Why Did The Roman Empire Collapse?

How does an empire spanning three continents and half a millennium fall apart? In the final episode of our series on the Roman Empire, we're joined by Professor Peter Heather to unravel Rome's collapse - from the chaos of the third-century crisis to the deposition of the last Western emperor. Why did an empire at its economic peak unravel so quickly? And why did the East survive when the West did not? Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore. We need your help! Let us know what you want from Dan Snow's History Hit by filling in our anonymous survey here: https://forms.gle/PvgayWLkWGjYT4St6 Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcast Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 0:32Speaker 01

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• 1:15Speaker 01

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• 1:27Dan Snow?

  Rome. For centuries, the unshakable titan of the ancient world. Its territory spanning three continents. Its soldiers gazed out on the frontier from massive defensive fortifications. Its engineers built cities, moved rivers and turned the desert green. Roads stitched its provinces together from the sands of the Sahara to the great rivers of the east, to the misty crags beneath Hadrian's Wall. Its legions conquered and campaigned to the edges of the known world. Its emperors claimed dominion over millions of human beings.

• 2:10Dan Snow?

  Yet, by the late 5th century, that empire, which had believed itself immortal, was gone across much of Western Europe and North Africa. The last emperor deposed, the imperial court dissolved, the map redrawn, new kingdoms now claimed Rome's lands as their own. So what on earth happened? It's one of the greatest questions of all, folks, and right now, here, we on Dan Snow's History are going to answer that question. Today, we are delving into the internal and the external forces that unstitched the Western Roman Empire, while acknowledging that the eastern half of the empire endured

• 2:53Dan Snow?

  and evolved into something new and long-lasting. We're going to explore how regional loyalties replaced imperial unity. We're going to look at Rome's relationship with frontier peoples, how it broke down, how it became corrupted, how the empire's vast size really was one of the roots of its vulnerability, and how changes on the distant Asian step, not for the last time in history, would plunge Europe into an epoch of fire and violence. This isn't just a story about collapse, it's a story about change, about one world ending, another beginning, and about transformation as much as finality.

• 3:36Dan Snow?

  This is the last of our episodes on our little series about the Roman Empire. Over the last two weeks, we've heard about how the empire rose, what it was like at its height, and there are links to those episodes in the show notes, so be sure to go and check those out before listening to this final episode, all about the empire's demise. I'm so happy to say that I'm joined by Peter Heather, Professor of Medieval History at King's College London, an expert in the later Roman Empire and its successor states. He's the author of The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. He's the co-author, you'll have heard him on this podcast before, he's written a book called Why Empires Fall: Rome, America, and the Future of the West. I used to read his books when I was a kid, when I was a student. It is a great honour to have him on the podcast. Always meet your heroes, folks, they're brilliant. He really is the guy to tell this story. Enjoy.

• 4:28Dan Snow?

  Peter, thank you so much coming on this podcast.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  It's an absolute pleasure.

• 4:32Dan Snow?

  We've set ourselves a great task. You've spent your entire career stewing in, why do people think this is the great question of history? Why does Rome fall and does it fall? And it just seems that people are obsessed with it.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  They are. I think it's got a lot to do with Gibbon. Got a lot to do with the American founding fathers, understanding themselves as Rome. And it's got a lot to do with surviving material. So there's a lot of information that you can play with.

• 4:55Dan Snow?

  And there's that great sort of list that someone's made. Various scholars have come up with how many different theories?

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Oh, it's well over 100.

• 5:01Dan Snow?

  Well over 100.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Yes, I can't remember. It was 120 and counting, I think.

• 5:05Dan Snow?

  Peter, I'm very upset if we don't get every single one of these theories into the next hour. Right, first of all, though, let's, shall we have a look at the Roman Empire? So let's start in the northwest of Europe, the outlying section. England and Wales, Britain, Britannia, the Roman province. What are we talking about? The height of the empire? The early second century, Trajan or Hadrian, those emperors that follow?

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, about 150. Well, no, actually, probably more like 200 is the absolute physical maximum. So we got. Because they had a bit more in Mesopotamia.

• 5:33Dan Snow?

  How much of Holland? I don't want to get this wrong. How much of Holland shall I put on?

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Western Holland.

• 5:37Dan Snow?

  West, okay, Western Holland, right. Down through northern Italy, obviously, Rome itself.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Bavaria.

• 5:43Dan Snow?

  Bavaria.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Austria and Bavaria.

• 5:45Dan Snow?

  Okay, a bit of Bavaria there. Okay, interesting. But yeah, North Africa.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:48Dan Snow?

  A sort of strip along the coast. How far inland does Rome?

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Well, the power stretches as far as the decent agricultural land does, so up into the Atlas Mountains.

• 5:58Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a very ill-defined frontier because it's basically about protecting agricultural production.

• 6:03Dan Snow?

  Right, okay.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  And there's no formed enemy there.

• 6:06Dan Snow?

  Come to Egypt, and of course, it's equivalent down the Nile, because there's good folks, so we'll go down the Nile there.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  That's right. Not Sudan, but.

• 6:12Dan Snow?

  Not Sudan.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Well into Iraq.

• 6:14Dan Snow?

  Well into Iraq. Anatolia, Turkey.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:17Dan Snow?

  The bit that I'm interested in, what's going on in Crimea, even parts of Russia and modern Ukraine?

• 6:22Speaker 02

  The empire is stretching up the. Western coast of the Black Sea.

• 6:28Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  But not as far as Crimea. There are independent cities there which have very close relationships with the empire. And there are lots of ambassadors there.

• 6:39Dan Snow?

  So almost client king sort of stuff.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Almost.

• 6:41Dan Snow?

  Greece, of course.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:43Dan Snow?

  And then is it the Danube frontier? I know Crasian conquered beyond the Danube, but.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  The line of the Danube is the place to start, but then you do have to add Transylvania beyond.

• 6:53Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  At this point. So there's a big arc up into the Carpathian system.

• 6:57Dan Snow?

  Is that empire? Geographically, it looks different to China, doesn't it? It looks different to sort of the Aztec empire. It's based around the Mediterranean. Is it unwieldy geographically or does this actually make it quite coherent? Is it easy to move troops and supplies around?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Well, you've got two things going on. First of all, it is the biggest state that Western Eurasia has ever seen. It's much bigger than Charlemagne's empire. It's much bigger than the Holy Roman Empire. You know, it is colossal. Uh, it goes from Scotland to Iraq. I mean, that tells you it's huge. And of course, it's bigger than it looks because land transport moves, you can do a kind of rough calculation and come up with a round number about twenty times more slowly.

• 7:39Dan Snow?

  Than today.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Than today. So it's actually measured in, because the real distance is how long it takes you and me to get from one place to another. That's the real measure of distance, not miles or kilometers or anything like that. So it's actually twenty times bigger than it looks. It's like running all of Eurasia now. That's the scale you're talking about. So it is colossal. Transport is slow. On the other hand, it's also the longest-lived state that Western Eurasia has ever known at its fullest extent. Apart from that Dacian hump, it's lasting for five hundred years, half a millennium. So time from us to Henry VIII. Nothing has lasted that long. Makes the British Empire look like a complete joke.

• 8:19Dan Snow?

  Flash in the pan.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Nothing. Complete nothing. So it's doing something right.

• 8:23Dan Snow?

  It's doing something right.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Although it's colossal and unwieldy. It works in an amazing way.

• 8:29Dan Snow?

  Part of that I learned from your books is some of that is luck. I mean, they get quite lucky in that there's no massive empires, for example, pushing in through what is now Northern Europe and.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  That's right. I mean, there's a pattern of underdevelopment still. What's different from China is that the Roman system doesn't take in all the kind of arable farmers of Western Europe. Some are left outside, whereas the Chinese system incorporates basically all the sort of arable farmers of the of the eastern end of Eurasia. But that farming area is still very underdeveloped. Population densities aren't high and you don't have any large structured states. So if you look at the expansion pattern of the Roman Empire, it basically takes over all the bits of Europe that were worth taking over in about the first century B.C.

• 9:20Dan Snow?

  Right. Tough hit on the Scots there, but we'll let that.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  But they did argue that actually Britain was not worth taking.

• 9:25Dan Snow?

  No, exactly. It was a vanity project.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Yes, you always go a bit further than the cost benefit.

• 9:30Dan Snow?

  So if we're going to look at the, well, whether it's the collapse, the fall of this Western Empire, the dissolution, the change of this Western Empire into something different. Is it important to start with actually not the fifth century when it all gets very dramatic? Is it important to start with the so-called crisis of the third century?

• 9:46Speaker 02

  I believe it is. I think you need some backstory. I think you need to understand how the imperial system is working in the fourth century at the verge of the outbreak of the process of unraveling or whatever you want to call it. Because I think if you don't understand, well, the process of unraveling is dictated, the precise nature of it, by the way that the empire works. And if you don't understand how the empire works, you're not going to understand the process of unraveling.

• 10:10Dan Snow?

  Okay, talk me through it. How does the empire sort of deal with these great crises it faced and then reconstitute itself?

• 10:16Speaker 02

  The third century crisis is really interesting because in part it's caused by the Romans' own success story. What they've done is turn the provincial populations everywhere from Britain into Iraq into Romans. So, you know, the Brits have stopped painting themselves blue. They're learning Latin. They're living in villas. They're wearing togas. They're in the. Imperial system and they want more from it. So the success of Romanization policies, self-Romanization in the first two hundred years creates a lot of political voices who want a share in the system. And the third century crisis is very substantially, the internal side of it is about these provincial voices wanting a share in the system. It's

• 11:00Speaker 02

  also caused by the rise of a Persian superpower next door.

• 11:04Dan Snow?

  Right, so they've got a peer competitor for the first time in a while.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Absolutely, first time.

• 11:08Dan Snow?

  And that's in what roughly modern Iran?

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Iraq and Iran, so southern Iraq and Iran. So it's the two combined. So you can, if you think about that, it's a pretty hefty competitor. Third century crisis takes the form of various emperors being defeated by the Persians and then various provincial subgroups breaking away from the centre in response to the fracturing of imperial authority. So the Persians challenge imperial authority on the battlefield and then these provincial communities start setting up their own branches of the Roman Empire. So we get a Gallic Empire that lasts for two generations in the second and third quarter of the third century. Why this is important is the way that the empire actually overcomes the crisis then shapes

• 11:55Speaker 02

  the nature of where we are in the fourth century. And in particular, I suppose two things stand out. One is we refashion the military. So gone are the legions. Early Roman Empire, you have legions, big units, they're 5,000 men, they're a small expeditionary army in themselves, each one dotted around the edges of the empire. It's a user patient in waiting, basically. In response to the breakaway units of the third century, we create a hierarchy. So there are still units on the frontier, but they're small, they're not very well equipped. There are some regional armies, intermediate, but the real striking power of the imperial army is concentrated in elite formations around the empire.

• 12:40Dan Snow?

  So he sort of maintains a monopoly of force within the empire?

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Absolutely. No political dissidents are After the year three hundred takes the form of a frontier or a regional commander challenging central imperial authority.

• 12:53Dan Snow?

  Because they don't have the muscle.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  They they don't have a chance.

• 12:55Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  You will be dead in no time at all. So we get lots of coups at the centre for control of that potent military force. But you don't see anyone challenging it, trying to fragment it.

• 13:05Dan Snow?

  Okay, but then the problem is the emperor has to get that field army to wherever there's trouble on the borders.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yes, he does.

• 13:11Dan Snow?

  And that's a huge space.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  It is a huge space, and this, I think, is the great downside of the third century crisis. Is that it becomes clear that if you've got enough force to counter the Persian threat, and Persia doesn't go away. It's countered, but it's not destroyed. Then you've got to have an emperor in the east, close to that concentration of military force. And if you've got an emperor in the east, he's too far away from the west to control political developments there. So it's often talked about as a system. It's not really a system. It's a series of improvisations in each political generation. But we usually end up with more than one emperor because of that. You've got to have one in the east, and if you've got one in the east, the west is too far away.

• 13:53Dan Snow?

  And so is there a formal divide between what becomes this of eastern west empire?

• 13:58Speaker 02

  It is broadly, if you started at the northern end of Greece.

• 14:02Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  And went straight up, it's more or less there.

• 14:05Dan Snow?

  Albania, sort of, okay.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Albania is part of the east, but Serbia would be part of the west.

• 14:12Dan Snow?

  Okay, and Libya, somewhere in Libya?

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Um Libya is east, Tripolitania, so Tripoli, that's west.

• 14:21Dan Snow?

  And initially that wasn't hardened fire, it wasn't designed to become two different states, that was just, okay.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  And they don't operate completely as two different states. This is a myth that some of my colleagues put around.

• 14:31Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Emperors pass laws for both halves of the empire. That's telling you they're operating.

• 14:36Dan Snow?

  And and occasionally will take over the other half and put a son on the throne and that sort of stuff.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It's not easy. There's lots of conflict. So one form of internal conflict is replacing your emperor in east or west. The other form of conflict is occasional head-on civil wars between east and west.

• 14:54Dan Snow?

  But that, roughly speaking. Keeps the empire going for another hundred or so years.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Yes, it does. It makes it impossible for an unraveling of the system in terms of geographical fragments emerging to independence.

• 15:07Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  You can't do it.

• 15:08Dan Snow?

  Now you've got a Western emperor who's sort of really usually in France, northern Italy.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:14Dan Snow?

  So nowhere's too. Yeah, nowhere's too far away.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:18Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Exactly so.

• 15:19Dan Snow?

  But as we come to the end of that fourth century, get into the fifth century, the 400s A.D., what starts to happen?

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Well, we get a new, we get a new element into the equation, and that is round the edge of Rome's European frontiers between the first and the fourth century. We have seen a kind of social and economic and therefore political transformation of largely Germanic-speaking neighbours. They're becoming a bit more coherent. Their economic systems are becoming more productive, so their populations are growing. They are still client states.

• 15:57Dan Snow?

  Okay, so they're outside the empire.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:00Dan Snow?

  But their leaders are sort of, they're trading with Rome.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 16:03Dan Snow?

  Rome might be sending ambassadors and giving them some military assistance and things occasionally.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Rome turns up once a generation, beats the crap out of them.

• 16:11Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Make a diplomatic agreement.

• 16:13Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  A lot of formal submissions rather than necessarily head-on conflict, but a little bit of bloodletting just to make the point that the empire's in charge.

• 16:21Dan Snow?

  But they start to, what, become sort of more coherent, more threatening?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  They are becoming more coherent. You can see that. By the fourth century, the one change we'd make to the map is to remove that Dacian hump, so Transylvania and Romania. It's part of the third century crisis, the response to it. The empire decides to shorten its defensive lines.

• 16:43Dan Snow?

  Okay. And so on this northern frontier, we're starting to see, well, almost a peer threat like we do in Persia. Something that can actually beat the Romans.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  They're too small to beat the Romans. If the wind is in their favour and conditions are right, they can extract better terms.

• 16:59Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  So for instance, the Goths, who are on the lower Danube, opposite Romania and Bulgaria now. They can get better terms out of the Emperor Valens in the late 360s because the Persians are getting uppity in the east. He needs to go and fight them. So he's in the middle of a Gothic war, but the Persians are much more important. So he'll do a deal that gives the Goths something of what they want in order to extract his armies and fight Persia. So they need that kind of a thing to go in their favour.

• 17:31Dan Snow?

  And is there anything within the Roman, people talk about disease or economic change, climate change, is there anything going on within this Roman world that is somehow weakening? Of course, Gibbon, the 18th century historian, would have said, well, they all became Christian and started loving their neighbours and all this stuff. And people often still, don't they, talk about how they became luxury loving and they all got a bit too, they forgot their martial traditions. Is there anything going on in this Roman world that is sort of weakening it?

• 17:55Speaker 02

  There is nothing that we can see.

• 17:57Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this is, in fact, the colossal new dataset that's become available since the 1980s. Rural surveying, you can date Roman pottery to within a decade, its progressions. And we know from careful sampling how dense a concentration of surface pottery means a settlement underneath. So rural surveying, very boring. You go move forward a metre, collect everything, put it in a plastic bag.

• 18:24Dan Snow?

  You don't have to dig anything.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  No.

• 18:25Dan Snow?

  It's on the surface.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, tractors mean that modern plowing techniques pull it all up. So you just go forward, collect it all, look at it. And what's emerged from that is not only where there are settlements in the Roman period, but when they're there, because you can date them to within a decade. And the staggering, it would have been to my older colleagues' fact, we're sort of getting used to it, but still thinking about it now, that has emerged from all of that, is that across the vast majority of this imperial landscape, the period of maximum rural population and rural productivity is the fourth century, not earlier. You know, this is, you know, it's the total game changer, actually.

• 19:05Dan Snow?

  Amazing.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  I think we're all still kind of wrestling with the significance of that and what that does to your understanding of Roman collapse, because it basically takes out all the old explanations about social and economic collapse. There might be other internal reasons, but it's not going to be straightforward, social and economic.

• 19:23Dan Snow?

  So things are going pretty, so we're approaching 400 AD, things are going pretty well?

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yes, you wouldn't be looking at it. And thinking crisis and actually the sort of material and non-material cultural remains of the fourth century suggest creativity, they're plentiful, there's a lot of people doing a lot of interesting things. The amount of writing, once you realise, which a lot of classicists didn't, that Christian fourth century people aren't still Romans. You do look at what Christians are writing as well as in the traditional genres, but you add it all in, the amount of creative writing generated in the fourth century is colossal.

• 20:03Dan Snow?

  Okay, so things are fine.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  You would think so. Well, you know, apart from that, you've had to divide the empire.

• 20:09Dan Snow?

  Yes, yeah.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  There are issues and no human state that we've ever seen is without its problems.

• 20:15Dan Snow?

  Well, indeed, indeed. Who are we to point the finger?

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Indeed.

• 20:19Dan Snow?

  Right, so let's get into those years beyond four hundred. What starts to happen?

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Well, we get a very interesting effect. There's some kind of problem on the Great Eurasian Steppe in the world of the nomads. So east of the river Volga. Not exactly sure what causes it. There is some ice core evidence that it was getting a bit hot and dry. It may be therefore that the nomad world is facing a problem about grazing on animals, but that's certainly a plausible candidate. The other would be that actually it's empire building going on on the steppe because they do that as well.

• 20:57Dan Snow?

  And when they do that, the rest of the world

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:59Dan Snow?

  is going to find out about it.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  But what we find out is in the mid three seventies, a previously unknown in the West group of nomads called the Huns start to impact upon Rome's frontier clients in the Danubian region, first off Goths north of the Black Sea.

• 21:17Dan Snow?

  So the Goths are now finding themselves squished between these Huns that are arriving and the hammer of the Huns and the anvil of the Roman Empire.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:26Dan Snow?

  Which is going to give way.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Yes, they're faced with a dilemma.

• 21:29Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  As to what to do. There are several different Gothic groups, they don't all do the same thing. But in the autumn of three seventy six, two separate large groups of Goths, one called Tavingi, one called Gru Tungy, ask for asylum inside the Roman Empire.

• 21:45Dan Snow?

  And the Romans are minded to let them in or not?

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Well, ha ha, Valens is in the middle of another war with Persia. So all his army is in Syria and Iraq. What he decides to do is to let one group in and keep the other group out. No Roman emperor who claims to be chosen to be emperor by the supreme creator of the cosmos can ever admit that he's forced to do anything by a barbarian. This is an admission that he's not actually divinely supported because he shouldn't be being forced to do things if he were. So Valens's propaganda says, yeah, great, we love to see the Goths. But actually, what he does is only let in one and try to keep the other one out. And he also takes measures to control all the food supplies in the Balkans where the Goths are intruding.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  So I think Valens is stuck. He can't disengage from Persia quickly enough. He's going for the least worst scenario that he can see, which is let in one group of Goths, keep the other one out.

• 22:42Dan Snow?

  And I take it that doesn't work?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  It doesn't work, and I don't think Valens's heart was in that agreement ever. I do think the control of the food supplies is a real indicator that he's thinking, I've got to do this in the short term, but in the long term, I'm going to restore normal service. And he negotiates peace with Persia, gets his army groups free, negotiates with his nephew, who's the Western Emperor, for a joint campaign. In the meantime, I think the Goths are equally unconvinced that the first agreement is going to hold. So the Goths who are admitted form an alliance with the Goths who weren't admitted. They all end up inside the empire, and this is where we are in 378.

• 23:23Dan Snow?

  And they end up in?

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Hadrianople.

• 23:25Dan Snow?

  So we get this accursed place for the Romans, Adrianople. Valens rushes to fight the Goths before his nephew turns up.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Yes, he's got some intelligence. I think that only one of the two Gothic groups are there. So he thinks he can win a fast one. Valens has been a bit short of military victories for a God-chosen emperor, so he's looking for one.

• 23:46Dan Snow?

  Nice to get one under the belt.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  And his nephew has been quite slow in turning up. So I guess his advisers said, yeah, okay, we've got an opportunity.

• 23:54Dan Snow?

  And the result is one of the great military catastrophes in Roman history.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Both Gothic groups were there, not the one. And the Romans are ambushed from the side when they haven't fully deployed, and Valens and two-thirds of his army are killed.

• 24:08Dan Snow?

  And that's what's always interesting about this story, is that it's this catastrophic defeat in the east that actually proves rather disastrous in the west, doesn't it? And is that because we've got Constantinople? This is the capital of the East, so you think, gosh, they must have been a threat, but they're very well defended. The Goths can't capture that city, can they?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  They can't, and even more-

• 24:28Dan Snow?

  Amazing walls.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  And even more important, they can't get across. The key revenue-producing areas of the Eastern Empire are coastal Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria, Middle East, and Egypt.

• 24:42Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  And they are insulated from the threat to the Eastern Empire's European territories.

• 24:49Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  So you can't get at the Eastern heartlands. It means that there is a, the constant flow of revenues which keeps the army in existence, keeps on coming.

• 25:00Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  So none of the threats to the Empire challenge the key revenue zones of the Eastern Empire. The tax base remains intact.

• 25:09Dan Snow?

  So the Westerners thought, well, thanks very much, that's, that's-

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Yes, after a while.

• 25:14Dan Snow?

  So you've now got the Goths sort of running wild in the Balkans.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Well, the, the end result of this conflict is that, I think, East and West agree that they can't at the moment terminate the Goths' independent existence. So we get a treaty in 382, I think dragged kicking and screaming out of the Empire, which recognizes Gothic autonomy on Roman soil.

• 25:38Dan Snow?

  Within the Balkans?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Within the Balkans.

• 25:40Dan Snow?

  Okay. Not a great sign.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  No, and we've got the speeches that the then Eastern Emperor's spokesman gave while trying to sell the agreement to the Senate of Constantinople, which is a gathering of Eastern land-owning opinion. And he pretty much admits, which is astonishingly rare, that the Empire's been forced into it. But he also looks forward to Gothic autonomy disappearing in the medium term.

• 26:09Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  He projects that as a likely outcome.

• 26:12Dan Snow?

  Yeah, sure, of course. Like our public sector debt issue, it'll just sort of disappear.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Growth will make it disappear.

• 26:19Dan Snow?

  Growth will make it disappear. Let's get back to the West. What is the problem here in Western Europe?

• 26:24Speaker 02

  The problem in Western Europe is that we haven't really seen the Huns yet. All we've seen is the kind of knock-on effects of the Hannoverian advance guard. There is no evidence for large-scale Hannoverian intrusion into the fringes of Europe itself before the year 400. When we first get Huns in large numbers in what's now Hungary, that's about 410. Coincidentally, I don't think it's a coincidence. Other people think it's a coincidence. The years before the sudden appearance of the Huns in Hungary, we get a massive outflow of population from that Central European region, the Great Hungarian Plain and its adjacent areas,

• 27:06Speaker 02

  one into Italy and one across the Rhine into Gaul. So two massive invasions, one in 405 into Italy and one at the end of 406 into Gaul. The Roman sources concentrate on the effects of these things. There was a source which told us what the causes were, but it survives only in fragments. And in a bowdlerised, confused later version where someone had read it and copies bit out. So it's entirely reasonable, as some of my colleagues would do, to argue that the invasions come first and the Huns move into a power vacuum. Myself, I think it's the other way around.

• 27:46Dan Snow?

  And why can't the Rome, just let's do the basic thing first. Why can't the Roman Empire just smash these barbarian invasions?

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Well, it does smash the first one.

• 27:54Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  The invasion of Italy in 405, that is broken up. It's led by a king called Radagaisus, who might be a Goth. The sources are messy, and that's why we can't be certain. But his coalition is broken up. A large number of his elite warriors are drafted into the Roman army of Italy. Lower-status warriors are sold off as slaves in such large numbers that the bottom falls out of the slave market in Italy. And Radagaisus himself is executed outside Florence.

• 28:24Dan Snow?

  Right. So normal, sir, that's what the Roman Empire, they've been dealing with problems coming from the north since the beginning.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:31Dan Snow?

  But you have left this thrust entering Gaul.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  The thrust into Gaul is more problematic. The main military concentration is in northern Italy, not in Gaul. And the local military commanders with landowner support go into revolt, particularly in Britain.

• 28:49Dan Snow?

  That's interesting. They revolt.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Because of the lack of, I think, care and attention coming in their direction. The revolt, it proclaims itself and the actions of the emperors, particularly Constantine III, the third of the usurpers, is to confront the invaders that have come in.

• 29:07Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History. More Rome falling after this.

• 29:16Dan Snow?

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• 30:27Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery, a detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what all baffled historians about us: mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 31:53Speaker 01

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• 32:02Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, host of Echoes of History, the podcast that plunges you into the ranks of the Knights Templar across ancient Egypt and behind the barricades of history's great revolutions to explore the worlds recreated in Assassin's Creed. In our new series, Chasing Shadows, we're in feudal Japan alongside samurai warlords and shinobi spies. Whether you're gearing up for Assassin's Creed Shadows or captivated by Japan's rich history, this podcast, brought to you by Ubisoft and History Hit, is a must-listen. Chasing Shadows is out now on the Echoes of History podcast.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Okay, so I should say that this Gaulish incursion, it's stretched across to Britain as well, has it affected?

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Well, the effects of it have.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, a bit of breakdown, there's the people from elsewhere seeing the opportunity jumping in.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Constantine III is a military commander in Britain. There are some moderately high-quality troops in southeastern Britain. He unites those with the moderately high-quality troops on the Rhine to create his powerbase.

• 33:13Speaker 03

  And he says, if Rome aren't going to defend us, we're going to try and do something ourselves. Okay, so Britain sort of slightly, at risk of sounding like an idiot, they slightly breaks it from the Roman Empire in this period.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  The end result is that they do, absolutely. It's about another...

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Within a decade or so, that's true.

• 33:30Dan Snow?

  Okay, so curiously, Britain sort of takes it oddly takes itself out of the empire.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Okay. It it does. Well, Comte de France is trying to take over the whole empire to start with.

• 33:40Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  And in fact, it's partly Brexit. I mean, I call it the first Brexit in one book, just as a joke, but it's partly ejected in that in the aftermath of the fallout from all these attacks, the central empire says goodbye.

• 33:57Dan Snow?

  Yeah, we're never coming back.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're not coming back.

• 33:59Dan Snow?

  Yeah. So, yes, you tried to take security into your own hands. Well, this time,

• 34:05Speaker 02

  We have other priorities.

• 34:06Dan Snow?

  Right, we have other priorities. And then Britain will see incursions from Ireland, from what is now Scotland, from Northern Europe.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:14Dan Snow?

  We can discuss exactly the extent to which Roman-ness remains, but it's sort of gone from the empire at that point.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  It's gone from the official empire from about the second decade of the fifth century. I mean, I think, and I'm not alone, most people do think this, there's a sub-Roman population, at least in southern Britain, that keeps its ties to the continent, that keeps its Latinate culture.

• 34:37Dan Snow?

  Christians.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  For a generation or two. The Continental Chronicles say it's in about 440 that the manure really hits the air conditioning in Britain.

• 34:46Dan Snow?

  Oh, really?

• 34:47Speaker 02

  So, you know, 25 years after the separation is when things get really nasty. I think they're probably right. They think they know what they're talking about.

• 34:55Dan Snow?

  Breakdown of agriculture, the barbarian hordes, all that sort of thing.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Large-scale intrusion. So I think there's a sort of funny 20-year period in Britain where it's outside the Roman Empire, but still very Roman in character.

• 35:08Dan Snow?

  Okay. So what's going on with this unchecked barbarian invasion through what is now France?

• 35:13Speaker 02

  They clear off in 40910 into Spain.

• 35:17Dan Snow?

  Wow, they're they're on the move.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  And they divide Spain up between themselves, everything except the very north-eastern corner. So the vast majority of the Iberian Peninsula, they divide up amongst themselves.

• 35:30Dan Snow?

  So this is a remarkable and you can see why in the past they assumed there must be some other factors at play. They assumed there must be some terrible disease in the Roman world, because this is in the space of two years. These barbarian kings are just feasting on the corpse of what had been the rest of the Roman Empire.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Yes, that's right. And the thing is made worse by the fact that the Goths who'd made the treaty in the Balkans in 382. Also go into revolt and they move into Italy in 408.

• 35:57Dan Snow?

  Right, so they decide to, again, leave the Eastern Empire alone. They now march up through...

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, they want a deal. They want a better deal. They've been frozen out of the political establishment of the Eastern Empire. The West is obviously in trouble. They can see they can get a better deal from that. And this is Alarek who moves into Italy.

• 36:14Dan Snow?

  He marched up through what is now places like Croatia and Slovenia into Italy.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  And then he gets lots of reinforcements from the leftovers of Radagysus's attack. So...

• 36:26Dan Snow?

  Oh, they're still hanging out. There's a few of them around, yeah.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  And they substantially increase Alarek's force. So we end up with two big new barbarian coalitions that have been created. Alarek's in Italy and then this emerging Vandal Alan coalition in Spain.

• 36:46Dan Snow?

  Just a complete omni shambles.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 36:49Dan Snow?

  And Alarek, once he's in Italy, the unthinkable happens and Rome itself...

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:56Dan Snow?

  Is sacked.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  It's sacked, yes.

• 36:58Dan Snow?

  For the first time in centuries?

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yes, the last time with some Celts in, ooh, 300 B.C., 200 B.C., something like that. I'm a medievalist.

• 37:08Dan Snow?

  Yeah, of course, of course. No, don't, it's not a test. Okay, but hundreds and hundreds of years, there are foreign enemies rampaging around the streets of Rome. And things get worse.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  They get worse, but they get better first.

• 37:22Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  They get better in the sense that Alarek was trying to sack Rome to get a deal. He's sitting outside Rome for 18 months.

• 37:30Dan Snow?

  Oh, wow.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  He could have sacked at any point, but he's trying to use it as a bargaining counter to get a deal out of the Western Empire. They won't do a deal with him.

• 37:40Dan Snow?

  By the way, where is the Western Empire at the moment? Just a few blokes living on Sardinia? What is the...

• 37:44Speaker 02

  The Western Empire is the army groups of northern Italy. The army is still there. Or the main central striking force is still there. And the flow of revenues that keeps it in being is at least some of it is still there.

• 38:00Dan Snow?

  Yeah, and they're still getting some revenue from North Africa.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  We're getting lots of revenue from North Africa. Sicily is good. The Western Balkans, so Croatia is very nice. Lots of money come from there.

• 38:11Dan Snow?

  Yeah, okay, so it's still the organs are still functioning.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Yes, they are. And when we get a powerful leader emerging in the Western Empire, he's not the emperor, but he's the generalissimo who acts as the front man. Then he suppresses the usurpers, unites the Roman military, forces the Goths who've retreated by this time into southern France. They've retreated out of Italy because they've kind of been starved out of Italy and no deal has been offered them. He does a deal with them that restricts them to a small area around Bordeaux and he mobilizes the Goths in alliance with his forces to attack the people in Spain. And the groups in Spain were two separate groups of vandals, Hasdins and Silings, and

• 38:59Speaker 02

  a number of separate groups of Allens, each under their own kings. And it's quite clear that the Allens were originally the most numerous group. This leader called Flavius Constantius destroys the Siling vandals, destroys the independence of the Allens, wins a whole series of victories and inadvertently creates a new, more concentrated vandal Allan Confederation around the surviving Hasdian vandals. But, you know, he wins a whole series of major victories in Spain and restores most of it.

• 39:33Dan Snow?

  Okay, so I'm gonna.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  To imperial control.

• 39:34Dan Snow?

  Okay, so we're gonna have a last hurrah here for the Romans in Spain.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And most of Gaul is brought back under control as well.

• 39:42Dan Snow?

  And most of Gaul as well.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  So we're left with a couple of barbarian enclaves.

• 39:45Dan Snow?

  Around Bordeaux.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, Goths in Bordeaux and probably in Portugal, the surviving vandals and Allens at this point.

• 39:52Dan Snow?

  Okay, as it had many times before, the Roman Empire looks like it might sort of bounce back. It might recover its vitality.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  It does. It absolutely does.

• 40:00Dan Snow?

  But no interest yet in Britain because this crisis is still too immediate. Okay, what happens next?

• 40:06Speaker 02

  The next crucial move is really that, and this is the problem with, I mean, you asked about weaknesses in the imperial system. The weakness in the imperial system is the lack of any clear succession.

• 40:20Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Plan, policy. In fact, pre-modern empires don't tend to have clear succession things. When it's really important who runs the empire, you can't have primogeniture.

• 40:32Dan Snow?

  Because you get an idiot son?

• 40:33Speaker 02

  You do, yes. One hates to tell that to kings and things, but it's only when they're not important that you can have primogeniture. So periodically, the Roman Empire, the course of politics in the Roman Empire had always been emergence of a strong man. It's a one-party state. You think of those images of Putin with those people around the table. His power is preeminent. When he dies, you get chaos.

• 40:58Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  You know, it's like when Stalin died, you had half a dozen people at each other's throats.

• 41:03Dan Snow?

  Resting each other, yeah.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Until the next one emerges. And that can take a while. And in that interregnum, it offers opportunities. Once you've got these barbarian confederations on Roman soil, they can start taking independent action. So in the middle of the succession crisis that follows the unlooked-for early death of Flavius Constantius, the Vandals move into North Africa.

• 41:27Dan Snow?

  Yes, this is the bit. They hop across. And again, people might be thinking, well, North Africa was, at the time, North Africa, enormously valuable agricultural land.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:38Dan Snow?

  Farming, breadbasket of the Roman Empire.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  You've got to think Algeria, Tunisia, where all the millionaires had their summer houses.

• 41:48Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Indeed, their winter houses in the interwar period. It's gorgeous, country.

• 41:53Dan Snow?

  Gorgeous.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  I mean, if people have not been there, we're not talking the Sahara Desert here. We are talking.

• 41:59Dan Snow?

  Fields of wheat, as far as I can see.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Yes, and beautiful gardens and lovely temperatures. The Atlas Mountains mean there's plenty of rainfall, enough rainfall to generate really prosperous agriculture. And it's a beautiful place to live. And more than that, it is the jewel in the crown because there are no enemies there.

• 42:19Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  You know, Berbers raid from the desert occasionally, but they're not a major enemy. You've never had to have a large military establishment there. It doesn't cost the empire a lot, and it contributes a huge amount.

• 42:31Dan Snow?

  Not anymore, it doesn't?

• 42:32Speaker 02

  No, it does not.

• 42:33Dan Snow?

  Falls over like a pack of cards.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Yes. The best bit is really Tunisia and Western Algeria, and the Vandals seized that in 439.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  And that is another real moment of crisis because a great flow of revenues is cut off. And the central army, which is what keeps the empire in being, relies on that flow of revenues. So the process, at least as I understand it, that brings about the imperial unraveling, is the loss of tax base, which then leads to the weakening of the military forces at the centre, until the centre is no longer the centre. It doesn't have that preponderance of force anymore.

• 43:13Dan Snow?

  How long does this stagger on?

• 43:16Speaker 02

  It staggers on for about two political generations after-

• 43:21Dan Snow?

  So about fifteen minutes.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Well, yes, in Roman terms, yes. Because they do realise that the way to fight back is actually to retake North Africa.

• 43:30Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  And the eastern empire is still willing to play.

• 43:33Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  It doesn't, never writes the west a blank cheque. But again, the idea that the east leaves the west to its fate is just not supported in the evidence. So there are three projected and actual expeditions to recapture North Africa from the vandals, two of which the east are substantially involved in. The first one we got, it's immediately afterwards in 442, were gathering huge armies in Sicily from the east and west for a major expedition. But then, blow me, Attila sees the opportunity and he invades across the Danube.

• 44:14Dan Snow?

  Ah.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  And that's what stops the 442 expedition going.

• 44:18Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Because the east Roman contingents have come from the Danube front. Attila is threatening eastern territories, so the east withdraws its armies to fight him instead.

• 44:29Dan Snow?

  Rome falls. After this, don't go away.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 45:32Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, host of Echoes of History, the podcast that plunges you into the ranks of the Knights Templar across ancient Egypt and behind the barricades of history's great revolutions to explore the worlds recreated in Assassin's Creed. In our new series, Chasing Shadows, we're in feudal Japan alongside samurai warlords and shinobi spies. Whether you're gearing up for Assassin's Creed: Shadows or captivated by Japan's rich history, this podcast, brought to you by Ubisoft and History Hit, is a must-listen. Chasing Shadows is out now on the Echoes of History podcast.

• 46:18Dan Snow?

  So the East has the misfortune to be facing Attila the Hun.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:21Dan Snow?

  So again, timing, just as the Roman Empire benefited in some ways from time and space over the previous centuries, it's now absolutely up against. It's got one of the great nomadic cavalry commanders of all time banging on the front door.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Exactly. And what Attila has done is it's only, I don't know, maybe a third of Rome's frontier clients had run over the border in the 370s and 400s. And he's pulled a lot of the rest into. To a nomadic empire.

• 46:49Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Which contains a lot of the Germanic speaking frontier clients of the Roman Empire.

• 46:54Dan Snow?

  And those guys know how to fight the Roman.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  They do, absolutely.

• 46:56Dan Snow?

  Okay, so that's very potent. So North Africa, not, do I remember from your book that was a gale destroyed one of the fleets?

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Yes, they have two more goes, four sixty one, the Vandals see that coming and burn the shipping, which are being gathered in Spain. And then four sixty eight is the big one. And the Eastern Empire really burns the money on that. Huge expedition, but they're caught against the Lee Shore in a storm. And the Vandals throw in fire ships.

• 47:26Dan Snow?

  Wow.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  So it's like the Spanish Armada in spades.

• 47:30Dan Snow?

  But it is a bit like Spanish mother in that it really feels like one of those moments. I remember reading that in your book years ago and thinking, oh, that feels like one of those moments where history, the course of history.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  It could have worked. It really could have worked because only, what, sixty years after that, an East Roman expedition does.

• 47:45Dan Snow?

  Yes.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  To land and does conquer Vandal North Africa. It's not an impossibility. It could have happened in the four sixties.

• 47:51Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  And if it happened in the four sixties, while Italy, Sicily, Southern Gaul. And the Adriatic coast are all still part of a functioning rump Western Empire.

• 48:02Dan Snow?

  Then, yeah, could have led to something.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  It would have led to something. I mean, I know what.

• 48:05Dan Snow?

  Instead, it doesn't. And that rump empire, when do you think, if we can, that we should put a date on the end of that Western Empire?

• 48:13Speaker 02

  It is the defeat of that expedition in four sixty eight, which clearly changes perceptions. That's what makes it clear that the Western centre, imperial centre, is not going to be revivified in any major way. So immediately in four sixty nine, the Goths break out of their Gallic reservation, start conquering Spain for themselves.

• 48:35Dan Snow?

  If you can't trust these Goths, who can you trust? Okay, so tough few years to be Spanish.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:41Dan Snow?

  To be living in Spain.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  It really is. And. Burgundians who have also fled Huns there in sort of Geneva and the Rhone Valley, they break out, start making an independent empire. This is what happens. Groups duck out of participation in an imperial project. They realise that the centre does not have enough money and enough military force to force them into a political relationship. And they start creating their own structures. And Roman landowners, we have lovely letter collection from a man living in central southern France at the time. They're caught between a rock and a hard place. Their lands are where they are. Their land is the total source of their wealth and elite status.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  You can't move it. You know, it's not movable wealth, not stock and shares, it's where it is. You're faced with a quandary. What is the best path to secure your future? Do you try and stay part of a Roman empire for as long as you think there's going to be one? Do you start cosying up to the nearest barbarian king, Goth or Burgundian? And you can see what's very nice about this letter collection, I think. It's a man called Sidonius Apollinaris and you see his friends and they make different choices, you know? It's one of those moments where you don't know what's going to happen. And people are guessing, they're making their best guess and acting on it.

• 50:03Dan Snow?

  Some marry off that unmarried sister to the local barbarian chief and hope that they can keep the party going.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely.

• 50:10Dan Snow?

  So we've got the Burgundians, we've got the Goths invading Spain. Come on, finish off Italy for me.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Yes, we've had renegades from, because Attila's empire's been and gone by this stage.

• 50:23Dan Snow?

  Attila dies.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  He dies in 453 and his empire breaks up, well, in a succession dispute between his sons, which gives everybody the chance to to clear off because they don't want to be part of the Hunic Empire. Quite a few of them have ended up in Italy, including a man called Odowaca, who is a senior general. But the tax revenues are not there to support that army anymore. And it revolts. And it revolts over a lack of pay, which is not surprising because we've got to find a different way of paying it.

• 50:55Dan Snow?

  There's no more money in the Roman treasury?

• 50:56Speaker 02

  No, there is not.

• 50:58Dan Snow?

  And he topples the last Caesar?

• 51:00Speaker 02

  He does, yes.

• 51:01Dan Snow?

  And crowns himself?

• 51:03Speaker 02

  He calls himself king but doesn't say what he's king of.

• 51:06Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  And what's brilliant about him is he sends a senatorial embassy to Constantinople, sending back the imperial regalia, whatever they were, and saying, there's no need for more than one Roman emperor anymore. So he doesn't define what the new situation is.

• 51:27Dan Snow?

  How odd.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I think it's a bit like the breakup of the Soviet Union with the emergence of those republics, you know, what is this political situation?

• 51:34Dan Snow?

  But it's interesting, he doesn't get there and think, oh, Rome, quite like this, I might crown myself emperor. It's interesting that he brings the curtain down on it in some ways.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  I think he was concerned that Constantinople might intervene.

• 51:46Dan Snow?

  Okay. So actually you say, look, I'm not a pretender to your throne.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 51:51Dan Snow?

  But there is now a new situation here.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, because actually the person who takes over from him, Theodric the Ostrogoth, he does the same kind of thing. He projects himself as an emperor. He allows his subjects to respond to him as though he's an emperor, but he never calls himself an emperor.

• 52:08Dan Snow?

  Okay. Just as you talked about with that amazing study of pottery, it seems to me that historians have been backward and forward on what that means for the people of this space that used to be the Western Empire. Do you think in some places it would have felt like not much had changed? As you say, these landowners are making accommodation, you put the local German in the palace and then you keep running the show and keep the water running on the aqueducts and things like that.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  Certainly, certainly in the first instance, yeah, in the first generation or so, it would have seemed that way in some places. The end of the empire takes different forms in different places. So in North Africa, for instance, the vandals settled themselves in the richest provinces, but those were estates owned by absentee Roman senator.

• 52:48Dan Snow?

  Move into the empty stately homes.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  So there's no sign of massive economic dislocation within the North African provinces. That archaeology is quite well known.

• 52:58Dan Snow?

  And the local sort of officials are still collecting their tax, but now they're giving it to the guy in the big house who's a vandal.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  That's right, yeah. So the vandals are concentrated in what's now Tunisia. They don't pay taxes, the tax structures break down there, but Western Algeria and Southern Tunisia, the two other provinces, they do pay taxes.

• 53:17Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  And that carries on as normal. Likewise, certainly in much of Southern Gaul, the local landowners make their peace with Gothic power, as this is the Visigothic Kingdom. We have a letter collection from the first generation of that kingdom, and a lot of those landowners are still there.

• 53:35Dan Snow?

  And I suppose they're saying to Visigoths, "Look, mate, don't smash everything up. There's money here. We'll put you in the big house, we'll keep the systems of Roman government going, and you can benefit. There's no point torching everything."

• 53:47Speaker 02

  That's right, but there are land confiscations.

• 53:50Dan Snow?

  I'm sure, yeah.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  This has been much debated in the last scholarly generation, and there was one very popular line of argument when I was doing my finals back in 1981. Large book coming out two months before I did finals, thank you so much, which is arguing that they didn't get actual land, they got tax revenues. But actually, the evidence for that is really ropey.

• 54:15Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  And it's quite clear that you get land expropriations, particularly in the Burgundian Kingdom, a little bit in the Visigothic Kingdom and so on. These people have fought quite hard to be here. They've suffered from the Huns, they've fought Roman armies, they expect a payoff, and they want landed capital.

• 54:36Dan Snow?

  Can we finish on Britain? When I read your book 20 years ago, I mean, Britain feels like a place that went extreme.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 54:41Dan Snow?

  And that does feel a little bit more collapse.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. The unraveling of the imperial system would have felt different in different places. And certainly in Northern Gaul and in Britain, the archaeology and actually the historical evidence, although it's not great from Britain, makes it very clear that you're looking at something much more apocalyptic. As we said, it looks like these Roman landowners survive. Exiting the system for a generation or two in the fifth century. But by the end of the fifth, middle of the sixth century, they have completely gone.

• 55:17Dan Snow?

  They just nowhere to be found.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  No, they're not. The villas disappear, the towns disappear.

• 55:23Dan Snow?

  Roman London is a sort of ghost town.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Latin disappears, all the marks of Roman culture disappear. And actually, the latest DNA evidence, although it's only one site. It had been argued that they stopped being Roman, but they kind of make themselves into Anglo Saxons. I never really bought that. You've got one very interesting cemetery now from Dover, looking at Anglo Saxon elite from the fifth into the sixth century. And the vast majority of the families in there, and you can see their related families. They are intrusive continental groupings, as you might expect. One, very interestingly, one family line is indigenous Romano-Britain. So a minority somehow navigate across that boundary.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  But basically, Roman culture and most of the patterns of Roman life disappear in Britain. The wonderful thing is there's great archaeologist in Canterbury, Ellen Swift, has managed to show there is a market for secondhand broken glass in post-Roman Britain, which I think tells you everything you need to know.

• 56:25Dan Snow?

  Really exciting, high value goods.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:28Dan Snow?

  Give you some broken glass.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Bits of northern Gaul look like that. Elsewhere, the landowners survive. But I think one thing that's really important to know and notice is that although they keep their Latin and they keep their landed estates, the major pattern of their life changes in that they become liable for military service. So already in the great confrontation between the Visigoths and Clovis the Frank in 507, Roman aristocrats of southern Gaul are having to turn up and fight. So we see a militarisation of the landed aristocracies in the post-Romeo.

• 57:07Dan Snow?

  Looks a bit more medieval.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  Yes, it changes things in some very fundamental ways.

• 57:11Dan Snow?

  And the last point, though, is the eastern half of the empire, it's still functioning.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 57:15Dan Snow?

  Going into the 500s, so Rome does not fall.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. The Roman system is alive and kicking in the Eastern Empire. I mean, it's one of the things that makes it clear that there's nothing wrong with the kind of structural mechanisms of the empire inherently, in that the Eastern Empire is run on the same ones as the Western Empire. But the Eastern Empire is able to protect its tax base, or its tax base is not threatened, and it is the unraveling of the West's control of its tax base and hence its ability to fund its armies which undermines the West.

• 57:50Dan Snow?

  The East would have its day in court, but not now.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:54Dan Snow?

  That's another story.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  Yes. For the moment, they are in shock at having seen the Western Empire go.

• 58:01Dan Snow?

  Yeah. Thank you so much for going on the podcast and telling me all about it.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  It's my pleasure, absolutely.

• 58:07Dan Snow?

  It's a long ambition of mine fulfilled. Thank you.

• 58:13Dan Snow?

  Thanks for listening to that, folks. It's very clear to me, after spending time with Peter, of course, that the Western Roman Empire didn't disappear and leave an empty space on the map. Of course, it left those foundations. Frankly, it left complete buildings, and it left roads and laws and languages and religions and cultures and people that successor kingdoms co-opted and built upon. In Gaul, a Frankish kingdom would one day become France, and Hispania, Visigothic kings issued law codes in Latin, and in Italy, under the Ostrogoths, Roman senators still sat around and debated and addressed each other with sort of defunct imperial titles. They still obviously carried some weight. And let's not forget, in the East, the empire endured not as a relic, but as a thriving state centred on Constantinople

• 58:58Dan Snow?

  that would last in some form or another for another thousand years. So in some places, Rome's fall did look a little bit like Mad Max, but in other places, it's striking to us what endured.

• 59:09Dan Snow?

  Even the mightiest systems change and evolve. As Shakespeare said, "It's all just an insubstantial pageant." And viewed from space, viewed from a long, long way in the future. Anyway, on that cheery note, a huge thank you to our guests for guiding us through the story of Rome throughout the series. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review. That makes a difference. Sorry to be a bore, but it does. And subscribe to the pod, obviously. And if there are any topics you want us to cover, you can send your ideas to the email in the show notes and your dream episode might become a reality. See you next time.

• 59:54Speaker 01

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• 1:00:45Dan Snow?

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