When a civilization destroys itself

“The light of the world has gone out…”. With these words one of the greatest Christian writers of the 4th-5th century, Saint Jerome, commented on the news of the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths in 410. The city had not suffered invasions for eight centuries: therefore until then it had represented the emblem of the invulnerability and immortality of the Roman state. For many men of the time, its fall therefore meant the end of civilization and the beginning of barbarism, so much so that Jerome himself wrote in those tragic days for all those who recognized in Rome the emblem of everything they believed in : “The head of the Roman Empire was struck down, the whole world was destroyed with the destruction of a single city”.

The end of the Roman Empire, conventionally fixed at 476 AD (the year in which the Middle Ages began), was in reality not a sudden collapse, determined by a single event, albeit dramatic, such as the sacking of Rome by hordes of those who they were generically called barbarians. It was the result of a long process of disintegration of the Roman state which was determined by many factors. Historian Michael Kulikowski, professor of Ancient History at Pennsylvania State University, in his recent essay "Imperial Tragedy" (Hoepli editore, 2023, Euro 28, pp. 402 also Ebook) emphasizes the serious responsibilities of those who held power in the empire: the ruling dynasties, the aristocratic classes, the military. Thus he recounts the period from the seizure of power by Constantine at the beginning of the fourth century to the arrival of the Lombards in the Italian peninsula (568 AD) as an age dominated by palace intrigues, religious conflicts and wars, as well as innumerable changes in social, religious and political structures.

Michael Kulikowski therefore disputes the notion that Rome fell to external invasions. Instead, it focuses on the choices of those who lived within the Empire, because it was not a single catastrophic moment that broke it, but a creeping, karst self-destructive process. After the reign of Constantine, the Roman Empire certainly had to face the growing threat of the barbarians: the Germans, but also the nomads of the steppes such as the Huns, increasingly violated its borders. The eastern regions of the Empire, albeit with difficulty, managed to face the enemy, while the western part of the Empire engaged in a struggle for survival with the aggressors. A struggle, however, ultimately destined to defeat. How come?

We know for certain that the attacks of the 4th and 5th centuries were different from those that had occurred before. They were no longer simple raids for the purpose of looting, but real migrations of peoples against which the Roman army found itself powerless. This impotence was a consequence of the profound crisis that had been affecting the western territories for at least two centuries: wars, famines, epidemics and political instability had led to the depopulation of the cities, the contraction of commercial traffic, the disappearance of small property in favor of large estates, the collapse of the slave production system. Most of the population lived in poverty, oppressed by a gigantic bureaucracy and rapacious taxation.

Even the army, which for centuries had saved Rome from ruin, was no longer what it once was. More and more Roman citizens escaped conscription by paying tribute or by finding refuge in territories beyond the Empire's border, safe from recruiting officers and even from tax collectors. Indeed, the barbarians became the backbone of the Roman military machine and even the military commanders who found themselves holding real power in the West were of Germanic stock.

At some point, the barbarians realized that they no longer needed an emperor to control the lands they had settled on. In 476, they deposed Romulus Augustulus, the Western Emperor, and sent the imperial regalia back to Constantinople. It was a symbolic gesture that brought the curtain down on an Empire in which even the Romans themselves no longer believed.