Blog #4: A little more detail on the fall of Rome

29 November 2013

                        Blog #4: A little more detail on the fall of Rome

            I wanted a little bit more information on the fall of Rome and what exactly caused this empire to crumble. I could talk on this subject for almost an hour, but I have to squeeze one of the most important events in the history of the world in less than five minutes of presentation time. Therefore, I cannot go too far in detail about the intricacies of the Rome’s demise, but I can add more context to the facts I have already presented. Through the Milner Library online database, I found an article called “Why Rome Fell” by Richard A. Gabriel. It was rich with background information about the political system in Rome and the many complex factors that led to the fall of the Roman Empire, but I had to sift through it to find information that was relevant only to the factors that we had time to focus on; the outside barbarian forces and the economy.

            As I discussed in my previous blog, the Huns displaced local barbarian tribes, namely the Visigoths. The Romans, instead of showing their new allies kindness and mercy, showed the Visigoths cruelty and arrogance in their time of dire need. Thus, they lost a powerful ally and gained a fierce enemy. The Visigoths fought back against their Roman oppressors, wreaking havoc in the empire.“Why Rome Fell” picks up where that book left off, “Between 405 and 408, during a period historians refer to as the Fourth Century Crisis, the empire suffered […] largescale barbarian invasions. Roman losses during the campaigns between 395 and 410 were horrific; […] Once the invaders had breached the border defenses, Rome lacked the military strength to expel them and instead settled them in various provinces, on the condition they provide troops to the Roman army. But settling the migrants did not end the problem. The barbarian migrants did not end the problem. The barbarian settlements, with their own rulers and strong armies, resisted Roman efforts to control them. Within a few years the barbarian kings took to […] raiding and occupying neighboring Roman settlements. Most of the empire’s interior cities and towns lacked defensive walls, a consequence of the long Roman peace, so the barbarian raids and Roman counterattacks devastated several of the provinces”. These barbarians could have been an addition to the Roman army, giving the empire even more security and manpower. However, thanks to the cruelty of the Romans, they became a drain on the military instead.

            The barbarians also took a toll on the empire financially, “With the barbarian settlements and outright occupation of some of the provinces, the flow of tax money to the imperial capital dried up. By the end of the 3^rd century an estimated 2/3 of the empire’s tax revenue no longer reached the imperial administration.” The revolt of the Visigoths crippled the Roman Empire in ways they would never have been able to imagine.

Blog #3: What Caused the Fall of Rome

24 November 2013

                                    Blog #3: What Caused the Fall of Rome

                        Rome had a reputation to uphold of being the strongest empire the world had ever known. Although there were problems plaguing the Romans, the government thought it essential to uplift the people and distract them with spectacle-heavy events and games. After all, The Roman Empire came into existence by conquering weaker nations and taking their land. To admit that their own nation was facing the threat of being overthrown in a similar manner was unthinkable.

                        To understand what toppled the greatest nation on the world had seen up to that point, I turned to the book, “AD 410: The Year That Shook Rome” by Sam Moorhead and David Stuttard. From their book, I learned that the Huns, a barbaric tribe from the central Asian steppes, were sweeping Westward through Europe, causing chaos and death wherever they went. The threat of encountering the Huns as they swept through Europe caused more and more barbaric European tribes to push toward the borders of the Roman Empire. “The pressure of these tribes became unbearable, and by 376 reports began to reach the Roman court of throngs of barbarians massing on the farther banks of the Danube” (pg. 56).

                        Most of these people came from the Visigoths, the western branch of a greater Gothic tribe in modern day North-East Germany. The Visigoths were once one of the most feared tribes in Europe because they were known for plundering cities and nations along the coastal strips of the Black Sea. “By the final years of Constantine’s reign, during the 330s, the Goths and Romans became allies. The Goths settled in the lands of Dacia, once conquered as a Roman province, but now a useful buffer zone against the eastern barbarian tribes” (pg. 57).

                        When the Visigoths were displaced by the Huns, the Romans had an excellent opportunity to use their new allies to their advantage. They could have joined forces with the Visigoths to build an invincible army, “but the Romans sneered at these people whom they considered to be barbarians […] How the Romans dealt with them was crucial. If the Goths had been settled along the Danube, given lands and been integrated within the empire, the Romans could have benefited from their manpower and labor. If the Romans had fed the hungry barbarians in the days and weeks after their desperate crossing, they might have earned their gratitude and loyalty. Instead, they treated the Goths with arrogance and cruelty, exploiting their weakness. The Romans even bartered mean rations of cheap food, stale mouldy bread and the carcasses of dogs for Gothic youths, whom they immediately enslaved” (pg. 58-59). The Visigoths rebelled against the Romans and these mighty warriors gave the Romans a number of devastating losses on the battle field, from which they were never quite able to recover.

                        The Romans, in their arrogance, threw away an opportunity to make powerful friends and instead made devastating enemies.

Kelly's Second Blog

18 November 2013

                                    Individual Blog Post, #2

            One thing that our group aims to focus on when discussing spectacle in Ancient Rome is how it was used as a form of distraction by the government. Events which employed a large amount of spectacle, such as gladiatorial events in the colosseum, were great devices for lolling the populace into a false sense of security and confidence. I wanted to understand how these leisurely activities could have a stronghold on a such a large population. To help me gain an understanding of the importance of these events to Roman culture and society, I turned to a book called, “Leisure and Ancient Rome” by J.P. Toner. I learned by reading this book that these recreational activities, specifically the imperial games, provided an opportunity for people of both genders and of every class to come together as a community, the provided role models for men, and, perhaps most importantly, it boosted the ego of the empire. These games showed off Rome’s great strength and power by showing the athleticism of the participants. These events relieved people of the drudgery of everyday life, helping them to enjoy their lives and take pride in their country.

            The author begins by introducing a term that I have never heard before, but one that I found to be very interesting, “ ‘ Otium’ […] contained an element of doing as one pleased in one’s own good time; hence, some foods had to be allowed to cook ‘otiose’” (pg 23). This stuck out to me because it immediately gave me an idea as to why the Romans would be able to indulge in leisure without noticing that their empire was in trouble. This gives the impression of a people who would much rather sit back and have fun rather than engage in activism. Toner goes on to say, “Indeed, the promise of less labour and greater leisure has been a common goal of much utopian literature throughout the ages, and for the vast majority of people in Rome, any move towards these ends would have represented a notable alleviation of the harsh toils of their daily struggle for survival. The sense of choice, freedom, and enjoyment, which ‘otium’ fostered within them, came to epitomize the ‘good life’” (pg. 23). This made the Roman people more relatable because it is now apparent that they are pursuing things that are very dear to Americans even today; freedom and choice. After all, who in their right mind would not do what they could to ease their suffering? It is a habit of people, in general, to seek a way to ease the burdens of living. Undoubtedly one way to do this is to engage in exciting, community-wide events.

            Ancient Rome was an empire that was very much ruled by its caste system, and yet, according to Toner, those lines became blurred when an imperial game was being held. “The place of the games in the scheme of leisure was broadly cross-social and cross-gender. […] Children played at gladiators, adolescents were addicted to them, and they provided the staple stopgap of everyday conversation” (Toner 35). He goes onto say that the games were important because it was a place of equalization and a way to relieve stress. People came together at Colosseum events more so than at any other time in Roman life.

            Toner makes a few more really interesting points that I would like to cover in my presentation, such as gladiators acting as role models for males and the Roman’s taking pride in their bloodthirsty history of conquest and expansion. This article made the Romans more relatable in my eyes by reminding me that they were real people and not just mindless pawns of the Roman Empire.

Kirsten Blog Week 2

     The past week I have been researching more in depth of on the topic of bread and circus. I’m coming across the issue of finding books about the topic but in the incorrect time period.  A lot of the information in the books I have checked out makes their central time period centuries later after the Roman Empire and only use ancient Rome as a point of reference. For Pax Romana there shockingly wasn’t much to check out unless it was in a generalized ancient Rome textbook. Stepping back from the research I found I thought about what may the solution to the issue I am coming across.  Going back to the Milner Library website I searched through the articles and found more helpful research. Something that also helped was not just focusing on the two ideas of Pax Romana and bread and circus but spectacle as a whole. With this I found myself able to move my research forward to forward and find sufficient research on ancient roman spectacle.
 

Sculpt!

For our presentation we intend to do a power point presentation covering our topic Ancient Roman spectacle.  Members of our group will discuss certain movements of spectacle during ancient roman times and we will then connect them to the politics of that time. Our presentation will mainly focus on the political connection and influence roman government had on spectacle. With in this presentation will cover the topics bread and circus, imperial games, pax romana and what control the Roman Empire had over these moments in history.  To avoid drowning our audience in information we plan to cover the main ideas of the spectacle movements and bring more focus on the political connection they have. After rethinking our format we have removed the modern day correlation of the presentation to help communicate our idea in a clear manner.

 With the increase of economic down fall and the threat of foreign invaders roman government used specific tactics to keep their society calmed and controlled, spectacle being a specific one. With entertainment taking importance in the lives of romans, politicians utilized imperial games making gladiators from both foreign and domestic prisoners while also feeding the poor during events creating the term bread and circus. These two are tactics to both blind and calm society from any political or economic issues that were happening. Knowing this, it can be proven that roman government had great involvement in the mechanics of ancient roman spectacle.