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      THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IS THE ARCHETYPE OF EVERY collapse in human history. It is the giant metaphorical mirror we hold up to whichever era we live in. If we can find some parallel, no matter how superficial, between Rome and today, then we can predict and pontificate about whatever dangerous road we are traveling. If we point out only the similarities between, say, the Iraq War and the Spanish-American War, then a few history buffs might nod in recognition and turn the page, but if we find similarities between the Iraq War and the fall of Rome, then we can easily spread panic and alarm throughout the population, thereby earning our hefty pundit salaries.

       A Really, Really Short History of the Roman Empire before the Fall

      The Roman Republic became the Roman Empire with the accession of Augustus in 14 BCE. For the next few centuries the imperial apparatus muddled along, surviving every threat. The emperors ran the gamut from the criminally insane to the honest and sensible in an almost predictable pattern. A few decades of decent emperors would be interrupted when the succession fell to a dangerous psychotic. After a brief reign of terror, he would be assassinated, and a short, sharp civil war would sort out all of the claimants. Then a new string of reasonably competent emperors would restore calm. Sure, it’s messier than the television attack ads and colorful sex scandals that determine who gets to run the typical modern democracy, but it worked well enough for generations.

      After several centuries of this, the Roman Empire was very different from the Rome of popular imagination, where Julius Caesar raced a chariot against Pontius Pilate, and Caligula was smothered at Pompeii, while Spartacus seduced Cleopatra.^a The newer empire was Christian, and it no longer had much to do with the city of Rome. Emperors came from the Romanized populations of the provinces rather than the city itself. In fact, the empire’s ethnicity was becoming blended and homogenized. Latin had replaced the indigenous languages across much of western Europe, and every free man in the empire was legally a citizen, subject to a uniform set of laws. These new Romans even wore trousers on occasion rather than togas. They were turning medieval.

      For administrative convenience, the empire was usually split into two autonomous halves—the Western Roman Empire headquartered in Milan, and the Eastern Roman Empire headquartered in Constantinople. The system in place near the end made sense on paper but never worked. The emperor of each half (titled Caesar) selected and groomed his preferred successor (titled Augustus), and the succession was supposed to pass peacefully from one to the other without interruption. In practice, however, the death of an emperor often created a power vacuum, a civil war, and a usurper, with the throne eventually passing to the most audacious. Often the Caesar of the other half had practical approval of the choice since he was the one with armies at his command when the throne became available. This kept the two halves linked rather than drifting apart. It was common for close kinsmen to rule both halves at the same time, such as the brothers Valens and Valentinian, who became East and West Caesar in 364.

       Goths Arrive

      When a dangerous new breed of barbarian, the Huns, appeared on the northeastern horizon of the civilized world in the late 300s, all of the Germanic tribes in their path fled or surrendered. The Visigoths escaped across the Danube River, the northern border of the Roman Empire, and begged Eastern Emperor Valens to save them. He allowed them to settle along the south bank as federates, a kind of subordinate vassal living in an autonomous enclave. The Visigoths placed the emphasis on autonomous, while the local Roman officials preferred to stress the subordinate part of the equation. Pretty soon, disagreements turned into open revolt.

      In 378, Valens marched the Roman army against the Visigoths, who were approaching the Roman city of Adrianople and planning a pillage. Valens arrived with 40,000 troops, camped for the night, and then advanced against the Gothic infantry, who had drawn up in a circle of wagons. Valens attacked in proper legionary order, but the laager held until Gothic cavalry arrived and enveloped his army. The encircled Romans were squeezed, crushed, and annihilated, resulting in the worst Roman defeat in recent memory. They never even found the emperor’s body. It was somewhere in the pile, just one anonymous corpse amid the tens of thousands.

       Peace Returns to Constantinople

      Although it’s customary to treat the Battle of Adrianople as the beginning of the end for Rome, nothing else happened for a generation. The Western emperor (Valentinian’s son Gratian) gave the Eastern Empire and his sister to one of the few high generals of good Roman family, Theodosius, who ruled competently for twenty years.

      Theodosius was a bit of a thug. He once massacred seven thousand inhabitants of Thessalonica because a mob there lynched one of his generals for imprisoning a popular charioteer, but it’s worth noting that the empire was not swirling irrevocably down the drain at this point. The Romans were still capable of producing a strong emperor who would be remembered for what he did rather than for what was done to him.

      Theodosius

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