Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians

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The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians Pub. Date: 12/1/2005 Publisher: Oxford University Press

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Overview

The death of the Roman Empire is one of the perennial mysteries of world history. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Peter Heather proposes a stunning new solution: Centuries of imperialism turned the neighbors Rome called barbarians into an enemy capable of dismantling an Empire that had dominated their lives for so long.
A leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, Heather relates the extraordinary story of how Europe's barbarians, transformed by centuries of contact with Rome on every possible level, eventually pulled the empire apart. He shows first how the Huns overturned the existing strategic balance of power on Rome's European frontiers, to force the Goths and others to seek refuge inside the Empire. This prompted two generations of struggle, during which new barbarian coalitions, formed in response to Roman hostility, brought the Roman west to its knees. The Goths first destroyed a Roman army at the battle of Hadrianople in 378, and went on to sack Rome in 410. The Vandals spread devastation in Gaul and Spain, before conquering North Africa, the breadbasket of the Western Empire, in 439. We then meet Attila the Hun, whose reign of terror swept from Constantinople to Paris, but whose death in 453 ironically precipitated a final desperate phase of Roman collapse, culminating in the Vandals' defeat of the massive Byzantine Armada: the west's last chance for survival.

Peter Heather convincingly argues that the Roman Empire was not on the brink of social or moral collapse. What brought it to an end were the barbarians.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780195325416
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 5/23/2007
Pages: 576
Sales rank: 226,291
Product dimensions: 9.20 (w) x 6.10 (h) x 1.60 (d)

Meet the Author

Peter Heather teaches at Worcester College, University of Oxford. A leading authority on the barbarians, he is the author of The Goths, Goths and Romans, and The Huns.

Pt. 1	Pax Romana
1	Romans	3
2	Barbarians	46
3	The limits of empire	100
Pt. 2	Crisis
4	War on the Danube	145
5	The city of God	191
6	Out of Africa	251
7	Attila the Hun	300
Pt. 3	Fall of empires
8	The fall of the Hunnic empire	351
9	End of empire	385
10	The fall of Rome	431
	Dramatis personae	461

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Anonymous

Posted February 23, 2006

Like Rome then is like us today

The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, by Peter Heather This new book by a professor at Worcester College, University of Oxford is a true gem among books covering historical subject matter. The past when covered by most books attempting to educate the reader on historical subject matter covering several hundred years often results in text book like reading without the inspirational individual efforts of the everyday citizen being included or explained. If you are interested in finding out just how similar our world events today are to ancient Rome and the issues they faced, read this book! Rome faced many of the same issues as we see today. Heather argues, in my opinion very successfully that it was the barbarians who brought down the Empire rather than any social or moral collapse. In my opinion it succeeds. At 459 pages just for the story and persuasive argument for his theme Heather adds a timeline and other sources as well, making the total page count 572. This book was fun, entertaining and engaging. I highly recommend it.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Conrad_Jalowski

Posted October 19, 2008

more from this reviewer

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Peter Heather's analysis of the resultant decline and fall of the Roman Empire is based on its great predecessor- Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Overall, Edward Gibbon's 1,252 page analysis has the underlying thesis that Rome had a glorious aetataureate or a Golden Age during the Antonine Principate Period. After the passing of these benevolent despots, the Roman Empire underwent stagnation and then inevitable dilapidation, decline and ulimate abjuration as it was to be swept away. This thesis of Edward Gibbon has sparked a controversy. Multitudinous theses have been proposed on the fall of the Roman Empire with Peter Heather being one of them. Peter Heather utilizes socio-demographic means with illustrative methods such as tables, graphs and charts to stress the decentralization of the political unit into the feudal period of manorialism. Within the greater context, society was disrupted to an extent in the fact that the geographic constitution of the Roman Empire had collapsed. This point is where the multifarious theses converge. Edward Gibbon proposed that the fall of Rome was a catastrophe that led Europe into an age of less civilized societies that lacked centralization, unity and internal coherence. For Edward Gibbon, the fall of Rome led to the "Dark Ages". Pirenne's thesis, however, states that Greco-Roman culture continued until 638 CE when the Muslim forces disrupted Byzantine and Mediterranean mercantile activities and deprived the Byzantine forces and all of its Greek and Roman legacies of the Exarchate of Carthage, the Exarchate of Hispania, Syria, Egypt, Cyrenaica and other outlying and semi-peripheral zones. With the disruption of trade and commerce, the age of antiquity finally gave way to the Mediaeval Period. The theory of Late Antiquity maintains that whilst geographic hegemony of Rome fell, it gave way to an era of transition with the Byzantine state and the revival in the West or Charlemagne's Empire as well as the Holy Roman Empire that maintained the Greco-Roman tradition. Peter Heather brings together all these inimical and conflicting theories and adds through assiduous research, interior images, charts, tables, graphs and a rigorous works cited/bibliography list a concise reiteration and a new perspective. For example, Peter Heather mentions that 40% of the Byzantine forces were held in check against the Sassanian Persians. The overall military expenditure, over-extension of manpower and economic exhaustion were some causes of the fall of Rome and an interesting outlook to the continuity/disruption theories that concern the topic of the fall of Rome.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted March 8, 2006

Good Read

There is much to learn from the backward slide of an advanced civilization when put upon by 'Huns'. I am quite sure that the dramatic decline in populations, living standards, economic, hygene, recreation, longevity, security, educational, technological was something akin to a nuclear event.

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