The Fall of the Roman Empire in the West: A Case of Suicide or Force Majeure?

Abstract

Today, so we are told, there are two main views, held in Moscow and Peking, concerning the way in which the West will ultimately meet its fate; the one view that Western society can and should be overthrown by military force, the other that because of its own internal contradictions and weaknesses Western society will destroy itself without needing to be subjected, at any rate in any large degree, to external force—it will inevitably give way to the superior organization of society as revealed by the gospel of Karl Marx. This difference of opinion illustrates once again the topical relevance of the problem of the decline of the Roman Empire which has been well emphasized by F. W. Walbank, for it is paralleled by contrasting explanations of the fate which overtook the Roman world. Naturally the orthodox Marxist has not failed to emphasize the internal causes of the decline of Rome, thus providing himself, deliberately or otherwise, with an admirable historical basis for his belief as to the eventual outcome of contemporary events. But it is by no means, of course, only historians of Marxist outlook who have placed the emphasis on internal rather than external factors. Even Edward Gibbon, whose view, summed up in the famous words ‘I have described the triumph of Barbarism and Religion’, is regarded by Toynbee as a classic exposition of the view that civilizations lose their lives as the result of successful assaults upon them by external powers, recognized what might more properly be regarded as internal causes; as when he speaks of the decline of Rome as ‘the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness’ or in his approval of the judgement that Septimius Severus was ‘the principal author of the decline of the Roman Empire’.