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148-624: Francis Willughby began work on De Historia Piscium in 1663. Willughby and Ray travelled together on a tour of Europe to study the natural world prior to the beginning of the production of the book. The book was completed by John Ray after Willughby's death in 1672. Ray's motivations have been linked to the wider aims of the Royal Society, namely to recover knowledge lost after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire . Willughby, and later Ray, produced

296-554: A Gallic Empire in the West (260–274), a Palmyrene Empire in the East (260–273), and a central Roman rump state ; in 271, Rome abandoned the province of Dacia on the north of the Danube . The Rhine /Danube frontier also came under more effective threats from larger barbarian groupings, which had developed improved agriculture and increased their populations. The average stature of the population in

444-415: A caste system , and land fell out of use in the East just as it had in the West. Yet the East stood its ground in the fifth century, fought back in the sixth, and even recovered some territory in the seventh. The East had only one apparent advantage: geography. It was less vulnerable, strategically, than the West. The narrowest sea crossing to its core territories was protected from the northern barbarians by

592-467: A "barbarian term", it had at points in the past sometimes been used to describe Roman emperors and served to indicate that the barbarian rulers were sovereign rulers, though not with authority eclipsing that of the emperor in Constantinople. Many, but not all, of the barbarian kings used ethnic qualifiers in their title. The Frankish kings, for instance, rendered their title as rex Francorum ("king of

740-484: A breakdown in society. For centuries, Theodosius was regarded as a champion of Christian orthodoxy who decisively stamped out paganism. His predecessors Constantine , Constantius II , and Valens had all been semi-Arians , whereas Theodosius supported Nicene Christianity which eventually became the orthodox version of Christology for most later Christian churches—his Edict of Thessalonica described Arian Christians as "foolish madmen". Therefore, as far as Ambrose and

888-572: A conceptual level. Treaties made with the Visigoths in 439 and the Vandals, who had conquered North Africa, in 442 effectively recognized the rulers of those peoples as territorial governors of parts of imperial territory, ceasing the pretension of active imperial administration. These treaties, though not seen as irrevocable, laid the foundations of true territorial kingdoms. Barbarian rulers took various steps to present themselves as legitimate rulers within

1036-514: A continuity of Roman culture and political legitimacy long after 476. Pirenne postponed the demise of classical civilization to the 8th century. He challenged the notion that Germanic barbarians had caused the Western Roman Empire to end, and he refused to equate the end of the Western Roman Empire with the end of the office of emperor in Italy. He pointed out the essential continuity of

1184-531: A demoralized army, began his brief reign (363–364) while trapped in Mesopotamia without supplies. To purchase safe passage home, he had to concede areas of northern Mesopotamia , including the strategically important fortress of Nisibis . This fortress had been Roman since before the Peace of Nisibis in 299. The brothers Valens ( r.  364–378 ) and Valentinian I ( r.  364–375 ) energetically tackled

1332-723: A failure to integrate the barbarian rulers into the existing Roman imperial systems. Early barbarian rulers were tolerated only on the terms of the Roman Empire. Early 'kingdoms', such as those of the Suebi and Vandals in Hispania, were consequently relegated to the edges of less important provinces. In 418, the Visigothic groups formerly under Alaric were settled by Emperor Honorius ( r.   393–423) in Aquitania in southern Gaul , establishing

1480-474: A great increase in the purchasing power of gold, two and a half fold from 274 to the later fourth century. This may be an index of growing economic inequality between a gold-rich elite and a cash-poor peasantry . "Formerly, says Ammianus, Rome was saved by her austerity, by solidarity between rich and poor, by contempt for death; now she is undone by her luxury and greed (Amm. xxxi. 5. 14 and xxii. 4.). Salvianus backs up Ammianus by affirming that greed (avaritia)

1628-513: A kingdom, instead spending his career unsuccessfully trying to integrate himself and his people into the Roman imperial system. The earliest Visigothic ruler known to have called himself a king and to issue documents from something resembling an imperial chancery was Alaric II ( r.   484–507), though contemporary writings allude to widespread acceptance and recognition of a Visigothic kingdom in Gaul by

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1776-618: A large regular army with logistics and training. The cursus honorum , a standardized series of military and civil posts organised for ambitious aristocratic men, ensured that powerful noblemen had the opportunity to become familiar with military and civil command and administration. At a lower level within the army, connecting the aristocrats at the top with the private soldiers, a large number of centurions were well-rewarded, literate, and responsible for training, discipline, administration, and leadership in battle. City governments with their own properties and revenues functioned effectively at

1924-484: A large and powerful group as Christians had now become. Julian prepared for civil war against Constantius, who again encouraged the Germans to attack Gaul. However Julian's campaigns had been effective and only one small Alemannic raid, speedily dealt with by Julian, resulted. Constantius died before any serious fighting and Julian was acknowledged as master of the entire Empire. He launched an expensive campaign against

2072-451: A local level; membership of city councils involved lucrative opportunities for independent decision-making, and, despite its obligations, became seen as a privilege. Under a series of emperors who each adopted a mature and capable successor, the Empire did not require civil wars to regulate the imperial succession. Requests could be submitted directly to the better emperors, and the answers had

2220-482: A major centre for Jewish unrest. Nevertheless, it remained a culture based on an early subsistence economy , with only ineffective inklings of a germ theory of disease . Despite its aqueducts , the water supply did not allow good hygiene. Sewage was disposed of on the streets, in open drains, or by scavenging animals. Even in the Roman Climatic Optimum , local harvest failures causing famines were always

2368-538: A major part in the fall of the West". The Roman Empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Trajan (r. 98–117), who ruled a prosperous state that stretched from Armenia to the Atlantic Ocean . The Empire had large numbers of trained, supplied, and disciplined soldiers, drawn from a growing population. It had a comprehensive civil administration based in thriving cities with effective control over public finances. The literate elite considered theirs to be

2516-556: A much wider time span than the hundred years from 376. For Cassius Dio , the accession of the emperor Commodus in 180 CE marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron". Since the age of humanism , the process of the Fall has been thought to have begun with Constantine the Great , or with the soldier emperors who seized power through command of the army from 235 through 284, or with Commodus , or even with Augustus . Gibbon

2664-428: A perilous vacuum of authority." The major difference between the Roman imperial administration and the new royal administrations was their scale. Without a central imperial court and officers that linked the governments of the different provinces together, the administrations in the kingdoms were flattened, becoming significantly less deep and complex. The smaller size of the barbarian kingdoms meant that official power

2812-409: A possibility. And even in good times, Roman women needed to have, on average, six children each in order to maintain the population . Good nourishment and bodily cleanliness were privileges of the rich, advertised by their firm tread, healthy skin color, and lack of the "dull smell of the underbathed". Infant mortality was very high, and diarrhoeal diseases were a major cause of death. Malaria

2960-471: A reduced tax base. The business of subduing barbarian warbands also demanded substantial gifts of precious metal. At least one extra levy provoked desperation and rioting , in which the emperor's statues were destroyed. Nevertheless, he is represented as financially generous as emperor, though frugal in his personal life. By the end of the 380s, Theodosius and the court were in Mediolanum , and northern Italy

3108-418: A senior ( Augustus ) and junior ( Caesar ) emperor in each half of the Empire, but this system of tetrarchy broke down within one generation and the hereditary principle re-established itself with generally unfortunate results. Thereafter civil war became again the main method of establishing new imperial regimes . Although Constantine the Great (in office 306 to 337) again re-united the Empire, towards

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3256-541: A system within De Historia Piscium which would allow for the definition, classification, and identification of fish using external features. One of the main features of the book was its extensive illustrations, financed by subscriptions to the Society, but still a huge cost. The cost of the illustrations was the principal cause of the excessive expense of the publication of the book, which ultimately put serious strain on

3404-501: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Fall of the Western Roman Empire The fall of the Western Roman Empire , also called the fall of the Roman Empire or the fall of Rome , was the loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire , a process in which the Empire failed to enforce its rule, and its vast territory was divided among several successor polities . The Roman Empire lost

3552-507: Is a vice common to nearly all Romans". However, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi (consul 133 BC) had already dated the start of Rome's moral decline to 154 BCE. Within the late Roman military , many recruits and even officers had barbarian origins. Soldiers are recorded as using possibly-barbarian rituals, such as elevating a claimant on shields. Some scholars have seen this as an indication of weakness. Others disagree, seeing neither barbarian recruits nor new rituals as causing any problem with

3700-519: Is conceivable that the victor of such a conflict would have re-established the Western Roman Empire under his own rule. Though no war happened, such developments worried the Eastern Roman emperors. Worried that their granted honours could be seen as imperial "stamps of approval", the eastern court never granted them to the same extent again. Instead, the eastern empire began to emphasise its own exclusive Roman legitimacy, which it would continue to do for

3848-501: The Eastern Mediterranean , although it lessened in strength. Additionally, while the loss of political unity and military control is universally acknowledged, the fall of Rome is not the only unifying concept for these events; the period described as late antiquity emphasizes the cultural continuities throughout and beyond the political collapse. Since 1776, when Edward Gibbon published the first volume of his The History of

3996-564: The Huns . They were exploited by corrupt officials rather than effectively relieved and resettled, and they took up arms and were joined by more Goths and some Alans and Huns. Valens was in Asia with his main field army preparing for an assault on the Sasanian Empire. Redirection of the army and its logistic support would have required time, and Gratian's armies were distracted by Germanic invasions across

4144-643: The Loire . Between 405 and 407, a large number of barbarians invaded Gaul in what is called the crossing of the Rhine , including the Alans , Vandals , and Suebi . These groups were not from the kingdoms immediately adjacent to Roman Gaul; instead they had likely been heavily dependent on Roman gifts and were provoked to journey west as such gifts stopped and the Huns arrived in the east. The barbarians quickly overwhelmed what remained of

4292-557: The Ostrogoths , who in turn were fleeing from the Huns . The Eastern emperor, Valens ( r.   364–378), was pleased at the arrival of the Visigoths as it meant that he could recruit their warriors at low cost, bolstering his armies. Barbarian tribes seeking to settle in the empire were typically broken up into smaller groups and resettled across imperial territory. The Visigoths were however allowed to remain united and to themselves choose Thrace as their place of settlement. Although

4440-595: The Roman Republic , controlling a smaller area than the western Empire, had been able to reconstitute large regular armies of citizens after greater defeats than Adrianople. That war had ended with the near-extermination of the invading barbarian supergroups, each supposed to have more than 100,000 warriors. ) The final Gothic settlement was acclaimed with relief, even the official panegyrist admitting that these Goths could not be expelled or exterminated, nor reduced to unfree status. Instead they were either recruited into

4588-639: The Vandal Kingdom in Africa and the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy. Most of the smaller kingdoms in Gaul were conquered and absorbed into the Frankish Kingdom or disappear from historical sources entirely. The emergence barbarian kingdoms was by and large a Roman political phenomenon which occurred in the context of the late Roman geopolitical landscape. In place of these kingdoms, new realms emerged in

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4736-482: The Visigothic Kingdom . The Romans envisioned this as a provisional settlement of loyal clients of the imperial government, whose support could be relied on in internal struggles. The settlement was not seen as an actual ceding of imperial territory, given that the Roman administration was also envisioned as continuing in the granted lands, albeit overseen by the Visigoths as vassals. Though some Roman generals in

4884-535: The collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. The barbarian kingdoms were the principal governments in Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages . The time of the barbarian kingdoms is considered to have come to an end with Charlemagne 's coronation as emperor in 800, though a handful of small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms persisted until being unified by Alfred the Great in 886. The formation of

5032-443: The diocese of Macedonia to their control. In 387 Maximus invaded Italy, forcing Valentinian II to flee to the East, where he accepted Nicene Christianity. Maximus boasted to Ambrose of the numbers of barbarians in his forces, and hordes of Goths, Huns, and Alans followed Theodosius. Maximus negotiated with Theodosius for acceptance as Augustus of the West, but Theodosius refused, gathered his armies, and counterattacked, winning

5180-444: The first among equals ); emperors from Aurelian (r. 270–275) onwards openly styled themselves as dominus et deus , "lord and god", titles appropriate for a master-slave relationship. An elaborate court ceremonial developed, and obsequious flattery became the order of the day. Under Diocletian, the flow of direct requests to the emperor rapidly reduced, and soon ceased altogether. No other form of direct access replaced them, and

5328-520: The "Age of Reason", with its emphasis on rational thought, it was believed, that human history could resume its progress. He began an ongoing controversy about the role of Christianity, but he gave great weight to other causes of internal decline and to attacks from outside the Empire . The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired

5476-433: The 450s. The Visigoths did not establish a secure power-base as a consciously post-imperial kingdom until the 560s under Liuvigild , after slow and often brutal conquests in Hispania. The practice of the barbarian kingdoms being subservient to the Eastern Roman emperor came to an end as a result of the wars of reconquest of Emperor Justinian I ( r.   527–565). Justinian sought to restore direct imperial control to

5624-481: The Christian literary tradition that followed him were concerned, Theodosius deserved most of the credit for the final triumph of Christianity. Modern scholars see this as a Christian interpretation of history. Theodosius did not stamp out paganism, which continued into the seventh century. Theodosius had to face a powerful usurper in the West; Magnus Maximus declared himself Emperor in 383, stripped troops from

5772-503: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , Decline and Fall has been the theme around which much of the history of the Roman Empire has been structured. "From the eighteenth century onward," historian Glen Bowersock wrote, "we have been obsessed with the fall: it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears." From at least the time of Henri Pirenne (1862–1935), scholars have described

5920-469: The East, but these failed. In the ensuing bloody civil war Magnentius marched against Constantius with as many troops as he could mobilize, stripping the Rhine frontier of its most effective troops. Magnentius died and so did many of his men. Meanwhile, Constantius sent messages to the German tribes east of the Rhine, inviting them to attack Gaul, which they did. In the next few years a strip some 40 miles wide to

6068-584: The Eastern Roman Empire. Their rule in Italy came to an end when their kingdom was conquered by the Franks in 774. The small successor kingdoms of the Visigoths in Hispania—predecessors of medieval kingdoms such as León , Castile , and Aragon —were fundamentally sub-Frankish, culturally and administratively closer to the Frankish Kingdom than the fallen Visigothic Kingdom. As the sole survivor of

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6216-593: The Empire, driven by the Huns who themselves may have been driven by climate change in the Eurasian steppe . These barbarian invasions led ultimately to barbarian kingdoms over much of the former territory of the Western Empire. But the final blow came only with the Late Antique Little Ice Age and its aftermath, when Rome was already politically fragmented and materially depleted. Aurelian reunited

6364-519: The Empire, split them up, and allotted to them lands, status, and duties within the imperial system. In this way many groups provided unfree workers ( coloni ) for Roman landowners, and recruits ( laeti ) for the Roman army . Sometimes their leaders became officers. Normally the Romans managed the process carefully, with sufficient military force on hand to ensure compliance. Cultural assimilation followed over

6512-406: The Franks"). The rulers of Italy, where the pretense of Roman continuity was especially strong, are notable in that they only rarely used ethnic qualifiers. In addition to rex , the barbarian rulers also assumed various Roman imperial titles and honours. Virtually all of the barbarian kings assumed the style dominus noster ("our lord"), previously used only by Roman emperors, and nearly all of

6660-544: The Great of Italy and Clovis I of the Franks. Both rulers received honours and recognition by the imperial court in Constantinople, which granted them a certain degree of legitimacy and was used to justify territorial expansion. Theodoric was recognised as a patrician by Emperor Anastasius I , who also returned the western imperial regalia, in Constantinople since 476, to Italy. These regalia were worn by Theoderic on occasions, and some of his Roman subjects referred to him as an emperor, but he himself appears to have used only

6808-669: The Rhine. In 378, Valens attacked the invaders with the Eastern field army, now perhaps 20,000 men, probably much fewer than the forces that Julian had led into Mesopotamia a little over a decade before, and possibly only 10% of the soldiers nominally available in the Danube provinces. In the Battle of Adrianople (9 August 378), Valens lost much of that army and his own life. All of the Balkan provinces were thus exposed to raiding, without effective response from

6956-469: The Roman Empire ceased to make itself felt in the region; local offices were withdrawn to southern Gaul, aristocrats fled south, and the local capital was moved in 395 from Trier to Arles . Archaeological evidence from Britannia and northern Gaul showcase a rapid collapse of Roman industries, villa life, and Roman civilization as a whole. The effective border of imperial control moved from the Rhine frontier to

7104-549: The Roman Empire well into the sixth century. When Theodoric the Great ( r.   493–526), the Ostrogothic king of Italy, also became ruler of the Visigoths of Hispania in 511, this was celebrated in Ravenna as a liberation of Hispania and a re-integration of the Visigothic territories into the Roman Empire. This is despite the Visigoths also having been de jure part of the empire before this point. The exact process in which

7252-400: The Roman Empire. The new form of government was a personal one, based on powers of, and relationships between, individuals, rather than the heavily administrated, judicial and bureaucratic system of the Romans. The time of the barbarian kingdoms came to an end with the coronation of Charlemagne , king of the Franks , as Roman emperor by Pope Leo III in 800, in opposition to the authority of

7400-521: The Roman defensive works in the region and led Roman forces in Britain to acclaim the usurper-emperor Constantine III ( r.   407–411). Constantine III managed to keep the barbarians on the Rhine somewhat in check. The end of his reign due to further internal Roman conflict left the armies in Gaul in tatters and led to the tribes being able to penetrate deep into Gaul and Hispania. Without sufficient military force and with administration impossible,

7548-540: The Roman imperial framework, nominally subservient to the Western Roman emperor. This practice continued even after the deposition of the final western emperor, Romulus Augustulus , in 476. Barbarian rulers after 476 typically presented themselves as subservient to the remaining Eastern Roman emperor, and were in turn at times granted various honors by the imperial government. Almost nowhere in Western Europe were barbarian rulers firmly linked to territorial kingdoms until

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7696-462: The Roman position in the East. These campaigns depended on effective imperial coordination and mutual trust—between 379 and 380, Theodosius controlled not only the Eastern empire, but also, by agreement, the diocese of Illyricum . Theodosius was unable to recruit enough Roman troops, relying on barbarian warbands without Roman military discipline or loyalty. (In contrast, during the Cimbrian War ,

7844-447: The Roman religion) and the Latin language themselves, thus inheriting and maintaining Rome's cultural heritage. At the same time, they also remained connected to their non-Roman identity and made efforts to establish their own distinct identities. Roman identity gradually disappeared in Western Europe, both due to the Eastern Roman Empire emphasizing its own unique Roman legitimacy and due to

7992-433: The Roman state was to provide the Visigoths with food, imperial logistics could not handle the large number of refugees and Roman officials under the command of Lupicinus worsened the crisis by selling off much of the food before it reached the Visigoths. Amid rampant starvation, some Visigoth families were forced to sell their children into Roman slavery for food. After Lupicinus had a group of high-ranking Visigoths killed,

8140-496: The Romans. Modern historiography diverges from Gibbon. While most of his ideas are no longer accepted in totality, they have been foundational to later discourse and the modern synthesis with archaeology, epidemiology, climatic history, genetic science, and many more new sources of history beyond the documentary sources that were all that was available to Gibbon. While Alexander Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, twenty-first century scholarship classifies

8288-578: The Sasanian Persians . He succeeded in marching to the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon , but, at the suggestion of a Persian agent, burned his boats and supplies to show resolve in continuing operations. The Sassanids then burned crops so the Roman army had no food. Finding himself cut off without supplies in enemy territory, Julian began a land retreat, and during the Battle of Samarra , he was mortally wounded. Julian's successor Jovian , acclaimed by

8436-400: The Society's finances. It was unpopular and sold poorly, causing severe strain on the finances of the society. This resulted in the society being unable to meet its promise to finance the publication of Newton 's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (" Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy ", better known simply as Principia ), leaving this to Edmond Halley , who was then

8584-490: The Visigothic kings and the barbarian kings of Italy (up until the end of the Lombard kingdom ) used the praenomen Flavius , borne by virtually all Roman emperors in late antiquity. The early barbarian rulers were careful to maintain a subordinate position to the emperors in Constantinople, and were in turn sometimes recognised with various honours by the emperors, in effect serving as highly autonomous client kings. Although

8732-412: The Visigoths revolted several times under Alaric, who sought to attain a formal position in the imperial framework as a Roman general, as well as pay for his followers as Roman soldiers. Alaric was repeatedly caught in the rivalry and court intrigue between the Eastern and Western empires and his failure to obtain formal recognition eventually led to his forces sacking Rome in 410. Roman civil wars in

8880-421: The Visigoths under their leader Alaric I ( r.   395–410) to become an active force in imperial politics, only tenuously linked to the imperial government itself. Both Visigoths and Romans were aware that Gothic autonomy had only been accepted because there were few alternatives and repeated Gothic casualties in Roman wars likely made the Visigoths increasingly suspicious of Roman motives. In this context,

9028-544: The Visigoths, Franks and Lombards —only the Frankish Kingdom survived the Early Middle Ages. The Visigothic Kingdom collapsed already in the sixth century and had to be restored almost from scratch by Liuvigild in the 560s and 570s. The kingdom was finally destroyed when it was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate in the early 8th century. In his wars of reconquest, the Eastern emperor Justinian I destroyed both

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9176-532: The West refused to intervene in Christian controversy. In the East, Valens had to deal with Christians who did not conform to his ideas of orthodoxy, and persecution formed part of his response. He tolerated paganism, even keeping some of Julian's associates in their trusted positions. He confirmed the rights and privileges of the pagan priests, and confirmed the right of pagans to be the exclusive caretakers of their temples. Valentinian died of an apoplexy while shouting at envoys of Germanic leaders. His successors in

9324-569: The West suffered a serious decline in the late second century; the population of Northwestern Europe did not recover, though the Mediterranean regions did. The Empire survived the "Crisis of the Third Century", directing its economy successfully towards defense, but survival came at the price of a more centralized and bureaucratic state . Excessive military expenditure, coupled with civil wars due to unstable succession, caused increased taxes to

9472-518: The West were children, his sons Gratian ( r.  375–383 ) and Valentinian II ( r.  375–392 ). Gratian, "alien from the art of government both by temperament and by training", removed the Altar of Victory from the Senate House . He also rejected the pagan title of Pontifex Maximus . In 376, the East faced an enormous barbarian influx across the Danube, mostly Goths , who were fleeing from

9620-434: The acceptance of barbarian rulers by local Roman aristocrats, who in many cases saw the possibility of restored Western Roman central control as an increasingly futile prospect. Many barbarian rulers enjoyed considerable support from Roman aristocrats, who raised armies from their own lands both against and for them. The populace of the barbarian-controlled territories in Western Europe continued to view themselves as part of

9768-548: The agricultural economy was generally doing well. On January 18 350, the imperial magister officiorum gave a banquet in Augustodunum while his master, Western Emperor Constans , was away hunting. During the feast Magnus Magnentius , commander of the imperial household troops , appeared in an imperial purple toga and announced himself to be the new Emperor. Constans was soon murdered and Magnentius took over most of his western domains. He made peace overtures to Constantius in

9916-421: The barbarian kingdoms saw power in Western Europe being dispersed from a single capital, such as Rome or Ravenna in the past, to several local kings and warlords. Despite this, the apparatus of the former imperial government continued to fundamentally function in the west because the barbarian rulers adopted many aspects of the late Roman administration. Roman law remained the predominant legal system through

10064-695: The barbarian kingdoms was a complicated, gradual, and largely unintentional process. Their origin can be traced to the Roman state failing to handle barbarian migrants on the imperial borders, which led to both invasions and invitations into imperial territory. Despite an increasing influx of barbarians, the Romans simultaneously denied them the ability to properly integrate into the imperial framework. Barbarian rulers were at first local warlords and client kings without firm connections to any territory. Their influence only increased as Roman emperors and usurpers began to use them as pawns in civil wars. The barbarian realms only transitioned into proper territorial kingdoms after

10212-430: The barbarian kingdoms were ruled by non-Romans, no one in late antiquity would have doubted that they belonged to the greater late Roman political system. The kingdoms were in some cases rooted in barbarian traditions but were also linked to high Roman imperial magistracies and their rulers held formal and recognized vice-imperial powers. In the early sixth century, the most powerful kings in Western Europe were Theodoric

10360-414: The barbarian kings took on certain functions and prerogatives previously ascribed to the Roman emperors is not entirely clear. It is believed to have been a highly drawn-out process. History generally recognizes Alaric I as the first 'king of the Visigoths', though this title is applied to him only retroactively. Contemporary sources refer to Alaric only as dux or at times hegemon , and he did not rule

10508-480: The barbarian rulers. Some rulers even took steps to restore parts of the administration. In 510, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, Theodoric the Great, restored the Praetorian prefecture of Gaul on territory he conquered from the Visigoths and appointed as praetorian prefect the Roman aristocrat Liberius . A large number of Roman political and bureaucratic offices survived the end of the Western Roman Empire, attested in

10656-566: The civil war in 388. There were heavy troop losses on both sides of the conflict. Later Welsh legend has Maximus's defeated troops resettled in Armorica , instead of returning to Britannia, and by 400, Armorica was controlled by Bagaudae rather than by imperial authority. Barbarian kingdoms The barbarian kingdoms were states founded by various non-Roman, primarily Germanic , peoples in Western Europe and North Africa following

10804-415: The clerk of the society. After Halley had personally financed the publication of Principia , he was informed that the society could no longer afford to provide him the promised annual salary of £50. Instead, Halley was paid with left-over copies of De Historia Piscium . This fish-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a book on zoology or animals

10952-485: The climate became on average somewhat worse for most of the inhabited lands around the Mediterranean. After about 450, the climate worsened further in the Late Antique Little Ice Age that may have directly contributed to the variety of factors that brought Rome down. The Roman Empire was built on the fringes of the tropics . Its roads and its pirate-free seas, which produced an abundance of trade, also unknowingly created an interconnected disease ecology that unleashed

11100-431: The collapse of effective Western Roman central authority. Barbarian kings established legitimacy through connecting themselves to the Roman Empire. Virtually all barbarian rulers assumed the style dominus noster ("our lord"), previously used by Roman emperors, and many assumed the praenomen Flavius , borne by nearly all Roman emperors in late antiquity. Most rulers also assumed a subordinate position in diplomacy with

11248-455: The collapse. Climatic changes and both endemic and epidemic disease drove many of these immediate factors. The reasons for the collapse are major subjects of the historiography of the ancient world and they inform much modern discourse on state failure . In 376, a large migration of Goths and other non- Roman people, fleeing from the Huns , entered the Empire . Roman forces were unable to exterminate, expel or subjugate them (as

11396-468: The conclusion of the Gothic war made the Visigoths semi-independent foederati under their own leaders, able to be called upon and drafted into the Roman army. Unlike previous settlements, the Visigoths were not dispersed and instead given cohesive lands in the provinces of Scythia , Moesia , and perhaps Macedonia . Although the defeat at Adrianople was disastrous, several modern historians have criticized

11544-428: The continuity in material culture and in patterns of settlement as late as the eleventh century. Observing the political reality of lost control (and the attendant fragmentation of commerce, culture, and language), but also the cultural and archaeological continuities, the process has been described as a complex cultural transformation, rather than a fall. The "perception of Late Antiquity has significantly changed:

11692-411: The detriment of the industry. Under Gallienus (Emperor from 253 to 268) the senatorial aristocracy ceased joining the ranks of the senior military commanders. Its typical members lacked interest in military service, and showed incompetence at command. Under Constantine, the cities lost their revenue from local taxes, and under Constantius II (r. 337–361) their endowments of property. This worsened

11840-450: The diversity of the new kingdoms in favor of a homogenous non-Roman barbarism and ignores any analysis in which the empire could be seen as complicit in its own collapse. Despite being divided into several smaller realms, the populace of the barbarian kingdoms maintained strong cultural and religious connections with each other, and continued to speak Latin. The barbarian kings adopted both Christianity (at this point firmly established as

11988-524: The economy of the Roman Mediterranean even after the barbarian invasions, and suggested that only the Muslim conquests represented a decisive break with antiquity. The more recent formulation of a historical period characterized as " Late Antiquity " emphasizes the transformations of ancient to medieval worlds within a cultural continuity. In recent decades archaeologically based argument even extends

12136-481: The effectiveness or loyalty of the army, at least while that army was effectively led, disciplined, trained, paid, and supplied by officers who identified as Roman. A. H. M. Jones has pointed out that the earlier scholarly views are Western. Most of the weaknesses discussed by scholars were "common to both halves of the empire", with Christianity even more prevalent in the East than the West. Religious disputes were bitter, bureaucracy corrupt and extortionate, it had

12284-644: The emperor received only information filtered through his courtiers . However, as Sabine MacCormack described, the court culture that developed with Diocletian was still subject to pressure from below. Imperial proclamations were used to stress the traditional limitations of the imperial office, while imperial ceremonies "left room for consensus and popular participation". Official cruelty , supporting extortion and corruption , may also have become more commonplace; one example being Constantine 's law that slaves who betrayed their mistress's confidential remarks should have molten lead poured down their throats. While

12432-630: The empire in 274, and from 284 Diocletian and his successors reorganized it with more emphasis on the military. John the Lydian , writing over two centuries later, reported that Diocletian's army at one point totaled 389,704 men, plus 45,562 in the fleets, and numbers may have increased later. With the limited communications of the time, both the European and the Eastern frontiers needed the attention of their own supreme commanders . Diocletian tried to solve this problem by re-establishing an adoptive succession with

12580-582: The end of the fourth century the need for division was generally accepted. From then on, the Empire existed in constant tension between the need for two emperors and their mutual mistrust . Until late in the fourth century, the united Empire retained sufficient power to launch powerful attacks against its enemies in Germania and in the Sasanian Empire . Receptio of barbarians became widely practised: imperial authorities admitted potentially hostile groups into

12728-525: The end of the fourth century, Christianity had become the religion of any ambitious civil official. The wealth of the Christian Church increased dramatically in the fifth century. Immense resources, both public and private, were used for building churches, storage barns for the grain used for charity, new hospitals for the poor, and in support of those in religious life without other income. Bishops in wealthy cities were thus able to offer patronage in

12876-459: The end of the fourth century. Constantine settled Franks on the lower left bank of the Rhine . Their communities required a line of fortifications to keep them in check, indicating that Rome had lost almost all local control. Under Constantius, bandits came to dominate areas such as Isauria , which were well within the empire. The tribes of Germania also became more populous and more threatening. In Gaul , which did not really recover from

13024-483: The evolution and spread of pathogens. Pandemics contributed to massive demographic changes, economic crises , and food shortages in the crisis of the third century . Heavy mortality in 165–180 from the Antonine Plague seriously impaired attempts to repel Germanic invaders, but the legions generally held or at least speedily re-instated the borders of the Empire. From 376, massive populations moved into

13172-412: The existence of semi-autonomous barbarian-controlled territories as desirable, but began to tolerate them through the 420s and 430s. Neither the Romans nor the various barbarian groups sought to establish new and lasting territorial kingdoms that replaced the imperial government. The rise of the barbarian kingdoms derived not from barbarian interest in creating them but from failures in Roman governance and

13320-430: The existing difficulty in keeping the city councils up to strength, and the services provided by the cities were scamped or abandoned. Public building projects had declined since the second century. There is no evidence of state participation in, or support for, restoration and maintenance of temples and shrines . Restorations were funded and accomplished privately, which limited what was done. A further financial abuse

13468-503: The fall of the Roman Empire in the West include the Crisis of the Third Century, the Crossing of the Rhine in 406 (or 405), the sack of Rome in 410 , and the death of Julius Nepos in 480. When Gibbon published his landmark work, it quickly became the standard. Peter Brown has written that "Gibbon's work formed the peak of a century of scholarship which had been conducted in the belief that

13616-589: The fifth and sixth centuries. Several barbarian kings showed interest in legal matters and issued their own law codes, developed based on Roman law. Towns and cities had been the main building blocks of the old empire and initially remained as such in the barbarian kingdoms as well. The disappearance of the old Roman imperial framework was a gradual and slow process, spanning centuries and at times accelerated due to political upheaval. The old Roman administrative system of provinces , dioceses , and praetorian prefectures remained partially functional in some places under

13764-425: The first emperor to increase the arrogance of the military, raising their rank and power to excess, severely punishing the minor crimes of the common soldiers, while sparing those of higher rank who felt able to commit shameful and monstrous crimes. Despite a possible decrease in the Empire's ability to assemble and supply large armies, Rome maintained an aggressive and potent stance against perceived threats almost to

13912-470: The force of law, putting the imperial power directly in touch with even humble subjects. The cults of polytheist religion were hugely varied, but none claimed that theirs was the only truth. Their followers displayed mutual tolerance , producing a polyphonous religious harmony. Religious strife was rare after the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 136, after which the devastated Judaea ceased to be

14060-501: The former western empire, though his reconquest was incomplete and established the idea that any lands outside of the eastern empire's direct control were no longer part of the Roman Empire, also causing Roman identity to decline dramatically in Western Europe. The coinage of the Visigothic Kingdom continued to depict the eastern emperors until the 580s, when the Visigothic kings began to mint coins in their own name. The rise of

14208-506: The fortifications and the sea and land forces of Constantinople , while the European frontier from the mouth of the Rhine to that of the Danube is some 2000 kilometres great-circle distance and could be crossed with much less difficulty. "The devastations of the barbarians impoverished and depopulated the [Western] frontier provinces, and their unceasing pressure imposed on the empire a burden of defense which overstrained its administrative machinery and its economic resources. ... [playing]

14356-429: The idea of "barbarian invasions" bringing a sudden and violent end to the world of antiquity, once also the widely accepted narrative among modern historians, does not accurately describe the period. Out of the many barbarian kingdoms, the only realm more or less entirely created through military conquest was the Vandal Kingdom in Africa. Ascribing the end of the Western Roman Empire to "barbarian invasions" also ignores

14504-476: The idea that it was a decisive step in the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Other than the Visigoths remaining a cohesive group, their eventual settlement was not much different from previous groups and they had been effectively pacified and contained by the early 380s. Roman civil wars in the late 4th century, as well as periods of cold war between the imperial courts of the Western and Eastern Roman empires, allowed

14652-444: The imperial forces, or settled in the devastated provinces along the south bank of the Danube, where the regular garrisons were never fully re-established. In some later accounts, and widely in recent work, this is regarded as a treaty settlement, the first time that barbarians were given a home within the Empire, in which they retained their political and military cohesion. No formal treaty is recorded, nor details of whatever agreement

14800-500: The imperial government effectively abandoned Britannia and northern Gaul around 410. In Britannia, this led to fragmentation into numerous local kingdoms. In northern Gaul, dominion was taken over by peoples such as the Franks and Burgundians , who had formerly lived beyond the imperial frontier. The second stage in the formation of the barbarian kingdoms was the imperial acceptance of the status quo . The Roman government at no point saw

14948-418: The imperial government of the increasingly unstable Western Roman Empire that it was no longer able to effectively administer its own territories. This led the empire to cede effective control of more lands to the barbarian rulers, whose realms now formed a permanent part of the landscape. These territorial changes did not mean that lands within the former imperial borders ceased to be part of the Roman Empire on

15096-525: The invasions of the third century, there was widespread insecurity and economic decline in the 300s, perhaps worst in Armorica . By 350, after decades of pirate attacks, virtually all villas in Armorica were deserted. Local use of money ceased around 360. Repeated attempts to economize on military expenditure included billeting troops in cities, where they could less easily be kept under military discipline and could more easily extort from civilians. Except in

15244-613: The kingdoms established in Western Europe after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire . The term has been criticized by some scholars on account of " barbarian " being a pejorative term. Some historians also consider "barbarian kingdoms" to be a misnomer since the kingdoms were supported and to a large degree staffed by former Roman elites. Alternate terms that have been proposed and used by some historians include "post-Roman kingdoms", "Roman-barbarian kingdoms", "Latin-Germanic kingdoms", "Latin-barbarian kingdoms", "western kingdoms", and "early medieval kingdoms". "Barbarian kingdom"

15392-526: The last emperor of the Western Roman Empire in Italy, Romulus Augustulus , and the Senate sent the imperial insignia to the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno . While its legitimacy lasted for centuries longer and its cultural influence remains today, the Western Empire never had the strength to rise again. The Eastern Roman, or Byzantine , Empire, survived and remained for centuries an effective power of

15540-640: The late fourth century were disastrous for the defense of the Western Roman Empire. In 388, the eastern emperor Theodosius I ( r.   379–395) defeated the western usurper-emperor Magnus Maximus ( r.   383–388). In 394, Theodosius's troops again defeated a western rival, Eugenius ( r.   392–394). Both conflicts meant large slaughters of Western Roman regiments. After Magnus Maximus, no significant western emperor ever traveled north of Lyon and there appears to have been very little real imperial activity in Britannia or northern Gaul. In many ways,

15688-427: The local barbarian ruling class and Roman populations merging ethnically. The fading connectivity to the Roman Empire and the political division of the west led to a gradual fragmentation of culture and language, eventually giving rise to the modern Romance peoples and Romance languages . The barbarian kingdoms proved to be extremely fragile states. Out of the three most powerful and long-lasting kingdoms—those of

15836-486: The long-established manner of Roman aristocrats. Ammianus described some who "enriched from the offerings of matrons, ride seated in carriages, wearing clothing chosen with care, and serve banquets so lavish that their entertainments outdo the tables of kings". But the move to Christianity probably had no significant effects on public finances. The large temple complexes, with professional full-time priests, festivals, and large numbers of sacrifices (which became free food for

15984-622: The masses), had also been expensive to maintain. They had already been negatively impacted by the empire's financial struggles in the third century. The numbers of clergy , monks , and nuns increased to perhaps half the size of the actual army, and they have been considered as a drain on limited manpower. The numbers and effectiveness of the regular soldiers may have declined during the fourth century. Payrolls were inflated, so that pay could be diverted and exemptions from duty sold. The soldiers' opportunities for personal extortion were multiplied by residence in cities, while their effectiveness

16132-501: The migrations of large numbers of barbarian (i.e. non-Roman ) peoples into the territory of the Roman Empire. Although the Migration Period ( c. 300–600) is often referred to as the "Barbarian Invasions", migrations were spurred not only by invasions but also by invitations. Inviting peoples from beyond the imperial frontier to settle Roman territory was not a new policy, and something that had been done several times by emperors in

16280-460: The next generation or two. The Empire suffered multiple serious crises during the third century. The rising Sassanid Empire inflicted three crushing defeats on Roman field armies and remained a potent threat for centuries. Other disasters included repeated civil wars , barbarian invasions, and more mass-mortality in the Plague of Cyprian (from 250 onwards). For a short period, the Empire split into

16428-518: The old kingdoms, the Frankish Kingdom provided the model of early medieval kingship that would later inspire Western European monarchs throughout the rest of the Middle Ages. Though the Frankish rulers remembered Roman ideals and often aspired to vague ideas of imperial restoration, the centuries of their rule had transformed the governance of their kingdom into something that bore very little resemblance to

16576-622: The once vast and diverse network of kingdoms. Alfred the Great unified the Anglo-Saxons in 886, forming what would eventually be known as the Kingdom of England . Ostrogoths who migrated to the Crimean Peninsula , later known as Crimean Goths , maintained a distinct culture until roughly the 18th century , but little is definitively known about them. "The barbarian kingdoms" is the collective term commonly used by modern historians to designate

16724-541: The only worthwhile form of civilization, giving the Empire ideological legitimacy and a cultural unity based on comprehensive familiarity with Greek and Roman literature and rhetoric . The Empire's power allowed it to maintain extreme differences of wealth and status. Its wide-ranging trade networks permitted even modest households to use goods made by professionals far away. The empire had both strength and resilience. Its financial system allowed it to raise significant taxes which, despite endemic corruption, supported

16872-470: The outlying regions of Roman Britain (probably replacing some with federate chieftains and their war-bands) and invaded Gaul. His troops killed Gratian and he was accepted as Augustus in the Gallic provinces, where he was responsible for the first official executions of Christian heretics . To compensate the Western court for the loss of Gaul, Hispania, and Britannia, Theodosius ceded the diocese of Dacia and

17020-480: The partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians. After a diligent inquiry, I can discern four principal causes of the ruin of Rome, which continued to operate in a period of more than a thousand years. 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

17168-662: The past, mostly for economic, agricultural or military purposes. Because of the size and power of the Roman Empire, its capacity for immigration was nearly infinite. Several events through the fourth and fifth centuries complicated the situation. In 376, the Visigoths were allowed to cross the Danube river and settle in the Balkans by the government of the Eastern Roman Empire . The Visigoths, numbering perhaps 50,000 (out of which 10,000 were warriors), were refugees, fleeing from

17316-438: The period is no longer seen as an era of decline and crisis but as an epoch of metamorphosis in the Mediterranean region". A synthesis by Harper (2017) gave four decisive turns of events in the transformation from the height of the empire to the early Middle Ages: The loss of centralized political control over the West, and the lessened power of the East, are universally agreed, but the theme of decline has been taken to cover

17464-423: The primary possibilities more concisely: A recent summary interprets disease and climate change as important drivers of the political collapse of the empire. There was a Roman climatic optimum from about 200 BCE to 150 CE, when lands around the Mediterranean were generally warm and well-watered. This made agriculture prosperous, army recruitment easy, and the collection of taxes straightforward. From about 150,

17612-399: The rare case of a determined and incorruptible general, these troops proved ineffective in action and dangerous to civilians. Frontier troops were often given land rather than pay. As they farmed for themselves, their direct costs diminished, but so did their effectiveness, and their pay gave much less stimulus to the frontier economy. However, except for the provinces along the lower Rhine,

17760-446: The remaining Eastern Roman Empire . Many aspects of the late Roman administration survived under barbarian rule, though the old system gradually dissolved and disappeared, a process accelerated by periods of political turmoil. The barbarian kingdoms of Western Europe were for the most part fragile and ephemeral. By the time of Charlemagne's coronation in 800, only his Frankish Kingdom and a few small Anglo-Saxon realms remained out of

17908-407: The remaining garrisons who were "more easily slaughtered than sheep". Cities were able to hold their own defensive walls against barbarians who had no siege equipment , therefore the cities generally remained intact, although the countryside suffered. Gratian appointed a new Augustus , a proven general from Hispania called Theodosius . During the next four years, he partially re-established

18056-428: The removal of the man Gibbon referred to as "the helpless Augustulus" in 476. Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke argue that the entire Imperial era was one of steady decay of institutions founded in republican times. Theodor Mommsen excluded the imperial period from his Nobel Prize-winning History of Rome (1854–1856). As one convenient marker for the end, 476 has been used since Gibbon, but other key dates for

18204-441: The rest of its history. In the sixth century, Eastern Roman historians began to describe the west as "lost" to barbarian invasions, rather than the fact that many barbarian kings had been settled by the Romans themselves. This development has been termed the "Justinianic ideological offensive" by modern historians. Though the rise of the barbarian kingdoms in the place of the western empire was far from an entirely peaceful process,

18352-428: The scale, complexity, and violence of government were unmatched, the emperors lost control over their whole realm insofar as that control came increasingly to be wielded by anyone who paid for it . Meanwhile, the richest senatorial families, immune from most taxation, engrossed more and more of the available wealth and income while also becoming divorced from any tradition of military excellence. One scholar identifies

18500-461: The seventh through ninth centuries that represented a new order, largely disconnected from the old Roman world. The Umayyad Caliphate, which conquered Hispania from the Visigoths and North Africa from the Eastern Roman Empire, made no pretenses of Roman continuity. The Lombard Kingdom, though often counted among the other barbarian kingdoms, ruled an Italy destroyed by conflict between the Ostrogoths and

18648-464: The situation erupted into a full-scale rebellion, later known as the Gothic War (376–382) . In 378, the Visigoths inflicted a crippling defeat on the Eastern Roman field army in the Battle of Adrianople , in which Emperor Valens was also killed. The defeat at Adrianople was a shock for the Romans, and forced them to negotiate with, and settle, the Visigoths within the imperial borders. The treaties at

18796-484: The sixth century. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the barbarian rulers in Western Europe made an effort to strengthen legitimacy by adopting certain elements of the former empire. The title most widely used by the kings was rex , which formed a basis of authority which they could use in diplomacy with other kingdoms and the surviving imperial court in Constantinople. Although some Eastern Roman authors, such as Procopius , described rex as

18944-504: The strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces ; modern historians posit factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army , the health and numbers of the Roman population, the strength of the economy , the competence of the emperors , the internal struggles for power, the religious changes of the period, and the efficiency of the civil administration. Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture also contributed greatly to

19092-456: The study of the declining Roman Empire was also the study of the origins of modern Europe". Gibbon was the first to attempt an explanation of causes of a Fall of empire. Like other Enlightenment thinkers and British citizens of the age steeped in institutional anti-Catholicism , Gibbon held in contempt the Middle Ages as a priest-ridden, superstitious Dark Age. It was not until his own era,

19240-409: The threats of barbarian attacks on all the Western frontiers. They also tried to alleviate the burdens of taxation, which had risen continuously over the previous forty years; Valens in the East reduced the tax demand by half in his fourth year. Both of them were Christians, and re-confiscated the temple lands which Julian had restored. But they were generally tolerant of other beliefs. Valentinian in

19388-411: The time of Honorius had worked to curb the influence and power of the barbarian rulers, the number of civil wars that followed Honorius's death made the status of the barbarians a secondary concern. Instead of suppressing the barbarian kings, emperors and usurpers in the fifth century viewed them as useful internal players. The third stage of the formation of the barbarian kingdoms was the recognition by

19536-430: The title rex , being careful not to insult the emperor. After the Franks defeated the Visigoths at the Battle of Vouillé in 507, Clovis was recognised by Anastasius as honorary consul, a patrician and a client king. Like Theoderic, some of the subjects of Clovis also referred to him as an emperor, rather than king, though he never adopted that title himself. Theodoric and Clovis came close to war several times and it

19684-469: The various law codes issued by the barbarian kings. There are numerous documents that demonstrate that Romans continued to be active in such offices within the kingdoms. The establishment of the barbarian kingdoms did thus not bring an end to Roman society. Per the Irish historian Peter Brown , they can instead be seen as "on the contrary [having] brought law and order to regions that had suffered for decades from

19832-420: The very late fifth century or even later. The final stage in the formation of the barbarian kingdoms occurred as the barbarian rulers slowly lost the habit of waiting for the Western Roman Empire to again function properly. Left to their own devices, barbarian rulers instead began to take on the roles formerly held by the emperors, transitioning into proper territorial kings. This process was only possible through

19980-420: The vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by

20128-443: The west of the Rhine was occupied by the Germans, and a further 120 miles into Gaul the surviving population and garrisons had fled. Julian ( r.  360–363 ) won victories against Germans who had invaded Gaul. He launched a drive against official corruption, which allowed the tax demands in Gaul to be reduced to one-third of their previous amount, while all government requirements were still met. In civil legislation, Julian

20276-409: Was Constantius's habit of granting to his immediate entourage the estates of persons condemned for treason and other capital crimes . This practice reduced future, though not immediate, income; those close to the emperor also gained a strong incentive to encourage his suspicion of conspiracies . The new supreme rulers disposed of the legal fiction of the early Empire (seeing the emperor as but

20424-499: Was actually made. When the Goths are next mentioned in Roman records, they have different leaders and are soldiers of a sort. In 391, Alaric , a Gothic leader, rebelled against Roman control. Goths attacked the emperor himself, but within a year Alaric was accepted as a leader of Theodosius's Gothic troops and this rebellion was over. Theodosius's financial position must have been difficult, since he had to pay for expensive campaigning from

20572-608: Was endemic in many areas, notably in the city of Rome itself, possibly encouraged by the enthusiasm of rich Romans for water features in their gardens. In 313, Constantine the Great declared official toleration of Christianity . This was followed over the ensuing decades by the search for a definition of Christian orthodoxy all could agree upon. Creeds were developed, but Christianity has never agreed upon an official version of its Bible or its doctrine; instead it has had many different manuscript traditions. Christianity's disputes may have effected decline. Official and private action

20720-530: Was experiencing a period of prosperity for the great landowners who took advantage of the court's need for food, "turning agrarian produce into gold", while repressing and misusing the poor who grew it and brought it in. Paulinus the Deacon , notary of Ambrose the bishop of Milan , described these men as creating a court where "everything was up for sale". Ambrose himself preached a series of sermons aimed at his wealthy constituents, asserting that avarice leads to

20868-455: Was never again effectively consolidated. By 476, the position of Western Roman Emperor wielded negligible military, political, or financial power, and had no effective control over the scattered Western domains that could still be described as Roman. Barbarian kingdoms had established their own power in much of the area of the Western Empire. In 476, the Germanic barbarian king Odoacer deposed

21016-464: Was not a contemporary term and was not used by the populace of the kingdoms to designate their own states. Early medieval writers in the kingdoms sometimes used "barbarian" in reference to denizens of other kingdoms, though never in reference to their own. The rise of the barbarian kingdoms in the territory previously governed by the Western Roman Empire was a gradual, complex, and largely unintentional process. Their origin can ultimately be traced to

21164-519: Was notable for his pro-pagan policies. Julian lifted the ban on sacrifices , restored and reopened temples, and dismantled the privileged tax status and revenue concessions of the Christians. He gave generous tax remissions to the cities which he favored, and disfavor to those who remained Christian. Julian ordered toleration of varieties of Christianity banned as heretical by Constantius; possibly, he would not have been able to persecute effectively such

21312-522: Was reduced by concentration on extortion instead of military exercises . However, extortion , gross corruption , and occasional ineffectiveness were not new to the Roman army. There is no consensus whether its effectiveness significantly declined before 376. Ammianus Marcellinus , himself a professional soldier, repeats longstanding observations about the superiority of contemporary Roman armies being due to training and discipline, not to individual size or strength. He also accuses Valentinian I of being

21460-419: Was taken against heterodox Christians (heretics) from the fourth century up to the modern era. Limited action against pagans , who were mostly ignored, was based on the contempt that accompanied Christianity's sense of triumph after Constantine. Christianity opposed sacrifice and magic, and Christian emperors made laws that favored Christianity. Constantine's successors generally continued this approach, and by

21608-496: Was their normal practice). In 395, after winning two destructive civil wars, Theodosius I died. He left a collapsing field army, and the Empire divided between the warring ministers of his two incapable sons. Goths and other non-Romans became a force that could challenge either part of the Empire. Further barbarian groups crossed the Rhine and other frontiers. The armed forces of the Western Empire became few and ineffective, and despite brief recoveries under able leaders, central rule

21756-403: Was truncated and that the opportunities of personal advancement and careers that had existed in the old empire were no longer possible. This breakdown in Roman order had the side effect of leading to a marked decline in living standards, as well as a collapse in economic and social complexity. This development was not universal and many places, such as Gaul, came to experience economic upswings in

21904-463: Was uncertain about when decline began. "In the first paragraph of his text, Gibbon wrote that he intended to trace the decline from the golden age of the Antonines"; later text has it beginning about A.D. 180 with the death of Marcus Aurelius; while in chapter 7, he pushes the start of the decline to about 52 B.C., the time of Julius Caesar and Pompey and Cicero. Gibbon placed the western empire's end with

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