Although historians argue about the details, it is undeniable that the Fall of the Western
Roman Empire was the event that changed the course of history in the Mediterranean, no
matter if the era after it should or shouldn’t be called the Dark Ages.
In this video, we will not discuss the merits of the title “Dark Ages”, but will try
to look at the changes brought by the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the Mediterranean.
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During the times of the Roman Empire, great social and economic progress was accomplished
in the Mediterranean world.
The Romans had established the rule of law, social life had flourished in the empire,
with hundreds of towns adorned with palaces, public squares, circuses, theatres, temples,
markets, basilicas, public baths, and aqueducts.
Although the structure of Roman society had remained aristocratic, any citizen could have
risen through merit, fortune, or the exercise of public functions.
Furthermore, the existence of a still numerous middle class of small landed proprietors,
merchants and artisans, served to maintain a social equilibrium within the Empire.
By the 5th century, slavery had almost entirely disappeared in favor of free artisans in the
towns and coloni in the rural areas, who enjoyed personal liberty and stability on the soil
which they cultivated.
Thus, a great mass of men had attained at least a semi-freedom.
Despite the hardships of the previous centuries, the Roman Empire was still in possession of
this greater degree of prosperity than most of the world.
Many regions in the Empire provided a picture of prosperity; some others had suffered from
depopulation, war, and economic decline.
But this period also coincided with the start of the migrations and invasions of the Germanic
peoples.
Already in the first half of the 5th century, there was a big change in the demography of
the Mediterranean, as many Germanic tribes settled in the Western Roman Empire.
Whereas in Italy the complex civilian society of the Romans remained intact, the northern
borders of the Empire gave way against the fierce pressure.
In Gaul for example, the senators were left as the main symbol of Roman legitimacy.
In time, however, they started to lose their political and social positions in the face
of their Germanic guests, who started to consolidate, eventually leading to the formation of Germanic
kingdoms.
The increasingly weakened Roman aristocracy started to retreat from the cities to their
estates, building towers for protection against the so-called barbarians.
The Western Empire finally fell in 476, when a Germanic confederation led by Odoacer deposed
the last Roman emperor, establishing the Kingdom of Italy.
Odoacer’s rule wouldn’t last, and two decades later he would be assassinated by
Theoderic the Great, with his realm incorporated into the Ostrogothic Kingdom.
Theoderic sought to safeguard the Roman customs because of his appreciation of the benefits
that this civilization had developed, so he kept patronizing public works, continued to
promote economic activity, and got the support of the Senate to reinforce the legitimacy
of his rule.
He also kept his own people in settlements away from the main Roman centers, which were
entrusted to be governed by collaborators inside these populaces.
Towards the end of his rule, severe measures were taken against the Romans that can be
attributed to fears due to succession, but despite this, Theoderic managed to maintain
the Roman inheritance in Italy alive until the fall of the region to the Lombards in
568.
Similar measures were also adopted in the other Germanic kingdoms.
In order to secure the obedience of the Romans, the Germanic rulers presented themselves as
defenders of Rome, adopting titles such as magister militum, consul, or patrician, managing
to take advantage of the old system of bureaucracy to gain the support of the Roman aristocracy
and Church.
Yet after a century, and coinciding with the arrival of the Lombards, the Germanic monarchs
recognized that they were now militarily strong enough to drop this disguise, which led to
a deterioration of the institutions the Romans had developed: solid Roman administration
collapsed, resulting in the loss of order, and the reappearance of anarchy throughout
the Mediterranean.
The Catholic Church was the only centralized institution to survive the fall of the Western
Roman Empire intact, responsible for protecting the inheritance that the Roman Empire had
left them.
As for the Roman aristocracy, they had to draw upon episcopal elections to maintain
their traditional leadership of the community and to preserve their customs and culture.
Together, the old aristocracy and the Church managed to preserve Latin learning, maintain
the art of writing, and keep in place a centralized administration through the network of bishops.
The resistance offered by the Roman population was also a great success, as they gradually
started to assimilate the Germanic and Slavic tribes established among them.
Only the Visigoths and Lombards managed to remain in power as the sole conquering aristocracies
in Spain and Northern Italy.
Despite the preservation of Roman identity, the old Roman middle class experienced great
misery and was despoiled by the barbarians, as new rulers altered the laws in their favor.
For example, the Visigoths and Burgundians seized two-thirds of the Roman domains, gardens,
vineyards, cattle, slaves, and houses by legal means.
In Italy this land distribution was more moderate, extending only to a third of the Roman belongings.
This great transference of property provoked the formation of a new aristocracy with Romans
and Germanics mixing.
However, it also caused the disappearance of the small free proprietors and a quick
diminishing of the Roman middle class.
Germanic aristocracy formed an oligarchy of war chiefs, further oppressing the poor and
the weak, and deepening the inequality.
Even those Romans who remained freemen were robbed of their personal liberty and were
reduced to the rank of the old coloni, and some were even enslaved leading to rapid regrowth
of slavery.
Finally, the change in laws stripped them from the rights they previously had.
Germanic criminal codes were filled with cruel punishments for the most inconsiderable misdemeanors,
like the loss of ears, nose, eyes, tongue, hands, and genitalia.
As such, life in the Mediterranean considerably deteriorated.
Roman villas were plundered by the conquerors, while many temples and monasteries were sacked.
The Germanics faced no resistance as the masses knew that it was futile.
After the Germanic peoples had finally settled in the 6th century, the destruction continued
through the wars they waged against each other.
This endless cycle of violence led to the waning of economic life in the Mediterranean.
Agricultural labor became scarce, the cattle was decimated, production was discouraged,
famines and epidemics were on the rise, and many lands were left unpopulated.
Once the site of vineyards and olive groves, Narbonne became a land of ruined farm buildings.
The surviving small cultivators were then forced to take refuge in fields and great
domains, protected by ditches and palisades, or by embankments of earth and stone.
Thus, life became concentrated and localized in the rural areas and the economy primitivized.
Consequently, city trade was reduced to simple traffic in foodstuffs.
Bartering reappeared as the main form of trade, as money became rare and credit disappeared.
The roads deteriorated, the bridges fell, post and relay station ceased to exist, making
travel slow and perilous.
Lawlessness hampered the land commerce even more.
The same applied to maritime trade, as ports deteriorated, shipbuilding declined, and the
seas were infested with pirates.
Many citizens became beggars or criminals, buildings and monuments were put to the torch,
and populations fled in terror as entire towns were left burning.
Within the crumbling walls, towns and cities were half-deserted.
Fields and gardens occupied the greater part of the open spaces within them.
Many artisans and merchants became destitute or were enslaved, which only worsened the
commercial situation.
During Emperor Justinian’s war to reconquer Italy between 535 and 554, Rome was besieged
thrice and paid dearly for it.
Many of the ancient statues were smashed, long sections of the Aurelian Wall were demolished,
entire districts were burned as the city changed hands between the Byzantines to the Ostrogoths.
The population dropped to 30 thousand living in the ruins of what once was the capital
of the known world.
After the Lombards invaded Italy, however, the city suffered beyond what was thought
possible, as they laid waste to the countryside, destroyed aqueducts, sacked churches and catacombs,
and looted sacred relics.
When the miserable population took refuge inside the city’s defenses, they suffered
from fires, food and water shortages, and plague.
Rome was left desolate by the end of the 6th century, with its buildings crumbling into
ruins, aqueducts and sewers were in urgent need of repair, public granaries had long
since collapsed, monuments were dismembered, people were dying of starvation and plague
in the hundreds.
The Eastern Roman Empire, looked like it would share the fate of the Western Empire for much
of the 5th century.
The last representatives of the Theodosian house were weak, Balkan provinces were ravaged
by Hun and Ostrogoth invasions, religious dissension in Syria and Egypt was on the rise,
and Constantinople itself was at times threatened.
But the strong military organization of the Eastern Empire enabled it to hold out until
the time of Justinian and Heraclius, welcoming some of the invaders as foederati and pushing
the others back across the Danube.
As a result, the Byzantine Empire emerged as a resilient and cohesive society.
Even more, under the leadership of Emperor Justinian, the Italian peninsula and the province
of Africa were reconquered and brought back into Roman rule.
This, however, didn’t prevent many in the Eastern Empire from suffering the fate of
their western counterpart: the invasions of Slavic and Germanic barbarians into the Balkans,
culminating with the arrival of the Bulgars, inflicted considerable damage in the Byzantine
population.
Dysentery, typhus, the Asiatic plague, and finally the bubonic plague during Justinian’s
reign decimated the Eastern Empire causing tens of millions of deaths and having catastrophic
effects on both urban and economic life.
Still, the Byzantines managed to fight off the diseases and the invaders, and culturally
assimilate some sort of the barbarians that decided to settle in the East.
The anarchy of the West was therefore avoided, and a new Hellenic state was upon Roman political
and religious institutions.
Restoration and economic development were facilitated, while the preservation of the
effective agricultural economy allowed the Byzantines to repopulate the countryside.
To combat the abandonment of rural areas, the emperors decreed that landowners who left
their lands uncultivated should forfeit it.
The 6th century saw the establishment of the laws enforcing those who held arable land
to pay taxes and consequently forcing the owners of uncultivated land to bring it under
cultivation.
The height of the colonization effort came in the 7th century when the reform of the
themes incited the Byzantines to create numerous military colonies.
There, soldiers of the Byzantine army cultivated the lands given over to them as a form of
military service.
Many slaves and heretics were also enfranchised and assigned to colonize the most deserted
lands of the Empire, especially in Southern Italy and Thrace.
All of these reforms contributed to an economic renaissance in the Eastern Mediterranean,
with fisheries flourishing on the Ionian and Adriatic islands; pig-breeding and sheep-farming
prospered in the forest regions of the Empire; cattle-raising carried on rich plains; famous
race-horses and army chargers were raised in Thrace and the Peloponnesus; granaries
and orchards in the Empire remained the richest of Eastern Europe; and the scented wines of
Lesbos, Samos, Greece, and Sicily continued to be world-famous.
This economic boom strengthened the principle of private property, with imperial and fiscal
domains diminishing at the expense of the rural communities, and profiting the Church
and aristocracy.
This wouldn’t be limited to agriculture, as the urban economy remained intact and even
developed in the Eastern Empire.
Industry remained centered in the towns during this period, although there were also rural
workshops in the estates of the nobility and the Church.
Objects of luxury were produced there, like purple tissues, fine cloths, and carpets;
and monasteries sometimes specialized in industrial arts, mosaic work, illumination, and painting,
while the urban industry was carried out by small workshops of entrepreneurs and free
artisans, or by the great state factories mainly concerned with the textile industries.
Additionally, there were imperial manufactures, working solely to furnish the needs of the
army and the imperial palaces.
In the political aspect, Byzantine society also evolved during this period.
Many changes came with Justinian’s administration in particular.
In celebration of his military success, a new Code of Roman Law was issued.
Justinian's legislative activity, like his stalwart defense of religious orthodoxy, was
based on an elevated view of the universal empire, which he saw as the terrestrial image
of God's heavenly kingdom.
During his rule, Justinian also undertook a lavish program of building, including the
Church of the Hagia Sofia in Constantinople, with its dome of unprecedented size.
The Empire remained rich and powerful for the next century, with the economic situation
of all its lands, with the exception of Italy, seeing a great improvement.
Justinian's reign thus marked a new beginning for the Roman Empire.
By the time of his death, the glory of Rome had been at last restored after the tumultuous
situation of the last centuries, and it would contribute to the survival of the Roman Empire
for many centuries to come.
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