Plague - The Destroyer of Empires

[Nathan Ross]

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 didn't, though. Roman civilisation did not collapse in the Antonine era or the first few decades of the 3rd century, the Roman state did not change and the army did not disintegrate. There was huge mortality during the plagues in this period, which probably contributed to the later instability of the 'third century crisis' (which only began in AD235 with the murder of Alexander Severus), but by the end of the third century, central control had been reestablished and the empire entered a new period of strength and prosperity.

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

https://searchinginhistory.blogspot.com/...-romana.ht

Your second linked article goes with a figure of 10% mortality for the plague.

The first thesis suggests that a figure of 25-30% is 'the general view today' - I don't think it is, as the previous figures I cited bear out. The author seems to have got his estimate from Duncan-Jones, and from Yan Zelener's 2003 thesis. (Note that the author also suggests that smallpox had been known in Europe before this time!)

I can't find a copy of Zelener's thesis online, but he seems to have modelled the impact of the plague quite thoroughly to arrive at a figure of 25% mortality. This 2014 thesis by Kenneth Philbrick discusses Zelener's work:

Epidemic Smallpox, Roman Demography and the Rapid Growth of Early Christianity

The author quotes (p.7) Littman & Littman's estimate of 7-10% rising to 13-15%, then (pp10-12) discusses Zelener's study. He cites the Center for Disease Control's figure of 30% mortality among those affected by smallpox, and mentions the wave-like cyclical nature of smallpox epidemics and the increasing immunisation of the population.

Philbrick (pp13-14) prefers to 'moderate' Zelener's estimate, bearing in mind the CDC's figure only concerns those affected, not the total population; he then uses the Littman's figure of 60-80% infection within a population and a 25% mortality rate for the infected to arrive at an estimate of 15-20% mortality for the total population, possibly rising to 18-24% if we accept the 30% infection-mortality figure given by the CDC.

I do suspect that even this figure is too high: the CDC estimates, I think, concern relatively confined population bases, whereas the Roman empire was a vast territory with varied communication routes. While the eastern provinces, military accumulations and large urban areas may have been heavily affected, the western provinces may not have been hit so hard - so we could see a sort of east-west 'fade' for the plague's effects.

In this case, dropping to a figure of 10-15%, with highs of up to 25%, seems plausible. These are still very high estimates, and would create a massive death toll.

However, we do have evidence to suggest that population levels recovered within 50 years of the initial outbreak, and coupled with the lack of disruption to the state or the army, we could see this as evidence of the strength and resilience of Roman society and civilisation at this point!

[Robert Vermaat]

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 could but you completely ignored one of my earlier replies which was not all that nice either. I thought if I was more blunt that might attract your attention?
I think your main problem is that Original idea of yours. As an idea it's not bad at all but usually one does test one's ideas with what is known about it. So far I have not see you do that, and no matter what the rest of us bring against it you seem to cling to your idea as if having the idea is enough. It isn't. That's why we get frustrated by your answers - you ignore the sources in the first place and ignore anyone else who brings arguments (based on the sources I might add) becauase you're in love with your briljant idea. But Christopher, if you come to a forum like this, expect your ideas to be tried and tested. And please don't ignore information counter to your theory as if that is just something people thought up during breakfast. Those arguments are based on study. Of material from the sources.

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.

Well there you have it again. You ignore the sources. These days we have plenty of evidence that the dark Ages weren't dark. But it doesn't fit your theory of major collapse (which we also have argued successfully against here) so you 'don't buy it'.  Well, that's awfully nice of course but what do you want here? We can't for the world accept your theory because it's based on nothing (sorry to be impolite but that's the harsh truth) and you're not open to any information that might undermine your ideas.

Lastly, no one here denies the crisis of the Roman Empire, not the one during the 3rd century, not the fall of the West during the 5th century, or the degredation of the remaining Eastern Empire during the 6th and 7th centuries. But, as has been said here too, this was not one big crash (over 400 years????), nor was it related to one single cause but oh so many different ones, and there were several periods inbetween of growth and restoration. What use ignoring all that?

Oh and, Waterworld and the Postman are awfully bad movies. I mean the Postman, really? Society collapses withing just a few years, and the next generation already drives around in better cars than we do?

[CNV2855]

Well I have an open mind and I wouldn't post here if I didn't want to be educated and corrected. Just because I'm arguing from a certain POV doesn't mean that I'm invested either way. It's no coincidence that I would make a post arguing that the Dark Ages did exist on a forum with several posts arguing against that very notion. Discussion with people that have opposing views is often the best way to arrive at the real truth, with group think being the opposite. Arguing for the sake of boasting is one thing, but doing it for the sake of being proven wrong is another, and I could make this post on a forum with people who agree with me - but what's the point?

When I look at the Roman insulas, grand cities, the quality of life, and the general welfare of citizens in say 1st century Rome, you get a pretty good picture for most of the population, even slaves. I forgot which major historian said it, but he said that it was better to be alive in early Rome than pretty much any other time in history up until the industrial revolution.

Compare that to conditions of even the nobility in the Early Medieval Period, and especially that of the serfs or common classes, and you see destitution, the rise of a brutal Feudal society.

Looking at the production of society, the quality of life, and so forth of your average person, how can you correct this image I have of society regressing? People struggled to survive, even the nobility were poor, productivity was terrible, almost no travel, and most educated men belonged to a strong central church.

The Viking Age brought to Europe a revitalization that was desperately needed. The early church, which was a prime target for their raids, portray them as bloodthirsty pagans who brought nothing but destruction, but the Vikings contributed much to society. They were skilled sailors, shipwrights, merchants, traders, and craftsmen. They had hygiene; something they had in common with the Romans who bathed.

The Vikings were northern Germanic tributes who had not been conquered by Rome or brought under it's sphere of influence. They were very similar, culturally, to the barbarians who had slaughtered the legions at Kalkriese. The Romans viewed these people as regressive, harsh, and uncivilized. Ironic, that by the late 8th century, it's these uncivilized men who provided the spark which would eventually put an end to the Early Middle Ages.

Educate me. Is it not true that it'd be better to be a 1st century Roman citizen, perhaps even a slave, than live in any other non modern period (within Europe, Byzantium included)?

If I'm wrong, and the backwardsness of that era was not attributable to poor conditions but rather attitudes and outlooks of the day, then light hearted articles like this are correct? How much of this regression is due to the influence of the church then and it's attitudes, and why was so much concern given to "maintaining good health" so much so as abstaining from bathing? Almost exactly the backward thinking of a society dealing with generations of disease looking for any and all causes for the widespread death, even water. Even Galen had more than a few silly notions. People were trying to make sense of it all; why people would suffer and die the way they did, were they not?

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/...al-europe/

[Bryan]

I think if you really want to come up with a working theory you should stop generalizing over the course of thousands of years and just focus on the time at hand, without comparing it to anything else. Find evidence, from ancient sources, which support/corroborate your theory. Then come back with your findings. You're all over the place, one sentence your'e discussing viking ship design, the next medieval sanitation. What does any of this have to do with the Crisis of the 3rd Century? Stick to that time and nothing else, or else you're going to lose readers, who can't keep up with your mind.

[CNV2855]

Well there are a lot fewer sources of information between 200-1000 AD.

A lot of it is guesswork, a lot of misinformation, and culture became more localized than in centralized Rome, so someone in Spain was more apt to behave entirely different from someone in Britain.

I am trying to focus on overall trends, that's my point. While the evolution of arms/armor may have continued unabated, society itself seems to regress, in general, at least by most measures. I mean how do you measure the level of technological advancement?

Hygiene,
literacy,
military technology,
civilian/public construction,
trade (roads & boats),
food production,
centralized currency.

Certain aspects went backwards, certain trends continued forwards. Literacy is probably one of the largest measures for me, and that's why we know so much about Caesar, Hannibal, and so forth while certain other "heroes" such as Ragnar Lodrok remain shrouded in mystery. We know more about lesser figures in Antiquity than we do Charlemagne. People became more illierate in Western Europe.

A society could have been able to construct sophisticated plate armor but not concrete aqueducts. One could have built libraries, the other castles. What we considered more advanced is a matter of perspective, but we certainly have more in common with Antiquity than we do the Medieval citizens.

---

Think about how much knowledge from Antiquity was lost due to the destruction of libraries, Muslim/Christian censorship, or just because they weren't copied or saved. Caesar's life is one of the greatest historical stories, ever, and we're lucky to know of it. How many extraordinary stories are lost? How lucky we are to have the works of Livy and Pliny, etc.

People can't even agree on whether there was even a Ragnar Lodrok, and if he did he was one of the most important men of his time. The Dark Ages were Dark, if only, because we know so very little about them (or at least I don't).

[ValentinianVictrix]

Christopher, I find your arguments very hard to follow as you tend to make very long posts which contain a lot of contrasting information. You should try to make smaller posts dedicated to a specific topic that can then be carefully debated.

In relation to the plague issue, you just don't see evidence from the records of pandemic outbreaks that would cause a civilisation to collapse, they tended to be localised breakouts that were over relatively quickly once the plague ran its course. Because transport was limited to horses, oxen, mules, camels and humans the spread was limited by how far a person could travel in a day or two. Once word spread that a plague was infecting a location you hear tales that surrounding cities, towns and villages would not allow strangers to enter for fear of contagion, further limiting the outbreak.

You appear to have overlooked the fact that civil war between rival factions in the Empire probably resulted in much higher deaths than plagues caused during the 3rd-4th Centuries AD. Take the Battle of Mursa in AD351, the armies of Constantius Ii and the usurper Magnentius fought probably the largest Roman vs Roman battle and losses were in excess of 50,000 dead, many more wounded. This led directly to most of Gaul being denuded of troops and allowing the Alamanni and Franks to overrun large portions of that province. However, within just six years Julian was able to recover Gaul on behalf of Constantius. The Late Empire was very resilient even after the defeat at Adrianople.

[Nathan Ross]

Is it not true that it'd be better to be a 1st century Roman citizen, perhaps even a slave, than live in any other non modern period (within Europe, Byzantium included)?

Perhaps. Although for the average tenant farmer in Gaul life was probably much the same in the 6th century as the 1st. 'Byzantium' lasted over a thousand years, and had its ups and downs; the citizens of Constantinople in the 5th century probably had as high a standard of living, if not higher, as the citizens of Rome in earlier centuries.

The kind of urban life you're describing - bathhouses and bread doles and insulae (although the insulae were pretty insanitary at times - just read Juvenal) - endured through the 3rd and 4th centuries. In fact, the citizens of the later empire had some things their forefathers did not (trousers, for example - I'd consider that an important development! )

But things did break down in the west in the 5th century - and in the east at certain later periods too: the eastern empire seems to have gone through a bad patch c.AD700, when we see a lot of previously prosperous towns in the east being abandoned. Ward-Perkins is good on this.

What makes the difference is infrastructure, I think. If you have a strong central government and an established network of trade and communication you have not only (relative) security but the sort of civil engineering and large-scale organisation that makes urban living possible. You have working aqueducts to bring water to your mills and baths and fountains, a labour force that will repair buildings and dredge harbours and clean streets (and light them - Antioch had oil lamps in all main thoroughfares by the 4th century), and government bodies that will direct them.

When that central government collapses, the infrastructure goes with it and people have to shift for themselves. Capital is concentrated in the hands of a few private individuals, who are less willing to invest in public works (and more willing to donate their wealth to the church!). Cash crops are no longer viable without trade infrastructure; people turn to subsistence farming. And so on.

But even without all this, 'Roman' life continued in the west long after the fall of the western empire: the incoming barbarian rulers adopted a lot of Roman forms of government and culture. Sidonius Apollinaris was a landowner, bishop and diplomat in 5th century Gaul, living in the period of the change from Roman to Gothic control. But if you read his surviving letters, Apollinaris was still living a classically Roman life: he describes traditional dinners, poetry, his luxurious villa and bath-house. (Although he does have a rather 'germanic' fireplace in his dining room, and at one point builts an odd temporary bathing hut on a riverbank - perhaps another 'barbarian' innovation!)

In effect, Apollinaris is living like an early medieval landowner, or one of the wealthy bishops of a later era. But his cultural and social coordinates, if you like, are classical Roman. It's an odd mix.

As for the middle ages (a much-abused term!), I would say that the standard of living of a citizen of one of the Italian city-states of the 12th or 13th century possibly approached the sort of standard known by the common people in ancient Rome. Although the society of the day was quite different, of course - far fewer slaves, an expanded church taking a social role, and a flourishing proto-middle-class. But it's very difficult to compare these things in a meaningful way!

[Robert Vermaat]

Well I have an open mind and I wouldn't post here if I didn't want to be educated and corrected.  
[..]
Educate me 

I have two answers:
1 - Please read some good books. Or try Wikipedia to even get started. There is a lot of information out there, and it's not the place of this forum to school you in the most basic knowledge about this period. What we can do here is reply to your theories.
2 - However when we do, please accept the points made by all members here during this discussion, which started with a pandemic but now seems to derail at high speed. If you know your own limits, why do you ignore every point made here that undermines your basic starting point?

When I look at the Roman insulas, grand cities, the quality of life, and the general welfare of citizens in say 1st century Rome, you get a pretty good picture for most of the population, even slaves.  I forgot which major historian said it, but he said that it was better to be alive in early Rome than pretty much any other time in history up until the industrial revolution.

Well noticed. Archaeologists found that every Roman building, even stables and shes, had rooftiles, something not seen again until the 17th century. But that economic downturn is part of a much larger story which includes, among the 2 dozen reasons for the fall of Rome, also climatic changes and other non-Roman external causes. calling that all is due to one pandemic and a rapid decrease in society is not based on reality.

The Viking Age brought to Europe a revitalization that was desperately needed.  The early church, which was a prime target for their raids, portray them as bloodthirsty pagans who brought nothing but destruction, but the Vikings contributed much to society.  They were skilled sailors, shipwrights, merchants, traders, and craftsmen.  They had hygiene; something they had in common with the Romans who bathed.  

The Vikings were northern Germanic tributes who had not been conquered by Rome or brought under it's sphere of influence.  They were very similar, culturally, to the barbarians who had slaughtered the legions at Kalkriese.  The Romans viewed these people as regressive, harsh, and uncivilized.  Ironic, that by the late 8th century, it's these uncivilized men who provided the spark which would eventually put an end to the Early Middle Ages.

Actually, no.
The Vikings are what made the 'dark ages' into a 'dark age'. Historians can tell you that most written sources such as deeds, property lists and similar written documents of the British isles and much of coastal Western Europe all post-date the Viking period. The same goes for much if not most of the written sources. So much was lost in the Viking onslaught - the Vikings did not relitalise Europe but raped it. Sure they set things in motion but so did the Black Death of the 14th c. which lead to the end of serfdom in Britain. You won't hear anybody say that the plague was a 'revitalising agent'!! So the Vikings could sail well, build ships well, well good for them, so could all the traders of that age who came from the same region. Hygenic? Nice, but their victims were not much happier to be killed by a clean(er) warrior from the North. That the Vikings washed themselves better did not make their victims want to do the same. This revilalisation came about by knowledge spread to Europe by contacts to the Middle east, where it was in fact preserved by the Arabs and other contacts with the Rioman Empire, and duly passed on back to Europe again.

That the Vikings were not culturised by Rome has no bearing on anything (least of all this discussion), because neither were the Vandals, the Lombards, the Avars, the Slavs, the Arabs and al those barbarian tribes which cause nothing but misery for the Roman Empire during the 5th to 8th centuries.

The Vikings did NOT provide the 'spark which would eventually put an end to the Early Middle Ages'. In fact, the Black Death can take more credit for that!

[CNV2855]

But things did break down in the west in the 5th century - and in the east at certain later periods too: the eastern empire seems to have gone through a bad patch c.AD700, when we see a lot of previously prosperous towns in the east being abandoned. Ward-Perkins is good on this.

Well thank you.  At least we can both agree there was some degree of deterioration.   Literacy is my main marker, and it does seem to plummet near 200 AD but I'll have to find sources to reconsider my argument.  Maybe I've just been far more exposed to material 500 BC-200 AD and missing the later three centuries.  It does seem that by 476, Rome is broken without the ability to muster any resistance, whatsoever, which I think is one of the most anticlimactic ends.

far fewer slaves, an expanded church taking a social role, and a flourishing proto-middle-class. But it's very difficult to compare these things in a meaningful way!

You've brought me around on several points, but the plagues did help drive mass conversion to Christianity.  We know the early church has been quite the... "drain" throughout history.  I wonder how much of state and military was funding was redirected to these early churches, which were then sacked by the barbarians?   Christianity being another possible cause, that really didn't help the state survive, so that's an indirect way that disease may have contributed? 

I've never thought it was disease alone that brought it down. Just that it was the beginning.  The catalyst that set things in motion. Plague of Justinian did seal the fate of the WRE, without it, I think we'd have seen a full reconquest. Byzantium was rich beyond measure, had an ambitious Emperor, and a great general. The barbarians were weakened and would've completely collapsed under the pressure of a larger expedition.

Wikipedia to even get started.

Wikipedia is a very basic learning tool, and most of it's content runs directly to several ideas that you guys directly disagree with.  For instance, the Wikipedia on armor says that Segmentata was superior, phased out because of cost and complexity.

There is a lot of information out there, and it's not the place of this forum to school you in the most basic knowledge about this period.

First, the entire point of a forum is to learn.  Hence, the word forum.

I'm more than knowledgable about the basic information out there.  That's kind of a hurtful thing to say, as I just had arrived at different conclusions than you based on that information.  I can name most of the Emperors, the major battles, and quite a bit from the later period by heart.  I just don't haven't seen the recent finds that you guys have, nor can I cite which author I've learned most of what I've learned from.   

Textbooks, Wikipedia, or any source of information on history is never 100% correct.   Not even close, and a lot is guesswork to fill in holes.  Our understanding changes over time as we uncover more from our past.  I can learn information from a book, documentary, and it can be outdated and full of errors. Kids today are STILL taught that Christopher Columbus was the first European to discover North America, when we've known different for 100 years.

This you do agree with.

Though I think there's some degree of probability that Carthage or Rome made the trip before the Vikings. They might not have survived the journey home, but so many voyages and the chance of being blown off course? It had to happen.

We may never know though, and that's so sad.

The Carthaginian coin with the map and the land to the west fascinates me. It's probably just happen chance, but if the Pheonicians knew 2,000 years ago... that'd be amazing.

The known enterprise of the Phoenician race, and this ancient knowledge of America, so variously expressed, strongly encourage the hypothesis that the people called Phoenicians came to this continent, established colonies in the region where ruined cities are found, and filled it with civilized life. It is argued that they made voyages on the “great exterior ocean,” and that such navigators must have crossed the Atlantic; and it is added that symbolic devices similar to those of the Phoenicians are found in the American ruins, and that an old tradition of the native Mexicans and Central Americans described the first civilizers as “bearded white men,” who “came from the East in ships.

Yeah, me getting way off topic again!

Well noticed. Archaeologists found that every Roman building, even stables and shes, had rooftiles, something not seen again until the 17th century.

Thank you.

Actually, no.   

plague was a 'revitalising agent'!!

I'm willing to concede most of what I said about the Vikings.  They reopened the trade routes and diminished the influence of the church, but at what cost?  

There are people who say the Plague was just that.  There are people who arrive at all sorts of conclusions, especially with the dawn of the internet.  I don't disagree with anything you said.

What do you think brought about the plummet of literacy between 200AD-600AD? When did the drop occur, how fast, and how significant? Can we agree that some basic understanding of literacy was remarkably high for the era at one time, 30% or greater?

Anyway thanks for taking your time.

[Robert Vermaat]

Wikipedia is a very basic learning tool, and most of it's content runs directly to several ideas that you guys directly disagree with. 
For instance, the Wikipedia on armor says that Segmentata was superior, phased out because of cost and complexity.

Some pages are indeed bad, but it’s not all rubbish. And you might get a general idea about certain periods (such as the Vikings) [/color] [color=#000000]that you can use here.

First, the entire point of a forum is to learn. Hence, the word forum.

The forum was not a school. This forum, while a great place to learn, has no responsibility to teach each member. That’s why I advise you to go out and read books & stuff. In time you’ll learn to distinguish between good and bad information.

I'm more than knowledgable about the basic information out there. 
That's kind of a hurtful thing to say, as I just had arrived at different conclusions than you based on that information. I can name most of the Emperors, the major battles, and quite a bit from the later period by heart. I just don't haven't seen the recent finds that you guys have, nor can I cite which author I've learned most of what I've learned from.

My apologies, I don't intend to hurt your feelings. Knowing battles and emperors by heart is nice but my impression of the state of your knowledge is based on the wild conclusions you are prepared to draw while not reading (accepting) the (lack of) actual sources on those specific subjects. That is unrelated to us knowing ‘the latest finds’ I’m afraid.

Textbooks, Wikipedia, or any source of information on history is never 100% correct.  

Not even close, and a lot is guesswork to fill in holes. Our understanding changes over time as we uncover more from our past. I can learn information from a book, documentary, and it can be outdated and full of errors.[/quote]
Although I can relate to outdated works I cannot relate to your conclusion that you won’t even read them? No book is wholly outdated, no Wiki page is 100% rubbish. Like I said above, keep at it and you will be able to recognize the good from the bad. Believe me, I took the same path 30 years ago, pestering professors with wild ideas about late Roman Britain. They gave me the same advice.

Kids today are STILL taught that Christopher Columbus was the first European to discover North America, when we've known different for 100 years.

Get outta here! Really?? Not in schools where I live they don’t.

I'm willing to concede most of what I said about the Vikings. 

Good!

What do you think brought about the plummet of literacy between 200AD-600AD? 

When did the drop occur, how fast, and how significant? Can we agree that some basic understanding of literacy was remarkably high for the era at one time, 30% or greater? [/quote]
I don’t have the figures for ‘Roman literacy’, I don't even know if these exist! I only know about the decline of written sources. If that happened because less were written or more was lost I cannot tell you. Changes occurred throughout society though. With the rise of Christianity and the diminishing influence of Rome as a role model, we see that histories became less fashionable, and chronicles began to be written with the ‘end of time’ in mind. Literacy would go down because of the economic slum over the years. Remember that education was a strictly private affair, and with wealth being distributed over a smaller amount of people, less would be able to teach their children. Hence a drop in literacy. For people who need to feed their family, reading and writing becomes less interesting. Of course it never died out, and we even see the Germanic successors taking it up when possible.

[Nathan Ross]

We know the early church has been quite the... "drain" throughout history.  I wonder how much of state and military was funding was redirected to these early churches, which were then sacked by the barbarians?

By the time the Goths sacked Rome in 410, they were Christians too; same with the Vandals in 455. On both occasions church property was (at least officially) respected. Although some churches were pillaged, mostly it was private wealth that was taken.

But the church was a drain - mainly because, as the Roman aristocracy became Christianised, they preferred to donate their extraordinary wealth to the church, rather than using it to maintain the cities. Peter Brown's Through the Eye of a Needle (2012) is a vast chunk of a book, but full of detail about this handover from private aristocratic wealth to church wealth, particularly in the 4th-6th centuries.

It's hard to tell how much plague - and other woes - led to the growth of Christianity in the 3rd century. The church in some places - North Africa, and Rome itself - expanded massively, but this could have been the work of a vigorous clergy in these areas. The experience of the persecutions probably did more to weld the scattered Christian congregations together: by AD311 (when Galerius revoked the last persecution edict) Christians probably numbered only 5-10% of the Roman population, but they had shown themselves resilient and united, and able effectively to defy imperial orders. It was Constantine's patronage, I think, that really led to the Christianisation of the empire: once the elite classes in particular realised that the new faith gave them a road to imperial favour, it became unstoppable.

As for literacy - once again, I suspect it's to do with urbanisation. You need cities to produce a large literate population, and with the decline of the cities in the later Roman west, literacy fell. (You could argue that the Antonine Constitution of 212 started this process, of course).

Literacy in Europe only rose again with the growth of the Italian city states. We see the first universities in Italy in the 12th century, and by the 13th century, in cities like Milan, Venice and Florence (population 100K+) literacy was probably something like 33%, equivalent to the Roman empire's heyday. Of course, these sorts of figures are hard to establish with any certainty, but it's no surprise that the Renaissance began in Italy a good century or two before anywhere else in Europe!

[CNV2855]

Robert, I read quite a bit. There are people who think the Viking expansion was a good thing; that's not a personal conclusion at all.

Yes, schools here in the states still teach that Columbus was the first European. I live in Louisiana and there is still a sizable portion of the population who want Evolution to be ditched out of textbooks in favor of Creationism. It's crazy, but the truth.

So in the end, until someone becomes a universally accepted authority on a subject, there will continue to be debates on several issues. This topic will be discussed, argued, and researched for centuries to come. It's probably one of the most complicated subjects in all of history. It's easy for us to pinpoint a persons birth year, but things like this involve other subjects like the study of economics, demographics, demography, and so much more, as well as history.

That' said, I think Climate Change is overlooked as a factor.

Everything from the gold mine in spain, to the massive deforestation that we knew occurred in North Africa, and still persisted to modern day, shows that the Roman's had a massive effect on their environment. There's no telling what possible consequences this truly had. Did they make the planet uninhabitable? Far from it, but I think they probably upset several ecosystems that had regional consequences. This in effect disturbed taxation, recruitment, and so forth.

Plague had a very big impact on Rome. I really never meant to imply that it was the sole causative factory, sorry if that's how I came off. I still think it's probably in the top 5. The most disturbing reasons are the ones with the most ripple effects. Plague < de-urbanization < conversion to Christianity < loss of taxation < more private money to private institutions < loss of learning < population drop > agricultural drop... and keep going, and going, and going. I'm sure there are things that helped bring about epidemics,(increased trade, larger cities, malnourishment) so there's an inter-relation between all of these causations. In the end, what brought about Rome is a very, very long list of things.

It's a giant spider web, with certain strands being stronger than others. Battlefield losses (like Adrianople) are probably the most apparent, yet probably most over-rated. When can we agree that they stopped being able to replace armies of 100,000 men (100,000 men drowned in one storm during the 1st Punic War, (300k+ casualties during 2nd Punic War) and they still steamrolled Carthage) to Adrianople being so disastrous because of just one defeat and loss of 30,000 troops?

And Nathan, why is the Battle of Cap Bon so overlooked? It seems almost as disastrous as Adrianople, but almost nothing is written about it. Had the Empire not lost 50,000 men and 50+ ships, they'd have retaken North Africa, and ended the Vandal threat.

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Battle of Cap Bon (468)

The Battle of Cap Bon was an engagement during a joint military expedition of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires against the Vandal capital of Carthage in 468.

The purpose of the operation was to punish the Vandal king Gaiseric for the sacking of Rome in 455.

It was not only a military but an incredible financial disaster which accelerate the end of the Roman empire of Occident.

The most conservative estimation for expedition expenses is of 64,000 pounds of gold, a sum that exceeded a whole year's revenue for the Empire.
For other sources it was the double 120'00 pounds of Gold and 700'000 of silver.

If you consider
the costs for Iraki war : 3 trillions
and the US budget for 2012 : 4 trillons dollars,
you can imagine the cost of this unique and single battle.

Roman Imperium force was his capacity to rebuild and furnish new armies even after major defeats. Cap Bon was the final financial disaster for Rome.

[Fabricius Carbo]

Erm, Columbus did 'discover' America.
You aren't counting a few lost Vikings in Newfoundland are you?

[ValentinianVictrix]

Christopher, your conclusion about Cap Bon is unfortunately wrong because the Eastern half of the Empire went on to survive for another 1000 years after that disaster.

There is a lot of merit in climate change having a major impact on the 'barbarian migrations' starting during the 4th Century AD, there have been relatively few studies so far on that topic.

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Actually the cost of the Battle of Cape Bon was a HUGE factor.

Nutshell:

Attila pretty wiped out the entire Roman military defence of the Balkans in 441-447. The Illyrian Army was annhilated in 442, the Danubian Limes completely obliterated after Theodosisu reinforced them in 446, the Thracian and One of the Praesental (possibly both Praesental) field armies wiped out at the Battle of the River Utus and the Battle of the Chersonesus in 447. The entire Balkans tax base down to Thessalonica was annihilated. From that point forwards, defense of the Balkans was largely handled by Foederati groups like Theodoric's Goths, the Scirii, or Chelchel's and Ultzinzur's Huns.

Amassing the force to attack Cape Bon was a huge undertaking. The number for the ships (1100 which consipicuously echos the number of ships the Persians were using at Salamis) allegedly could support 70,000 men and horses. In actuality I doubt the Romans could commit more than 20,000 to 30,000 men. Especially considering at the time they were still paying gold tributes to both the Sassanids and the Balkans Goths and Huns both on orders of several Thousand pounds.

BTW the Deforestation of North Africa occurred after the Roman period.