Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire              Prof. Horowitz

 

RISE OF ROMAN EMPIRE:

       Rise of Military Commanders: Marius, Sulla and Client armies

       Civil Wars (44 BCE Julius Caesar’s assassination to Battle of Actium 31 BCE)

       Golden Age or Augustan Age under Octavian, named Emperor Augustus, who ruled 27 BCE-14 CE.  Writers Virgil and Horace, historian Livy.   

 

Pax Romana (27 BCE-180 CE)    Maximum extent of Empire and best Latin literature.  Tacitus’s critique of Rome

           Roman Hegemony on the Mediterranean coasts;12 emperors discussed by Suetonius and then Marcus Aurelius.  See maps.

           Monarchial form of government: Augustus could veto or initiate legislation in Senate. Augustus declared Julius Caesar a god, and then emperors worshipped. Assemblies ceased after 98 CE. Senate usurped functions. By end of Pax Romana, Senate weak before Emperor and simply approved Emperor’s decrees.

            Height of Roman Culture: Pantheon, Colosseum, city of Pompeii, Trajan’s Column, Arch of Titus,  Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, Juvenal, Pliny the Elder, Quintilian, Tacitus, Seneca

  

 

WHAT ARE THE KEY DATES IN THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE?

Cato the Elder (234-146 BCE) criticized Republican Rome for abandonment of republican values. Juvenal and Tacitus during the Pax Romana were very critical of Roman corruption.

Greatest extent of Empire under Trajan, 117

Diocletian split empire, assigning West to Maximian 284-6 (sculpture of Tetrarchs)

Emperor Constantine established capital in Constantinople, and in 313 decreed toleration of religion. First emperor to become a Christian

Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the state religion, forbidding paganism, 383

Visigoths sacked Rome 410, and then Augustine wrote City of God

Attila the Hun invaded western empire, 451

Vandals sacked Rome 455

Visigothic leader Odoacer seized power in Rome, 476---end of Roman Emperorship in the West.

Eastern Emperorship continued as under Justinian (ruled 527-565) and long into Byzantine civilization (until 1453 when Constantinople conquered by the Turks)

 

Historical Interpretations:

 

Gibbon’s Religious and Moral Explanation  brought on a debate

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776:

“ As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear, without surprise or scandal, that the introduction, or at the least the abuse, of Christianity had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire”

“But the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness.” (Greek “hubris” as in Thucydides’ explanation of defeat of Athens by Sparta)

Twentieth-Century Debate on:

Did Rome decline or was it transformed?

What caused the changes?

 

Socio-Economic Causes

Loss of self-sufficiency

Wallbank: Slavery and underdeveloped technology, restricted internal market on account of split between patricians and plebs and slaves

Westermann: Lack of free economy, landed estates imitating Persian serfdom

Rostovtzeff: Antagonism of city and country, soldier peasant against bourgeoisie

Baynes: Peasants fear army

King: economic decline of the cities, state became a machine to support the army

 

 

Political-Military Causes

Unsuccessful attempt of Diocletian (2 emperors & 2 caesars, 293) and other emperors to reconstitute the empire. (Hunt et. al. emphasize ineffectiveness of political rearrangement, despite increasing autocracy in term "Dominate" replacing "Principate" established by Augustus)

Many military takeovers of the emperorship

Jones: Internal weaknesses common to East and West, but only the West fell. West was more exposed to attack from German tribes.

Greer: No principle of political succession.

Baynes: State’s overtaxation hurt agriculture

Gibbon: Imperial conquests had already corrupted Roman Republic, weakening self-discipline

Bury: Rome needed to recruit German tribesmen to fight Rome’s wars. Transformation of army into camps along borders

Heitland: Rome never developed representative institutions that could give continuous reform

 

Intellectual-Religious Causes

Augustine’s Christian Otherworldliness, seeing the city of Rome as unimportant compared to the city of God and advising spiritual withdrawal when Rome was sacked.

Clergy undermined civic virtue, preaching pacifism. Others did preach just war theory

Machiavelli and Nietzsche would later call for restoration of pagan manly virtue.

 

 

Margaret King:  “Then, in the third century, the tide turned. A deep and persistent crisis took hold. Prosperity faded; poetry and philosophy languished.  The borders could be hold only by enormous efforts required the reorganization oft the army, the economy, and the machinery of the state. Thenceforth, until the final collapse of authority in the Western Empire in the late 400s, although Rome survived, it bled” (King, Western Civilization: A Social and Cultural History, Brief Edition, 2001, p. 119).