The History Blog

I came across this list of reasons historians have suggested over the past couple hundred years for the fall of Rome in The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins.

It was compiled by German historian Alexander Demandt for his 1984 history Der Fall Roms, but since I have neither 350 spare dollars to purchase a copy of my own nor the German to read it, I turned to Google to slake my thirst. It led me to Crooked Timber and now, without further ado, here are 210 reasons Rome fell.

Abolition of gods, abolition of rights, absence of character, absolutism, agrarian question, agrarian slavery, anarchy, anti-Germanism, apathy, aristocracy, asceticism, attacks by Germans, attacks by Huns, attacks by nomads on horseback.

Backwardness in science, bankruptcy, barbarization, bastardization, blockage of land by large landholders, blood poisoning, bolshevization, bread and circuses, bureaucracy, Byzantinism.

Capitalism, change of capitals, caste system, celibacy, centralization, childlessness, Christianity, citizenship (granting of), civil war, climatic deterioration, communism, complacency, concatenation of misfortunes, conservatism, corruption, cosmopolitanism, crisis of legitimacy, culinary excess, cultural neurosis.

Decentralization, decline of Nordic character, decline of the cities, decline of the Italic population, deforestation, degeneration, degeneration of intellect, demoralization, depletion of mineral resources, despotism, destruction of environment, destruction of peasantry, destruction of political process, destruction of Roman influence, devastation, differences in wealth, disarmament, disillusion with state, division of empire, division of labour.

Earthquakes, egoism, egoism of the state, emancipation of slaves, enervation, epidemics, equal rights (granting of), eradication of the best, escapism, ethnic dissolution, excessive aging of population, excessive civilization, excessive culture, excessive foreign infiltration, excessive freedom, excessive urbanization, expansion, exploitation.

Fear of life, female emancipation, feudalization, fiscalism, gladiatorial system, gluttony, gout, hedonism, Hellenization, heresy, homosexuality, hothouse culture, hubris, hyperthermia.

Immoderate greatness, imperialism, impotence, impoverishment, imprudent policy toward buffer states, inadequate educational system, indifference, individualism, indoctrination, inertia, inflation, intellectualism, integration (weakness of), irrationality, Jewish influence.

Lack of leadership, lack of male dignity, lack of military recruits, lack of orderly imperial succession, lack of qualified workers, lack of rainfall, lack of religiousness, lack of seriousness, large landed properties, lead-poisoning, lethargy, levelling (cultural), levelling (social), loss of army discipline, loss of authority, loss of energy, loss of instincts, loss of population, luxury.

Malaria, marriages of convenience, mercenary system, mercury damage, militarism, monetary economy, monetary greed, money (shortage of), moral decline, moral idealism, moral materialism, mystery religions, nationalism of Rome’s subjects, negative selection.

Orientalization, outflow of gold, over-refinement, pacifism, paralysis of will, paralysation, parasitism, particularism, pauperism, plagues, pleasure-seeking, plutocracy, polytheism, population pressure, precociousness, professional army, proletarization, prosperity, prostitution, psychoses, public baths.

Racial degeneration, racial discrimination, racial suicide, rationalism, refusal of military service, religious struggles and schisms, rentier mentality, resignation, restriction to profession, restriction to the land, rhetoric, rise of uneducated masses, romantic attitudes to peace, ruin of middle class, rule of the world.

Semi-education, sensuality, servility, sexuality, shamelessness, shifting of trade routes, slavery, Slavic attacks, socialism (of the state), social tensions, soil erosion, soil exhaustion, spiritual barbarism, stagnation, stoicism, stress, structural weakness, superstition.

Taxation, pressure of terrorism, tiredness of life, totalitarianism, treason, tristesse, two-front war, underdevelopment, useless diet, usurpation of all powers by the state, vaingloriousness, villa economy, vulgarization.

Any of those look familiar? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them all used at various times by various people to bemoan the degenerate condition of the US. Hell, I’ve used a fair few of them myself.

Except for maybe tristesse. That’s a new one. Oh, and hyperthermia.

Firemen in Prague have discovered a massive illegal collection of antiquities in a burnt-out apartment. The owner/looter, most likely a metal detecting type, died in the fire.

The collection comprises some 1,900 bronze objects and 1,400 iron objects. Ceramic and objects made of other material appear only marginally in it.

Only several objects represent the beginnings of metallurgy in Central Europe in the late Neolithic (about 4,000 B.C.), while more objects date back to the Bronze era (about 2,000-700 B.C.), Iron era (the last seven centuries B.C.), the ancient Roman era and the Migration Period (until 568 A.D.)

In addition, the collection includes medieval objects and those originating in the early modern times.

Unfortunately, the scientific value of these rare and magnificent artifacts is significantly reduced by the lack of provenance. That’s the things about looters: they don’t often keep detailed records of the location and condition of their thefts.

On another note, can you believe this is a pendant?

Check out this neat feature on modern-day descendants of historical figures photographed in their ancestors’ most famous poses.

Nine times great-grandson of Charles II and long-time mistress Barbara Villiers, Lord Charles FitzRoy, a 50-year-old father-of-two, is a London-based fine art tour specialist.[...]

In our photograph, Charles is wearing a curly poodle wig and his fine moustache has been created by a make-up artist. He’s standing in front of a real drape but the rest of the background, and the suit of armour, have been digitally added. The sword and the staff are real.

Fun! It’s worth it for the outfits and props alone, never mind the coolness of replicating grandpa’s exact pose.

You know, if young Napoleon had just squinted his eyes a little bit, he’d have looked so much like his imperial ancestor. As it is, he looks like a bit dorky, or at least like he’s trying to choke back a guffaw. Wussy. Napoleon probably had to stand for that portrait for hours. Mr. de Salis just had to hold it a second for the camera.

As if it weren’t awesome enough that Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog, he had to go and make him some LOLpilgrims.

No thyng hath plesed me moore, or moore esed myn wery brayne than thes joili and gentil peyntures ycleped “Cat Macroes” or “LOL Cattes .” Thes wondirful peintures aren depicciouns of animals, many of them of gret weight and girth, the which proclayme humorous messages in sum queynte dialect of Englysshe (peraventure from the North?). Many of thes cattes (and squirreles) do desiren to haue a “cheezburger,” or sum tyme thei are in yower sum thinge doinge sum thinge to yt.

Ever since computer programmer Luca Mori discovered a Roman villa in his hometown using Google Earth, archaeological surveys are becoming more of a telecommuting gig than a through-the-jungle-with-a-machete gig: Satellites build a picture of the past.

American archaeologist Scott Madry, Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, stumbled across a newspaper covering Mori’s story. Madry had been professionally surveying archaeological sites for more than 25 years, becoming frustrated with the inefficient, dangerous and somewhat inaccurate method of aerial surveying.

Within a few hours on Google Earth, Madry was able to locate 101 features in an area covering 1,440 square kilometres in Central France. These features represented Iron Age, Medieval and Gallo-Roman sites.

Aerial surveying is expensive as hell, too. Not only are planes expensive, but even a single high resolution satellite image can cost thens of thousands of dollars. Google Earth is free.

P.S. - NASA has an archaeologist. Who knew?

Ninety years ago, laceworker Harry Lamin wrote letters home to his brother and sisters from the trenches of World War I. His grandson Bill found them in a drawer and decided to publish them in a blog exactly 90 years after they were written so we read them one at a time just as his family would have read them almost a century ago.

Since Harry had a son before he left, we don’t know if the next letter we read will be one from him or the dreaded telegram from the war department. It’s suspenseful and touching and just so real.

Be sure to read the archives backwards to catch up. Bill opens with a useful introduction to the people referenced in the correspondence, and then dives right in with the first letter.

Not the original, of course — much of that was butchered and stolen by Lord Elgin 200 years ago and the rest remains in place under assault by Athenian pollution — but castings made from the original 19th century molds were rescued from the library of the Staten Island Academy in 1960 by two College of Staten Island professors.

“It’s a 19th-century footprint long before air pollution and anything else that would change the surface,” said Katherine Schwab, an associate professor of art history at Fairfield University in Connecticut, which also has plaster slabs depicting the frieze. “They can look at the plaster casts and in some cases see details no longer there.”

How the casts found their way to Staten Island remains something of a mystery. It is known, however, that the works were made by a Boston firm called P. P. Caproni & Brother that did work for East Coast museums and universities and that fashioned the casts from 19th-century British molds taken directly from the Parthenon.

Somehow, the casts wound up in the library of the Staten Island Academy, a private school. William Winter, a New York theater critic, dedicated the library to his 13-year-old son, Arthur, who had died in a sledding accident in 1886. Because “Ivanhoe” had been the child’s favorite book, the school’s library had been decorated to replicate the frieze-adorned study of the book’s author, Sir Walter Scott. When the academy moved to Dongan Hills in 1970, the reliefs stayed behind in the abandoned school.

The castings were somewhat neglected until recently, but now, thanks to the efforts of history professor Sandra Gambetti, they are being lovingly restored. For more details and some fantastic pictures of the casts and restoration process, see The Parthenon at CSI.

You might not know this given the centuries governments and cultural institutions have spent covering up the material remains of Roman licentiousness, but explicit sex and nudity were very much a fixture of everyday public life in ancient Rome.

Deemed too shocking for women, children and the lower classes, artefacts that were later labelled pornographic were kept behind locked, and even bricked-up, doors in what became known as the Secret Museum established in 1819 in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.

There was also a series of secret rooms in London’s British Museum.

On occasion, admittance to the Naples secret chamber was permitted to responsible gentlemen of good moral character, including young males of the wealthy elite enjoying a gap year by undertaking the European Grand Tour to complete their “education”.

These same gentlemen could also gain access to a series of peep shows kept under lock and key at Pompeii where specially built steel cabinets kept various frescoes and murals from general view.

The Secret Museum was opened only briefly during the social revolution of the 1960s. It was closed again until 2000. Since 2005 the collection has been housed in a special room. Entry is gained by a separate ticket.

Interesting how porn was a privilege of class and male gender. These sexual images were seen as genuinely dangerous to public morality. In order to see them, you had to prove yourself above it all in some way, a scholar and a gentleman, who might examine them in dirty, dirty secret, but never get the hint of a boner or even a giggle, heaven forfend.

This is a glimpse into how the modern notion of pornography was born: explicit sex removed from its social context and ghettoized in the name of protecting those who cannot be trusted to cope with (read: repress) arousal. The word “pornography” was actually coined as a description of classical erotic art in the 1850’s. It wasn’t until several decades later that it began to be used to described prurient art in general.

For a wonderfully entertaining running commentary through the Secret Museum of the National Museum of Archaeology in Naples, listen to this BBC radio story by Lynda Nead. The analysis of the significance of the Secret Museum in the dawn of pornography in the 19th century is fascinating. Besides, there’s nothing like hearing about creamy-fleshed girls straddling giant phalluses as described by British professors.

Children’s author Alan Garner has put his medieval house in trust rather than see it fall into the laquered and beclawed hands of footballer’s wives.

Garner said: “Despite denying children and grandchildren their inheritance, neither I nor my wife could bear the thought of the house falling into the hands of some footballer’s wife, who might destroy 10,000 years of heritage for the sake of building a swimming pool and a tennis court.”

Bummer for his kids, but I support his choice a hundred percent. The house seems amazing.

Garner said his home was a site of archaeological importance dating back 10,000 years and the thought of it being bulldozed to make way for a modern mansion horrifies both him and his wife.

He added: “We are continually finding artefacts from as far back as 10,000 years, the end of the last Ice Age.

“We also know that the house is built on a Bronze Age burial mound, one of several, and that beneath the house there are the remains of two further older houses and probably more dwelling places before then. It is a rare site and must be preserved.”

An update to one of the top 10 archaeological stories of 2007, the discovery of the 2000 year old henge at Lismullin and the Irish government’s plan to pave it over with a new highway.

NPR’s Marketplace has a segment about the protests. They take a rather patronizing approach to the story, opening with neo-druids casting spells against the road in the name of the White Mare Goddess, and there’s no mention of the EU’s lawsuit against the Irish government, but there is a money quote from the National Road Authority’s Mary Deevy:

Mary Deevy: Although it’s a national monument, that doesn’t mean it’s . . . no one can ever do any research or excavation or work on it.

Beard: Or build a road on top of it?

Deevy: Yes, and in this instance, or build a road on it, yes.