The Ancient Suicide of the West
by
Nicholas Davidson
unsolved riddles of history.
Rome rose from obscurity to dominate the ancient
world until
it became
practically synonymous with civilization itself. Yet a
few centuries later its terrified survivors, decimated by disease,
famine, and infertility, eagerly laid their necks beneath the swords
of barbarian conquerors. Why?
Edward Gibbon, who set out to solve this
riddle at the time of
the American Revolution, had yet to find any but
the vaguest
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire. By answering
the riddle of the fall of Rome, Gibbon hoped to
discover whether
modern European civilization might be threatened
by a similar fate.
Precisely because the riddle remains unsolved,
Gibbon's History
remains the standard work in its area - a unique
situation in the field
of history, where obsolescence overtakes most
works within a few
years of publication.
Despite his
high reputation, Gibbon was something of a plodder,
and his work is full of repetition and the
sacrifice of concept to
narration: a touchstone of English usage in its
few inspired moments,
a valuable source even today, but scarcely a
model of analytical
clarity. At the end of his study of the fall of Rome, Gibbon
concluded that modern civilization, unlike Rome,
was too complex
to fall, without adequately specifying what the
conditions for that
complexity might be.
Gibbon's
vagueness has inspired a seemingly endless stream of
alternate explanations. After reviewing the same
general evidence,
scholars have come to the most diffuse and
frequently the most
farfetched conclusions.
A classic
example is F. W. Walbank's account of the decline of
and factually reliable, his conclusions are less
convincing.
Walbank argues that the lessons of the decline can guide us in
the present. "Having learnt the lessons of that 'awful revolution',
we can more advantageously devote our passions and our
energies to the amelioration of what is wrong in our own
society." What are these "lessons," according to Walbank?
He describes in detail the coercive economic actions of the
Roman state and then concludes that "private enterprise, left
to itself, was proving unequal to the task of feeding the civilian
population." The fall of Rome is attributed to insufficient
government planning. We must, he writes, "attempt to plan
the resources of modern society
for the whole of its peoples."
Every misguided state action that
hastened the fall of Rome
- family policy, industrial policy, wage
and price controls - is
trotted out by such supremely accomplished
scholars as
historian may be, his conclusions about past
socioeconomic
events are only as reliable as his grasp of
economic theory.
Since the 1920s, the pick of classical scholars
have lived amidst
a miasma of fanciful notions on the relation of
government
policy and social progress. It is precisely in
the most sophisticated
milieus that the naïvetés of leftism have bitten
deepest, as in
Britain, where many of the leading historians of
the past fifty
years have been large-C Communists, and in
America, where
socialist, Marxist, and New Deal mentalities have
great prestige
in the academy and it is nonnative to ridicule
the free market.
A better explanation for the decline of Rome must
address the
universality of the problems that confronted the
Romans. The
evils that Rome faced were not worse than those
faced by other
societies before or since. Political turmoil,
civil war, invasion,
plague, famine, and all the other scourges of the
ancient world
can be found abundantly in the histories of all
societies, including
modern and early modern Europe. Why in the
seventeenth century
did England not succumb to plague and civil
strife, nor Holland
to devastating, repeated invasion? Rome itself
had survived all
these scourges, including invasion, occupation,
civil war, and
ceaseless barbarian pressure during the republic
and the early
empire. What none of the factors, commonly
advanced to explain
the fall of Rome, can do adequately, is to show
why, at the very
pinnacle of its grandeur in the first century A.D., at a
time when
it utterly dominated the ancient world, Rome's
culture and economy
should have entered a precipitous and ultimately
fatal decline.
II. The Free Market of the Ancient Mediterranean
Classical civilization was a middle class civilization. It stood at
the pinnacle of a long process of democratization
that had begun
hundreds of years earlier. Broadly speaking, the
aristocrats first
overthrew the kings. The oligopolies they
established were in turn
overthrown by the upper middle class.
A vast development of trade between the ninth and the fifth
centuries B.C. underlay this development. The
central importance
of commerce was self-evident to the ancient
Greeks. As Plato has
impossible," to which Socrates' interlocutor
rejoins, "Impossible."
class. Two of the criteria of aristocratic worth
- wealth and military
value - simultaneously passed to the middle
class. Building on these
assets, the middle class sought and in many cases
achieved cultural
and political influence commensurate with its
economic power.
By the peak moment of Greek civilization in fifth
century Athens,
the upper middle class occupied a position
roughly analogous to
that of the upper middle class in Britain after
1688 or France after
1789, as the cultural center of society.
If the Greeks, along with the Phoenicians and their
Carthaginian
descendants, were a thorough success as merchants, they were
less
successful in their political efforts. They
experimented with every
form of government without ever transcending the
specter of
political instability. But the political
turbulence of the Greek
world may have held unsuspected economic
benefits.
The disunited world of the ancient Mediterranean
constituted
a de facto free market. States, each one seeking
its own interest,
competed against each other, with none able to
gain a lasting
advantage. In this setting, commerce flourished.
The population
and prosperity of the Mediterranean basin
increased dramatically.
Mediterranean, such as Marseille, Syracuse,
Carthage, Athens,
and Egypt. At first the benefit seemed enormous.
The chronic war
and piracy which had plagued the Greek world were
suppressed.
Briefly the world knew peace and order and was
able to expand
its infrastructure. The ancient world reached yet a new peak of
population and prosperity.
But the state which made this possible carried
within itself the
principle of its own destruction.
III. Collectivism Under the Roman Republic
Throughout
its history, Rome defined civic rights and duties as
the properties of collective bodies. Under the
republic (c. 500 B.C.
-27 B.C.), these bodies achieved a certain
balance, so that, no one
body being able to completely dominate any other,
the power of
the state over the individual, while in principle
absolute, was in
practice limited. A senatorial governing class,
an aristocracy of
"equites" or knights, and a distinct citizen body
of plebeians shared
hegemony over the various aspects of public life.
Further segmented
into influential extended families, the Roman
republic embodied
powerful principles of both balance and unity.
In the later years of the republic, the power of these intermediary
bodies eroded even as the aggregate power of the
state, augmented
through conquests, reached unprecedented heights.
After a series
of civil wars between rival generals, one of
them, Julius Caesar,
emerged as supreme ruler. His successor Augustus
(ruled 27 B.C.
to 14 A.D.), founded the Roman Empire. Over the
next four hundred
years, that empire was progressively to snuff out
the power of all the
intermediary institutions. Ironically, the
principle of collective rights
which had sustained Roman liberty under the
republic would be used
to undermine ancient civilization itself under
the empire.
Already in the late republic, the practices had begun
which were
to prove fatal under the empire. The functions of
society gradually
became the properties of exclusive classes. The
upper classes were
as restricted as the lower. By a law of 218 B.C.,
senators were
forbidden to own cargo ships. This law forced the
Roman upper
class to invest in land rather than commerce.
Since induction into
the senatorial order was becoming a prerogative
of success, the
result was to forbid successful men to engage in trade.
It is
characteristic of the low esteem in which the Romans held
trade that Cicero described it as a vile
occupation, unworthy of a
man of honor. "We condemn the odious occupation
of the collector
of customs and the usurer, and the base and
menial work of unskilled
laborers. . . . Equally contemptible is the
business of the retail dealer;
for he cannot succeed unless he is dishonest. . .
.. The work of the
mechanic is also degrading; there is nothing
noble about a workshop. . . ."
Only retirement from commerce could
legitimate a businessman.
Cicero goes on to say that "[I]f the merchant,
satiated, or rather,
satisfied, with the fortune he has made, retires
from the harbor and
steps into an estate, as once he returned to
harbor from the sea, he
deserves, I think, the highest
respect."
to maintain its prerogatives by limiting the
commercial opportunities
open to others. The Macedonian mines were closed,
and those of
Italy virtually so, with this
intention.
of citizens were themselves not immune to such
temptations.
The forced purchase of grain from farmers at a price
set by the state
was common by the late
republic.
havoc with the market, much of this grain was
resold by the state at
a yet further subsidized price. Some of it was
distributed outright to
the lower classes of Rome. Seeking popular
support, demagogues
increased the numbers of those eligible for these
distributions.
Hundreds of thousands of Romans acquired the
right to free grain.
Meanwhile finance, even more despised than
trade, remained
underdeveloped. Throughout Roman times,
successive attempts
were made to legislate the rate of interest:
sometimes 4 per
cent, sometimes 8 per cent. At one point interest was forbidden
outright, leading to surprise when the supply of loan funds
suddenly dried up. Denied the means to
meet changing economic
conditions, the banking system of the
Hellenistic world was
disrupted; it eventually disappeared altogether.
Such policies
depressed the supply of loan capital, causing the
same excessive
interest rates they were meant to discourage.
Combined with
onerous taxation, the net result of state
agricultural and financial
policy was to drive farmers off the land.
The parts of the empire first conquered were the first impoverished.
Even before the establishment of the empire,
Roman policy had
ruined fertile Sicily, previously the breadbasket
of Italy, and virtually
ended the cultivation of grain in the Italian
peninsula itself. The
thriving old Greek states of Asia Minor underwent
a comparable
of agri deserta - fertile but deserted farmland -
was to haunt Rome
until its fall. The resulting combination of
urban unemployment
with rural depopulation presented Rome with a
quandary it was
never to resolve.
The amount of grain
consumed by the city of Rome alone was
considerable. Under the empire, the annual
consumption of
subsidized grain in Rome probably exceeded
17,000,000 bushels.
a permanent need for revenue, which was not a
problem so long as
Rome was a conquering power gathering to itself
the accumulated
capital of the ancient world,
taxation replaced plunder as a source of state
income. Most of the
taxes were paid by the very farmers whose
livelihood they were
used to undermine. Too, state appropriation of
the grain supply
must inevitably have discouraged the development
of efficient
private markets.
All these tendencies
were to accelerate under the empire, under
an increasingly absolute Emperor and a
bureaucracy which
relentlessly expanded until it became virtually
coterminous with
society itself.
The Beginning of the
Decline in the Early Empire
The late republic was a period of
chronic political instability
characterized by mob violence, political
assassination, and
intermittent civil war. The price of involvement
in politics was
often violent death. The assassination of Julius
Caesar is only
the best-known of the political murders of this
period. Yet despite
this turmoil, Rome's aggregate wealth and power
continued to
increase up to the founding of the empire in 27
B.C.
At the very moment Rome triumphed over the rest of the ancient
world, the forces of statism were reaching a
point of critical mass,
at which their full effects came into play. In
consequence, the
unparalleled economic growth and cultural impetus
of the
classical world were stalled and then reversed.
Gibbon began his
History with the second century of empire, the
age of the Antonines. But towards the end of his
life he regretted
he had not begun much earlier. In fact, the
decline began as soon
as the empire. The flowering of the Augustan Age
was remarkably
brief - a matter of a single generation. After
this one great initial
burst of energy, Rome lapsed into sterility and
decadence. Under
the pressure of government interference, trade,
agriculture, letters,
art, and personal freedom entered a decline which
is visible almost
from the beginning, and was a frequent source of
concern for
ancient writers.
The Roman economy
reached its peak toward the middle of the
first century A.D. and thereafter began to
decline. One symptom
of this condition was that long-distance trade in
manufactured
goods fell off noticeably in the course of the
first century.
the economic decline would steadily accelerate
until the whole
of classical civilization was sent into a
tailspin.
A Rapid Enfeeblement
Depopulation followed. In
the countryside, the peasants continued
to desert their lands, even as the competing
slave population shrank
with the receding of the time of
conquests.
of the empire set a dazzling standard that was
never matched. Cicero
and Virgil would have many admirers, but no
equals, as education
became a matter of imitative declamation. The
Emperors, as their
power became increasingly absolute, accelerated
this trend by
persecuting or simply killing adverse literati.
In portraiture, there
is a falling off that is noticeable immediately.
High art, which had
been the prerogative of many, increasingly became
a prerogative of
the Imperial court. The scientific impetus of the
Greeks virtually
disappeared, with a few isolated exceptions like
the physician Galen
- and even he may have been more of a compiler
than an originator.
The story of the first century A.D., the apex of
Roman glory, is
thus that of a rapid and progressive enfeeblement of those
very
elements which had made classical civilization a
great age of
achievement.
"The Golden Age of the
Antonines"
By the end of the first century A.D., the peak had passed
and the
decline began in earnest.
The
stagnation in all aspects of society was associated with
a continuous extension of governmental functions. Social
engineering was tried on the grand scale. The state relentlessly
expanded into commerce, industry, and private life.
Government acquired
near-monopolies of previously private
or mixed sectors, such as mines and
quarries.
humble inhabitants of the empire became direct
employees of
the state. At the same time, the bureaucracy
grew, demanding an
ever-larger share of state expenditures.
Depopulation became general. The problem was not limited
to
impoverished peasants. The urban upper middle
class on which
so much of classical civilization depended seems
to have developed
a catastrophically low birth rate. As usual,
the response of Roman
government was to enact coercive
legislation. Under Augustus,
elaborate laws had been promulgated to
penalizethe unmarried
and the childless. These laws were to be
frequently reaffirmed
over the following centuries.
Mass
population transfers were tried, whether to people recently
conquered lands, to replenish newly depopulated
ones, or as
political policy. The Diaspora began as a
characteristic act of
Roman administration.
To meet its
growing expenditures from a shrinking tax base,
the government began to resort to deliberate
inflation, devaluing
the currency time and again. A succession of
attempts was made
to restrict wages and prices.
had never been completely banished by Rome even
in the time of
It is not too much to speculate that a population
weakened by
poverty and hunger proved newly susceptible to
the ravages of
disease. The plagues, which devastated the Roman
world, seem
to have had little lasting effect on the hordes
of barbarians on the
fringes of the empire.
By the time
the so-called "Golden Age of the Antonines" ended
in 235 A.D., the Roman world was weaker, poorer,
less populous,
and in important ways less civilized than it had
been in the mid-first
century. Yet no external force had intervened
powerful enough to
halt and then reverse the progress of classical
civilization, which
for the previous six hundred years had only gone
from strength to
strength. Neither political chaos nor
irresponsible rule can be
blamed for this state of affairs. The decline
became most tangible
between 96 A.D. and 180 A.D. under the successive
reigns of the
"five good emperors," who were widely admired in their time and
recommended for centuries thereafter as models of
enlightenment
to European monarchs and statesmen. Indeed the
best of them,
such as Marcus Aurelius, came as close as humanly
possible to
fulfilling the Platonic ideal of the
"philosopher-king." Though
uniformly conscientious, concerned, and
hard-working, the
Antonines seem only to have exacerbated the
problems of their
society.
It was during this period
that Rome ceased its outward expansion
and, turning inward, began to suffer from the
incursions of the
barbarians into whose lands it had previously
expanded with
impunity.
The Time of the Fifty
Emperors
The problems that had slowly sapped the forces of the Roman
Empire worsened during the period of acute
political instability
from 235 to 284. During this half-century, nearly
every emperor
died a violent death, often after reigns of less
than a year. As the
civilian fabric of the empire disintegrated, the
military came to
the fore, making and breaking emperors as it
pleased. As in the
late republic, the Roman world was once again
ravaged by civil
war - but this time there would be no recovery.
The anarchy ended only with the accession of Diocletian in 284.
Diocletian was another "philosopher-king" in the
Platonic mold,
both a forceful and a scrupulous monarch, so
immune to the
opium of
power that, still in his vigor, he chose to spend his later
years in voluntary retirement. Diocletian's policy, designed to
give the empire a new lease on life, in fact practically ensured its
downfall.
The Roman World after the
"Reforms" of Diocletian
Imagine a world in which peasants are bound
to the soil; in
which the military dominates society; in which
soldiers form
a hereditary caste; in which sons are required to
follow their
fathers' trade; in which commerce is under the
exclusive
control of privileged guilds; a world where material and
moral progress are slow or absent, but where poverty, hunger,
and disease are ubiquitous, and the magnificence
of the few
serves only to highlight the misery and
degradation of the many.
Such an image evokes for many the world of the
Middle Ages;
but it applies equally well, indeed far better,
to the society
established by Diocletian and reinforced by
Constantine and
his other successors. In fact the high Middle
Ages were a mecca
of freedom and rapid advance in comparison to the
society of
the late empire.
By the late empire,
the prevalence of slavery in the ancient world
had diminished. But slavery was merely replaced
by other forms
of unfreedom. The technically free peasant of the
late empire,
the colonus, is not distinguishable from the serf
of later centuries.
Like the medieval serf, the Roman colonus owed a
fixed proportion
of his produce to the landowner, was obliged to
give him a certain
number of days of free service, and was obliged
to dwell within
the landowner's domain. Coloni were legally bound to the soil.
In addition, they were likely to be crushed by
taxes and on top
of all this virtually enslaved by debt. A colonus
who fled and
was recaptured could be returned in chains like a
slave.
Marxist rhetoric has sunk so deep into modern consciousness
that we are apt to overlook the fact that
oppression fell not just
on the peasants but also on the landlords.
Agricultural taxes were
assessed according to acreage, not production;
thus in bad years
they were as high as in good years. Furthermore,
landowners in
the late empire became liable for increasingly
onerous payments
in kind to support the growing demands of the
administration and
the military. Their role was made as economically
impossible as
that of their tenants.
Diocletian
radically expanded the civil service. The number of
administrative districts
was more than doubled, requiring a vast
expansion of the Imperial bureaucracy. One can
argue endlessly
over whether the Roman people were better or
worse governed
before Diocletian. What is certain is that they
were more governed
after him.
A significant part of this
new state activity was explicitly devoted
to repression. Already under the "good emperor"
Hadrian (117-138),
the commissariat officials or frumentarii had
given rise to a secret
central role in the administration of the later
empire.
Along with the expansion of the civil service went an
expansion
of the military. A dual governmental structure
was created, in
which the military administration of each
province paralleled the
civilian one. The number of troops was vastly
increased, from
around 300,000 to over 500,000, though the
quality of many
units seems to have been poor. The trend was to
rely on
barbarian auxiliaries.
citizen, whose quintessentially hard-bitten
character in the
republic had made it possible to win the empire, had become
a soft and unreliable soldier.
Trade was subjected to ever-more-detailed
state restrictions.
This is by far the simplest and most plausible
explanation for
the decline in commerce that began in the first century A.D.
and accelerated steadily throughout the remaining
lifetime of
the empire. Long-distance commerce, the lifeblood
of ancient
outside the Empire. At various times the
government prohibited
"the export of . . . wine, oil, grain, salt,
arms, ivory, and gold."
nothing.
To meet its rising
expenditures from a shrinking economic base,
the state resorted to a growing welter of
financial manipulations.
Deliberate inflation destroyed the currency.
Eventually the
coinage became so worthless that the monetary economy
which had
sustained commerce for the previous thousand years
disintegrated altogether. The ancient world went
back tobarter.
Even taxes, which remained payable in specie
after it had largely
disappeared from commercial transactions, often become
payable
in kind, presumably because there was no other
way to collect
them. The legionaries, who originally had been
paid so they
could purchase food and equipment, were now
issued food
and equipment in lieu of pay, necessitating a
vastly enlarged
state supply system.
The state had
long owned a system of manufactories to supply
the court and army. This system was greatly
expanded under
Diocletian and his successors. The government
directly operated
an extensive network of wool and linen mills,
dyeworks, embroidery
ateliers, and possibly boot factories. People who
sheltered runaway
textile workers were liable to severe penalties,
which are frequently
articulated in the celebrated law codes of late
antiquity.
Each factory was organized as a regiment. The
workers were ranked
like soldiers, and like the soldiers they
inherited their profession.
To prevent them from escaping, they were branded.
The workers in
the government mints were subject to a similar
system, and were
farmers and artisans. Middle-class life too
became an intolerable
burden.
In all periods, the
organization of classical civilization rested on
the city-state and its dominant middle class. The
Roman municipal
of-ricers or curiales comprised in effect the
upper middle class of
the Roman towns or municipia. Under the empire,
the curiales
became personally responsible for the
administration of their
municipalities, and financially responsible for
the collection
of taxes
required by the central government. Local office, once
vied for
as a mark of prestige and a fount of influence, came to
be shunned. Economic success was directly
penalized, for even
a fairly modest fortune subjected its possessor
to induction into
a status which became virtually hereditary under
the late empire.
Like the coloni and the workers in the state
factories, the curiales
were denied freedom of movement. If they migrated
to a new town,
they were liable for a double obligation, in both
their new and
former locations. The curiales were forbidden to
join the civil
service, the army, the Church, after it was
established, and even
the state factories. The fact that a member of
the ostensibly
governing class had to be forbidden to accept
this latter employ-
ment, tantamount to slavery, suggests how low
this class had
sunk, and with it the towns it theoretically ruled. In the
final act
of this absurd drama, elevation to curial status
came to be inflicted
as a criminal punishment.
Commercial
organizations fared no better than the municipalities.
Like the guild which succeeded it, the Roman
collegium was a
cross between a trade association and a trade
union. Merchants and
artisans had organized themselves into collegia
since the republic,
but under the empire these organizations acquired
a growing
importance.
The shipping associations
provide a striking case of this trend.
At first the government offered concessions to
shippers; little by
little these merged into demands. For example,
tax concessions
granted to the shippers under Claudius (41-54)
later provided a
lever to bring them to heel under Hadrian
(117-138).
trend was for the collegia to become instruments
of state control.
The system of collegia was not restricted to a few
occupations
or regions but became general throughout the
empire. All trades
were inducted into the system. Members were
forbidden to change
occupations. Their heirs inherited the same
obligations.
In many trades, members were obliged to marry inside
the guild.
Such prohibitions were not absolute, however: for
instance,
a non-baker was permitted to marry the daughter of a baker -
provided he then became a baker himself.
It is easy to see that the
ban on changing occupations made it
impossible for the Roman economy to adapt
flexibly to changing
circumstances.
In return for
accepting state control of their lives, people received
sustenance - those
who survived the famines, plagues, civil strife,
and barbarian attacks. The inhabitants of Rome
itself were the
special beneficiaries of this state largesse. In
addition to the free
and the subsidized grain distributed since the
republic, other food
items became the objects of government concern.
From the time
of Septimius Severus (193-211), olive oil was
distributed by the
government free of charge. In the course of the
next century, a
pork ration became standard. Wine was also distributed free or
at very low cost. The shippers, bakers, and hog merchants acquired
official
duties, becoming in effect direct servants of the state.
They were obliged to buy, transport, and sell
goods in quantities
and at prices fixed by the state.
The
result could be ruinous to the traders involved. For instance,
shippers were obliged in the early fifth century
to transport state
cargoes in exchange for one per cent of their
value - a remuneration
that plainly could not have covered the costs
incurred.
sprang up against speculation, illicit trading,
delay, and sabotage.
Eventually membership in the collegia, like that
in the municipia,
was meted out as a criminal punishment - a bitter
finish for
organizations that in the end were able to serve
neither the public
nor the private good.
In some ways
this mixed economy was crueler than a pure socialist
system. The possession of property merely
obligated an individual
to work for the state. Individuals retained their
property in theory,
only to be held responsible for the crushing
liabilities it incurred.
Property, whether a baker's shop or a landed
estate, could not be
alienated by its owner. Often the compensation
allotted by the state
was grossly inadequate, the burdens onerous,
death the punishment
for avoiding them.
Thus long before
the deposition of the last western emperor in
476, the
de facto free market of the ancient Mediterranean had been
replaced by a frozen society. With its secret
police, branded workers,
and coercive family legislation, Rome was the
first totalitarian state.
Once the reforms of Diocletian were in
place, the classical world
had for all intents and purposes ceased to exist
and a new world,
that of
the Middle Ages, had begun. The Dark Ages of Western
civilization did not begin with the sack of Rome by the Visigoths
in 410, but generations before with the
self-strangulation of the
Roman polity. The barbarians, who had been there
all along,
stepped into a vacuum created by the Roman state
itself, not in
spite but because of its might.
IV. The End of the
Ancient World
Over the past generation it has become fashionable to
downplay
the catastrophic effects of the fall of Rome and
to stress instead
the continuity between classical and early
medieval civilization.
Rome, it is argued, did not fall
catastrophically; elements of classical
civilization persisted into later centuries. This
schema is only partly
correct. Rome was a very different place in 400
from what it had
been in the time of Augustus. Something had
happened in between.
There is a major discontinuity between
classical and Dark Age
culture. But the source of discontinuity lies,
not in the fifth century
with the sack of Rome and the deposition of the
last Western
emperor, but in the first two centuries of empire, as the civilization
of the ancient Mediterranean slowly disintegrated under the growing
absolutism of the Roman state. By the end of
Diocletian's reign in 305
A.D., the process had almost certainly passed the
point of no return.
It is not so much that the Dark Ages were more
"classical," as that
the Roman Empire was more "medieval" than we have
yet imagined.
of the catastrophe this development represented.
The destruction of
ancient civilization was a veritable holocaust
for the people of the
ancient world, who died like flies amid the
poverty and degradation
of the period. It is fearsome to contemplate the
broken dreams and
shattered lives that lie behind the ancient
reports of deserted farmland
and the cold archeological maps of shrinking city
perimeters. The
survivors were glad to trade their freedom for
work and bread, even
if it meant living as branded laborers in
regimented state factories.
As the curtain of the Dark Ages fell
across the society of antiquity,
it covered a civilization paralyzed in the East,
shattered in the West;
the currency worthless, trade at a standstill;
learning forgotten,
agriculture devastated; the countryside deserted,
the cities empty,
and military capacity so diminished that the
once-war-like Romans
would do little but cringe before successive
waves of Germanic,
Arab, and Scandinavian invaders. Sunk in poverty,
tyranny, and
ignorance, the West was not to rise again for
centuries.
Only the re-emergence of the urban middle class in the
decentralized
trading states that sparked the Renaissance of
the West would end
the Dark Age culture of poverty and permit
intellectual, economic,
and cultural progress to begin again. Before that
could happen,
the remnants of the Roman Empire would undergo yet further
fragmentation under the cruelly repeated hammer
blows of the
barbarian invasions, the Arab and Viking
conquests, the Crusades,
and the devastations of the Turks and the
Mongols.
V. Why Rome Fell
Rome was never a democratic or
'individualist society. But power
under the republic was highly diffused. Consuls,
senate, tribunes,
and tribal assemblies shared influence in the
early Roman state.
The destruction of the independent power centers
and the resultant
concentration of power in the hands of a single
ruler and his direct
subordinates was an ongoing process, which began
in the late
republic and culminated in the late empire. With the destruction
of the centers of corporate power, the individual was left naked
before the state.
The inability of
the Romans to keep their government within
functional bounds was a cumulative process. At
each stage it
became harder to retreat. Each new problem was
met by an
expansion of the functions of the state. Each
such expansion
created unexpected new problems, requiring a yet
further
extension of the scope of government.
In addition to
increasing the power of the state, each new
intervention created a constituency whose
immediate self-interest
turned it against constructive change. These
privileged constituencies
cut across social classes, from the senatorial
aristocracy which
forced the closing of mines to weaken the
commercial middle class,
to the shippers and tradesmen with their guild
monopolies, to the
Roman mob with its entitlement of free bread,
wine, and pork.
By the time the process had reached its logical
conclusion under
the late empire, a republic had been
reduced to a despotism, a
dynamic and growing polity to a static and
shrinking one, and
while millions had grown up amidst prosperity,
millions more
would perish through famine, plague, and outright
massacre.
Conclusions
Three conclusions follow from this
discussion.
First, the principles of the market are universal to
complex economies
that depend on trade and manufacturing. They did
not arise from the
genesis of a mystical entity called "capitalism."
Though masters of
war and engineering, the Romans lacked a science
of economics.
Second, societal suicide is not the only possible
outcome of
unfreedom. The Greek East, with its long-established commercial
traditions, proved more resistant to state absolutism than the Latin
West. The crippling of enterprise which opened the western empire
to destruction opened instead the eastern empire
to a long stagnation.
Surrounded by tributary lands, the Byzantine
Empire lasted for a
thousand years. The Byzantines mastered the art
of police, enabling
a subject population to be held in check
regardless of changes at the
top. Defended by impregnable walls and the secret
formula for
"Greek fire," a primitive napalm, Byzantium fell
only with the
development of a new technology, the cannon with which the
Turks shattered its walls in 1453. But the
eastern empire did not
altogether perish. Its principles of government
and diplomacy moved
north to the kingdom established by the lords of
the Rus Vikings.
After the sack of Byzantium, their successor,
Ivan III, married the
niece of the last eastern emperor and proclaimed
a "New Rome"
in Moscow.
Finally, the quandary
posed by Edward Gibbon can at last be
answered. Any society subject to the same
restrictions as the
Roman Empire would speedily fall into economic stagnation
and cultural decadence. Ancient civilization was destroyed by
unrestrained statism, which flourished in the
absence of a principle
of individualism. Modern civilization will not fall, because it has
discovered the intimately related principles of commercial vitality
and individual freedom. Will not fall, that is, unless those who
ignore the lesson of the ancient suicide of the West triumph,
opening the way to the new barbarians.
Notes
1.
Pre-twentieth century liberal interpretations of the decline of
Rome
emphasize political at the expense of economic factors. Recent
liberal
interpretations are rare, and most fail to bring out the
connectedness of
the various economic, political, and social aspects of the
decline. The
major exception is that of the Austrian economist Ludwig von
Mises, who
sketches the same interpretation as mine in
Human
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0945466242/lewrockwell/>
Action (Third Revised Edition; Henry Regnery Co., 1966),
pp. 767-769. A
generally similar thesis is presented by Lawrence W. Reed in
"The Fall of
Rome and Modern Parallels," The Freeman. November 1979, pp.
647-652. For a
compendium of interpretations, see Alexander Demandt, Der Fall
Roms (Munich:
C, M. Beck, 1984).
Modern works cited include W. L.
Westermann, "The Economic Basis of the
Decline of Ancient Culture," American
Historical Review. v. XX, 1914-15, pp.
723-743; Louis C. West, "The Economic
Collapse of the Roman Empire," in
Classical Journal 28 (1932), pp. 98-106;
André Aymard and Jeannine Auboyer,
Rome et son empire (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1954); A, H, M.
Jones,
The
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801832853/lewrockwell/>
Later Roman Empire (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1964); F, W,
Walbank, The
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0853230404/lewrockwell/>
Awful Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1969); and Arthur
Fen-ill, The
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005VV9G/lewrockwell/> Fall
of the Roman Empire: The Military Explanation
(London: Thames and Hudson,
1986).
2. Walbank, pp.
71, 77.
3. Republic, 11.
4. Cf.
Westermann, p. 734: "[W]e have in the Greek world, from about 700
B.C., the
development of cities with a wide expansion of industry and
transmarine trade
between the farspread Hellenic city-states such as,
quantitatively, the world
had never before seen."
5. See West, p. 98, for a
summary of the beneficial effects of Imperial
pacification on commerce.
6. Cicero, De officiis, i, 150-51; after Walbank, p. 43.
7. Walbank, p. 44.
8. See Aymard
and Auboyer, p, 152.
9. A parallel trend for industry
may be suggested by the gradual shift of
the center of blown glass production
- a major industry - from Sidon and
Alexandria to Campania, thence to Gaul,
and subsequently to Cologne on the
Rhine frontier - in other words, from the
least to the most barbaric parts
of the empire. In Italy itself, both
agricultural and industrial activity
declined very early. For these points,
see West, p. 100.
10. Walbank, p. 30.
11. Aymard and Auboyer emphasize the unprecedented
centralization of
capital in the city of Rome.
12.
Walbank, pp. 48, 70.
13. On the decline of the slave
population, see for instance Westermann,
p. 740.
14.
Cf. West, p. 101.
15. See Roberr L. Schuettingar and
Eamonn F. Butler, Forty
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0891950230/lewrockwell/>
Centuries of Wage and Price Controls (Washington, D.C,:
Heritage Foundation,
1979), pp. 9-27, for a comparative discussion of Roman
wage and price
controls.
16. Cf., Aymard and Auboyer,
p. 313.
17. Walbank, p. 63.
18.
Eventually the army became numerically more barbarian than Roman.
See
Ferrill, p. 84,
19. See for instance West, p. 98.
20. West, p. 102.
21. Walbank,
p. 79.
22. Jones, p. 835.
23.
This appears to be the upshot of the discussion in Jones, pp.
738-739.
24. The remarks on the collegia are indebted
to Walbank, pp. 70-73.
25. Walbank, p. 72.
26. For this reason, once we stop trying to see late
antique culture with
"classical" eyes and start looking at it with "medieval"
ones, its
atmosphere and aesthetic begin to fall into place.
May 6,
2004
Nicholas Davidson holds a Master's degree in European history from
the
University of Chicago. He is the author of The
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0879754087/lewrockwell/>
Failure of Feminism (Prometheus Books, 1987). Reprinted
from The Freeman:
<http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?sec=iolmisc> Ideas on Liberty with permission.
Copyright
1987 FEE <http://www.fee.org/>
Back to
LewRockwell.com Home <http://www.lewrockwell.com/> Page