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Speaker 1

00:00

395 and the Roman Empire has been split in 2. This was done by Emperor Theodosius I, known also as Theodosius the Great because he defeated the Goths and made the official religion of the Empire Christianity. He did this in a very clever way, by banning all of the others. The Empire's 2 halves were to be inherited by Theodosius' sons.

Speaker 1

00:18

Arcadius received the eastern half, centred at Constantinople, and Honorius received the west, centred at Mediolanum. In case you're wondering, Rome was seen as the spiritual capital of the entire Empire, and it's important to note that the Empire wasn't officially divided. Those who controlled the 2 halves saw themselves as joint rulers of a single empire but realistically they were run as separate entities at this point. As a whole the empire had a population of about 40 million people and was fairly urbanised.

Speaker 1

00:41

Rome was the largest city and had a population between 350, 000 and half a million but the east as a whole was much more urbanised. The major urban centres there included the likes of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Corinth. Feeding the masses of Roman Constantinople required what was called the Grain Doll. This was where wheat was imported from the fertile regions of North Africa and Egypt to the cities at great cost to the imperial treasury.

Speaker 1

01:04

This was part of the bread and circuses mantra where by feeding and entertaining people meant that they would shut up and not riot. The entertainment was mostly paid for by the wealthy but after 404 this entertainment would no longer include gladiatorial combat. This was because a monk, Telemachus, tried to stop a fight between gladiators and was promptly murdered. Honorius, moved by this, banned gladiatorial combat because it was un-christian and apparently not okay to watch people maim each other for our entertainment.

Speaker 1

01:28

So another major expense to The treasury was of course the army which numbered between 400 and 500, 000 men. This was extremely expensive and required an extensive tax system and bureaucracy to make sure the army was paid on time since if the army wasn't paid on time they tended to revolt. Both halves of the empire suffered with many problems, corruption, rebellion, financial crises and perhaps most notably, barbarian invasions. Side note, the term barbarian will be used to describe non-Latin or Greek speaking peoples who originated from outside of the empire.

Speaker 1

01:55

There were loads of barbarian groups that the Romans had to deal with, but the main ones were the Celts, the Franks, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths and later on the Huns. The Eastern Empire was wealthier than the West but had to share a border with the extremely potent Sasanian Empire meaning that it could never bring its full force to bear lest they face a deadlier invasion. Nominally the Western Empire was run by an Aureus but the real power lay in a man called Flavius Stilicho who was born to a Vandal father and a Roman mother. I.e.

Speaker 1

02:20

He was a barbarian, or at least was seen to be by his peers. This was not a rare occurrence since there were many groups of barbarians that had been allowed to settle within the Empire on the condition that they fight for it. The Romans rarely held up their end of the bargain though and this led to many barbarian groups revolting. The most notable example of this occurred in 378 when the agreement between Fritigern and his Goths and the Roman Emperor Valens wasn't honoured.

Speaker 1

02:41

Fritigern revolted and defeated the Romans at the battle of Adrianople in which Valens was killed. Surely after this though the Romans would learn to uphold their bargains, but fun fact, no. So a Visigoth called Alaric had been rampaging across the Balkans and in order to get him to stop he was given an imperial title and allowed to settle in Illyrica here. He wanted to be closer to Rome, Rome wanted him to not be closer to Rome and so he decided to compromise in 401 when he raised an army and marched on Rome.

Speaker 1

03:05

He was stopped and defeated by Stilicho but this invasion did lead to Honorius moving the capital of the Western Empire from Mediolanum to Ravenna which was more secure. In 406 another invasion, this time led by a goth called Radegaisas entered Italy. He was also defeated by Stilicho, but in order to do so he had to withdraw troops from the northern border which in hindsight not a great idea because immediately after this in came the Vandals who flooded into Gaul. Fortunately for Stilicho things would quiet down after this, by which I mean they would get considerably worse.

Speaker 1

03:32

In 407 a general in Britain declared himself to be the rightful emperor as Constantine III in invaded Gaul. Stilicho was being blamed for all of the previous few years failings and him being half vandal meant that many questioned where his loyalties lie. As such he was accused of being a traitor, executed and soon afterwards the Romans slaughtered any of his allies and whatever vandals they could get their hands on. With Stilicho now a bit on the dead side, things started to get a bit better for the Western Empire.

Speaker 1

03:55

That was a lie, I'm sorry. Alaric made his way back into Italy again and was free to do whatever he wanted. Honoris was getting a bit worried by this point and so recognised Constantine as his co-ruler to help the situation. It didn't.

Speaker 1

04:06

In 410, after his third siege of the city, Alaric took Rome and promptly sacked it. He was a Christian and so he spared most of the churches, but the city was damaged quite severely. The main damage was to Roman prestige however, since Rome had remained safe for 800 years. Rome was no longer invincible and by extension neither was her empire in either the east or the west.

Speaker 1

04:24

After the sack Alaric went south where he promptly died, removing at least 1 major threat from the Romans. It was in this same year that the people of Britannia who complained of their lack of protection from Celtic raids to Honorius. He promptly told them to deal with it. As such, Britannia's place in the Empire simply fell away and it would never again be under Roman rule.

Speaker 1

04:40

In 411, after failing to secure Gaul or defeat the barbarians, Constantine decided this emperor business wasn't for him and he abdicated, soon after which he died, of being murdered. So the west was starting to fall apart at this point but how was the east doing? Fine, really. There was no immediate prospect of war with the Persians and the wealthiest regions of the empire were far away from danger in the south.

Speaker 1

04:59

Furoate did see the death of Arcadius and the succession of his son Theodosius II though. Back in the west the Roman army spent the next decade mopping up the remaining bands of barbarians as well as any remaining rebels or usurpers. Much of this was done by allowing the barbarians some semblance of independence such as when the Visigoths were granted territory here in 418. By 423 the crisis had subsided and so Honorius celebrated by dying and after some arguing he was succeeded by Valentinian III, Theodosius' nephew.

Speaker 1

05:26

422 had seen the outbreak of war between the Eastern Empire and the Sassanians but they agreed to peace after only a year. With all this in mind, it's important to remember that the vast majority of Romans thought the Empire was fine. Rome had suffered many civil wars in the past and had also survived the 3rd century crisis, so there was little reason to think that this time would be any different. In the East, this certainly seemed to be the case, since it saw the beginnings of an economic boom which would last until the 6th century.

Speaker 1

05:49

The issues of the barbarians within the Western Empire were growing worse though, with many groups, notably the Visigoths and the Vandals demanding more territory. Valentinian III was essentially a puppet to a general named Flavius Aetius who failed to deal with the barbarians in any meaningful way. In fact, he had to turn to a new group of barbarians to help suppress Rome's enemies, the Huns, led by a certain Attila. The Huns were a nomadic group of people who had been pushing west for several decades at this point, forcing other barbarians to also head west into the Roman Empire.

Speaker 1

06:17

Aetius made regular use of Hunnic mercenaries to help fight other barbarian groups which even when it was successful was only so for a short time. Roman success was short lived since it was never long until barbarian groups would rise up again in revolt and start taking territory. By the late 430s the Romans had settled large groups of barbarians in Gaul and Hispania who were also essentially independent, reducing the Western Empire's effective territory to this. Of course the major change occurred when the Vandals, led by King Jenseric, settled in North Africa in the early 430s and in 439 conquered the city of Carthage.

Speaker 1

06:47

This was a major blow to the Western Empire since the Vandals now controlled the grain supply to Rome and thus could cut it off whenever it suited them. Furthermore, the loss of all of this territory meant that Rome could no longer raise as much tax as it had done previously and so it couldn't pay its troops. Soon after the fall of Carthage, Aetius raised a large force to retake the city from the Vandals, but this wasn't to be, since the Eastern Empire was then invaded by a massive force of Huns, so these troops had to be recalled. In case you're wondering, both the East and West had attempted to help each other several times before this, such as when the east sent troops to Carthage but generally speaking self interest won out over fraternity.

Speaker 1

07:20

So the Hunnic threat had picked up massively during the 440s as Attila had united the Huns and subjugated people like the Ostrogoths. Attila's empire looked like this and in the early 450s he launched a large scale invasion of the Western Empire. This culminated in the 451 Battle of the Catalonian Fields which saw Aetius command an army mostly made up of barbarians against the Huns. A colossal amount of people died and by 453 the Huns had withdrawn from the Western Empire and it was in this same year that Attila died.

Speaker 1

07:46

His empire subsequently fell into civil war and disintegrated fairly quickly. 454 saw the assassination of Aetius by Valentinian, who the next year was himself assassinated. In the wake of Valentinian's death, the west fell into chaos which saw more territory lost and Rome sacked again in 455, this time by Genseric. By 457 the Emperor was a man called Meorion, who actively sought to reconquer the lost territories within the West.

Speaker 1

08:08

He had some success with this and recaptured all of this territory with the help of his magister militant Rissima. Rissima would have Meorion assassinated and would then rule the Western Empire as Dilucohan through a series of imperial puppets until his death in 472. There were some more weak emperors in the West until a man called Orestes took control of it and named his son emperor as Romulus Augustus, although he's better known as Augustulus which means little Augustus. Both of these were soon chased off in 476 by a man called Odoacer who forced Romulus to abdicate leaving the imperial throne vacant in the west.

Speaker 1

08:37

This is with the exception of the former emperor Julius Nepos who claimed it but had no authority. This is, by many historians, considered to be the final end of the Western Roman Empire. In the void it left were many new kingdoms, including the Vandals, the Visigoths, the Franks and now in Italy the Kingdom of Odoacer which pledged its allegiance to the Eastern Emperor Zeno. Zeno would of course have other plans and tasked the Ostrogothic King Theoderic to retake Italy as the Eastern Empire's representative which he would do by 493.

Speaker 1

09:02

So the Roman Empire in the west was now gone, Rome lay in ruins and the city wouldn't really recover until the 19th century. Whilst Rome had fallen, the Roman Empire had not and in the east it stood as strong as ever. What remained was a highly urbanised empire which would dominate the eastern Mediterranean and would continue to do so for another 2 centuries. With hindsight, it's easy to look at what happened in the west and assume that it was inevitable.

Speaker 1

09:24

Rome had survived many great problems before, but this time it was many weaknesses combined which led to its ultimate collapse in the West. Whilst the Roman Empire had disappeared from Western Europe, her legacy would endure and would be something republics and monarchies alike would aspire to be over the next millennia, or 2. I hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching and a special thanks to James Bissonnette for sponsoring the channel. If you'd like To know more about the fall of Rome there are some book recommendations in the description below.