Why Did Rome Fall—And Why Does It Matter Now? [Victor Davis Hanson]

A German scholar twenty years ago listed, I recall, some 210 reasons for the collapse of the Western empire. Readers, you have heard many of them, plausible and otherwise—corruption, civil strife, Germanic barbarians, Christianity, lead in the pipes of the elite, etc.

Any such discussion is also predicated on two other twists: the Eastern Empire at Constantinople went on for nearly another 1,000 years until the 1453 sack by the Ottomans. And for the last twenty years, revisionists have disputed Gibbon’s notion of a dramatic “fall” in the West, and argued instead that it was a “transition” as the “barbarian” “other” was insidiously assimilated into what would emerge in the latter Dark Ages as “Europeans”.

The East certainly had more defensible borders with the Danube and the Hellespont. Constantinople was far better fortified naturally and artificially than was Rome; the defense of Byzantium could rely to a greater degree on naval forces. And greater wealth was to be had in Asia and Egypt than in the northwestern provinces.

How could Christianity have caused the Western ‘fall’ when a very Christian East survived? (So I postpone here discussion of that crux of why the East enjoyed another 1000 years (e.g., larger population, greater wealth, less civil strife, more defensible borders, fewer Germanic enemies, etc.), given it shared many of the same pathologies of culture as the West.)

My concern, however, is instead with the indisputable decline in material culture in Britain, Iberia, Gaul, Italy and North Africa from the 4th-5th century AD onward, with the end of strong government that had resulted in everything from secure borders to internal calm (the sort of world that St. Augustine in Tunisia saw ending at his death).

Rather than rehash Gibbon, or review the spate of recent books on Rome’s decline and our own supposed end, I throw out a few general notions.

The Romans themselves by the first century AD (cf. Horace to Livy to Petronius to Juvenal) felt that the enormous influx of unearned wealth from conquered provinces had undermined the old republican virtues of small farmers and merchants (e.g. the old yeoman with four kids and a wife on five acres of grain now either devolved into the urban unemployed spectator in the Coliseum at Rome on the dole or evolved into the sterile estate owner with 50 slaves and 200 acres of wine grapes and an expensive pasture with a herd of beef cows.)

So the rise of latifundia, and the influx of unheard of wealth and slaves, gradually, in the ancients’ own view, created a dependent class on the dole and corruption among the elite. “Decline” as seen in the ancient mind was not inevitable, and was almost seen as a moral question—material progress resulting in ethical regress.

Yet Rome did not fall for four centuries after its moralists wrote of its decadence and decline. Why the resilience?

Entitlements and official corruption were for centuries subsidized by the profits accruing from global standardization and Romanization—brought about by the implementation and imposition of Roman law, order, and commerce throughout the Mediterranean. As long as the empire was cohesive, it brought in thousands yearly into its sphere of influence.

Those from the Black Sea to the Nile and from Portugal to Iraq were now subject to habeas corpus, a standard official language, regularization in weights and measures, and security on roads and the seas. The centuries-long result of such Romanization is easily discerned in the later historians from Ammianus to Zosimus, who remarked on both widening prosperity and a persistent moral crisis, rather than the dangers of material impoverishment.

So such global uniformity created real wealth in newfound places faster than such bounty could corrupt the citizens in the old Italian core to the degree to bring down what was now a world system. In other words, the creation of entirely new cities like Leptis or the growth of Asian centers such as Ephesus, brought previously unproductive tribal folk into the Roman system at precisely the time old Romans were no longer doing the things that had once created their own vibrant culture that swept the Mediterranean—the ancient version of the Chinese youth working 10 hours in an Adidas factory while an American counterpart is still “finding himself.”

One can see the resultant transition in the center of power— emperors mostly were born in the provinces, wealth centers were increasingly found in Asia and Africa, and good soldiers were no longer native Latin-speakers. The West taught the East, and the East soon became not only the more productive hemisphere of the empire, but also the more enthusiastic upholder of being Roman itself.

Petronius’s Satyricon (ca. AD 60) is a glimpse into the world of tough-minded Asian immigrants who had created fortunes in business—and who were desperately (and crudely) trying to buy into the snotty aristocratic and bankrupt world of fossilized Old Rome.

The point? We see something like this today. What made American culture boom through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were traditional American values like the Protestant work ethic, family thrift, limited and stable government, equality of opportunity rather than result, lower taxes, personal freedom, opportunity for advancement and profit, and faith in American exceptionalism.

But the cloning and spreading of this system after WWII (“globalization”) did two things: literally billions of non-Westerners adopted the Western mode of production and began, in economic terms, becoming far more productive in creating valuable manufacturing goods, food, and exporting previously unknown or untapped natural resources; in addition, the vast rise in population added billions to the world’s productive work force.

Two, this influx of imported goods and inclusion of hundreds of millions into the American orbit enriched the United States in unimaginable ways. In my own life, the very notion that I would have a tooth implant rather than one of my grandfather’s poorly constructed false teeth is mind-boggling. We once huddled around a 19-inch fuzzy black and white TV to watch 4 days of the JFK funeral in 1963 in a small 800 square foot house; now today I have 2 plasma 500-chanel cable TVs. Poverty, as I saw it as a boy in Selma in 1960, might be defined by occasional homes with outhouses in the back yard, gravel rural roads, no TVs and rampant illiteracy among those over 30.

Today, the “poor” as I see them daily at Wal-Mart and Food-4-Less in Selma (a poor town in a poor county in poor central California) buy blue-ray DVD players, have to buy food-stamp subsidized sirloin rather than rib-eye (as I can attest watching 5 carts ahead of me in line tonight), and drive used 2000 Tahoes and 2001 Yukons rather 2010 Honda Accords. Government subsidies for housing, food, transportation, etc., coupled with cheap Chinese and Indian imported consumer goods, have for a time been substituted for the old manufacturing jobs or resource-based work (e.g., we don’t make steel, we increasingly curtail farming, we don’t drill, etc.). In other words, we are enjoying a lifestyle undreamed of by our grandparents who had values quite different from our own—a result of globalization, advances in technology, and massive borrowing and debt.

But as in the case of Rome, there is a price for all these sudden riches. Just as the Iberians, and Libyans and Thracians were hungrier and more enterprising than Italians back in the bay of Naples, so too we, the beneficiaries of this wealth, lost the values that were at its heart, in a way that the Indians, Chinese, and others have not–yet. Our youth in schools are not so excited by the notion of creating 100 new nuclear power plants, creating new mountain reservoirs, building new railroads and highways, or eager to rebuild the steel industry, or dreaming of increasing food production or eager to mine more ores—instead the emphasis in our schools is more on race/class/gender engineering, regulation, redistribution, etc, all of which in classical terms is not necessarily wealth creation.

We are now borrowing nearly $2 trillion a year to do things like ensure the 84-year old has a hip replacement—nearly half of it from the Chinese where 400 million have never been to a Westernized doctor. We spend $45,000 to incarcerate the felon in California, to meet utopian court-ordered mandates. As imperial Romans, we are felt to be owed a standard of living, even as our own daily habits would no longer necessarily translate into such largess, even as those on the periphery have learned what made America so wealthy from 1950 to 1990.

Where does it all end? I have no idea, but offer only competing scenarios: 1) as our debt becomes unsustainable, we react and increase the retirement age, cut spending and entitlements radically, and renew our work ethic (impossible by choice, made possible by necessity), and enjoy a renaissance; 2) we become a UK-like museum, with witty cynical observers, as the new giants in Asia produce the next Microsoft, Exxon, and Ford, and we fade; 3) India and China discover that they too have a rendezvous with suburban blues, environmentalism, consumer regulation, and a pampered citizenry, and there is some sort of shared global postmodernism.

We inherited a wonderful infrastructure from our parents. A superb system of politics and economics was likewise given to us at birth. Many of us try to copy our grandparents and parents whose values and work ethic we increasingly eulogize. But against all that is that Roman notion of luxus, untold wealth and leisure that we see juxtaposed with shrill cries and accusations that we are too poor, exploited, and in need of someone else’s income. The wealthier we become, the louder and angrier we become that we are not even more wealthy.

In short, what ruined Rome in the West? Lots of things. But clearly the pernicious effects of affluence and laxity warped Roman sensibility and created a culture of entitlement that was not justified by revenues or the creation of actual commensurate wealth—and the resulting debits, inflation, debased currency, and gradual state impoverishment gave the far more vulnerable western empire far less margin of error when barbarians arrived, or rival generals marched on Rome. For a while the Romanization of the wider Mediterranean subsidized this ennui, but eventually the old western and southern provinces neither could protect what they had created nor could continue to be as productive as in the past nor believed that being Roman was any better than the alternative.

The strange thing is that these wild swings in civilization are at their bases psychological: decline is one of choice rather than necessity. Plague or lead poisoning or famine did not destroy Rome. We could balance our budget tomorrow without a great deal of sacrifice; we could eliminate 10% worth of government spending that is not essential; we could create our own energy with massive nuclear power investment, and more extraction of gas, oil, and coal. We could instill a tragic rather than therapeutic world view that would mean more responsibilities rather than endlessly more rights. We could do this all right—but too many feel such medicine is worse than the malady, and so we probably won’t and can’t. An enjoyable slow decline is apparently preferable to a short, but painful rethinking and rebirth.

I don’t dispute economic incentives and pressures (driven by high taxes as well as the factors you identify) as the driving factors for declining family size in a modern economy. But I distinguish between the decline from ten children down to, I don’t know, three or four children, and a further decline (by choice not inability) down to one or zero children. At a certain point, I think materialism, self-centeredness, family breakdown, a general feeling of despair or purposeleness and similar factors have a significant impact when family sizes get down to the anemic range, and that such an outlook is tied to a general decline in rigorous European-based Christianity.

It is not a choice to have a slow decline ... we are past that ... look for an abrupt loss when America's money/economic system fails.

Unions are POWERFUL BEYOND ACCEPTING and spreading tentacle's into every employer or single persons having their own employment, IE day care, coming under the umbrella of unions without our voting on it.

We are watching the demise of our life styles on fast forward escalation.

I would love to be wrong. How deep and how bad is yet to be seen. Look at Zimbabwe ... the farmers there (largely Dutch, German, etc. that had been there successfully for 40 -50 years having successful farms ... lost them all. Not willingly. some were shot. All were seized.

Did they believe it would happen? NO way.

Horace to Livy to Petronius to Juvenal) felt that the enormous influx of unearned wealth from conquered provinces had undermined the old republican virtues of small farmers and merchants

Reminds me of the world-view of Thomas Jefferson who fought tooth and nail against Alex Hamilton's different vision of an increasingly capitalistic society. Hamilton won out and the result was the metropolis of NYC.

"We could bring back all manufacturing from China/Asia and we would still be stuck with not enough blue collar jobs by a long shot. All due to computerization, robotics and automation."

In 1800 something like 90% of Americans were farmers.
By 1900 it was still over 50% of Americans farming.
By 2000 less than 5% of Americans worked on farms.

First of all, was there any reduction in US farm output as a result of declining farming populations? No, just the opposite.

And where did all those former farmers go?

For well over 100 years they went into manufacturing, which peaked as a percentage sometime after 1960. Since then, just as with farming, productivity per worker has vastly increased, while numbers of manufacturing jobs declined.

Where are all those former manufacturing workers now going? To service jobs -- in venacular, they (we) are flipping hamburgers and selling real estate. They (we) are also designing, building, operating and repairing the hi-tech machines which have eliminated so many unskilled workers' jobs.

Here's the ultimate truth of the matter: in the long run, unskilled work will go away. What will remain forever are the hi-tech and service jobs. And most in demand will be those rare folks who combine the personal skills of a salesman with the technical skill of an engineer.

That's the future FRiend. Go for it. :-)

I was thinking more along the lines of blue States and red States, with the Blues being the Democrats, and the Greens being the, well, Greens and other radicals.

You have to wonder how much America would be improved if suddenly we had 30,000 fewer ultra leftist radicals. There would certainly be a lot of academic positions opening up in the universities.

The ultimate solution is not service jobs because we don’t need so many in those businesses. Malls and stores are closing right and left. Many to most service jobs are idiotic and provide no real benefit to society. Like all those nail salons that sprung up in the last few decades.

Plenty of the consumer crap is inane too thus those that sell it are useless too

My point is that plenty of what passes for economic activity in America is pointless and not needed. A huge medical sector that contributes hugely to GDP just means people are sicker than they should be and should drop their unhealthy habits. Then the GDP shrinks

Except the empty moralizing of the late republic had nothing to do with the prosperity or the fall of the western empire.

It was and remains empty moralizing by crabbed would be Catos.

The western empire fell because the forthieth man to conquer it as spoils in a civil war decided he'd rather be called a king than an emperor.

Generals had been conquering the empire for centuries. For centuries, their armies had been German, and for the last few, the generals were, too.

Civil war is what destroyed the western empire, in other words. Not one civil war, but endless civil war after civil war. So many that the empire as a joke if not a disgrace, rather than a prize.

Nobody is interested in dying for a political football used exclusively for the benefit of the cynical murdering dictators who seized it by force.

The only thing remotely of the same tendency in the modern west is the hyperpolitical, hyperpartisan attitudes of modern ideological parties. That all is politics, that the party comes before the country, that the purpose of the party is the material benefit of its adherents - those are in common with Rome in its decline. But we aren't murdering each other over such things, so we don't (yet) have their disease.

You know, you are right. In fact, everything people spend money on is pointless, except what I want it spent on. The economy would be just fine if I owned everything. When other people have any income and spend it on the things they want instead of on the things I know to be important, it is a complete waste.

Hand everything over to me. Problem solved.

Sometimes it is necessary to illustrate absurdity...

And oh yeah, we conquered the world. Just little things you know, like that.

Actually to Jefferson's credit, he recognized that the Louisiana purchase meant putting the US on Hamilton's road and not on his own preferred small yeoman republic one. But he also recognized it was in the interests of the country. When push came to shove, he chose greatness.

Hamilton knew greatness was the thing to aim for, all along...

For those men of working age there are not enough jobs to go around. That’s part of the reason so many useless government jobs are cooked up

We can produce enough food and manufactured items with an ever smaller number of workers. To avoid this cruel truth we create asset bubbles. We keep many employed in white collar sectors which do nothing to increase our wealth. Wall Street and lawyers come to mind. Dittos for mortgage brokers....many of them have no job since the phony housing boom collapsed

I am old enough to know an age when the labor of all working age men was needed. This is not how is today. Go open up some useless malls. Many malls and Sams Clubs are closing because they were never needed in the first place

Everyone profitably employed earns their pay in value they add. Nobody needs your moral approval to add value and they do so in every sort of industry, including those you sneer at. Yes in recessions men who were working in sectors where demand has fallen are not needed in those specific jobs, and in the previous numbers; it adds value to let them go since production can be maintained without them. That is exactly what we have already accomplished in the present recession. They are then free to find work anywhere else doing anything useful, and they always do find such places. Not always at their previous wages, but always. All of the value they produce in their new jobs is net gain, because the output of existing industries is fully maintained without them.

Income is not raised by being in an industry that you approve of or that makes things you can hit with a stick. It is raised by productivity, and productivity is created and maintained by free competitive forces moving men and capital to where it does the most good, and away from legacy roles that no longer contribute anything.

There is nothing wrong with the US economy. It remains productive because it is free. The cycle we always have had and always will have; it makes no difference in the long run. Americans are more productive now than ever, and all the crapstorm moralizing nonsense pretending we are poor or broke is just that, nonsense. Every generation is richer than the last by large amounts and that goes straight on. Nothing happening now, or in the recent past, endangers any of it in the slightest.

With all due respect you are spouting familiar gibberish. My simple contention is there is not enough real meaningful work to go around. All due to computerization and automation. You will never disprove this. Don’t waste your time
Far better to continue on w your illusions

I would never say such awful inhumane things if we were to go back just 110 years to 1900. All men were needed to labor and were useful

If you went back to 1840 we used slaves because all the labor we needed could not be done by the free men we had. These days it is the opposite. We don’t need slaves and we don’t need 50% of the working age men we have. Their labor is not needed though we still want them to be consumers to rev up our consumer economy

Americans are more productive now than ever, and all the crapstorm moralizing nonsense pretending we are poor or broke is just that, nonsense. Every generation is richer than the last by large amounts and that goes straight on. Nothing happening now, or in the recent past, endangers any of it in the slightest.
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That productivity is exactly why the labor of so many is no longer needed. Why they are unemployed and will stay so. Productivity is a double edged sword

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