Barbarians and the fall of Rome

Was it the End of Civilization?

What was the last region of the western Roman Empire to fall to the barbarians? Perhaps some parts of southern Italy which remained under Byzantine control? Or maybe Ravenna, that last shining light of civilization in the west? According to Professor Bryan Ward-Perkins, the answer is north Wales, which held on until 1292 when Edward I’s English army brought it under Saxon rule.

I suppose it depends on who you class as barbarian - Edward’s first language was Latin-descended French - but it’s a fun way of looking at what was the biggest catastrophe to befall European civilization.

Or was it?

The reason for the fall of Rome has always been a contested issue with relevance for contemporary debate. But on top of the why, there is even a question of if it fell at all, or whether the end of antiquity was more marked by a transition of one order and society to another.

As can be guessed by its title The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization, Ward- Perkin’s 2005 book very much went against the recently popular ‘steady transition’ theory and back towards the traditional ‘barbarians turning up and sacking the place’ view of history.

Ward-Perkins begins by noting how two American academics had recently argued that the barbarian settlements occurred ‘in a natural, organic, and generally eirenic manner’, and who ‘take issue with historians who demonize the barbarians and problematize the barbarian settlements’.

In his view, the arrival of barbarians probably was a bit of a problem, indicated by the archaeological evidence. For example, he points out, across Britain the art of pottery disappears in the early 5^th century and would only be reintroduced 300 years later.

‘The potter’s wheel is not an instrument of cultural identity. Rather, it is a functional innovation that facilitates the rapid production of thin-walled ceramics.’ It fell out of favour, he suggests, because there  probably weren’t enough consumers with wealth to sustain specialised potting.

‘The invaders entered the empire with a wish to share in its high standard of living, not to destroy it,’ he writes, and there were ‘people like the Ostrogoths living in marble palaces, minting imperial-style coins, and being served by highly educated Roman ministers. But, although the Germanic peoples did not intend it, their invasions, the disruption these caused, and the consequent dismembering of the Roman state were undoubtedly the principle cause of death of the Roman economy. The invaders were not guilty of murder, but they had committed manslaughter.

‘The post-Roman world reverted to levels of economic simplicity, lower even than those of immediately post-Roman times, with little movement of goods, poor housing, and only the most basic manufactured items. The sophistication of the Roman period, by spreading high-quality goods widely in society, had destroyed the local skills and local networks that, in pre-Roman times, had provided lower-level economic complexity. It took centuries for people in the former empire to reacquire the skills and the regional networks that would take them back to these pre-Roman levels of sophistication.’