Words for Board: Gibbon, Toynbee, Rostovizeff, Gilbert Murray, Boak, Stockmyer

Why did the Empire fall??? The pagans said it was the Christians' fault. The Christians said God wanted the Romans to convert at a faster rate and therefore had pulled the rug out from underneath them. Actually, Christianity was not a cause. It just didn't help. It was more of a result than a cause.

Edward Gibbon is the best-known historian who gives reasons. He was a moralist. He said the cause was cuz the morals of Rome declined. The Romans were throwing too many wild parties, etc. He is always cited by people like Billy Graham, etc. to show that the American morals are declining and we're going to fall if we don't perk up and get the particular branch of religion they're pushing. Course they don't mention that he published his work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1776. Writing at that time he didn't have much to work with cuz there was no archeology or modern medicine. Nobody had discovered Pompeii or stuff like that. All he had to work with was what Roman historians and literature said about themselves. That was bad cuz the Roman historians saw their job as trying to make the current generation better so they were always warping their versions of history to say that their ancestors were better behaved and that the current generations were going down the tubes. Actually there was a small decline in morals but only in the upper generation which was not the large number of the population. After the Empire was failing, the people got depressed and they really went down. But not for most of the people or most of the time. The decline of morals was a result not a cause.

There was a Russian Marxist historian who said the fall was cuz of a revolution on the lower classes against the bourgeoisie. It's the Communist version but there's no truth to it.

Arnold J. Toynbee (that name should ring a bell) says Rome was doomed to fall ever since the Greeks got into the Peloponnesian War. Say, huh?? That was before Rome was even really around. That meant the Romans conquered all of the world while they were falling?? He says that cuz the Romans inherited the Greek culture. The Greeks couldn't make it work so obviously the Romans weren't going to either. He said Romans inherited a poisonous culture. Actually, he backed up too far. Besides, the Romans didn't steal everything from the Greeks -- just the good stuff. The Romans were a different kind of people with whole different attitudes. Toynbee also said philosopher/kings won't work cuz they can't think and act at the same time.

Rostovizeff was a Russian historian who defected to the West. His big theory pushed economics. He said the western empire was too weak. It dragged down the rest of the empire. The western farmer had been destroyed by the provinces. The Roman Empire was rotting out from the core (Italy). Rome needed the colonies' taxes to get the food to feed the welfare people. But bad stuff happened with bad emperors, plagues, etc. so everything fell apart. He also said there was lots of internal hatred between the people (army vs. citizens, lower class vs upper) and you can't get people to cooperate in that environment.

Gilbert Murray is an English historian. His basic idea is phrased as the "Failure of Nerve." He says Romans lost their nerve, i.e. became pessimistic. At the end of the Republic the state was turned over to the emperor to solve things. When the empire is going down, people turned to religion which didn't work. The more you feel you can't solve a problem, the more you won't solve it.

Boak is also English and wrote Manpower Shortage and the Fall of the Roman Empire. He said the Romans didn't have enough people throughout the world to run things. He gives lots of neat population statistics and how plagues destroy the population. It takes 200 years to get back all the people killed off in the plagues, and Rome was never overpopulated in the first place (except in the City of Rome). The emperors were having trouble getting troops. But especially the plague killed off the people in the cities. City people were the ones with education and training on how to make the empire work. The only other people with education were the army officers. The military men were stuffed into high civilian roles and get the city going and that reduced the education level of the army and made them more barbaric. There just weren't enough educated people.

Stockmyer (yes, it's him -- with the truth and nothing but) gives you the REAL cause. There was a lack of education period in the Roman Empire. The education was private and there was no state money support for it. Very few people were really educated. The plagues hit the city the hardest cuz it was so communicable. There were poor emperors, the failure of adoptive succession, the decline of the discipline and education level of the army, the expansion of the empire too far, the economic weakness of Italy as compared with the provinces and the fact that there were barbarians lurking on all the borders waiting to pounce if the Romans made too many mistakes. All of that jazz inspire great pessimism which caused people to turn to religion. Religion doesn't fix everything. (You don't pray to god to fix your broken TV set.) But people weren't looking for solutions so they weren't finding them.

Well, gang -- it's been fun. You are, of course, signing up for one of Stockmyer's other courses, right??? Since I have a monopoly on the notes in the library, I'll see you later. (Yes, it's true -- I typed all the notes in the library though I think this is my best set yet.) Auf Wiedersehen.