ABSTRACT

The causes of the fall of the western empire in the fifth century have been endlessly debated since Augustine’s day, but those who have debated the question have all been westerners, and have tended to forget that the eastern empire did not fall till many centuries later. Many of the causes alleged for the fall of the west were common to the east, and therefore cannot be complete and self-sufficient causes. If, as the pagans said in 410, it was the gods, incensed by the apostasy of the empire, who struck it down, why did they not strike down the equally Christian eastern parts? If, as Salvian argues, it was God who sent the barbarians to chastize the sinful Romans, why did He not send barbarians to chastize the equally sinful Constantinopolitans? If Christianity, as Gibbon thought, sapped the empire’s morale and weakened it by internal schisms, why did not the more Christian east, with its much more virulent theological disputes, fall first?