How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower

by Adrian Goldsworthy

Hardcover, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

937.09

Genres

Collection

Physical Books

Publication

Yale University Press (2009), Edition: First Edition, 560 pages

Description

In AD 200, the Roman Empire seemed unassailable. Its vast territory accounted for most of the known world.By the end of the fifth century, Roman rule had vanished in western Europe and much of northern Africa, and only a shrunken Eastern Empire remained.What accounts for this improbable decline? Here, Adrian Goldsworthy applies the scholarship, perspective, and narrative skill that defined his monumental Caesar to address perhaps the greatest of all historical question show Rome fell.It was a period of remarkable personalities, from the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius to emperors like Diocletian, who portrayed themselves as tough, even brutal, soldiers.It was a time of revolutionary ideas, especially in religion, as Christianity went from persecuted sect to the religion of state and emperors. Goldsworthy pays particular attention to the willingness of Roman soldiers to fight and kill each other. Ultimately, this is the story of how an empire without a serious rival rotted from within, its rulers and institutions putting short-term ambition and personal survival over the wider good of the state.How Rome Fell is a brilliant successor to Goldsworthy's "monumental" (The Atlantic) Caesar.… (more)

Media reviews

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

This is not a book that I could use in the classroom--too thick, too well-written, and perhaps most dangerously, too clear. Portraying history in such simplistic terms, however, fails to explain that governing the Late Roman Empire was a complex business. But since this is not what Goldsworthy set

out to do, such criticism is unfair. By design, this is the sort of book that politicians, school teachers, and my colleagues in the Department of Physics will read, sucked in by the blurb on the dust jacket.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member DanelMaddison

An insightful history of each stage in Rome's fall, from the catastrophes of the Third Century, through the transformation of the Fourth Century to the final dissolution of the Western Empire. An exceptional work of scholarship, yet effectively written of the informed lay. His focus on internal

strife as the key explanation for Rome's fall well- argued but is subject to debate.

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LibraryThing member RobertP

This is a very informative and entertaining look at the long drawn out collapse of the Roman Empire. Adrian Goldsworthy makes two good points. First, that the Empire took a long time to collapse - it was not a sudden or noticeable thing. Second, that a self-serving and not very efficient

bureaucracy played a role. What he didn't spend enough time on, and I think there is sufficient information out there now to have done so, is the impact of health and disease, especially large-scale epidemic disease, on the Empire.
A ripping good read, really.

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LibraryThing member Schmerguls

Goldsworthy is an exhaustive historian and there is very little drama in his history accounts. So many pages of this book were non-attention-holding. The final chapters, in which he attempts to tell why the western Roman Empire fell, are well-done and of interest. But the boring parts outweigh the

non-bofing.

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LibraryThing member gmicksmith

Less a how than it is a straight history here Goldsworthy surveys the latter part of the Roman Empire and its ultimate demise.

LibraryThing member Peacock1

An excellent telling of the decling years of Rome, with a thought provoking last chapter as to Goldsworthy's explanation of why the WEstern Empire collapsed.

LibraryThing member nmele

Goldsworthy's clarity brings a clear narrative line to his history of the Roman Empire through the sixth century. He offers pretty compelling evidence for his thesis that because emperors placed their survival above the good of the state, the state rotted from within.

LibraryThing member zen_923

This book is both well-written and informative. The author provides a good narrative of the period from the golden age to the last years of the roman empire. He also does a good job of incorporating his thesis into the narrative to explain the age-old question of why and how the decline happened.

LibraryThing member DinadansFriend

This is the third try I've had at this big question. Gibbon was, of course the first. Goldsworthy wants to understand the past in its own context and wants to downplay the "Lessons for modern America" approach. I'm in favour of this for as Adrian points out "Historians do not make the best

prophets. Still, the lessons of the big collapse should be laid out for the present student. A fact that Goldsworthy wants us desperately to remember when consulting the records left by the Romans is that they did not know they were "Falling". It always seemed to them, that though the times were a bad patch, the empire had come through before, and odds were good it would again. Goldsworthy works on defining the long view, that serious flaws in the Roman method accumulated to the breaking point in the mid-four fifties. This is definitely a book to at least read along with Gibbon, and Peter Heather on the classical apocalypse!

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LibraryThing member kaitanya64

Excellent. Goldsworthy states that he is not an expert in this period, which actually makes the book better for the general reader as he examines a variety of perspectives on various controversies rather than presenting the reader with a neat analysis. I am working my way through Gibbon and found

this to be the most helpful overview so far of the period and the debates surrounding it. Very readable for a non-specialist. It does focus mainly on politics and military issues. If you want something about the life and times of the ordinary person, there is not much here.

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LibraryThing member Paul_S

Everyone's heard all the wacky theories of why Rome fell, with the lead pipes leading the pack. This book starts off really boring with the slow and seemingly inconsequential succession of rulers but slowly builds into a reasonable explanation of the slow decline and disintegration of the Roman

Empire.

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LibraryThing member jcvogan1

Argues that civil wars and the growing frequency of usurpers did in the Empire in the West. Also made the comparison to modern day and bureaucracies that forget their larger purpose.

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