Persistent Myths VII: The Roman Edition

The Roman Edition

I was reminded today of a couple of popular myths regarding the Romans.

I suppose it would be surprising if the Romans weren't subject to all sort of myths, after all, they were a major power forever.  Given that, some baloney is going to stick to them.  Let's take a look

A. The Romans Never Lost a Battle

There's apparently a popular myth that the Romans never lost a battle.  Oh yes they did.  You can't be a military power that long and not loose a few, that's for sure, and they lost their fair share.

What's more the like it is that the Romans had really deep military pockets, so they were able recover from their losses, but loose they did.

B.  Rome Fell because it was corrupt.  

This myth is extremely persistent, but completely in error.

Students receive this myth in some classrooms today, and its no surprise as it was a thesis advanced by Gibbons, who was the first really major modern historian (1700s) who addressed the topic of Roman history.  Gibbons, however, was not free from inserting his own beliefs and agendas into his writing, and while the world owes him a debt of thanks for tackling the topic, it is burdened by his outlook.  

Gibbons was English and living in an era when the ruling class of the United Kingdom was quite anti Catholic, as was Gibbons himself.  This is significant in that it seems to have colored Gibbons views of 5th Century Rome.  It doesn't seem to answer, however, why Gibbons went on in his work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, to cover the Byzantine Empire as well, which is typically forgotten about him.

Anyhow, the popular myth is that Rome had become debauched and was reveling in vice which is why the robust Germans busted in and shut the whole thing down.  In actuality, Rome had been pretty debauched since day one and was actually living at the height of its virtue at the time it fell.  The Romans did a fairly good job of actually cleaning up its early history, in terms of what it told about itself, but in reality the town had been founded by bands of roving, fleeing ,thieves and had at first been a pretty much all male criminal enclave.  It became a real town when it acquired a female population, but it did that by taking its female population by force, not a very admirable thing to do.  In its imperial period Rome did all sorts of nasty icky things, but that didn't cause it to fall.

With Constantine the  Great, who ruled from Byzantium, the empire became Christian, but retained a large pagan population.  But its character really began to change. By the mid 400s when Rome fell its official religion was Christianity and it was at an all time high in moral behavior.

Rome really fell because of a series of odd events, which is often how such things occur.  For one thing, Rome had overextended itself, which it knew.  It had withdrawn from its most northerly advances some time prior and was working on trying to consolidate its holdings.  Its grip on Britain was slipping.  Administering the Empire from Rome had proven too difficult and the administration of the Empire had been split in two.  It had suffered from internal armed strife since the time of Caesar which continually drug it down.  And, most significantly here, Germanic peoples from Eastern Europe were being driven west by invading Slavs, which caused them to push by necessity on Rome's northern and eastern borders. They were coming in no matter what, and there was little Rome could do stop that.  Having said that, the Romans botched it specifically by ineptly handling Germans crossing the Rhine, giving unnecessary rise to invasion, and the end of the Western Empire.

C.  The Vomitorium isn't what you've heard.

As a minor one, a Vomitorium wasn't where people went to throw up, in their debauchery.  It's a big exit.  That's because it derives from   a word meaning to spew forth, as to pour out, as in to pour out a lot of people.  Think stadium exist.