fall of rome podcast

Rome's Collapse Turned Petty Kings, Strongmen, And Warlords Into The French

Decades before Romulus Augustulus was deposed in 476 AD and the Western Roman Empire officially went out of business, the provinces of northern Gaul (roughly the area between Paris and the lower Rhine in what’s now the Netherlands and northwest Germany) had long since slipped from the grasp of the authorities. The…

Theoderic The Great Was A Barbarian General Cloaked In The Language And Political Concepts Of The Past

As the central institutions of the Roman Empire in the west crumbled and the provinces splintered off and went their own way over the course of the fifth century, new kingdoms popped up to take their place. Today, we tend to identify these new political units with specific barbarian groups: the Visigoths in southwest…

After The Visigoths Sacked Rome, They Established A Full-Blown Kingdom

When last we met the Goths, they had just sacked the city of Rome in 410 CE, the act for which this barbarian people is both famous and infamous. They were, after all, the first group in 800 years to pillage the Eternal City, and that kind of action is going to leave a mark in the history books. The history of this…

The Roman Empire Was Brought Down By Structural Rot

One way of telling the story of the fall of the Roman Empire is to examine the lives and personalities at the very top of the political spectrum, the emperors, generals, court officials, and kings at the center of power who made the life-and-death decisions that reverberated throughout the Roman world. In this…

The Roman Empire Accidentally Killed Itself

It took just 80 years for the Roman Empire to fall apart as a political unit.

As The Roman Empire Fell, Its People Stopped Talking To One Another

Rome was more than just an empire, an agglomeration of provinces ruled by the emperor and administered through a central bureaucracy and a collection of appointed governors and officials. The Roman world, beyond the political structures that sustained the empire, went much deeper than that: It was an interconnected…

What Happened To Normal People When The Roman Economy Fell Apart?

The sophistication and scale of the Roman economy was a marvel that powered all of its other achievements, from monumental buildings on three continents to its famed and feared professional army. Although it was an agrarian economy focused around agricultural production, it was surprisingly complex, with whole regions…

The Roman Economy Was A Powerhouse

We remember the Roman Empire for a great many things. Gladiators are always popular, and the army runs a close second, but the most striking thing about Rome is the monumental landscape of buildings it left behind. The Colosseum, the Circus Maximus, ornate palaces and villas, aqueducts that reach to the sky: These are…

The Late Roman Empire Army Was A Changing, But Still Massive, Force

If there’s one piece of the Roman Empire that has managed to weave its way into popular culture, it’s the army. Every decade or so, we get a new movie featuring the heroics of a Russell Crowe (Gladiator), Clive Owen (King Arthur), or Michael Fassbender (Centurion, which is an awesome action flick), and images of…

Attila The Hun Did Far More Than Just Leave Charred Bones In His Wake

Nearly 16 centuries after he lived and died, the name of Attila the Hun still carries overtones of wanton destruction and senseless slaughter. The Huns, unlike the Franks or the Anglo-Saxons or the Goths, have no modern politicians claiming them as glorious ancestors for a shot of cheap nationalism; the Huns embody the stereotype of the barbarian as rampaging looters, destroyers who left in their wake nothing but charred cities full of bones.