Why Rome Fell

5 Continuity and Change

Chapter 4 explored Constantine’s legacy, the effects of his rule chiefly over the ensuing century. This chapter takes an analytical bird’s-eye view of the two divergent worlds, East and West, in the longer term. The chief objective is to explain how and why the two halves of the Roman Empire developed so differently after the demise of the western empire. This analysis is undertaken with reference, inter alia, to the power relations that pervade this period—and, indeed, through every other period over the last three thousand years that I have studied—namely competition between two models of government: monarchy and aristocracy. (See Chapter 6, and Arnheim 2017a.)

The issues discussed in this chapter are the following:

• Birth, Land, and Office
  • The nexus between birth, land and office in the West in “late antiquity;”
  • The growth of self-contained and fortified estates;
  • The nature and significance of patronage in the East and West;
  • The use of amicitia by nobles in relation to “barbarian” generals;
  • The power-structure in the early Middle Ages in the West;
  • The unnecessary feud over “feudalism.”
• The Byzantine Paradox
  • Much ado about nothing— whether Byzantium was an “empire” or not.
  • When is a schism not a schism? Special pleading to try to deny a thousand-year rift.
  • An inconsequential pother: Whether the Byzantine Empire was a “Greek” Empire.
  • Some unparadoxical paradoxes.
  • Did Byzantium really last more than a thousand years? Yes, as a yo-yo empire, growing and shrinking ...