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The Roman Empire - Episode 6 - The Fall Of The Roman Empire (History Documentary)
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Jun 4, 2025
Rome's glory had shone for a thousand years. The Roman Empire had united all lands from Spain to Syria, created more prosperity, more stability and more peace than the Western world had ever seen - nothing lasts forever. In the 3rd Century AD, civil war engulfed the empire. Chaos and corruption undermined it from within and from every direction Rome's enemies gathered for the kill. By the end of the 4th century, the Roman Empire was nothing more than a fragile military machine that was no match for the invading barbarians. The inevitable occurred in 410 AD when Rome, the historic heart of the Empire, was sacked. As the Vandals stormed the city they were shocked at what they found. Gone were the crowds of the Golden Age. An eerie silence greeted the warriors as they wandered the same streets that their ancestors had walked down in chains 150 years earlier. The inhabitants of Rome, with their empire crumbling, had been chased away, the glory that had been Rome's was of another day.
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0:00
Rome's glory shone for a thousand years
0:08
But nothing lasts forever. In the third century A.D., civil war engulfed the empire
0:16
Chaos and corruption undermined it from within. And from every direction, its enemies gathered for the kill
0:23
Panic spread as terrified Romans sensed the apocalypse at hand. Rome rose to the pinnacle of its extraordinary power and glory in the 200 years after Christ
1:04
It grew until the empire united all lands from Spain to Syria and from Scotland to Egypt
1:11
More prosperity, more stability and more peace than the Western world had ever seen
1:17
It was in 190 A.D. with the mad Emperor Commodus that it all started to fall apart
1:27
Crazy emperors were nothing new to the Roman Empire, so when Commodus started fighting as a gladiator
1:32
and walking around town dressed like Hercules, Romans weren't too worried. They simply assumed he'd be assassinated like so many before him
1:43
He was. Then waited for reason and order to return. It didn't
1:51
Civil war broke out as legion fought legion, each trying to install its general as emperor
2:00
Anarchy. Romans yearned for one of the great emperors of the past to take control
2:11
Julius Caesar. An Augustus. A Hadrian. Instead, they got the likes of Elagabalus
2:22
proclaimed emperor by the Third Legion on May 16, 218 AD. Elagabalus was a 14-year-old transvestite from Syria
2:34
brought up to worship the sun. At 17, he married a male charioteer named Hierocles
2:44
who publicly whipped him. It wasn't the only bizarre ceremony to invade the imperial court
2:52
In honor of the sun, Elagabulus sometimes walked backwards through the city
2:58
carrying a large black stone. Romans looked on, stupefied. When he finally announced he wanted to be castrated, it was the last straw
3:09
His own palace guard killed him as he sat on the toilet, then threw his body in the Tiber
3:17
Romans wondered how their great empire could have fallen to such a shameful state of affairs
3:29
Some believed it was the long-awaited fulfillment of the Sibylline Oracles, a series of apocalyptic prophecies that had haunted Rome for centuries
3:38
And on thee one day shall come, O haughty Rome, a deserved blow from heaven
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You will be plundered and destroyed, and with wailing and gnashing of teeth you will pay
3:57
And you, daughters of Rome, clothed in gold and luxury, drunk with the attention of your
4:09
boors, you shall be made a slave and a because men forgot the good and gave themselves
4:16
to greed and unrighteous living. But there was nothing mystical about the chaos of the third century
4:28
Quite simply, the empire had become unmanageable. Emperors could no longer cope with the monster Rome had become
4:37
We tend to get a picture of Rome, particularly through the movies
4:41
as being dominated by a bunch of kooks. Yes, Nero was disturbed
4:46
Yes, Caligula was an extremely unpleasant person to be around, and Commodus liked being a gladiator and a beast hunter
4:53
Elagabalus liked dressing up in funny clothes and dancing around his pet rock
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The average Roman emperor is a bureaucrat, is a man who's able to balance the different demands
5:05
of the major political constituencies within his empire, the army, the guard, the population of the city of Rome
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the Senate and the palace. keeping those interests working in concert with each other so he can stay alive
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After Elagabalus, the best efforts of a succession of hard-working emperors were all in vain
5:31
Political power was concentrated in too few hands. The wealthy were forgetting the old democratic ideals
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balancing the power of rulers with the needs of ordinary citizens. Rome had turned its back on the common man
5:56
The ancestors of Roman peasants like Gaius led humble but dignified lives as small farmers
6:04
But slave-owning aristocrats had commandeered their land and evicted them. Destitute families flooded into the city
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swelling the ranks of sweatshop workers and the urban poor. Gaius grew up in Rome doing menial jobs and a lot of drinking
6:28
Like millions of poor Romans, he lived on welfare handouts of grain and mindless distraction
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Lots of it. The proletariat are idle, lazy, and devote their whole life to drink, gambling, brothels, shows and chariot races
6:49
Their temple, their dwelling, their meeting place, in fact the centre of all their desires, is the Circus Maximus
6:58
They talk about nothing else. Ammianus. By the third century AD, the number of days devoted to games had risen from a handful
7:16
to a staggering 170 each year. People became obsessed by these games by watching races by watching gladiatorial events by watching whatever it is that was put on for their amusement I think that often people say that that what happening to the modern world
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We're more interested in sport, more interested in watching games than we are in working
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But I think it puts it in some perspective if you understand how far the Romans went
7:48
We've got a long, long way to go. So being a couch potato now is a lot different than being a Colosseum potato 2,000 years ago
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Intent on distracting themselves, most Romans didn't notice the social fabric of their empire shredding all around them
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Rome's sense of community had disappeared. The elite were increasingly isolated from the poor
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They are greedy. Their language is foul and senseless. The manners of the poor have decayed completely
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They're quarrelsome and make disgusting noises by snorting loudly through their noses
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Ammianus. Upper-class Romans could ill afford their disdain. Gaius would die in squalor and oblivion
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But his children and grandchildren would never forget how Rome had shut them out
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Educated Romans were turning their backs on everything to do with old Rome, not just the poor
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The East, ancient, mysterious and exotic, seemed much more enticing. wealthy Romans headed off to see the sites of Egypt
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the world's first tourist boom had begun bored local officials were forced to cater to Roman aristocrats
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on senatorial junkets Lucius Mammus, a Roman senator in a position of considerable importance and honor
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is sailing up the Nile from Alexandria to see the sites receive him in grand style
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and see to it that at the usual points lodgings are prepared and landing facilities completed
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Also, provide furniture for the lodgings, the special food for the feeding of the crocodiles
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whatever is needed for the labyrinth, offerings, sacrifices, all the usual things
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In general, do everything possible to please them. Romans marveled at the wonders of Egypt
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and like tourists in centuries to come, scratched graffiti to record their visits
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I, Palladius of Hermopolis, a judge, saw and was absolutely amazed. I, Colonel Januarius, was here with my daughter
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and we marveled at this place. unique unique i only curse myself for not being able to understand the hieroglyphs
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egypt was a land of magic and mystery it had the pyramids it had hieroglyphs it had the nile
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And Romans, they went to Egypt much more often in fantasy, in pictures
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by bringing the wild animals of Egypt from Egypt into Rome, hippopotamuses, crocodiles
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But some of them, probably on lazy culture trips, went as far as they could, right to the boundaries of Ethiopia
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As travelers abroad marveled at the mysteries of Egypt, Romans back home were hungry for their own taste of the mysterious East
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A luxury trade in expensive foreign goods flourished. There is this exotica that the rich and wealthy came to expect
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Perhaps one of the most startling examples would be spices. They came from the Far East, from the islands of Indonesia
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Even more than that, we've got a guide written for shippers up the Red Sea
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on how to cross over using the monsoon to India to pick up goods
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And it tells you what you can get in the Yemen, at Bombay, on the southern tip of India
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where there may very well have been a colony of Roman citizens. The Roman delight in far-flung places was not reciprocated
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As Rome thrilled to the exotic east, the exotic east was starting to hate Rome's guts
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In the provinces and periphery of empire, resentment festered. The great Roman orator Cicero had foreseen it all
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Words cannot express, gentlemen, how bitterly we will be hated among foreign nations
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because of the outrageous conduct of the men we have sent to govern them
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All the provinces are complaining about Roman greed and Roman injustice. I remind you, gentlemen, Rome will not be able to hold out against the whole world
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I do not mean against its power and arms in war, but against its groans and tears and lamentations
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From the beginning, Rome had built its empire by conquest and force of arms
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In the early days of empire, there had been real benefits to being defeated by Rome
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Citizenship, civil rights, trade and prosperity. But by the 3rd century A.D., those benefits were evaporating
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Citizenship was giving way to slavery. Peace and prosperity replaced by shameless exploitation
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And for all the wealth that Rome took from Asia, three times as much shall Asia take from Rome
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visiting upon her her accursed arrogance. And for every slave in a Roman house, I swear
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20 Romans will one day be sold into the most wretched slavery
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Rome was sitting on a powder keg of poverty and resentment. In April 248 AD, the Emperor Philip staged the Millennium Games
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Rome was a thousand years old and celebrating its birthday in the only way it knew how With a grandiose spectacle of ritual races and bloodletting
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As Romans celebrated, barbarian armies hammered the empire's frontiers. Rebellions were breaking out in the provinces
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With their world collapsing into chaos, the Roman thirst for macabre distraction grew
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The death toll from the Millennium Festival was spectacular even by Roman standards
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A thousand gladiators and hundreds of exotic animals were killed. Leopards, lions, elephants, giraffes, tigers, hippos, and even a rhinoceros
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Noisy crowds paraded statues of the gods through the streets. Priests heaped offerings in front of the temples
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praying for a return of Rome's good fortune. Nature itself seemed to be conspiring against the Roman Empire
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Climatic changes in Central Asia were freezing the high plateaus and forcing its nomadic peoples to migrate
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Shut out of the Chinese lowlands, they had no option but to move west
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As they headed for Europe, they pushed all the tribes in their path further west as well
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In the 3rd century, wave after wave of uprooted peoples were pushed up against Rome's northeastern frontier
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Goths, Sloths, Vandals and more. In 259 AD, Persians attacked
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Rallying to the empire's defense, the Emperor Valerian marched his legions hundreds of miles to confront them
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Weakened by illness and exhaustion, they were massacred and the emperor captured
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Eager to humiliate the emperor to the maximum, the Persian king used Valerian as a stepping stool to mount his horse
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When Valerian died in captivity, the Persians skinned him and hung his hide in a temple for all to see
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Rome's humiliation was complete. Dearest Mother, my greetings
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I just want you to know that I finally arrived safe and sound in Alexandria after four days travel
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I miss you all already. Tell Io that if he wants to join the army, he should come here
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Everybody seems to be joining the army. As Isis wrote to her mother from Egypt
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the disaster of Valerian's defeat had sparked panic throughout the empire. There was a furious recruitment drive
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By the year 300, there were almost half a million Roman soldiers
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and the legions were still growing. The only way to maintain this gigantic military machine was taxation
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Taxes rose and inflation spiralled. Roman currency, the denarius, was progressively devalued
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Once again, ordinary Romans bore the brunt. The ordinary person in the late Roman Empire could expect to be taxed more efficiently, more harshly, more often, and more consistently than ever before
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Likewise, people realized that in order to safeguard themselves, their families, their livelihoods, that they should join the state
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So there's an enormous competition to join the army and join the bureaucracy
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all of which confer substantial taxation privileges and immunities. Taxation would be less brutal if the burden were shared equally by all
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It is not. Tributes due from the rich are extorted from the poor
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and the weaker bear the burden of the stronger. Ordinary people are being crushed by the weight of taxes
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What more can I say? The situation is shameful and disastrous. Salve
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Beset by enemies without and turmoil within, the Empire tried desperately to tighten its grip
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Along with the army, the whole apparatus of imperial power began to swell
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Bureaucracies multiplied. The people who oversaw the postal system, the speculatores, had become the world's first full-fledged intelligence operation
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Spies were everywhere, reporting any signs of rebellion in the provinces. emperors were obsessed with maintaining control
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Rome was moving slowly but surely towards the totalitarian regimes that would preside over its final collapse
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in 285 AD realizing the empire was becoming bloated and top-heavy the emperor Diocletian embarked on reforms to streamline it
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He split the imperial bureaucracies into two, two linked empires, two emperors and two armies
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He froze prices, putting the brakes on runaway inflation, and banned a subversive cult called Christianity
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In the short term, Diocletian's reforms were astonishingly successful. Romans breathed the sigh of relief
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as peace and order once again reigned in the empire. Certain the Roman world was back on track
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Diocletian did something no Roman emperor had ever done. He retired and lived quietly to be an old man
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But the peace didn't last long. By the 4th century, no amount of bureaucratic restructuring could cope with the class conflicts
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and the political infighting tearing the empire apart. If Rome was to survive, it needed more than a sane administrator like Diocletian
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It needed a ferocious and all-powerful ruler. It was about to get one
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On October 26, 312 A.D., rival Roman armies massed outside the city, waiting to do battle
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At the head of one was a young commander called Constantine He knew the next day a river of Roman blood would flow
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He also knew that if he lost, it was all over. His claim to the empire certainly, and probably, his life
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Constantine looked up into the sky. He saw a cross of light that seemed to burn itself into the heavens
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And above it the words, In hoc signo vinces, By this sign you will conquer
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He had crosses painted on the shields of his troops. The next day, at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge
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he smashed the armies of his rival, Maxentius. No sooner was Constantine installed as emperor
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than he repealed many of Diocletian's reforms, including his ban on Christianity
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But he went even further, declaring himself a Christian. Romans were stunned
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Most thought Christianity was just another weird Eastern sect. Suddenly their new emperor had declared himself a cult member
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They thought they had another lunatic on their hands. They didn't. Constantine cleverly saw how Christianity could unify an empire coming apart at the seams
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Unlike Rome's pagan religion, it preached discipline, obedience, and only one God
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Constantine's one of the most dynamic figures in Roman history. He presented himself as a new Moses, leading his people to a promised land
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But I think he saw himself being guided by the hand of a god
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And after all, it's one god who's in charge, just as there's one emperor who's going to be in charge
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We're getting rid of this old system of multiple emperors under Diocletian
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and going back to the system where one man is calling the shots
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Christianity resonates with Constantine's view of himself. Under Constantine, Roman unity was reborn
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but there wasn't much that was Roman about it. Constantine grew up in the Balkans in Eastern Europe
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and the imperial city of Trier, Germany. He had no liking for Rome
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and recognized it had become strategically irrelevant. All the important conflicts in the empire
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were now along the frontiers to the east and north. So he moved the empire's capital to the ancient city of Byzantium
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and renamed it after himself, Constantinople. The foundation of Constantinople is, I think
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one of the most important moments in the history of the Roman Empire
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It's the foundation of New Rome, to use Constantine's name for the city
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It marks a political, a cultural and an economic shift from Italy to the Balkans
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The Roman Empire now will be centred not in the west but in the east
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Constantine abandoned the traditional trappings of a Roman emperor and ruled like an oriental sultan from his palace in modern Turkey
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His power was absolute. His piety, and some say his vanity, knew no bounds
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Pagans were a little more doubtful about Constantine's piety. One pagan story said that Constantine converted to Christianity
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because having murdered his son and had his wife suffocated in a hot steam bath
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he was desperately in search of a religion that would give him forgiveness
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And Christianity was the only religion that would do that, Constantine having been flatly refused forgiveness
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by a number of pagan priests. Before he died, he had 13 coffins placed in his sepulcher
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12 for the 12 apostles, one for himself. as if Constantine was the 13th apostle of Christ
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the one who finally brought his kingdom to earth. It may have seemed like God's kingdom was coming to earth
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but not for long. Christianity's growth from a small, persecuted sect to the dominant religion of empire was a violent and bloody one
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Even before Constantine died, fine points of Christian doctrine about the Holy Trinity
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were generating furious debate and, before long, bloodshed. In 366, a conference of bishops left 137 corpses
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on the floor of a Roman basilica. The 4th century was marked by bitter divisions of belief between bishops
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and they fought with every weapon they could. They used state forces to expel some people from the church
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What's remarkable about Christianity is the degree to which Christian leaders thought that their religion could encompass only a single orthodoxy
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The very persons who ought to display brotherly love or violently estranged from one another
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It's disgraceful, positively sickening. Bishop Crestus. By the end of the century, there were over 60 official decrees
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outlawing different heretical beliefs. Before long, there were attempts to ban all non-Christians from public office
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Synagogues were burnt. Pagans observed the growth of Christianity with alarm. Their Rome had been ruthless in punishing people's actions
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but unconcerned about their beliefs. That sort of tolerance was now a thing of the past
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Have a care. Even wild beasts are not as ferocious as these Christians
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in their hatred of one another. Ammianus. but not all Christians were engaged in theological feuding
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In 423, outside the town of Antioch in Syria, a man called Simeon climbed up a pillar
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He stayed there for 30 years, scorched by the sun, kneeling, singing, and suffering
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A hundred years earlier, everyone would have assumed he was a madman
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he would have been arrested or ignored. Not now. In this new Christian Rome
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suffering was the mark of holiness. Educated Romans gave up comfortable lives
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to go and live in the desert. In 375, St. Jerome was one of many
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who chose to renounce everything, retire to the Holy Land, and mortify the flesh
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Tears and groans were every day my portion. Whenever I felt sleep overcoming me, I bruised my restless bones against the bare earth
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My only companions were scorpions and beasts. My face was pale with fasting
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But though my limbs were cold as ice, my mind was burning with desire
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and the fires of lust kept bubbling up before me even when my flesh was as good as dead
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Jerome. Romans had always reveled in grandiose displays of wealth and power
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They had inherited from the Greeks and Etruscans a love of the human body and its appetites
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In Rome before Constantine, if you had it, you flaunted it. To the pagans who refused to convert
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Christian self-denial was bizarre and puzzling. The ones who call themselves monks
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live in unspeakably dreary places and shun the light. Why would a man choose to live in misery in order to escape from it
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They seem to be afraid of everything, particularly what is good and pleasurable
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The reasoning behind all this seems completely insane and I find it utterly incomprehensible
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Rutilius. Despite the rigors of Christianity, as the 4th century progressed, Romans flocked to it
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Women, long oppressed by patriarchal Rome, found respect and recognition. to everybody men and women rich and poor roman and non-roman christianity offered a refuge from
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the chronic uncertainties of the era there's no doubt in my mind that christianity saved the roman
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empire at the end of the third century it gave it a new focus for unity both religiously and
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ideologically but christianity is the glue that sticks the various parts of the roman empire
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together in the centuries after constantine christianity could hold the empire together for a
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while but not forever in the year 378 a.d at adrianople in modern turkey the emperor of valence
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led his army into battle against Goths from Romania. It was time to teach the barbarians a lesson
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and make them submit to the might of Rome. Like Valerian before him, Valens marched into disaster
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His legions were surrounded. The famous Roman discipline gave way. He and his army were massacred
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It was Rome that had learned its lesson, and it was a bitter one
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Rome could no longer rule by military might alone. She would have to negotiate with the barbarians
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The truth was there were already as many Germanic tribespeople within the ranks of the Roman legions as opposing them
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But now they wanted more. If they were good enough to fight Rome's wars
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they deserved to share its power. But Romans didn't share power. As beasts from men
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as the dumb from those who speak, so the foolish heathen differs from the Roman
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Rome stands alone in pride over barbarian lands. Prudentious. That Roman pride was now taking a serious blow
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Forced to accommodate the barbarians, Romans began to feel threatened. Intolerance and resentment grew
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The Goths are perfidious, the Elani rapacious lechers, the Saxons, Franks, and Eurulians are wantonly cruel
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and the Germans are alcoholics to a man, Salvian. Special scorn was reserved for the Huns
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the nomads from Central Asia who had pushed the other barbarians westward in the first place
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They, too, now appeared on the frontiers of empire. They are so monstrously ugly and misshapen
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that one might take them for two-legged beasts. They are totally ignorant of the difference between right and wrong
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so it's impossible to make a truce with them. Like unreasoning beasts, they are at the mercy of the maddest impulses
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Ammianus. These attitudes didn bode well for the future of interracial harmony in the empire For centuries barbarians had been humiliated and enslaved
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They were tired of it. When Alaric, leader of the Goths, settled his people inside the northern frontier
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he wanted a dignified coexistence with Rome. Alaric spoke Latin fluently, was well-read, and not about to be dismissed by Pampas Romans
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We tend to think of the barbarians as a collection of Conan the Barbarian and his buddies coming across the frontier
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waving their double-handed axes. This is quite far from the truth. By the time the barbarians come across the frontiers, they're beginning to be Romanized
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Alaric, who sacked Rome in 410, did so because he was turned down for a job as a Roman general
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What these people wanted first and foremost was a place within the empire for themselves
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and when they didn't get it, they turned on the government of the emperors
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But Rome had still not learned its lesson. Instead of building diplomatic relations with the Goths
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Local governors systematically insulted, starved, and overtaxed them. Alaric sent letters of protest to the emperor
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They were ignored. When Alaric and his people finally descended on Rome in 410 AD
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it was not to rape and pillage, but to drive home his people's protests
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and demand the decent treatment they'd been promised. to his surprise as his army swept through the heart of the empire there was hardly a roman
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soldier in sight the truth was many romans were no longer prepared to fight the barbarians
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some even welcomed them i tell you that the poor have been so robbed and downtrodden
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that many of them seek refuge with the enemy. They seek among the barbarians a Roman mercy
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because they cannot endure the barbarous mercilessness they find among the Romans
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Salvian. And so in the year 410, for the first time in almost a thousand years
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Romans awoke to find an enemy army camped just outside the city
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They couldn't believe it. Alaric's demands were reasonable. All he wanted for his people was part of the Danube River Valley in what is now Austria
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Rome refused. Furious with Rome's arrogance, Alaric laid siege to the city
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In addition, he now demanded 5,000 pounds of gold, 3,000 pounds of silver, 4,000 silk tunics, 3,000 scarlet-dyed skins, and 3,000 pounds of pepper
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Will you leave us with nothing, asked the Roman envoys. Alaric replied, if you give us what we want, you can keep your lives
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Rome held back procrastinated and in the end Alaric lost patience
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barbarian slaves delighted by the prospect of Rome's ruin threw open the city gates
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the Goths poured in and sacked the city proud Rome was finally brought
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to her knees It's inconceivable
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Rome? Fallen? The city which subjugated the whole world? Conquered? I am speechless with despair
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What will have happened to our friends? I fear the whole world is faced with annihilation
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Jerome. Although the city of Rome was no longer the center of the empire
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for Romans everywhere, seeing it sacked was an omen of catastrophe. Diseases are spreading
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Time surely is nearing its end. I foresee the massacre of all humanity
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This surely is the twilight of the world. Ambrose Romans were now sure the apocalypse was at hand
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Stories circulated that the mouths of volcanoes were getting bigger, ready for the souls of all the sinners they have to receive Rome was now divided in half The Eastern Empire remained strong but as barbarians overran the West Romans everywhere were terrified the end was at hand My soul shudders to recount
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the downfall of our age. The blood of Romans is being shed everywhere from Constantinople to the
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Alps, women are raped. The whole empire is being sacked, pillaged and plundered
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Jerome. But apocalyptic visions turned out to be untrue. Not only did the world not end
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the barbarians didn't do much raping and plundering either. Goths, Visigoths, Vandals and other German tribes
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streamed out of Central Europe and spread themselves throughout the Western Mediterranean
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To everybody's surprise, they tried to live peacefully alongside the Romans. Paulinus was a wealthy Roman nobleman
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with huge estates near Bordeaux in modern France. When news arrived that an army of Goths
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was heading for his lands, he feared the worst and fled in terror for his life
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Tormented by all the stories of mass rape and Roman children sold into slavery, he sent his family ahead of him
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On the road, he was astounded to receive a letter from an unknown goth
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He says he wishes to buy a piece of my property and has actually sent me the price of it
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I am astonished. It is nothing like its true value, of course
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but in the circumstances, it seems like a gift from heaven. Pauliness
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There's no doubt that the Mediterranean was seen by much of the rest of the world as a sort of El Dorado, as California
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It's where you want to be. There was the good life. It's very wrong to think that the German tribes
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that were trying to invade the Roman Empire, empire and who eventually bring about its collapse in the west were seeking to destroy it they weren't
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they wanted their piece of the action they wanted to be part of it they wanted to be part of this
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great world and when they take over in the west they behave like mini roman emperors
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great roman senators because this is the good life aleric's sack of rome in 410 a.d was not
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the end. The Eastern Empire was still strong. From its wealthy cities in Turkey and the Middle East
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it viewed the disintegration of the West with growing detachment. It would slowly become the Byzantine Empire, but go on calling itself Roman until the Middle Ages
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The Western Empire staggered on for another 60 years. There were still emperors in Rome
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but their control was evaporating as the power of the central bureaucracy crumbled
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The Western Empire now did nothing for the provinces except tax them
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Local Roman nobles soon felt they were better off without it. They came to see themselves as free agents, fortifying their estates
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making their own deals with the barbarians, even intermarrying with them. This was the birth of medieval Europe
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an anarchic world where local barons owed allegiance to few and built their own fiefdoms
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The disintegration of the Western Empire drove even more people into the arms of the Christian church
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With this world collapsing all around them, they sought refuge in the next
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Paulinus was one of them. After the Goths took over his estates, Paulinus threw away what little he'd rescued
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He wandered on foot through Spain and finally found his way to the south of Italy
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where he ended his days as the abbot of a small monastery. His poverty came to feel like a blessing
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I visit cities infrequently these days and have grown to love the intimate remoteness of the silent countryside
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Solitude is conducive to the spiritual life. I feel that I am fashioning and strengthening Christ within me every day
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I strive for the kingdom of God as once I strove for position
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I attend to heavenly goods as carefully as I once attended to earthly ones
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Paulinus. Everywhere, people were turning their backs on Rome
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In 476 a Gothic commander quietly told the last Roman emperor of the West he was out of a job The emperor withdrew to his villa by the sea Nobody cared or even noticed
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By a strange twist of fate, the emperor's name was Romulus. Over a thousand years had passed since the first Romulus
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that legendary wild man reared by a she-wolf, killed his brother and founded Rome on the banks of the Tiber
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In the millennium in between, Rome had grown from a tiny, primitive backwater
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to ruler of the Western world. The achievement of the Roman Empire is extraordinarily impressive
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of conquest, commitment to discipline, to winning, to victory, to war. And in the history
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of the human race, the creation of large empires has been fundamentally important, even though
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it's no longer fashionable. The creation of peace, the creation of law, order, the institutions
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of Senate, the creation of money, democracy, elections, voting, all these, even if some
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Some of them are only the perpetuation of the Greek tradition have been fundamental in modern European culture
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With Rome's passing, the West's long love affair with its memory began
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Paradoxically, it was the Christian church that faithfully kept the language and culture
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of its former persecutor alive. Simply walk into any church. In its architecture and design
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you have just walked into a Roman imperial palace. Sit down in that church and perhaps listen to the church service
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listen to the liturgy, listen to the hymns. You are listening to Roman imperial court ceremonial
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The structure of the buildings of the Christian church, its liturgy, its choirs, its priests, its bishops
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are taken, are imitative of Roman imperial court ceremonial. In the centuries that followed her fall
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Rome was reborn again and again. The guiding idea of the Italian Renaissance
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was the rebirth of Rome and its classical ideals. When the founding fathers of the United States
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sought a model for their new country, it was to Rome they turned
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Raised on the classics, they poured Rome's Republican ideals into the Constitution
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The early Roman Republic inspired democracies and high ideals down to the present day
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But the empire it became left a very different legacy. When the French emperor Napoleon claimed to have Roman blood
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coursing through his veins, it wasn't the Republic, but the Empire and its all-powerful rulers he was thinking of
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The great danger is that we believe that the Roman Empire was a good thing
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That is a 19th century view. It's the reason why in Britain people learnt the classics
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They learnt the classics and they read their livy in order to know how to govern India
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because Britain saw herself as doing exactly what the Romans had done
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We have not yet properly written the post-imperialist history of Rome that will come and realise that this whole thing, great though it was, has its negative side
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It has its violence. It has its dark side. That dark side of Rome was ruthlessly exploited by the fascist dictator Mussolini
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who openly styled his regime as a new Roman Empire and himself a new Emperor Augustus
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For both good and bad, the whole Western world has grown up in Rome's towering shadow
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Nurtured on its stories, imitating its heroes, always trying to learn the lessons of its republic
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its empire and its fall. Rome, ruthless in its lust for power, insatiable in its ambition, revolutionary in its political ideals
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Its soaring spirit has never died. Rome's power and glory have branded themselves on the Western imagination forever
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