EPISODE I TRANSCRIPT:
THE FALL OF THE WESTERN ROMAN EMPIRE, PART I
Welcome to the history podcast The Stream of Time!
My name it Eliot and I’ve been studying the history of Western Civilization for years.
It’s something I have a tremendous love for.
And anyone who knows me knows that I love talking about it.
I love to share my passion as much as I can. So the next logical step to share it on a grander scale was to start a podcast.
The goal or “core value” of this podcast is to bring history to as many people as possible in a way that’s approachable, interesting, and even fun.
In fact the title of this podcast is from a quote from the Byzantine historian Anna Comnene.
The quote bears repeating because I think it captures the essence of why I love history so much and why I feel it is so important to share.
““The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration; as the playwright [Sophocles] says, it ‘brings to light that which was unseen and shrouds from us that which was manifest.’ Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against this stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion.”
The quote is admittedly a bit heavy, but the point the quote is making is the goal I’m shooting for, which is to understand who we are and where we come from. To paint a bigger picture of understand. The great civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. said “We are not the makers of history. We are made by history.” So in order to understand who we are, we must understand where we come from. And not just us, but others.
On that note, I’ll be jumping around a lot. I’ll try not to introduce dramatically new concepts that I’ve never covered before, but I also won’t necessarilly be going episode to episode in chronological order.
In fact, more often than not, episodes won’t be in chronological order, although I’ll try to tie episodes together when it makes sense
My main criteria when choosing a topic is “is it interesting to me?”, which, given that my friends and family don’t run away screaming when I start talking history, should be a workable criteria to go on.
That’s the history of my podcast, which is probably not why you came here. So let’s get on to the good stuff!
This episode is a beginning, so I thought a good topic to start off with would be…an ending. Specifically, the end of the Western Roman Empire.
It’s a good topic for more reasons than simply the totally artificial connection to my first podcast. It’s a good topic because it’s a topic that a lot of people know about, but a lot of people totally misunderstand. It’s also a big topic, so I’m splitting it up over the first two episodes.
Some things misunderstood about it that I’d like to clarify over the next two episodes include:
-What caused it
-Who were the major players, the dramatis personae
-What exactly did it mean for the Western Roman Empire to fall?
-What were some lasting repercussions of the Fall?
The so-called “Fall” happened in 476AD with the deposition of the last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, an emperor who so faded into obscurity that we don’t even know the date of his death.
But in order to understand our story better, we’re need to go a few centuries back, to the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the “5 great emperors”. His reign lasted from 161 to 180 AD.
By the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Empire was flourishing. In fact, the height of the Roman Empire was most definitely in the 2nd century AD under the aforementioned 5 great emperors, who were, in order, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius.
By this point in time, the Roman Empire extended from England in the Northwest to modern day Egypt in the Southeast, and everything in between. The Empire completely surrounded the Mediterranean. In fact, they called it “Mare Nostrum”…”Our Sea”.
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But by the time of Marcus Aurelius’ reign, problems were starting to arise in the Empire. Two problems in particular were disastrous for the empire.
The first problem was plague. The Antonine Plague was probably introduced to the Empire in the years 165-166 after some Roman soldiers brought it back from a siege of the city of Seleucid (in modern day Iraq). We can’t be sure where it came from before that, but there are records that the plague had actually been as far east as Han China before it made it to the Roman Empire.
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We also aren’t sure what type of disease it was, but some suggestions have been that it was smallpox, measles, or both smallpox and measles, two diseases that Europe had not been previously exposed to, and against which had no defense.
As I mentioned, the plague was devastating. At its height, it was killing thousands of people per day. It claimed the life of Marcus Aurelius’ co-emperor Lucius Verus, after who’s family it is named. And it eventually claimed the life of the philosopher-emperor himself, Marcus Aurelius.
I should note, we are told that he went out as stoically and nobly as he lived, as among his final words were “Weep not for me; think rather of the pestilence and the deaths of so many others.”
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The Western Roman Empire never really recovered from this massive depopulation. We have lived in a world that has seen consistent population increase for years, so it’s difficult for us to visualize the effect of depopulation.
Simply put, there weren’t enough people to do everything that needed to be done. Less farmers meant less food to go around. Less soldiers meant legions were left far under the size necessary for the defense of the empire. And in fact, it is from this point on that the empire which had been growing for centuries begins to shrink, and even at some points, split.
While I am getting a bit ahead of myself, I wanted to emphasize the point here…depopulation due to the plague had tremendous consequences that would be felt for centuries.
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I mentioned two big problems that emerged during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The first was plague. The second was the increase in tensions with Germanic tribes to the north.
Again, I need to go back a bit to explain what’s going on here. I promise this is the last time I’ll do this. I hate flashbacks within flashbacks as much as you probably do.
Rome had never conquered the Germanic areas to the North. While there had been attempts to conquer the Germanic areas, the Battle of Teuteborg forest in 9AD pretty much put a complete halt to advancement in Germanic territories.
I won’t go into too much detail in the battle (it would make for a great future podcast!), but suffice to say, a large Roman force led by the incompetent general Quintillius Varus was led into a crushing ambush by a Germanic tribe leader named Arminius who had been pretending to be allied with the Romans.
I hate to overuse the word “devastating” in this episode, but it’s the only way to describe the Battle of Teuteborg Forest from the point of view of the Romans. Three Roman legions were almost completely wiped out, out of about 28 total legions in the empire. We don’t know exactly how many Roman soldies were killed, but estimates range from 20,000 to 36,000.
The losses were tangible, but the larger consequence of the battle was psychological. The emperor Augustus was genuinely freaked out by the whole thing. He fired his Germanic barbers (no, seriously), and was heard sometimes yelling in his sleep “varus, give me back my legions”.
The psychological effect was so strong that this effectively stopped Roman expansion into Germanic territories for good and left the Germanic areas to be governed by various Germanic tribes, or confederations of Germanic tribes.
That brings us back to the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Early in his reign, we start to see a shift in the Germanic tribes. There’s a little bit of a domino effect happening, as the tribe of the Goths, who had been habitating in modern day Poland, began migrating southward, which put put pressure on other tribes to move, eventually pushing up against Roman borders.
Eventually this resulted in a set of wars…the Marcomannic Wars…that lasted for the better part of Marcus Aurelius’ reign.
We’ll hear more about the Goths in a bit, but for now, what we’re seeing here is a hint of what’s to come for the Roman Empire. The problem of Germanic tribes putting pressure on the borders is only going to get worse for the Roman Empire.
The death of the emperor Marcus Aurelius also marked political problems. His son is memorable only for what a terrible emperor he was (and of course, for his portrayal by Joaquin Phoenix in the movie “Gladiator”). After a few more totally forgettable emperors, we end up with the emperor Septimius Severus. This emperor managed to bring stability to the Roman Empire, but at a cost…literally. In order to ensure loyalty of the legions, he increased the pay of the armies dramatically. This worked in the short term, but it created a dangerous precedent for later emperors. Emperors were often pressured by the army to increase army pay to unrealistic or impossible levels that ultimately lead to serious economic problems such as inflation and/or recession.
And so the stage is set for that historians now call the “Crisis of the 3rd century”. You can see how complicated the situation was since the best word historians could come up with to describe it is simply “Crisis”
So let’s take a second to keep score here, because it’s easier to understand what comes next if you understand the combination of factors working together here
1.The empire is suffering a long term population shortage
2.Germanic tribes are beginning to push up against the northern borders with increasing pressure
3.Finance is becoming a big issue
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What ends up happening over the course of the 3rd century is that all of these factors exacerbate each other, and cause political instability. We get a string of emperors assassinated. In fact, over just a 50 year period in the middle of the century, there are 26 claimants to the throne of emperor. Contrast that with the whole 100 years of the 2nd century, where there were a mere 10 emperors.
Even worse, some of these quote-unquote “emperors” carved out areas of the empire for themselves. At certain points of the 2nd century, the Roman Empire was divided up into up to 3 pieces, all controlled nominally by their own “emperor”.
Remember the Goths? By the mid-3rd century, the Goths begin to cross over the borders of the Roman empire. Whereas before they were a problem because they pushed other Germanic tribes into the Roman borders, now they were themselves becoming a problem. One emperor fell in battle against the Goths. An emperor falling in battle was unprecedented, and is a good sign of how bad things were getting.
As if all of this wasn’t bad enough, yet another existential threat cropped up in the 3rd century. The Eastern borders of the Roman Empire had always been somewhat contentious, as the Romans often battled over key areas such as Mesopotamia with the Parthians who habitated East of the Roman borders. Despite the similarity in name, the Parthians were not Persians. They had taken those areas from the Persian Achaemenid Empire centuries earlier.
The Parthians were a problem for the Roman Empire, but never a serious problem. While they did manage to win some crushing victories against the Romans over the centuries, their threat generall was more of a nuisance than a serious threat. In the 3rd century, the Parthians were defeated by a Persian force, the Sassanids. The Sassanids were far more organized and driven than the Parthians were, and hostilities with Rome burned high during this century. Yet another Roman emperor, Valerian, was caught by the Sassanids in battle. We have differing accounts of what happened to Valerian ranging from “he was let go” to “he ended up getting skinned, and his body filled with straw so it could be used as a trophy to the Sassanid emperor Shapur I. I tend to believe the former, but regardless of what happened to Valerian, the Sassanids were a clear problem for the Romans.
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If all of this sounds chaotic, that’s because it was. All of these problems compounded each other. Any one of them would have been a serious problem. But with all of these problems coming on at the same time, at a time when the Roman Empire was depopulated, the reigning emperors simply could not effectively handle all of these problems. The armies couldn’t be everywhere, and the fact that emperors were consistently getting assassinated by their own troops didn’t help matters.
It would take something dramatically different to fix the problems facing the empire. It would take someone thinking completely outside of the box. That someone…is Diocletian.
I like to joke that Diocletian is my favorite cabbage farmer because he retired to go farm cabbage. But the fact that he did retire…the only emperor ever to retire of his own will…says a lot about this man and the duty he felt to stabilizing the empire.
What he did was recognize that one person headquartered in one location couldn’t run the whole empire. He didn’t even think two people could run the empire. He created the “tetrarchy”…the rule of four. He divided the Roman empire into four parts that roughly corresponded to a Northwest sector, southwest sector, Northeast sector, and southeast sector.
He then appointed 3 co-emperors to rule those areas with him. Two would be junior emperors, and two would be senior emperors, with Diocletian himself being the senior senior emperor.
The idea was that eventually the two senior emperors would abdicate the throne, the junior emperors would take those spots, and appoint two new junior emperors to take their former spots. He also wanted to avoid dynastic issues that would often crop up, so part of his plan was to avoid dynasties, and have emperors appoint new emperors based on merit, not family ties. He even took steps to make sure the emperors kept their word and took some family members as hostage. One of these hostages was the son of the junior emperor in the Northeast, Constantius. The fact that this hostage was Constantine, who later became the sole emperor of the whole empire should tell you how long the tetrarchy ended up lasting.
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Setting up the tetrarchy wasn’t the only thing Diocletian did. He also began political and military reforms that Constantine would continue later during his own reign. These reforms separated political power from military power and made it harder for provincial governors to use an army to take power. They also set up the army in a way that could better handle barbarian incursions into the empire without having to move large legions around.
The strategic theory at play here was “defense in depth” and the basic idea was that there would be a first line of defense that would slow a threat down, which would give a reasonably close second line of defense time to move to the threatened position.
Diocletian retired after about 20 years on the throne. As I hinted, the tetrarchy fell apart pretty much immediately after his abdication, and resulted in a messy civil war among the emperors who were left. Constantine came out on top, and by 325 was the sole ruler of the whole Roman Empire.
So the tetrarchy didn’t last, and there was civil war, but once that settled, Diocletian’s and Constantine’s reforms were effectively a “reset” button for the empire.
This is a good stopping point for this episode, but I wanted to address one more thing before next episode.
If you know anything about Constantine, you might be wondering if I’m going to talk about his conversion to Christianity. This *was* an important event in history, but it didn’t contribute to the downfall of the Roman Empire.
The idea that the Roman Empire’s adoption of Christianity as the state religion contributed to the downfall of the roman Empire was put forward by the 18th century historian Edward Gibbon, who wrote the seminal work “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. Gibbon lived smack dab in the middle of the Enlightenment period, in which many philosophers began questioning religion, and by extension, Christianity. In other words, downplaying religion was popular during the time that Edward Gibbon lived.
The history of Christianity is a fascinating topic in itself that I will be tackling eventually. But for this discussion, it’s enough to know that Christianity was not the cause of the downfall of the Roman Empire.
That’s a wrap for this episode! Tune in next time for the dramatic conclusion to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire! Thanks for listening and don’t forget to subscribe!