The fall of the Roman Empire

by Arther Ferrill

"What cause the fall of Rome? Since Gibbon's day scholars have hotly debated the question and come up with answers ranging from blood poisoning to rampant immorality and excessive bureaucratization. In recent years, however, the most likely explanation has been neglected: was it not above all else a military collapse? Professor Ferrill believes it was, and sets out his case in this provocative book. In the last decade of the fourth century AD one emperor -- Theodosius -- still ruled over an Empire larger than that of the great Augustus, and commanded a massive army of several hundred thousand men. Less than eighty years later, both Empire and army in the West had been wiped out. How did this happen? Barbarian invasions certainly played their part, but the fundamental cause, Professor Ferrill shows, lay within the Roman army itself. The huge mobile reserve created by Constantine (306-337) fatally weakened the frontier forces and emphasized cavalry at the expense of infantry. The introdu