Flavius Claudius Iulianus Augustus Memorial Thread

they didn't really "destroy" the roman empire. the goths wanted in and assimilated/became the new west in a less centralized state structure resulting in a less powerful state, while the center of roman power went eastward to byzantium. The roman empire there lasted until the 1400s when it was superceded by the Ottoman empire.

the whole "fall of rome (in the 400s)" trope is repeated because it serves the purpose of the kind of people who want to reinforce a narrative that if you get away from holy roman catholic values into LICENTIOUS BEHAVIORS, your great empire will fall. In truth it's because agrarian (pre industrial) empires cannot last; they can only grow outward to a point where they spread themselves too thin and there is too much land to administrate the upkeep of efficiently

yeah, i'm aware-- i used the phrasing i did because it's an easier shorthand than trying to communicate the complicated events of late antiquity. the goths served as foederati for the romans and generally wanted the benefits of the developed political institutions and strong economy rome had compared to the pontic steppe (which was getting conquered by the huns and generally sucked to live in). late antiquity isn't really my historical specialty, as i'm generally more into the medieval period and onwards, but i know enough about it to know that rome didn't really fall so much as fragment and transform from a taxation-based economy to a land-based one with weaker political institutions (as well as, y'know, a germanic elite instead of a latin one) in the west, and the byzantine empire in the east.

the narrative i remember about the fall of the roman empire is the edward gibbon one that it's all christianity's fault, which is silly and rooted in enlightenment-era secularism and anti-clerical thought. you could make a case for licentious behavior, at least in the form of the political corruption endemic to fourth and fifth-century rome, but that's just symptomatic of larger problems and the fact that empire management is really hard (as well as being a judgment that can only really be made in hindsight, from a fourth-century perspective the system generally worked).