The Fall of the Roman Empire

by Michael Grant

  The Romans reached exactly the opposite conclusion. The self-satisfaction with which they reacted to current events displayed a sluggish insensitivity to current developments. Ausonius, although a political adviser of Emperors, is a conspicuous example. His whole attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.

  And above all this acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. North-African inscriptions of the turbulent later fourth century refer with an utterly misplaced hopefulness to 'the youthful vigour of the Roman name' and 'golden times everywhere'. And the same inane spirit is found in writer after writer. For example, Claudian spoils his moving praise of the universality of the Empire by gross exaggerations of the theme that there will never be a limit to Roman power. Rome only has to threaten, he cries, and the Rhine is pacified. Yet these traditional assertions by the poets that countries even as far afield as India will bow beneath the Roman Imperial yoke were little less than ludicrous in the circumstances of decline.

  Now, to my sight, is Babylon subdued; The Parthians take to flight, as if pursued; To Roman laws, submission Bactria shows; The Ganges pale 'mid captive borders flows; And Persia, at our foot, with humble air, Spreads costly ornaments and jewels rare. Your course to Bacchus' utmost limits bend; From pole to pole your Empire shall extend. The Ruddy Sea will you with pearls supply; On Indus' stream for ivory rely; . . .

  Symmachus, too, with equal fatuity, pronounces the conquest of new territories to be the Empire's continued aim. Moreover his Christian opponent Prudentius holds just as firmly to the same belief that the Eternal City has been granted a wholly new lease of life under its new Christian management. As he makes the goddess Rome declare,

  My grey hairs become gold again. Let all that is mortal Age according to the law; for me time has ushered in another century

  And a long life taught me scorn of death.

  Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius Namatianus continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance:

  Your power is felt wherever the sun's light shines, Even to the farthest edge of the world. . . . Let your

  Bright armour flash the light of perpetual fire. . . .

  Let your law extend to all the known world;

  It will not die. You have lived a millennium

  Plus sixteen decades and now nine more years.

  You need not fear the Furies; the years that remain

  Have no limit but the earth's firmness and

  The strength of Heaven supporting the stars. Your strength

  Is the weakness of other Empires:

  You are strong because you can learn from misfortune.

  That is nobly said. But it entirely diverts attention from the need to take the most vigorous imaginable steps to ward off the collapse of his beloved Rome, which was, in fact, so urgently imminent.

  Sidonius paid his second visit to the city as late as 467, only nine years before the Western world ceased to exist. And what did he find? He found that everything was in excellent order. As he gazed at the Romans enjoying their holiday celebrations, the ancient institutions seemed to him wholly unshaken. He neither saw nor felt the slightest indication of the portentous changes under way.

  Once again, that was not the spirit in which anything was likely to be done to save the declining Empire: or even to see that there was anything more than usually wrong with it. This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditionalist fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all.

  13

  The Other World against This World

  If the pagans, and the products of their educational system, failed to meet the challenge of the crisis owing to excessively traditional attitudes, the great churchmen and theologians, men of superior brains and character who in earlier times would have been public servants, were guilty, too often, of a different but equally serious fault: that of discouraging other people from serving the state, either in a peaceful or a warlike capacity.

  This had been a natural enough attitude in the old days when the state was engaged in persecuting Christianity. Their feelings at that period were summed up by Origen: 'We Christians defend the Empire by praying for it, soldiers in a spiritual welfare much more vital than any in which a Roman legionary serves.' In the same spirit, his more radical contemporary Tertullian argued that a Christian soldier in the Roman army who had refused to put a garland on his head during a pagan festival was entirely justified, even though his refusal might be followed by his own imprisonment, and by the persecution of his co-religionists. Indeed, the command to 'turn the other cheek', attributed to Jesus, made it difficult for a Christian to be a Roman soldier at all; and there were numerous specific instances of men who, after embracing Christianity, felt unable to serve in the army any longer.

  Nor was the Christian attitude to civilian public service any more favourable. For the scriptural saying 'You cannot serve two masters, God and Mammon', was interpreted by identifying Mammon with the Emperor. 'Nothing, then, is more foreign to us than the state,' felt Tertullian. And the church Council held in about 306 at Illiberis (Elvira) in Spain declared that no member of the faith who had been appointed to an official post could be allowed to come to church throughout his entire period of office.

  But it may seem somewhat surprising that, after the Empire became Christian, the church and its leaders, although they were now the partners of the Emperor, still persisted in their old conviction that Christianity was incompatible with state service. In 313, for example, the Council of Arelate (Aries) in Gaul pronounced that those who wished to take up political life were excluded from communion. For, in the words of an early papal letter to the Gauls, 'those who have acquired secular power and administered secular justice cannot be free from sin'. In consequence, a series of Popes, including Siricius and Innocent I, debarred those who had held administrative jobs from holy orders, explaining that this was because such government posts, even if not actually sinful in themselves, were gravely perilous to a man's soul all the same.

  Moreover, this veto was still specifically extended, as in earlier days, to those who had served in the army. Indeed, the Christian leaders of the time, in spite of their new and intimate associations with the government, still continued to speak out frequently and openly against military service. Athanasius explicitly praised Christianity because it alone implanted a truly pacifist disposition, since the only foe it battled against was Evil. Basil of Caesarea related this attitude very rigorously to practical life, declaring that a solider who killed a man in the course of his duties was guilty of murder and must be excommunicated. Even Pope Damasus, from his position of close alliance with the state, still praised Christian soldiers who courted martyrdom by throwing away their arms. St Martin of Tours asked to be released from the army because I am Christ's soldier: I am not allowed to fight'. And when taxed with cowardice, he was said to have offered to stand in front of the battle line armed only with a cross. But then, according to the legend, the enemy surrendered immediately, so that no such gesture proved necessary.

  Paulinus, bishop of Nola, supported these arguments against the profession of arms in explicit detail, contrasting it with the wearing of armour for God.

  ... Do not any longer love this world or its military service, for Scripture's authority attests that whoever is a friend of this world is an enemy of God. He who is a soldier with the sword is the servant of death, and when he sheds his own blood or that of another, this is the reward for his service.

  He will be regarded as guilty of death either because of his own death or because of his sin, because a soldier in war, fighting not so much for himself as for another, is either conquered and killed, or conquers and wins a pretext for death - for he cannot be a victor unless he first sheds blood.

  For t
hose who were defenders of the tottering fabric of society, there is not much sign of any encouragement here. It remained for the unknown fifth-century writer On the Calling of all Nations to express, not merely the common belief that barbarians were the instruments of divine punishment, but the actual hope that Roman arms would fail against the enemy whose 'weapons which destroy the world do but promote the grace of Christianity'.

  When such views were being expressed by bishops and theologians, it was hardly to be expected that their congregations would show any greater enthusiasm for the army and its tasks, however pressing these might be; and so the power of the Empire to resist its foes was sapped. Pacifism can only be pursued when no potential external enemies exist - and that was not the situation of ancient Rome.

  Another menace to the loyal defence of the state was something more subtle. It came from Augustine, who possessed one of the best intellects of his own or any other age, and composed very numerous and abundant writings. Now Augustine could not accurately be described as a pacifist at all. The saying 'turn the other cheek', he pointed out, can only be regarded as metaphorical, since to take it literally would be fatal to the welfare of the state. Wars were sometimes, he believed, a grim necessity, and might even be just, and in any case Jesus never told soldiers not to serve and fight. Yet Augustine discouraged national service by more insidious means. Just as the monks undermined the Empire by physical withdrawal, so he undermined it, too, by a sort of spiritual withdrawal: the state we most urgently need to serve is not the Roman Empire, but an ideal, heavenly state.

  His work the Civitas Dei, rendered as the 'City of God' though the word rather means 'community' or 'society', is not primarily a political treatise, but a work of theology. Nevertheless, its abundant pages yield important evidence of Augustine's influence on the political events of his time. Plato had described an ideal city which was the forerunner of Augustine's, It was 'laid up somewhere in heaven', to be a model for actual communities upon earth. In later Greek times the Stoic philosophers had envisaged the world as a single unit, a cosmopolis, which is itself a potential City of God on earth, since all men possess a share of the divine spark. Then another philosophical thinker, Posidonius, turned this doctrine to the advantage of the Roman Empire, which he saw as the only realizable cosmopolis.

  St Paul, too, wrote that the minds of the enemies of Christ are set on earthly things, whereas Christian believers on earth 'by contrast are citizens of heaven'. Yet he held that earthly governments had to be obeyed, for they are instituted by God and are in the service of God, so that those who rebel against them are flouting divine authority. And in the same spirit the Gospels record a much-discussed saying of Jesus, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's'.

  After the accession of Constantine, it was believed by his supporters that the words of Jesus and Paul enjoining obedience to the earthly power had become peculiarly relevant, since the unity between the heavenly and earthly communities detected by Posidonius had actually begun, under the reigning Emperor's auspices, to come about. Subsequently Theodosius I, by his total union between state and church, seemed to have completed the process, and the official doctrine was now insistent that by serving the Christian government a man was also serving heaven.

  But when Alaric sacked Rome in 410, a wave of pessimism came over the relations between church and state, and it finds expression in the thought of Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine. This gloom was based on certain antique attitudes. In particular there had always been a widespread pagan doctrine that the world, so far from exhibiting modern concepts of progress, was steadily declining from the Golden Age of the past down to the

  Iron Age of the present, with catastrophe to come in the future. Such doctrines, which conveniently coincided with Christian views of the Day of Doom and the Last Judgment, enabled Ambrose, for example, to take a most unfavourable view of the condition and prospects of the Roman Empire. After the battle of Adrianople, he announced 'the massacre of all humanity, the end of the world', and then again in 386 he recorded 'diseases spreading, time nearing its end. We are indeed in the twilight of the world'. Christianity he saw as the crop coming just before the frosts of the winter: and the approaching world's end, as one of his followers explicitly declared, was to be preceded by the collapse of Rome.

  Since the Romans, when they expressed over-optimism, were speaking foolishly, it seems hypercritical to denounce them when they were pessimistic as well. And, indeed, there was one thing to be said in favour of this gloomier attitude. It did at least appreciate that there was something terribly wrong. But useful plans to put it right were scarcely more apparent among Christians than among pagans.

  Upon this world of unconstructive thinking burst Alaric in 410. Almost a century earlier, the Christian writer Lactantius had said that the fall of the city of Rome would mean the end of the world, and now, with Alaric's onslaught, both these events seemed to have come at one and the same time. Although, in fact, the Visigoths only stayed for three days, and did not do as much damage as might have been expected, this blow that felled the Eternal City seemed an appalling horror to optimists and pessimists alike.

  Jerome, although far away in Bethlehem, took it as hard as anyone else. Alaric's earlier invasions had already filled him with the gloomiest forebodings, and now, after the sack of the city, he wrote to other friends in desperation, almost believing that the blackest prophecies had been right, and that the last days of the world were truly come.

  ... I dare hardly speak until I receive more definite news. For I am torn between hope and despair, tormented by the terrible things that have befallen our friends. But now that this glorious Light of the World has been tampered with - defiled; and now that, with this city, the whole world, so to speak, is faced with

  annihilation, 'I am dumb, and am humbled, and kept silent from good things.'

  Three years later, he was still reverting to the same theme.

  . . . Terrifying news comes to us from the West. Rome has been taken by assault. Men are ransoming their lives with gold. Though despoiled, they are still hounded, so that after their goods they may pay with their very lives.

  My voice is still, and sobs disturb my every utterance. The city has been conquered which had once subjugated an entire world.

  Nevertheless, the Christian view remained equivocal since Alaric, in his work of destruction, seemed to be acting as the human instrument of God, and imposing a divine visitation, punishment, and test. 'God's providence', wrote Augustine, 'constantly uses war to correct and chasten the corrupt morals of mankind, as it also uses such afflictions to train men in a righteous and laudable way of life, removing to a better state those whose life is approved, or else keeping them in this world for further service.'

  Yet on hearing for the first time of the capture of Rome Augustine's first reaction, like Jerome's, had been one of deep shock. 'Tidings of terror are reaching us,' he declared to his African congregation. 'There has been a massacre: also great fires, looting, murder, torture.' Later he realized that these first reports were overstated. Acting with relative restraint, Alaric, himself a Christian, had spared the personnel and property of the church.

  However, many people, and not only pagans, were asking why, since the Imperial government was Christian and allegedly enjoyed God's backing, had God allowed such a thing to happen. Nothing so frightful had ever occurred under pagan rule. It was in order to meet this challenge that Augustine began to write the twenty-two books of the City of God. 'The first five', explains its author, 'refute those who attribute prosperity and adversity to the cult of pagan gods or to the prohibition of this cult. The next five are against those who hold that ills are never wanting to men, but that worship of the pagan gods helps towards the future life after death.' The second part of the work contains twelve books. The first four describe the birth of the two cities, one of God, the other of the world. The second four continue their story, and the third four depict their final destiny.
These last twelve books contain a far-reaching philosophy of history which does not depend solely on Alaric's capture of Rome but possesses a universal application.

  Augustine had read Plato's Republic in Latin translations, and had studied commentaries on the work. But he borrowed the concept of the two cities from certain contemporary North-African Christians, the Donatists (see Appendix 1), who held that one city served God and his loyal angels, while the other worked for the Devil and his rebel angels and demons. At present, it was true, the two cities seemed inextricably mixed together within the church as in the rest of the world,but at the Last Judgment they would appear in manifest separation, one on God's left and the other on his right, like the captor city Babylon and its liberated captive Jerusalem.

  This vision of captivity and liberation excited Augustine and inspired him. And in consequence, during the year following 410, he began to develop this whole theme for his readers and congregations, elaborating it with the passion of a masterly and persuasive artist. Two loves, he says, have created two cities: love of God the heavenly city, to the contempt of self; love of self the earthly city, to the contempt of God. The city of God is the city of the righteous, which contains God and his angels and saints in heaven, and all men and women who lead good lives on earth. The earthly city contains all unrighteous men and women wherever they be in the universe - fallen angels, the souls of the unrighteous, the unrighteous in the world. Although, therefore, marginal points of contact exist, the earthly city is not the same as the Roman Empire.

  What, then, does Augustine think of that Empire? His answer is founded on his doctrine of Grace. Without this god-given help to human beings, he feels that we who are lumps of perdition -sinful ever since Adam's Fall - can never attain eternal salvation. Augustine's own recurrent struggles between the flesh and the spirit caused him to share St Paul's poor opinion of what a person can achieve by his own unaided will, and made him break with the more optimistic, classical, humanist view that we can achieve great things by our own endeavours.