Once upon a time, I read a Byzantine historian’s thoughts on the fall of the West. Not only why it fell when it did, but how it managed to endure for so long through the endless disasters between the third through sixth century. I cannot recall the text or historian, but his words burned into my mind as deeply wise. The Historian answered the question with a correctional edit:
It wasn’t the legions that defended Rome, but the memory of them…
This short statement contains deep wisdom for today’s realities, and while the rest of the text is a bit hazy in my mind, the gist that he presented is that Rome no longer had a real ability to defend itself. It was relying on the memory of past glory to shore up it’s hard power weaknesses. It’s once-great legions had evaporated. Their iconic shingled armor and short sword had long started to rust. In their place was barbarian for-hire armies.
That memory - the fear that something genocidal may still dwell across the Rhine - kept the Germans home. But once the Germans realized those classical legions had entered into myth - that now all that stood to stop his entry was his cousin across the Rhine - they realized they could simply cross over and become the new rulers. In fact, we have a clear date the myth of Rome’s glory broke. The Thirty-First of December, Year of Our Lord Four Hundred and Six.
For years before this date, Attila had been ransacking Germany. Every burned village, every sacked fort, every town scattered - every act - created a small mob of refugees, who began coalescing along the Rhine, petitioning for refugee status to Rome. Rome at this time had no functioning government to answer the refugees. The Emperors had long become figureheads for the civil wars of Prefects and Governors, themselves no longer Roman in many cases, but the sons of past refugees from Germany who had integrated and become Rome’s new elite. To call this corpse an Empire, let alone Roman, is a joke. But on that faithful day in December, the Rhine froze over. And suddenly Rome’s lack of answer became a permission in ambiguity.
On the Gaul side of the Rhine there was a Roman general in charge of the border. Stilicho was his name. You may know this name as an insult or a curse among some historians. It’s true, he deserves his. General Stilicho was not a Roman. He was a Vandal raised in Rome. He was guardian of the emperor Honorius. His wife was the niece of Emperor Theodosius. His power was broad, his reach far. By all accounts, Stilicho was the highest ranking civil servant of the Roman Bureaucracy. But when the mob of refugees began to dare the frozen Rhine and approach his fortifications, Stilicho dared to tear for his people still in Germany. And Stilicho decided on that day - without imperial decree - to let the refugees in.
And so, on that day, some 30,000 Germans crossed the Rhine. And when they arrived they found no legions their fathers warned them of. They found no terror or super power. They found a plague-stricken land without a functioning government. And in the belly of the beast that terrorized their forefathers, they realized they had the upper hand…
Twenty Six years before the crossing, Stilicho’s uncle-in-law, Emperor Theodosius, had faced a similar crises when the Franks began exerting power within the Empire. This demographic shift resulted in Theodosius making the Franks honorary Romans if they converted to the Catholic faith. He made their general-king Arbogast his Magister Militum, a rank akin to Prime Minister. Rome had a German Prime Minister…Rome had already become a pluralistic society with all the hallmarks of demographic political factionalization we see today in the United States. In his decree, Theodosius said:
…It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue to profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We order the followers of this law to embrace the name of Universal Christians…
If you are unawarem Catholic translates to Universal in English. This was the birth of the formal Catholic Church. And thus the Roman Catholic Church can be translated to English as the “Roman Universal In-Gathering”. Theodosius turned the Roman Identity into a religious and political ideology rather than an ethnicity.
Whether Stilicho was attempting to do something similar is not at all clear. What is clear is that he failed. The Franks, seeing the precedent of a General acting without Imperial orders, declared war on the refugees without imperial orders. Thus was born France. And France would never again bow to a Western Emperor, viewing itself as the rightful heirs of Rome thanks to Theodosius’ decree. All of Western Europe unraveled into a race to collect as many Roman Assets as they could. Iberia was taken by the Visigoths, Italy by the Ostrogoths. Carthage by the Vandals. Everyone wanted what stake they could claim now that they were all equally Romans. Everyone wanted a way to direct the headless Roman Bureaucracy. And only Four years later, one of those refugees - Alaric - would sack Rome, ending the divine city’s 800-year-run of not being sacked. Stilicho didn’t make it that long. He was summarily executed in 408, amidst the ashes of Gaul and Iberia.
There are some truly odd consequences as a result of this scramble. The Visigoths continued paying taxes to Constantinople, the Franks created their own Prime Ministership which was often run by Gallo-Roman locals. The Ostrogoths empowered the Roman Senate and for a time it seemed as if Rome had become a Republic again. All of these were copes, in a sense. Even as the Western Corpse was thoroughly hollowed out, some sense of fear directed the Germans to maintain order and normalcy. There was no reason to, they just felt they ought to keep the lights on for as long as they could. At no point among any of these carved out territories will you find a declaration that Rome was dead, or that the Empire was over. Every one of these entities viewed themselves as shareholders of a still-functioning Roman Empire.
Perhaps the most amusing example can be found in North Africa, where magistrates were still being named for a now non-existent emperor, well into the 8th century. When the Muslims took Carthage in 698, there wasn’t a single Roman left defending the city. The Visigoths, again still paying taxes to Constantinople, took up the responsibility as shareholders of Roman Interests, along with a few Franks. Imagine being a Carthaginian civilians demanding by birthright to be evacuated, only to find a cohort of Germans was all that remained of a “roman” presence, performing a tactical withdrawal to Iberia…
I always encourage people to read into late antiquity, as it is such a rich area to study the cultural affects of widespread psychological indoctrination.
Americanas fabula
It wasn’t the legions, but their memory, that defended Rome. Remember that. It only took four years for Rome to fall once that memory faded. It only took four years for 30,000 Germans - upon discovering Rome’s glory was myth - to go from hapless refugees to conquerors of the Ancient City. These myths have incredible power, and it’s often not visible to what degree they hold things together until they fall. And when they fall, the sheer amount of your existential comfort that they were supporting becomes visible very quickly.
Seventy years of failed foreign wars has revealed that it wasn’t the US military protecting America, but the memory of their past victories. What we are witnessing with the Biden administration - and to some extent the Trump administration too - is the collapse of the American Dream into the American Myth. I do not know if its collapse has been total. But what I do know is, it only took Rome four years to fall. It took Afghanistan 11 days. Somewhere in between those two is likely how long the Pax Americana has left.
But I do not think this is the end. The Western Roman government continued on for many centuries. The Visigoths were still paying taxes to Constantinople even as Umayyad ships were landing. The Franks accepted Constatinople’s imperial advisors as authoritative even as Emperor Charlemagne bowed to receive his crown. The Imperial Roman government fell. The Local Roman state continued.
An amusing feature to muse upon: To this day, the ancient Prætor Praefectus position of Roman government still exists in a number of Latin provinces in both France and Romania and elsewhere. They still wear some traditional Roman garb:
At the local government level, Roman civilization never ended. Visit any Mediterranean city and you will find still-lingering aspects of Roman Civil government operating their ancient roles. They still police, commission, protect, and legislate local towns and villas the same as they ever have. Sometimes you will even find imperial directives still being obeyed in matters of urban planning and holidays.
When the American Empire falls, it is extremely likely your local police, fire, and other bureaucrats will continue on as if nothing changed. And that is why you should be more invested in such local entities. They are timeless. They will survive. You will too. The American Dream is becoming the American Myth, but your American life doesn’t have to.
The themes here remind me of "The Sleeping Giant" by Kazuo Ishiguro. Great book :D