Posted on 01/10/2004 8:50:37 PM PST by NYC GOP Chick
Well, whaddya know. It IS political after all.
They used to call it "Free Love", back in the day...
Hmmm. I guess you know you're with a liberal woman if her idea of talking dirty during sex is "Cut my taxes you brute!"
But you're right. Morality isn't solely defined by Christianity. Let's just say that at its nadir, Rome was capable of the depravities described in this article, and that that level of amorality, accompanied by the subsequent decline in social and military unity, contributed substantially to the fall of the Empire. By the time Constantine (and even Diocletian) managed to recover some sense of integrity, there was little left of Glorious Rome.
Not humanity's finest hour.
After Constantine, only one emperor, Julian the Apostate (360-363), was not a Christian. Julian made some vague rumblings about disfavoring Christians, but these were perfunctory, and Julian's reign was rather short in any case. These don't really amount to "attempts" to return to paganism.
By the time Constantine (and even Diocletian) managed to recover some sense of integrity, there was little left of Glorious Rome.
Again, you are too broad. Diocletian's reforms crippled the Roman economy, which had already been weakened by a century of almost continual civil war. But Constantine's reign came at the beginning of the fourth century, and at this point in time Rome was still incomparably mighty and in possession of much of her past glory.
Some historians, most notably Gibbon, have argued that Christianity actually hastened or even caused the fall of the Roman Empire, through a variety of factors, including the economic drain of monasticism, eschatological detachment from secular affairs, and cultural rifts caused by theological strife. It is therefore too simple merely to claim that bad morals and a lack of integrity helped the Empire to fall; paradoxically, it appears that the Roman Empire was strongest during its periods of moral decay.
By the time Constantine began his reign, the Roman military could no longer sustain itself and was forced to hire mercenaries to defend its borders. This contributed to a further weakening of an economy crippled by civil war, and forced the Emperor to institute drastic economic reforms that only delayed the inevitable end. With the confederation of many of the barbarian tribes, and given its dwindling resources, Western Rome could no longer protect its borders. The end was assured by the start of the Fourth Century, although the Empire struggled on after that, even managing some semblance of its former glory whenever it could stop bickering long enough to raise an effective army.
While it is simplistic to attribute the fall of Rome to moral decay, it is simply revisionist to pretend that it didn't play a role. Constantine's reign marked the last flare of the Roman candle before the flame was extinguished permanently.
Most of us call it a bedroom.
Do you remember that now-quaint phrase people used to use to defend gay people -- what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own home is nobody's business? It's outdated now, because it only mentions two partners, it contains the word "adults" in it, and it doesn't include the new "right" to have sex in public!
BTW, I like women 40+ because that's when the become jump-up-and-down horny:)
Yeah, I remember. Seemed like a fine sentiment at the time. Too bad it was only used to (cough) butter us up for full scale debauchery with no limits...
You have done an admirable job of summarizing the military and economic factors leading to the Empire's decline after what Rostovtzeff termed the "Crisis of the Third Century", but you haven't given any indication of what part you believe moral decay played in the collapse of the Western Empire. As I pointed out, many contemporary Romans considered the spread of Christianity to be "moral decay", for the reasons which Gibbon noted - detachment from secular affairs, monasticism, etc.
That calls for a different, more extended case. I'm forced to draw the connection between the moral decay of the Empire and those military and economic factors you cited. And as you can imagine, that is much more difficult and more speculative.
I've never held much truck with Gibbon's assertions, but looking at it objectively, it can certainly be argued that Christianity was a DEstabilizing influence as much as a stabilizing one in Constantinian Rome, since it offended the status quo and demanded a different worldview. As you pointed out, Julian was determined to return Rome to its pagan roots, an ideological u-turn that resulted in even more bloodshed.
Before Constantine? I could argue that the flaccid Roman army resulted from abdication of the obligations of empire, including a strong moral element to bind its far-flung interests. I could also argue that much of the internal strife in the Empire was the consequence of amoral leadership -- generals who betrayed their Emperors, Senators who betrayed their class, Emperors who entertained their restive citizens with blood spectacles. Those arguments are staid and well worn. I'm sure you're familiar with all of them.
But eventually Rome settled into its role as protector of the Word. And it's arguable that the Holy Roman Empire reached corners of the earth that a military conquest never would have.
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