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476 AD
The Beginning of Europe’s Long Descent into Darkness
HAD THERE BEEN NO ROME and Roman Empire there would be no us. Founded around 510 BC, the Roman Empire had by the third century AD extended across millions of square miles, to the Rhine and Danube rivers in the north, North Africa in the south, Spain in the west, and Constantinople and beyond in the east. Throughout this territory, the Romans paved roads (some still in use today) through trackless wilderness, constructed towns, and built aqueducts to water them. Roman government held sway and the Latin language grew in influence.
The city of Rome itself, with its public baths, sewer systems, glorious buildings, and flourishing arts and poetry, was not only the center of Western civilization, but in a sense helped create it. Our Western systems of law, our cultures, and our languages — it is estimated that fifty percent of the words in English, for example, are of Latin origin — derive from ancient Rome. Even our sense of empire. These days, it’s considered a bad thing to have an empire, but Rome’s thousand-year hold over the world probably did more good than harm.
Not surprisingly, the rulers of this magnificent empire attained godlike status. Some, such as Julius Caesar and Octavian, even claimed they were gods. Even the less effective, more disreputable emperors like Nero had an air of grandeur about them.
So, given all these great accomplishments, how did Rome end up in 476 AD being ruled by Romulus Augustus, a twelve-year-old boy? His first name, fatefully enough, was the name of the legendary founder of Rome, but people mocked him and called him Momyllus, which means “little disgrace” — that’s when they weren’t sarcastically calling him Augustulus, which means “little emperor.”
BARBARIAN INVASIONS
The eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon wrote a famous masterwork, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon attributed Rome’s “fall” partly to the “barbarian” (from the Latin word for “bearded”) tribes who had long been bubbling and boiling around the edges of the northern Roman Empire, but also to the Romans themselves, whom, he claimed, became lazy and self-satisfied, depending on hired mercenaries (in some cases the same barbarians who would turn on them) to do their fighting. Many contemporary scholars, however, have rejected Gibbon’s arguments about barbarian hordes as overly simplistic and paternalistic. Was Gibbon not merely viewing the barbarians from a contemptuous Roman point of view? Barbarians were, after all, mainly Germanic tribes on an empire-building mission of their own. In the view of some of these modern essayists, the Roman Empire never “declined”; it was merely transformed, becoming an amalgam of Germanic and Roman influences.
This provides us with a kinder, gentler —not to mention more politically correct — end to the Romans. But it ignores the very real trauma felt by this thousand-year-old civilization at the time. It also overlooks the impact of the subsequent decline of Western (read: Roman) learning, when much classical knowledge — including records of what was happening in the fifth century as Rome neared its end — was not “transformed,” but irrevocably destroyed. As a result, Europe entered what has come to be known as the Dark Ages.
NEPOS USURPED
Romulus Augustus reigned from October of 475 to September of 476. Not much is known about him, except that he was thought good-looking. He was a kid caught in a big trap, really, one from which he was going to be lucky to escape alive, given the chaotic conditions prevalent in Rome at the time. Romulus had been named emperor by his father, a general named Flavius Orestes, who was part German and part Roman and yet had been named Master of Soldiers —commander in chief of the Roman army — by the then-emperor, Julius Nepos.
This was a sign of the deep barbarian infiltration of Rome, and a mistake on Nepos’s part. For Orestes subsequently led a combined group of barbarian auxiliary forces against the emperor, sending him into exile (there are some who say that Nepos was really the last Roman emperor) and putting his own son, Romulus, on the throne. He probably did this so that he could rule from behind the scenes. But if he was expecting a bright new era in Roman history (or even just greater spoils), he was to be sorely mistaken.
A SLOW DECLINE
Rome had, in fact, been sliding from power since the middle of the fourth century, when the Huns, a nomadic people from Central Asia, had appeared on the Eurasian steppes and pushed other tribes westward in front of them. One of these tribes was the Visigoths, who settled on the banks of the Danube in about 376 AD, living there on the sufferance of Emperor Valens, head of the Eastern Roman Empire (the Roman Empire had been divided into two halves, Eastern and Western, by the Emperor Diocletian, in 285 AD, to make it easier to govern).
Valens’s corrupt officials treated the Visigoths in a high-handed way, as if they were inferiors, stealing money from them and not listening to their complaints. As a result, they revolted, and defeated and killed Valens in the historic battle of Adrianople in 378, then swept with a vengeance through the Eastern Empire. The next emperor, Theodosius I, finally made peace with the Visigoths in 382, but only after ceding them the territory they had seized — Thrace (now northern Greece and the Balkans). Rome looked eastward nervously.
Less than twenty years later, a charismatic young general named Alaric arose from one of the royal families of the Visigoths. Alaric was trained by the Emperor Theodosius and served as one of his top commanders, but after Theodosius died he turned on the Romans. He first invaded Italy in 400, but was defeated by the Roman general Stilicho in the Piedmont region, possibly because the Romans had captured his wife and family and were holding them hostage. Around 408, Alaric tried again, this time in the middle of a civil war — a propitious time for an invasion, as it turned out. Alaric even briefly aligned himself with forces under his old foe General Stilicho, but, after Stilicho was murdered by the Romans, Alaric turned with purposeful vengeance and marched on Rome.
While they did not build cities, the Huns were, like the Romans, intent on assimilating conquered peoples.
In August 410, panic gripped the citizens of Rome as Alaric settled in for a siege. The Emperor Honorius fled to Ravenna just as Rome began to starve. Thousands of slaves left their masters and slipped out through the city’s gates, seeking better employment with the Visigoths. Honorius refused to bargain with Alaric; meanwhile, the people of Rome, suffering from a plague, began to die by the scores. According to some sources, cannibalism was practiced. Finally, someone — legend has it that it was a rich Roman noblewoman who could no longer stand the plight of her city — opened the Salaria Gate, and, for the first time in seven hundred years, Rome was in the hands of a foreign invader.
As far as sackings went, Alaric’s was relatively mild. Many Roman citizens were enslaved, but because of this there was a glut of slaves on the market and they could be bought back from the barbarians very cheaply. What the Visigoths were mainly interested in was food, and after obtaining what little they could from the starving Romans, they set off south to sack more fertile parts of the country. But Alaric died of an illness shortly thereafter, and the threat was temporarily dispelled.
THE EMPIRE DISINTEGRATES
The respite for Rome was relatively brief, however, for soon it had to deal with Attila and his Huns, who had moved out of Asia pillaging and conquering. While they did not build great cities like the Romans, the Huns — particularly the charismatic Attila, who saw himself as a world leader — were intent on assimilating conquered peoples. After first invading the Balkans and Gaul (where they were defeated at the battle of Châlons), they headed for Italy. In 452, Attila cut a great swath of destruction through the northern part of the country before heading for Rome. It is said that Pope Leo I then met with Attila and persuaded him not to attack the city, although it is more likely that Attila turned back because famine and disease were by then tearing his army apart. In any event, the Imperial City was spared.
Attila died the next year, and the power of the Huns waned, but in 453 the Vandals dealt Rome a devastating blow. The Vandals were a tribe from eastern Germany whose very name is now synonymous with wanton destruction. After taking a roundabout route to Rome — through Spain, hopping across the Mediterranean, devastating North Africa, and then sailing to Italy — they spent two full weeks sacking Rome and did not refrain from murder and plunder, before returning to North Africa.
Over the next twenty years, the Imperial City and the Roman Empire disintegrated. With the Italian Peninsula devastated by barbarian onslaughts and civil war, the struggling Roman government was unable to levy enough taxes to keep a standing army in the field. Increasingly, it depended on barbarian mercenaries. The Roman government was weak and obviously up for grabs. It was at this point, 475 AD, that Flavius Orestes was appointed — ironically, to protect the Roman emperor. As soon as he could, he betrayed him.
ROMULUS IN EXILE
After Flavius Orestes appointed Romulus emperor, he, too, fell prey to the tumultuous politics of the time. He had double-crossed the barbarians who had fought for him, refusing to give them land to settle on, and they joined forces and rose against him, led by the Visigoth Odoacer (a name that has numerous spellings). Orestes was captured and quickly beheaded on August 28, 476. Then Odoacer marched on Ravenna, where Romulus Augustus held court, and immediately deposed him, in the autumn of 476, as easily as a big kid pushes a little one out of a sandbox.
Odoacer then sent an arrogant note to Emperor Zeno of Constantinople — then head of the Eastern Empire — to the effect that there would be no need to appoint a new Western emperor: he, Odoacer, would now rule. It is a sign of how insignificant a threat Romulus was that Odoacer did not bother to have him killed — he simply pensioned him off to Campania in southern Italy.
The fall of the Roman Empire was so quiet, one commentator has written, as to be “noiseless.” But this was because by the time Odoacer pushed Romulus out, the power of Rome was already gone forever, lost in war and strife. The Eastern Empire, protected by better luck, a great wall built around Constantinople, and water (the Bosphorus separates Constantinople from Europe, and the barbarians were notoriously poor seamen) survived until the Ottomans conquered it in the fifteenth century. But the Western Empire was gone. For a time, Roman bureaucracy kept the streets paved, the water flowing through the aqueducts, and the books safe in their grand libraries, but these things were not of value to the new owners of the empire, and gradually fell into disuse and disrepair.
Some aristocratic Roman families cooperated with the Germanic tribes and thrived, but many of the inhabitants of Rome and other major Italian cities were enslaved. Others were left alone to work for their new masters, but because the barbarians had redistributed the land among themselves, these former Roman citizens were left in a condition approaching serfdom.
Times changed. Coins were not minted. The famous Roman pottery, which had spread across the empire, stopped being made. Local economies declined severely, as did the population of Europe. The great civilization of classical antiquity now entered a steady decline. The Dark Ages, which would last until about 1000 AD, had begun.
What Happened to Romulus Augustus?
There is much speculation, but not a lot of real evidence, as to what happened to the young emperor after Odoacer deposed him. It is known that he went to live with relatives in Campania, in southern Italy, with a pension of six thousand gold solidi a year. He may have become a scholar or a monk — there is brief mention of a “lovely letter by the holy brother Romulus” in correspondence, dated 507, between a North African bishop and an Italian diplomat. And around the same time, a secretary to Theodoric the Great wrote a letter to a Romulus about certain issues to do with a pension. But after this, all is silence.
Лексика:
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descent — /dɪˈsent/ — упадок, спад
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wilderness — /ˈwɪldərnəs/ — дикая местность
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aqueduct — /ˈækwɪdʌkt/ — акведук
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glorious — /ˈɡlɔːriəs/ — славный, великолепный
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flourishing — /ˈflʌrɪʃɪŋ/ — процветающий
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disreputable — /dɪsˈrepjətəbəl/ — сомнительный, дурной репутации
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grandeur — /ˈɡrændʒər/ — величие
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sarcastically — /sɑːrˈkæstɪkli/ — саркастически
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barbarian — /bɑːrˈbeəriən/ — варвар
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mercenary — /ˈmɜːrsəneri/ — наёмник
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paternalistic — /pəˌtɜːrnəˈlɪstɪk/ — покровительственный
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contemptuous — /kənˈtemptʃuəs/ — презрительный
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amalgam — /əˈmælɡəm/ — смесь, сплав
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irrevocably — /ɪˈrevəkəbli/ — безвозвратно
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prevalent — /ˈprevələnt/ — распространённый
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infiltration — /ˌɪnfɪlˈtreɪʃən/ — проникновение
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auxiliary — /ɔːɡˈzɪljəri/ — вспомогательный
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nomadic — /noʊˈmædɪk/ — кочевой
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sufferance — /ˈsʌfərəns/ — терпимость, дозволение
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high-handed — /ˌhaɪˈhændɪd/ — властный, грубо командующий
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vengeance — /ˈvendʒəns/ — месть
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charismatic — /ˌkærɪzˈmætɪk/ — харизматичный
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propitious — /prəˈpɪʃəs/ — благоприятный
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assimilating — /əˈsɪməleɪtɪŋ/ — ассимилирующий
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siege — /siːdʒ/ — осада
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cannibalism — /ˈkænɪbəlɪzəm/ — каннибализм
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plight — /plaɪt/ — бедственное положение
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sack (verb) — /sæk/ — грабить город
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respite — /ˈrespaɪt/ — передышка
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pillaging — /ˈpɪlɪdʒɪŋ/ — разграбление
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swath — /swɔːθ/ — полоса разрушения
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wanton — /ˈwɒntən/ — бессмысленный, безудержный
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plunder — /ˈplʌndər/ — добыча, грабёж
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onslaught — /ˈɒnslɔːt/ — нашествие, натиск
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to levy (taxes) — /ˈlevi/ — взимать (налоги)
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tumultuous — /tuːˈmʌltʃuəs/ — бурный, шумный
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deposed — /dɪˈpoʊzd/ — свергнутый
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pensioned off — /ˈpenʃənd ɒf/ — отправленный на пенсию, отстранённый с содержанием
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noiseless — /ˈnɔɪzləs/ — бесшумный
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seamen — /ˈsiːmən/ — моряки
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disrepair — /ˌdɪsrɪˈper/ — запущенное состояние
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aristocratic — /ˌærɪstəˈkrætɪk/ — аристократический
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serfdom — /ˈsɜːrfdəm/ — крепостное состояние
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minted — /ˈmɪntɪd/ — отчеканенный
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antiquity — /ænˈtɪkwɪti/ — древность
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speculation — /ˌspekjəˈleɪʃən/ — догадки
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correspondence — /ˌkɒrəˈspɒndəns/ — переписка
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diplomat — /ˈdɪpləmæt/ — дипломат
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issues (formal sense) — /ˈɪʃuːz/ — вопросы, проблемы
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silence (metaphorical) — /ˈsaɪləns/ — отсутствие сведений, тишина
