Erik Andrus

Well, I can't take any credit for the theory. It's Joseph Tainter's, and is a highly acclaimed one in contemporary cultural anthropology. Myself, I'm no academic, just a farmer, but I find Tainter very compelling and don't understand the rationale of most of your counterarguments, caldrail. I take the view that collapse is such a frequent event in human history that there ought to be identifiable patterns to it, and I don't buy the argument that Western Rome is a one-off, totally unique, and not comparable to other collapses in any way. So maybe we don't have much left to discuss. But maybe some others can offer their views? I would just like to add that the splintering of central control (I thought that was what "polarization" referred to, but wasn't sure) is not in itself a symptom of increasing compexity. It is an attempt of these regions to break away from highly complex societal arrangements. So for instance you had an independent pretender Western Empire comprising Gaul, Spain, and Britain from 260-274, attempting to see to its own welfare and defense, exactly as you said. The mere fact that these regions were able to hold their own against Rome for so long suggests that Rome was powerless to prevent it, and indeed at the time the tenure of emperors was very short and insecure and the amount of silver in the denarius was dropping off a cliff. However the Empire wasn't dead yet, and it reconquered these regions and imposed more severe control upon them under the Dominate. I find it really interesting that the ultimate fate of the western roman provinces was in fact collapse, and not the creation of smaller, stable, independent states maintaining the culture and complexity of Rome. It seems that this latter was something that was attempted (as in the breakaway Gallic Empire) but that it was doomed to fail, being not strong enough to stand head-to-head to a Rome that had its military act back together under Aurelian. The Gallic Empire also never resolved the economic imbalances that led to the crisis of the 3rd century in the first place, so even if Rome had left it alone it would probably have fallen to the barbarians and collapsed anyway. Maybe another way of saying this is that the most interesting thing about the breakaway provinces is that they failed--failed to break completely and permanently from central control, and failed to avert collapse. Collapse occurred anyway.

Sorry, one more thing. Settlement pattern is another thing to measure. You can count the people in the national capital, or the number of people living in cities generally, and that's a great barometer of complexity. Urban settlement can't exist absent complex arrangements to reallocate food from the countryside to the metropolis. The bigger the city the more complexity required to support it, as a general rule. I think most urban centers within the borders of the Merovingian Empire were generally much smaller in population than they were during the late Roman Empire, and this phenomenon of the withering of Roman urban centers has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread. As one example, Trier (Augusta Trevororium) went from 80,000 in the 4th century to 5,000 at the beginning of the 6th century, partly from the ravages of invasion but also because the former citydwellers of the Roman Empire were dispersing into the countryside in order to subsist. This was I guess one of the largest settlements in the Merovingian Empire?

Returning at the topic, could we make a summary comparison of the Late Empire and a barbarian kingdom like the Franks under the Merovingian dynasty to see if the social structure was really simplified? You could probably do so. The Merovingian dynasty set out to rebuild empire in the ashes of the Roman west. Probably even at that dynasty's peak it didn't exhibit the level of complexity that the late Roman empire had. But also by this point in history collapse had run its course and complexity was beginning more or less anew. There are plenty of reasons why complexity is adopted by human cultures. One of the most seductive is that it allows for military conquest of neighbors and plundering of their accumulated surpluses. This strategy worked great for Rome's expansion. But getting at the heart of your very reasonable question, how is societal complexity best measured? Social stratification is one measure. So too is the level of spending on defense, public works, civil services, art, monumental architecture, and the like as a percentage of overall GDP. And I know this is not conclusive proof, but the architectural legacy left behind by the Merovingians in no way compares to Rome's. So maybe we can infer that the Merovingian rulers were not able to leverage surpluses from their subjects sufficient to build great castles, roads, churches/temples, and aqueducts that compare to the Roman Empire's. Therefore they were probably less complex overall. I would bet that someone on this forum knows a lot more about the Franks and Merovingians than I do and could give a better answer. But I also understand the Merovingians to be a kind of federation of mini-kingdoms (or chiefdoms) rather than a centrally-controlled communication-intensive economic and military empire like Rome's. This is inherently an arrangement of lower social complexity, and runs largely off the loyalty of warriors to their village chief, village chiefs to their regional warlord and so on up, rather than the ability of a distant treasury to pay them in minted coin.

I'll let the moderators answer directly, but in general, it is a Roman history forum. I find the subject quite fascinating. Can it not be tailored to an exclusively Roman experience? I've tried to keep my remarks pertinent to the Roman experience. But since we are not Romans, and we look at the past through a lens anyway, we need tools to interpret what we observe. Comparison with other societies' experience is one tool. The thread was intended to discuss Tainter's theory of collapse and how it applies to ancient Rome. This theory applies to all complex societies, including our own, which must inevitably confront diminishing returns on societal investments in complexity. But Rome is one of the best examples in human history, since it is so much more thoroughly documented than, say, Easter Island or the Mayas. That's why I find it so fascinating. I've also tried to define my terms as best I can while being respectful of the amount of space I take up, though maybe I've done a poor job of it. "Complexity" for instance is a huge heading and includes just about everything you or I can observe in our cultures in our daily lives. It also includes just about every aspect of ancient Roman culture that's discussed on this forum (art, politics, military, economics, architecture). So in response to your question, which again, maybe I've done poorly, I have introduced examples from other cultures and periods in the belief that these examples are germane to the topic and might help us better understand the Roman collapse and add to the discussion. If this is disallowed I'll certainly stop doing so. Another issue, maybe not directly spoken, is that this forum is maybe, as I've read elsewhere, a romanophile forum. Maybe some aspects of my argument, for instance the idea that collapse might have left the citizenry better off in certain cases, might not be favorably received by those who strongly identify with Rome and her culture.

Actually all of the factors you listed fall under the heading heading of problems associated with increased complexity. 1. You mentioned increased stratification (minority patrician power-brokers versus the immigrant and slave majority). This is a chief aspect of complex societies. 2. Economic losses due to increasing expenses (on societal complexity) and dwindling supplies of precious metals with which to back up those government debts 3. Inability to defend the frontier because the military was too expensive for the state to field and spread too thin. The level of military spending needed to pacify an incredibly long frontier became increasingly unaffordable. Costs of complexity again. 4. Polarization of communities, I don't understand exactly what this refers to. Maybe you could elaborate. Is it true that forum rules prohibit the comparison of the Roman experience with other cultures in other times and places? If so I'm sure I don't belong here, that's most of what I'm interested in.

Tainter's theory explains the collapse of empires but also the collapse of smaller complex societies that are not empires (like Easter Island or the Chacoan society of pre-contact New Nexico) yet are also unraveled by investments in complexity and diminishing returns. So you could say that collapse is a common end to an empire, but that collapse as a social phenomenon is not limited to empires. In recent times, diminishing returns have been circumvented by the tapping of a new, more potent energy source. For example the switch from wood to coal, coal to oil. For various reasons this option wasn't available to Rome, whose only sources of energy/resources were the plundering of reserves of neighbors during the expansion period, and the modest agricultural yields of annexed territories.

Increased complexity carries increased costs per capita. This being in terms of energy and resources. It is a general concept but it explains a lot. In present day western culture we consume a huge quantity of energy per capita, mostly fossil-fuel based, so the fact that most of it goes to support cultural complexity is bearable to most. But once conquest had run its course, Rome had to run on the backs of agricultural laborers, who produced maybe 1/20 to 1/10th of a horsepower each. The only way to finance additional investment in complexity was to increase pressure on the farming classes by any means necessary. By the late empire this pressure was unbearable, and had negative consequences for physical health and population growth in the provinces. As a social scientist, how does one explain how some administrations are competent and others corrupt? Why do some cultures manage well and others poorly? Are there no patterns we can identify? If this pattern of inefficiency truly threatened the existence of the collective in the case of Rome, why was no decisive action was taken to correct the trend? If you believe (and I don't) that inefficiency was the primary cause of collapse, then why did this occur in Rome and not in China, which I believe had several dynasties that ended with totally endemic corruption and inefficiency, yet were replaced with new dynasties without the collapse of the entire culture? Complex societies respond to crisis with additional investments in complexity (such as the increasing specialization of the roman military in the dominate, or the switch from a part-time to full-time soldiery in the republic). Initially this strategy works well for them. But over time, all complex societies face diminishing returns from additional investment. Reducing investment is not an option, the elites have too much at stake. When the marginal returns on investments in complexity are outweighed by the costs there is risk of collapse. As for provincial towns reverting to villages and losing their currency, this in fact represents a collapse. But just because the population no longer uses currency and abandons urban centers, this does not mean that their welfare necessarily decreases. It may or may not. In the case of the far-flung provinces of the empire in later times, they were underpopulated anyway. The peasants may well have fared better wandering off into the woods, or farming to support their local barbarian warlord than toiling on some latifundia to feed the empire.

Complex societies like empires actually incur increased costs of defense, in terms of resources. Consider a tribal hunter-gatherer or primitive agriculturalist society. Warfare is one role, a part-time role, of men who also hunt, fish, or farm. Such "defense" as this society can muster comes at a very low resource cost. It's also well-established that people in simple societies work fewer hours a day for self-sufficiency than we in highly complex societies work at our jobs in order to earn a living. This is the cheapest common defense there is. In another thread someone suggested, flippantly, that the demise of Rome began with Marius and the professional army. This is a really good point. While an army of part-time soldiers had its military limitations, it provided a fighting force that didn't need to be supported by taxing non-combatants. A professional army has a higher resource cost, per capita, than a part time one, because a republican citizen-soldier could still farm as well. Granted, sometimes the investments in these higher-cost complexities pay off. After all, the Roman conquest was made possible by the professional army. But over time, continued investment in complexity inevitably yields diminishing returns. Rome found itself engaged in persistent frontier warfare versus less-complex societies who could field part-time warriors for a low resource cost. Even victory over such opponents yielded little and in no way paid for the cost of the Roman campaigns. Much like the Afghanistan, you could say. The Taliban can keep on the way they're going indefinitely, whereas the cost of the US's afganistan escapade threatens to overrun the country's ability to pay it off, ever. As for the Vermont question, I don't think it can work either (though for different reasons) so I won't argue with you there. And as for how ordinary people adapted to collapse in the West, whether it was violent or bloodless, catastrophic or welcome, I would welcome any discussion of contemporary accounts. What I've read suggests that by the 4th century the Empire wasn't providing much in the way of governance anyway, being too preoccupied with its own survival. I've read that in some regions of Gaul, barbarians were sometimes welcomed as liberators and even invited in the 4th century. Though no doubt there was plenty of violence too. I guess one thing you could say is that if you belive (and I don't) that the primary cause of the collapse was military defeat then you'd have to say the common people didn't do a whole lot to prevent this defeat. They certainly did not all fight to the last man to defend Roman Gaul, for instance, which is why contemporary French has much more latin influence than gothic influence. The people there had new masters but they were not displaced, and adapted through some sort of transition, retaining their language and much of their culture. Here's Zosimus, writing about Thessaly and Macadonia, mid 5th century: "as a result of this exaction of taxes city and countryside were full of laments and complaints and all invoked the barbarians and sought the help of the barbarians."

If we're to understand what collapse means, the terms "civilization" and "dark age" aren't helpful because they imply that the current order of things is necessarily "better" and that the converse is "bad." The point is that when the benefits of complexity (or "civilization," if we must) outweigh the costs then collapse is rational, necessary, and possibly even beneficial. Collapse results in a decrease in per capita costs of maintaining society. In the case of Rome, there was a large class of information-handlers that simply no longer existed under barbarian control and the beginnings of feudalism. Rank and file commoners did not have to work as hard to support this class of people. The bread and circus ended, which was no doubt an unwelcome development to citydwellers who depended on the free bread but probably more welcome to the more numerous farming classes who were taxed to the hilt to support the dole. I don't mean to gloss over real hardship by the "winners and losers" line. The social convulsions that occur in any collapse are impossible to predict. But usually the resulting social organization is less stratified, and if you support the idea of social justice, that could be a good development. But also in many cases there is significant loss of life as well as livelihood and most people wouldn't welcome either of those things. In the case of western empire, there is evidence to indicate that commoners often welcomed the demise of the empire, or were at least apathetic about it. I am trying to locate it, but I have heard secondhand about an archaeological bone density study before and after the collapse that suggests that physical health improved, on average, after the end of imperial control. On the other hand, over half the people in the world today simply wouldn't be alive in the first place were it not for the Haber-bosch process that creates synthetic fertilizer from natural gas. So I don't mean to just casually wave my hand and say that we need to unload half the population somehow and that's just fine. But the reality of diminishing returns to social investment in complexity seems to be inescapable, and if we're to understand this process and how it may apply to us, as historians and social scientists (amateur, in my case, admittedly), doing so requires the most objective, calm, neutral consideration that we can manage.

People have been theorizing (and moralizing) about the fall of the roman empire since the fall itself. I remember hearing all kinds of theories when I was in school, lead plumbing, too many orgies, ethnic and religious strife, depletion of critical resources, military incompetence of leaders, you name it. I've recently read Joseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies, and while the book doesn't devote itself exclusively to the Roman question, it does treat it extensively. If you haven't read it, the book takes up several historically and archaeologically-documented examples of past collapses and groups the prevalent theories of why they occurred. For instance there are "spiritual/mystical" explanations of the Roman fall that were common in the 50's through the 70's. Tainter reviews instances of collapse and the prevalent theories explaining them in order to find common patterns of why societies collapse, and what explanations hold true in all cases. The ultimate resulting thesis is that collapse is a rational, economical action that occurs when the burden of supporting complexity heavily outweighs the benefits of complexity. To sum up Tainter's thesis: 1. Human societies are problem-solving organizations 2. Complexity requires energy for its maintenance 3. Increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita 4. investment in sociopolitical complexity often reaches a point of diminishing returns The rational thing for individual members of a complex society to do when confronted with increased costs and diminishing returns is to collapse. In fact in the case of the Western Roman Empire the argument has been made that the vast majority of the population were better-off under the barbarians than under the late empire. It's not hard to see parallels with our own situation. For instance health care--the benefits of modern health care are obvious to anyone. But what we have is a health care system of exponentially increasing costs and complexity, with consolidation of power and control (I am in the US, our major regional hospital has been repeatedly accused of actions intended to undermine, marginalize or eliminate smaller local hospitals). No doubt the care at the major hospital is great. Procedures are available there routinely that were rare a decade or two ago. But the cost per capita extends ultimately to us all, and you don't need to be a master mathematician to see that the pattern of exponentially increasing costs will soon lead to a crash. Like the collapse of the Western Empire, this will involve some losers. But is it possible that say just for instance, people's overall, individual health could be better without the benefits of the current health care system but also without having to work to the point of damaging ones' health in order to make medical payments, or even, as frequently occurs now, losing ones' entire financial basis in order to satisfy medical bills? One of the interesting conclusions is that while the Western Empire collapsed, the Eastern Empire did not really have the option of collapse. Collapse would have resulted in the East being made part of the Persian Empire. The more-or-less constant war footing with a competing empire of equal strength helped the Byzantine emperors maintain their legitimacy. Collapse isn't possible when all your neighbors remain complex. They'll just take you over. From this perspective, the breakaway independence of the Western Empire of Britain, Gaul, and Spain from 260-274 could possibly be seen as an attempt to devolve to a more local-level administration that failed when this territory was reconquered by Rome. Following Diocletian, all of the empire's resources were leveraged to ensure its own survival long after the death of its economy and the majority of what you might call its "freedoms." With the ruthless taxation, economic serfdom, and military conscription, the last century of the Western Empire must have been a pretty miserable time to be a Roman commoner, however beautiful the triumphal arches. Here where I live, in Vermont, there is a group of well-meaning, well-spoken individuals who want Vermont to secede from the Union in order that we may create a simpler, more just, more locally-based society. As much as I agree with the objectives, the goal is totally impossible. The US and Canada will no more allow Vermont to simplify than the EU will allow Greece to default. The only way one of us goes down is if we all go down together. I have to say that's not very comforting.

Let's leave the Great Men of Rome to the side for the moment.... What is your favorite source for details of what daily life was like in the empire? Hopefully one that conveys a sense of what life was like for the rank and file, as they lived lives of growing crops, trading, performing minor civil functions, raising children, or serving in the military at a low rank? I am hoping such accounts exist in the historical record at all...my chief interests are the third and fourth century and Gaul, for what it's worth. If they do exist, then this is the place to ask.

Thank you. I will have a read. Do you find Herodian to be a credible source? Also, how would I learn more about the makeup of the Roman army on the Rhine at the time of this incident? Herodian makes it read like a classic military coup, with the typical effort to contain and marginalize the civilian government in the aftermath of the assassination.

So far I've found some gory details from Herodian: http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/herodian_06_book6.htm Is this the definitive account of the event, does anyone know?

So, Emperor Alexander Severus was murdered by his own troops in 235. The army was apparently not too happy with the emperor's decision to pay off the germanic tribes and keep the peace. Does anyone have additional information on this pivotal event that paved the way to the subsequent half-century of chaos? Who did the deed, where, why (though we think we know, partially), when (more precisely) and how? Or perhaps someone can steer me to a good source? Thanks!

Hello, New to the forum, and very interested to discuss the crisis of the third century with members. I am working on a historical novel idea, and am just beginning the huge amount of research needed to be able to write good characters and a believable world. I want to set the majority of the story in Narbonensis or Aquitania between about 230 and 280 a.d. Most of the characters will be commoners and involved in agriculture in one way or another. Has anyone here read Joseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies? This is a scholarly work that I've picked up recently. I think illustrating Tainter's thesis through fiction could make a really compelling story that could really resonate with contemporary readers.