Predatory Migrants - Another Survey of Change

Peter Heather, Empires and Barbarians: the Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

If one has ever wondered just how the barbarian invasions of Rome might have actually happened, look no further than Peter Heather’s Empires and Barbarians, a comprehensive study of the patterns of migration and cultural development in late ancient Europe. Tackling the first millennium, Heather addresses a world of changing identities and migrating tribes that used the developed Roman Empire as a catalyst for growth in to nation states. This books strides the middle ground in the debate over whether the barbarians invaded or migrated, taking “full account of all the positive aspects of the revisionist thinking, while avoiding its traps.”

Heather objects the school of thought that the migrations were made by homogenous people groups and tribes, attributing the theory to faulty generalizations of Roman accounts and “runaway nationalism” amongst historians – notably the Nazis. Rather, he considers the “tribes” to be a loose and malleable confederation of different groups, forged together on the march. Though Jordanes offers a “textbook” opinion on the classic invasion theory, Heather takes the stance that the Germanic tribes were not one king and one people, but were rather very spread out and never united. He points out three major migrations into Roman territory in the West’s latter days: the initial flight from the Huns in the mid-300s; the dispersal of Attila’s subjects in the years following his death; and that of the Franks and Anglo-Saxons, the last simply hopping into the chaotic space left by the initial break-ins. Heather’s reasons for their sudden ability to defy Roman might are based around the concepts of political restructuring and development.

One of Heather’s favorite standards for the early stages of barbarian improvement is the military gathering at Strasbourg in 357. Unlike their regional ancestors living at the time of Christ, these fourth century Germans sported a stronger political system that allowed them to field more soldiers under kings. Heather turns to Ammianus’ account to establish that the Germans had revamped their leadership structure beyond simply organizing a good turnout, having evolved said kingships and a coordination within their confederations’ that substantially improved their political lifespan. Moreover, these kings came equipped with shiny new war bands that gave them enough clout to rise up above their people. Strasburg signals for Heather the early stages of a complete overhaul of the Barbarian tribe, a development that eventually had a direct impact upon the fall of Rome’s borders, as the barbarians fleeing their Hunnic enemies were far more suited for migration into hostile territory than their first century ancestors.

The arrival of the Romans is attributed as the catalyst to the dramatic changes experienced by the Barbarians. Initially, Roman soldiers policing the border turn to the locals for whatever materials they need, rather than relying upon the empire to provide them. Thus, trade with the locals begins almost at once, the wealthy barbarians – later kings – benefiting the most. Naturally the nearby wealth represents a surplus income for the enterprising barbarian and the stereotypical cross-border raids ensue, with routine Roman counter-expeditions following in short order, often ending with subsidy payments being made to those kings willing enough to grovel at Roman feet. This additional income stimulates further barbarian social development, and also encourages neighboring tribes to have a go at ousting those currently benefiting from Roman affiliation, and so the vicious cycle continues throughout the first half of the book. Heather’s raiders are drawn like moths to a flame as Rome creates a “two-speed Germania whose economy and society worked at higher and more intense levels of development the closer you got to the Roman frontier, and vice versa.” Even the Huns, from all the way across Asia, are eventually subjected to the gravitational pull of the Roman economy and come a-wandering in the direction of the goods. In Heather’s view, Rome ironically strengthened its neighbors through trade until they were strong enough to challenge the emperor’s authority.

So when the Roman Empire’s borders crumble, it is not so much a case of bloodthirsty raiders plunging into the imperial heartland intent on slaughter. Rather, it is a combination of the above elements: migrations away from danger – stimulated by a healthy fear of the Huns – and Roman proximity. But once the barbarians are in the empire, the formerly divisive tribes suddenly seem to behave with startling coherence. They are definitely still immigrants, Heather argues, albeit predatory. What the author sees are barbarians forced to undergo another cultural shift that forges them into stronger – yet malleable – political and martial bodies that provide protection and encourages the Romans to come to terms rather than commit to a costly war that might not even destroy the menace in the end. What this means for the author is that these survival-based affiliations eventually morph into kingdoms, made possible by the Roman socio-economic prosperity that raised up their barbarian neighbors in the first place. This process continues even once Rome is out of the picture: the Frankish kingdoms directly profit from this heritage so that, once Justinian removes the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy, the northern Franks are allowed to expand unchecked. By the ninth and tenth centuries, the “barbarian” kingdoms in northern Europe are massive, and much more powerful than the petty chiefdoms that had bickered over Roman subsidies. They have come from building hill forts to constructing castles, maintaining professional armies, raising churches, and improving infrastructure. They remain rather rustic by comparison to Rome, failing to keep proper written records – and thereby forgoing the associated administration that accompanies such bookkeeping – and upholding old traditions of taxation, like itinerancy. But these new empires serve the purpose of furthering state development in the north: they share wealth (through economy and time-honored raiding) and their menacing presence encourages their comparatively tribal neighbors to solidify and build up confederations and states of their own.

The complex social history of Empires and Barbarians is woven from a multitude of sources. Heather is indefatigable in his examination of the evidence. He briefly states that “our ignorance of the Huns is astounding,” then launches into a nearly sixty-page chapter on their culture and impact upon the movements and politics in Europe. Heather does an outstanding job cross-referencing materials, drawing upon archeology, economic data, chronicles, and contemporary studies to produce a picture of what the world probably looked like. For instance, Roman frontier strategy – kill malefactors and devastate their lands, force their neighbors to kowtow, reward those who impress – is applied to archeology to determine that the Rhine/Weser region was a particularly violent area, given that there are less Roman imports discovered there, implying that the region was less prosperous – all evidence that lines up perfectly with the imperial records concerning that place. But Heather tries to not let his imagination run too wildly and remains considerate of his sources. One is tempted to wonder, though, if the author takes too many liberties at times. Though he remains ambiguous as best he can with words such as “may” and “could have,” Heather does take some questionable liberties with the data. Granted, the available information is scant in many cases, but he does not hesitate to use legal codes from sixth and seventh centuries to shed light on the social strata of the fourth century. Given that the gap between the texts and their hopeful application is similar to that dividing Strasburg’s war bands and kings from the first century raiders, the documents’ value in such a situation is questionable – though Heather is upfront about this.

As for readability, Heather is a master at conveying dense knowledge. Since the material is presented as a survey, its information offered in doses restricted to subjects, Heather does not follow a strictly chronological narrative, and he often makes odd reference to the more prominent events, such as Strasburg. This raises the difficulty of following the finer details. He moves in and around the innumerable barbarian tribes at blinding speed so that Alans, Ostrogoths, Marcomanni, and Seuvi only stand out from Huns because the latter are given their own chapter. His attention to detail is remarkable as well; taken as a whole, the sheer volume of information presented on a single page is mind numbing, though Heather is a talented author and makes such a tedious examination of the evidence engaging enough to render the average sentence reasonably painless.

Despite its nature as a survey, Empires and Barbarians is a very readable book, suitable for either the academic in search of details or for the casual student of history who simply wants some deeper answers to questions about early Europe. Heather’s approach has many winning characteristics, being engaging yet detailed, and carefully explaining his reasoning on any given topic. Weighing in at 618 pages, along with copious endnotes and maps, this book certainly adds a great deal to the ongoing debates concerning Rome’s fall.

Image taken from Sword and Sandal Gaming.'s review of the same book.

A Survey of Change - Peter Brown's "The World of Late Antiquity"

As a primer on the latter Roman Empire, Peter Brown’s The World of Late Antiquity is a succinct and informative read. Merely 203 pages, it covers a lot of ground and goes into great detail, but limits its subject matter to do so. The professed themes of the book are societal and cultural changes affecting the Mediterranean world, from the third century to the seventh, a period of change in which ancient institutions vanished. Where some authors on Roman history, such as Edward Gibbon, compile blow-by-blow accounts, Late Antiquity is a survey that serves as a quick introduction into a rapidly changing world. Brown’s work carries the narrative style of a novel, where a status quo exists in the first chapter, that status quo is disturbed by Christianity and the barbarian invasions, and then is finally restored.

The whole narrative is built around evolving social contrasts: the contrast between the rich and poor, the rulers and the ruled, and the struggles that defined each. At the outset there was the status quo of the empire, a world where the cities of the third century were islands of civility and culture in a sea of barbarism, both within and without the physical confines of the empire. This comfortable world of conservative rulers was upset in the crisis of the 240s, when those barbarians beyond Rome’s borders suddenly attacked in the 240s. War on every front led to the necessity of promoting men of action and this “aristocracy of service” came to dominate where before had been cultured elites. In this new climate the middle class flourished, but the fourth century revival also saw the consolidation of the local elites as some senators served out their office without ever visiting Rome. This trend solidified with the barbarian invasions, the loss of the West leaving it narrow in focus and ambition. In the West, the locals were now governed by the militant barbarians and church fathers, and while the East was reduced to governance by the church as Emperor Justinian cut the empire down to its bare bones, the locals turning to their bishops and clergy to replace the magistrates removed by the autocrat. At last, the rulers and the ruled of both the East and West shared the same cultures. The world of Brown’s narrative at last knew peace; in a sense, the world came full circle, back to an ancestral religion and a state of harmony. These changes came about thanks to the internal efforts of Christians and the external pressures of barbarians.

The conflict between the Christians and the pagans is another theme of change and contrasts. It is a curious theme, for though Brown attempts to cut the upstart Christians down to size whenever he gets the opportunity, he does give them their due with regard to their work in the changing fabric of the empire. Despite early pressures, the church filled a vacant hole in a changing world, where the “barbaric” peasants were suddenly socially mobile. Thus Christianity unexpectedly exploded in the third century and filled in where the pressured paganism receded, offering a home to the physically and spiritually homeless. But this new strength brought the church into direct conflict with the elite Hellenes, the representatives of pagan culture. Brown likes the Hellenes because, unlike the new Christians, they turned to the old ways to meet the new problems. At first he treats the Christians and pagans similarly, allowing that Christianity offered social bonds and salvation, and expressing quiet reverence for the twilight of the tenacious pagans. But Brown shifts tones as the story progresses, almost defensively building up the pagans, willing the reader to see that “The ‘Hellenes’ created the classical language of philosophy in the early Middle Ages, of which Christian, Jewish and Islamic thought, up to the twelfth century, are but derivative vernaculars.” He even grants to a Hellene, Plotinus, the honor of delivering the notion of connections between the seen and unseen to the “crude” monotheism of the Christians. Brown then depicts the Christians’ worship as “cold,” while describing the vigorous warmth associated with pagan sacrifice. As paganism finally died out, it bestowed its dramatic grandeur to its Christian successors: as the world risked growing “pale in the harsh light of the Christian Apologists’ call to the simple worship of a half-known high God” it “became suffused again with colour.” Where paganism had infected Gibbon’s pure Christian worship, Brown sees it as invigorating its successor. This bias for pagan things continues on as Brown makes it clear that Constantine was a poor Christian, his “conversion” a result of propaganda with which those Christians in his circles “besieged” him. Then, with the advent of the popular, empire-wide church, Brown’s rhetoric suddenly takes on heavily pro-pagan color as he takes the Christian elites to task for (sniff) only learning Homer for his literary value, even asserting that “Such men deserved the sudden fright of nineteen months of ostentatiously pagan rule” of Julian the Apostate, whom he favors with the note that he received a “proper” education. However, Christianity was there to stay and Brown moves on to acknowledge, like Gibbon, those formidable saints and abbots who moved their worlds – he is not favorable towards them, but cannot ignore the grave power of the pulpit.

Curiously, it is on the subject of barbarism that Brown pulls out all the stops in his rhetorical whipping of the Christians in his simplistic view of a complex time. Not only are the Christians made guilty of allowing the barbarians into the flourishing empire, they are also written up for alienating their conquerors. While he addresses the notion of barbarism in general terms, Brown largely ignores the invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries. Brown argued for a “barbaric” countryside, where the sensibilities of the senators and cultured elite were assaulted by an alien world of peasants, almost barbarians themselves: “bilingual aristocrats passed unselfconsciously from Latin to Greek; an African landowner, for instance, found himself quite at home in a literary salon of well-to-do Greeks at Smyrna.” Images of an empire united in opinion against the northern aggressors is attributed to the revival of the fourth century, where Brown has the divide between “us” and “them” fit the familiar mold: less of “city v. country,” more of “Romania v. the Outside.” Brown does not trouble himself too much with reasoning behind the causes for the fall, mainly asserting that it is complicated and related to economic and social weaknesses. But what he does think important is the reception of the barbarians by their Roman enemies. The subject of violence is abbreviated as much as possible here. After all, Brown is a busy man with a whole story of social change and restructuring to tackle in just two hundred pages, so he glosses over the invasions between 376 and 410, relegating them to a mere blip on the radar while quickly dropping the uncomfortable words like “invasion” and “campaigns” and casually asserting that “immigrants” from over the Rhine had come to seek a better living in Roman country. The above development of what Brown calls intolerance had a direct impact on his depiction of a newly barbarian world. In setting up his grand defense of the barbarians, Brown first makes the claim that the main problem with Rome’s weakened defenses was the disassociation of the Catholic Church and the senatorial aristocracy with the army. As the invasions continue and gain in strength, Christian distrust of soldiers goes on to divert blame for the fall of Rome back onto the Christians rather than those who overthrew them. The unbending Roman society could not handle the invasion and moreover the poor barbarian “settlers” were not welcomed by their Christian neighbors – described as “civilians” that could not stomach a soldier – who threw up “a wall of dumb hatred” at the presence of Arian heretics. Moreover, the formation of violent barbarian kingdoms is blamed upon the “intolerance that greeted the barbarian immigration.” Brown continues to ignore the violence of the era, preferring to note the discomfort felt by the Italian elites as their new equilibrium was upset by Justinian’s reconquest of the peninsula in 533.

Brown has offered us a short introduction into a deep subject. While doing a credible job of delving into the why of his subjects, much of history is left untapped. This book is perhaps a good starting place to get an idea of the world of the late antique and to be presented some new ideas that fit with politically correct molds, but its very brevity is more suited to recounting, in concise form, what is commonly held to be true. Brown has done a fair job with this, but the challenges he puts forth, most notably the nature of the barbarian “immigrations,” would require whole extra books to adequately address them.

The Epic Tragedy of Antique Rome: Gibbon’s Dramatic History, Part II

Where before I reviewed Gibbon's sources and his take on Decline and Fall, here I continue with the more entertaining aspects: his opinions!

Part II: Theory
Throughout the book, Gibbon shamelessly falls back on his Enlightenment past, focusing in on the exemplars of virtue and British manly vigor. All would be well if Gibbon did not launch off into biographical expose, building up favorite characters into minor deities. A case-in-point is Gibbon’s treatment of Julian the Apostate, ruler of the Empire for a mere year and a half before dying in 363, a somewhat controversial figure for his unorthodox views and actions. Lord Norwich wrote that he was highly intelligent but suffered from fanaticism and “a lack of sharpness and definition in his thinking.” David Potter branded him “Julian the schemer.” But to Gibbon, Julian was the epitome of the virtuous pagan, the perfect philosopher king. Here the reader is presented a man almost devoid of vices, overflowing with virtues, the sort of fellow whom slave girls would have fought over, though the careful abstinence of this pagan saint never allowed them the chance.

Gibbon devotes several chapters to Julian’s brief reign, bringing to life the faultless credulity that led the unscrupulous youth into the embraces of dying paganism, yet leaving him so virtuous as to dim the glories of the effeminate saints. Alarmingly, Gibbon turned to Julian’s own writings to vindicate the man. When the legionaries came to crown their beloved Caesar, Julian’s emotional distress over the prospect of betraying his rightful king inspired a recounting of the divine intervention by Jupiter that sapped Julian’s loyalty, prompting him to take the purple. What this gained from Lord Norwich was a quizzical, “Does Julian, perhaps, protest a little too much?” Forgoing all niceties, David Potter bluntly stated, “Julian saw his chance.” But Gibbon would have none of such unhealthy skepticism. Where he is willing to laud the clever hyperbole employed by Augustus, who amicably claimed to be the first among equals and the servant of Rome, here the author cheerfully glosses over the same prose when penned by Julian and calls it all humility and honest self-depreciation.

The entire life – as much of it as history allowed, that is – of Julian is one great apologetic argument. The rhetoric employed by Gibbon leaves only room for what is good and holy in the breast of Julian, and as though aware that his gushing appraisal might have the unfortunate side effect of irritating the credulity of his readership, the author pauses several times to once more recount for the benefit of the skeptical reader the many virtues and unsullied righteousness of his idol. To contrast this muse among men, Gibbon spares no details in building up a foe in the garrulous and grasping George the Cappadocian. Whether or not the churchman was as bad as Gibbon claims, it is fascinating to watch as George takes on the characteristic shades of pure evil that could have engendered in Procopius the sin of envy. This contrast only serves to magnify the faultless glory of the Apostate. Even the faulty and fated campaign into Persia is spun out like a Greek tragedy, wherein the willing and manly martyr advances, like the swift runner Achilles, on to his glorious end. At last, as the genial and virtuous emperor lies dying of blood loss and a ruptured liver, Gibbon assures us that, after a beatific gulp of water, he “expired without pain.”

But while Gibbon expresses his rapturous fixation upon the champions of stoicism and justice, he also inks copious pages with lamentations against his irritants. Fanaticism and superstition are the great evils of the Decline and Fall. After all, it was fanaticism, overriding his more virtuous notions, that drove Julian to rebel against his master. Likewise, the opponents of Justinian are reviled as superstitious. It may come to no surprise to most that the enemies of Julian – the Christians – are also the frequent bearers of ignorance. That is not to say that Gibbon is an enemy of Christianity; on the contrary, his pages detailing the early church positively glow with reverence. But the later church, with its bishops and its saints and its monks seems to turn Gibbon’s stomach, an understandable conclusion as he recounts, with sinister gravity, the fervor with which the more martially inclined Christians came to dominate Paganism in the years following Julian’s death. He reviles the “piously inhuman” praise of the Old Testament purges that comes from the clergy as the old things are pulled down and all things are made new by “those Barbarians” the Christians. He is alarmed by the rise of saint-worship and the degeneracy of once-pure Christianity. He rails against the ascetics and calls ecclesiastical legends “insipid.” All this in his animated distain for the superstitions of the age. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise that, from the pen of Edward Gibbon should flow the justification of the murder of emperor Valentinian III, not so much for his abject cruelty, but for his adherence to superstitious magics.

Rivaling his ire at the perceived ignorance of his subjects, Gibbon expresses a curious – one might even say “British” – irritation with effeminate trends in the Empire. By his estimation this was a disease that spelt doom for Rome, originating in the government and spreading to the army, thus furthering the decline and fall. The preoccupation with effeminacy and distaste for un-manful luxury seems to start with Constantine the Great’s application of Near Eastern cultural attributes and continues on from there, springing up at the oddest times. Often this takes a humorous bent, such as when the languid culture and moral corruption of the East is several times attributed to the heat index rather than to any relaxation of ethical duty. Herein is the argument that surroundings are what make the man: discomfort is basically good, while even basic comfort and luxury is evil – another theme that permeates the Decline and Fall. In another place, the unwillingness of an Armenian king, Arsaces Tiranus, to commit his forces to a war on Julian’s behalf is attributed to the unmanly decline and pusillanimity – a word of which Gibbon is overly fond – of that monarch. Gibbon goes to great lengths in support of he pet peeve, even pausing in the midst of his expose on Byzantine international trade to point out that Emperor Elagabalus “had sullied the dignity of an emperor and a man” by incorporating silk into his wardrobe. But the degeneracy of manly virtues appears to have been actually quite severe and the fears of Gibbon are justified as he references Vegetius, who noted the growing sloth and effeminate delicacy of the Roman legions.

After his own examination of the foibles of Edward Gibbon, historian Peter Brown sees Gibbon as a “sociologist of empire,” understanding human nature and the nature of power such that, by looking at Rome, the Achaemenid empire, and Tamerlane, he could craft a compelling interpretation of the character of the absolute monarchy of Cyrus. In particular, Gibbon adhered to a strict interpretation of knowledge, abandoning some of the most crucial and conventional evidence because it did not “materially” affect his story. Brown correctly points out that Gibbon chose to include in his work that which belonged in the real world, and some things that did not belong at one point in time might just do so eventually. Such metaphysical questions as filioque would be quite outside the realm of material value until someone died for it. Such was the case with Arianism, a set of beliefs that would have no value to Gibbon whatever, except for the fact that they directly impacted real-world events and inspired Julian to bait his Christian enemies against one another. Such was also the case with Julian’s personal faith. In what Brown would probably term “horrified fascination,” Gibbon took on the task of bringing the young philosopher’s paganism to life:

"A devout and sincere attachment for the gods of Athens and Rome, constituted the ruling passion of Julian; the powers of an enlightened understanding were betrayed and corrupted by the influence of superstitious prejudice; and the phantoms which existed only in the mind of the emperor, had a real and pernicious effect on the government of the empire.”

But pernicious as he saw them, Gibbon later asserted that the nocturnal visitations of the gods, no matter how imaginary, were contrasted with those of the monks; the holy spent their lives in “useless” pursuit of visions, while those of Justinian are lauded in Gibbon’s history as the driving forces that galvanized his actions.

So we see Gibbon as both the historian of detail and the impassioned orator, championing the heroes of old even as their bones molder in distant graves. In this light, our brave Englishman was not a perfect historian. He had his foibles, his prejudices, his own pernicious visions of antique glory that sometimes superseded the evidence. But where one might fault Gibbon’s partiality for Anglo-Roman Enlightenment, the man is somewhat vindicated by his works. The Decline and Fall is an epic prose poem of crumbling grandeur that will long stand outmatched against all comers.

The Epic Tragedy of Antique Rome: Gibbon’s Dramatic History, Part I

In his famous work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon tackled a tremendous subject. It is an expansive work, reaching back to the very birth of the Empire under Augustus in the fine line between the first century B.C. and the first A.D. and then progresses through the ages, right past the infamous 476 A.D. and right up to the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in the fifteenth century. True to his title, Gibbon’s epic drama recounts in views both wide and narrow the incidents and personalities that influenced that span of history. But Gibbon was also a product of his time, and as a child of the Enlightenment, he passes severe judgment on the morals and actions of the Empire throughout his work, as well as expressing his own curious partialities and easing, through judgment, his own irritations.

The copy of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall that is subject to this review is the Penguin Classics abridged edition. Therein lies the inherent weakness with the book, where whole chapters have been cut out or reduced to a page or two, accompanied by the editor’s commentary. The reader is thus left at the mercy of Mr. Womersley, who might have edited whatever bits pleased him and that he deemed the least important. But to be fair, the editor has included some abridged entries that seem to reflect a willingness to represent Gibbon’s own views as faithfully as possible.

Part I: Empiricism
Naturally, Gibbon leans a great deal upon those writers contemporary to the events. Tacitus, Pliny, and others make repeated appearances, and some, like Ammianus and Procopius, are used a great deal within the chapters that deal closely with those authors’ areas of interest. Many of Gibbon’s own contemporaries and luminaries of Europe make an appearance in his footnotes, such as Le Clerc and Le Comte. Though Gibbon tends to like certain sources in particular and relies heavily on a few names when addressing complex subjects – he turns often to Mosheim to discover the history of the early church – he does display sufficient knowledge in other areas to make comment, such as the Hungarians on Attila.

One major shortcoming of Gibbon’s is that he is hardly objective and does falter somewhat when using sources with which he closely agrees. When he turns to Procopius to discover the truth of Justinian’s court, Gibbon does a credible job of warning the reader that Procopius is beyond biased, but argues that by reading between the lines, one might discern the truth of the matter. That being said, Gibbon launches into a series of chapters that seem to rely heavily upon Procopius’ opinions – perhaps due to Gibbon’s own strongly held beliefs in virtue and manly decency that are antithesis to the court at Constantinople. Tales of such corruption play a central role in Gibbon’s evidence for decline.

In the last chapter of the book, Gibbon helpfully lays out the four key reasons for the decay of the Roman city: “I. The injuries of time and nature. II. The hostile attacks of the Barbarians and Christians. III. The use and abuse of the materials. And, IV. The domestic quarrels of the Romans.” Although this list is intended to address the decay of the city itself, some circumstances regarding its fall are applicable to the empire at large.

The first argument is weak with regards to the fall of the Empire: the authority and eminence of Rome long survived the symphonic conflagration of Nero, and the swelling of the Tiber merely kept Augustus busy during his tenure as the first emperor. There is one outstanding exception, that of the dramatic sandstorm that undermined the defense of Jerusalem in A.D. 636 against the Muslims, whose capture of that city was supposedly reflective upon the poor morals of Emperor Heraclius. The fall of the imperial holdings from the Levant to Iberia followed shortly.

More worthy of Gibbon’s topic, warfare and strife is a combination of Barbarians thrashing both the frontiers and later the interiors of both the East and the West, as well as the dissentions among the Christians. There are many factors here, most appreciably those of corruption at home and failures at arms – and these are often closely interrelated. The Battle of Adrianople in 378 is an excellent example, wherein the corruption of the nobility led to martial disaster. The declaration of liberty by the Goths while in Thrace was effectively the first successful invasion. Following that war, and due to the constant perils that threatened everyday life, the morals of the Empire declined as a spirit of “eat, drink, and be merry” superceded the more temperate Roman virtues. In this climate of resignation and stagnation, the actions of Attila in the following century are easily seen as aiding in the destruction of Rome. In the midst of the horrors of Hunnish raids, one martially motivated town that successfully fought back against the Huns showed how the regular government and arms of the Eastern Empire had deteriorated.

Our author waxes eloquent on his dialogues regarding the use and abuse of resources. If armies may be called resources, then they earned the just ire of Gibbon. Loss of freedom and patriotism were the results of the legions becoming more and more mercenary in nature, thus starting a vicious cycle: as the legions threatened the Empire, the fearful emperors moved to weaken the army, thus sabotaging any attempts to overthrow the barbarian enemies that plundered the countryside at will. Finances were another frequent abuse, best put on display by Justinian’s riotous spending campaigns in the Sixth century, wherein the prodigal emperor engaged in building and lavishing moneys onto his favorites and leaving naught for his successor but debt, and what defenses he did build Gibbon deems pointless.

The domestic quarrels of the Romans were the final weakness that allowed for the avalanche of state to begin tumbling. Court intrigues abound, from the jealously of Canstantius II to the murder of the worthy general Aetius – fresh from his victory over Attila – by his liege. The problem was summed up well as Gibbon gravely pronounced that the Empire appeared “every day less formidable to its enemies, more odious and oppressive to its subjects.” As the first blows were succeeded by a storm of invaders, the imperial division into East and West allowed the factions that crippled any attempts to unify forces against common foes. Even after Rome was reduced to the seat of barbaric authority in Italy, further division is explored with regard to the Greens and Blues in the East, athletic-turned-quasi-political factions that haunted Justinian’s reign, leading to the Nikan Revolt.

Though whimsical and sprinkled with appreciated irony, Gibbon’s view of the fall of Rome is a gloomy one, well suited for comparison with The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, by Bryan Ward-Perkins. The differences of opinion are largely in focus: where Gibbon the epic historian examines the leadership and humor of the populace, Ward-Perkins the archeologist reads between the lines of ancient texts when not examining pottery kilns in Briton and Latin graffiti on the walls of Pompeii. Some of their conclusions are certainly different, at least in the means to the same end. The toppling of Rome was, for Gibbon, largely founded upon the abuse of power and the loss of the macho drive that invigorated the Republic and early Empire. In his view the coming of Christianity was a good marker for the decline, supposing that the religion “preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity” leading the once-manly Empire into a “servile and effeminate age,” as public wealth was redirected to the ecclesiastical institutions – though he does allows that the mollifying effects of Christianity helped to cushion the fall of Rome to the Barbarians. This is in contrast with Ward-Perkins’ largely religion-free opinion that Rome had long survived only precariously, as its legions liked to play defense and, while undisputedly superior to the swarming Gothic hordes, never enjoyed an edge so definite as that of the Gattling gun over African natives. In the composition of the military, too, Gibbon is more leery of mercenary loyalties than Ward-Perkins, who views mercenaries as a reasonable expenditure – as apparently did the Romans. Further differences arise when it comes to the decline and fall, since Ward-Perkins sees a government over-burdened with military upkeep – as opposed to the bellicose barbarians – and a society suddenly devoid of a tax base right when it needed one. Though Gibbon does address the social problems associated with monasticism and religious diversity, pollution of the army by mercenaries, and certainly the oppressive taxes, he usually sticks with the Great Men school of history, putting the blame of said diversity, pollution, and taxation upon the heads of the Roman elite, most often the emperor.

As one might suspect of these dour authors, Gibbon and Ward-Perkins agree on the level of violence that characterized the fall of Rome. But where Ward-Perkins focuses upon the Germanic invasions, Gibbon produced graphic depictions of Hunnish atrocities under Attila. But once hostilities subsided, these two historians also agree on the matter of Barbarian reverence – however imperfect – of the Roman tradition. The Germans were not necessarily bent on carnage and destruction for its own sake. But, having seen the glories of Rome and being trained in her armies, savvy with her weaknesses, they were able to turn that to their advantage and lay hands upon those portable spoils that suited them. That being said, much as Gibbon reminds us that the physical buildings were often spared, so too does Ward-Perkins offer the consolation that the institutions of Rome prevailed in some barbaric guise. But all means aside, the result of the fall is a point on which both men echo each other’s assessments of the contemporary implications. Writes Gibbon, “The Romans were ignorant of the extent of their danger, and the number of their enemies.” Ward-Perkins finishes the thought thusly: “Romans before the fall were as certain as we are today that their world would continue for ever substantially unchanged. They were wrong.” Though writing from different periods, they both agree that the threat of decline and overthrow at the hands of barbarians is a risk applicable to all great civilizations.

The Certainty of the Uncertain

Simon Schama, Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations). New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1991.

History is a controversial subject and Simon Schama’s Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) certainly looks like a controversy waiting to happen. A collection of imaginative narratives mixed with winsomely rendered biographical accounts, it reads like a novel, but claims to be history. Finding a thesis in Schama is a bit of a trick, as the first chapter does not clearly stake a claim. But within said first chapter is a running theme of historical restructuring, the notion that, in the name of artistic license, it is possible to craft a “representative history” that eventually supercedes the truth.

The story of Dead Certainties goes something like this: “At the close of the French and Indian war, General Wolf died in battle. His memory was remembered in painting and even changed to something holy. Some years later, Francis Parkman, historian and world traveler, also died after writing a grand account of the Heights of Abraham. Meanwhile, back on those same heights, a tired and frightened soldier hurried up to tell the dying general that the battle was won for England. On a somewhat unrelated note, while Francis Parkman was traveling the world in his younger days, Governor George Briggs of Boston stressed over the responsibility to sign off on the death of a Harvard professor who had been implicated in the murder of young Parkman’s relative, Dr. George Parkman. There follows an examination of the victim and the villain and sundry others.”

What results is a bizarre and clever organization of chaos. This is no book for those interested in light reading that progresses from points A to B to C. The transitions from one set of stories to the next is more analogous to a plate of spaghetti; each chapter is like a noodle that is swerving and turning and contacting other noodles, meatballs, and the odd spice or diced tomato that’s been stirred into the mix. It is a masterful recipe, though some readers might find it hard to digest.

But very real problems arise throughout, thanks to Schama’s chosen means of narration. There is a great deal of story and a great deal of history to be seen, but what is what, which is which? The lack of notes means that the author could very well have written up an outline of the facts and then filled in the blanks willy-nilly, thumbing his nose as the reading public, daring them to trust his account. Indeed, Schama stresses in the afterword that the stories that he has told are just that, “works of the imagination, not scholarship.” So has Schama written fiction, or history? What is the reader to make of this?

Upon examination, Schama’s sources certainly appear to be sound. For the death of General Wolfe there are listed books written from the 1800s through the late 1900s, letters, journals, wartime memorabilia, and art. For the macabre murder in Boston, more letters, trial accounts, and contemporary news clippings are presented. A whole host of secondary sources – primarily books and news clippings – are also included. Schama certainly seems to treat his sources with respect, even pointing out how some were grossly inaccurate, but still useful for the purposes of establishing atmosphere and such. But the disturbing reality remains: Schama did not include footnotes or endnotes within his pages, so unless an intrepid investigator wishes to recreate Schama’s work, one must take the author at his word. Some will probably chafe at such a necessary evil, especially when in A Note on the Sources, Schama admits that, “The more purely fictitious dialogues (such as Marshal Tukey’s conversation with Ephraim Littlefield) are worked up from my own understanding of the sources as to how such a scene might have taken place.” What! The very idea of imagining history! And yet in such a confession is summed up the very beauty of the whole work.

By subtitling his book Unwarranted Speculations Schama seems to take a jibe at himself, pointing out that his book is naught but a collection of speculations that, in the greater scheme of things, are unwarranted, and will offer little by way of new knowledge. This thesis is summed up well in the developed martyrdom of Wolfe. Though seemingly at odds with a murder trial in Boston (the main story), the death of Wolfe lends the insight that, regardless of what really happened, history will remember the account told by the best author. Just as Benjamin West’s painting reshaped the way school children would remember their history lessons – even if they were actually taught the truth of the matter – so might narrative accounts, even Schama’s own, color the reader’s understanding of murder most foul in Boston.

If anything, Schama has succeeded in artfully blurring the distinction between History and Historical Fiction. His book may not be suitable as a secondary source, but it is highly informative as to how such a secondary source might turn out – it is thus both a discouragement to “serious historians” and an encouragement to authors of both camps. But it remains a warning to all: what is written may overcome what has transpired.