Fall Of The Roman Empire Research Articles

ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕ МЕМЕТИКИ ПРИ ИССЛЕДОВАНИИ РЕЦЕПЦИИ АНТИЧНОСТИ В АМЕРИКАНСКОЙ ПРЕССЕ РУБЕЖА XIX−XXВЕКОВ

Antiquity, which once inspired the Founding Fathers and later became an important reference point for many subsequent generations of American politicians, has lost its former significance. Many researchers traditionally associate this process with the industrialization at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, when society placed more emphasis on practical knowledge and skills. It would be logical to anticipate a gradual decrease in the number of references to Ancient Greek and Roman history featured in the publications of the emerging mass press focused on the needs of a wide audience and consisting of short and catchy notes. However, there was an upsurge of interest in antiquity in American newspapers. Unfortunately, researchers of classical reception usually pay little attention to periodicals. Using the memetic approach, the article attempts to resolve this contradiction. In addition, the survey analyzes which particular classical subjects were interesting to the readers of mass press, and considers possible options for interpreting and rethinking some ancient history’s images. Through a range of public issues, as well as events and characters of ancient history, the article examines two subjects in detail: the fall of Rome and Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi.

The Ladins and their history of legal resilience

The Ladins of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol are an ethnic minority with an ancient history, located in the Dolomites Mountains, a place associated with extreme beauty and rugged land. Under the Italian Constitution, Ladins have acquired several legal rights connected with their language and history.Ladins have a history dating to the Roman Empire. Located in a strategic place, with Alpine valleys and mountain paths that connect the Italian Peninsula with Central Europe, several Germanic tribes after the end of the Roman Empire invaded and established themselves in the zone, enforcing their customs and laws. Those so-called “barbaric laws” together with Carolingian and Ecclesiastical law gave birth to a particular system of law during the Middle Ages.Afterward, Ladins became part of the Holy Roman Empire, and later, part of the House of Habsburg. During the aftermath of World War I, Italy obtained the region from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in the peace treaty of Saint Germain-en-Laye of 1919.The Italian experience with the Ladins started soon after World War I with several publications taking the task of understanding the origins of their language and its people. Ever since, Italian interest in the Ladins has not ceased. In 1998 the Italian Constitutional Court recognized the Ladin people their right to be represented in regional institutions, answering to the historical and social reality of Alto Adige/Südtirol.Consequently, the legal resilience of the Ladins gives testimony of a long history of peaceful victories for their rights, associated with the Ladin language, in the context of judicial procedures, political participation, and legislation.In comparison, Ladins living in other regions of Italy like Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia have not reached the same level of autonomy and privileges as those in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol.

Local Religions in Roman North Africa on the Eve of the Middle Ages

This paper considers how late antique Latin authors (mainly Augustine and Corippus) dealt with ancestral rites and practices of probable autochthonous (i. e. Berber) origin and provided an ideological resemantisation. Although motivated by anti-pagan pleas and also allowing for some exaggeration, they nevertheless provide reliable information, which can be compared against epigraphic evidence, and offer further contributions that enrich the knowledge of the North African local pantheon, otherwise largely documented by epigraphical evidence. It might therefore be surmised that, notwithstanding the deep Christianisation of the region, at the end of the Roman Empire, North Africa still witnessed the survival of residual and isolated pagan fringes.

Walter Scheidel, Escape from Rome. The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity

This is a long book with a big theory: that innate features in Europe’s geography and culture made it peculiarly empire-proof after the collapse of Rome, and that it is the failure of any empire to control Europe that best explains the exceptional technological, scientific and economic development which gave us the world we have today, in which the majority of us are ‘so much richer, healthier and better educated than our ancestors used to be’ (p. 1). The principal driver of this change is for Scheidel the persistent polycentrism in Europe after Rome, and the consequent thriving of competition, not only between numerous independent states but also within states, between different groups competing for wealth and influence – merchants, lords, bishops and kings.

Unfelt: The Language of Affect in the British Enlightenment

Unfelt: The Language of Affect in the British Enlightenment

Acoustic to Electronic and Public to Private: An Introduction to Music in the Great Expansion (1700–2100 CE)

Acoustic to Electronic and Public to Private: An Introduction to Music in the Great Expansion (1700–2100 CE)

Arcana and Ambiguity in Intellectual History

As history became a narrative of contexts as well as of actions, the moral and exemplary character of the actions related was affected … The narrative of action became a narrative of mystery, meaning not only the mystery of random contingency, but the mystery of how decision and action were framed in the face of contingency. Whether action had proved successful or disastrous, that which was exemplary about it was at the same time that which was arcane, formed in the depths of the human heart as it interacted with fortune.The epigraph comes from the “prelude” to the second volume of Barbarism and Religion, J. G. A. Pocock's masterpiece devoted to reconstructing the manifold contexts for understanding Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In this passage, Pocock is addressing the transformation of historical understanding in the wake of the Pyrrhonian controversy that dominated early modern learning. Reconstruction of contexts, Pocock argued, was one answer to skepticism about our knowledge of the past, but it could not come at the expense of an understanding of action and motivations. For his part, Gibbon sought a neoclassical synthesis designed to generate “narrative at the point where the exemplary became the arcane.” Such is the paradox of historiography as a modern craft. That which gives a historical episode its value (its exemplarity) is typically that which escapes the explanatory frameworks we bring to it (its arcana).

Last of the Romans: Boffin, Belisarius, and the Collapse of Historical Distance in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend

Allusions to Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–89) in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend (1864–65) are often viewed as commentary on the state of ninete...

Ждет ли США судьба Римской империи? (размышления по поводу статей Ирины Жежко-Браун об элите меньшинства в США)

The starting point of the paper is the three articles in the journal Ideas and Ideals by Irina Zhezhko-Brown who analyzes the formation of a new ruling class in the USA, which rests on racial and gender minorities. The values proclaimed by the elite are fundamentally different from traditional American values. The paper shows that any attempt to bring them into life can have devastating consequences for American society and, ultimately, lead to its downfall. Considering the huge role of the USA in the world system, this can be compared to the fall of the Roman Empire. The author shows that it is possible to escape such an outcome. The obstacle to this escape is the entire social and economic system that has developed in the USA. In the field of economics, the priority in recruiting personnel is given to quotas based on race and gender instead of qualification and business qualities, which will lead to a significant decrease in the financial performance of companies and the wages of employees. The author analyzes such long-term macroeconomic defects of the American economy as the budget deficit, trade and balance of payments deficit, and the growth of government debt. In the near future, these defects may lead to a deep economic crisis, a stock market crisis, and the US dollar can lose its position as the key currency. The paper considers economic and political premises and prevention methods of these destructive processes.

Early Medieval Commons? Or How the History of Early Medieval Europe Could Benefit from a Necessary Conversation: The Case From NW Iberia

In 2016, M. Laborda-Pemán and T. De Moor issued a call to advance the conversation between commons scholars and historians. This paper argues that in order to further this conversation, in the case of Western Europe more attention needs to be paid to the centuries preceding the blossoming of the commons in the high Middle Ages. It focuses on NW Iberia to show that in this case, as in others, such developments need to be assessed against the processes triggered by the collapse of the Roman Empire. On the basis of the extant sources, and building upon some of the concerns of critical institutionalism, it then considers some of the theoretical avenues that could facilitate such a dialogue: addressing the multifunctional, socially embedded nature of institutions; the weight of social inequalities and power relations in their configuration and functioning; the role of conflict in the definition of norms and their transformation over time; and the discursive practices aimed at legitimising specific institutional arrangements.

Julia Hell. The Conquest of Ruins: The Third Reich and the Fall of Rome.

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Kantor, V. (2019). &lt;i&gt;Demythologisation of Russian culture&lt;/i&gt;. Moscow, St. Petersburg: Tsentr gumanitarnykh initsiativ. (In Russ.)

Vladimir Kantor’s new book Demythologisation of Russian culture is concerned with interaction of world cultures and the turning points in the world history — the fall of the Roman Empire, World War I, Russian Revolution of 1917, etc. What drives the masses in times of war and revolutions; how mob mentality takes over society, and how the truth known to an individual defies widespread delusion; what is the nature of the myth and of the two principal events of world history — ‘the life and death of a living being’ — each of these questions receives an answer in seventeen essays on key figures of Russian culture: Peter I, A. Pushkin, I. Turgenev, F. Dostoevsky, A. Chernyshevsky, M. Katkov, A. Kerensky, M. Gorky et al. Published as an addendum to the book is Kantor’s short story ‘The death of a retiree’ [‘Smert pensionera’], supplied with a dedicated article ‘On the event of death’ by K. Barsht.

The San Saturnino Basilica (Cagliari, Italy): An Up-Close Investigation about the Archaeological Stratigraphy of Mortars from the Roman to the Middle Ages

The manufacturing technology of historical mortars from the Roman to Medieval period apparently has not undergone evolutions. As reported in the literature, a quality decrease in the raw material occurred after the fall of the Roman Empire. During the Roman Age, the mortars presented the requirements of long durability due to hydraulic characteristics, and in later times, the production has only partially maintained the ancient requirements. To focus on the different production technologies between Roman and Medieval mortar, this research presents the case study of San Saturnino Basilica (Italy), where an archaeological mortar stratigraphy from Roman to Middle Ages is well preserved. An archaeometric characterization was performed to compare the mortars of the Roman period with the mortars of the Medieval period collected from the case-study monument. This comparison was carried out by measuring some physical-mechanical, mineralogical, petrographic and thermal features that give more information about the durability and resistance to mechanical solicitations and weathering. After the characterizations, contrary to what is reported in the bibliography, a better quality of Medieval materials than Roman ones is pointed out. This has been highlighted by higher hydraulicity, mechanical performance, and a more appropriated particle-size distribution of aggregates.

The Internet and the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

The Internet and the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

Catherine the Great’s Byzantium

Catherine II inspired many Russian projects in historical studies. She herself was an active, if amateur, historian. The empress eagerly used history to promote her own political ideas and was an avid reader of history, both Russian and ancient. But what about Byzantine history? One would think she would have been interested in it as well, since between the late 1770s and the early 1790s, Catherine was enraptured by a plan to dismember the Ottoman Empire and recreate Byzantium with the capital in Constantinople. In her view, her youngest grandson (born in 1779) was to rule this future empire and was deliberately named Konstantin. This “Greek Project”, broadly regarded to have been the main thrust of Russian foreign policy for fifteen years, had very solid cultural “wrappings” such as architectural projects, poetry, drama, paintings, medals, etc. The author examines whether this campaign was accompanied by a deeper interest in and knowledge of the history of the Byzantium that Catherine wanted to revive. The author concludes that the empress did not bother to learn anything about this great civilization. Byzantine history, apart from Russo-Byzantine relations, did not become a subject of scholarly research during her reign. Catherine herself began reading Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but gave it up on the eighth volume of its French translation, thus going no further than the fifth century, when Byzantium proper was just emerging. In her play Oleg’s Early Rule, she demonstrated complete ignorance of Byzantine history, culture, court ceremonies, etc. Finally, numerous and blatant errors in the “Byzantine” parts of her Notes on Russian History suggest that Catherine had no interest in or “a big picture” of Byzantine history. Only once in this extensive book, and even then only in a footnote, do we suddenly come across a very precise, thoughtful, and detailed description of Byzantine facts, namely, of the Varangian guards at the imperial court of Constantinople. This suggests that when Catherine deemed a subject important, she was able to find exhaustive information on any “Byzantine” question. Yet, of all things Byzantine, Catherine showed interest in only one issue, and that was because it concerned the “Norman question”, a highly sensitive topic in her time and ever since. Otherwise, the empress remained completely indifferent to Byzantium. It can be surmised that Catherine never saw the “Greek Project” as a practical task of recreating a real state with its distinct laws, officials, territorial division and, finally, church.

Counterfactuals, Empires, and Institutions: Reflections on Walter Scheidel’s Escape from Rome

This essay reviews Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity by Walter Scheidel. It examines the argument that Europe’s persistent fragmentation following the collapse of the Roman Empire is responsible for the origins of the modern world. First, I consider Scheidel’s argument that the rise of Rome at the end of the first millennium BCE was relatively overdetermined, but that once Rome fell, it was highly unlikely for any subsequent empire to dominate Europe. Second, I examine the institutional consequences of this divergence in state building. Finally, I reflect on the role of counterfactuals in history. (JEL Y80)

The Conquest of Ruins: The Third Reich and the Fall of Rome

Book Review

The Justinianic Plague’s Origins and Consequences

The bubonic plague is an extremely old disease (apparentely from the late Neolitic era). The so-called “Justinianic plague” of the sixth century was the first well-attested outbreak of bubonic plague in the history of the Mediterranean world. It was thought that the Justinianic Plague, along with barbarian invasions, contributed directly to the so-called “Fall of the Roman Empire.”

“Supreme in Ruin”: Empire’s Afterlife in Romantic Encounters with Imperial Ruins

ABSTRACT Registered in Romantic depictions of imperial ruins is the endurance of empire in its immateriality: the imageries of empire’s ruination announce a future where imperial sovereignty maintains its presence spectrally. Using Jacques Derrida’s notion of hauntology, and recruiting further insight from political theory, this essay argues that empire manifests in Romantic vision as an ontological dynamic, that is, an obscured yet efficacious force that impinges on the subject’s relationship with the world. My discussion traces this abstraction of power in the works of Felicia Hemans, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and Robert Southey, clustered together through their mutual influence and shared source, Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In the light of these authors’ reflections on the ruins of empire, this article focuses the ontological dimension of imperial sovereignty to extend the critique of imperialism in Romantic studies beyond its familiar historical-material terrain, toward sites where empire prevails even after its presumed disintegration as an official, political entity.

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