The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History

by James J. O'Donnell

“An exotic and instructive tale, told with life, learning and just the right measure of laughter on every page. O’Donnell combines a historian’s mastery of substance with a born storyteller’s sense of style to create a magnificent work of art.”  — Madeleine K. Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State

The dream Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar shared of uniting Europe, the Medi-terranean, and the Middle East in a single community shuddered and then collapsed in the wars and disasters of the sixth century. Historian and classicist James J. O'Donnell—who last brought readers his masterful, disturbing, and revelatory biography of Saint Augustine—revisits this old story in a fresh way, bringing home its sometimes painful relevance to today's issues.

With unexpected detail and in his hauntingly vivid style, O'Donnell begins at a time of apparent Roman revival and brings readers to the moment of imminent collapse that just preceded the rise of Islam. Illegal migrations of peoples, religious wars, global pandemics, and the temptations of Rome's end foreshadows today's crises and offers hints how to navigate them—if present leaders will heed this story.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Roman History, Ancient History, Audiobook, Ancient, Historical

450 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 16, 2008

About the author

James Joseph O'Donnell is a classical scholar and University Librarian at Arizona State University. He formerly served as University Professor at Georgetown University (2012-2015) and as Provost of Georgetown University (2002-2012). O'Donnell was previously Vice Provost for Information Systems and Computing at the University of Pennsylvania (1996–2002). He is a former President of the American Philological Association (the national learned society for academics who work on the ancient world) and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. From 2012 to 2018, he chaired the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies.
O'Donnell writes and lectures on topics of the late Roman Empire, Augustine of Hippo, and also on the impact of information technology in the modern academic and cultural world. He was an early adopter of the World Wide Web for academic collaboration within the humanities. He co-founded and has been involved with Bryn Mawr Classical Review since it was founded in 1990. In 1994, he offered the first Internet MOOC when 500 students around the world participated (through gopher and email) in his University of Pennsylvania seminar on the life and work of St. Augustine.

Reviews

[M. D. Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not exactly a Fall of the Roman Empire book in the usual sense - it actually is concerned with the hundred years or so after the traditional date of 476 A.D. (and the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, traditionally seen as the "last" Roman emperor). In particular, the book examines and criticizes the efforts of the Byzantine Empire to re-establish its hold on the western "barbarian" half of the empire. The Emperor Justinian and his general Belisarius are seen as agents of mayhem and destruction, demolishing peacefully coalescing kingdoms of the Goths, Vandals, and even those obstreperous Avars and Lombards. The sub-title blurby thing on the front cover makes the pitch: "The emperor who brought it down, the barbarians who could have saved it."

O'Donnell tries to sell this pro-barbarian view of the Decline & Fall as something new. In fact I first encountered it 30 years ago in a wonderful alternate history science fiction novel by L. Sprague DeCamp called "Lest Darkness Falls," which was written in the 1930s. In it, an American archaeologist is time-traveled to the Rome of c. 500, just in time to help the fairly "Roman" Goths resist the army of General Belasarius and Justinian. Sort of a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court approach that pretty much makes the same argument O'Donnell does. But then these popular history books are always being peddled as new approaches (accounts of Custer's Last Stand from the Indian point of view are nothing new). But it is a fascinating period of history and one I am pretty ignorant about. So I dug in to O'Donnell's book with enthusiasm only to find myself feeling like one of those mastodons that wondered into the La Brea Tar Pits, up to my pits in sticky prose. This book is, in many ways, one of the worst-written history books I have ever encountered. Let me enumerate the problems.

Organization: Although the book covers a fairly specific period of 200 years in time, it jumps all over the place. Sure, even in ruins the Roman Empire was a big place. Towards the end of the book, this lack of organizing principles (despite chapters and sections and whatnot) seems to get worse, as if HarperCollins editors were sneaking out early. Or slitting their wrists at their desks. Or like telegraph operators, do real functioning editors no longer exist? Not here they don't.

Angry, Overtly Biased Author: O'Donnell is one of those writers who needs an antagonist - which seems to be at times the whole rest of the world. Or at least anyone who has ever had anything good to say about the Byzantine Empire. The problem with this entirely anti-Byzantine approach is that it is...wrong? I mean come on - the Byzantine Empire endured a thousand (!) years, from c. 400-1453. And they built the Hagia Sophia. And the Orthodox Church. And they preserved the works of Antiquity and had a lot to do with the Renaissance (many of those Greek clerics and scholars fleeing the Turks in 1453 went to Italy with their books). Whether or not any civilization is worth the blood and tears can be applied to anyplace anytime anywhere since Lucy the Australopithecus wandered the waddi.

Disappointed Expectations: Throughout the book we are given dire hints that the worst catastrophe of Late Antiquity was the despoliation of Italy by Belisarius. In addition to the promise of horrors to come, we are given daffy bits of bold historian's posturing (Italy was never as peaceful as it was in 500 A.D. ...until the 1950s! Forget the Renaissance, man! Of course the Renaissance was not what could be described as "peaceful" yet the violence was neither as catastrophic, widespread, nor civilization-killing as the Dark Ages (c. 500-1000) were. Italy in the Baroque period, and in that period after reunification, 1870-1914 was reasonably peaceful as well). But O'Donnell forgot to give us the payoff - I never could find a coherent couple of pages outlining just what happened during the Byzantine re-conquest of Italy. I just had to be satisfied with a couple hundred pages of being told from time to time that it was really, really bad.

Passive-aggressive Over-familiar Author: "Many modern readers know at least something about barbarians and the fall of the Roman empire, but many more readers will know a fair amount about early Christianity. To such readers I must now say, Would you please leave everything you think you know about Christianity at the door? We really must start over." (p. 147). There's a lot of this kind of authorial hectoring throughout the book. A lot.

Justinian as Villain: In his efforts to portray Justinian as a villain, O'Donnell fails to ever give him credit. The guy did build the Hagia Sophia, one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. In my quest for things Byzantine, I read Procopius's "The Secret History" which is a vicious attack on Justinian written by a guy who worked for him. But even Procopius understood that the way Justinian and his Empress Theodora were playing a very shrewd game when they seemed to be supporting opposites in the on-going political-religious strife of the times. Half the people could look to the Emperor for their side of things, while the other half could look to the (very powerful) Empress as a source of moderating hope. This kept opposition to the throne perpetually divided. That this was "really" how things were in the Palace is very unlikely - that it kept things relatively stable through a long reign is manifestly true. Justinian's efforts to defuse the religious situation were ham-handed and did perhaps more harm than good, but then those were religiously and politically difficult times. Here's a half-baked (but only half) analogy for the US: think Red State-Blue State conflicts routinely breaking out in riots at NFL games, punctuated by Army generals trying from time to time to take over the Presidency and Catholic bishops murdering Episcopalians for failing to adhere to the true definition of the nature of The Trinity. If you want an overview of how scary stuff was, look up the Wikipedia article entitled: "Political mutilation in Byzantine culture" - its own article! But notice that virtually everybody eyeless, noseless, footless, testicalless and handless on the list date from after Justininian's time.

Clichés Abound: Note in the passage above you are asked to leave everything you know "at the door." A few more at random: "...and so in the 540s, Justinian began to throw historical baggage over the side." (p. 297) Sometimes the clichés are not even used quite right: "So when, in the 570s, the Persian king sent a force south to Yemen to support the local Himyarite rulers in shaking off Ethiopian control a domino at the farthest frontier fell silently into Persian hands." (p. 348). Worse than the standard-issue clichés, O'Donnell employs things that are not so much clichés (which dead as they are, still sort of live to walk the page - kind of like verbal zombies). Rather than clichés, these are what I guess you would call obsolete catch-phrases which unlike clichés are as dead as...a doornail. Whatever a doornail is. Anyway, an illustration on page 224 has this caption: "Justinian as general: a spin doctor's fantasy." Actually the illustration is of the famous Barberini ivory diptych, one of the most beautiful works of late Antiquity - so who is being the barbarian now, eh? In any case, "spin doctor" (which O'Donnell uses elsewhere as well) sounds so first Clinton Administration, so 1992, so clueless.

Baffling Paragraphs: O'Donnell's theory of paragraph construction must be interesting. I believe he thinks that an occasional short paragraph serves as a sub-heading for the prose, sort of the way 19th century newspapers used to do it. Most of O'Donnell's paragraphs are fairly lengthy, but below are a sampling of his short ones:

"Such geopolitical wisdom may have lain beyond Justinian's ken, I admit. Economic wisdom was demonstrably beyond him and his times, as he surveyed a capital pumped up with wealth leached away from lands no Byzantine emperor would ever again visit." (p. 245)

See below for another even more baffling example.

Bombastic Yet Incoherent Efforts at Contemporary Relevance: This book has a blurb from Madeleine Albright (who says this book is perfect for "admirers of great writing") which no doubt pleased its author - such geo-political heft! From time to time O'Donnell treats us to how Justinian screwed up things so badly US troops are still dying for his warped ideals. He will also give us dabs of editorial content, such as this, which stands alone as its own paragraph:

"The separate world of east Asia has mainly stood outside the Eurasian psychodrama and may well yet prevail over all its rivals. The two other boundaries of peoples, defining the two directions in which west Asians must look, have been killing fields and chasms of misunderstanding. The United States chose to go to war in 2001-2003 in both those regions." (p. 356)

East Asia? West Asia? The two directions they "must" look? Which all has something to do with the US war of 2001-2003? It all sounds so dire and stuff but I have no idea what it means. Note the use of "psychodrama" - a TV critic's word from c. 1999 that manages to obfuscate and yet diminish.

Sometimes wild statements are made (apparently) designed to shock: "The only truly sane monarch in antiquity was Alexander, the wild child, who came to within an inch of creating a world in which we now most wish we could live, one marked by community and not by conflict of cultures. His only really rational successors were Mehemet the Conqueror and Genghis Khan..." (p. 355). Um, Augustus was pretty sane. And Vespasian. And Trajan. And Antoninus Pius. And Marcus Aurelius. And Anastasius I. And Diocletian. And Constantine the Great. And Pericles. And those guys who ran Carthage for a couple centuries. And some of those Pharaohs. And a bunch of Chinese emperors. And Nebuchadnezzar. And the first couple Ptolemies. And Khusro of Persia (whom O'Donnell praises for his wisdom and political savvy throughout the book). And Theodoric (ditto). Notice how describing Alexander as a "wild child" manages to be condescending, slightly off-kilter, and sort of somehow 1980s American teenager diction. Gag me with a spoon, dude.


****

This being said, convoluted, incoherently opinionated, and made up of the worst prose this side of the Dardanelles, I still rather liked this book. The random acts of composition are buttressed by fairly useful footnotes (when they aren't marred by quasi-scholarly showing off), and a great deal of what seems to me solid if poorly-deployed research and references. Also, I think beneath the bombast and confusion, O'Donnell makes some good points. If his cynicism can be at times cheap and almost comically hard-boiled, he still manages to give a pretty fair picture of the various factions and schisms that nearly destroyed Christianity and made Islam so attractive to the very confused and theologically discouraged peoples of the Middle East. The history of the Papacy is deftly handled as well (Pope Gregory in particular, despite an awkward effort by O'Donnell to disguise the fact he was Pope in order to better educate the benighted reader). If O'Donnell's portrait of Justinian is made blurry by spluttering rage, he does a good job with Odoacer and Theodoric, very enlightened "barbarians" who were trying to rule Italy. He also ably explains (but in fragments scattered throughout the book) how Rome became a backwater - I've read this as a historical truism for years (the Forum as a cow pasture, etc.), but O'Donnell makes it convincing (and even kind of spooky). Think contemporary Detroit, if Detroit had been a combination of New York City and Washington D.C. The acres of abandoned buildings. The scattered pockets of population. Paupers huddled in abandoned churches and monuments. Water supply becoming intermittent than stopping altogether. Priests still persisting in their rituals, shimmering in silk vestments while bats flit 'twixt the broken columns...

So although the actual reading experience can be discouraging and frustrating, O'Donnell is rarely boring. In fact I was only bored in those intermittent stretches where I had trouble figuring out his sentences. Anyway, a very interesting story emerges from the ruins of the (sorry) barbaric prose and I have to say I'm glad I read the damned thing.

[Terence · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not an overly generous dispenser of four- and five-star reviews but when a book moves me emotionally or intellectually (the latter, in this case) it must be acknowledged. James O'Donnell's The Ruin of the Roman Empire is a brilliant (if flawed) look at a critical moment in the evolution of Western civilization that moves the reader to reassess their understanding of the period.

The primary thrust of O'Donnell's arguments is that what we call "the Roman Empire" didn't fall to barbarians but was brought down by the ignorant and foolish policies of its emperors - most especially Justinian (whose epithets in this volume include "arrogant," "indecisive," "rash" and "dumb"). The author attempts to make the case that, if we could go back to the fifth and sixth centuries, often we would be hard pressed to distinguish Roman from barbarian (and the distinction would have been meaningless, anyway, to the men in question).

The poster boy for O'Donnell's thesis is Theodoric, the "king of the Ostrogoths" from 471 to 526. He was the son of an Arian general and a Catholic (or, perhaps better, orthodox) mother; raised and educated at the imperial court in Constantinople; and didn't see his "people" until 471, when he was 18. Note that O'Donnell is careful not to identify any of the actors in this drama too closely with the traditional labels. Even distinguishing Theodoric's parents by religious creed is problematic at a time when all identities were in flux. The author argues that the emergence of a "Gothic" identity or a "Frankish" one was driven by Rome's unwillingness to accommodate barbarian desires for assimilation into the Roman system. The men and women Theodoric led were Heruls, Scirians, Suevi, Romans, Greeks, even Syrians; it was only in the furnace of Justinian's attempt to reconquer the West and historical hindsight that an Ostrogothic Kingdom emerged (however briefly).

The first few generations of barbarian usurpation in the empire were all men who were products of the imperial system: Stilicho, Ricimer, Aetius, Alaric, Odoacer, Theodoric and so on. All sought legitimation through recognition from the emperors, or they claimed imperial prerogatives as can be seen from a dedication to Theodoric found along the Appian Way:

Our Lord the most glorious and celebrated King Theodoric, / victor in triumph, / ever Augustus, / born for the good of the state, / guardian of freedom and propagator of the Roman name, / who has tamed the nations... (p. 145)

The important point here is the word "Augustus," a title reserved to the emperor alone by this time. Neither I nor (I think) O'Donnell would claim that Theodoric claimed imperial honors but the presence of this man's dedication indicates how Italy viewed the man who ruled them and what they expected of him.

The author suggests that the examples of Theodoric, the Goths in Provence and Spain, and the Vandals in Africa were leading toward a new Roman "commonwealth," a reordering of the empire as profound as the reorganizations the marked the change from Republic to Principate at the beginning of the Christian era, and from Principate to Dominate at the end of the third century.

What derailed a second Roman renaissance was a combination of three things:

1. Religious fundamentalism
2. The artificiality of Roman unity
3. Justinian and his immediate successors

All three factors are related and this review can hardly do them justice. An example of the first factor, is the divisive nature of imperial intervention in religious doctrine. What often was academic distinctions of no substantive effect on fundamental dogma rapidly became poles around which opposition or support of imperial policy focused. Under circumspect and tactful rulers like Theodoric and Anastasius (emperor from 491-518), a delicate balance was maintained. Under an "ignorant peasant" like Justinian, who saw any variance as a threat to imperial stability, firm lines were drawn between Chalcedonians, Arians, monophysites and any other number of creeds; compromise became difficult and, ultimately, impossible.

The second factor - the unity of the Mediterranean basin - is interesting as O'Donnell argues that Rome's imposition of that unity was a fluke and only endured so long as Rome faced no serious, socially advanced polities along its borders. A situation that was beginning to change in the fifth and sixth centuries (for a more detailed analysis of this phenomenon, I would recommend Peter Heath's Fall of the Roman Empire).

Internally, the empire was a collection of highly disparate regions: the hellenized, urbanized East, where there was a three-millennia-old tradition of culture; the Balkans, characterized by O'Donnell as the empire's "Wild West"; the Mediterranean provinces of the western empire (south Gaul, Spain & Africa), hellenized to the extent that its few urban centers were Greek and/or Punic in origin but otherwise only superficially urbanized; and the frontier provinces in north Gaul and the Rhine and Danube valleys, where Greco-Roman culture was represented by vast estates, cities were essentially military camps, and most lived lives little different from the tribes Caesar had conquered half a thousand years previously.

The "Great Satan" of the sixth century, however, the man who put paid to the continued existence of a Roman Empire and Mediterranean unity, is Justinian, who reigned from 527-565, but probably ruled for much of his uncle's preceding regime as well (518-527).

I first encountered Justinian in the pages of L. Sprague de Camp's novel Lest Darkness Fall, and it was not good first impression. In this alternate history, Martin Padway (or Martinus of Padua, as he's known in Theodoric's Italy) is transported from modern Rome (c. 1950) to Italy soon after Theodoric's death, on the eve of Belisarius' invasion. In order to preserve peace and stability in Italy and, thus, his own life, Martin proceeds to "invent" U.S.-style political campaigns, paper, a printing press and the heliograph, and suborns Belisarius and his troops to the Gothic cause. Justinian doesn't come off at all well since he's willing to devastate Italy for the impossible dream of restoring the old empire (kind of like the Vietnam-era idea of "destroying the village to save it").

O'Donnell clothes that fictional Justinian with the facts of history. In 518, Anastasius left a full treasury and a relatively stable political situation but Justinian's and his uncle's ill-considered, blundering and expensive policies bankrupted the empire, alienated and polarized opponents, and broke the military. The results were ruined provinces in Italy, Spain & Africa; a powerful Frankish state in northern Gaul; crippling divisions between monophysite and orthodox; and the seeds of a ruinous war with Persia that would leave both empires prostrate before the looming Arab jihad.

The are just examples of some of the themes O'Donnell explores in this well-written, provocative book. Before I end this review, I should mention what I consider the weakest part of the volume. From the beginning, O'Donnell has been arguing that we need to divest ourselves of misleading labels and the misconceptions of 2,000 years of historiography and place ourselves in the minds of the period's contemporaries (as much as that's possible). Yet, in the final chapters of the book, I think he falls into that trap by imputing motives to Cyrus, Alexander, Augustus and any other conqueror to unite the world in a peaceful commonwealth of diverse communities. Perhaps I'm too cynical, but in my reading, I've never found a conqueror or statesman who acted from such high motives. They may have had strategic visions (a position I'll grant to Augustus, certainly) but more often than not they were simply greedy megalomaniacs (Alexander) or trying to achieve "top dog" status and protect themselves against enemies (Genghis, perhaps?). Whatever benefits resulted from their conquests were recognized and justified in hindsight.

This book isn't "perfect" but it does shake up the reader's perception of the "received wisdom" on the late empire and its neighbors. For a novice in Roman history, it's a revelation; for an older hand, it's a wonderful tonic and corrective, and I'd recommend it unreservedly. (I'm looking forward to reading his biography of Augustine.)

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this author and am only sorry he launched a successful career as a university administrator and then librarian which apparently limited his time as an historian of late antiquity. His biography of St. Augustine is a brilliant book. This one is almost as good. In it, the author demonstrates his mastery of the sources of late antiquity. He also demonstrates his familiarity with both halves of the Mediterranean world, and indeed later historical epics. But saying all that doesn’t explain how this author makes you feel as if he lived through the events he writes about. I guess this sense of intimacy is born of his empathy, capacity for creative historical analogy, and vast writing talent.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Título engañoso, contenidos peculiares.-

Género. Ensayo.

Lo que nos cuenta. Visión de los últimos años del Imperio Romano de occidente y de los posteriores, cuando el Imperio Romano de oriente tomó protagonismo en el Mediterráneo central y occidental, centrado en tres líderes muy distintos en cuanto a perfil, ideas, voluntad y acciones.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erudite and well-written. O'Donnell seems to take great pleasure in being contrarian, at least against the wave of recent histories recounting the collapse of the western empire at the end of the fifth century or thereabouts. O'Donnell argues that the empire wasn't destroyed from without by "barbarians"; rather, he argues that the various peoples who inhabited and milled about the imperial periphery were themselves roman, in a sense anyway. one by-product of the roman process of creating a material, spiritual, military and economic culture was the rise of self-awareness among the barbarians of the north -- the goths, the avars, the alans, the sarmatians, and all those fun folks. in other words, the romans were at once the Other against which the barbarians defined themselves, and something to which the barbarians aspired. so when the barbarians began to penetrate the fabric of the empire, the romans (by now almost synonymous with the eastern empire) were foolish to view these peoples as anything but roman (theoderic was the match of many a caesar, for example, and despite the funny name he adhered closely to roman tradition), and by fighting against them they sealed their own eventual doom.

lots of religious history here (which is natural given the time period the book focuses on). it's interesting, but if you're at all averse to discussions of monophysites, the nature of the godhead, arianism, etc., this may not be the book for you.

Best line (and i'm paraphrasing here): alexander the great was the only sane monarch of ancient times, and wasn't matched until the rise of that other great leader genghis khan. wow. he's arguing here that alexander, like genghis later, was on the cusp of creating a multi-ethnic empire linking the mediterranean with the near east and central asia -- a sort of uber-persia. their ultimate failure means that we've inherited a fractured globe, one in which cultural tectonic plates (middle east, balkans, western europe, central asia) grind against each other and create conflict.

Gripe: I appreciate history written for a lay audience, but O'Donnell's occasional attempts to show the parallels between the ancient world and modern times grates a little. Fortunately they were few in number.

[Nathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

A popular history far too popular for its own good. If more attention had been paid to the coherence of the narrative and chronology, and less to the constant attempts at amusing phrases and witty asides, this book would have been infinitely better. As it was, I was alternately bored and irritated at the condescension of the author.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that had the potential of being a five-star work of scholarship is mitigated by (1) the author working out some personal historical issues on the page, and (2) the same author forgetting that, once in a while, one should quit before concise & entertaining becomes drawn out & irritating. A very strange book, with swaths of greatness butting heads with obtuseness.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is not as if the author of this book is a total idiot.  There are at least some things that the author gets right--Justinian's attempt to re-conquer the Roman empire was ill-advised, especially in the wake of a plague that killed a large percentage of the population of his empire and made his successors ill-equipped to handle the many foreign wars that would beset them in the next few decades.  The author correctly notes at the end of the book that it is by no means foreordained that civilization will succeed and that it depends on wisdom and some measure of pragmatism.  The author is also generally right to praise the importance of healthy village culture as a necessary handmaiden to urban civilization in providing the food that is necessary for urban parasites to survive above and beyond the subsistence level.  That said, the author says a lot of things that are just impossible to believe, and sometimes downright contradictory as when he tries to out-Procopius the Secret History as as critic of Justinian and claims that Alexander The Great was the one sane emperor of the ancient world, he of the paranoid murders of childhood friends and trusted advisers and all, lest we forget.  

This sizable book of about 400 pages is divided into three parts and 8 large chapters.  The book begins with a preface and an overture that sets the destruction of Rome in the 6th century by looking at the decline of Rome in the 5th century that precedes the events discussed in the rest of the book. The first part of the book then consists of two chapters that examine the world of the doomed Ostrogoth Theoderic (I), including a look backwards at 500 from Rome (1) as well as a look at the world that might have been (2) had Theodoric not gotten paranoid and killed his advisers.  After that the author spends a fair amount of time with his bete noir Justinian (II) discussing what it was like to be Justinian (3), whom the author thinks to be not very wise and discerning, what opportunities were lost in the author's mind by not focusing his attention on keeping the Balkans unified and tied to Constantinople (4), as well as the wars that were worse than civil that ended up destroying Italy (5).  Finally, the author closes the book by looking at Gregory The Great (III), and discussing what it was like to learn to live again (6), the debris of empire that followed Justinian in Constantinople (7), as well as Gregory The Great's life and career (8), after which there is a list of Roman Emperors, notes, suggestions for further reading, credits and permissions, and an index.

This book is not a really good example of history.  It is the example of someone trying to force history to fit along with his prejudices against Christianity (despite his love for Pope Gregory The Great, who he insanely calls the last consul), of which there are too many examples in new histories.  While the author is not completely misinformed he is nonetheless not the sort of person whose opinion can be taken seriously or as gospel truth.  Indeed, in one section of the book he states various untruths while saying at the same time that everything he says is true, acting like a Democratic politician on the stump claiming that this time contemporary Western states know how to set the right level of taxation so as not to discourage entrepreneurial efforts (which is laughable when one looks at the meager economic knowledge of folks like Sanders, Warren, et al in our contemporary political scene).  One wonders whether the author has actually ever pondered that the ancients may not be as dumb as he thinks they are or whether he is not actually as smart as he thinks he is.  A bit more humility would have made this a far better book.

[Denis Mcgrath · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an in your face witty account of the decline of the Roman Empire. The political intrigue and the characters portrayed makes the United States White House appear like some chaotic nursery school. Our politicians could learn a lot by reading History. O”Donnell is a first class Latin scholar who deftly weaves and sometimes spins his players based on an intimate knowledge of resources and brings to bear a more modern approach to classical Roman studies. A good read and worth the effort.

[Hildegart · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started reading this book with little knowledge of the Roman Empire. I felt like I was at the end of a yo-yo with his going back and forth between centuries. And then, he'd say he would discuss more fully a subject- for example Theodosia- and then later have maybe one paragraph on it. It was very difficult to get through this book.

[Nicolas · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Civilization is a thing of the calm, the patient, the pragmatic, and the wise. We are not assured that it will triumph”

This book is a must for any person that enjoys roman history. New perspectives helps to change misconceptions repeated for centuries and giving the common western culture wrong understandings, about not only the fall of Rome, but of mighty civilizations.

The Ruin of the Roman Empire does indeed takes fifth and sixth century Europe into a new perspective. The whole book could be taken more as an essay to support the author's perspective on Gothic and Frankish western Europe, as well as on Justinian, that goes against common "historical knowledge" of the epoch. We see in Italy an empire that did not fall in 476 as historians have pointed out for more than a thousand years; a tyrant and inept ruler that could have worked out to further develop european, hence western, civilization, but instead opted out for destroying part of it in order to fulfill his ambitions and live up to his ego.

In his “Overture”, O'Donnel introduce the book in a perfect way, as he described the "fall” of the western empire. We see the Roman World in the sixth century from the perspective of many small authors, and by the world I mean, the old world, where the author devotes many lines to talk about Persia, China and even India. We are introduced to many paradigms of roman history, in which historians never really wanted to look at classical writers by who they were besides being generals or statisticians. They were elites, and a much bigger slice of the population was rather poor, uncivilized and far from all “roman" or "romanitas".

I think is very important to have previous knowledge of the time by more common authors and chronological lines, as the author will not just described the main political events. Instead, he will go back and forth the sixth century, sometimes briefly diving into previous centuries to set important background for the reader according to the topic being discussed. He concentrates the first two parts of the book on the main characters of western and eastern europe during the sixth century: Theodoric and Justinian.

He describes the ascent to power of Theodoric the Great and the place he took as a “barbarian”, a term the author argues strongly against, into the politics of fifth century Europe. So many sources have been using the word barbarian to write about anyone who may seem alien to them, or even just as the would want them to be. In reality, so many of the so called "barbarians" were so romaniced as many emperors, and even emperors (such as Justinian or Zeno), could have been perfectly described as barbarians, history decided not to. The many opportunities, by which the western empire would have been saved, were undertaken by the many barbarians, a.k.a romaniced germanic generals (Stilicho, Aeitus, Odoacer), that the whole conception of what was roman and no, taking emperors like Honorius, loses its logic. These same “roman” rulers ended the stability that this generals could have provided, making the fall of that civilization almost imminnet, were it not had been for Thedoric. And yet, years afterwards, another of this “Roman emperors”, Justinian, set about to finish the western roman empire, by this time definetely, erasing any possibility of stability in the west, and paving the way for the centuries of medieval and feudal Europe. The disdain showed by O'Donell towards Justinian will be a recurrent caracteristic of the book

The last part of the book concentrates on what life became in Gaul and Britain, how new elite rulers cope with the vacuum of power left by the western empire (here that means: Ostrogothic Italy), leaving the way for what it would eventually become worldwide empires (Spain, Britain, France); and how the catholic church took the role of that remnant of Roman cloud and power, that was put into motion by Gregory the Great, a late sixth century pope, the last consul, and for the author, the last great roman.

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years ago, in a history class I was taking, the professor made the point that no one woke up one day in 476 CE and said to themselves "welp, I guess the Roman Empire's over now." History doesn't usually move with that definite a sort of cut-off point between what was and what will be, and as it turns out the date commonly ascribed as the "end" of the Roman Empire might be a little less certain than we think. This book goes a long way towards correcting many of the assumptions that many (including your humbler reviewer) have about the glory that was Rome.

"The Ruin of the Roman Empire" by James J. O'Donnell is a fun look at a horrible time, in many ways: the century after the supposed "fall" of Rome, which shows that the 500's were in fact a time when the Roman Empire in the West could've survived if not for some truly dumb-ass decisions on the part of leaders both in Rome and Constantinople. O'Donnell brings a light but authoritative touch to the history of that era, a time that we normally don't think of as having anything to do with the Roman Empire at its height but crucial in understanding why it ultimately failed to continue past the reigns of so-called "barbarian kings" (who were actually far more Romanized than they appeared) and Justinian, whose attempts to unite east and west again (after the empire had been partitioned in the 400's) met with little to no success and a whole lot of hurt feelings on both sides, not to mention casualties. Through it all, O'Donnell gives us as readers all the juicy sort of details about the lifestyles of the rich and powerful that we might enjoy reading about, while grounding that in serious discussion of why those rich and powerful were also stupid and wasteful. Totally not something that we ever have to worry about again, right? I'm looking at you, America from 2017 to January of this year. You know what you did...

I took my time with this book because honestly, I didn't really get into it until about a week ago (I had it as something I intended to read for a while after buying it in February, and then when I officially "started" it I couldn't get into it and had other stuff that I wanted to read), but I've powered through it over the course of this weekend in part to help mentally wash away the residue of the last book I read before this one (that one was a stinker and a half). I've always had a fascination with the Roman Empire and wondered what the real story of it is, aside from all the "history" that's been written before usually from one biased view or another. Rome wasn't great for everyone, but it had some redeeming qualities when done right (and when done wrong, as is the case in the events described in this book, it justified its own extinction). This was a popular history book done right, and I urge you to seek it out and enjoy it. Because I know that I did.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

We hear a lot about Rome and its supposed role as a model for the United States. In particular the right tends to look back on it as a moral example of what happens with lax morality, laziness, and open borders take on a great society. (Never mind the distinct lack of modern moral standards or even a democratic impulses among the aristocrats who ran what we euphemistically call the Roman Republic).
James J. O'Donnell has a different view. I had previously read and enjoyed his detailed work in "Cassiodorus" and "Pagans", but "The Ruin of the Roman Empire" is a much deeper analysis and has a fair number of unusual points. He dislikes Justinian, who he blames for trying to recreate the old Empire through conquest, emptying the Treasury and exhausting the army but yet ignoring the real threat in the Balkans. He has a healthy sense of how the historians of the era backtracked and wrote it in such a way as to please. While he likes "The Consolation of Philosophy" (which I personally find very slow), he suspects that Boethius may in fact have been guilty of the conspiracy that led to his imprisonment and death, perhaps even in a vain effort to take Theoderic's throne.
But his most intriguing insight is that we've gotten the whole barbarians crossing into the Empire wrong by writing it as tragedy. He points out the series of half-barbarian statesmen who kept the West running (Stilicho, Aetius, Ricimer) while Emperors played. Like Theoderic, a fair number of the barbarian rulers, such as the Vandals, adapted quite easily to the Roman style of governance, in some cases exceeding the skill of the so-called teachers.
But O'Donnell's key point is that our main takeaways--the long-term vision of rapacious barbarians down to the sense that civilization perishes from, rather than depends on, immigration--a wrong-headed. This is his breath-taking summation:
"Old errors are easy to reenact--as fading empires, bereft of self-awareness, struggle again to use their old power to preserve themselves, and in so doing risk weakening beyond repair; as religious communities mistake their faith for destiny and find pretexts for behavior that goes beyond even the unconscionable and the imaginable. Today, as in the sixth century, a calm sense for the long view, the broad view and a pragmatic preference for the better rather than the best can have a hard time overcoming the noisy anxiety of those who would transform--that is, ruin--what they do not understand."
Copyright 2008. Astonishing.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have just finished The Ruin of the Roman Empire. It took me approximately a month and a half, which is at least three times as I needed to get through James’s O’Donnell’s “Pagans”. Were I a less stubborn person, I would have put it down for good halfway through.

Mr. O’Donnell is clearly a master of his subject. Facts, histories, and biographical details, all expertly selected and interwoven, spring from his pen. When this book is at its best, when the lives of popes, emperors, and commoners are being drawn in crisp and breathing detail, it is hard to put Ruin down. At those times, Ruin resembles Pagans most strongly.

Regrettably, those episodes are the high points in what I found to be a most uneven read. Too often do we descend from the heights into the murk of recounting long-dead theosophical debates or, more commonly, simply a long diversion whose connection to the thesis of the book (insofar as it can be discerned) is unclear.

Perhaps the challenge lies with the subject matter. Mr. O’Donnell has taken on the task of reviewing what people really should be talking about when they talk about the “fall of the Roman Empire” - no small task, especially for a person of his familiarity with the topic. At no point did I feel that the author did not know what he wanted to say; rather that if he had been telling me in person, I might have periodically broken in to ask what we were talking about again, or perhaps gently tried to steer him back to his point. Where Pagans is a river of knowledge in spate, Ruin takes a more meandering course. More than a few times, I found myself washed up on its banks. It is for this reason, and certainly not a commentary on the author’s command of the subject, that I must only give it three stars.

[Robert Flaxman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though undoubtedly a pretty comprehensive survey of the Rome of late antiquity, I found this book to be somewhat challenging for the general or casual reader, and while I don’t doubt that this is not the fault of the author, the narrative promised by the cover (“the emperor who brought it down, the barbarians who could have saved it”) seems overstated as an organizing concept. I get that the goal of the book is to explain that just as Rome was not built in a day, neither did it collapse in one, or even in a single year as tradition generally has it, but the result is a lot of threads unspooling in all directions that are not always pulled together neatly. There is a lot of information here and you will undoubtedly learn something - including potentially about our modern society, the parallels to which are tantalizing and sometimes spelled out by the author - but don’t expect to burn through it or to follow absolutely everything that’s happening in the Mediterranean at the time.

[Peter C Lyon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wretched, maddening, and un-followable. The "Ulysses" of modern history books.

With all respect to Mr. O'Donnell's sublime erudition, this book is a hot mess. It lacks clear storylines and is, instead and unfortunately, a seeming regurgitation of everything he knows, with some cheeky modern comparisons peppered in (Pirates of Penzance?! James Bond?! C'mon man.)

A couple of fascinating parts are in the book, namely the Eritrean/Yemeni conflict in the fifth century and Belisarius' invasion of Tunis in the sixth. Each, along with descriptions of Persia at the time, could have been entire volumes on their own.

Overall, though, it was like panning for gold in a river -- sifting through oodles of dirt, mud, and silt to net a few tiny flakes of good stuff. Realizing this about 20% through, and wanting to preserve my sanity, I "punted" and skimmed through the rest.

[Paul Pessolano · Rating 2 out of 5]

“The Ruin of the Roman Empire.” by James J. O’Donnell, published by CCCO, an imprint of Harper Collins.

Category - Roman History. Publication Date - 2008.

First off, this book has to be a scholarly work and is definitely not a book for the casual reader. I picked this book up because I am interested in the history of Rome, especially around the time of Julius Caesar. This book takes one back to Ancient Rome and something I am totally not interested in. The book does have merit in that I read the entire book and found some very interesting facts that I did not know, but I still think I should have put this book down way before I hit 100 pages. Unless, of course, if one is totally absorbed in Ancient Roman History.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really struggled to finish this book and found myself skimming through long passages of tedious detail and too many sound-alike names. Other reviewers said it better than I can: I would find myself drawn in for a period of time with an historical tale that I was completely unaware of--the idea that it was a bad emperor who led to the final downfall of the Roman Empire rather than the "barbarians." That emperor was Justinian. However, the author's tendency to leap back and forth in time and from place to place and to include too many seemingly irrelevant characters made it very difficult to keep one's attention on the narrative.

[Stuart Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Argues that the Roman Empire ended not by "barbarian invasions" but through the ineptness and shortsightedness of its later emperors who could not think strategically or, in the case of Justinian, tried to force orthodoxy on all the many Christian communities. This is not a narrative history, so if you are relatively unfamiliar with Roman history in general or the period 400-700 CE specifically, this is probably not the book for you.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that sheds a new light on an old subject. Take what you think you know about the fall of the Roman Empire and throw that out the window. And the Byzantine Empire while you're at it.

This book gives a broad overview of a world that is wildly different from what history has always told us (us being the uninitiated, scholar-lite readers like myself). But that is nonetheless engaging and entertaining to read about.

[Barby · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author lays an interesting (albeit winded and slightly condescending) case that the fall of the Roman Empire was due to lack of term limits. In between tangents on clothing and fashion, he suggests Justinian's in ability to see the profit in peace vs. costly long wars was due to Justinian being "past his prime."

[Javier Masabanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro muy detallista que brinda una visión diferente de lo que acostumbramos a leer en los libros de historia tradicionales. Muestra el declive del Imperio Romano desde el punto de vista de pequeños actores como sacerdotes y terratenientes donde podemos vislumbrar como fue y pudo haber sido la historia fruto de las acciones de los grandes personajes que la moldearon en esa época.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

A well researched book about an interesting and often overlooked time period. However, the authors writing style makes it difficult and frustrating to follow. Numerous tangents and asides distract from the overall narrative, and the insistence on jumping between locations and time periods muddles the information.

[Moises Pittounikos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll give this 5 stars for the writers ability to spin a story. He is obviously a clever man and a truly talented wordsmith, which I like. A gifted writer can take you back to the ancient world itself.

The actual history probably isn't correct, but what it?

[Ed Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many interesting stories support the thesis that the dissolution of the Roman Empire was due more to the hubris and incompetence among leadership rather than the dilution of the empire by "Others". The writer provides masses of detail, but little explanation.

[Jim Witkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jumped around too much to hold my interest.

[G6 · Rating 4 out of 5]

PG 381

[Jim Swike · Rating 5 out of 5]

A greatly detailed study of the title. Great resource for research and / or term paper on the topic. Enjoy!

[Edward D. Bowling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good History

A lot of information that I'd never seen before. Lots of details, but a bit tedious sometimes. If you're interested in this thread of history, you will enjoy this book.

[Claire P · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit too long but I learned much about this time petiod and developed a great respect for Theodoric and the Goths.