A key part of the cultural argument is about the change in art over the centuries. Of the sculptor of the Tetrarchs, the author says:
> The artist is not trying to represent the emperors photographically, but rather trying – and succeeding – at representing the ideal emperors, who fully embody the qualities an emperor should.
And:
> Often this transition is, I think, misunderstood by students whose knowledge of artwork essentially ‘skips’ Late Antiquity... and leads some to conclude that the fall of Rome made the artists ‘bad.’ There are two problems: the decline here isn’t in quality and moreover the change didn’t happen with the fall of the Roman Empire but quite a bit earlier.
How do we know that?
One interpretation of the Tetrarchs sculpture vis-a-vis the "verist" sculpture c. 60 BC is that the artist was trying to do something different. Another is that he was just less capable. The earlier artist could capture a realistic portrait of an individual; the later artist couldn't.
How do we know that the first interpretation is the right one?
The author's argument is that the later artist was still really skilful - as he puts it, "look at those folds!" Yeah, sure, he sculpts way better than I could! But that doesn't seem to prove that he is as skilful as the first artist.
"[L]ook at those folds!" I'm looking at the folds, and they got worse.
And take the cover of the Lorsch Gospels: the misshapen fingers, the bulging eyes, the blank expressions -- this is crude, not stylized. You get the sense that art is devolving back to the "archaic smile".
The parallel I would draw in art isn't anime, but the trend in art in the 19th century away from trying to make more photorealistic art. For example, Impressionism. You can look at the works of, say, Claude Monet, and see that the heavy brush strokes and seemingly incomplete nature of his Impressionist paintings aren't because that's only as good as he can do.
I understand the parallel. I accept that sometimes, whether it's Monet or anime, people aren't trying to be realistic. What I want to know is, why should we believe that to be the case here?
He does mention one emperor in the middle of a chain of them who prefers the older, “more true” style. It stands to reason that if such skilled craftspeople were available for him they would have also been available for the ones immediately preceding and succeeding him. It being a hipster affectation or intentional throwback makes more sense than assuming he lucked into the handful of guys with the requisite skill sets that nobody else can find.
But with regards to impressionistic painting, the impetus away from photorealistic painting was the invention of photography. Artists could not compete with photos which could do literal photorealistic images at a fraction of time and effort of an painter doing photorealistic images.
With regard to these scultures, I am not aware of any such technological push.
Since my personal opinion on "modern" art (read: essentially everything you'll see in a museum that was made after 1900) is that it sucks, this isn't a particularly compelling argument to me!
The writer is far more knowledgeable than me, and it seems he believes there was no major decline related to the fall of Rome, the traditional "Dark Age" story is false, etc. I should take him more seriously since he knows a lot more, but it seems clear that there was a catastrophic fall in science, technology and living standards with the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The effect was felt as far as my ancestral land of South India where there was a massive de-urbanization and fall in trade in the 5th century. I do not understand why it is in fashion to deny this decline, and nothing in this blog makes a compelling case otherwise.
This is the first post in a series, and in this post, he's focusing on culture, literature, language and religion. I would agree that the case he makes is that in these areas the "change and continuity" party seem to mainly carry the day against the "decline and fall" party, but that doesn't mean that there won't be areas where that isn't true. I think we should particularly wait for parts 2 (institutions) and 3 (economics and demographics) before we settle too firmly into our opinions.
From the article:
> As will readily be apparent, that significance of that division of topics will be important because this is one of those questions where what you see depends very much on where you look, with scholars engaging with different topics often coming to wildly divergent conclusions about the impact and experience of the fall of Rome. And there is no way to really discuss that divergence (and my own view of it) without diving into the still active debate and presenting the different scholarly views in a sort of duel. I’ll be providing my own judgements, of course, but I intend here to ‘steelman’ each argument, presenting it in what I view as its strongest form; as will some become evident, I think there is some truth to both of the two major current scholarly streams of thought here.
There is a lot of these "dark ages were not dark" arguments but one can't deny that there is a difference in the world after the fall of the Roman empire.
The author emphasizes people drifting apart and cultural fusions, the natural loss of arts and books due to the medium on which they were written. All of this happens after the fall of any civilization.
Same thing could be said about the Aztecs or any other civilization, their people drifted apart, there was a fusion between cultures and their arts and books were lost due to the medium used to create it (it wasn't fireproof).
The empire didn't fall to any single external force but that is the nature of an empire, unless its conquered by an even stronger empire it always falls from within.
> The writer is far more knowledgeable than me, and it seems he believes there was no major decline related to the fall of Rome,
He doesn't claim that at all. In the intro he explicitly claims that there was such a decline and fall.
In the body of this first post of the series, he explores the areas where the case against his claim is strongest. That doesn't mean he's suddenly retracted his claims from the intro.
How do you figure that deurbanization in India is related to something happening in Western Europe? Back then trade was for valuables and valuables only. There simply wasn’t the capacity to transport things for everyday use of the general population.
And there is a large discrepancy between quality of life for the elite/aristocracy and quality of life for the general population.
I would expect the second and third part to answer your questions. And I’m pretty sure there will be some “these parts declined” components
While you're right about the trade between Europe and India. Rome and Constantinople we famously supplied with grain shipped hundreds of miles from Sicily, North Africa and Egypt. Even in pre Roman times there was extensive international trade, at its hight Athens were relient on grain shipments from the northern Black Sea coast. While pretty much everything besides basic foodstuffs and cheapest cloth was considered a luxury back then there were extensive trade networks between ancient city states.
Arguably the deurbanization both in India and Europe was to a large degree caused by climate change following the end of the Roman Warm Period.
The difference there is method of transportation. Yes bulk transport was possible, but only by sea not by caravan. And even then it’s relatively short distances. Which would imply that India should have been “shielded” by the continued existence of the eastern Roman Empire.
And yes definitely there were trade networks. But they consisted of relatively few but high value goods. Most of which populations could do without. However there is the point that cities formed around goods that were traded. So I’m no longer as certain that there is no correlation
Spices, food oils, mined metals and fabric are all valuables that are brought to coastal cities in organized trade causing urbanization. The existence of many of those cities, their bazaar and their mosque is all to do with the transition to Byzantine and then only Ottoman trade. It would hardly be surprising if there are many ex-cities that had better trade connections with the western empire.
> it seems clear that there was a catastrophic fall in science
Name one scientific discovery that was known in Late Antiquity that was not known in the Medieval period.
This is easier to do for technology, but that shouldn't be misconstrued as part of a generalized collapse of civilization. A large part of technology requires passing knowledge from individual to individual via a kind of apprenticeship, so if something stops happening for a few generations, it's easy to be lost. To use a very recent examples: battleships. We can't make battleship-grade steel armor anymore, because no one's been making it for several decades. But that's not because we've somehow "regressed" in technology--it's just that battleship-grade steel armor has no use anymore, so we stopped making it.
The major decline associated with the Roman Empire is the decline in administrative capacity of the state. And yes, this does bring economic depression and deurbanization, and also loss of several civic engineering techniques. You don't see a decline in scientific knowledge--after all, medieval people were using the same textbooks the Romans were. Maybe there's a pause in development of new scientific knowledge, but it also has to be remembered that the Romans themselves weren't all that prolific in science (as compared to technology). As for technology, well, by the 600s, there's already new technologies kicking about that the Romans never had.
> Name one scientific discovery that was known in Late Antiquity that was not known in the Medieval period.
I mean that's not hard to do unless your point is that they were rediscovered in the later centuries of the Medieval period. Almost all of Aristotle, all of Ptolemy, all of Archimedes was unknown in the Christian West for centuries.
Losing some texts by ancient authors doesn't mean some knowledge or technology was lost.
Aristotle is actually quite useless in medieval day to day life, so losing his texts is a big deal for a person studying ancient Greece, but not at all for a 650 AD ruler, blacksmith or trader.
The people who rediscovered the texts certainly thought they had found something new and astonishing. It wasn't, oh that ptolemy, he's old hat. Aristotle became the centerpiece of philosophy.
Usefulness to daily life is a whole other different metric, and not what gp asked.
Gp was talking about scientific discoveries, and of those none were lost. Aristotle didn't make any discoveries, he just had some ideas, which were totally useless in the medieval Europe. That uselessness is the reason they were lost: simply nobody cared to preserve them. Metalworking, hydraulics of the time, building methods were all very useful and were preserved. The only 'lost' technology is probably Roman concrete, which required some highly specific ingredient. But that's about it.
There was a significant decline in certain areas at least in Western Europe both in building methods and metalworking based on archeological evidence. After urban populations collapsed there simple was no demand for large complex buildings, metal statues etc. Of course most the knowledge was preserved in the part of the Roman empire that survived and in other pockets and by the high middle ages Europe had well surpassed it's Roman high economically and technologically.
You're conflating scientific knowledge and the practical arts. There is lots of scientific knowledge in Aristotle and the other authors I mentioned. e.g. Aristotle's physics. We would now consider it wrong, but those who rediscovered it didn't think so.
Even in the category of practical arts, though, you're mistaken. Check out the writings of Hero of Alexandria or Vitriuvius. Check out the waterwheels at Barbegal. Pick any major civil engineering project like the aqueducts, baths, roads, or arenas of ancient Rome. There is no equivalent until the cathedrals of the later middle ages.
There is no equivalent only because there were no economy that could afford such projects. Kingdoms were much smaller and couldn't waste resources on grandiose vanity projects. People certainly knew how to make an aqueduct, or a road.
As for arenas, they came out of fashion with the rise of the Christianity. You know, publicly feeding early Christians to lions didn't help popularize this type of entertainment.
Also, all this knowledge was very well alive in Constantinople, so any rich ruler who wanted to build a replica of Hagia Sofia could just hire someone from there. The only problem, there weren't any such rulers who had enough resources.
Regarding Barbegal waterwheels, what do you suggest checking? Waterwheels were abundant in all medieval Europe, this knowledge was never lost.
> it seems clear that there was a catastrophic fall in science, technology and living standards
According to what evidence and causes?
Besides, what's this "great science" of the ancient world? Science did not become a sustained enterprise until much later in Europe. Even Greek natural science was a relatively short-lived affair, pretty much dying with Aristotle (Stanley Jaki used the word "stillborn" to describe all other attempts to give birth to science in all civilizations other than Christian Europe, the differentiating factor being theological). The Middle Ages were a period of intense intellectual activity (the Scholastics) in which the intellectual bedrock for modern science was birthed. The Renaissance was comparably weak in terms of intellectual rigor, the philosophes later on mere pamphleteers. And today, scientism and other weird ideologies threaten to undermine science and intellectualism in general.
We do not give the Middle Ages enough credit. The question isn't why it is a fashion to deny medieval decline, but why the fashion to deny the period's excellence.
In case anyone wants to devote more time to this subject, Cambridge University's Institute of Continuing Education have an online course on the fall of the Roman empire starting in February (costing £295):
I vaguely recall from reading Tainter's book (the bible of collapse porn, amirite?) that currency devaluation was more a consequence rather than a cause. That is, the Roman emperors where trying to save the collapsing house of cards by debasing the currency in order to pay for the expenses of maintaining the empire. Of course, Tainter's whole schtick was that worsening, and eventually negative, marginal returns to increase in complexity is the explanation for why ancient civilizations collapsed, but anyhow, his argument is, at least to a layperson like yours truly, somewhat convincing.
(Not OP) I first read about this in The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous, the first 2/3rds of which, incidentally, is a history of (in his view) bad money. There he writes how the value of the gold (aureus) and silver (denarius) coins in circulation then was gradually eroded by clipping and debasing the precious metal content in the years leading up to the collapse and he supposes that this had a significant impact on the collapse of the economy and then the empire itself. He links coin debasement to food shortages, as market prices rise to compensate for debased currency. Price caps set by the Roman government stop food producers from being able to adequately profit from their labour, so food shortages occur, then civil strife and eventually collapse.
> gradually eroded by clipping and debasing the precious metal content in the years leading up to the collapse
I mean... that's kind of true... if your definition of the years leading up to the collapse start around 50AD. Roman currency was constantly debased from Nero to Diocletian (by Diocletian, there was almost no silver in the coins at all). Diocletian reformed this, then it started again. About 200 years later the Western Empire fell.
Keep in mind that this is just one of a series of articles on a subject that takes books to cover. Currency wouldn't really fall under the "words" covered today, but more likely next weeks organizations.
People often think of the "Decline and Fall" of the Roman Empire as separate parts, but I think one thing the author illustrates is the fall of the Western Roman Empire was a continuation of the decline. The shifts in culture, declines in economy, the lack of political stability, started before the Western Roman Empire fell. This muddies the dark ages were not too dark argument because are you comparing the height of Rome to the lowest point of the dark ages, and so on. When historical arguments quickly get stuck in the weeds of where you draw the lines, it's a good sign that the argument is probably beside the point.
One thing I think the author doesn't flesh out enough is the impact of having the Germanic foederati who settled in the empire keeping their existing chieftan's rule. This helped create a parallel political structure that could easily fill in the void left by the crumbling Roman political structure, instead of having the Roman Empire split into mini-empires like the Gallic Empire in the 3rd century.
Perhaps what might have happened without the parallel Germanic political order can be seen in the Italian city-states, although the history there is very specific so that's just what-if speculation.
My theory is that governments are limited by their tecnological advancement, and romans were advanced enough to govern certain number of millions of people.
Also, as people raise their standard of living and acquire citizenship, governing them becomes harder as well due to higher expectations.
This always kind of annoys me when people talk about this subject:
> In all of these, we will mostly be focused on the western empire (with some gestures at the East), but I’ll note here (and no doubt repeatedly subsequently) that this is because the empire didn’t fall in the East, at least not any time remotely around the fifth century. The continued existence of the Eastern Roman Empire is a free, massive point that the change-and-continuity argument gets to score at the beginning of these debates for free, every time.
Is it even possible to talk about the fall of the Western Roman Empire without someone interjecting that the Eastern Roman Empire didn't fall? Is it to be a permanent feature of the discussion, this shift in focus away from the actual topic of discussion? The next time someone talks about the continuity of the Eastern Roman Empire, I'm going to talk about the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Or maybe the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, just for variety.
> Is it even possible to talk about the fall of the Western Roman Empire without someone interjecting that the Eastern Roman Empire didn't fall?
No. It would be like discussing quantum mechanics without mentioning wave-particle duality--you're missing a key part of the story.
If you're legitimately interested in understanding why Late Antiquity played out the way it did, your hypotheses have to come up with a plausible explanation for why the trajectories of the Western and Eastern Roman Empire diverged as much as they did.
> No. It would be like discussing quantum mechanics without mentioning wave-particle duality--you're missing a key part of the story.
imo I've never been satisfied that the Eastern Roman Empire was sufficiently Roman to actually qualify. Everything I've read and consumed makes me think the Byzantines were as Romans as Romans were Greek, that is to say, they liked to think they were (and possibly claim they were for political reasons).
Byzantines spoke Greek, their architecture was not Roman, their military did not behave like Romans, they were Christian, they didn't eat Roman food; if you line up the Roman Republic, or even early Roman Empire, next to the Byzantines and asked an alien whether or not they were the same, they'd say no.
They definitely called themselves Romans, they loved to "re-conquer" their old empire in the West etc, but from my perspective there is little to tie the two together as "Roman".
Well by that standard the 4th or 5th century Roman empire (both east and west) wasn't Roman either. Rome in the 2nd century AD would had probably seemed as alien to a Roman from 3rd century BC as the Roman empire in the 5/6th centuries was to someone from the time of Trajan. Does that make any of the 3 less Roman? By the time the western empire fell being Christianity and Roman identity were inexorably linked and Latin continued to be the official language until the early 6th century. The Byzantine empire itself changed tremendously as well, while by the time of the crusades it was clearly Greek, before the plague of Justinian and the Arab invasions it would be clearly recognized as Roman (aside from religious changes) by anyone from the 3/4 th centuries.
Uh, do you have something against the eastern empire? We shouldn't even mention it when talking about the fall of the western empire? Your point would make sense if the two empires were truly unrelated, but makes no sense when the two were both Roman empires.
Well technically the Western Roman Empire did not "fall" it just got merged back into the "eastern" Empire. The collapse of the Roman Empire is just a convenient concept invented by modern historians to serve as an arbitrary line between the ancient times and the middle ages. There were never two Roman Empires, just a single one universal empire ruled by multiple rulers. In 476 it just temporary lost direct control of it's Italian provinces (which it later regained). At the time it was not considered to be some monumental event (e.g. like the Sack of Rome (410) was).
It's kind of hard to ignore; if your claim is that the Western Empire fell due to A, B and C, then the continued existence of the Eastern Empire, and whether it had A, B or C, surely has to be considered.
(In particular, a lot of the simplistic popular views of why the Western Empire fell run into this wall.)
A key part of the cultural argument is about the change in art over the centuries. Of the sculptor of the Tetrarchs, the author says:
> The artist is not trying to represent the emperors photographically, but rather trying – and succeeding – at representing the ideal emperors, who fully embody the qualities an emperor should.
And:
> Often this transition is, I think, misunderstood by students whose knowledge of artwork essentially ‘skips’ Late Antiquity... and leads some to conclude that the fall of Rome made the artists ‘bad.’ There are two problems: the decline here isn’t in quality and moreover the change didn’t happen with the fall of the Roman Empire but quite a bit earlier.
How do we know that?
One interpretation of the Tetrarchs sculpture vis-a-vis the "verist" sculpture c. 60 BC is that the artist was trying to do something different. Another is that he was just less capable. The earlier artist could capture a realistic portrait of an individual; the later artist couldn't.
How do we know that the first interpretation is the right one?
The author's argument is that the later artist was still really skilful - as he puts it, "look at those folds!" Yeah, sure, he sculpts way better than I could! But that doesn't seem to prove that he is as skilful as the first artist.