Download PDF | (Routledge Key Guides) Michael Grant - The Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire-Routledge (1999).
140 Pages
INTRODUCTION
The interesting thing about this period is that the Roman empire — of which the past history, together with that of the Greeks which ts inherited, ts summarily added in an Appendix — showed every sign of collapse. But it did not collapse — it went on, in the west, for another two hundred years, and in the east for far, far longer. Why and how was this? I have never seen this issue frankly and adequately discussed. Certainly, any number of people have written about the third century and its personalities, and in this book | have not been afraid to quote from them.
Indeed, I have done so to such an extent that I may be held guilty, I am aware, of patchwork or pastiche. But I have done so on purpose, because in my view it would be too egotistical to suppose that no one had written about the period at all, or to any purpose. However, I have tried not to lose sight of the main feature of the epoch, which is, I have said, that the Roman empire seemed ripe for complete disintegration, but that this did not occur.
Even if this volume does quote scholarly writers, it is not particularly, or essentially, scholarly: what I have sought in it is to bring home what really happened. Nor is the present book unduly sympathetic to the Roman empire; the Germans and Sarmatians and Persians also had something to be said for them. Yet it was the Roman empire which is a sort of precursor of the united Europe which many of us would like to see in existence today: see also the Epilogue.
The fact that the Roman empire did not collapse in the 260s or 270s AD is one of the miracles of history,’ and shows how careful we ought to be in asserting what will happen, or ought to happen. To historiographers it is an uncomfortable fact but an inescapable one. For one thing, as has already been said, the empire did not collapse, but recovered. When it recovered, it was by no means the same as it had been before; but surely that was only to be expected. What happened to it, in other words, why it was not the same as it had been before, is part of this story. Another part concerns the writers to whom those who were disgusted by the whole depressing military and political situation had recourse, and they included a great philosopher, Plotinus, and an unforgettable novelist, Heliodorus.
I am grateful to the following publishers, from whose publications I have quoted: where necessary | have obtained permission to do so: Blackwell Publishers (Todd, Zhe Early Germans, 1992); British Museum Publications Ltd., copyright Trustees of the British Museum (R.A.G. Carson, Principal Coins of the Romans, vol. III, 1981); Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Ancient History, vol. XII, 1956; PE. Easterling and B.M.W. Knox (eds.) Cambridge Fiistory of Classical Literature [, 1985; M. Grant, Roman Luterature, 1954; M. Grant, Roman Fiistory from Coins, 1958; E:ncyclopaedia Britannica Inc; (1971 ed.) (E. Strong, Art in Ancient Rome, 1929); Hutchinson (D.R. Dudley, 7he Romans, 1970); Oxford University Press (Oxford Classical Dictionary, vol. I, 1970, vol. HI, 1996); Penguin (A. Boethius and J.B. Ward-Perkins, E¢ruscan and Roman Architecture, 1971); Phaidon (M.R. Scherer, Marvels of Ancient Rome, 1956); Routledge (N. Holzberg, Zhe Ancient Novel, 1995; M. Grant, Aart in the Roman F:mpire, 1993); Scribners (M. Grant, Readings in the Classical Historians, 1992); Thames and Hudson (J.M.C. Toynbee in L. Rossi, Trajan’s Column and the Dacian Wars, 1971); Weidenfield and Nicholson, Orion Publishing Co. (M. Grant, The Emperor Constantine, 1993). I also owe special thanks to Richard Stoneman, Coco Stevenson and Sarah Brown of Routledge and to Susan Dunsmore.
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