CUP (2024) p/b 445pp £21.99 (ISBN 9781107529090)
Ever since Gibbon wrote his famous work in the 18th century, historians have been influenced by his view that the ‘decline and fall’ of the western Roman empire during the 4th-6th centuries was inevitable: over-extension, barbarian invasions, weak and eventually disappearing emperors and the disruptive rise of Christianity together made its survival impossible. S. does not accept this view. On the contrary, her favourite word is `resilience’. She takes us through, in considerable detail, the five major crises that happened to the city of Rome during this period: Constantine’s defeat of Maxentius, the sack by the Goths in 410, the Vandal occupation in 455, the civil war in the 470s and the Gothic attacks in the sixth century, and she shows how Rome not merely recovered after each of these events but thrived, and would have continued to do so if Justinian had not then taken control.
She attributes this continuous revival to one source above all, the Roman Senate. We who have been brought up on earlier imperial history tend to disregard the Senate as no longer having any agency, become an empty shell, a mere rubber stamp for the emperor and his court of freedmen. But, as S. demonstrates from a number of examples we know about, senators continued to be a uniquely privileged group; this was especially true of those she calls the ‘aristocratic elite’, hugely wealthy, inheritors of respected family names, keen to compete for the prestige of the various public offices and governorships and form alliances to help them do so, and able as a result to pass on even greater wealth and prestige to their descendants.
With an emperor present in Rome these men were inhibited, but when the emperor had moved to Ravenna, then disappeared entirely from the West and been replaced by Ostrogothic kings, with only one imperial court far away in the East, who else was there left who could run Rome? With meticulous analysis of the available sources, S. explains that this is exactly what happened: the emperors, the kings, the military authorities and the Emperor in Byzantium worked with and encouraged these ‘aristocratic elites’ and left the recovery of Rome largely to them. Promotion to the Senate was often a reward for good service, and these ‘new men’ added to the effective power of the old aristocracies. Rome and the ‘idea’ of Rome were still important: after each disaster it had to be rebuilt and renewed, the people provided with their food supply, etc.: it was the senatorial elites who had the wealth and authority to make this possible.
It was not Christianity: although Christianity spread quickly after Constantine’s endorsement, older habits and customs continued alongside it, and S. makes clear that in this period the bishops of Rome had little effective authority except in liturgical matters. It was only after Justinian’s takeover of Italy in the sixth century and the abolition of the Ostrogothic kingdom that the situation changed. Justinian was uninterested in preserving the city of Rome, and imposed new rules which removed the motivation which had previously spurred the senatorial elites to increase their prestige and wealth by running for public office; so they stayed in their estates and declined into obscurity, and Rome, under more effective bishops, became a papal city.
This is a work of high scholarship by an expert in the period and its (often scarce and difficult) sources, as is clear from the list of her other publications. She tells a complex story with much detail, so it is not a quick or easy read, but it is a pleasurable one. Her narrative is supported by plentiful notes at the bottom of almost every page, and a series of tables at the end with details of important officials appointed by various emperors during the period, illustrating relevant parts of the text. There are some useful maps and photographs, although in the paperback version it is not always easy to see the detail in the latter. The only other gripe is that, very occasionally, the text looks as if it had been proofread by a drunken AI because a key word is missing from a sentence. This is not enough to prevent it being a very pleasurable and interesting read.
Highly recommended.
Colin McDonald