The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History

Author - James J. O´Donnell ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from Ecco was reviewed on 10-Dec-2008.

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1) Hardcover Book The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History by Ecco. I will leave this short and to the point, others have already covered the high points. The book is great. Well written and enjoyable to the scholar or the casually interested person.

I only gave it four out of five because I disagree with the author´s premise. I ascribe to a more traditional narrative of the Collapse of the Western Empire as found in Peter Heather´s or Brian Ward-Perkins´ latest books.

Dr. O´Donnell´s book is the best defense of modern revisionist history I have read to date. Even if you disagree with the Late Antique theorists do not pass this book up.

Edited to add: I finally finished this book and wanted to warn readers out there that there are several factual errors to be aware of. Almost all of them that I noticed and confirmed were from pages 237-38.¤

2) Hardcover Book The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History by Ecco. This book - which I greatly enjoyed - also roused in me some deep feelings which, at the risk of self-indulgence, I am moved to share.

As an adolescent, coming of age in a midland city in England, feeling somewhat estranged because I was not English, I became rooted in my new environment by embracing and cherishing its medieval buildings, or what the Luftwaffe had left of them. Mostly this was churches, but also street patterns and a bit of city wall. Always a rather dreamy child, not particularly disposed to work or study hard, I spent a lot of time on my bike wandering the Warwickshire countryside in the early hours of the morning (and perplexing my family by sleeping away most of the afternoon, the better to be ready to set forth again at 3:30 am), mostly drawn - again - to churches, ancient camps and the like. You get the picture.

I thought I understood the middle-ages. It was a world of faith and ignorance and bravery and adventure and romance on which I could superimpose myself being noble, brave, adventuresome and, all-in-all, cutting a fine romantic figure. The more obscure the era, the better the opportunity for superimposition, so I headed back in time past Normans and Saxons to what was then called the "dark ages," a time when pretty much anything seemed possible. My parents - to whom I owe an enormous debt of thanks - may have despaired at my odd hours, but they had promised me early that if there were books that I wanted to read they would buy them for me. This promise may have been a remnant from a time when I did not like to read, but since then I had become a voracious reader. And that brings me to H. St. L. B. Moss´s book The Birth of the Middle Ages, which I found upstairs at W.H. Smith for 52 ½ p in 1974. Until this moment, when I googled him on the internet, I could not have told you his given names (Henry St.Lawrence Beaufort) and I still have no idea who he was (an academic?) but he opened a whole new world to me - who knew there was so much known about the dark ages? - and I had to know more. My late antique allegiances vacillated back and forth with my reading: post Roman Britain, the Byzantine Empire, Merovingian France, and I got to study under some great teachers at University, including a young Chris Wickham, who O´Donnell in his book does great - and deserved - honor for his Framing the Middle Ages (also a great book, but a challenging read, not to mention a daunting price tag).

Alas, my scholarly ambitions - such as they were - foundered against the rocky shores of my lack of application. But my interest in history has never waned and though my interests are now more catholic as to geography and epoch in the last year or so I have also returned to the late antique period. I was inspired after reading Wickham´s book to read Peter Brown´s The Rise of Western Christendom, as I thought it would be an interesting contrast to the "material history" approach of the former, which is was. One of the persistently perplexing aspects of the late antique period is the contrast between the stories told by the archaeological and literary remnants of the time (though both have elements of continuities and discontinuities, not always congruent). O´Donnell´s book, though he acknowledges a debt to Wickham, is more in the Peter Brown tradition of cultural history, with a twist - the twist being the "lessons" that O´Donnell would draw from late antiquity for application to our own time.

Historical writing is always informed by the concerns of the period in which it is written and O´Donnell has the virtue of trumpeting the moral he draws from his story rather than trying to disguise opinion as fact. But the object lessons are nevertheless a little heavy-handed. In my opinion the best parts of O´Donnell´s book come early on, in the vignette descriptions of lives offered as mirrors to their times, for example Aetius and Liberius in the west and Vitalian and Anicia Juliana in the Eastern Empire. Between historians who hew close to their sources and the mindset of their sources and those who steer more theoretical courses (think Eamon Duffy versus Keith Thomas) I am more inclined to grant indulgence to the abstract musings of the former, even when I might disagree with their conclusions. I thought O´Donnell´s treatment of the Italy of Odoacer and Theodoric was more closely sourced - and thus more convincing - than his more sweeping survey of Justinian, his "misguided" imperialism and the inevitable aftermath. (Towards the end O´Donnell was moving at such a breakneck pace that I was reminded of George Lucas in Star Wars III, with only 2 hours to tie up all the loose ends so that Star Wars I - or the eruption of Islam from Arabia - will make sense.)

Historians have the advantage of being able to see the long sweep of events and the obscure roots of what will become defining phenomena. The closest 6th century thinkers came to imaging the long future was in eschatology. Is it really fair to hold Justinian or any of those late Romans, including O´Donnell´s favorites like Theodoric and Boethius, to a modern standard of geo-political awareness? Was Justinian really any more vainglorious than Alexander - whom O´Donnell seems to admire? With the benefit of hindsight we can see the consequence of Justinian´s overreaching. Without the benefit of hindsight we might just condemn Charlemagne for overreaching when he invaded Italy in 773, or William of Normandy in 1066, or Alp Arslan in 1071, to name just a few of history´s "highly aspirational" individuals. And while there is undoubtedly much blame to fix on those who would mix absolute certainty in faith with absolute power and authority, Justinian was hardly the most noxious of mixers.

It´s rare to find a book that you can´t find a quarrel with and puzzling out the quarrel is half the fun of reading. This was an enjoyable read. I hope someone young and impressionable reads it - like I read Henry St.Lawrence Beaufort Moss all those years ago - and is as enthralled as I was.
¤

3) Hardcover Book The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History by Ecco. Excellent read, sometime in love with his own quirky type of address, one has the suspicion the writer sacrifices a balanced view to the turn of a witty phrase. But the research and the revision of history contradicting a Gibbon-type Fall of the Roman Empire is fascinating and convincing.¤

4) Hardcover Book The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History by Ecco. To be fair, I rated this book at 3 stars only because computer software requires a rating. I have not read it, but I happened upon it today at my local bookstore and paged through it for quite a while. It appears very lively and broad-brush and outspoken and interesting in its observations. Just what I normally would like. But I´m getting old so the adjectives "lively and broad-brush" now also raise to me high alert as to whether a book is well-sourced in scholarship. This book is relatively thin on footnotes. And when one of the only two jacket blurbs for it comes from the author´s Georgetown neighbor--ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who can scarcely be accused of being a Byzantine scholar--one wonders how much you can trust it. Maybe the book is great. I frankly don´t know, because I´m not a Byzantine expert. If YOU are and have read it, please speak up on this site and help the rest of us out. Pending that, I for now am going to wait two or three months for the impending publication of the Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire--quite a tome at about 1000 pages (and quite pricey), but likely to be the definitive work for the next couple decades. You won´t find it listed yet on the Amazon or Barnes and Noble websites. Look for its description at Cambridge University Press´s website.¤

5) Hardcover Book The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History by Ecco. For a couple hundred years after Gibbon´s time, the common wisdom was that Rome´s empire in the West finally fell to overwhelming and violent barbarian invasions during the 5th century CE (although the precise date and the underlying causes were much disputed). In the 20th and 21st centuries a newer theory gained much ground, claiming that Rome did not fall but merely transitioned from a more or less unitary classical culture to a very decentralized early medieval world over perhaps 200 years (and with migrations rather than invasions. According to this view, the new rulers in the West were well-assimilated into the Roman polity and perpetuated its culture. James J. O´Donnell, author of this book, is a firm adherent of the "no fall" school, but with something of a twist. He believes that there was a fall, but one that came in the 6th century CE and later and at the hands of fellow "Romans," sent from the imperial capital of Constantinople.

Justinian I´s attempt to recreate a united empire under his rule by dispossessing the "barbarian usurpers" in the West and in Africa, says O´Donnell, was not only misguided but catastrophic for both West and East. It resulted in the complete ruin of the City of Rome, the fragmentation and devastation of all Italy and the fatal crippling of all of Roman culture in the rest of Western Europe and North Africa. In the East Justinian´s policy uselessly sacrificed large amounts of limited (indeed, irreplaceable) resources in pursuit of a hopeless dream while diverting imperial attention both from areas essential to the empire (the Balkans) and from critical problems (the rising power of Persia).

Justinian enjoys few modern admirers and Justinian-bashing is nothing new in historical writing. But O´Donnell has some additional charges for the indictment. O´Donnell believes that an empire (such as the Roman) centered around the Mediterranean is "artificial" while one linking the Fertile Crescent to lands both to its east and west was more natural and certainly more desirable. O´Donnell seems to believe that such a multiethnic empire had at least the potential for promoting a common polity and culture across the entire Eurasian landmass, thus promoting the possibility of future harmony for the whole human race.

O´Donnell also assails Justinian for a foolish religious bigotry. He used this benighted zeal to impose a single form of Christianity in the place of the many that had existed before him and in his own time. In his time the varying forms of Christianity sprang primarily from disputes over the precise nature of Christ: Wholly human, wholly divine or mixed. Justinian believed that a viable state was not possible if there were competing religious systems within it. He therefore set out to extirpate those beliefs that conflicted with the one that he had chosen as correct. This was a goal both within the empire that Justinian took over when he came to the throne and for the Western lands that he was trying to reconquer for that empire (the Arian "heresy" was still strong in the West). O´Donnell believes that this "poison" spread by Justinian was harmful to the development of Christianity overall and that it promoted the religious wars, struggles and attendant fanaticism within and between the major Western religions, wars and struggles that beset us still.

History is a completely contingent process, the result of literally innumerable events great and small (many of them possibly even unknown to posterity). In this respect it is similar to chaos theory in physics. Looking back we can see the result and fashion an explanation that is consistent with known evidence showing to some extent what happened, to a lesser extent how it happened and (to a lesser extent still) why it happened. We cannot be sure that this explanation is the whole story or that it even incorporates all events significant to the outcome. Trying to foresee ultimate outcomes before the various contingent events have occurred is simply impossible. There are too many events and they are too complex for any prediction to be reliable beyond a very short run. Hence I think that O´Donnell´s view of what might have happened had Justinian been (as O´Donnell conceives it) both smarter and wiser is ultimately mere speculation. It may or may not be correct, but it cannot be proved (or disproved for that matter). It is, so to speak, a faith-based initiative. Justinian could have been everything that O´Donnell wished him to be and the world today could still be a major mess, perhaps even the same sort of mess that it actually is.

The book is written for a general audience. O´Donnell writes in an informal, almost conversational, style. He does not attempt much deep analysis or make formal arguments with detailed evidence in support. Instead he lightly sketches word pictures of the worlds and people that he describes with data points scattered here and there for support. Important areas (e.g. economics and trade, literacy) are touched on but lightly or not at all. The book is sparsely footnoted by scholarly standards but sufficently for what I take to be the target audience. If it were a painting, the book would be by a French Impressionist.

The writing style is quite readable and generally pleasing, although there are occasional puzzling moments such as when he describes over four lines a "sixth century monk whose views would have long influence" beginning his rule of monastic life by denouncing monks who did not live in a fixed community, but leaves the reader to figure out who this influential monk might have been (St. Benedict fits the facts given and may be the guy that O´Donnell had in mind, but who knows).

I have compared this book to an Impressionist painting. Such a book aims to interest the reader and, with luck, cause him to explore the field further. In these circumstances, suggestions for further reading are very important and offer a major opportunity to the author. The "Further Reading" section in this book is a major disappointment. Less than one page in length, it notes all of six books plus one volume of the multivolume Cambridge Ancient History then airily dismisses the reader to the "Notes beginning on page 397 [which] contain many more titles, almost [sic] all of them well worth browsing ...." This is at best a disservice to any reader who has bothered to read the entire book and reeks a bit of condescension.

This book is, however, well worth reading and will open up a world that many readers have perhaps not visited.
¤

6) Hardcover Book The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History by Ecco.

The dream Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar shared of uniting Europe, the Medi­terranean, and the Middle East in a single community shuddered and then collapsed in the wars and disasters of the sixth century. It was a looking-glass world, where some Romans ideal­ized the Persian emperor while barbarian kings in Italy and France worked tirelessly to save the pieces of the Roman dream they had inherited. At the center of the old Roman Empire, in his vast and pompous Constantinople palace, the emperor Justinian, with too little education and too much religion, set out to restore his empire to its glories. Step by step, the things he did to bring back the past sealed the doom of his entire civilization.

Historian and classicist James J. O´Donnell—who last brought us his masterful, disturbing, and revelatory biography of Saint Augustine—revisits this old story in a fresh way, bringing home its sometimes painful relevance to issues of our own time.

With unexpected detail and in his hauntingly vivid style, O´Donnell begins at a time of apparent Roman revival and brings us to the moment of imminent collapse that just preceded the rise of Islam. Illegal migrations of peoples, religious wars, global pandemics, and the temptations of empire: Rome´s end foreshadows our own crises and offers hints how to navigate them—if we will heed this story.

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 7-Jan-2009, 00607873769780060787370, 760-320-561-361-891-271-XKB-8

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