The Fall of the West: The Death of the Roman Superpower (2009)

"Rome's fate seems to act as a warning that strength and success will always prove transitory in the end, and that civilization will not automatically triumph. It was no coincidence that one of Winston Churchill's most famous speeches from 1940 foretold that Britain's defeat would result in 'a new Dark Age' - particularly apt since many believed that the Roman Empire had been destroyed by German barbarians in the fifth century."

Long after its fall from dominance, Rome continues to fascinate the imagination. It is the standard against which all great empires are measured and its fate is still not completely understood - at least not in a way that can be universally agreed upon by historians. Adrian Goldsworthy tackles the challenge of trying to explain why and how Rome fell, exploring four hundred years of history, of triumphs and reversals, of enemies from without and enemies from within. With an expert's eye he guides the reader from a united and powerful nation to one split apart, half strong, half falling away piece by piece.

The question of why Rome fell from power (or, at least from the overwhelming power it once enjoyed), is not simple to answer; it's more of a series of answers. First of all, there's the matter of size. Rome occupied a large part of the world - too large to maintain given both the technology available at the time (things like air travel and the internet have made the world a much smaller place now, but armies and information moved considerably slower in the time of Rome's empire), and the assertions of autonomy by natives of the occupied territories. There is also the deteriorization of Rome's social structure, a watering down, if you will, of the standards by which Emperors were selected. Where once Emperors were borne out of the highest spheres of Roman society, by the end of the Empire the man who who was best able to gain the support of the military took the title, regardless of his station in life. Although this isn't to suggest that someone not of the highest rank of society is somehow less "worthy" to rule, the fact that military support came to play such a dominant role in how rule of the Empire was decided meant that usurpation became easier and probably more frequently inevitable.

There were many other reasons for Rome's fall, reasons which Goldsworthy takes pains to explore, but those are the two that ultimately stand out, a cancer from without and a cancer from within working together in concert over the course of four centuries to eat away at Rome's power and influence. Goldsworthy's accounting of Rome's decline, and the various personalities and factions that led to it, is thorough, giving as detailed a picture as I imagine is possible. Though his prose is sometimes a bit dry, the story itself is so fascinating that it hardly matters. The Fall of the West is a must read for anyone with even a passing interest in Roman history.