On September 12, 1921, during an autumn colloquium on the arts and sciences, Ernst Kornemann (1868-1946) gave a lecture in Kiel on the decline of the ancient world. He described the topic of his address as ‘‘the problem of problems’’ in historiography. Then he proposed a possible solution: he suggested that the prosperity at the time of imperial rule had generated decadence everywhere, paralyzed social cohesion, destroyed the military masculine morale that had once made Rome great, and led the emperors to pursue an illusory policy of peace. In consequence, cultural life had come under the detrimental influence of a collectivist religiosity of eastern provenance (Kornemann 1922).
That was not an original view. In the humanities, the problem formulated by Kornemann had been an enigma for centuries - and it still is. The discussion centered on two questions: why did the Roman Empire decline; and when did this decline occur?
Let us first address the associated division of history into periods. Italian scholars of the Renaissance thought in terms of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern age - a model still familiar today. This model, which displaced the universal historical periodization characteristic of the Christian tradition - especially the theory of the four empires - was based on the assumption that the so-called Middle Ages had been a 1,000-year-long period of decline. That decline had to be overcome by bringing about a new epoch, one that would be connected to the period these scholars regarded as their norm: pagan and Christian antiquity.
After the sixteenth century, numerous authors tried to define more precisely the nature and date of the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages. Their suggestions included the coming to power of Diocletian (ad 284); the era of Constantine, in particular his accession (ad 306), his victory at the Milvian Bridge (ad 312), or the beginning of his autocratic rule (ad 324); and the crossing of the Danube by the Goths (ad 376), the Battle of Hadrianople (ad 378), and the settlement of the Goths within the empire (ad 382). These events, they argued, while not constituting the
A Companion to Late Antiquity. Edited by Philip Rousseau © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-1-405-11980-1
Boundary between antiquity and the Middle Ages themselves, prepared the ground for an event that actually signaled that antiquity had ended - namely the loss of the unity of the empire, following the death of Theodosius I (ad 395), the sack of Rome by Alaric (ad 410), or (most often mentioned) the deposition of Romulus Augustulus (ad 476) - an event that even contemporaries like Eugippius, Count Marcellinus, and Procopius considered a turning point. All of these suggestions were based on the assumption that there had been a sudden change in historical circumstances, triggered either by internal developments or by such external catastrophes as the triumph of the Christian faith or invasion by barbaric hordes.
In the nineteenth century, historians discarded that view: the notion of a gradual change replaced the idea of an abrupt transition. Scholars no longer considered the break between antiquity and the Middle Ages as clear-cut as their predecessors had, and, influenced by the classic work of the Austrian historian Alfons Dopsch (18681953), Wirtschaftliche und soziale Grundlagen der europaischen Kulturentwicklung (1918-20), many emphasized the continuity rather than the discontinuity between antiquity and the Middle Ages. As a result, the boundary between antiquity and the Middle Ages clearly shifted to later periods: among the proposals were now the invasion of Italy by the Lombards (ad 568), the reigns of the emperors Justinian (ad 527-65) or Heraclius (ad 610-41), or the pontificate of Pope Gregory the Great (ad 590-604). The Belgian economic historian Henri Pirenne (1862-1935) even advocated the thesis that Islam alone - or, more precisely, the advance of the Arabs in North Africa and Spain - had brought about the epochal change (Pirenne 1937). This notion of a successive transformation lasting several centuries established Late Antiquity as an epoch suigeneris. The concept of a ‘‘long’’ Late Antiquity that lasted from the third century to the seventh proved not only extremely rewarding for political, but also for ecclesiastical, cultural, economic, social, and literary history.
As to the causes of the decline of the Roman Empire, it must be kept in mind that, ever since the age of humanism, Late Antiquity has been regarded as an era of decline, thought to have begun with Constantine, with the soldier emperors, with Commo-dus, or even with Augustus. Numerous explanations for the supposed fall of the Imperium Romanum and the ancient world have been given (D’Elia 1967; Demandt 1984). Frequently, individual accounts have revealed more about the ideological and political position of their authors than about the historical patterns they claim to portray. The most prominent of the critical internal and external events that have been suggested are the rise of Christianity, the division between rich and poor, the spread of the Germanic peoples, exhausted sources of subsistence - through deterioration of the climate, soil erosion, and depopulation - as well as lead poisoning and hypothermia, racial interbreeding and biological degeneration: all of these possibilities have been considered by various authors. Views that are diametrically opposed to each other can also be found: for some, the Germans are destructive, while others regard them as protectors and revivers of ancient culture; here the end of Greco-Roman paganism is mourned, there the birth of Christian Europe is welcomed. Authors like Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) and Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) attempted to derive from the decline of the Roman world a theory of change, a notion of cultural cycles that would explain the emergence of new patterns of social, political, and cultural organization. Representatives of the materialistic view of history - which is now obsolete - portrayed Late Antiquity as a transitional period between ancient slave-owning society and the feudalism of the Middle Ages (Heinen 1980). In recent decades, however, the perception of Late Antiquity has significantly changed: the period is no longer seen as an era of decline and crisis but as an epoch of metamorphosis in the Mediterranean region (Liebeschuetz 2001b).
World History
