No matter when you go, Rome is a great city to visit because you can see all four seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall.
Oh no.
The collapse of Roman civilization is brought to you by Audible. More on that later.
There's a lot to unpack with the fall of Rome -
why it happened, when, and even if?
They are hotly debated questions and the academic discourse can start to sound like a game of Clue.
Well, I say it was the Vandals with the sack in 455.
No stupid! It was Constantine with the Christianity in 312.
Oh! Can't you see it was the Ottomans with the cannons in 1453.
So um, instead of just digging into all the theories of the buffet with all these stupid accents that make my head hurt,
I'll show you late imperial history, give my take and hopefully help you draw your own conclusions about the fall of Rome.
So, let's do some history.
After the reign of philosopher King Marcus Aurelius at the tail end of the idyllic Pax Romana,
his delusional and violent son Commodus found his death to the end of the blade and the subsequent Imperial succession became uncomfortably swift.
One emperor was murdered by the Praetorian Guard who auctioned off the position to someone else who was then ousted by another emperor
who had to go and fight off another would-be Pretender to the throne and it's a.....
It's...it's a whole lot of that for a hundred straight years.
I actually counted and of the thirty emperors only five died of natural causes,
during what would come to be known as the crisis of the third century.
In the middle of all that assassinating,
there were also civil wars going on between rival generals seeking land and power.
A concept not unfamiliar to Romans.
To pay for all that military might, generals and emperors gave massive bonuses to their armies
which immediately caused runaway inflation that destroyed the Roman economy?
It also really didn't help that Rome had to deal with the Goths and Frankish tribes moseying in from the north
Assassinate Persians invading from the east and also the empire casually split in three
Britannia Gaul and hispania broke away and then Egypt and the Levant went rogue
Sending the ghost of Augustus into a panic due to his literal worst nightmare coming true. It was a very bad time
Amid all the murdering the sucker at the top of the proverbial Deadpool was always just Rome
written will show pervasive doom and gloom and
Nobody made public works because there's no money and dulse if the world is going to hell. What's the point?
I also feel like it's probably implied, but I think I should probably just clarify that cities were getting sacked all the time
So to recap two invasions two rogue states two plagues, which I hadn't even mentioned earlier
But I was also going on Emperor's murdered biannually runaway inflation. You might reasonably expect the Roman world to shatter into pieces any minute now
Hi Emperor Diocletian here for flex tape the super-strong crisis proof tape right here. We've got the Roman Empire
That's a lot of damage. Let's seal it with some reforms
Diocletian's big change was the institution of the Tetrarchy which split the administration of the empire between four territories ruled by two
Senior agustí and two Little Caesars. I'm not even kidding
This kept things much more local where government could be more effective across an objectively way too big empire some of his reforms were less
Effective than he might have hoped and some of his reforms were murder more Christians
So the man's a mixed bag for sure Diocletian eventually retired from being emperor in 305 to go farm
Which would be hilarious if it wasn't actually a culturally
Monumental gesture to relinquish power after a crisis and return home in direct emulation of the early Republican hero Cincinnatus
But also like come on what a power move to just retire from being Emperor
One thing Diocletian really didn't count on was that in his absence the Augusta and Caesars would immediately
Start fighting civil wars with each other. Oh no, how could this shocking twist have happened?
We never saw this coming
In an honestly refreshing return to form where Rome's biggest enemy is just
itself, the Western Augustus by the name of Constantine got to conquering his rival tetrarch's what happens next is
Exactly what you expect.In the fight for control of Italy in North Africa
He received a vision from an angel telling him to paint the symbol of Christ onto his army shields. Now it may sound crazy
But let's be real if it's the fate of the Empire
You're not in the business of saying no to angels
So he got a paintbrush and took what Bob Ross said about creating your world
slightly too literally, winning the Battle of the Milvian bridge in 312
It's unclear on whether or not Constantine fully converted to Christianity
But whatever the case she was convinced enough that he legalized Christianity throughout the empire in 313 with the Edict of Milan ending nearly
300 years of persecution and he did this with a classic Roman trick of syncretism
Connecting Jesus to a Roman solar deity in loads of commemorative iconography. No joke
There was a solid century where Jesus was rubbing shoulders with Jupiter and everybody was cool about it
but the eastern part of the Empire was still controlled by people who made the crucial mistake of not being
Constantine so our boycotts affixing that by conquering the rest of the empire in
324 and founding an Eastern capital named Nova Roma soon to be
Constantinople. Constantine was much more successful at economic reform than Diocletian.
But he continued to rely on foreign mercenaries for much of Rome's external defense
And this will have unintended but certainly not unexpected though, probably
Unavoidable consequences over the next century. Through the 300s Rome held on
Administration was split between Rome and Constantinople
Sometimes there was one Emperor other times the job was shared. One guy tried and failed to reoutlaw Christianity, Big mess
But in the wake of Constantine things were loosely good, if a little uneasy. So as long as nobody comes to rock.
No, right. I don't want to dally on the false dichotomy between savage and civilized people
The simple fact is that the term barbarian was co-opted from Greek to describe all non Romans
And as I said before they were often allied with Rome to defend Imperial territory
But the trouble started with the Huns to the Northeast when these aggressors started to push into new lands
They forced the current residents
Ostrogoths, Visigoths lots of Goths to move somewhere else, and the path of least resistance was usually into Roman territory
So the notion of barbarian invasions kind of obscures
what was more likely a big awkward and bloody domino effect
This explains one why the push was so gradual and two why these people became increasingly more
incorporated into the military and political framework of Rome as vassal federate II
So now that we have all these barbarians on the edges of the Roman world. I think it's time that we talk about EHEM..
sacks, baby
Among other things in the early 400s huge
populations of Ostrogoths
franks and vandals hopped the wall in gull to accelerate Rome's fall while the Eastern Empire had politely asked the Visigoths to go bother the
West for land instead in 410 those Visigoths made the request to Rome by means of rolling up to the city and
Promptly sacking it. This is what we historians call an ocean moment
The damage to Rome was actually minimal
But the notion that the ancient capital was now in striking distance was frankly horrifying
I mean foreign adversaries aren't supposed to be able to just march on Rome only disgruntled Roman generals are allowed to do that
Come on people traditions
They're important and the following decades western territory
slowly fell away as barbarian tribes converted Roman provinces into their own kingdoms by far the scariest of these were the hunts top of the
Barbarian food chain who had arrived on Rome's doorstep in 450 to hell bent on conquering the whole empire in comes Pope Leo the 3rd
Who rode out to meet their leader Attila and persuade him with either one words?
to the well-timed apparition of a couple
Archangels or three the simple jingling of some gold coins to kindly not destroy our Empire
Thank you very much. Please too literally
Everyone's surprised Attila was convinced and withdrew from his campaign to get married and then instantly died, man
Timing it may have seemed like Rome was saved but it's never wise to count chickens before they hatch because someone might steal your eggs
And Huck them back at you enter the Vandals in 455 who gave Rome a proper sacking like really bad
This is why the word
vandalism exists bad many big-ticket monuments like the Coliseum and Pantheon were spared just because of their size and difficulty in
Destroying but countless smaller buildings got looted and knackered and also like lots of people got murdered that that to who's bad
vandals bad
Gonna go out on a limb on that one with all this talk of things going terribly for the western part of the Roman Empire
What about the East?
well
Emperor Theodosius left it in his will that his two sons would each
Inherit half of the Roman Empire in other words to show you the power of local bureaucratic delegation
I
Saw a Roman Empire in half. He also outlawed paganism and mandated Christianity as Rome's official religion
But that is a big can of worms that Constantine would have been very upset by so let's stick to imperial geopolitics
You know did the easy stuff?
Oh boy from 395 on Rome was permanently split between East and West in a decision
That's pretty easy to criticize on its face
This completely left the West for dead as it was poorer and less urbanized
It had less stable food sources than Egypt and a far longer border to defend and with every bit of land that went to quasi
Independent kingdoms, they had fewer and fewer resources to pay their armies, but on the other hand, no, no, it's it's just a death spiral
Theodosius put the western empire into a straight-up death spiral
This is about the time that you'd hope for a strong
Diocletian or constantine type emperor to show up in the West and turn things around right?
Guys
This is
definitely the end in less than a century the Roman Empire had gone from this to
This so
How about we call it?
Okay, the armies of King Otto accur conquered Italy and deposed the sixteen-year-old Emperor. The poetically named romulus augustulus
sending word to the eastern Roman Emperor that he had assumed control of the Western Empire on your behalf to which Constantinople said I
Didn't ask you to do that. But thank you to which I walk I responded. You're welcome
And with that the Western Roman Empire had been replaced with the series of Frankish and gothic kingdoms
And Italy was ruled by non Romans for the first time in
700 years as you can see the East was still going strong admittedly to the persistent and pervasive
detriment of the West and in fact
It will continue to thrive for another thousand years
some scholars like to argue that the fall of at least Western Rome didn't really change all that much and in fact was the opening
Act to a vibrant medieval world and that's an argument
You can certainly make but in point of fact the entity that was the Roman Empire
Collapsed like the Republic before it and I think it's irresponsible to speak of a millennium
Spanning States based in the city of Rome did not just go poof
So we have at least a when and a few wise for the fall of Rome, but the way I see it
It's a testament to Rome's strength and flexibility that had survived this long at all
It should have been conquered by Hannibal during the Punic Wars in the 3rd century, BC
It should have fractured in the 1st century BC with the carousel of military dictatorships and it should have
Collapsed in the 3rd century AD with that insane five pronged crisis and well on one level any civilization
Founded on continuous conquest will run into extreme difficulty the second that expansion stops
We should recognize that much as the Republic had been proven insufficient
The unified Empire was similarly no longer cutting it
So Rome did what it does best it
Adapted while the Empire died part of Rome very much lived on and we'll cover the runaway success of the Byzantines in future videos
And when you look at it this way, I think it makes a little more sense city of Rome kaput Empire of Rome poof
civilization of Rome that's still going strong still all that said there's a reason the question of why and how Rome fell
fascinates and even haunts us
It's this megalithic world conquering seemingly immortal civilization
Totally thrashed by a confluence of factors and any society can see a little bit of themselves in the fall of Rome
But also we here at OSP recognized that on a deep emotional level
It's just kind of funny to watch stuff break. So we made a t-shirt link below. See ya
But we can't let the Goths have all the fun
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Thank you all so much for watching
I'm glad that I was finally able to finish up my rome series after had a year and a half
But hey now that that's all good in collapsed. We can move on to the byzantines
So look forward to that later in the summer, and next video for me will be about the city of Hong Kong
timely
