing sense of complacency (we’re Rome, we’re number 1) all combined to leave a great society devided against itself and easy pickings for the enterprising barbarians.

Worst of all, much of this sounded familiar. Way too familiar. 

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