Fall of the Western Roman Empire
The fall of the Western Roman Empire, also called the fall of the Roman Empire or the fall of Rome, was the loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire, a process in which the Empire failed to enforce its rule, and its vast territory was divided between several successor polities. The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces; modern historians posit factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army, the health and numbers of the Roman population, the strength of the economy, the competence of the emperors, the internal struggles for power, the religious changes of the period, and the efficiency of the civil administration. Increasing pressure from invading barbarians outside Roman culture also contributed greatly to the collapse. Climatic changes and both endemic and epidemic disease drove many of these immediate factors.[1] The reasons for the collapse are major subjects of the historiography of the ancient world and they inform much modern discourse on state failure.[2][3][4]
In 376, a large migration of Goths and other non-Roman people, fleeing from the Huns, entered the Empire. Roman forces were unable to exterminate, expel or subjugate them (as was their normal practice). In 395, after winning two destructive civil wars, Theodosius I died. He left a collapsing field army, and the Empire divided between the warring ministers of his two incapable sons. Goths and other non-Romans became a force that could challenge either part of the Empire. Further barbarian groups crossed the Rhine and other frontiers. The armed forces of the Western Empire became few and ineffective, and despite brief recoveries under able leaders, central rule was never again effectively consolidated.
By 476, the position of Western Roman Emperor wielded negligible military, political, or financial power, and had no effective control over the scattered Western domains that could still be described as Roman. Barbarian kingdoms had established their own power in much of the area of the Western Empire. In 476, the Germanic barbarian king Odoacer deposed the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire in Italy, Romulus Augustulus, and the Senate sent the imperial insignia to the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno.
While its legitimacy lasted for centuries longer and its cultural influence remains today, the Western Empire never had the strength to rise again. The Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire, survived and remained for centuries an effective power of the Eastern Mediterranean, although it lessened in strength. Additionally, while the loss of political unity and military control is universally acknowledged, the fall of Rome is not the only unifying concept for these events; the period described as late antiquity emphasizes the cultural continuities throughout and beyond the political collapse.
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"Fall of Rome" redirects here. For other uses, see Fall of Rome (disambiguation).455–456: Failure of Avitus, further losses in Gaul, rise of Ricimer
Avitus, at the Visigothic court in Burdigala, declared himself Emperor. He moved on Rome with Visigothic support. He gained acceptance by Majorian and Ricimer, commanders of the remaining army of Italy. This was the first time that a barbarian kingdom had played a key role in the imperial succession.[263] Avitus's son-in-law Sidonius Apollinaris wrote propaganda to present the Visigothic king Theoderic II as a reasonable man with whom a Roman regime could do business.[264] Theoderic's payoff included precious metal from stripping the remaining public ornaments of Italy,[265] and an unsupervised campaign in Hispania. There he not only defeated the Sueves, executing his brother-in-law Rechiar, but he also plundered Roman cities.[264] The Burgundians expanded their kingdom in the Rhône valley, while the Vandals took the remains of the Diocese of Africa.[266] In 456, the Visigothic army was too heavily engaged in Hispania to be an effective threat to Italy. Ricimer had just destroyed a pirate fleet of sixty Vandal ships. Majorian and Ricimer marched against Avitus, and defeated him near Placentia. He was forced to become Bishop of Placentia, and died (possibly murdered) a few weeks later.[267]
421–433: Renewed dissension after the death of Constantius, partial loss of the Diocese of Africa
Constantius died in 421, after only seven months as Augustus. He had been careful to make sure that there was no successor in waiting, and his own children were far too young to take his place.[220] Honorius was unable to control his own court, and the death of Constantius initiated more than ten years of instability. Initially Galla Placidia sought Honorius's favour in the hope that her son might ultimately inherit. Other court interests managed to defeat her, and she fled with her children to the Eastern court in 422. Honorius himself died, shortly before his thirty-ninth birthday, in 423. After some months of intrigue, the patrician Castinus installed Joannes as Western Emperor, but the Eastern Roman government proclaimed the child Valentinian III instead, his mother Galla Placidia acting as regent during his minority. Joannes had few troops of his own. He sent Aetius to raise help from the Huns. An Eastern army landed in Italy, captured Joannes, cut his hand off, abused him in public, and killed him with most of his senior officials. Aetius returned, three days after Joannes' death, at the head of a substantial Hunnic army which made him the most powerful general in Italy. After some fighting, Placidia and Aetius came to an agreement; the Huns were paid off and sent home, while Aetius received the position of magister militum.[226]
Galla Placidia, as Augusta, mother of the Emperor, and his guardian until 437, could maintain a dominant position in court, but women in Ancient Rome did not exercise military power, and she could not herself become a general. She tried for some years to avoid reliance on a single dominant military figure, maintaining a balance of power between her three senior officers, Aetius (magister militum in Gaul), Count Boniface (governor in the Diocese of Africa), and Flavius Felix (magister militum praesentalis in Italy).[227] Meanwhile, the Empire deteriorated seriously. Apart from the losses in the Diocese of Africa, Hispania was slipping out of central control and into the hands of local rulers and Suevic bandits. In Gaul the Rhine frontier had collapsed, the Visigoths in Aquitaine may have launched further attacks on Narbo and Arelate, and the Franks, increasingly powerful although disunited, were the major power in the north-east. Armorica was controlled by Bagaudae, local leaders not under the authority of the Empire.[228] Aetius at least campaigned vigorously and mostly victoriously, defeating aggressive Visigoths, Franks, fresh Germanic invaders, Bagaudae in Armorica, and a rebellion in Noricum.[229] Not for the first time in Rome's history, a triumvirate of mutually distrustful rulers proved unstable. In 427, Felix tried to recall Boniface from Africa. Boniface refused, and overcame Felix's invading force. Boniface probably recruited some Vandal troops among others.[230]
In 428 the Vandals and Alans were united under the able, ferocious, and long-lived king Genseric; he moved his entire people to Tarifa near Gibraltar, divided them into 80 groups nominally of 1,000 people (perhaps 20,000 warriors in total),[200] and crossed from Hispania to Mauretania without opposition. They spent a year moving slowly to Numidia, defeating Boniface. He returned to Italy where Aetius had recently had Felix executed. Boniface was promoted to magister militum and earned the enmity of Aetius, who may have been absent in Gaul at the time. In 432 the two met at the Battle of Ravenna, which left Aetius's forces defeated and Boniface mortally wounded. Aetius temporarily retired to his estates, but after an attempt to murder him he raised another Hunnic army (probably by conceding parts of Pannonia to them) and in 433 he returned to Italy, overcoming all rivals. He never threatened to become an Augustus himself and thus maintained the support of the Eastern court, where Valentinian's cousin Theodosius II reigned until 450.[231]
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Theodosius died a few months later in early 395, leaving his young sons Honorius (r. 393–423) and Arcadius (r. 383–408) as emperors. In the immediate aftermath of Theodosius's death, the magister militum Stilicho, married to Theodosius's niece, asserted himself in the West as the guardian of Honorius and commander of the remains of the defeated Western army. He also claimed control over Arcadius in Constantinople, but Rufinus, magister officiorum on the spot, had already established his own power there. Henceforward the Empire was not under the control of one man, until much of the West had been permanently lost.[140] Neither Honorius nor Arcadius ever displayed any ability either as rulers or as generals, and both lived as the puppet rulers of their courts.[141] Stilicho tried to reunite the Eastern and Western courts under his personal control, but in doing so achieved only the continued hostility of all of Arcadius's successive supreme ministers.
Military, financial, and political ineffectiveness: the process of failure
The ineffectiveness of Roman military responses during Stilicho's rule and afterwards has been described as "shocking".[142] There is little evidence of indigenous field forces or of adequate training, discipline, pay, or supply for the barbarians who formed most of the available troops. Local defence was occasionally effective, but was often associated with withdrawal from central control and taxes. In many areas, barbarians under Roman authority attacked culturally-Roman "Bagaudae".[143][144][145] The fifth-century Western emperors, with brief exceptions, were individuals incapable of ruling effectively or even of controlling their own courts.[141] Those exceptions were responsible for brief, but remarkable resurgences of Roman power.
Corruption, in this context the diversion of finance from the needs of the army, may have contributed greatly to the Fall. The rich senatorial aristocrats in Rome itself became increasingly influential during the fifth century; they supported armed strength in theory, but did not wish to pay for it or to offer their own workers as army recruits.[146][147] They did, however, pass large amounts of money to the Christian Church.[148] At a local level, from the early fourth century, the town councils lost their property and their power, which often became concentrated in the hands of a few local despots beyond the reach of the law.[149]
376–395: Invasions, civil wars, and religious discord
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Battle of Adrianople
In 376, the East faced an enormous barbarian influx across the Danube, mostly Goths, who were fleeing from the Huns. They were exploited by corrupt officials rather than effectively relieved and resettled, and they took up arms and were joined by more Goths and some Alans and Huns. Valens was in Asia with his main field army preparing for an assault on the Sasanian Empire. Redirection of the army and its logistic support would have required time, and Gratian's armies were distracted by Germanic invasions across the Rhine. In 378, Valens attacked the invaders with the Eastern field army, now perhaps 20,000 men, probably much fewer than the forces that Julian had led into Mesopotamia a little over a decade before, and possibly only 10% of the soldiers nominally available in the Danube provinces.[107] In the Battle of Adrianople (9 August 378), Valens lost much of that army and his own life. All of the Balkan provinces were thus exposed to raiding, without effective response from the remaining garrisons who were "more easily slaughtered than sheep".[107] Cities were able to hold their own defensive walls against barbarians who had no siege equipment, therefore the cities generally remained intact, although the countryside suffered.[108]
Partial recovery in the Balkans, internal corruption and financial desperation
Gratian appointed a new Augustus, a proven general from Hispania called Theodosius. During the next four years, he partially re-established the Roman position in the East.[109][110] These campaigns depended on effective imperial coordination and mutual trust—between 379 and 380, Theodosius controlled not only the Eastern empire, but also, by agreement, the diocese of Illyricum.[111] Theodosius was unable to recruit enough Roman troops, relying on barbarian warbands without Roman military discipline or loyalty. (In contrast, during the Cimbrian War, the Roman Republic, controlling a smaller area than the western Empire, had been able to reconstitute large regular armies of citizens after greater defeats than Adrianople. That war had ended with the near-extermination of the invading barbarian supergroups, each supposed to have more than 100,000 warriors.[112])
The final Gothic settlement was acclaimed with relief,[110] even the official panegyrist admitting that these Goths could not be expelled or exterminated, nor reduced to unfree status.[113] Instead they were either recruited into the imperial forces, or settled in the devastated provinces along the south bank of the Danube, where the regular garrisons were never fully re-established.[114] In some later accounts, and widely in recent work, this is regarded as a treaty settlement, the first time that barbarians were given a home within the Empire, in which they retained their political and military cohesion.[115] No formal treaty is recorded, nor details of whatever agreement was actually made. When the Goths are next mentioned in Roman records, they have different leaders and are soldiers of a sort.[116] In 391, Alaric, a Gothic leader, rebelled against Roman control. Goths attacked the emperor himself, but within a year Alaric was accepted as a leader of Theodosius's Gothic troops and this rebellion was over.[117]
Theodosius's financial position must have been difficult, since he had to pay for expensive campaigning from a reduced tax base. The business of subduing barbarian warbands also demanded substantial gifts of precious metal.[118] At least one extra levy provoked desperation and rioting, in which the emperor's statues were destroyed.[119] Nevertheless, he is represented as financially generous as emperor, though frugal in his personal life.[120] By the end of the 380s, Theodosius and the court were in Mediolanum, and northern Italy was experiencing a period of prosperity for the great landowners who took advantage of the court's need for food, "turning agrarian produce into gold", while repressing and misusing the poor who grew it and brought it in.[121] Paulinus the Deacon, notary of Ambrose the bishop of Milan, described these men as creating a court where "everything was up for sale".[122] Ambrose himself preached a series of sermons aimed at his wealthy constituents, asserting that avarice leads to a breakdown in society.[123]
For centuries, Theodosius was regarded as a champion of Christian orthodoxy who decisively stamped out paganism. His predecessors Constantine, Constantius II, and Valens had all been semi-Arians, whereas Theodosius supported Nicene Christianity which eventually became the orthodox version of Christology for most later Christian churches—his Edict of Thessalonica described Arian Christians as "foolish madmen". Therefore, as far as Ambrose and the Christian literary tradition that followed him were concerned, Theodosius deserved most of the credit for the final triumph of Christianity.[124] Modern scholars see this as a Christian interpretation of history.[125][126][127][128] Theodosius did not stamp out paganism, which continued into the seventh century.[126][129][128][a]
Civil wars
Theodosius had to face a powerful usurper in the West; Magnus Maximus declared himself Emperor in 383, stripped troops from the outlying regions of Roman Britain (probably replacing some with federate chieftains and their war-bands) and invaded Gaul. His troops killed Gratian and he was accepted as Augustus in the Gallic provinces, where he was responsible for the first official executions of Christian heretics.[136] To compensate the Western court for the loss of Gaul, Hispania, and Britannia, Theodosius ceded the diocese of Dacia and the diocese of Macedonia to their control. In 387 Maximus invaded Italy, forcing Valentinian II to flee to the East, where he accepted Nicene Christianity. Maximus boasted to Ambrose of the numbers of barbarians in his forces, and hordes of Goths, Huns, and Alans followed Theodosius.[137] Maximus negotiated with Theodosius for acceptance as Augustus of the West, but Theodosius refused, gathered his armies, and counterattacked, winning the civil war in 388. There were heavy troop losses on both sides of the conflict. Later Welsh legend has Maximus's defeated troops resettled in Armorica, instead of returning to Britannia, and by 400, Armorica was controlled by Bagaudae rather than by imperial authority.[138]
Theodosius restored Valentinian II, still a very young man, as Augustus in the West. He also appointed Arbogast, a pagan general of Frankish origin, as Valentinian's commander-in-chief and guardian. Valentinian quarreled in public with Arbogast, failed to assert any authority, and died, either by suicide or by murder, at the age of 21. Arbogast and Theodosius failed to come to terms and Arbogast nominated an imperial official, Eugenius (r. 392–394), as emperor in the West. Eugenius made some modest attempts to win pagan support,[119] and with Arbogast led a large army to fight another destructive civil war. They were defeated and killed at the Battle of the Frigidus, which was attended by further heavy losses; especially among the Gothic federates of Theodosius. The north-eastern approaches to Italy were never effectively garrisoned again.[139]
408–410: End of effective regular field armies, starvation in Italy, sack of Rome
Stilicho's fall and Alaric's reaction
Stilicho had news of the coup at Bononia, where he was probably waiting for Alaric.[175] His army of barbarian troops, including a guard of Huns and many Goths under Sarus, discussed attacking the forces of the coup, but Stilicho prevented them when he heard that the Emperor had not been harmed. Sarus's Gothic troops then massacred the Hun contingent in their sleep, and Stilicho withdrew from the quarreling remains of his army to Ravenna. He ordered that his former soldiers should not be admitted into the cities in which their families were billeted. Stilicho was forced to flee to a church for sanctuary, promised his life, and killed.[176]
Alaric was again declared an enemy of the Emperor. The conspiracy then massacred the families of the federate troops (as presumed supporters of Stilicho, although they had probably rebelled against him), and the troops defected en masse to Alaric.[177] The conspirators seem to have let their main army disintegrate,[178] and had no policy except hunting down anyone they regarded as supporters of Stilicho.[179] Italy was left without effective indigenous defence forces thereafter.[142] Heraclianus, a co-conspirator of Olympius, became governor of the Diocese of Africa. He consequently controlled the source of most of Italy's grain, and he supplied food only in the interests of Honorius's regime.[180]
As a declared 'enemy of the Emperor', Alaric was denied the legitimacy that he needed to collect taxes and hold cities without large garrisons, which he could not afford to detach. He again offered to move his men, this time to Pannonia, in exchange for a modest sum of money and the modest title of Comes. He was refused, as Olympius's clique still regarded him as a supporter of Stilicho.[181] He moved into Italy, probably using the route and supplies arranged for him by Stilicho,[175] bypassing the imperial court in Ravenna which was protected by widespread marshland and had a port, and he menaced the city of Rome itself. In 407, there was no equivalent of the determined response to the catastrophic Battle of Cannae in 216 BCE, when the entire Roman population, even slaves, had been mobilized to resist the enemy.[182]
Alaric's military operations centred on the port of Rome, through which Rome's grain supply had to pass. Alaric's first siege of Rome in 408 caused dreadful famine within the walls. It was ended by a payment that, though large, was less than one of the richest senators could have produced.[183] The super-rich aristocrats made little contribution; pagan temples were stripped of ornaments to make up the total. With promises of freedom, Alaric also recruited many of the slaves in Rome.[184]
Alaric withdrew to Tuscany and recruited more slaves.[184] Athaulf, a Goth nominally in Roman service and brother-in-law to Alaric, marched through Italy to join Alaric. A small force of Hunnic mercenaries led by Olympius killed some of Athaulf's men on this journey. Sarus was an enemy of Athaulf, and on Athaulf's arrival went back into imperial service.[185]
Alaric besieges Rome
In 409 Olympius fell to further intrigue, having his ears cut off before he was beaten to death. Alaric tried again to negotiate with Honorius, but his demands (now even more moderate, only frontier land and food[186]) were inflated by the messenger and Honorius responded with insults, which were reported verbatim to Alaric.[187] He broke off negotiations and the standoff continued. Honorius's court made overtures to the usurper Constantine III in Gaul and arranged to bring Hunnic forces into Italy, Alaric ravaged Italy outside the fortified cities (which he could not garrison), and the Romans refused open battle (for which they had inadequate forces).[188] Late in the year, Alaric sent bishops to express his readiness to leave Italy if Honorius would only grant his people a supply of grain. Honorius, sensing weakness, flatly refused.[189]
Alaric moved to Rome and captured Galla Placidia, sister of Honorius. The Senate in Rome, despite its loathing for Alaric, was now desperate enough to give him almost anything he wanted. They had no food to offer, but they tried to give him imperial legitimacy; with the Senate's acquiescence, he elevated Priscus Attalus as his puppet emperor, and he marched on Ravenna. Honorius was planning to flee to Constantinople when a reinforcing army of 4,000 soldiers from the East disembarked in Ravenna.[190] These garrisoned the walls and Honorius held on. He had Constantine's principal court supporter executed and Constantine abandoned plans to march to Honorius's defence.[191] Attalus failed to establish his control over the Diocese of Africa, and no grain arrived in Rome where the famine became even more frightful.[192] Jerome reports cannibalism within the walls.[193] Attalus brought Alaric no real advantage, failing also to come to any useful agreement with Honorius (to whom Attalus offered mutilation, humiliation, and exile). Indeed, Attalus's claim was a marker of threat to Honorius, and Alaric dethroned him after a few months.[194]
In 410 Alaric took Rome by starvation, and sacked it for three days. He invited its remaining barbarian slaves to join him, which many did. There was relatively little destruction. In some Christian holy places, Alaric's men even refrained from wanton violence, and Jerome tells the story of a virgin who was escorted to a church by the invaders, after they had given her mother a beating from which she later died. The city of Rome was the seat of the richest senatorial noble families and the centre of their cultural patronage. To pagans it was the sacred origin of the empire, and to Christians the seat of the heir of Saint Peter. At the time, this position was held by Pope Innocent I, the most authoritative bishop of the West. Rome had not fallen to an enemy since the Battle of the Allia, over eight centuries before. Refugees spread the news and their stories throughout the Empire, and the meaning of the fall was debated with religious fervour. Both Christians and pagans wrote embittered tracts, blaming paganism or Christianity respectively for the loss of Rome's supernatural protection and all attacking Stilicho's earthly failures.[195][b] Some Christian responses anticipated the imminence of the Last Judgment. Augustine of Hippo in his book "City of God" ultimately rejected the pagan and Christian idea that religion should have worldly benefits. He instead developed the doctrine that the City of God in heaven, undamaged by mundane disasters, was the true objective of Christians.[196] More practically, Honorius was briefly persuaded to set aside the laws forbidding pagans to be military officers, so that one Generidus could re-establish Roman control in Dalmatia. Generidus did this with unusual effectiveness. His techniques were remarkable for this period, in that they included training his troops, disciplining them, and giving them appropriate supplies even if he had to use his own money.[197] The penal laws were reinstated no later than 25 August 410, meaning that the overall trend of repression of paganism continued.[198]
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