When did the decline of Rome really become apparent?
The reign of the Emperor Commodus (180–193) was bad enough in that Commodus was far more interested in gladiatorial events than anything to do with real military matters, but things only became worse with the turn of the century. One emperor after another deposed his predecessor, usually with the help of the Praetorian Guard, and none of them were men of great ability. There was a very surprising period of seven months when the empire was ruled by a man whose father had been a slave—this was a true anomaly—but this entire time was marked, in general, by mediocre leaders and an increasing sense of hopelessness.
THE MID-CENTURY CRISIS
Was there any time prior to the fifth century when Rome could have collapsed?
Yes. In the middle part of the third century, both the city of Rome and the empire showed severe signs of strain. Perhaps the worst moment was when the Roman Emperor Valerian (ruled 250–260) was captured by Shapur, king of the Sassanid dynasty in Iran. The event was commemorated in a number of sculptures and monuments in Iran (some of them exist today), and the shame felt by the Roman public was very great.
The Sassanids were a formidable foe, but they could never have threatened the integrity of the Roman Empire on their own; it was the simultaneous attack of tribal peoples along the vulnerable Danube River frontier that really accelerated the danger. Even then, had Rome in 260 been the Rome of two centuries earlier, it could have responded to all threats. As it was, currency devaluation combined with a weakness in the legions led to conditions that made a general collapse possible.
How did Rome make it through the crisis of the third century?
Neither the Sassanids nor the northern tribal peoples pushed their advantage strongly enough, and by about 275 Rome had steadied herself. A new emperor, Aurelian, was the first to appreciate that the city of Rome needed new defenses, and the Aurelian Wall was completed by 280. Other Italian cities were fortified, and by about 290 the empire had taken on a stronger, though highly defensive, look.
Then, too, a new emperor, Dicoletian, set a new set of rules and regulations. To us today, they seem extreme, as when he decreed that men must practice the trade of their fathers and that men and women must live in the towns of their birth. But to an empire that was on the verge of disintegration, these reforms made sense. Dicoletian, too, was the first emperor to acknowledge that the empire was too large for one person to manage; during his reign, there were two Augustuses and two Caesars, making for a total of four men who ruled.
Which is the correct name: Byzantium, Constantinople, or Istanbul?
In truth, they are all correct. Originally a small Greek fishing village on the west side of the Bosporus, the city became known as Constantinople after Constantine settled there; following its capture by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, it became known as Istanbul. All three names refer to the same place: one of the most beautiful and strategic places in the world.
Constantine decided to settle in the Greek fishing village because of its great strategic location. Even though the area had witnessed warfare all the way back to the Greeks and Persians, no one had ever fortified the area on the left, or west, side of the Bosporus. Constantine erected the first set of walls, which soon had to be knocked down and replaced, as the population grew.
What else was distinctive about Rome at the beginning of the fourth century?
Many people, including Diocletian, recognized that the city of Rome was no longer the heart of the Roman Empire. People still spoke of Rome with veneration, but the major public business had languished and quite a few merchants had picked up and moved. Dicoletian spent little time in Rome, but it was left to his successor to make the true break and establish a new imperial capital.
The Column of Constantine was erected in 330 C.E. when the name of the city was changed from Byzantium to Constantinople, the new heart of the Roman Empire.
Constantine I (ruled 306–337) emerged from a four-way contest to become the new emperor. Born in Britain, he was the son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, and he carried that tension throughout life. We have no doubt that he won the Battle of the Milvan Bridge (in 306) and that his men carried some Christian symbols into that battle; whether he actually dreamed that “In this sign shall you conquer” is another matter. Constantine did become the new leader, however, and he declared that there had to be a second capital.
How soon did Constantinople rival Rome?
Constantine took a fishing village of 800 inhabitants and turned it into a city of 50,000 people. A century later, there may have been as many as a quarter million people in Constantinople, and the number just continued to rise. There were people, however, who insisted that Rome would always be the center of the Roman Empire, and the contest between the two cities lasted for many years. The single most important advantage enjoyed by Constantinople was that the emperors—almost to a man—preferred to live there or at Ravenna, a city on the northeast Italian coast, rather than Rome.
Constantine was not—to the best of our knowledge—a likeable or admirable person, but few of the Roman emperors were. What matters is that he gave new life to an empire which had almost died and that his efforts prolonged its life for another 150 years in the western section and almost 1,000 years in the eastern.
BARBARIAN TRIBES AND THE FALL OF ROME
Doesn’t everyone come from a distant place at some point in their development?
Yes. It is only in retrospect that some people can call themselves “civilized” and others “barbarians.” If you trace the history of almost any people on earth far enough, you will eventually discover a time when they were the wild men, the outlanders, or the barbarians. For example, the French and Germans, who are considered among the most civilized of today’s peoples, were wandering tribal peoples at the time when the Roman Empire fell. Similarly, the proud Manchu rulers of China, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had previously been among the far-farers on the outside of the Wall of China. There is something especially “wild” about the centuries that followed the fall of Rome, however, a time when the barbarians outnumbered civilized peoples by a large margin.
Who were the first of the “wild people from far off”?
Although the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Burgundians can all lay a claim, the first truly wild folk to emerge were the Huns, who came to northeastern Europe in the first decades of the fifth century C.E. Very little is known about the early Huns, other than the fact that they were a Central Asian people who migrated westward, most likely in search of better pastures for their animals.
As soon as they arrived in the Danube Basin, the Huns sowed panic among the other tribal peoples of that region. Whether it was actual warfare or just rumors of conflict, the Huns seemed so fierce that the Ostrogoths practically begged the Roman Empire for protection. Quite a few Ostrogoths even entered the empire, with some joining the faltering legions. But the Huns became truly terrifying following the rise of Attila.
Who was Attila, and how did he become so powerful?
He was one of the two primary sons of the chief of the Huns, and he fought a long, protracted conflict with his brother to become “King.” Once he did so, however, Attila truly lived up to that title. He led the Huns in increasingly ambitious and daring raids, even threatening the city of Constantinople. Attila did not really wish to conquer the Byzantine capital; it was far more profitable to extract tribute from the Byzantines.
By 440 C.E., Attila had turned his attention to the Western Roman Empire. The farther he drove into its confines, the more weakness he detected. Attila was not as successful in extracting tribute from Rome, but he possessed excellent intelligence about the city and its people. He was even in contact with General Aeitius,