How Rome Fell

How Rome Fell

Review by Thomas R. Martin

How to explain what happened to the ancient superpower that was the Roman Empire has long preoccupied historians. As Adrian Goldsworthy’s subtitle implies, interest in the subject has only increased in the light of the recent history of the United States and its (fading?) status as a superpower. Goldsworthy discusses the possible historical parallel in his introduction, adroitly debunking some mean-spirited criticism of the U.S. with his insightful remarks. His main purpose, of course, is to analyze the fate of the ancient Western world’s greatest power, imperial Rome. This clearly written and thoroughly researched book does that very well, and in a way that might provoke its readers to ask whether the present is repeating mistakes of the past.

Goldsworthy is critical of the recent scholarly tendency to interpret the gradual disappearance of Rome’s empire as a story of “transformation” rather than of “decline and fall.” His conclusion is that the latter description, which of course originated in the 18th-century history of Edward Gibbon, is preferable.

Proceeding chronologically, Goldsworthy reveals how the Roman Empire self-destructed in an orgy of frequent civil war and the abandonment of the governing principles of the aristocratic Republic, especially the primary role of the Roman Senate as a body of experienced citizens advising the state’s rulers. Relying on his expertise as a military historian, he argues that the Empire’s “fall” was not the result of the appearance of bigger and fiercer external enemies. Instead, he insists, the Roman Empire undermined itself through unending internal struggles over political power and self-aggrandizement by the elite. The creation of the Dominate as a new system of rule under Emperor Diocletian in the late third century only made the situation worse because it ended the political influence (though not the existence) of the Senate.

If I were to supplement Goldsworthy’s analysis, I would add a greater emphasis on economic factors in the Empire’s fall. Especially significant was the change in the financial effect of the army. In earlier periods, it had been a “profit center” because its conquests brought in capital and land through successful wars of expansion. Under the later Empire, by contrast, the military became an increasingly expensive source of a “negative cash flow,” as its costs had to be paid even when the legions were no longer generating new revenues for the central government. Let us hope that the financial failure of the Roman Empire is not another possible parallel to our contemporary situation.

Regardless of whether one wishes to accept the superpower parallel, the interesting detail and cogent analysis of Goldsworthy’s book provide a compelling story of why it makes sense to see the disappearance of the Roman Empire as a “fall” and not a “transformation.”

Hardcover: 544 pages

Publisher: Yale University Press ( May 01, 2009 )

Item #: 58-3426

ISBN: 9780300137194

Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 x 1.36 inches

Product Weight: 30.0 ounces