Ancient States and Empires

Reflections on the fall of the empire.

It would be interesting to trace the various fortunes of the Teutonic nations in their new settlements, but this belongs to mediæval history. The real drama of the fall of Rome was ended when Alaric gained possession of the imperial city. “The empire fell,” says Guizot, “because no one would belong to it.” At the period of barbaric invasion it had lost all real vigor, and was kept together by mechanism—the mechanism of government which had been one thousand years perfecting. It was energy, patriotism, patience, and a genius for government which built up the empire. But prosperity led to luxury, self-exaggeration, and enervating vices. Society was steeped in sensuality, frivolity, and selfishness. The empire was rotten to the core, and must become the prey of barbarians, who had courage and vitality. Three centuries earlier, the empire might have withstood the shock of external enemies, and the barbarians might have been annihilated. But they invaded the provinces when central power was weak, when public virtue had fled, when the middle classes were extinct, when slavery, demoralizing pleasures, and disproportionate fortunes destroyed elevation of sentiment, and all manly energies. A noble line of martial emperors for a time arrested ruin, but ruin was inevitable. Natural law asserted its dignity. The penalty of sin must be paid. Nothing could save the empire. No conservative influences were sufficiently strong—neither literature, nor art, nor science, nor philosophy, nor even Christianity. Society retrograded as the new religion triumphed, a mysterious fact, but easily understood when we remember that vices were universal before a remedy could be applied. The victories of Christianity came not too late for the human race, but too late for the salvation of a worn-out empire.

The barbarians were advancing when Constantine was converted. The salvation of the race was through these barbarians themselves, for, though they desolated, they reconstructed; and, when converted to the new faith, established new institutions on a better basis. The glimmering life-sparks of a declining and miserable world disappeared, but new ideas, new passions, new interests arose, and on the ruins of the pagan civilization new Christian empires were founded, which have been gaining power for one thousand five hundred years, and which may not pass away till civilization itself shall be pronounced a failure in the present dispensations of the Moral Governor of the World.