“Gibbon’s fascination with the dissolution of a world that seemed quite literally set in stone is not surprising–deep within the European psyche lies an anxiety that, if Ancient Rome could fall, so can the proudest of modern civilizations.” (p. 3)
Bryan Ward-Perkins opens his short but insightful book by thanking his editor: “She made me prune many of the subordinate clauses and qualifications that scholars love; and above all forced me to say what I really mean, rather than hint at it through Delphic academic utterances.” (p. v)
As a former professor, I too am prone to Delphic academic utterances from time to time. But Ward-Perkin’s brilliant editor turned The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (2005) into something more than Cliff Notes to Edward Gibbon’s classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (a six volume work published between 1776 and 1788). You can read Gibbon’s 3000 page master work…or Ward-Perkin’s 239 page shortcut. I have done both.
Edward Gibbon ran into trouble by suggesting Rome’s fall was caused by Christianity and the spread of monasticism. Gibbon wrote “a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes, who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity.” (p. 40)
Bryan Ward-Perkins suggests another reason for Rome’s fall: “In my opinion, the key internal element of Rome’s success or failure was the economic well-being of its taxpayers. This was because the empire relied for its security on a professional army, with in turn relied on adequate funding.” (p. 41) As the wealth of Rome went to building churches and monasteries, the armies regressed because of lack of funding–and were defeated by barbarians.
The state of the world today shares parallels with the decline and fall of Rome. Civilization could disappear again with a few mushroom clouds… GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Preface — v
I. Did Rome Ever Fall? — 1
Part I: The Fall of Rome
II. The Horrors of War — 13.
III. The Road to Defeat — 33
IV. Living Under the New Masters — 63
Part II: The End of a Civilization
V. The Disappearance of Comfort — 87
VI. Why the Demise of Comfort? — 123
VII. The Death of a Civilization? — 138
VII. All for the Best in the Best of All Possible Worlds — 169
Appendix: From Potsherds to People — 184
Chronology — 188
Notes — 182
Bibliography –– 216
Picture List — 224
Index — 231
Thank you, Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Note to Trump:
You’re 80.
You can’t take it with you.
Jeff, plenty of parents of the sailors on the ABRAHAM LINCOLN aircraft carrier are pissed at Trump for his dismissal of their complaints about poor food and broken plumbing on the ship. Trump is clueless about the costs of War.
Remember the outrage at hegseth spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on steaks, etc for himself and others.
Typical for this piss poor administration. Just like the catering truck escape where all the rest of his entourage were left behind to travel in the threatened aircraft.
Maggie, I wonder how the White House Staff and Marco Rubio and Scott Bessent think of being sacrificed on the “decoy plane.”
For better or worse, history is full of civilizations & empires that could never be vanquished, only to be vanquished by the inexorable march of nature (plagues, droughts, crop failures, earthquakes, etc.) and humans (with their endless capacity for both idealism and selfishness). It’s not pleasant to be living in a declining & chaotic civilization, but here we are.
/Your resident Cassandra
Deb, the Nazis thought they had a Thousand Year Reich–they were off by nine and a half centuries. The United States is $40 TRILLION in debt–and our Debt is larger than our Economy. That is a path to Recession and High Unemployment. Plus Trump has damaged out Democracy to such an extent it will take decades to fix it!
Of course, Drumpf is At Least as likely to destroy us all at the moment as anyone else…thank goodness the resentful nostalgists have been willing to endorse and indulge his fantasies at the ballot box, if helped along thus by his fellow thieves, albeit most of them only marginally closer to sane, and probably at least as certain of their own immortality…and resentful of the creeping realization that they Aren’t immortal, however much they try to suppress that.
Todd, I can only hope the November Mid-term Elections put a stop to much of the chicanery Trump and his minions are inflicting on us!
It’s amazing how many tRUMP supporters are still supporting him when he acts against their interests. Of course any tRUMP supporters are just showing how stupid they are by doing so.
Maggie, there are a lot of stupid people in the United States…
Remember the outrage at hegseth spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on steaks, etc for himself and others.
Typical for this piss poor administration. Just like the catering truck escape where all the rest of his entourage were left behind to travel in the threatened aircraft.