From Etruscans and Romans to Modern Times - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 56

scenes of a spectator-jammed Colosseum make one believe that he or she is in the middle
of the action in ancient Rome's most famous arena.
History has its echoes. In 1916 during World War I, a group of militant German social-
ists took inspiration from their Roman predecessors. Calling themselves Spartacists, they
proclaimed socialist opposition to the oppression of the “capitalists' war” and called on
European workers to overthrow their governments and bring an end to the war. In 1919 the
Spartacists staged an uprising in Berlin, but government soldiers quelled the uprising and
killed its leaders.
ROME DECLINES AND MOVES
Barring some great catastrophe, cities do not disappear outright. Rather, they gradually
erode. The capital of the empire was moved to Constantinople in 330 CE: “New building
and renovation ceased; the grand buildings were stripped of marble, bronze or gilded or-
naments…houses were pulled apart for building materials and disappeared.” [54] Generals,
administrators, and families of wealth moved to Constantinople. Other important families
took up residence at their great agricultural estates in various parts of the empire. “Ten
years after the Saracens attacked in AD 846… (the city's population) had fallen to a mere
17,000.” [55] And cows grazed in the Imperial Forum. As Catullus lamented, the everlasting
night now held sway.
The Roman Empire, for all its faults, accomplished three purposes of effective govern-
ment: internal peace, good order, and the safety of its citizens. When the empire collapsed,
effective government slipped away, and all across the old empire, tribal loyalties asserted a
shadowy imitation of effective government.
ROME FALLS
As a political and administrative entity whose power ran from Britain to Persia, Rome's
decline and collapse have been subject to much theorizing by historians. Edward Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , first published in 1776, concluded that two forces
lay behind the decline and fall: “… an over-commitment to otherworldly Christianity plus
an excessive gigantism, the empire outgrowing its communications and transportation net-
work.” [56]
Other theories speak to the economics of empire: “A society with an agricultural
foundation… was impoverished to support a state and an army which could not render the
services necessary for maintenance of that society.” [57] And behind that impoverished ag-
riculture was a series of epidemics (smallpox, bubonic plague) that caused a shortage of
agricultural manpower: “The result was a decline in food supplies…This caused shrinking