[lit-ideas] Rome and the Barbarians
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 19:47:41 -0400 (EDT)
We read from Lewis/Short, Latin Dictionary:
'barbarus'
"in the mouth of a Greek", or in opp. to Greek: Italian, Roman, Latin --
never so used by a Roman, or the Romans.
In gen., 'barbarus' is used by the Romans for any hostile people (among the
Romans, after the Augustan age, especially the GERMANIC tribes, as, among
the Greeks, after the Persian war, the Persians):
opinio, quae animos gentium barbararum pervaserat, Cic. Imp. Pomp. 9, 23;
id.
Sull. 27,
the Germans, Tac. H. 4, 29; 5, 14; id. A. 1, 64;
Suet. Aug. 21; id. Tib. 9; id. Calig. 5; 47; 51; id. Galb. 6; id. Dom. 6;
12; Amm. 18, 2, 5:
ut sunt fluxioris fidei barbari, id. 18, 2, 18;
The Amateur Barbarian.
Heather, as we know, wrote a book with a provocative title: The fall of
the Roman Empire: a new history of Rome and the Barbarians".
He blames the Barbarians for the fall of Rome -- and gives names!
There is a section on P. Heather, whom L. Helm was mentioning in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire#Peter_Heather
"Peter Heather, in his "The Fall of the Roman Empire: A new history of Rome
and the Barbarians" , maintains that the Roman imperial system, with its
sometimes violent imperial transitions and problematic communications
notwithstanding, was however in *fairly good shape* during the first, second,
and part of the 3rd centuries AD."
According to Heather, the first real indication of trouble was the
emergence in Iran of the Sassanid Persian empire (226–651).
-- where 'indication' was a favourite word with Grice (and Peirce). An
indication (or index, as Peirce prefers) presuppoes that someone was noticing
it!
Heather says:
"The Sassanids are sufficiently powerful and internally cohesive to push
back Roman legions from the Euphrates and from much of Armenia and southeast
Turkey."
"Much as modern readers tend to think of the "Huns" as the nemesis of the
Roman Empire, for the entire period under discussion it was the Persians who
held the attention and concern of Rome and Constantinople."
Well -- this is what makes Heather's a NEW history of Rome, not the goold
old one!
I think the Huns were ANOTHER indication or other indications.
Heather goes on:
"Indeed, 20–25% of the military might of the Roman Army was addressing the
Persian threat from the late third century onward … and upwards of 40% of
the troops under the Eastern Emperors."
This is a fine distinction: East and West.
Heather goes on to state — in the tradition of Gibbon and Bury — that it
took the Roman Empire about half a century to cope with the Sassanid threat.
The Roman Empire did by stripping the western provincial towns and cities
of their regional taxation income.
The resulting expansion of military forces in the Middle East was finally
successful in stabilizing the frontiers with the Sassanids.
But trust a further indication will pass to exist:
The reduction of real income in the provinces -- the three Galliae, etc --
of the Western Roman Empire led to two trends which, Heather says, had a
"negative" long-term impact -- for the Romans if not the barbarians.
First negative outcome:
The incentive for local provincial officials to spend their time and money
in the development of local infrastructure disappeared.
Public buildings from the 4th century onward tended to be much more modest
and funded from central budgets, as the regional taxes had dried up.
Second negative outcome:
Heather says:
"The land-owning provincial literaus now shifts hisattention to where the
money was … away from provincial and local politics to the imperial
bureaucracy"
-- that is and was Rome!
Having set the scene of an Empire *stretched* militarily by the Sassanid
threat, Heather then suggests, using archaeological evidence, that the
Germanic tribes on the Roman Empire's northern border had altered in nature
since
the 1st century.
Cfr. Tacitus, "Germania".
Contact with the Roman Empire increases the Germanic tribes' material
wealth.
That, in turn leads to disparities of wealth sufficient to create a
"ruling class" capable of maintaining control over far larger groupings than
had
previously been possible.
Essentially they had become significantly more formidable foes.
Heather then posits what amounts to a domino theory — namely that pressure
on peoples very far away from the Roman Empire can result in sufficient
pressure on peoples on the Roman Empire's borders to make them contemplate the
risk of full-scale IMMIGRATION to the Roman Empire.
Thus Heather links the invasion by the Goths in 376 directly to Hunnic
movements around the Black Sea in the decade before.
In the same way, Heather sees the invasions across the Rhine in 406 as a
direct consequence of further Hunnic incursions in Germania.
As such Heather sees the Huns as deeply significant in the fall of the
Western Roman Empire long before they themselves became a military threat TO
the Roman Empire itself.
Heather postulates that the Hunnic expansion caused unprecedented
immigration (or westward movement -- cfr. Lebensraum -- in 376 and 406 by
Barbarian
tribes who had become significantly more politically and militarily
capable than in previous eras.
And as any Germanist knows, not ALL of that derived from Graeco-Roman
sources -- Aryan or Indo-European at most!
This immigration (as we may call it) impacted an empire already at maximum
stretch due to the Sassanid pressure.
Essentially Heather argues that the external pressures between 376 A. D.
and 470 A. D. could have brought the Western Roman Empire down at any point
in its history -- which still doesn't mean that there woulddn't be a Rome
-- cfr. "There'll always be an England" -- even when the Empire in India
_failed_.
Heather disputes Gibbon's contention that Christianity and moral decay led
to the decline.
Hence the epithet, "new" --.
Heather also rejects the political infighting of the Roman Empire as a
reason, considering it was a systemic recurring factor throughout the Roman
Empire's history which, while it might have contributed to an inability to
respond to the circumstances of the 5th century, it consequently cannot be
blamed for them.
Instead Heather places the beginning of the end squarely on outside
military factors, starting with the Sassanids.
Like Bury, Heather does not believe the fall was inevitable.
-- but then in history nothing is. Cfr. Berlin, "Historical Predictability"
and the Nose of Cleopatra --
Rather, a series of events came together to shatter the Roman Empire.
Heather differs from Bury, however, in placing the onset of those events
far earlier in the Empire's time-line, with the Sassanid rise.
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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