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Decline of the Roman Empire · Acedra
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Decline of the Roman Empire
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0:06
From the Caucuses to the Atlantic and from the Nile to the Scottish Highlands, Roman hegemony stood tall over the Mediterranean world, unrivalled in its dominance and unparalleled in its influence. The Empire boasted an effective political and civic administrative system that allowed it to control its conquered Provinces with relative ease. Yet the ultimate fate of the Roman Empire is known to all, and today we will provide a region-by-region survey of its
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decline. From the era of Constantine the Great to the final fall of the city he founded in 1453, we will explore how each province the Roman Empire controlled at its height was lost. Welcome back to the next instalment of life in the Roman World, in which we will summarize the entire history of the Empire’s territorial shrinkage.
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Despite Rome’s seemingly unassailable position as arbiter of the Mediterranean during the first centuries of the common era, it soon became hampered by constant infighting, religious discord, corruption, reliance on mercenaries, collapse of trade and finance, assassinations, usurpations, and foreign invasions. For example, during the Crisis of the Third Century, which began in 235 CE, there were 26 civil wars in a 49-year time frame,
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resulting in the collapse of the financial system. Over 800 years later, between 1071 and 1081, there were eight major revolts. All of these factors made the defence of the empire exceptionally difficult and left opportunities for entities both internal and external to take advantage of the growing void left behind by Roman control. The first loss of Roman territory occurred early in the Empire’s lifespan in 9 AD, when the provinces of Germania were abandoned following the
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disastrous defeat at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in that same year. Although Germanicus conducted an effective campaign of revenge and managed to retrieve the lost eagles and avenge the fallen, the frontier was established on the Rhine and remained for the next several centuries. Despite the issues the empire faced during the Crisis of the Third century, it is remarkable in many ways that more provinces were not abandoned until the death throes of the
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Western half of the Empire. Whether it was the constant invasions of the Franks, Alamanni, Goths, and Huns, the ever-present threat of the Sasanian Empire, plagues, the secession of the so-called Gallic Empire, the Empire did not break. It was ultimately able to retake any territory which had been temporarily lost to the invaders and secessionists.. By the fifth century, the pitfalls of the Empire’s crushing military burden became apparent.
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The Western half of the Empire had a standing army of approximately 250,000 troops, drawn from a 5th-century population of around 20 million. This army was divided into two groups. One was the frontier soldiers, the riparienses and limitanei, who numbered around 135,000. The other was the interior units, the comitatenses, numbering around 115,000. However, according to modern demographers, the actual number of field armies totalled around 65,000 due to the poor return from
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recruitment and conscription drives. The lack of a regular army forced the Roman commanders to turn to the barbarians on their borders. The reliance on barbarian mercenaries had roots set almost 200 years before the collapse of the Western Empire. Reigning between 253 and 268 CE, Emperor Gallienus banned senators from army commands, and most civilians lost all experience of and the taste for military life. The military became a caste apart, recruited no
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longer from the cities but from less Romanized border peoples such as the Illyrians. Later, even these border peoples were supplemented by non-Roman auxiliaries. Military service with Rome, sustained by an all-providing bureaucracy, attracted many barbarian peoples as a path to a better life. In addition to wages, uniforms, and weapons, the foreign troops were also furnished with cavalry horses reared on state stud farms with rations of bread, wine, meat and oil, and
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fodder for the horses. The soldiers’ daily ration of approximately a kilo of bread, over 600 grams of pork, a litre of wine and seven centilitres of oil was all supplied by an extensive and effective network of government food stores. This cushioned existence reflected the habits of a civilized, sedentary, and high-consuming population, which would have appeared as paradise to Europe’s
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semi-nomadic Germanic and Slavic peoples. To them, serving the empire was easier and more attractive than life on the other side of the frontier. After the disaster at Adrianople in 378, populations of dubious loyalty, like the Visigoths, were enrolled in the Roman armies. This trend saw a major decline in army discipline. If the barbarians never accepted Rome’s draconian discipline, Roman soldiers need not accept it either. Writing around 400,
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even worse, Roman armies too often fought each other for supremacy and the right to rule, crippling the already plummeting system. “The Roman world is collapsing… Fighting among ourselves costs us more than fighting our enemies.” So wrote St Jerome of Bethlehem in 396. The internal power struggles crippled the empire’s chances of repelling the encroaching barbarian hordes that were about to cross the frontiers. A crucial weakness of the Roman Empire was its
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lack of an accepted system of succession. In theory, the empire was not a monarchy, but Emperors exploited dynastic feeling where they could, even if they had incompetent heirs. Moreover, armies continued to proclaim Emperors to the end. In 407, troops in Britain followed the pretender Constantine III to Gaul, thereby stripping Britain of its last troops. The two most capable West Roman generals of the 5th century, Stilicho and Aetius, both fell victim to palace
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coups. Personal feuds between generals, encouraged by the empress Galla Placidia, led to the conquest of Africa by the Vandals. Roman society struggled in the West during the waning years of its life. Despite the government’s efforts to meet its objectives despite the constant obstacles it faced, Roman society retreated into its shell in an endeavour to escape from the state, while still enjoying the advantages it supplied. For the poor and homeless
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who were desperate for protection, turning to the Church became the only source of refuge. Under the ruling of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, clerics were forbidden to enter the following of a lay patron, which is when an ecclesiastical office is established by private means. Still, there was no distinction which forbade support in the contrary direction. During the fourth and fifth centuries, there was a marked rise in the number of clergy members.
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This is likely because the lands of the Church were subject to taxes, but the clergy were exempt from taxation and military service alike. It is during this time that the Church took definitive shape as a structure within the framework of the Roman state. Its hierarchy was modelled on the civil administrative structure so that each province had its metropolitan bishop and every civitas its bishop. The soldiers and the civilian officials now had as
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their counterpart the soldiers in the cohort of Christ, otherwise known as the clergy. Over time, the Church became a patron of the poor. Instead of military service as a way to escape homelessness, the Church became the alternative for the poor, contributing to the reliance on forcing the Roman government to turn to conscription or mercenaries. Despite its theoretical size, the standing army
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of the West was unable to stop the advance of the Alans, Vandals, Suebi, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths. Around 405, an unexpectedly harsh winter caused the Rhine to freeze, allowing hordes of barbarian peoples to cross into Roman territory. Gaul was ravaged, Rome was sacked, and despite Constantine III’s efforts to regain control, the west was ultimately unable to stop their advance. The provinces of Lusitania and Hispania were occupied by the Alans and Suebi, establishing themselves
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as semi-independent kingdoms under Imperial governance, much to Rome’s displeasure. Britain, having lost its entire garrison when it left with Constantine III, was defenceless against the heavy Saxon raids. By 410, Britain had seen the last of Roman law, and the populace reverted to their native customs and armed themselves. Over the next sixty years, the West continued through its gradual collapse, unable to stem the tide. Gallia Narbonensis was conquered by
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the Visigoths in 426. Germania Superior fell in 475 after being conquered by the Franks. The provinces of Raetia, Noricum, Alpes Graiae et Poeninae, Alpes Maritimae, Alpes Cottiae, Gallia Lugdunensis, Hispania Baetica, and Hispania Ulterior all fell officially in 476 after the total collapse of the West. Raetia was conquered by the Ostrogoths. Noricum and the three Alpes provinces were absorbed by Odaecar when he deposed the Romulus Augustulus in 476,
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thereby ending the reign of the last Western Emperor and bringing about the end of the Western Empire. With these losses, the Western Roman Empire ended, and the provinces which it had controlled for around 400 years with it. In the East, the Roman Empire continued, experiencing periods of growth and decay in equal measure. Though the term Byzantine is a modern invention given to this empire, the inhabitants called themselves Romans throughout their history,
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and they regarded their empire as the seamless continuation of the Roman Empire. To that end, they attempted to reconquer what the west had lost, in an effort to restore Roman hegemony. Under Justinian I 527-565, the Romans regained much of the territory lost when the western empire collapsed and succeeded in establishing footholds across the Mediterranean to ensure they remained under Eastern Roman control. Justinian’s famed general Belisaurius had
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reconquered northern Africa, Sicily, the Italian peninsula, and Dalmatia during the Vandalic war of 533 and the Gothic War of 535. Some of these retaken western provinces remained a part of the Eastern Roman Empire for several centuries, while others fell much sooner. Spain was reconquered by the Visigoths in 624, and North Africa fell to the Muslim conquests in 698 when Carthage was destroyed once more. Under constant pressure internally and externally,
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the Romans were unable to maintain their footholds in the provinces of old. In the east, affairs were not much better. The Muslim expansion was unstoppable following the exhausting Byzantine-Sasanian wars of 609-628, also known as the Last Great War of Antiquity. This war cost the lives of an estimated 200,000 people on both sides and crippled their economies and material resources. Eastern Rome barely had a chance to recover before the newly united Arabs
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under Islam washed over the near Eastern provinces. The Levant, which included Syria and Palestine, and Mesopotamia, fell during the first Muslim expansion period between 634 to 637 respectively. Egypt fell not long after in 646, despite Roman counterattacks to retake their breadbasket, and Armenia was conquered in 661. From the 7th to 11th centuries, Eastern Rome experienced a “Byzantine Renaissance”. Despite 47 different revolts and uprisings,
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the Byzantine-Arab wars between 780-1180, the Bulgarian Wars between 680-1355, and the East-West Schism in 1054, the Empire saw significant growth in education, learning, philosophy, land reform, art, construction, and religion. Unfortunately, this could not stem the steady loss of territory to invading forces. Corsica fell in the early 8th century to Ostrogoth and Lombard raids, Sicily fell in 965 to the Muslims, and Sardinia broke apart in the mid 11th century. Southern
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Italy, which had been under Eastern Roman control for five centuries up until that point, fell to the Norman invasions by 1071. By the time Sicily fell, the golden age for the Medieval Byzantine Empire had ended, whose Doukid dynasty was fighting a losing battle against the rising power of the Seljuk Turks. Following the significant Roman defeat at Manzikert in 1071, Anatolia was open to the Turks. Cappadocia was conquered in 1073. Lesser Armenia fell a few years
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later in 1075. Cilicia, located on the southern border of modern Türkiye, rebelled against the Romans in 1080. All that remained of Asia minor was a strip of territory near Constantinople. It was during the 12th to 15th centuries that truly saw the doom and decline of Eastern Rome. This was a time when a number of military nobles carved out more or less independent domains for themselves, which added further to the general disorder coursing through the Empire.
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Everything that mattered happened in Europe, and what happened was a series of catastrophes for Byzantium. The internal political history was a sequence of coups d’états, beginning with the seizing of power by Andronikos I, followed by the weak reigns of the Angelos emperors, who had a penchant for blinding and imprisoning their own brothers. Under these conditions, the empire could not prevent the disintegration of
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its Balkan domains. In 1181, rebel Serbs and Hungarians raided Macedonia and Bulgaria, which regained the independence they had lost for nearly two centuries. Henceforth, Eastern Rome had no access to the Adriatic except by the coast of Albania, whose princes, while independent, remained loyal to the Serbs for fear of expansion. Then, in 1202, Vukan of Serbia recognized the supremacy of the Pope in Rome over the Patriarch in Constantinople. In 1204, Kaloyan of Bulgaria
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even received his crown from Pope Innocent III. Rome hadn’t just lost its territories, it was also losing its political and religious prominence. In 1185, the Normans of Sicily went back on the offensive and succeeded in taking and plundering Thessalonica, the second city of the Empire. Although they were pushed back, they were quickly followed by the Third Crusade in 1189-1190, in the course of which Barbarossa, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, came close to attacking
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Constantinople itself. The only territory that the Eastern Roman Empire lost during the Third Crusade was Cyprus, conquered by King Richard of England. However, the idea of the Byzantines as the ‘sick man’ of Europe was henceforth rooted in the West, and reappeared when the Crusaders of 1204 decided to sack Constantinople. The last decade of the twelfth century had seen an acceleration in the internal dismemberment of the empire. Everything worked towards this, from the
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dispersal of tax resources, exemptions, and grants of land to the sovereign’s relations and allies, to the provincialisation of the economy and culture. Before 1204, it was clear that whole regions of the empire had broken away from it to a greater or lesser extent, both in Europe and in Asia Minor. Theodore Mangaphas in Philadelphia and Leo Sgouros at Corinth and Argos behaved like minor kings. The basic principle that had never been seriously questioned in Eastern Rome– namely,
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the sacred unity of political power– became gradually hazier in people’s minds, because the new dynasties had nothing in common with the claimants to the throne in previous centuries. While the general Bardas Skleros used his command to acquire supreme authority back in 976, Sgouros aimed only at carving out for himself an independent ‘principality’ in central Greece. Following the sack of Constantinople and its occupation by the Latin invaders of Western
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Europe, the administrative structure of the Byzantine State went into exile, forming the successor states of the Empire of Nicaea, the Despotate of Epirus, and the Empire of Trebizond. In 1261, the Nicaean Empire would eventually go on to recapture Constantinople, starting a short-lived revival of Roman fortunes. Before long, civil wars plagued the crippled empire between 1321 and 1347, sabotaging the manpower and economic output it
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was already incapable of. These civil wars also allowed the exploitation of the Empire’s fringe territories by the emerging Second Serbian Empire, which conquered Thessaly and Epirus in 1348. Unfortunately for the descendants of the Romans, their fortunes only went from bad to worse. The emerging Ottoman Empire crossed into Europe via Gallipoli, following a devastating earthquake that forced the inhabitants to abandon the site. The Ottoman Sultan Orhan conquered the fortress
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in 1354, giving them access to the Balkans and wider Europe. The Ottomans defeated and conquered the Second Serbian Empire, subjugating it as a vassal. Following the inconclusive battle of Kosovo in 1389, which left Ottoman resistance debilitated, the Balkans became dominated by the Ottomans. Within ten years, Roman Thrace fell, including the city of Adrianople in 1369. Eastern Rome was now surrounded on all sides by an enemy that wanted to conquer it.
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The final century of Eastern Rome’s survival was achieved largely through effective diplomacy and, fortunately, timed events. The Ottomans continued their expansion into Europe, taking Thessalonica in 1387. Sultan Bayezid I besieged Constantinople in 1394, but the city was spared due to the warlord Timur, who defeated and killed Bayezid in battle in 1402. Eventually, Sultan Mehmed II besieged Constantinople in 1453. Centuries of
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Eastern Roman decline had allowed the Ottomans to conquer their neighbours and isolate Rome from any remaining strengths it had. Though the provinces had mostly been lost due to military action from foreign powers, the internal stability of the Roman Empire in the east and west was plagued by infighting, incompetence, and misfortune. Had any number of events played out differently, the Roman civilization might have survived longer. Conclusion
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Instead, on the 29th of May 1453, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire was captured. The defenders had been made up of Genoese mercenaries, Venetian volunteers, and retinues from the Papal States, the Kingdom of Sicily, and the Crown of Aragon. They made a valiant but fruitless effort to halt the Ottoman army, which greatly outnumbered them. There, in the streets of the city founded over a thousand years earlier, Emperor Constanine XI cast aside his crown and
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purple regalia and led his remaining soldiers in a final charge against the Ottoman lines, perishing in the streets along with his men. With his death, 2206 years of uninterrupted Roman presence in the Mediterranean came to an end. More videos on the life and society of the ancient Romans are on the way. To make sure you don’t miss it, please consider liking, commenting, and sharing – it helps immensely. Our videos would not be possible without our
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