What was it like to live through the Fall of the Roman Empire? [10:34]

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
· Introduction
0:03 · On August 24, 410 AD, a band of Visigoths entered Rome's Salarian Gate.
0:11 · Even before the other gates were taken and the whole horde came streaming into the city,
0:15 · smoke began to rise above the manicured treetops of the emperor's gardens, and the first
0:20 · screams echoed in the canyon-like streets.
0:23 · Rome, the imperial city, had fallen.
0:28 · Although Rome was no longer the capital, it remained the empire's symbolic heart.
0:34 · No foreign invader had entered the city in eight centuries; and for many Romans, it was
0:39 · almost inconceivable that it could be sacked by barbarians.
0:45 · Saint Jerome, writing from his monastic cell in Bethlehem, summarized the general feeling:
0:50 · "with one city, the whole world has died."
0:54 · By contrast, the event regarded by modern historians as the end of the Western Roman
· Reactions to the Fall of Rome
1:00 · Empire – the overthrow of Romulus Augustulus, the last western emperor, in 476 – seems
1:08 · to have been virtually unnoticed by contemporaries.
1:10 · This is partly a consequence of the scantiness of our sources, and partly an acknowledgement
1:18 · that the Western Empire was little more than a political fiction by the time it fell.
1:23 · More generally, it reflects the fact that the fall of the Western Roman Empire was a
1:29 · process, not a moment; an era, not an event.
1:33 · Only in retrospect did its significance and permanence become clear.
1:38 · The fall of the Western Roman Empire – in the sense of an end to effective imperial
1:43 · authority in a given region – was not always dramatic, or even especially noticeable.
1:50 · Wars and invasions cost many Romans their property, their freedom, or their lives.
1:56 · But for many others, the fall of the empire represented nothing more or less than the
2:01 · gradual disappearance of familiar things, from Roman patrols on the roads to Roman pots
2:07 · in the kitchen.
· St. Germanus and Britain
2:09 · The familiar things faded swiftest in Britain, the first part of the western empire to slip
2:15 · from imperial control.
2:17 · Over the course of a few decades, under the pressure of Germanic raids and the struggles
2:22 · of local warlords, the social structure of Roman Britain collapsed.
2:28 · Cities and villas were abandoned, the production of trade goods ceased, and standards of living
2:33 · sank to their lowest ebb in more than a millennium.
2:37 · A British monk, writing a century later, described the period in apocalyptic terms: "as flames
2:44 · roared and swords gleamed on every side, priests and people were hacked down together."
2:50 · A generation after the end of Roman rule in Britain, a Gallic bishop named Germanus visited
2:58 · the former province to combat heresy.
3:01 · He met priests and soldiers still attuned to developments in the empire.
3:06 · But he also encountered a marauding band of Saxon raiders.
3:11 · Fortunately, the good bishop was up to the challenge: appointing himself head of the
3:16 · local militia, he sallied forth against the barbarians, and put them to flight – if
3:22 · his biographer can be believed – with a war cry of "Alleluia!"
· St. Severinus and Noricum
3:27 · Although Britain's post-Roman trauma was exceptional, most of the frontier provinces
3:32 · were profoundly affected by the collapse of Roman authority.
3:36 · Besides the fact that they were the first regions to be overrun by invaders, their economies
3:41 · tended to be heavily dependent on their garrisons.
3:44 · Once the imperial government stopped paying its troops, the whole provincial economy frayed.
3:50 · Many frontier cities came to resemble the once-great legionary fortress of Naissus,
3:55 · which a visitor in the mid-fifth century described as a gutted ruin, ringed by fields white with
4:02 · bones.
4:03 · The most vivid account of the end of Roman rule on the frontier appears in the Life of
4:09 · Saint Severinus, a holy man who lived and worked in Noricum (modern Austria).
4:14 · By the time Severinus arrived in the mid-fifth century, the provincial administration had
4:20 · disintegrated, leaving each city to fend for itself.
4:24 · The saint did what he could to help local authorities stave off disaster, arranging
4:28 · counter-raids against bandits, advising Germanic kings, and – in one instance – ensuring
4:35 · that food was supplied to the inhabitants of a hungry town.
· HelloFresh
4:39 · [ad text redacted]
5:44 · Back to Noricum, and the fall of Rome.
· St. Severinus (cont.)
5:47 · Although the border defenses were in ruins and the field armies long gone, a few garrisons
5:52 · held out along the old frontier.
5:55 · By Severinus' time, only one of these garrisons was still in contact with the imperial government.
6:02 · But since no official dared to enter Noricum, the garrison commander was forced to send
6:07 · soldiers over the Alps to retrieve pay from Italy.
6:11 · The last time this journey was attempted, the men were ambushed by barbarians.
6:16 · Their bodies, washed up on the banks of a local river, were the only news the garrison
6:21 · ever received of the disaster.
6:24 · As the last imperial troops faded away, Germanic tribes moved in to fill the power vacuum.
6:32 · Severinus did what he could to mediate between the invaders and the local inhabitants, convincing
6:37 · one king to free all the Romans his warriors had taken captive.
6:40 · But despite the saint's efforts, raiders continued to sack cities and enslave their
6:46 · inhabitants.
6:48 · After Severinus died, the situation deteriorated to the point that all the remaining Romans
6:53 · were evacuated from the province.
· Sidonius Apollinaris and southern Gaul
6:56 · The end of imperial authority tended to be less dramatic in the heartlands of the Western
7:01 · Empire.
7:02 · This was especially true of southern Gaul, whose powerful aristocrats struggled against,
7:08 · negotiated with, and finally served under the Germanic invaders with remarkable success.
7:14 · The perspective and experiences of the Gallic aristocracy at the moment of transition from
7:21 · Roman rule are epitomized by the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris.
7:27 · After a distinguished political career at Rome, Sidonius became bishop of Clermont in
7:32 · his native Gaul, and fought to keep his city within the swiftly-eroding empire.
7:37 · But eventually, after a siege that reduced them to eating grass, the citizens of Clermont
7:43 · opened their gates to the Goths.
7:45 · In a letter to a friend, Sidonius – who had urged continued resistance – despaired:
7:51 · "our ancestors," he wrote, "will no longer glory in the name of Rome, if they
7:58 · have no descendants."
8:00 · Sidonius praised those who fought the Goths, telling a man who had sallied out against
8:05 · the invaders that he had "made Romans of [his] fellow-citizens."
8:11 · In the end, however, like most members of his class, he accepted the demise of the empire,
8:17 · and resigned himself to the realities of living under the rule of the Goths, even commending
8:22 · one of his younger correspondents for learning the German language, and combining "Burgundian
8:28 · eloquence and a Roman spirit."
· Boethius and Italy
8:31 · Accommodation was also the strategy pursued by the great Roman magnates of Italy.
8:37 · Thanks to their willingness to cooperate with the new Germanic ruling class, the Italian
8:41 · elites preserved most of their wealth, lands, and prestige.
8:46 · The Senate continued to meet in Rome, consuls continued to be chosen, and games were still
8:52 · staged in the Colosseum and Circus Maximus, financed by the men from the same families
8:57 · who had dominated politics in the last years of the Western Empire.
9:02 · One such man was Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius.
9:07 · A scion of Rome's most distinguished clans, Boethius rose to literary distinction as a
9:15 · young man, composing learned treatises on a wide range of philosophical and theological
9:21 · subjects.
9:22 · He also achieved political success, becoming consul.
9:27 · Then, at the height of his power, he was falsely accused of treachery and thrown into prison.
9:34 · As he awaited judgement and execution, Boethius composed The Consolation of Philosophy, a
9:40 · dialogue exploring the nature of happiness and free will in brilliant prose interspersed
9:45 · with a series of poems.
9:47 · The final lines of one poem neatly summarize the experience of those who lived through
9:53 · the fall of the Western Roman Empire: This law no earthly thing transcends: All that
10:00 · has a beginning, ends If you enjoyed this video, please consider
10:06 · supporting toldinstone on Patreon.
10:09 · You might also enjoy my book, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants.
10:14 · Thanks for watching.

Welcome to the story of How we Might have Mis-understood Roman Britain. This week we take a walk around west Hampshire and the Village of Ashley. We find a Roman Road, a Roman Settlement, a castle and moat and a 850 year old church. All whilst asking the question, when did the Romans leave Britain.
The Collapse of ROMAN BRITAIN doesn't add up! | 14:19
Paul Whitewick | 178K subscribers | 68,693 views | June 8, 2025
00:00 - Intro
01:19 - Evidence
03:53 - Treat One
04:30 - Zosimus
07:36 - Treat Two
09:11 - Coins
10:15 - 410 or 440
12:28 - Treat Three
13:09 - Conclude

What was Rome like after Alaric's Sack in 410 AD? | 11:56
toldinstone | 583K subscribers | 196,044 views | June 2, 2023
0:00 The Sack of Rome
1:38 Theodosius and the Goths
2:51 Alaric
4:10 Reactions to the Sack
5:12 Through Eternity Tours
6:01 Christian Basilicas
7:49 The first popes
8:57 Santa Sabina
10:21 Things fall apart

Between 220 and 235 AD, all four of Eurasia's major empires - Rome, China, Parthia and the Kushan realm - either collapsed or suffered serious reverses. Why?
235 AD: The Collapse of Four Great Empires | 10:40
toldinstone | 583K subscribers | 298,814 views | August 25, 2023
0:00 Four Great Empires
1:43 The Roman Empire
2:46 The Parthian Empire
3:51 The Kushan Empire
4:12 The Han Chinese Empire
5:00 Masterworks
6:16 Connected stories?
6:42 Climate
8:05 Disease
8:50 Conclusions

Well, for the Vandals and Goths it wasn’t so bad...................

What was it like to live through the Fall of the Roman Empire?

Like living in California today.

LOL!

Except for the surfing.

The population of Rome when it fell was 1/10th of its peak.

No one wanted it except the "barbarians" who didn't yet know better.

The Roman Empire embraced sin on a massive scale which directly lead to its demise.

The same is being played out today here in the US.

Bookmark

At the height of Rome’s power in 180 A.D. it was the largest city in the world with about one million inhabitants. By 476 A.D. there were about 10 to 15 thousand left. All the others had walked away.

Steeeee-riiiike!

The thing that amazes me is how much of the City of Rome had been abandoned by 475. It wasn’t like a million people still were living in the city when the Western empire fell. The accounts of the time were that the citizens of Rome lived is a small section of a massive ghost town. They knew their ancestors built a great city that now was crumbling. Like Detroit on a massive scale.

This was the *western* Roman Empire. The *eastern* Roman Empire, centered around Constantinople, which still considered itself the Roman Empire, continued on until it was conquered on 29 May 1453.

The fall of Constantinople and of the Byzantine Empire was a watershed of the Late Middle Ages, marking the effective end of the Roman Empire, a state which began in roughly 27 BC and had lasted nearly 1,500 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople

Just like the Obama and Biden years minus the technology.

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
	·	Introduction
0:03	·	On August 24, 410 AD, a band of Visigoths entered Rome's Salarian Gate.
0:11	·	Even before the other gates were taken and the whole horde came streaming into the city,
0:15	·	smoke began to rise above the manicured treetops of the emperor's gardens, and the first
0:20	·	screams echoed in the canyon-like streets.
0:23	·	Rome, the imperial city, had fallen.
0:28	·	Although Rome was no longer the capital, it remained the empire's symbolic heart.
0:34	·	No foreign invader had entered the city in eight centuries; and for many Romans, it was
0:39	·	almost inconceivable that it could be sacked by barbarians.
0:45	·	Saint Jerome, writing from his monastic cell in Bethlehem, summarized the general feeling:
0:50	·	"with one city, the whole world has died."
0:54	·	By contrast, the event regarded by modern historians as the end of the Western Roman
	·	Reactions to the Fall of Rome
1:00	·	Empire – the overthrow of Romulus Augustulus, the last western emperor, in 476 – seems
1:08	·	to have been virtually unnoticed by contemporaries.
1:10	·	This is partly a consequence of the scantiness of our sources, and partly an acknowledgement
1:18	·	that the Western Empire was little more than a political fiction by the time it fell.
1:23	·	More generally, it reflects the fact that the fall of the Western Roman Empire was a
1:29	·	process, not a moment; an era, not an event.
1:33	·	Only in retrospect did its significance and permanence become clear.
1:38	·	The fall of the Western Roman Empire – in the sense of an end to effective imperial
1:43	·	authority in a given region – was not always dramatic, or even especially noticeable.
1:50	·	Wars and invasions cost many Romans their property, their freedom, or their lives.
1:56	·	But for many others, the fall of the empire represented nothing more or less than the
2:01	·	gradual disappearance of familiar things, from Roman patrols on the roads to Roman pots
2:07	·	in the kitchen.
	·	St. Germanus and Britain
2:09	·	The familiar things faded swiftest in Britain, the first part of the western empire to slip
2:15	·	from imperial control.
2:17	·	Over the course of a few decades, under the pressure of Germanic raids and the struggles
2:22	·	of local warlords, the social structure of Roman Britain collapsed.
2:28	·	Cities and villas were abandoned, the production of trade goods ceased, and standards of living
2:33	·	sank to their lowest ebb in more than a millennium.
2:37	·	A British monk, writing a century later, described the period in apocalyptic terms: "as flames
2:44	·	roared and swords gleamed on every side, priests and people were hacked down together."
2:50	·	A generation after the end of Roman rule in Britain, a Gallic bishop named Germanus visited
2:58	·	the former province to combat heresy.
3:01	·	He met priests and soldiers still attuned to developments in the empire.
3:06	·	But he also encountered a marauding band of Saxon raiders.
3:11	·	Fortunately, the good bishop was up to the challenge: appointing himself head of the
3:16	·	local militia, he sallied forth against the barbarians, and put them to flight – if
3:22	·	his biographer can be believed – with a war cry of "Alleluia!"
	·	St. Severinus and Noricum
3:27	·	Although Britain's post-Roman trauma was exceptional, most of the frontier provinces
3:32	·	were profoundly affected by the collapse of Roman authority.
3:36	·	Besides the fact that they were the first regions to be overrun by invaders, their economies
3:41	·	tended to be heavily dependent on their garrisons.
3:44	·	Once the imperial government stopped paying its troops, the whole provincial economy frayed.
3:50	·	Many frontier cities came to resemble the once-great legionary fortress of Naissus,
3:55	·	which a visitor in the mid-fifth century described as a gutted ruin, ringed by fields white with
4:02	·	bones.
4:03	·	The most vivid account of the end of Roman rule on the frontier appears in the Life of
4:09	·	Saint Severinus, a holy man who lived and worked in Noricum (modern Austria).
4:14	·	By the time Severinus arrived in the mid-fifth century, the provincial administration had
4:20	·	disintegrated, leaving each city to fend for itself.
4:24	·	The saint did what he could to help local authorities stave off disaster, arranging
4:28	·	counter-raids against bandits, advising Germanic kings, and – in one instance – ensuring
4:35	·	that food was supplied to the inhabitants of a hungry town.
	·	HelloFresh
4:39	·	[ad text redacted]
5:44	·	Back to Noricum, and the fall of Rome.
	·	St. Severinus (cont.)
5:47	·	Although the border defenses were in ruins and the field armies long gone, a few garrisons
5:52	·	held out along the old frontier.
5:55	·	By Severinus' time, only one of these garrisons was still in contact with the imperial government.
6:02	·	But since no official dared to enter Noricum, the garrison commander was forced to send
6:07	·	soldiers over the Alps to retrieve pay from Italy.
6:11	·	The last time this journey was attempted, the men were ambushed by barbarians.
6:16	·	Their bodies, washed up on the banks of a local river, were the only news the garrison
6:21	·	ever received of the disaster.
6:24	·	As the last imperial troops faded away, Germanic tribes moved in to fill the power vacuum.
6:32	·	Severinus did what he could to mediate between the invaders and the local inhabitants, convincing
6:37	·	one king to free all the Romans his warriors had taken captive.
6:40	·	But despite the saint's efforts, raiders continued to sack cities and enslave their
6:46	·	inhabitants.
6:48	·	After Severinus died, the situation deteriorated to the point that all the remaining Romans
6:53	·	were evacuated from the province.
	·	Sidonius Apollinaris and southern Gaul
6:56	·	The end of imperial authority tended to be less dramatic in the heartlands of the Western
7:01	·	Empire.
7:02	·	This was especially true of southern Gaul, whose powerful aristocrats struggled against,
7:08	·	negotiated with, and finally served under the Germanic invaders with remarkable success.
7:14	·	The perspective and experiences of the Gallic aristocracy at the moment of transition from
7:21	·	Roman rule are epitomized by the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris.
7:27	·	After a distinguished political career at Rome, Sidonius became bishop of Clermont in
7:32	·	his native Gaul, and fought to keep his city within the swiftly-eroding empire.
7:37	·	But eventually, after a siege that reduced them to eating grass, the citizens of Clermont
7:43	·	opened their gates to the Goths.
7:45	·	In a letter to a friend, Sidonius – who had urged continued resistance – despaired:
7:51	·	"our ancestors," he wrote, "will no longer glory in the name of Rome, if they
7:58	·	have no descendants."
8:00	·	Sidonius praised those who fought the Goths, telling a man who had sallied out against
8:05	·	the invaders that he had "made Romans of [his] fellow-citizens."
8:11	·	In the end, however, like most members of his class, he accepted the demise of the empire,
8:17	·	and resigned himself to the realities of living under the rule of the Goths, even commending
8:22	·	one of his younger correspondents for learning the German language, and combining "Burgundian
8:28	·	eloquence and a Roman spirit."
	·	Boethius and Italy
8:31	·	Accommodation was also the strategy pursued by the great Roman magnates of Italy.
8:37	·	Thanks to their willingness to cooperate with the new Germanic ruling class, the Italian
8:41	·	elites preserved most of their wealth, lands, and prestige.
8:46	·	The Senate continued to meet in Rome, consuls continued to be chosen, and games were still
8:52	·	staged in the Colosseum and Circus Maximus, financed by the men from the same families
8:57	·	who had dominated politics in the last years of the Western Empire.
9:02	·	One such man was Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius.
9:07	·	A scion of Rome's most distinguished clans, Boethius rose to literary distinction as a
9:15	·	young man, composing learned treatises on a wide range of philosophical and theological
9:21	·	subjects.
9:22	·	He also achieved political success, becoming consul.
9:27	·	Then, at the height of his power, he was falsely accused of treachery and thrown into prison.
9:34	·	As he awaited judgement and execution, Boethius composed The Consolation of Philosophy, a
9:40	·	dialogue exploring the nature of happiness and free will in brilliant prose interspersed
9:45	·	with a series of poems.
9:47	·	The final lines of one poem neatly summarize the experience of those who lived through
9:53	·	the fall of the Western Roman Empire: This law no earthly thing transcends: All that
10:00	·	has a beginning, ends If you enjoyed this video, please consider
10:06	·	supporting toldinstone on Patreon.
10:09	·	You might also enjoy my book, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants.
10:14	·	Thanks for watching.