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.

You are oblivious to the Federal unemployment statistics and the real unemployment statistics. You are being proven wrong every day by these stats

We have run out of bubbles to juice up the economy. Say all the pie in the sky free market stuff you want but this time it is real. An ideology is not a cure. The success of an ideology is the cure and your dinosaur brand of capitalism has now been rendered defunct by computers and automation

Capitalism will continue to thrive and prosper in a world almost entirely run by computers long after you are dust and nobody remembers anything about you. Or me.

Facts are stubborn things, and the world does not bend to your fantasies. All the crazy fears of unemployment due to machines since the dawn of modern industry have been entirely refuted by actual history, and it isn't any different this time.

"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."

"We"?
Who's this "we" Kemo Sabe?
Would that be you, and who else?
Do you speak for all their customers, or for some high level "economic planners" empowered to decide what "we" really need or don't need?
Of course not.

There are two macro-economic reasons why formerly prosperous businesses fail:

Obsolete business models get out-competed and replaced by newer-stronger models.
Example: Mom&Pops replaced by shopping centers, replaced by malls, replaced by big-box & internet sales.
Of course there are still plenty of the older stores around, but market leadership goes to the newer-stronger business models.
A business cycle downturn reduces everyone's income and causes the weaker businesses to fail.

Both of these factors are at work today, and at least to some degree it's all entirely natural.
When the economy finally begins to recover (that is to say, when we can get enough conservative Republicans elected to Congress), then the cycle will start all over again -- weaker businesses will recover, new business will form, all businesses will get healthier, and new, sometimes surprising market leaders will emerge.

That's business, that's the free market, that's life. It happens. Learn it, love it, Kemo Sabe. ;-)

"It is just foolishness..."

You just nailed it, JasonC.

dennisw sounds like some kind of old-style Malthusian in reverse -- where Malthus said there wouldn't be enough resources to supply all of the population, dennisw tells us there will be too many resources and not enough work to keep everyone busy.

The answer, of course, is advertising.
What percentage of the population today has everything they ever wanted? One percent? One tenth of one percent?
Doesn't that mean that at least 99% of people are strongly motivated to work harder to gain whatever it is they don't now have?

The idea that we will ever run out of customer demand for various goods and services is ludicrous.
Just take one example: the recent snow storms.
How many of those people stuck in the blizzards & whiteouts do you suppose wished they were down on a beach in the Caribbean drinking pina coladas?

I rest my case, FRiends.

Those malls and retailers are closing all over America because they simply are not needed today and I doubt they will ever come back. They were needed and kept in business during the bubble years when the US consumer had much bigger appetites and more fake money to squander on them

The US economy is structurally out of wack
A consumer driven economy is an idiotic economy
We have to get our production more in line w our consuming
Only problem is that due to automation and computerization we don’t need that many men to produce what what we need

"In addition, the Anglo American has embraced the idea that the barbarian is his equal. In short, the Anglo American has abdicated his right to govern. He is being eagerly replaced as governor by blacks, hispanics, homosexuals, actors and actresses."

This is poisonous nonsense. Keep it up and I'll suggest you be banned as a racist, pal.

In truth, "Anglo-Americans" constitute well under 50% of the US population today, so they could govern NOTHING on their own. They had no "right to govern" in the first place, and so had nothing to "abdicate."

If you add in ALL Americans of direct European ancestry, then you get something like 2/3 of the population.
These people still constitute a strong majority, but that's only if you include not just "Anglos," but also non-Anglo northern, eastern, southern and western Europeans.
And there are many counties, cities and regions around the country where these people are not the majority.

None of my ancestors -- not one -- was "Anglo," and yet some of my ancestors fought in every major American war, including the Revolution and Civil War.
So I consider myself to be as American as anyone alive.
And the same could be said of many blacks and even some of Hispanic ancestry.

So don't go nuts on us pal, with poisonous racist nonsense.

Great article.

VDH didn't mention a few things. First of all, by the end those who were ethnically Romans no longer really cared. The ones who were holding the Western empire together were former barbarians. The native Romans had all dropped out of the equation by that time.

The other issue (mentioned in part) was that the military became very involved in the politics. And that military was no longer native, and made up of mercenary troops. Increasingly they had no real feel for the culture of Rome, and didn't really view it as something worth saving.

When the last Emperor was pensioned off, most people seemed to like it. The violence and oppression of the later Western empire was very hard on the people, and the germanic kings were less oppressive.

View it as a warning for our times.

"Only problem is that due to automation and computerization we don’t need that many men to produce what what we need."

What is your problem, pal? Are you just stuck on stupid?

What is this "what we need" cr*pola?
Is that for YOU to decide?
Don't you suppose that everyone can decide on their own, without your help, "what we need"?

Do you fantasize there is some natural limit to "what we need"?
There is not, of course. Most people want far more than what they have, whether they truly "need" it or not.
This has always been the case, always will be -- unless the government somehow contrives to suppress or corrupt people's natural desires.

As for getting "our production more in line w our consuming," this will happen entirely naturally, as a matter of course, once economic recovery is well under way, and unemployment begins to return to the 5% range.

So, not to worry.
Everything will be fine again economically, once voters return conservative Republicans to office, and they begin to get the government out of the way of prosperity.

lol my bro.
I am not a dictator who can force anyone to buy anything or can force anyone to engage in any particular business or profession

My simple comment is that most working age men have no real work to do. They are either doing ridiculous work or can’t find work. Go to the poor part of town. Go into a poor black neighborhood. Lets say every male there wants to work. The jobs simply are not there and never will be

I know a time 30 years ago and more when the jobs were there for them in light industry. Heavy industry. In many useful endeavors

.......The jobs simply are not there and never will be.....

I visited Big Bend National Park in November. Across the Rio Grande from the southern end of the park is a Mexican village. Boats, some homemade, were drawn up on the muddy Mexican shore.

The parking lot was ringed with very large boulders. Displayed on these rocks were sculptures of scorpions wrought from twisted wire. There were also beads and other simple handcrafted items. There were jars and cans to receive the payments.

The people across the river made themselves a job. If you want a job, all you have to do is get off your butt and make one.

"My simple comment is that most working age men have no real work to do. "

Well, of course! "Worst economic collapse since the Great Depression," with 20% unemployed or under-employed. And that means some areas and some groups are 50% or more unemployed.

And the government's "economic stimulus" policy has done NOTHING except keep government workers employed. And this IS the "transformation" Obama promised to get elected.

But it's NOT the "transformation" most Obama voters expected, and they are beginning to realize that we have been had, and are so so scr*wed.

If and when a normal economic recovery begins, then we will see it develop just like every recovery in history. And if it is founded on a solid base and allowed to grow slowly, slowly, then in due time most everyone who really wants work will find something appropriate for their skills and energy.

You can be certain of that.

This is what you did not pay attention to. I know a time when it was not like this. When there was plenty of meaningful work for males to do. In fact our building/construction bubble was an attempt to provide real jobs for guys. Work that men like to do

But it was all a bubble funded by easy money
I know a time when that kind of work was natural to our economy and not part of a bubble. But a bubble is the best that we can do these days with our out of wack economy

Of course. Rather than sit around and whine, take some initiative and get to work. Whining about someone not offering a ob is pure laziness.

You write of an economy owned and operated by others. There is an economy of self. That must be exploited rather than sitting around whining because there is no work. .

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