THE REASONS FOR THE FALL OF ROME

Books? Well, I'd start with The Alexiad of Anna Comnena. It's a history and political puff-piece chronicling the life and reign of her father, the Emperor Alexius I in the late 11th century.

It's a fun read (if you get a good translation) and by itself shows that an awful lot of what people think is true about the Middle Ages is false: it's a history full of allusions to both Scripture and classical Greco-Roman mythology, written by a woman, and showing the manifest self-understanding of the Empire centered at Constantinople as the Roman Empire (as under the reforms of Diocletian, the Emperor is title both Emperor and Augustus, and 'sub-emperors' are title Caesars, Comnena refers to its citizens as "Romans" even though they all spoke Greek).

Beyond that, the most accessible thing are the writings of Fr. John Romanides and his followers. Most of them are available on the website www.romanity.org. By and large, this is the only modern source to take the approach of not making a distinction between 'Roman' and 'Byzantine'. He has an odd agenda, in some ways the complete reverse of Gibbon's, to reclaim the 'glories of Rome' for what he regards as its living continuation: the Orthodox Church. (There is an odd sense in which this last idosycratic view, if not strictly true, at least supportable: Orthodox canon law draws heavily on Roman civil law, notably the Novellae of Justinian, and the Orthodox Church is home to one institution that still functions under an Imperial charter: Mount Athos.)

We should have a few more good centuries since we have had only one Civil War and have haven’t yet conquered our neighbors except culturally.

Of course, limiting the power of the dependent class will become even more critical. Caesar rode it to power becoming so powerful a threat to the status quo that its defenders killed him and unleased the wars resulting in the empire.

The institutionalization of the payoff to the lumpenproletariat ate away the vitals of the City morally and economically. Only by exploiting the rest of the world could the loot be raised while becoming a permanent interest for war and expansion.

In Rome probably a majority of the citizens were on the dole and the whole society was supported by slavery. We are not in that situation so there is a limit at which government can extract and redistribute. As far as federal taxes go the number oscillates around 19-20% over the last century.

Adversity employs great talents; prosperity renders them useless and carries the inept, the corrupted wealthy and the wicked to the top

May they bear in mind that virtue often contains the seeds of tyranny

May they bear in mind that it is neither gold nor even a multitude of arms that sustains a state but its morals

May each of them keep in his house, in a corner of this field, next to his workbench, next to his plow, his gun, his sword, and his bayonet

May they all be soldiers

May they bear in mind that in circumstances where deliberation is possible, the advice of old men is good but that in moments of crisis youth is generally better informed that its elders

Denis Diderot

Apostrophe to the Insurgents, 1782

When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing." - Teddy Roosevelt

Amazing - very insightful... Thanks for sharing Aunt B.

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