
“Peak Civilization”: The Fall of the Roman Empire (2009) - simonsarris
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5528
======
lambdasquirrel
Only tangentially related, but I can’t possibly be the only one who read this
and thought about a particular codebase...

> _The answer to these crisis and challenges is to build up structures - say,
> bureaucratic or military - in response. Each time a crisis is faced and
> solved, society finds itself with an extra layer of complexity. Now, Tainter
> says, as complexity increases, the benefit of this extra complexity starts
> going down - he calls it "the marginal benefit of complexity". That is
> because complexity has a cost - it costs energy to maintain complex
> systems._

~~~
OrganicMSG
One way to reduce this is to try and enforce that structure is to be dependent
on whatever is currently being done, so that any bureaucracies that are
created are explicitly shut down at the end of a given task, with a meta-
bureaucracy that just has the job of spinning off structures and winding them
up, like job management in an OS.

~~~
wallace_f
Perhaps this is a good reason for a stronger social safety net.

In other words, while on the one hand it is important to eliminate jobs that
produce zero or negative value, or even ones that offer value lower than their
total economic costs (which includes opportunity costs--ie children who learn
more effectively by another teacher, or on their own), on the other hand it is
very difficult to tell people they should be losing their job. One way to fix
that is perhaps to entitle everyone to basic needs.

------
ptrincr
Last time Rome popped up as a topic on hackernews, someone mentioned "The
history of Rome" podcast. It's absolutely fantastic. I mention it so that
perhaps someone else can enjoy this masterpiece as much as I have.

~~~
smartbit
Rome popped up in the GDPR discussion some 30min after your wrote your text
:-)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16606629#16609355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16606629#16609355)

~~~
ptrincr
Yes, and it also mentions the gini coefficient. This popped up in the History
of Rome podcast I was listening to last night. Never heard it before, need to
read up on it :-)

------
ornel
James C. Scott (in "Against the Grain: a deep history of the earliest states
[2017]) has a bit of perspective on "collapse":

 _" Why deplore “collapse,” when the situation it depicts is most often the
disaggregation of a complex, fragile, and typically oppressive state into
smaller, decentralized fragments? One simple and not entirely superficial
reason why collapse is deplored is that it deprives all those scholars and
professionals whose mission it has been to document ancient civilizations of
the raw materials they require. There are fewer important digs for
archaeologists, fewer records and texts for historians, and fewer
trinkets—large and small—to fill museum exhibits... Yet there is a strong case
to be made that such “vacant” periods represented a bolt for freedom by many
state subjects and an improvement in human welfare.

What I wish to challenge here is a rarely examined prejudice that sees
population aggregation at the apex of state centers as triumphs of
civilization on the one hand, and decentralization into smaller political
units on the other, as a breakdown or failure of political order. We should, I
believe, aim to “normalize” collapse and see it rather as often inaugurating a
periodic and possibly even salutary reformulation of political order."_

~~~
astebbin
>an improvement in human welfare

Was this generally the outcome of the Roman Empire's collapse? Intuitively, I
would expect breakdowns in law and order and the collapse of complex supply
chain systems (particularly food delivery) to result in mass human suffering,
at least in the short term.

~~~
nostrademons
For whom, and according to what value system?

The histories I've read of the early middle ages corroborate much of your
intuition. Trade collapsed; many luxury goods became impossible to obtain at
any price; illiteracy rose; population declined and many citizens died from
famine and plague.

But there's often a trade-off between freedom and convenience, then and now.
The Roman empire was built upon large-scale slavery and wealth inequality. If
you were a member of the elite, then yes, the collapse was terrible; you lost
access to all the privileges of the empire. If you were a slave, you probably
ended up somewhat better off, becoming either a peasant or a bandit. Not being
able to obtain pottery or steel doesn't matter much if you couldn't afford it
to begin with, and dying at 40 from starvation is an improvement on dying at
25 in the arena.

~~~
1gor
> If you were a slave, you probably ended up somewhat better off

Slavery continued to exist in Western Europe after the fall of Roman empire
until at least year 1000 AD.

In other former parts of Roman Empire such as Northern Africa slavery
continued to flourish almost until the 19th century.

~~~
hcho
The number of people in slavery would have still decreased. The fact that it
continued to exist is immaterial to the point being made.

~~~
1gor
> The number of people in slavery would have still decreased

On what basis are you making this assumption? "The fall of Rome" was not an
anti-slavery uprising. It was gradual disappearance of the central authority
(and all its benefits such as roads, law and order etc).

About 10% of England's population entered in the Domesday Book (1086) were
slaves. Compare that with the Roman Empire where slave population (including
Rome and all provinces) are estimated at 10-15% of the total.

~~~
hcho
The biggest buyer of slaves going down would decimate the market, no? I would
imagine it would have played exactly like abolition of slavery in Britain or
US. There was still slavery across the world, but the number of people that
suffered from it went down.

------
Nomentatus
Size and complexity shouldn't be confused. Often large size necessitates
simpler policies and procedures.

I happen to be rereading Gibbon right now. He doesn't focus in on complexity,
he contradicts it - pinpointing Constantine's crude-but-effective solution to
constant rebellions and civil wars as the cause of the slow collapse: namely
stationing perhaps two-thirds of Rome's military permanently in the cities
with independent commands (the "palantines".) This prevented the regular
barbarian-fighting armies (the "Borderers") and their commanders from
rebelling successfully because they were now a relatively small military
minority that would have to fight city after city - even in their own area -
just to usurp power locally. But, with one hand tied behind its back, Rome's
fall was inevitable from that point on. This "prepared the ruin of the Empire"
in Gibbon's words. (But it was, arguably necessary, rebellion and civil war
were incredibly frequent before that decision was taken.)

Size (and inequality) had undermined solidarity across the empire, not
complexity. Diversity isn't exactly complexity. Keeping large groups together
is hard, and the traditional pagan religion had lost most of its force well
before Christianity came along; soldiers were no longer too afraid of the Gods
to break a solemn oath in order to join a local rebellion under their
particular commander. Most people's religion, particularly in the upper
classes, had become much simpler - they really didn't have any.

It's possible to see this inexorable tendency toward rebellion as a result of
Augustus' previous simplification long before; when drafting soldiers became
too complex and unpopular, he ended conscription. This set up the situation in
which soldiers became more loyal to their commanders, and themselves, than to
the official emperor in Rome.

Looking at other societies, from other books, local chiefs and individuals
slowly learned how to undercut central authority, in particular, slowly
starving the center of revenues. Deviousness and a growing culture of tax-
cheating and avoidance. It ain't that hard to keep things together if you have
the money.

~~~
smallnamespace
The complexity that is being referred to is social and administrative
complexity, the huge military upkeep being a side effect of that.

A simple _policy_ can still reflect a highly complex, expensive form of social
organization. It's rather hard to argue that stationing massive garrisons
throughout an empire is not a massive exercise in social complexity and
organization.

> Diversity isn't exactly complexity. Keeping large groups together is hard,

It's difficult to argue that late Imperial Rome, with its multiple levels of
bureaucracies, military _and_ civilian, a nascent Church, along with large
standing garrisons wasn't far more socially and economically complex than the
societies of the invading barbarians.

And all that complexity went exactly towards 'keeping large groups together'
without the benefit of a unified ethnicity or other identity.

But note that in earlier times, Rome's technological and social complexity was
able to pay for itself and then some: it was able to field and man large
military organizations, and the complexity brought in a profit by conquest and
war booty.

In other words, _size_ was a logical end result to earlier complexity: in
order to keep the system running, Rome had to continue to grow.

Unfortunately, Rome ran out of rich easily-conquered lands and its inefficient
(and complex) economy could not make the economic transition (unlike the
Eastern Empire, which had richer and more densely populated lands).

Your example of stationing two-thirds of a massive standing army just to keep
order is an example of just how inefficient the late Western Imperial economy
must have been, and why it fell against barbarian groups that had much
simpler, flatter social hierarchies based on ethnic kinship and trust.

~~~
Nomentatus
Much conflation of size and complexity, here, once again. And you seem to
merely elide my points. The size of the Roman army allowed a remarkable degree
of standardization in the tools of war, and training. That's not complexity.
Roman society hadn't gotten poorer; but it had gotten less cohesive, fewer
were ready to sacrifice for the whole.

~~~
smallnamespace
Size automatically required large amounts of social complexity in the days of
Rome, especially if you measure complexity in the actual cost it took to hold
Rome together.

I'll remind you that the contemporaneous Chinese Han dynasty also evolved into
a large militarized, centralized bureaucratic state despite the wide
differences in geography and developmental path, and faced very similar
problems of replacing conscripts with professional soldiers and then keeping
them loyal. What forced them to have similar organization was their sheer size
and the organizational pressures this caused.

~~~
Nomentatus
But I started with a profound example of the reverse. Cost is size, not
complexity. There were considerable savings due to scale in Rome, including
assembly lines for manufacturing amphora, etc.

Re China you give another example of size creating simplicity and
standardization. In contrast to your first paragraph.

~~~
smallnamespace
> Cost is size, not complexity.

You're narrowly defining 'complexity' as only 'complexity of procedure' and
completely ignoring social complexity and specialization.

How about you justify why only the single measure of 'complexity' is
sufficient for our discussion?

A few direct responses to your example:

1\. Standardization _may_ save costs overall, but they represent a form of
social complexity (you now have specialized bureaucrats and administrators to
determine standards and communicate with troops, weapons must move a long way
to supply every legion, training is now done in a centralized fashion)

2\. This social complexity adds fragility to the system—if your army depends
on having standardized gear to function properly, and barbarians capture your
centralized workshops, then all of a sudden you lose the ability to equip the
troops effectively; barbarians don't have that problem

3\. It's not even clear that standardization saves overall costs here; it may
save _administrative_ cost at the Imperial level (it's easier to manage and
train troops if they are interchangeable) but incur large hidden costs at the
local level; in other words standardization may be an externalization of
administrative problems onto the provinces. A direct example would be: if you
force all the troops to use standard gear, they might fight worse than if they
used weapons that were specialized for dealing with local enemies; also now
your troops have a huge delay in being equipped from a central armory, and may
end up pay out of their own pockets for local wares just to survive.

Anyone who has sat through multiple re-orgs at a large corporation will
understand that what is 'simple' for the administrator (let's make the org
chart simple and clear!) may actually cause tons of hidden additional
complexity at the bottom layers, so that total complexity has risen even
though things look 'simpler' at one particular level.

~~~
Nomentatus
Lots of strenuous agreeing with me (vs the article) here, if you actually read
what I've said, along with hypothetical tangents that may be worth thinking
about but don't belong in a reply to me. Much of this I've addressed, see
complex for the pilot, simpler plane. Many distinctions can be made, but less-
organized societies have no shortage of complexity and variety (the armies the
Romans met in Gaul had enormous variety in equipage, and thanks to little
training, all too much variety in the responses of soldiers in battle.) The
(Western) Romans didn't go down due to complexity, and Gibbon can't be cited
for that claim, as was done. The standardization of Roman shields allowed them
to pack together and shield soldiers better, their uniformity was not a
"liability".

~~~
smallnamespace
It's a liability if the costs of the costs of the standardization exceed the
real returns, a point which you have 'strenuously' ignored while pretending to
push the burden proof back to me.

Sure, in a vacuum anything can be seen as 'complexity', but if you actual
_measure_ the costs of doing complicated things in late Roman times then it's
clear why their system fell apart while the Germans' largely didn't, despite
the Romans having more territory and population to start with, and the key is
to see that the late Roman system was horribly inefficient, _even after taking
standardization into account_.

I've made a detailed case for my views. Where's yours?

Otherwise you will never come to any real conclusions, since every society
will look more complex from a particular perspective, so none can be
fruitfully compared to another. Or you would end up with ridiculous
conclusions like modern society is simpler than hunter gatherer societies,
because we have uniform driving laws and a global data routing protocol while
they don't.

~~~
Nomentatus
I'm not ignoring perverse standardization as a possibility, but c'mon there's
no shortage of additional details that can be added, tangents, exceptions to
exceptions, etc. But I'd be more interested if your points were specific
historical instances and sourced, not hypotheticals (which we all acknowledge
as logically possible.)

I've cited a source, and a specific historical instance, have you?

PS - the German "system" fell apart many times, populations swapped, etc. The
area was always a problem, no one empire or monarchy there was a constant
problem.

~~~
smallnamespace
I think the crux of our disagreement here seems to be that you believe size is
the main driver of Rome's failure and complexity should play no (causative)
role.

I have a more nuanced position: size was certainly a strong causative factor,
but it had an intricate relationship to social, military, other complexities
in a strong feedback loop that took place over centuries.

In large, complex systems, it's never one factor that fully causes another,
but a complex feedback occurs; sometimes the system tends towards homeostasis,
while other times a feedback occurs that utterly transforms the system as a
whole.

Let's just talk about Rome in particular. Rome's Empire has often been called
the 'accidental' empire in the sense that the Roman Republic and the people
did not seek out to create an empire from the get-go, but it sort of fell into
their lap. How did this happen?

1\. Rome was embroiled with constant conflicts with their neighbors starting
with the Etruscans and Samnites and developed the military and social
institutions (a certain form of complexity here) that let them eventually
triumph

2\. To defeat their enemies, Rome eventually built a massive war machine
(complexity) and found out that conquest was very profitable (selling slaves
back in Rome, pillaging and taxing the conquered territories—tons of social,
economic, and military complexity, but here have the beginnings of _size_ as
well).

3\. However, this 'pillaging economy' only worked as long as Rome was able to
keep conquering weaker neighbors and taking its population as slaves. At any
point in the process, Rome theoretically could have disbanded (or drastically
reduced) the size of its legions and decided 'here is enough', but internal
conflicts, the quest for glory, etc. kept the military adventurism, because it
was _profitable for the generals and troops that lead the conquest_ (a complex
arrangement, leading to 'size')

4\. Administering a vast empire was difficult, so simplifying reforms (which,
as you say and I completely admit, may reduce complexity) like standardization
of coinage, law, military equipment, etc. occurred in the late Empire. However
this was _still_ in the context of an overly bloated (size) and overly
inefficient (complexity) Empire that was only held together by military force

So I think _you 're absolutely right_ if your thesis is that size ->
complexity. However, in certain cases (like Rome's), complexity -> size as
well, and the combination is key.

And the rise and fall of Rome over the centuries can be seen as a certain path
one can take:

initial complexity (the highly profitable, 'accidental' Roman war machine) ->
overly fast, unsustainable growth -> forced additional complexity due to size
-> failure to reform (and simplify) quickly enough -> collapse

------
jcranmer
The Classical Roman Empire had a surprisingly ineffective and inefficient
administrative system, even at its height. It was strongly centralized, and
the Empire, even by the second century, was simply too large to manage by one
person. After the Crisis of the Third Century, Diocletian essentially solved
the issue by installing multiple co-emperors to divvy up the work, although
this did have massive issues (turns out that having two theoretically co-equal
rulers in an absolute monarchy doesn't bode well for stability).

What essentially happened from the third century through the seventh century
is that the internal instability caused more and more power to be
(intentionally or not) devolved to more local elites. After Christianity
became the state religion, the administrative backbone of Roman Europe became
the Church and not the Empire itself, which also helped to hasten the
devolution. At some point, the local rulers and population would realize that
they're not getting anything from Rome and they owe nothing to Rome, so why
call themselves Roman? The Western Roman Empire effectively dissolved itself
into nothingness, and its passing went more or less unnoticed by
contemporaneous observers.

Portraying this gradual process as a concrete "fall" is somewhat problematic.
There is a striking continuity on many levels. Even the polities end up being
fairly stable: the Frankish kingdom eventually ended up inheriting the Western
Roman Empire de facto and arguably de jure following the crowning of
Charlemagne as Holy Roman Empire, while the Eastern Roman Empire became the
Byzantine Empire. In both cases, the administrative systems had been
transformed dramatically from the traditional Roman model. That's not to say
that there wasn't a severe shock, but the biggest shock would have been the
loss of North Africa (the key granary supplying Rome) that created a vicious
cycle of economic decline. The actual date commonly given for the fall (476)
was more or less contemporaneously ignored by everybody as yet another change
in the local ruler.

~~~
Naritai
While my only source is the Fall of Rome podcast that others on this thread
are raving about, one key point he makes is that whether or not it was a
'Fall' depends a lot on where you lived. Yes, there was lots of continuity in
Aquitane and Gaul, but if you lived in much of Northern Africa, (what is now)
northern France, or Britain, you saw a significant decline in your standard of
living. Britain even stopped using currency altogether.

------
rock57
Great quote made back in 2009 "I can see the politicians of the time running
on a platform that said, "Keep the barbarians out! More walls to defend the
empire"."

Also "As things stands, we seem to be blithely following the same path that
the Roman Empire followed. Our leaders are unable to understand complex
systems and continue to implement solutions that worsen the problem. As the
wise druid was trying to tell to Marcus Aurelius, building walls to keep the
barbarians out was a loss of resources that was worse than useless. "

~~~
meri_dian
Well, the reality is that letting the barbarians in actually did in
significant part lead to Rome's downfall. They rampaged through the
countryside and sacked Rome multiple times.

Rome was in a state of near perpetual warfare with the Germans for centuries.
Eventually Rome became too weak to defend its northeastern borders and the
Germans hollowed out what had become a rotten western empire.

~~~
mjfl
I don't know why you're being downvoted - the analogy to modern politics they
are trying to push is hilariously bad. Are we really blaming the Romans for
not supplicating the Goths and then getting massacred by them, leading to a
1000 year technological stagnation? Are we really trying to project Donald
Trump onto Marcus Aurelius? You've got to be kidding me.

~~~
rdiddly
No, we're projecting Donald Trump onto a hypothetical Roman politician
imagined in 2009 by Ugo Bardi the Oil Drum writer, due to the coincidental and
quite obvious similarity of their "wall" platforms, including both the expense
and the futility, as well as the fact that both are set in empires collapsing
under their own weight. Is it so hard to see?

~~~
meri_dian
America isn't an empire, and is hardly collapsing under its own weight. It's
actually doing incredibly well, aside from some annoying partisan bickering.

~~~
rdiddly
That is, as they say, the naive view.

------
mltony
This article focuses too much on economics. Surely these economic effects have
happened and greatly contributed to Rome's demise. But were they a root cause
or just a consequence of something else? I think that politics played some
role in Rome's demise and that should've at least been mentioned to give a
complete picture.

Some political systems are quite effective, some are not as much. Monarchys
are typically less effective since the power transition is not merid-based.
Roman empire wasn't quite a monarchy in the medieval sense, but judging by the
amount of crises per century, it was pretty close. Wasn't that a factor to be
taken into account? Wasn't that the bad emperors who screwed up Roman economy
to the extent that even Marcus Aurelius couldn't fix it?

Early Roman republic was on the other hand an outlier in terms of its
efficiency. Obviously that was military efficiency, but wasn't it tightly
connected with political efficiency? It seems to me that early Roman republic
managed to build a system that promoted people based on their merit and that
somehow made the entire system an order of magnitude more efficient then their
neighbours.

It seems to me that just the fact that we are looking at ancient Roman history
is an example of availability bias. Hundreds or thousands of other city-states
of that era weren't as militarily or politically effective and therefore lost
to Rome and ceased to exist. This is another indicator of high efficiency of
early Roman politics, and it kind of implies that as time went by the
efficiency slowly or rapidly decreased.

Of course it's hard to argue about how effective is one political system
compared to another. It's hard to even define precisely what is efficiency in
this case. But I think we shouldn't only focus on economics just because it's
easier to talk about. I am waiting for someone smarter than me to write a book
about political reasons of why do societies collapse. Or is there such a book
already out there?

~~~
avn2109
Fate of empires by John baggot glubb is the canonical treatment of this topic.
It’s also really short and pithy and you can read it in an hour.

------
CurtMonash
Since the article starts by citing the battle of the Teutoberger Forest (in
the photo caption), I'll say this:

If you can read or understand German, and you don't know the 19th Century
satirical song "Als die Roemer Frech Geworden", you're in for a treat.

Every recorded version seems to have a different choice of stanzas, but a
comment to
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-z2Nmu4okI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-z2Nmu4okI)
seems pretty comprehensive.

------
maxerickson
I wonder if in the long view we still live in the Roman empire.

~~~
mkempe
The USA is an Enlightenment creation, designed to learn from and avoid the
failures of previous government systems; as such they owe more to the spirit
of Ancient Athens than to that of Ancient Rome.

~~~
baddox
From what I have read, the thinkers of the American and French revolutions
seemed to be influenced by Rome rather than Athens.

~~~
mkempe
The US revolution is driven by the spirit of the agora and the polis, an
alliance of such polities, and the idea that the people are the source of all
state power; rather than the Roman Republic or Empire as a centralized entity
with absolute dominion over the people.

I don't think it is accidental that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson read
classics in the original Greek _for pleasure_. Also, while Cicero was a giant
of the Roman Republic, he was a great admirer of Aristotle.

------
creep
Can someone help me translate the quoted Latin? I'm a beginner.

>“In primis sciendum est quod imperium romanum circumlatrantium ubique
nationum perstringat insania et omne latus limitum tecta naturalibus locis
appetat dolosa barbaries."

I think generally if you look at the above sentence and know some Latin
vocabulary you can see what is going on, but I'm having a hard time sorting
out the structure given the subjunctives, passives, and participles.

~~~
mkempe
"The Barbarians are at the gate."

Source: I took Latin for 8 years; had to read-and-translate live for three
years from Virgil every other week at 8am in front of the class. Latin is
usually more concise than English, except when it's medieval or kitchen Latin.

~~~
creep
There are only two verbs in this sentence that I can see: "appetat" which
means "he/she/it attacks/grasps/strives for/approaches, and "perstringat"
which is a subjunctive and means "he/she/it may graze/seize/reprove". I think
_perstringat_ refers to _sciendum_ , but I am not what _appetat_ refers to.

There is no verb that implies a plural third person, nor is there a word for
"gate" here.

What I'm having trouble with is the second part. So the first part is
something like, "in the beginning, the knowing may draw together what is the
roman authority of the barking around, wherein the nation..." But still I'm
not sure. Then in the second part we have what could be multiple nominatives
and only one verb.

~~~
mkempe
First it must be known that the empire is surrounded etc. etc. and each edge
(of the empire) covered with natural features appeals to cunning barbarism.

I.e. they're at the gate.

------
walterbell
R.A. Lafferty brought this event to life in his fiction.

[https://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/r-a-lafferty/fall-of-
rome...](https://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/r-a-lafferty/fall-of-rome.htm)

 _”Rome 's demise was not a simple case of fierce barbarians sacking and
subduing a decadent, crumbling city. The author has skillfully balanced the
turmoil and illusions of a mighty, dying Empire against the vitality of the
aggressive Huns, Vandals, and above all, the Goths. The result is one of the
most perceptive and stimulating historical accounts ever written.

This is history told and read for sheer pleasure: exciting, splendid and
complex. The Fall of Rome is a story of the men and women who made things
happen, who were as awesome, poignant, and in some cases, as savage as the era
itself.”_

------
mynameishere
The fall of Rome is complicated because people like to match it up with their
pet theory as to why our current empire will collapse real soon now.

But the Romans just ran out of things to steal. Taking foreign lands meant not
just immediate booty but ongoing tribute and advantageous trade and promises
of farmland for soldiers. That strategy could only go so far. Then when they
lost their great early prize, Carthage, which supplied grain to Rome itself,
the empire was finished. Local gangsters took over from the distant gangsters
and so they had feudalism.

~~~
icebraining
The eastern Roman empire kept going for centuries despite losing Egypt and
generally getting their ass kicked by the caliphates, though.

------
drpgq
I miss the oil drum. It had good content and good commenters. Too bad they
couldn't survive the rise of oil from shale.

------
qwerty456127
I am not even sure it has actually fallen. It seems a lot we are still living
in what it has morphed into.

------
soufron
Has it fallen ? Il thought its capital had moved to Washington...

