Not Gibbon, but not without wit. Seems to be arguing that Rome's aggressive policy vis-a-vis the barbarians induced them to form larger and powerful coalitions, strong enough to fight their way onto Roman territory and stay there. ( )

This is a comprehensive, almost encyclopedic (for the non-expert) coverage of the end of the western Roman empire - but the author manages to keep it readable. One technique is to go into detail about a person, or place or event, and then use this information to illustrate a broader facet of the history. I was entertained and informed. Great stuff. ( )

An extremely well researched account of the fall of the western Roman Empire. The author's convincing central thesis is that the fall was essentially down to the incursion of outsiders, not to any systemic weakness within the imperial system, though such weaknesses did mean that these incursions had a greater or quicker impact than they might otherwise have done. Mostly an excellent read, though I felt it did drag in a few places. Some of the maps were not as good as they could have been (e.g. refs in the text to towns X, Y and Z on a map and then those towns are not marked on it). ( )

A recent visit to Rome caused me to wonder exactly how the empire had fallen. I had only a vague idea that the barbarians had sacked Rome and then everything fell apart. Peter Heather, an expert in the Goths, tells the story of wave after wave of 'barbarian' peoples moving through the Western Empire, eventually causing it to totally destabilise and collapse. Once independent military forces had penetrated deep into the Empire and various barbarian factions were able to act both for and against the empire, in particular robbing it of tax revenues, the whole system was unsustainable. The image I got (although never used by the author) was of the central authorities (of 'Rome' in some sense) as the beating heart of the Empire, circulating wealth and materials. The Empire could survive some injuries to its extremities, but eventually there was not enough to sustain the centre, and it all fell apart. I learned a lot of things, including that Rome was for centuries not the seat of the Emperor, who was often closer to the border (e.g. in Trier) or in another capital (e.g. Ravenna), and that for that matter, for centuries there was no one single Emperor, but at a minimum one in the East and one in the West, if not more. In fact one big issue for the Empire as a whole was that there were no clear processes for leadership change, so there were roiling political intrigues and various stages of civil war every time the leaders fell from power. The book is a good read, synthesizing a lot of different sources, and doing a good job of piecing things together given the very thin remaining sources for the late empire. It goes beyond pure history in some places to (clearly indicated) speculation by the author, where the sources are too thin. Can be a bit heavy reading in parts as there are many players and centuries of changes covered. The decline itself is still challenging to understand, but the picture is fairly clear: the invading forces were not particularly interested in sustaining cities, luxurious rural villas, and literacy - these weren't part of their culture. If the invading forces hadn't been so numerous, Rome would have been able to slowly absorb them and "Romanise" them (and indeed many in the Roman military and even leadership were drawn from what had been invading forces) - but they ran out of time and money. It's also possible if they'd had great foresight they could have incorporated the invaders as equals in the Empire (which is what many of the barbarians wanted) but at the time it was needed this was inconceivable, it was not part of the Roman worldview. Eventually as the invading forces became the ruling forces, over the span of a few centuries all of the complexity of Roman civilisation fell away. Overall a very interesting view of an empire at the height of its powers that was brought low by a combination of barbarian invasion and structural limitations, along with some bad luck and bad decisions. ( )

In this volume Peter Heather attempts to explain that ultimately, the cause of the Fall of the Western Roman Empire was not due to tax inequities, a failure of the economy, internal discord, etc., but rather because of the simply overwhelming level of barbarian invasions which began in the late 4th century. This he proceeds to do very well.

This work is divided into three main parts; "Pax Romana" for chapters 1-3, "Crisis" for chapters 4-7 and "Fall of Empires" for chapters 8-10. I will discuss each of these briefly.

In "Pax Romana" Heather discusses the Barbarians, the Romans, and the Roman Empire briefly. For each of these groups he gives an overview of their development to the latter part of the 4th century, in order to provide us with a starting point for the period of the barbarian invasions. He discusses what it meant to be "Roman" and how even cities far removed from Rome, such as Trier, were fully involved in Roman life and, rather than being rustic frontier outposts, were as fully a part of the Empire as cities of the Italian peninsula. He discusses the increased autonomy of the Emperor and how the Empire changed and adapted to the rise of Sassanid Persia as a threat to the East, including changes in the taxation system to support an increased military presence in that area. He also discusses the evolution of Germanic tribes and their coalescence from small, isolated people into larger, more unified kingdoms, capable of truly threatening Rome rather than just gaining an occasional, ultimately meaningless victory as had previously been the case.

All of this is to set the stage, to explain the status of the Empire and people within and oustide it, and to show that in the late 4th century the Empire had recovered from the tumultous 3rd century and the Persian threat to once again reached a point of balance, able to maintain its prosperity as well as defend its borders.

It is impossible to do justice to section 2, "Crisis" with a summary. Here Heather provides what is simply the most detailed account of the military actions of the late Roman Empire that I have ever read. This section is outstanding. Heather provides a great deal of information, beginning with the Gothic campaign which resulted in the huge Roman loss at Hadrianople and ending with Aetius repulsing the Hunnic invasion at the Catalaunian fields. He discusses various battles, their effect on the Empire, and how the Empire responded to meet these threats. From the Goths to Alaric, from the Hunnish threat to the Vandal invasion of North Africa he covers these events and their impacts in great detail.

In the final section, "End of Empires" Heather first discusses the fall of the Hunnic Empire and why this was not of as much benefit to the Empire as might be suspected as it allowed many other Barbarian invaders access to the Empire, as opposed to facing one single threat. He also discusses the Western Empire's last struggles to remain viable, including its efforts to regain the economically wealthy North Africa, a region which might have provided the necessary wealth for Rome to restore its military strength. Heather discusses how the failure of the North African invasion fleet in 468 spelled doom for the Empire. Finally he details the last days of Rome and the successor kingdoms that formed to fill in the void in Western Europe.

This is an excellent work. Heather writes well, the narrative is interesting, he references source material extensively and he goes into great detail regarding the last century of the Western Empire. I will say that I believe he argues his thesis rather convincingly. He does not try to minimize internal problems, particularly that so much of the military was focussed on Persia, however he provides a great deal of support for his argument that were it not for the sheer size and number of Barbarian invasions, particularly those driven by Hunnish pressure, the Roman Empire would not have fallen when it did. He details this by discussing the relative size of the two forces and showing that the Barbarian fighting men very likely enjoyed substantial numerical superiority over the Western Empire's field armies. Does he prove his thesis? Probably not - I've read works which argue equally convincingly that a combination of an over-bureaucracized society and the concentration of wealth were key aspects of Rome's decline. However Heather argues his point extremely well.

Even if you are not interested in the argument as to "why" Rome fell, this is an excellent account of the Barbarian invasions of the late 4th and 5th centuries and how Rome responded. I would recommend it on that basis alone. ( )