Plague - The Destroyer of Empires

[Bryan]

I'm not discussing effectiveness of armor, I'm discussing manufacturer. Many tens of thousands of rivetted rings is harder to produce than pressed and hammered iron plates attached by leather straps. Mail was harder to make, and yet at a time you keep insisting was so bad the Romans switched to using the harder to make, more time consuming, more expensive armor, over the cheap munitions grade stuff they previously used. This is a hole in your theory, big enough to fly a plane through.

In addition, you asserted earlier that pila were difficult to make. That also isn't true. They weren't hard to make, they weren't difficult to throw as they were intended (within 20 meters). The various plagues of the Late Roman Empire have nothing to do with the pila's disappearance, simply put they switched tactics and switched weapons largely for cultural and practical reasons.

[CNV2855]

Not hard to make, but more difficult to craft than darts. Which requires more resources? A pilum or an arrow? Plumbata seem to be a mass produced, cheaper alternative that could be made by the soldiers themselves in the field. I don't see the darts having the massive shock of thousands of heavy javelins crashing into the rank and file.

Never the less, I do think mail is a far superior armor against spears while plate is extremely effective against swords, and axes. You do not want to be in a coat of mail when someone is swinging an axe at you. The disappearance of the swordsman on the battlefield, with spearmen filling their role may also play a role in dominance of mail.

We'll have to rely on historical re-enactments to know for sure. That's why it's so exciting. We've lost so much knowledge in the last two thousand years, that is just now being rediscovered. A skilled Knight with a Zweihander could take on up to four opponents. Segmentata gets a bad rap.

I'm obviously of the opinion that it's the height of Roman craftsmanship, another "invention" nearly a thousand years before it's rediscovery.

Regardless, the population of Europe went through a dramatic decline around 180-260 AD and it took 1,100 years to recover. Antiquity was a very prosperous, populated, and golden age (Except for the Plague of Athens which destroyed Greece).

65 million down to 30 million in less than a quarter of a century. That's a near loss of an entire generation.

Cavalry began to be used more often in warfare, so infantry were increasingly trained in the use of spears, and the same infantry was therefor equipped with armor best suited for defense against small pointed tips, not cleaving blows. Mail is extremely effective against arrows and stabbing motions.

[Bryan]

Plumbata did not replace pila. They were missile weapons but both had completely different uses. The heavy war spear, the Hasta, replaced the pila as the pole arm, it wasn't thrown, line infantry stopped being missileers. The Late Roman infantry weren't going for shock tactics using missile weapons anymore, they were doing it with flatter ovalish shields that were locked together in shield walls, bristling with spears. Legionary tactics changed completely from those previous, which was why the pila disappeared.

[Nathan Ross]

The demographics, the study of the population between 150AD-300AD tells a story of a massive population drop.  A drop of nearly 50%. 

I'm not sure where you're getting these figures - could you cite some of the research you're drawing on?

There are no accurate statistics for population during the Roman period. Therefore demographic studies are always going to be very imprecise, except in areas like Egypt where we have large amounts of surviving documentation on tax and land ownership. Some of these Egyptian sources do indeed suggest a drop in population, but we cannot extrapolate too much from that.

Historians of the 18th and 19th century were keen on the idea that the Antonine Plague almost wiped out Roman civilisation and led to a terminal decline. In more recent times, more cautious and evidence-based views have prevailed.

J.F. Gilliam (The Plague Under Marcus Aurelius, 1961) was one of the first reputable scholars to challenge the idea of the plague's severity. Gilliam cites in particular the lack of contemporary testimony to massive mortality, and estimates the total figure at 1-2% of overall population.

Subsequent scholars have regarded Gilliam's figure as overly conservative, while accepting his general thesis. A much higher estimate comes from R.P Duncan-Jones (The Impact of the Antonine Plague, 1996) - I haven't read his paper, but I think he makes a tentative estimate of up to 25%. He bases his findings heavily on Egyptian evidence, however, which has been questioned by other researchers.

Turchin and Nefedov (Secular Cycles, 2009) mainly use Duncan-Jones's estimates to calculate a massive loss in the tax base in Egypt, with some villages in the Nile delta losing as much as 93% of their population. However, these losses only persist for four years, which suggests that a lot of it was due to flight from disease rather than actual death.

Littman & Littman (Galen and the Antonine Plague, 1973) go with the idea that the plague was smallpox, and study in particular other known outbreaks in more recent times. "During a pandemic, smallpox might be fatal to an average 25% of those affected... usually only 60 to 80 percent of the population might contract the disease." (They cite epidemics in Mexico and Prussia in the 18th century with mortality of between 7% and 18%) - they then argue that the 23-year Antonine (smallpox) pandemic followed a similar median mortality rate, giving "a death rate of 7 to 10 percent... approximately 3.5 to 5 million deaths, at a conservative estimate". It's worth noting that the Littmans believe the Athenian plague was also smallpox, and the Antonine population was not 'virgin'.

Walter Scheidel (2002) also uses Egyptian evidence, but arrives at a median figure of 10% for overall mortality, with a possible high of 25% in some places. Frier, in The Cambridge Ancient History Vol IX 'Demography' (2000) also goes with the figure of 10%.

One of the highest estimates I've been able to find is Zuiderhoek ('Government Centralization in Late Second and Third Century A.D. Asia Minor: A Working Hypothesis', 2009), who argues that mortality could have ranged from 7-10% to as much as 25-33%; he does seem to believe that the plague may have been bubonic, and draws his estimate from a comparison with the Black Death.

Anyway, as you can see there's significance difference in scholarly thinking on this! However, no works that I've seen estimate a figure above 33% (which is itself based on the Black Death and presumes the plague was bubonic).

65 million down to 30 million in less than a quarter of a century.  That's a near loss of an entire generation.

Again, I know of no research in the last 100 years that would support that claim! Where are you getting this from?

Incidentally, the 'Plague of Athens' (probably typhoid or typhus) did not 'destroy Greece'. It didn't even destroy Athens, although it did lead indirectly to them losing the Peloponnesian War. The state endured, and after a short blip they restored their democracy.

[CNV2855]

Nathan, I can cite my sources all of which are obviously biased towards my opinion, but before I go through the effort I want you to think of the reality of the situation.

We are familiar with Smallpox, we're familiar with mortality rates, we're familiar with it being a terrible disease - as even those who survived were permanently scarred (ugly), or disabled (blind, deaf, or loss of limbs). Leprosy is another disease that is almost unthinkable to the modern mind.

We know where it originated, we know how it traveled across the world, and we have a pretty good idea about the path of destruction it left in its wake. Smallpox led us to the vaccine, as people would would sniff powdered scabs from sick patients, or perform other forms of variolation.

Without Smallpox, the Americas might have very well have set the stage for a Great World War, or perhaps postponed colonization until the advent of industrialization, in which we might be regarded as mass murderers (instead of the Germans). The Spanish accounts of so many sick that the ones who were well could not maintain the crops, the water, and created a situation in which the sick caused the rest to die of starvation and thirst.

I just don't see how a population who had absolutely no immunity to the disease, which unlike the Bubonic Plague could not be stopped by mere proper hygiene. Had the Black Death hit the Roman Empire, they'd probably have fared quite well due to their frequent bathing and the relatively nice accomodations of insula, compared to medieval cottages.

I had never heard of Plague put forth as a primary reason for the Fall of the WRE (and ERE) until 2013, when recent research confirmed the Antonine Plague was in fact Smallpox. I had only heard of Gibbons, rather absurd notion, that Christianity caused a moral decrepitude, when in fact religion has a tendency to sanction violence rather than condemn it.

It's interesting to know that there were historians who thought that the cause 300 years ago, so I guess it's not nearly as new a notion as I thought. It's the most likely in my eyes though.

We do know with pretty good accuracy that within a generation around the late 2nd century, literacy dropped from 30% to 3%. We also know that trade was disrupted, perhaps due to brigands, but more likely the realization that contact could spread disease.

Of course, they could have recovered from it after all they weren't the only people hit hard. Parthia was a mere footnote to Rome's conquests and failed to put up any battle of note before being overwhelmed. But Smallpox did come, and the we know it hit the army hard. People love to talk about Teutoburg and the loss of those legions as the one battle that put an end to Roman expansion, but those legions must have been a small price for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers that would soon be sick, infected, and dying. Rome's great trade networks would have hastened the travel and they wouldn't have known what hit them until it was too late.

Two Emperors, one of whom is immortalized by talking about the sheer amount of death he had witnessed, and so on... I just don't get the picture that it was pretty or contained.

We won't know the official death count, but battles kill unmarried, uneducated, poor men. Disease kills indiscriminately. Rome is never the same when reading about events post 170 AD, at least not to me. It's when it's Latin heart was ripped out and it started becoming predominately Greek.

I'd be interested to see a disease model that would allow for less disastrous consequences, but everything I've ever read about Smallpox paints quite a grim picture.

The Roman Empire was always destined to regain it's lost lands and become whole again, if it weren't for the Plague of Justinian. Timing could not have been worse. What Belisarius could have done to the Vandals with a couple hundred thousand men... I have little doubt he could have reconquered the whole of the Western Empire.

I read quite a few estimates regarding demography, especially transitioning from Antiquity to the Dark Ages and the numbers all seem to be the same. Perhaps they're all guess work based upon the same authors? They show a sharp decline followed by a plateau, a huge sudden recovery, then another massive decline (Black Death).

The Historians you mentioned did not know for sure that the Antonine Plague was Smallpox. That confirmation is a pretty big deal, as we now know an approximate virulence and mortality, and there really aren't any pathogens that could have been worse.

Regardless, it's ironic that our largest endeavors were actually often being gambled upon by the smallest form of life on this planet. May again be the case if we enter a post antibacterial age.

A good read: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...re/473862/

[Bryan]

Did you forget to cite your sources?

[Nathan Ross]

I can cite my sources

Please do!

We do know with pretty good accuracy that within a generation around the late 2nd century, literacy dropped from 30% to 3%. 

How can anyone possible estimate that? The Romans kept no records of literacy.

I just don't get the picture that it was pretty or contained. 

Nobody is claiming that it was. We know there was some kind of epidemic, or a series of them, and many people died - 10% would be a significant casualty rate. The disease continued off and on for decades, even centuries - Egypt was never entirely free of it until the modern era.

But that does not mean that we have to assume a catastrophe, or see it as the sole cause or catalyst of wider troubles.

Rome is never the same when reading about events post 170 AD... it started becoming predominately Greek. 

Rome was never Greek - Latin remained the language of government in the west into the middle ages. If you mean the Roman empire more generally, Greek was always more prominent in the eastern provinces, but Latin remained the official language of the Eastern ('Byzantine') empire until AD610.

The Historians you mentioned did not know for sure that the Antonine Plague was Smallpox.

All of those I cited believed it was probably smallpox, except Scheidel (who thought smallpox and perhaps measles) and Zuiderhoek, who considered it might have been bubonic. Nobody knows for sure what it was, of course!

A good read: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...re/473862/

Interesting - thanks. I do like Kyle Harper - his book on late Roman slavery was excellent. This article, however, gives no estimates of mortality; sensibly so, since the writer recognises how difficult it is to trust ancient sources or extrapolate from limited evidence!

I would be wary about putting too much trust in Christian accounts of the 2nd-3rd century plagues though. While some of Cyprian's stuff may be good reportage, Christian writings are often cited as evidence of the reaction of the Roman state or the 'pagan' population (particularly in the idea that the supposed lack of care given to victims by 'pagans', as opposed to the care given by Christians - and the 'terror' of the Roman state at the spectacle of mass death - contributed to the rise of Christianity in a time of crisis*). These writings are exhorations and sermons - they are propaganda, and the pagan state is the enemy. We should not take them as objective descriptions of what might have been going on at the time, or what non-Christians might have thought about it!

*An idea put forward in Rodney Stark's 'Cities of God'; Stark also goes for a high Antonine mortality rate of 30%, but bases his ideas heavily on Christian writings. He claims that Christians had a better chance of surviving the disease as they developed immunity due to their care for the sick, as opposed to 'pagans' who tended to abandon theirs. This latter idea is dubious, to say the least!

[CNV2855]

To the Pagans, it was the end of the world.

To the Christians, it was God's vengeance.

What a time it must have been. I'll find the sources tomorrow. Regarding literacy, that was a statistic that caught my eye when reading something... I really need to find it. They seem convinced that literacy was around 30% (which is extremely high for pre-modern society, though I'd have guessed it higher) and fell to 1-3% as Roman society fell apart. I think it's based on extant texts, the amount written, the number copied, and the intended audience.

The question I pose to you though, before I go dig up a bunch of material, is that if these plagues hit the Roman Empire at a time when there seemed to be a lot of change in both the military, social, and political realms... is it possible that any of that change was for the worse (due to economic reasons, instead of practical)? They increasingly relied on mercenaries, that's a terrible long-term change, but made sense in light of the current situation, lest those mercenaries turn on a weakened Rome.

If so, why is there so much hate for the equipment and typical heavy infantry legionnaire on these forums? Sure, pop culture loves them and they're what we identify as Roman. To me, I'd have loved to see them face off against Frederick Barbossa or Richard's armies. I think they'd have crushed them, because we really never see the rise of super heavy infantry until the rise of unmounted knights (which comprised less than 10% of total manpower).

These were men who were building roads, aqueducts, constantly constructing, training, and were perhaps so physically strong that we'd have difficulty imaging it. Knights on the other hand were aristocrats, born into the station, who practiced at leisure.
I'd love to see a legion face off against an Feudal army of unmounted knights and their conscripts. Dan Carlin votes for the Legions, and I'd have to agree. Knights played at war. The legions did not. Heavy cavalry & the mythical Longbow, none of them would give the decisive advantage as the Romans were familiar with both crossbows and Cataphracts (and elephants).

Keep in mind that I am aware there hastily conscripted legions such as Crassus basically hiring every man willing to wield a sword. But the legions that earned their reputation, the legions made of men conscripted for 20+ years, legions with a tremendous advantage in NCO's and experienced veterans, all of which Medieval armies sorely lacked. Hell, at Hattin the War Council was comprised of a bunch of imbecils that sent 30,000 men off to their death via fatigue and thirst.

The Great 3 English victories are not so much a display of English prowess and superiority at war, but instead a display of just how terrible the Europeans had become at warfare. Your opinion?

I'm sure even the worst Consuls knew not to funnel extremely heavily armored men over wet, plowed mud. Medieval battles are rife with stupidity because there was confusion as to who even was in charge half the time, and the nobles wanting to lead the Vanguard and get themselves killed/captured certainly didn't help the situation. Varus, for all the blame he takes actually led a tactically sound campaign at Teutoberg, it was the strategic blunder of being SO trusting to throw caution to the wind, that he was put into a hopelessly lost situation.

So I say Rome has the technology. Rome has the logistics. Rome has the commanders. And Rome has the more hardened men.

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On a side note, they should reopen the Coliseum or an equivalent.. We pretend we're above bloodsport, but UFC has eclipsed boxing all too completely.

There would be tons of willing participants, from fame, cash prizes, and so on. Very few fights ended in death, and while I'm not interested in that aspect, I'd really love to see some medieval combat. I know we have the renewed martial weapon arts, but it's still fake fighting in the respect that Kung Fu is just fancy dancing.

I'd love to see what two men without restraint fighting with armor on looks like (if they were trained). Yeah people would die. People die all the time performing their hobbies from mountain climbing to tightroping. I think it's silly for us to pretend we're above it all. Not a crusade of mine or anything, just think it'd be cool idea to reconsider the legality for volunteers.

I don't want to see someone die, but I do want to see realistic swordsmanship.

[Nathan Ross]

To the Pagans, it was the end of the world.

No it wasn't. Some Christian writers used such ideas, but they were drawing on a Judeo-Christian tradition of plagues and the apocalypse which the traditional religions did not share. There is no suggestion that any 'pagan' at the time thought the world was ending.

They increasingly relied on mercenaries... lest those mercenaries turn on a weakened Rome.

The Roman army did not rely on 'mercenaries' to any extent until the 5th century. The Severan army, as I've said, expanded to even greater size on the traditional legion model. Rome was not 'weakened' or at risk from 'mercenaries' - are you thinking of the sack of Rome in AD410, perhaps?

I do wonder where you're getting your ideas about later Roman history. I recommended David S Potter's The Roman Empire at Bay before, I think - it's very good on the whole period from AD180 through to the death of Theodosius.

Regarding our subject, Potter makes the point that the empire was suffering from massive overpopulation at the end of the Antonine period, and the plagues actually thinned out the population in a beneficial way, increasing available land, lowering prices and raising pay.

Potter writes (p.17) that the empire had expanded from c.45 million under Augustus to c.64 million under Marcus Aurelius - "a population nearing the limit of its carrying capacity". Egyptian census records from the time of the plague do reveal a sudden fall in population, but also a rapid restoration "with a population that was slightly younger [and which] may have recovered to its preplague size within fifty years - and continued to place extreme pressure on the land that supported it".

why is there so much hate for the equipment and typical heavy infantry legionnaire on these forums? 

Is there? I've never seen any. What you might be seeing is a lack of disdain for the later army, which is still popularly portrayed as debased and inept, for no good reason.

Knights on the other hand were aristocrats, born into the station, who practiced at leisure... I'd love to see a legion face off against an Feudal army of unmounted knights and their conscripts.

This is off-topic, but we've had these debates before. Medieval society was completely different to Roman society, and the demands of warfare were different too. Knights (for most of the middle ages) were military professionals who spent their entire lives training for war. Comparing the military systems of completely different eras or cultures is never all that useful!

[Fabricius Carbo]

CNV2855
Constantly restating the same assertions isn't going to convince anyone who isn't already convinced.
An affermative claim needs to show it's support and evidence, it's not for others to disprove your position, you have to prove it.
You can't do this when you try to use vague appeals to unknown authority and sources and it's not for us to find them, try to prove a negative or agree with the strawman position you assign to us and thrn argue against.

Cite your sources and show why you have reached your conclusions.

[CNV2855]

http://documents.routledge-interactive.s...0World.pdf

http://www.mariamilani.com/ancient_rome/...e_fall.htm

Can't find the 30% to 3% figures. It was a well written article in NatGeo or something.

[quote]The level of literacy also fell drastically as clearly all the public, administrative and legal offices became but a shadow of their former self.

Declining population (see below)
Falling per capita income and growing poverty
Price inflation in line with declining supply of goods and raw materials
Emigration
Increasing numbers of people selling themselves (or their children) into slavery
A shift in the jobs and careers towards:
building and construction was presumably an important function,
so too would prostitution increase.
An increasing proportion of clergy
Probably declining life expectancy – approx 35 years old (whilst at Alexandria it was closer to 25)
Huge taxes to fill the failing state treasury, be it Gothic or Bizantine (Constantinople)
Increasingly paid in kind, such as oil or grain.[quote]

[quote]Widespread literacy in the post-Roman West definitely became confined to the clergy. A detailed analysis of almost 1,000 subscribers to charters from eighth-century Italy has shown that just under a third of witnesses were able to sign their own names, the remainder making only a mark (identified as theirs by the charter's scribe). But the large majority of those who signed (71 per cent) were clergy. Amongst the 633 lay subscribers, only 93, or 14 per cent, wrote their own name. Since witnesses to charters were generally drawn from the ranks of the 'important' people of local society, and since the ability to write one's name does not require a profound grasp of literary skills, this figure suggests that even basic literacy was a very rare phenomenon amongst the laity as a whole" (Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization [2005] 166).[quote]

Literacy is assumed to be much higher than previously accepted because the graffiti found were conversations, suggesting an audience, with input from multiple commoners.

The population levels of Europe during the Middle Ages can be roughly categorized:[1]

[quote]
200–600 (Late Antiquity): population decline
600–1000 (Early Middle Ages): stable at a low level, with intermittent growth.
1000–1250 (High Middle Ages): population boom and expansion.
1250–1348 (Late Middle Ages): stable or intermittently rising at a high level, with fall in 1315–17.
1348–1420 (Late Middle Ages): steep decline.
1420–1470 (Late Middle Ages): stable or intermittently falling to a low level.[quote]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography

https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/sc...070706.pdf

[Robert Vermaat]

Dear CNV. Read your PM about adding a real name and act on it.

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Roman gear didn't slowly evolve, it was completely reworked in a very short period of time.  We see the disappearance of the Gladius, Pila, Scutum, Ballista, and Segmentata.   Five pieces of gear we identify with the Principate legionnaire.  Something that drastic happening so swiftly seems to employ a major rift, not a "slow evolution meant to deal with different threats."    This was a sudden, swift, and drastic transformation.  

If you are to disagree, then explain to me the shortfalls of the Ballista and why a healthy state would discontinue the production of the handheld and siege versions in favor of a simple Onager?  Why would such a weapon come to dominate warfare some 1,000 years later when it was reinvented?

Sorry for the edits, I'm quite drunk. .

Never post when you're drunk. You dan't make sense.

Roman military equipment did not change over a very short time. That's a straw man that you're kicking down there. The gladius when ouit of use but we still have the semispatha. The pilum (not 'pila') was repalces (as I explained to you above) due to changes in warfare. The scutum idem. The ballista did not disappear? The lorica segmentata was most robably abandoned due to manufacturing isues, but the staill made them in Spain in the later 4th c. So nothing changed all of a sudden.

The onager is a very different wepon. It mainly used in sieges (big stones) and less on the ballefield (like the ballista). Also, there are many different sizes and uses for the ballista, so you can't argue about 'the' ballista anyway. Also, a ballista was a noice weapon but to say that it 'dominated warfare'? Nah.

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Can't find the 30% to 3% figures.  It was a well written article in NatGeo or something.  

In fact so far I see no sources at all. A few vague Wikipedia pages, a nice study about demography that in NO WAY corroborates your 'catastrophic loss of life' during the said period, and another vagues website. You have nothing so far.

[Nathan Ross]

Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization [2005]

That's a good book, but Ward-Perkins is writing about the 5th and 6th centuries. (I recall that in his introduction he kind of brushes off the 'end of civilisation' idea, which was suggested by his publishers!) Similarly, the paper on 'post Roman' Europe is about the situation during and after the 5th century.

Doubtless literacy rates did decline (gradually) over the course of the later 3rd century and onwards, for reasons we've discussed before, but there's nothing in any of this to indicate a sudden decline 'within a generation' in the late 2nd or early 3rd century, caused by one catastrophic event.

Scheidel, author of the 'population' paper, is one of those I mentioned above as estimating mortality of 10% for the Antonine Plague.

[CNV2855]

[quote pid='338851' dateline='1472367847']
In fact so far I see no sources at all. A few vague Wikipedia pages, a nice study about demography that in NO WAY corroborates your 'catastrophic loss of life' during the said period, and another vagues website. You have nothing so far.

Well you could have been a bit more polite.  This isn't something I've read but is an original idea that I constructed and began to explore and work backwards from, trying to find the answer.   What caused civilization (advancement in arts, education, society, culture) to reach a peak, then suddenly collapse, regressing for several hundred years and taking over a millenia to recover?  It seems as if the world did suffer a series of apocalyptic events, in some form, such as if modern society were to suffer a worldwide disaster sending our society back to the drawing board. (i.e. the Postman, Waterworld, and all other apocalyptic fiction, except this DID occur.)

I explored:
1. Loss of democracy, autocracy causing corruption.  Could Rome survive as a Republic?
2. Poor leaders.
3. Civil War.
4. Religion
...and so forth.  Every answer is insufficient, as they were able to overcome all of these with remarkable resilience throughout it's 2,400 year history.

I've always been enamored by the idea of a global civilization that unites mankind, and transcends our instinctual tribalism.   It's a personal belief that a united humanity is one of our only opportunities to dismantle the notion of war itself, which has the potential to be catastrophic in the nuclear era.

Most large nations would last one or two generations, then be torn apart or dismantled.  Fragmented leadership along with smaller cultures would seize the first opportunity to break away from they view as their oppressor, and rebellions/revolts seem to be occur with marked regularity throughout history.

Rome was different in the length of time it lasted.  Not only did the state survive an astounding 2,400 years, there's a continuation people identifying as 'Roman' all the way to the present day.  From the Carolingian Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and even the Vatican today; with the title Caesar appearing as Tsar/Kaiser and adopted by dozens of different tongues.

The entirety of the Mediterranean and Northern African bought into the idea of being Roman.  It annihilated people who would not assimilate with ruthless efficiency (Carthage, Jews), yet adopted and accepted many smaller cultures that all wanted a piece of 'civilization' and to step out of the darkness.  Many generations would increasingly join the Roman caste, displacing their native cultures (much as Cajun culture is vanishing/being replaced in the United States).  

So with the entire Western World firmly under one identity, did this vast state fail when it had the one advantage that eluded every other vast state throughout history?   Unity.   

I do -NOT- buy that the Dark Ages weren't Dark.  I don't buy that the Empire just transformed.  Civilization clearly reached a peak, a bubble, which popped sending our advances back to ca. 1,000 BC.   It was a collapse (well underway by 476AD), with religion filling the gaps, serfdom, terrible living conditions, and almost non-existent education.  Even the Byzantine's seemed to stagnate and rot.

What was it that set all this in motion?   What was the beginning of the end?

People love to transcribe that terrible leaders were the problem, but I think this is just trying too simplistic and something far more catastrophic would have to occur for civilization to regress as it did.

That's why I look at what ended Pax Romana.  What caused the Golden Age to end?  Disease.  Unrelenting disease and plague throughout Europe that began in 160 AD and continued until the 20th century.  


This is my main source:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/12530343/The-...man-Empire

Despite all these methodological difficulties, many Roman historians are willing to argue that we are able to identify the agent behind the Antonine Plague, if not with certainty, then at least with a high degree of probability. The proposed culprit? None other than smallpox, the devastating disease that was finally eradicated from the planet in 1980.

If this identification could be proven without a doubt, it would make the Antonine Plague the first known outbreak of smallpox, something that has huge implications not just for historians, but for all scientists who study infectious disease: it would give us a firmer timeline, and valuable (if fuzzy) early epidemiological data for the emergence of one of history’s deadliest diseases.

https://searchinginhistory.blogspot.com/...omana.html

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My theory is that the collapse started at the end of Pax Romana, with one epidemic leading into another, after another, after another over the course of centuries.  It was a perfect storm that was mild at first, almost insidious in that it began with mild deterioration that seemed to masked by other factors to contemporary historians, such as civil war, currency debasement, etc. and then ended with a bang (the Justinian Plague - arguably worse than the Black Death), and then more localized epidemics occurring with remarkable regularity until somewhere around the end of 900-1100 AD.

Measles, Smallpox, Malaria, and Bubonic Plague all hitting Europe during this time.  What hope was there?

If you look at Antiquity.  It's almost remarkable how stable living conditions were.  There were no major epidemics, no major disease outbreaks, no large natural disasters (except Pompeii).   It caused the population to increase, to become educated, to travel, to trade, to cross cultural boundaries, and... then 700 years of unprecedented disease that really did not end until the 20th century, which despite having the worst wars in history has had a MASSIVE increase in population due to stability.  Viruses and bacteria have been our historic "checks and balances" which we've eliminated for the time being.   Can civilization survive another period of massive mortality?  People are now more educated than ever before, and yet our spark seems to have disappeared in the period between "200-1500AD".

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Frankly, I think the fifth century is misconstrued as the "Fall". It was the Third. Bathes, aqueducts, these beautiful cities, libraries were built all over the Empire until the 3rd century, which they were able to "maintain" for a few hundred years, and as they melted away Europe changed.

[Fabricius Carbo]

You are assuming your conclusion.
You have decided what your concludion has to be and you are looking for evidence to support it and you are handwaving away or ignoring anything that doesn't fit.

Several different posters have given links to evidence that runs counter to your claim, you can't just look the other way.

So with the entire Western World firmly under one identity, did this vast state fail when it had the one advantage that eluded every other vast state throughout history?   Unity.   

What unity? Most of the empire was held under force of arms just like every other empire that has come and gone.
As for one world order or identity, the British Empire came closest but only in terms of territory. One identity was just as much a fiction as it was for the Romans.