Selected Texts on The Fall of Rome

Ammianus Marcellinus (c.330-395 CE):

History, XIV.16: The Luxury of the Rich in Rome

The following was written only about a generation before Alaric plundered Rome in
410. Ammianus Marcellinus, who observed Rome on a visit, saw the city as full of
emptiness and lacking all real culture. It shows us that the threat was not only from
without, but a corruption from within.

Rome is still looked upon as the queen of the earth, and the name of the Roman
people is respected and venerated. But the magnificence of Rome is defaced by
the inconsiderate levity of a few, who never recollect where they are born, but fall
away into error and licentiousness as if a perfect immunity were granted to vice.
Of these men, some, thinking that they can be handed down to immortality by
means of statues, are eager after them, as if they would obtain a higher reward
from brazen figures unendowed with sense than from a consciousness of upright
and honorable actions; and they are even anxious to have them plated over with
gold!

Others place the summit of glory in having a couch higher than usual, or splendid
apparel; and so toil and sweat under a vast burden of cloaks which are fastened
to their necks by many clasps, and blow about by the excessive fineness of the
material, showing a desire by the continual wriggling of their bodies, and
especially by the waving of the left hand, to make more conspicuous their long
fringes and tunics, which are embroidered in multiform figures of animals with
threads of divers colors.

Others again, put on a feigned severity of countenance, and extol their

patrimonial estates in a boundless degree, exaggerating the yearly produce of
their fruitful fields, which they boast of possessing in numbers, from east and
west, being forsooth ignorant that their ancestors, who won greatness for Rome,
were not eminent in riches; but through many a direful war overpowered their
foes by valor, though little above the common privates in riches, or luxury, or
costliness of garments.

The whirlpool of banquets, and divers other allurements of luxury I omit, lest I
grow too wordy. Many people drive on their horses recklessly, as if they were
post horses, with a legal right of way, straight down the boulevards of the city,
and over the flint-paved streets, dragging behind them huge bodies of slaves,
like bands of robbers. And many matrons, imitating these men, gallop over every
quarter of the city, with their heads covered, and in closed carriages. And so the
stewards of these city households make careful arrangement of the cortege; the
stewards themselves being conspicuous by the wands in their right hands. First
of all before the master's carriage march all his slaves concerned with spinning
and working; next come the blackened crew employed in the kitchen; then the
whole body of slaves promiscuously mixed with a gang of idle plebeians; and
last of all, the multitude of eunuchs, beginning with the old men and ending with
the boys, pale and unsightly from the deformity of their features.

Those few mansions which were once celebrated for the serious cultivation of
liberal studies, now are filled with ridiculous amusements of torpid indolence,
echoing with the sound of singing, and the tinkle of flutes and lyres. You find a
singer instead of a philosopher; a teacher of silly arts is summoned in place of
an orator, the libraries are shut up like tombs, organs played by waterpower are
built, and lyres so big that they look like wagons! and flutes, and huge machines
suitable for the theater. The Romans have even sunk so far, that not long ago,
when a famine occurred, and the foreigners were driven from the city, those who
practiced liberal accomplishments were expelled instantly, yet the followers of
actresses and all their ilk were suffered to stay; and three thousand dancing girls
were not even questioned, but remained unmolested along with the members of
their choruses, and a corresponding number of dancing masters.
On account of the frequency of epidemics in Rome, rich men take absurd
precautions to avoid contagion, but even when these rules are observed thus
stringently, some persons, if they be invited to a wedding, though the vigor of their
limbs be vastly diminished, yet when gold is pressed in their palm they will go with
all activity as far as Spoletum! So much for the nobles. As for the lower and
poorer classes some spend the whole night in the wine shops, some lie
concealed in the shady arcades of the theaters. They play at dice so eagerly as to
quarrel over them, snuffing up their nostrils, and making unseemly noises by
drawing back their breath into their noses; or (and this is their favorite amusement
by far) from sunrise till evening, through sunshine or rain, they stay gaping and
examining the charioteers and their horses; and their good and bad qualities.
Wonderful indeed it is to see an innumerable multitude of people, with prodigious
eagerness, intent upon the events of the chariot race!

Source: William Stearns Davis, ed., Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts from the
Sources, 2 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912-13), Vol. II: Rome and the West)

Rutilius Numantius, 413 AD,

The Greatness of Rome in the Days of Ruin

Rutilius Numantius, a native of Gaul who was the City Prefect of

Rome, wrote this poem in praise of the city that he had seen plundered by Alaric. He was
a pagan, one of the circle of literary men who fixed their eyes on the glorious past, and
despised Christianity. His tribute to the greatness of Rome is clear evidence that even the
awful calamities of the time did not shatter men's faith in the abiding majesty and empire
of the Eternal City.

The Greatness of Rome in the Days of Ruin

Give ear to me, Queen of the world which you rule, O Rome, whose
place is amongst the stars!
Give ear to me, mother of men, and mother of gods!
Through your temples we draw near to the very heaven.
 You do we sing, yea and while the Fates give us life, You we will sing.
For who can live and forget you?
Before your image my soul is abased---graceless and sacrilegious.

It were better for me to forget the sun,

For your beneficent influence shines
Even as his light to the limits of the habitable world.
Yea the sun himself, in his vast course, Seems only to turn on
your behalf.
He rises upon your domains;
And on your domains, again he sets.

As far as from one pole to the other spreads the vital power of nature, so far your
virtue has penetrated over the earth.

For all the scattered nations you created one common country.

Those that struggle against you are forced to bend to your yoke; Yet you proffer to the
conquered the partnership in your just laws.
You have made one city what was aforetime the wide world!

O! Queen, the remotest regions of the universe join in a hymn to your glory!
Our heads are raised freely under your peaceful yoke.
For you to reign, is less than to have so deserved to reign;
The grandeur of your deeds surpasses even your mighty destinies.

Source: William Stearns Davis, ed., Readings in Ancient History: Illustrative Extracts from
the Sources, 2 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1912-13), Vol. II:
Rome and the West, pp. 318-319.

Pope Leo I and Attila the Hun

Prospers Early Account

Prosper, a Christian chronicler, writing about 455, gives the following simple account of Leo's
famous interview with the king of the Huns three years before:
Now Attila, having once more collected his forces which had been scattered in Gaul [at
the battle of Chalons], took his way through Pannonia into Italy. . . To the emperor and
the senate and Roman people none of all the proposed plans to oppose the enemy
seemed so practicable as to send legates to the most savage king and beg for peace.
Our most blessed Pope Leo trusting in the help of God, who never fails the righteous
in their trials undertook the task, accompanied by Avienus, a man of consular rank,
and the prefect Trygetius. And the outcome was what his faith had foreseen; for when
the king had received the embassy, he was so impressed by the presence of the high
priest that he ordered his army to give up warfare and, after he had promised peace,
he departed beyond the Danube.

An Anonyomus Later Account [somewhat condensed]

In a life of Leo the Great by some later author, whose name is unknown to us, the episode
as told by Prosper has been developed into a miraculous tale calculated to meet the taste of the
time:

Attila, the leader of the Huns, who was called the scourge of God, came into
Italy, inflamed with fury, after he had laid waste with most savage frenzy Thrace and
Illyricum, Macedonia and Moesia, Achaia and Greece, Pannonia and Germany. He was
utterly cruel in inflicting torture, greedy in plundering, insolent in abuse. . . . He
destroyed Aquileia from the foundations and razed to the ground those regal cities,
Pavia and Milan ; he laid waste many other towns, and was rushing down upon Rome.
[This is, of course, an exaggeration. Attila does
not seem to have destroyed the buildings, even in Milan and Pavia.]
Then Leo had compassion on the calamity of Italy and Rome, and with one of the
consuls and a lar,e part of the Roman senate he went to meet Attila. The old man of
harmless simplicity, venerable in his gray hair and his majestic garb, ready of his own
will to give himself entirely for the defense of his flock, went forth to meet the tyrant who
was destroying all things. He met Attila, it is said, in the neighborhood of the river
Mincio, and he spoke to the grim monarch, saying "The senate and the people of
Rome, once conquerors of the world, now indeed vanquished, come before thee as
suppliants. We pray for mercy and deliverance. O Attila, thou king of kings, thou
couldst have no greater glory than to see suppliant at thy feet this people before whom
once all peoples and kings lay suppliant. Thou hast subdued, O Attila, the whole circle
of the lands which it was granted to the Romans, victors over all peoples, to conquer.
Now we pray that thou, who hast conquered others, shouldst conquer thyself The
people have felt thy scourge; now as suppliants they would feel thy mercy."
As Leo said these things Attila stood looking upon his venerable garb and aspect,
silent, as if thinking deeply. And lo, suddenly there were seen the apostles Peter and
Paul, clad like bishops, standing by Leo, the one on the right hand, the other on the left.
They held swords stretched out over his head, and threatened Attila with death if he did
not obey the pope's command. Wherefore Attila was appeased he who had raged as
one mad. He by Leo's intercession, straightway promised a lasting peace and withdrew
beyond the Danube.

From the accounts in J. H. Robinson, Readings in European History (Boston: Ginn, 1905), pp. 49-51