Concept
Fall of the Western Roman Empire
Overview
loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire in late antiquity
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Sensible of their own force, and allured by the prospect of so rich a prize, the northern barbarians, in the reign of Arcadius and Honorius, assailed at once all the frontiers of the Roman empire; and having first satiated their avidity by plunder, began to think of fixing a settlement in the wasted provinces. The more distant barbarians, who occupied the deserted habitations of the former, advanced in their…
David Hume, The History of England, Volume I
Close in meaning to Fall of the Western Roman Empire; the term itself is not named.
Just as formerly, the Roman farmers during the last period of the republic, so now the free land-owning peasants, the mass of the Frank people, were exhausted and reduced to penury by continual civil feuds and wars of conquest. They who once had formed the whole army and, after the conquest of France, its picked body, were so impoverished at the end of the ninth century that hardly more than every fifth man could go…
Friedrich Engels, The origin of the family, private property, and the state
Close in meaning to Fall of the Western Roman Empire; the term itself is not named.
Towards the end of the Republic, the Romans, having grown more circumspect, were as unreasonably sparing in the use of the dictatorship as they had formerly been lavish. It is easy to see that their fears were without foundation, that the weakness of the capital secured it against the magistrates who were in its midst; that a dictator might, in certain cases, defend the public liberty, but could never endanger it…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The social contract & discourses
Close in meaning to Fall of the Western Roman Empire; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Edward Gibbon
- Migration Period
- Athens
- Historiography
- Ambrose
- Jerome
- Last Judgment
- Justinian I
- Julian (emperor)
- Byzantine Empire
- Louvre
- Latin
- Latin literature
- Middle Ages
- Mediterranean Sea
- Heterodoxy
- Polytheism
- Tacitus
- Mesopotamia
- Augustine of Hippo
- Eastern Mediterranean
- Bologna
- Roman emperor
- Tuscany
Place in the tradition
Part of Ancient history.
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