Major New Source for Late Antiquity Research

I read this book for a university Late Antiquity course, and it is generally understood among professor and students alike that it will become the defining source on the period for years to come. It is a rather heavy read and sometimes seems to drag on about certain details, but any scholar will recognize Heather's overall work as exceptional.

In a nutshell, the Roman Empire was destroyed by barbarians because of qualities of the barbarians, not because of any incipient weakness or any other quality inherent to the empire. I can't judge how original this is for people familiar with the field, but for me it was a completely novel way of looking at a central event in world history, that I didn't even know was open to question.

Maybe this deserves 5 stars... I didn't appreciate the massive detail of political intrigues and economic developments over 2 centuries perhaps as much as I should have, or the work that goes into making such erudition even comprehensible to a non-expert.

An interesting, if at times slightly speculative history, with occasional commentary that made me laugh at times.

"By virtue of its unbounded aggression, Roman imperialism was ultimately responsible for its own destruction".

I think most people when talking about the fall of the Roman Empire guess that it fell because of the Empire's own internal structure and decisions, which in a way, yes, but also no. And that's what I enjoyed about this book that it laid this argument out so clearly and fully in a way that was highly readable and entertaining.

Instead of the oft-repeated theory by Edward Gibbon that Rome fell because of the internal decision to switch to Christianity, Heather suggests that what ultimately did Rome in was the successive attacks by various "barbarian" groups in the late 4th-5th centuries and the declining ability of the Roman Empire to deal with these attacks because of their inherent internal deficiencies. The quote above appeared at the end of the book and ultimately does describe what happened to the Western Roman Empire but it was a much more complicated and drawn-out process than what Gibbon has said.

I also really enjoyed the comparisons that Heather would make of the Roman events he was discussing to more modern historical events so as to make the reader understand them more clearly - which I really appreciated. An example would be the comparison of the Roman's final act to save the Western Empire against the Vandals in 468 CE to the attack on the Spanish Armada by the English during the Elizabethan era.

Overall, a really great book and would definitely recommend if you want to know more about the later period of the Roman Empire!

On a whole, I enjoyed this book and found Heather to be reasonably competent at justifying his arguments. Despite this, I did have two fairly significant issues with the book. First off, Heather's writing is neither exceptionally engaging nor particularly consistent. On a whole, the experience of reading The Fall of the Roman Empire was slow--what was being discussed was interesting, but how it was presented did not always match this. Tonally, the book was generally "academic". However, there were a variety of sudden shifts towards a much more conversation writing style that simply didn't fit. While short, they were not particularly gripping and always jarring, especially given how suddenly they would appear (and disappear).

Peter Heather's Fall of the Roman Empire was easily one of the most engaging history books I've ever read. Although it may appear that the Roman Empire's Fall has been flogged about as many times a dead horse can be flogged, Heather's history is genuinely new in the sense that it looks at very new archaeological and historical evidences and re-looks at this pivotal moment for the Western world.

Peter Heather specializes in Late Antiquity and is now a Professor of Medieval History at King's College in London and has taught at Oxford and Yale Universities.

If the book has to be summed up quickly, Heather turns Gibbon on it's head and says: the barbarians did it! It wasn't Christianity or licentiousness that brought down the Western Roman system (the Eastern Empire survived after all, indeed flourished in the 5th Century CE), but hordes of barbarians moving in and staying there. The book meticulously builds up, giving the readers a detailed reconstruction of the Empire from the 2nd Century CE onward when the Romans lost disastrously to the Persians. The rise of Sassanians in Persia is now considered to have shook the Roman Empire to its core; if one single reason has to be pinned down for the need for dual power centres and Emperors it was the rise of a rival superpower in the East.

Heather then recounts the sudden influx of barbarians such as the Goths into the Balkans in 376 CE, and a coalition of Vandals, Alans and Suevi in 405 CE across the Rhine. These groups had tremendous impact on both halves of the Empire both economically --entire provinces were lost such as Hispania to the Rhine invaders in 408-- and demographically --massive losses to standing armies which were never replaced, and of course the death and destruction that occurred in these areas. Heather recounts archaeological sources such as excavations in the Balkans ("country" villas disappear only to reappear in fortified towns as large houses) or in Austria; and also literary sources such as the letters by famous Romans.

Various "killing blows" are discussed. The Huns were definitely responsible for quite a bit of the mayhem, but had more of indirect effect such as driving the Germani before them who promptly stripped Rome of it's richest provinces such as North Africa by the Vandal-Alan combine and Southern Gaul by the Visigoths. As Heather points out, the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410, or Attila's forays into the Empire --while would have led to massive losses in terms of med, money and material-- weren't going to harm the Empire in the long run. In the end, Heather ends by pointing out that it was the Roman Empire's own expansionist tendencies which led to sour relations with the barbarians which led the Western half to collapse when it did. The Eastern half's richest provinces meanwhile where out of reach such as Egypt, Anatolia and Syria (Heather mentions in passing that the East's death knell was sounded when it lost these to the Muslims).

The book is also supplemented by a very useful glossary and sequence of dates. The appendix of names and groups is also a handy refresher.

The Fall of the Roman Empire has everything I look for in a history book, it is wittily written yet doesn't compromise on the quality of the scholarship and educates the lay reader on how the conclusions were arrived at. It covers nearly 200 years going into culture, biographies, historiography and economy yet doesn't have the feel of a stodgy, academic work. Even some of its bad puns can be hand-waved away since Heather is British and we all secretly enjoy British humour.

This book can be read by everybody with only a remote interest in history. For people intimidated by Gibbon, this book is the perfect antidote.

I thought this was a very readable account of the fall of the Roman Empire convincingly argued on the basis of current archeological evidence while respecting previous leading theorists.

so far a little too conversational, but good enough.