Rome Falling

Adrian Goldworthy, author of "How Rome Fell," finds himself to be a popular guy in Washington D.C. these days, reports Peter Stothard in the Wall Street Journal (4/21/09). Adrian says it’s "an odd sensation, for a historian to talk to an audience that is actually listening to what you are saying." But policy makers are listening, intent as they are to find similarities between Rome’s decline and what’s going on today in America. It’s not unlike the way the British were all ears when Edward Gibbon published the first volume of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" in 1776.

At the time, "the prospect of Britain keeping its American colonies seemed bright." By the time Gibbon published his last three volumes, Americans were reading them in their new country. So, how, exactly did Rome fall? Oh, lots of reasons: "There were mad, bad, emperors, of course, campaigns lost against Persians, Germans and Gauls, and the imposition of Christianity in extreme and intolerant forms." The life-imprisonment of Emperor Valearan, the battle of Adrianople, not to mention "the fifth century emperors, a succession of generals, children and chancers."

Rome didn’t fall quickly, "like the 20th century empires of Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union." But it did fall violently, particularly between 450 and 900, when "protection for the weak and vulnerable from roaming killers and even from the weather" was shaky. The fall began, according to Adrian, in "the four years following 192 A.D., when Rome tottered under … the weakness of its leaders" — such as Julianus "(who bought the office at auction)." The biggest surprise, he concludes, is that the empire lasted as long as it did, and the smallest that ultimately "empires are no more immune from human stupidity than anything else."