Comments on: The Fall of Rome – an author dialogue

By: David Probert

David Probert — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:01:40 +0000

For Brian Ward Perkins: Such an excellent readable and timely corrective to the gradualist view of a melded Germano-Roman civilisation.

The subject is so relevant as the New Europe faces problems of identity, mass immigration, religious challenge and common purpose. There are so many parallels in a civilisation unwilling and unable to defend its values and identity after decades of introspection and post Imperial guilt.

The tragedy lies also in the glimpse you give of how the Empire might have survived and what a difference that would have made to European civilisation.

I cannot help also feeling that the adoption of Christianity with its ruthless suppression of ancient culture and values played a key part in undermining the identity, way of life and self-belief of the Roman world.The Taliban have so much in common with those early Christian monks!

By: Peter Heather

Peter Heather — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 16:52:06 +0000

The answer is certainly. Tactics & weaponry clearly were pooled to some extent. The post-Hunnic Goths were substantially mounted, for instance, but lancers rather than archers. According to Procopius, this is why mounted Byzantine archers were able to defeat them in Italy in the sixth century.

By: William Beckman

William Beckman — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 06:40:32 +0000

For Peter Heather;

I just finished reading your book and wanted to congratulate you for your entertaining and factual illumination of a most significant and long period of history that most historians have glossed over by simply showing arrows on a map of Barbarian invasions…and then picking up the story with Charlemagne. After all, for better or for worse, these Barbarians picked up the torch of western civilization from the Romans and have carried it till this day making that event one of the major or maybe THE major event in the history of the west.It was most refreshing and enjoyable to read a history of that period based on fact rather than opinions.
You have connected the dots rather convincingly and have provided many intriquing insights… such as Attila’s court speaking Gothic and having numerous Germani peoples as part of his army.
This information rhen raises many questions.Did the Germani under Hunnic control learn some battle skills from the Huns such as archery?..or just plain ferocity?… or fighting from horseback?…or tactics? As you pointed out in your book the Vandals quickly learned the art of naval warfare, resulting in the defeat of the Byzatine armada.Would it not be probable then that the Hunnic controlled Germani, over the course of several generations of living with and fighting alongside the Huns,likewise learned some of their lethal warfare techniques? If so, an already formidable Barbarian army would become even more ominous to Rome.Would they have become a fast moving mounted army similar to the Huns after the death of Attila? This may have rendered the slow and methodical Roman army style of fighting obsolete except for defending walled cities. But perhaps these and other questions will be answered in your next book which I eagerly await.
Best Regards,
William Beckman

By: Bryan Ward-Perkins

Bryan Ward-Perkins — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 17:15:42 +0000

No book on a subject that has been chewed over for more than a thousand years can ever be ‘unique’ – but what is distinctive and new about my book is that it presents (in a way that I think is accessible) the new archaeological evidence, for the consequences of the Fall of the West. None of this was avaialble until recently, and most of it is still only accessible, without synthesis, in scholarly journals.

The available written sources have not changed that much since Gibbon’s time. One of his most distinctive theories – that Christianity was substantially to blame for the Fall of the Empire – came not from his sources alone, but from these combined with the anti-clerical perspective of the eighteenth-century ‘Enlightenment’.

By: Jeffrey Lionel Wood

Jeffrey Lionel Wood — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 18:28:11 +0000

Do think that your view point is unique?

Do you think that Edward Gibbon’s theory was based on his sources or the period that he was brought up in?

By: william cormeny

william cormeny — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 06:11:23 +0000

The Western Empire and Eastern Empire or Byzantine Empire might have been able together to hold off or restrict Islam to the Middle East and not North Africa and Central Asia.
It is also possible,with an emperor centered tradition of Councils,Christianity would not fall into division.Furthermore the economic recovery of Europe might have occurred far easier since trade would continue between east and west.However, this ignores the overwhelming number of disasters and invaders entering into all sides of the Roman Empire.German Barbarians and Huns are followed by Islam,the Slavs,the Vikings and Magyars,a fact seldom mentioned in the works.Nor is much made of the far smaller defensive position of the Byzantine Empire for over 650 years.The failure of Charlemagne’s children helped create the enduring legacy of turmoil.
The Treaty of Verdun marked the end of a reunified Western Empire. The schism in l054 created Central Europe.
In all cases the significant failure of political forces remained two fold. First,there was concensus regarding the method of succession embodied in either the Eastern or Western Roman Empire.Secondly, the invsions created the feudal states since no central authority could protect the outlying provinces for the loss of the key economic basis of the state,the ability to tax had been wiped out by the Empire’s greedy adherence to fixing people to places.

By: BARISTA

BARISTA — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 05:43:55 +0000

empire falls, but not like the movies

We have inherited memes of empire and catastrophe, of occupation and decline. These stories seem to be the plausible way in which the past is constructed. Built into our popular culture, distorted by collective amnesia, the story of Western…