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Rome and the Barbarians, 100 B.C.–A.D. 400
The barbarians of antiquity, so long a fixture of the public imagination as the savages who sacked and destroyed Rome, emerge in this colorful, richly textured history as a much more complex―and far more interesting―factor in the expansion, and eventual unmaking, of the Roman Empire. Thomas S. Burns marshals an abundance of archeological and literary evidence, as well as three decades of study and experience, to bring forth an unusually far-sighted and wide-ranging account of the relations between Romans and non-Romans along the frontiers of western Europe from the last years of the Republic into late antiquity. Looking at a 500-year time span beginning with early encounters between barbarians and Romans around 100 B.C. and ending with the spread of barbarian settlement in the western Empire around A.D. 400, Burns removes the barbarians from their narrow niche as invaders and conquerors and places them in the broader context of neighbors, (sometimes bitter) friends, and settlers. His nuanced history subtly shows how Rome's relations with the barbarians―and vice versa―slowly but inexorably evolved from general ignorance, hostility, and suspicion toward tolerance, synergy, and integration. What he describes is, in fact, a drawn-out period of acculturation, characterized more by continuity than by change and conflict and leading to the creation of a new Romano-barbarian hybrid society and culture that anticipated the values and traditions of medieval civilization.
461 pages, Hardcover
First published September 8, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 30, 2021
This is a very interesting book that gives a pretty compelling theory behind the historical continuity of the transition from late antiquity to early medieval history. It helps better bridge the increasingly rich archeological understanding of late antiquity with our historical understanding and suggests that the "barbarian invasions" were not so much the replacement of the Roman world than the flourishing of the frontier societies that the Roman Empire made inevitable.
Although Burns doesn't explicitly make this case, it's implicit in his argument that we must take the Roman imperial government as the most significant consumer. The sheer gravity of the government's spending power represents a magnet that shifts the distribution of output in the Roman world. This argument is backed by other recent archeological and historical research of late antiquity, including Michael Kulikowski's Late Roman Spain and its Cities and J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz' The Decline and Fall of the Roman City. Urbanity certainly begins to take on a different shape, as the classical forum goes out of use, is gradually encroached upon by new housing, markets, and even waste disposal, and ultimately finds new public use in the shape of urban churches and cathedrals after a period of time. Many cities shrink in the 3rd and 4th centuries, but some expand. The ones that expand are the ones most associated with imperial administration, and therefore expenditure.
Burns makes a strong case that the decline in Mediterranean trade after the 1st and early 2nd centuries has more to do with the shift of importance to the frontiers from the Mediterranean. Strategically, the focus of the Roman government shifts to the defense of the new Rhine and Danube frontiers in Europe (and the Euphrates in Asia). One has to remember that Roman coinage was primarily done to pay troop salaries and to clear large government purchases. Even commercial use of coinage, including bronze "small change" (the only currency equipped for small day-to-day transactions), depends in large part on the initial disbursement of coinage to soldiers, which they subsequently spend in private markets. Where this relationship breaks down as the Western Roman Army disintegrates, so does the private usage of coinage.
Archeologically, we see this distributional shift in the acceleration of trade along the Rhine and Danube, as trade within the Mediterranean slows except for the large imperial wheat trade between Africa and Egypt to Rome (and later Constantinople).
The European frontier therefore begins to develop socio-political-economic world of its own, determined by Rome's defense needs. This includes both intervention in the political organization of the "barbarians" on the other side of the frontier, and their exploitation as sources of manpower for the Roman Army. Rome tended to recruit soldiers near the action, so over the very long-run we see Roman recruitment shift from Italy, to Macedon and Spain, to the Danube and Rhine frontier. The Danube frontier, especially Pannonia (from where many emperors of late antiquity came from precisely because of this reason), is doubly important because it lays between the defense needs in Gaul and those in Syria.
The world that develops is an integrated world along the frontier. There wasn't a line at which civilization began and ended, rather there is a continuum influenced by Roman military spending, the commercial ventures that developed around this spending and, also, recruitment needs. The immediate world beyond the formal frontiers must therefore be seen as a continuation of the Roman world — a collection of client kingdoms and tribes that thrive or decline based on patterns of Roman spending.
There isn't a broad agreement on whether the Roman Empire could be said to have collapsed or whether the Roman Empire just changed its shape as its institutions were gradually inherited by new powerbrokers. You just need to read Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell and Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire, both recent contributions to the literature, to see the disagreement. Burns does a good job of bridging the two different interpretations.
It is generally agreed that the rise of the Sassanid dynasty in Persia represented a strategic shift in geopolitics. The Sassanids were much stronger institutionally and militarily than their predecessors, the Parthians. As a result, the amount of resources that the Romans need to secure the eastern frontier increases. Budgetary constraints being what they are, the Romans begin to transfer men from the Danubian frontier to the east.
If the Roman government is a disproportionately large consumer, to the extent that it has enough market power to determine the distribution of market activity (as we have seen above), then the shifting of military resources (the primary expenditure) will have pretty dramatic socio-economic effects. Namely, the Danubian frontier sees a reduction in spending and the profits that the frontier communities were thriving on dry up. Burns argues that this is a primary factor behind the breakdown of the Roman client system among the Danubian tribes during the "Crisis" of the Third Century. This frontier was briefly stabilized by Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian, Constantine, etc. but begins to break down again as spending on the Danube begins to take second place as these frontier forces are stripped to join the gargantuan armies of the civil wars fought during the 4th century.
We also see an acceleration of the integration of frontier society during the 4th and 5th centuries. First, consider Diocletian's separation of military and administrative bureaucracies. It's no longer required to serve in the administration to rise up the ranks of the Roman Empire, because you can do so through a purely military career. The traditional Roman elite (senators) are seen more in positions of civil administration, leaving the military elite to others, including recruits from the frontier. Unsurprising, then, the growing number of Roman commanders with non-Roman names and of non-Roman origins (although all of these Romanized during their service). Second, large losses as a result of a growing frequency of civil war require more recruitment from the frontiers.
It's Roman politics, in other words, that provides the impetus for this transition of importance from the Mediterranean elite who represent classical antiquity and the frontier elite who represent early Medieval politics.
Burns also advances the compelling theory that the Crisis of the Third Century and subsequent Germanic raids throughout the 3rd and 4th centuries are directly related to the Roman civil wars. Rather than representing external invasions of a weakened Roman Empire, with the intention of carving it up, these raids were incentivized by Roman leadership. More concretely, Roman rivals in civil war would call upon their frontier clients and leverage them to gain an advantage. This shouldn't be controversial because it aligns with a practice that had already been occuring for centuries. One is reminded of the sheer amount of destruction and damage throughout the Hellenistic world as both sides called upon, and often simply forced, cities to their side (and were therefore punished by the other, if the other won) during the civil wars following the assassination of Julius Caesar. Or, the use of Spanish clients by various factions throughout the civil wars of the late Republic.
The deterioration of the western Roman imperial government is therefore less of deterioration, and more so a shift in the balance of power between elites. You get a sense of this in, for example, the letters of Sidonius. Sidonius represents the civil administration and its classical Mediterranean values. He bemoans the gradual disappearance of these values. But this shift was not a product of external invasions independent of Roman policy, but are a product of Roman policy itself.
The Romans had been settling the "barbarians" within the formal frontiers of the empire for centuries. These settlers were expected to provide manpower and defensive capabilities. This practice of settlement continued into the 5th century and beyond, and with the shift of political focus from the Mediterranean to the Danube — a shift also represented by, for example, the movement of the western Roman capital from Rome to Trier and Milan — came the shift in political power, as the Danube/Rhine-focused economies find their own way, finding it no longer economical to rely on a tax-starved central imperial government based in Italy.
The archeology-focused research of late antiquity can be rather boring. One example is Peter Wells' The Barbarians Speak, which is a great book, just rather difficult to get through and, in my opinion, devoid of a larger narrative. Burns' Rome and the Barbarians is the exact opposite, and he does a fantastic job of weaving together both archeological and literary sources into a comprehensive interpretation of the political evolution of late Roman Europe. This is a must-read for anybody who is seeking a deeper, more accurate understanding of the "decline and fall" of the Roman Empire and the birth of early Medieval Europe.
Although Burns doesn't explicitly make this case, it's implicit in his argument that we must take the Roman imperial government as the most significant consumer. The sheer gravity of the government's spending power represents a magnet that shifts the distribution of output in the Roman world. This argument is backed by other recent archeological and historical research of late antiquity, including Michael Kulikowski's Late Roman Spain and its Cities and J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz' The Decline and Fall of the Roman City. Urbanity certainly begins to take on a different shape, as the classical forum goes out of use, is gradually encroached upon by new housing, markets, and even waste disposal, and ultimately finds new public use in the shape of urban churches and cathedrals after a period of time. Many cities shrink in the 3rd and 4th centuries, but some expand. The ones that expand are the ones most associated with imperial administration, and therefore expenditure.
Burns makes a strong case that the decline in Mediterranean trade after the 1st and early 2nd centuries has more to do with the shift of importance to the frontiers from the Mediterranean. Strategically, the focus of the Roman government shifts to the defense of the new Rhine and Danube frontiers in Europe (and the Euphrates in Asia). One has to remember that Roman coinage was primarily done to pay troop salaries and to clear large government purchases. Even commercial use of coinage, including bronze "small change" (the only currency equipped for small day-to-day transactions), depends in large part on the initial disbursement of coinage to soldiers, which they subsequently spend in private markets. Where this relationship breaks down as the Western Roman Army disintegrates, so does the private usage of coinage.
Archeologically, we see this distributional shift in the acceleration of trade along the Rhine and Danube, as trade within the Mediterranean slows except for the large imperial wheat trade between Africa and Egypt to Rome (and later Constantinople).
The European frontier therefore begins to develop socio-political-economic world of its own, determined by Rome's defense needs. This includes both intervention in the political organization of the "barbarians" on the other side of the frontier, and their exploitation as sources of manpower for the Roman Army. Rome tended to recruit soldiers near the action, so over the very long-run we see Roman recruitment shift from Italy, to Macedon and Spain, to the Danube and Rhine frontier. The Danube frontier, especially Pannonia (from where many emperors of late antiquity came from precisely because of this reason), is doubly important because it lays between the defense needs in Gaul and those in Syria.
The world that develops is an integrated world along the frontier. There wasn't a line at which civilization began and ended, rather there is a continuum influenced by Roman military spending, the commercial ventures that developed around this spending and, also, recruitment needs. The immediate world beyond the formal frontiers must therefore be seen as a continuation of the Roman world — a collection of client kingdoms and tribes that thrive or decline based on patterns of Roman spending.
There isn't a broad agreement on whether the Roman Empire could be said to have collapsed or whether the Roman Empire just changed its shape as its institutions were gradually inherited by new powerbrokers. You just need to read Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell and Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire, both recent contributions to the literature, to see the disagreement. Burns does a good job of bridging the two different interpretations.
It is generally agreed that the rise of the Sassanid dynasty in Persia represented a strategic shift in geopolitics. The Sassanids were much stronger institutionally and militarily than their predecessors, the Parthians. As a result, the amount of resources that the Romans need to secure the eastern frontier increases. Budgetary constraints being what they are, the Romans begin to transfer men from the Danubian frontier to the east.
If the Roman government is a disproportionately large consumer, to the extent that it has enough market power to determine the distribution of market activity (as we have seen above), then the shifting of military resources (the primary expenditure) will have pretty dramatic socio-economic effects. Namely, the Danubian frontier sees a reduction in spending and the profits that the frontier communities were thriving on dry up. Burns argues that this is a primary factor behind the breakdown of the Roman client system among the Danubian tribes during the "Crisis" of the Third Century. This frontier was briefly stabilized by Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian, Constantine, etc. but begins to break down again as spending on the Danube begins to take second place as these frontier forces are stripped to join the gargantuan armies of the civil wars fought during the 4th century.
We also see an acceleration of the integration of frontier society during the 4th and 5th centuries. First, consider Diocletian's separation of military and administrative bureaucracies. It's no longer required to serve in the administration to rise up the ranks of the Roman Empire, because you can do so through a purely military career. The traditional Roman elite (senators) are seen more in positions of civil administration, leaving the military elite to others, including recruits from the frontier. Unsurprising, then, the growing number of Roman commanders with non-Roman names and of non-Roman origins (although all of these Romanized during their service). Second, large losses as a result of a growing frequency of civil war require more recruitment from the frontiers.
It's Roman politics, in other words, that provides the impetus for this transition of importance from the Mediterranean elite who represent classical antiquity and the frontier elite who represent early Medieval politics.
Burns also advances the compelling theory that the Crisis of the Third Century and subsequent Germanic raids throughout the 3rd and 4th centuries are directly related to the Roman civil wars. Rather than representing external invasions of a weakened Roman Empire, with the intention of carving it up, these raids were incentivized by Roman leadership. More concretely, Roman rivals in civil war would call upon their frontier clients and leverage them to gain an advantage. This shouldn't be controversial because it aligns with a practice that had already been occuring for centuries. One is reminded of the sheer amount of destruction and damage throughout the Hellenistic world as both sides called upon, and often simply forced, cities to their side (and were therefore punished by the other, if the other won) during the civil wars following the assassination of Julius Caesar. Or, the use of Spanish clients by various factions throughout the civil wars of the late Republic.
The deterioration of the western Roman imperial government is therefore less of deterioration, and more so a shift in the balance of power between elites. You get a sense of this in, for example, the letters of Sidonius. Sidonius represents the civil administration and its classical Mediterranean values. He bemoans the gradual disappearance of these values. But this shift was not a product of external invasions independent of Roman policy, but are a product of Roman policy itself.
The Romans had been settling the "barbarians" within the formal frontiers of the empire for centuries. These settlers were expected to provide manpower and defensive capabilities. This practice of settlement continued into the 5th century and beyond, and with the shift of political focus from the Mediterranean to the Danube — a shift also represented by, for example, the movement of the western Roman capital from Rome to Trier and Milan — came the shift in political power, as the Danube/Rhine-focused economies find their own way, finding it no longer economical to rely on a tax-starved central imperial government based in Italy.
The archeology-focused research of late antiquity can be rather boring. One example is Peter Wells' The Barbarians Speak, which is a great book, just rather difficult to get through and, in my opinion, devoid of a larger narrative. Burns' Rome and the Barbarians is the exact opposite, and he does a fantastic job of weaving together both archeological and literary sources into a comprehensive interpretation of the political evolution of late Roman Europe. This is a must-read for anybody who is seeking a deeper, more accurate understanding of the "decline and fall" of the Roman Empire and the birth of early Medieval Europe.
March 23, 2012
Not an easy read but an interesting one. Burns shows that "barbarian" was a complex term with a complex genealogy. "The barbarians were not all the same and never had been, but because in literature and imperial propaganda they still served the same singular purpose--to be humbled before the power of the emperor--they were still portrayed as one people, thirsting after Roman blood and booty just as in all the centuries past." For ancient writers, they were stock villains so one must read the histories with more than one grain of salt.
The Roman army was often made up largely of these "barbarians" including the leadership. Since Roman colonization often consisted of settling former soldiers in colonized areas, different "barbarian" groups of soldiers mingled, intermarried, etc. with other groups of peoples.
He tracks all these things through literary and archaeological evidence--foreign sources of objects found in sites, name changes ("barbarian" to Roman, for example), etc.
The Roman army was often made up largely of these "barbarians" including the leadership. Since Roman colonization often consisted of settling former soldiers in colonized areas, different "barbarian" groups of soldiers mingled, intermarried, etc. with other groups of peoples.
He tracks all these things through literary and archaeological evidence--foreign sources of objects found in sites, name changes ("barbarian" to Roman, for example), etc.
March 20, 2009
3.5 stars
Rome and the Barbarians rounds out my recent study of Late Roman history and the empire’s relationships with the peoples on its frontiers. Unlike the earlier volumes (Goffart, Heather, O’Connell, Bedoyere & Whittaker), Burn’s work looks at the entire history from Julius Caesar’s day to the collapse of the Western Empire c. AD 500.
I’ve been unable to find the time to write the review this book deserves so you’ll have to trust without evidence that this history is worth your time. If I did have to sum it up in a short, dust-jacket-worthy blurb, it would be this: Burns shows that in the course of five centuries, the Roman Empire didn’t collapse so much as evolve into a new civilization along the zone where imperium met barbaricum.
Rome and the Barbarians rounds out my recent study of Late Roman history and the empire’s relationships with the peoples on its frontiers. Unlike the earlier volumes (Goffart, Heather, O’Connell, Bedoyere & Whittaker), Burn’s work looks at the entire history from Julius Caesar’s day to the collapse of the Western Empire c. AD 500.
I’ve been unable to find the time to write the review this book deserves so you’ll have to trust without evidence that this history is worth your time. If I did have to sum it up in a short, dust-jacket-worthy blurb, it would be this: Burns shows that in the course of five centuries, the Roman Empire didn’t collapse so much as evolve into a new civilization along the zone where imperium met barbaricum.
October 2, 2022
Very interesting overview that will make you rethink a lot of things about Rome and "barbarians." It is pretty dry but worth my while.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews