Author:
Watts, Edward Jay, 1975- author.
ImprintNew York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021]
Descriptionxi, 301 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm
Note:Introduction: A snapshot and a story -- Decline in the Roman Republic -- The republic of violence and the empire of peace -- Manufacturing the Golden Age of Trajan -- Renewal without decline : the Antonines and Severans -- Decline and false renewal : the third century crisis -- Decline, renewal, and the invention of Christian progress -- Roman renewal versus Christian progress -- When renewal fails to arrive -- The loss of the Roman West and the Christian future -- Justinian, Roman progress, and the death of the Western Roman Empire -- Rome, the Arabs, and iconoclasm -- Old Rome, new Rome, and future Rome -- The retrenchment of one Roman Empire, the resurgence of another -- The captures of Constantinople -- The fall of Roman Constantinople and the end of Roman renewal -- Roman renewal after the fall -- The dangerous idea -- Conclusion: Roman decline and fall in contemporary America.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references and index.
Note:"The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome: The History of a Dangerous Idea traces the development and use of the rhetoric of Roman decline and renewal across 2200 years. Beginning in the Roman Republic at the turn of the 2nd century BC and stretching to the uses of Roman decline in the present day, the book argues that the use of this common rhetoric frequently blamed people for sparking Roman decline. It also evolves over time. In the Republic, politicians like Cato pointed to decline in the present and promised future renewal. Augustus and other emperors beginning a new imperial dynasty often claimed to have sparked a renewal that corrected the decline caused by their predecessors. Early Christian emperors like Constantine and Theodosius I experimented with a rhetoric of progress in which they claimed that Rome's embrace of Christianity meant it would become better than it ever had been before. The fifth century loss of the west forced Christians like Augustine to disentangle Christian and Roman progress. It also enabled the eastern emperor Justinian to justify invasions of Africa, Italy, and Spain as restorations of lost territories to Roman rule. Western emperors ranging from Charlemagne to Charles V used similar claims to support military action directed from the west against the east. Figures as diverse as Napoleon and Mussolini show that the allure of restoring Rome remained potent into the twentieth century, but the story of Rome's decline and fall, popularized by eighteenth century writers like Montesquieu and Gibbon, is now most frequently evoked as a warning about the consequence of social or political change."-- Provided by publisher.
Note:Recommended in Resources for College Libraries.
