Der Untergang des Römischen Weltreichs

by Peter J. Heather

Other authorsKlaus Kochmann (Translator)
Paperback, 2017

Status

Available

Call number

NH 7680 H441

Collection

Publication

Reinbek bei Hamburg Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verl. 2017

Description

Peter Heather presents a history of one of the greatest and most epic mysteries - the strange death of the Roman Empire.

User reviews

LibraryThing member cemanuel
In this volume Peter Heather attempts to explain that ultimately, the cause of the Fall of the Western Roman Empire was not due to tax inequities, a failure of the economy, internal discord, etc., but rather because of the simply overwhelming level of barbarian invasions which began in the late 4th
Show More
century. This he proceeds to do very well.

This work is divided into three main parts; "Pax Romana" for chapters 1-3, "Crisis" for chapters 4-7 and "Fall of Empires" for chapters 8-10. I will discuss each of these briefly.

In "Pax Romana" Heather discusses the Barbarians, the Romans, and the Roman Empire briefly. For each of these groups he gives an overview of their development to the latter part of the 4th century, in order to provide us with a starting point for the period of the barbarian invasions. He discusses what it meant to be "Roman" and how even cities far removed from Rome, such as Trier, were fully involved in Roman life and, rather than being rustic frontier outposts, were as fully a part of the Empire as cities of the Italian peninsula. He discusses the increased autonomy of the Emperor and how the Empire changed and adapted to the rise of Sassanid Persia as a threat to the East, including changes in the taxation system to support an increased military presence in that area. He also discusses the evolution of Germanic tribes and their coalescence from small, isolated people into larger, more unified kingdoms, capable of truly threatening Rome rather than just gaining an occasional, ultimately meaningless victory as had previously been the case.

All of this is to set the stage, to explain the status of the Empire and people within and oustide it, and to show that in the late 4th century the Empire had recovered from the tumultous 3rd century and the Persian threat to once again reached a point of balance, able to maintain its prosperity as well as defend its borders.

It is impossible to do justice to section 2, "Crisis" with a summary. Here Heather provides what is simply the most detailed account of the military actions of the late Roman Empire that I have ever read. This section is outstanding. Heather provides a great deal of information, beginning with the Gothic campaign which resulted in the huge Roman loss at Hadrianople and ending with Aetius repulsing the Hunnic invasion at the Catalaunian fields. He discusses various battles, their effect on the Empire, and how the Empire responded to meet these threats. From the Goths to Alaric, from the Hunnish threat to the Vandal invasion of North Africa he covers these events and their impacts in great detail.

In the final section, "End of Empires" Heather first discusses the fall of the Hunnic Empire and why this was not of as much benefit to the Empire as might be suspected as it allowed many other Barbarian invaders access to the Empire, as opposed to facing one single threat. He also discusses the Western Empire's last struggles to remain viable, including its efforts to regain the economically wealthy North Africa, a region which might have provided the necessary wealth for Rome to restore its military strength. Heather discusses how the failure of the North African invasion fleet in 468 spelled doom for the Empire. Finally he details the last days of Rome and the successor kingdoms that formed to fill in the void in Western Europe.

This is an excellent work. Heather writes well, the narrative is interesting, he references source material extensively and he goes into great detail regarding the last century of the Western Empire. I will say that I believe he argues his thesis rather convincingly. He does not try to minimize internal problems, particularly that so much of the military was focussed on Persia, however he provides a great deal of support for his argument that were it not for the sheer size and number of Barbarian invasions, particularly those driven by Hunnish pressure, the Roman Empire would not have fallen when it did. He details this by discussing the relative size of the two forces and showing that the Barbarian fighting men very likely enjoyed substantial numerical superiority over the Western Empire's field armies. Does he prove his thesis? Probably not - I've read works which argue equally convincingly that a combination of an over-bureaucracized society and the concentration of wealth were key aspects of Rome's decline. However Heather argues his point extremely well.

Even if you are not interested in the argument as to "why" Rome fell, this is an excellent account of the Barbarian invasions of the late 4th and 5th centuries and how Rome responded. I would recommend it on that basis alone.
Show Less
LibraryThing member port22
Historic orthodoxy dismisses barbarians and puts forward reasons like corruption, decline in agriculture, over-taxation, and religion in the center of what brought the empire down. To Peter Heather it was the barbarians who destroyed it.

Historians, while attributing fault to the barbarian forces,
Show More
felt a power as great as Rome couldn't have been brought down by disparate hordes of illiterates. Rome had established a civilization -- it had central administration, weapons factories, schools of philosophy, forms of banking, experienced armies, trade was thriving -- so it feels that a cogent explanation would admit barbarians had something to do with empire's demise but they shouldn't have been the central acting force. All research is then wrongly focused on what fundamental weaknesses of imperial life did barbarians aim to exploit.

The historic narrative of Peter Heathers' book is as much a probe in imperial Roman life as it is an attempt to perceive what took place on the other side of the Empire's frontier in the development of two centuries of barbarian life.

Around the fourth century AD Rome reached the natural limit of its expansion. While there were always more territories to conquer the benefit of this had to be judged against the potential bounty and later on against the expense of maintaining standing armies to defend larger borders. After successfully taking over the land around the Mediterranean Sea, which in the face of all ancient civilizations (Greek, Egyptian) provided reach bounties, it found a diminishing return when faced with the challenge of fighting the primitive barbarians inhabiting less populated land of what is today Germany and Eastern Europe.

The life in the empire was marked by officials using power to enrich themselves and their associates. What we'd today define as "corruption" in ancient Rome it merely reflected the normal relationship between power and profit. Since this didn't impede the spectacular rise of the empire we shouldn't assign it too much fundamental significance in its downfall.

Ancient agriculture suffered from two limitations. First, the productivity of any piece of land was limited to the number of laborers that worked on it, and second, in absence of fertilizers ancient farmers were unable to significantly increase the output of foodstuff. During its entire time of existence Roman economy was not operating much above subsistence levels. To fend off Persia, Rome had to impose new taxes. Part of the historic orthodoxy was the notion that the land owning classes were over-taxed into oblivion. The evidence of which were documents about abandoned agricultural lands which, it is tempting to think, were uneconomical to work on.

Archaeological work has made it possible to test levels of rural settlement and agricultural activity over wide geographic spread and different points in time of the Roman period. They showed that the 3rd and the 4th century, when the new (more demanding) tax was introduced, saw unimpeded economical development -- field tests of what is today Greece, Spain, southern France, Syria, Tunisia and Libya demonstrated that prosperity didn't begin to decline until the 5th century.

Fourth-century sources mention taxation discontent and there was only one known major tax riot. Emperors knew that importance of consent in imposing taxation. Citizens were constantly reminded that taxes paid for the army, which was the defender of the Roman world.

With the conversion to Christianity in 312 emperor Constantine began the dismantling of the ideological structure of the ancient Roman world. According to the famous historian Edward Gibbon this was a key moment in the story of the collapse. He believed that Christianity pacified the society, that military spirit was subdued.

Christianity brought a cultural transformation, but it could hardly be claimed that it had deleterious effect upon the functioning of the Empire. Religion and Empire reached a balance. Roman imperialism claimed that it was divinely predestined to conquer and rule the world. After adoption of Christianity as religion of the state, the theology was quickly reworked and it was claimed that the Empire fulfilled God's will. While the Emperor could no longer be deified, state propaganda claimed that he was hand picked by God to rule with Him.

The central arch that this book follows in explaining the fall of the empire is by exploring the life of the barbarians, their progress in agriculture, the concomitant increase in their population density, and in the formation of more hierarchical societal structures.

Occasional raids grew into more permanent settlements. The western Empire at first lost insignificant territories. For a long time the tribes that moved in didn't dare challenge the central authority. Yet, damage inflicted by protracted warfare, combined with permanent loss of territory lead to massive decline of revenue for the central state.

While the numerous victories earned Attila fame the entire direct interaction with the Huns was only a sideshow to the dislocation of the tribes that were forced to cross the frontier. Attila never threatened alienation of huge chunks of western Empire's taxpayers. The groups that fled in 408 did precisely that.

Vandals, Alans and Suevi removed most of Spain from central imperial control. Worst, Vandals and Alans shifted operations to North Africa, seizing the richest provinces of the Roman west in 439. Reduced revenue lead to reduction in the capacity of military forces that Rome could maintain.

As the Roman state lost power the provincial land owning elites faced new reality. With their wealth defined by the land they stood on, they realized that they have to make accommodations for the new dominant forces in their respective provinces. Between 410 and 450, for example, they came to terms with Goths and Burgundians as autonomous elements of central Roman state, but the trajectory of the west was inescapably set towards fully independent Goth and Burgundian kingdoms.

Any of the conventional explanations fail in one important aspect. While, according to them, the western Empire collapsed, suffering the same downsides the eastern Empire not only survived but even thrived in the sixth century. If the reasons for the collapse were valid it should have disintegrated soon after the western part. While the east defended successfully its richest province, Egypt, the west lost Norther Africa, and that was the most central element of its undoing.

This book is insightful, comprehensive, and was delightful and educational to read.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jcbrunner
The fall of the Roman Empire, a topic about which much ink has been spilled. Memorable are also the series of sword and sandals films of the 1960s with valiant Romans and vile Goths and Huns. Peter Heather has written a good account of the gradual decline of the Roman Empire that accelerated in the
Show More
final decades before 476. It is interesting that Rome adjusted relatively well to the challenge of the Persian Sassanid Empire than the smaller challenge of succeeding barbarian invasions. Rome's perimeter defense once breached resulted piece by piece in the loss of valuable territories (and thus of taxes, supplies and manpower).

While Heather mentions, again and again, the rather limited size of the barbarian armies of around 30-50.000 men, he only shows that the Romans had very limited central reserves to assist the border troops. Heather is correct that the strained public finances did not allow Rome to keep up a large standing reserve army. It is, however, puzzling, why Rome didn't try to revive the citizen army of the republic. After all, Rome managed to compensate the huge losses inflicted by Hannibal and raise new forces seemingly like it had dragon teeth at its disposal. Instead, Rome's oligarchy preferred its empire go down than empower its co-citizens. The oligarchy arranged itself with the new rulers, giving up part of their large land holdings in order to keep their status. It was the rule of law and central government that was lost which plunged Europe into a dark age.
Show Less
LibraryThing member rakerman
A recent visit to Rome caused me to wonder exactly how the empire had fallen. I had only a vague idea that the barbarians had sacked Rome and then everything fell apart. Peter Heather, an expert in the Goths, tells the story of wave after wave of 'barbarian' peoples moving through the Western
Show More
Empire, eventually causing it to totally destabilise and collapse. Once independent military forces had penetrated deep into the Empire and various barbarian factions were able to act both for and against the empire, in particular robbing it of tax revenues, the whole system was unsustainable. The image I got (although never used by the author) was of the central authorities (of 'Rome' in some sense) as the beating heart of the Empire, circulating wealth and materials. The Empire could survive some injuries to its extremities, but eventually there was not enough to sustain the centre, and it all fell apart. I learned a lot of things, including that Rome was for centuries not the seat of the Emperor, who was often closer to the border (e.g. in Trier) or in another capital (e.g. Ravenna), and that for that matter, for centuries there was no one single Emperor, but at a minimum one in the East and one in the West, if not more. In fact one big issue for the Empire as a whole was that there were no clear processes for leadership change, so there were roiling political intrigues and various stages of civil war every time the leaders fell from power. The book is a good read, synthesizing a lot of different sources, and doing a good job of piecing things together given the very thin remaining sources for the late empire. It goes beyond pure history in some places to (clearly indicated) speculation by the author, where the sources are too thin. Can be a bit heavy reading in parts as there are many players and centuries of changes covered. The decline itself is still challenging to understand, but the picture is fairly clear: the invading forces were not particularly interested in sustaining cities, luxurious rural villas, and literacy - these weren't part of their culture. If the invading forces hadn't been so numerous, Rome would have been able to slowly absorb them and "Romanise" them (and indeed many in the Roman military and even leadership were drawn from what had been invading forces) - but they ran out of time and money. It's also possible if they'd had great foresight they could have incorporated the invaders as equals in the Empire (which is what many of the barbarians wanted) but at the time it was needed this was inconceivable, it was not part of the Roman worldview. Eventually as the invading forces became the ruling forces, over the span of a few centuries all of the complexity of Roman civilisation fell away. Overall a very interesting view of an empire at the height of its powers that was brought low by a combination of barbarian invasion and structural limitations, along with some bad luck and bad decisions.
Show Less
LibraryThing member AndreasJ
The fall of the (western) Roman Empire has inspired a great deal of industriousness on the part of historians, with Gibbon's monumental The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire standing as the origin of modern historiography on the subject. Heather's motivation for penning another
Show More
weighty tome (albeit much smaller than Gibbon's) on the topic is to argue, contra Gibbon and many others, that the principal cause was exogenous and not endogenous. The fifth-century western empire was, he argues, to me pretty convincingly, was not appreciably more "decadent" than either its fourth-century self or its eastern contemporary. What as different was the barbarians beyond the Rhine-Danube frontier.

The Germanics, Dacians, and others of the early imperial period could occasionally inflict serious defeats on Roman armies, most famously in the Teutoburger Forest in AD 9, but lacked the economic, demographic, and organizational wherewithal to stand up the the Romans in the long run. The border between empire and barbaricum was eventually drawn not according to the barbarians' ability to resist but according to what the Romans thought profitable to conquer. Compared even to Gaul, Germania had little wealth to tax. But across the following centuries the the world beyond the frontier underwent a profound economic and demographic development which left the barbarian groups of the later fourth century much closer to parity with Roman military power than their ancestors had been a few centuries earlier - they could muster many more warriors, with better equipment, and this larger number of warriors were divided into a smaller number of therefore individually much stronger political units. Much of the impetus for this development, Heather says, ironically enough came from interaction, both military and commercial, with the Romans, who in a sense created their own Nemesis.

Then, from the 370s on, the arrival and rising power of the Huns gave these newly more powerful barbarian groups - mostly Germanic or at least Germanic-lead, but also including multiple groups of Iranian-speaking Alans - a very strong incentive to migrate west and south into Roman territory. The Roman armies failed to ever thoroughly subdue the original Gothic incursors of the 370s - who inflicted a famous defeat of the Romans at Adrianople in 378 - because repeated new incursions were set off by continued Hunnic activity, both by the rise and the fall of Attila's empire, whose fall sent new waves of warlike refugees across the Danube. By the 470s, the western empire had ceased to exist - the decisive point being the loss of the North African provinces to the Vandals and the failure of the efforts to regain them, because their rich tax revenues combined with their previously unthreatened position meant they were critical contributors to imperial finances - while the eastern empire survived because its principal tax bases in Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt lay beyond the invaders' reach.

Heather writes well and his arguments are mostly convincing - to me at any rate - but a good deal of the argument here was repeated in his later book Empires and Barbarians, which I read a few years ago, which means I enjoyed the book perhaps less than I ought. But it's warmly recommended to anyone coming more innocent to the subject, or who has read accounts stressing internal causes and wants a contrary argument to compare.
Show Less
LibraryThing member DanielMaddison
Outstanding new history of the fall in the west with a focus on the barbarian kingdoms that appeared to challenge the Empire in the late 4th Century. Professer Peter Heather stresses the crucial role played by the Huns after their arrival which challenged the Empire both directly and indirectly at
Show More
several levels. Excellent use of new research and discoveries to demonstrate the dramatic changes in the world of Rome's German neighbors from the 1st to the 4th centuries.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Meggo
An interesting look at the end of the Roman Empire, that posits that it is not the Huns, but rather the Germanic tribes that were the eventual downfall of the Empire in the West. Well researched and generally well written, although the author lapses into the first person a bit much when discussing
Show More
alternative hypotheses. Worth a read for anyone interested in the late Roman Empire.
Show Less
LibraryThing member liehtzu
An excellent book that created a solciological context for the eventual demise of the Roman empire and its evolution in other. A salutary lesson for the USA and the EU. It maybe that the author, being so familiar with his topic, some what overwhelmed me with names [of tribes and persons] without
Show More
giving me the breathing space to absorb one before launching us at the next - but this is a small observation on a book that transfromed my view on the end of the first European Union. Great book!
Show Less
LibraryThing member mbmackay
This is a comprehensive, almost encyclopedic (for the non-expert) coverage of the end of the western Roman empire - but the author manages to keep it readable. One technique is to go into detail about a person, or place or event, and then use this information to illustrate a broader facet of the
Show More
history. I was entertained and informed. Great stuff.
Show Less
LibraryThing member endie
I recently finished reading Peter Heather's newest book "The Fall of the Roman Empire". As an author, he usually writes about those on the north-eastern side of the Roman limes: the Goths and Huns, and the OUP describes him, racily, as the leading authority on the barbarians. Which, surely, has
Show More
rarely have been a handier subject than today.

The cover notes say that Heather offers a new and radical interpretation of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire: that it was not the failings but the success of the Roman Empire that led to its downfall. Here, the name of the book is important, and I am sure that the contrast with Gibbons' "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" is completely intentional. Heather, basically, strips away any process of decline. Essentially, he says that the Roman Empire was strong - and in many ways getting stronger - right up until the first impact upon the Danubian provinces of the Hunnic migrations in the 360's.

He's certainly a big barbarophile: he never really says it out loud, but one does get the feeling that he is arguing less in defence of the late western Empire against charges of decadence, and more in favour of the barbarians. A sort of "the better team won" thing, and obviously, it's better if your team beats Manchester United than Accrington Stanley.

It is traditional for treatments of this period to dive into the "how small were the invading tribes that destroyed Rome?" reverse auction. Heather's figures are definitely towards the lower end of the bidding - low five figures, in the main - but his analysis of tribal confederations (caused, he says, by a mixture of Hunnic and Roman activities amongst the Germanic peoples), and the localised impact of these concentrated forces when facing static, 3rd rate Roman border defence forces - is convincing.

The real oddity of the book for me is the ending. After 450-odd pages of narrative, analysis and evidence-gathering the conclusion - that the Romans provided just the right mixture of example, grooming and provocation to harden and consolidate the Germanic tribes into a weapon capable of their destruction - is only really presented in just one paragraph (the very last). I'm not sure how to put this so as not to sound insulting, but this structure can't help but strike one as oddly undergraduate. It's as if reading all those essays and dissertations has left Heather feeling that he has to tack on a "Janet-and-John" conclusions paragraph. There is also a strange sensation that he'd reached his essay word-limit, or that the examiner had instructed him to stop writing.

The book is fun, and at times sparklingly funny. But I wish he'd spoken less about Alaric's "Gothic supergroup". I have trouble enough not seeing the cliched long hair, unkempt beards and womanising habits of the 5th century tribes as suspiciously Led Zeppelin, without Peter Heather light-heartedly describing them in a way that smacks of the wonderful Stonehenge scene in Spinal Tap, but performed by proto-Goths Bauhaus.
Show Less
LibraryThing member JohnNebauer
Heather's view is that the collapse of the Western Empire resulted from the loss of tax revenues as parts of the West suffered declining tax revenues due to impact of the Germanic peoples that entered the empire from the late 4th century.

Those people were more dangerous to the Roman state than the
Show More
first-century Germans described in Tacitus' "Germania" in part because their long contact with Rome led to the creation of larger and more sophisticated political confederations, which were also better led and equipped. This again is partly due to long contact with the Romans.

The according to Heather the East had long helped finance the Western armies. When the two halves permanently went their separate ways the Western empire was already at a disadvantage. Declining tax revenue from devastated and (later) lost provinces sent the Western empire into a terminal tailspin.

It's also very easy to read for the layperson.
Show Less
LibraryThing member john257hopper
An extremely well researched account of the fall of the western Roman Empire. The author's convincing central thesis is that the fall was essentially down to the incursion of outsiders, not to any systemic weakness within the imperial system, though such weaknesses did mean that these incursions
Show More
had a greater or quicker impact than they might otherwise have done. Mostly an excellent read, though I felt it did drag in a few places. Some of the maps were not as good as they could have been (e.g. refs in the text to towns X, Y and Z on a map and then those towns are not marked on it).
Show Less
LibraryThing member stillatim
My rating is unfair: this is a very good book, that will appeal to all kinds of readers. Heather's sentences are very readable, he tells a good story, he takes into account pretty much every factor you possibly could to explain the "fall" of the Empire (including the possibility that it wasn't a
Show More
fall etc...), and he addresses major scholarly debates. His case is well laid out and convincing: the fall of Rome in the west can only be understood in the context of profound changes in other parts of Eurasia, which forced populations to move, alliances to change, and so on.

But honestly, this is far too long. It turns out that taking account of pretty much every factor, and telling a good story about each of them in clear sentences can make a really dull book. Sometimes you don't need a story, you know? Sometimes you don't need to repeat every single fact about the Huns to make the argument that the Huns are important for understanding the fall of Rome.

So I got bored. But if you care about the subject matter, and have a higher tolerance for blow by blow military history than I do (you know what matters about a battle? Who won, and maybe why. Otherwise, please don't tell me about it. It's like describing a football game between two teams the reader doesn't care about), you'll love it. And if you have my very low tolerance, you should still read it, because there are great tales and great arguments. And every dull battle report is followed by something interesting.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Stbalbach
Peter Heather (Oxford) is a leading expert on barbarians (he's written 3 books about Goths and Huns), and is under contract (for some of these books) by a leading European-wide institution. The book is subtitled "Rome and the Barbarians", and thus unsuprisingly, in his final analysis Rome fell
Show More
because it was overwhelmed by external barbarians, and not (entirely) because of internal reasons, which is usually the more common explanation (Christianity, civic pride, economic and cultural stagnation, etc..) - and further, the barbarians invaded the Empire because they were in effect blowback from 400 years of Imperial aggression ("By virtue of its unbounded aggression, Roman imperialism was ultimately responsible for its own destruction"). Rome in effect created the barbarian menace, who were forced into more politically organized and dangerous super-groups.

This is a compelling history that I highly recommend for its riveting narrative, asking the key questions (and providing answers, even if educated guesses), dispelling old notions, illuminating a lot of new information about the barbarians and the Huns in particular, and providing a structured story from start to finish that is unforgettable. Heather reminds me of Runciman in his classic political narrative style. I've read 4 other narratives of this period and they all leave more questions than answers about a very complicated series of events to the point it just seems like one random contingency after the next, as un-interesting as the trajectory of a pin-ball game; but "Like a late Roman emperor, Heather is determined to impose order on a fabric that is always threatening to fragment and collapse into confusion; unlike most late Roman emperors, he succeeds triumphantly."
Show Less
LibraryThing member FPdC
This is the first book I have read about this momentous event in the history of humanity of which I knew close to nothing. And its reading was an eye opening experience: the fall of the (Western) Roman Empire was not only a momentous event, but a really intricate and extended affair. It is
Show More
fascinating to read about the events in the Danube frontier, the Persian peril, the Germanic push, the Huns, the disabling loss of North Africa, and the (in the end) doomed efforts of the western Empire to survive. An enthralling narrative that presents the facts and try to provide a rational (and reasonable) interpretation of them. Everyone interested in History, as well as every European, should find time to read this book.
Show Less
LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
while Adrian Goldsworthy's book on the same theme deals Rome's long standing administrational and strategic Issues, Heather's book is far more tactical. The cause of the disappearance by 476 is far more due to mishandling of the empire's relationship with the Hunnic "Empire" stapled together by
Show More
Attila. There was simply too much stress from the usual level of usurpers, the failing tax base, and the loss of Africa to the Vandals, and a loss of Gaulish revenue, for a central administration to deal with. It is fun to read both of these authorities, consider Walbank's "the Awful Revolution" and of course the prose of Gibbon, and come to one's own conclusion. This is a good book on the tactics.
Show Less
LibraryThing member pingdjip
One of the best history books I have ever read, combining narrative flair with analytical depth.
LibraryThing member CharlesFerdinand
Heather makes the point that the Western Roman Empire collapsed, not because of some inevitable internal decline, but because of growing pressure from outside by what can be conveniently called 'Barbarians'. This in turn weakened the Empire, which set in motion a vicious circle ending in the
Show More
dissolution of 476.

This is narrative history at its best. The chatty tone (calling fibulae 'safety pins' for instance) can be a little unsettling at first, but he knows his stuff. He keeps the narrative line uncluttered (East Roman politics, or internal Germanic developments are only mentioned when the are relevant to the main story line. Likewise, people are introduced as and when they are needed to explain the course of events. This makes for a certain back and forth in chronology, but it keeps the main argument easy to follow.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
An interesting new look at the perennial question of why the Roman Empire collapsed. The thesis presented suggests that the Empire itself transformed its barbarian neighbors over time resulting in the disruption of the centuries old empire. It is fascinating to read and consider the evidence
Show More
presented in this well-reasoned history.
Show Less

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2005

ISBN

9783499626654
Page: 0.3982 seconds