Capital of the western part of the Roman Empire. Western Roman Empire: History of the Fall

It is believed that history does not have a subjunctive mood. But the whole historical process is a choice from numerous "if". "Around the World" suggested what today's life would be like if one day history had taken a different path.

East - West

Imperial ambitions - the very word "empire" and the ideal of a powerful multinational power - a gift to European civilization from ancient rome. For many centuries, the sovereigns of Europe tried to recreate the standard, declaring themselves the heirs of the Western Roman Empire, which collapsed at the end of the 5th century. The Western and Eastern Roman Empires existed as two equal parts of a single whole since 395. The first of them had little chance of surviving the systemic crisis into which it was sinking ever deeper. In 475, Emperor Julius Nepos was expelled by his commander and proclaimed emperor by his infant son. Soon the boy was overthrown by the rebellious barbarian mercenaries, after which they sent signs of power to Zeno, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. Zeno recognized Julius Nepos as emperor, but he never regained control even over Italy. The Eastern Roman Empire lasted for more than a thousand years before it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 - and Muscovite Russia had its lost imperial ideal. How could events have developed if the Western Roman Empire had not fallen?

5th century (2nd century of the Diocletian era)

Roman emperors rely on Christianity as a new state ideology. The idea of ​​Roman citizenship has long ceased to unite the heterogeneous population of an immense power. Realizing this, the emperors purposefully planted Christianity as a common religion and ideology from the center to the borders, in the only version approved at the Council of Nicaea. The capital is transferred from Ravenna back to Rome, which also becomes a religious center. As part of the movement to Christianize the empire and unite its periphery, missionary communities are settling along the borders, pushing out heresies and pagan cults. Asceticism and piety are promoted at court. As a result of several successful military campaigns, the barbarian kingdoms claiming independence as part of the empire turn into provinces with an administration loyal to the capital.

8th century (5th century of the Diocletian era)

The viceroy of the Roman emperor in the province of Frankia, Charles Martell, converts to Islam. Striving for independence, he tries to enlist the support of a strong neighbor - the Arabs who have seized the Iberian Peninsula. Charles Martel converts to their religion and declares his lands an independent Frankish emirate from the emperor.

9th century ( II–III century Hijri)

Muslims conquer Rome. Karl Musa, the grandson of Karl Martel, nicknamed the Great, first enters into an alliance with the emperor of the West against the Avars, who harass them with raids. Having defeated the Avars, Karl swears that he is ready, together with his people, to return to the bosom of the Christian church, is with an army on the Apennine Peninsula and treacherously captures Rome. Most of the provinces of the empire are part of the Frankish Caliphate proclaimed by Charles.

X–XI century (5th century AH)

The Mohammedan faith penetrates Scandinavia and the British Isles. The Norwegian king Olaf converts to Islam and brings the Koran and Sharia norms to the Scandinavian world. A native of the Roman Caliphate, William defeats the Anglo-Saxon King Harold and implants Mohammedanism in Britain. Christians retain influence in Eastern Europe, in the Balkans and in the Eastern Roman Empire with its capital in Constantinople. Contradictions between Sunnis and Shiites are growing, the former prevail in the south, the latter in the north of Europe. The former greatness is preserved by the Holy Roman Caliphate.

13th century (6th century AH)

Muslims of Europe storm Constantinople. When the influential Islamic scholar Innocent of Rome called for a mass jihad, Sunni warriors were on a campaign to purge the North of the Shiite scourge. Thanks to diplomatic efforts, the conflict can be turned into an external military campaign - a campaign against the Eastern Roman Empire. After a long siege, the armies of the West capture Constantinople. The Balkans and Asia Minor are under Muslim rule.

XV–XVI century ( IX–X century hijri)

Islam penetrates New World and to Russia. The development of science and technology allowed Sunni and Shia travelers to pave the way to new lands in the Western Hemisphere. The last Christian ruler of Europe, Prince Ivan of Moscow, converts to Shiite Islam, in need of allies against Sunni enemies.

18th century (12th century AH)

New Islamic State Established in Western Hemisphere United Imamate- as a result of the uprising that was raised by the Shiites of the northern colonies of the New World. Mohammed Washington became the first imam.

20th century (XIV century AH)

The mystic Adolf ibn Alois, who seized power in the Roman Caliphate, unleashes a war against the Moscow Caliphate. The latter, joining forces with Shiite Britain, the Nordic countries and the United Imamate, is victorious. After big war, which lasted six years, Sunnis and Shiites, shocked by the scale of losses, conclude Eternal Peace.

Outcome. During the years of the last war between Shiites and Sunnis, a decision was made to create a World Ummah - the Islamic ideal of statehood, a global community that controls freedoms and ensures peace on the planet. 100% of financial transactions are controlled by the World Islamic Bank. Freedom of speech proclaimed. There is a special procedure for publishing video materials on the Web. Non-Muslims in cities can only live in certain neighborhoods. Asia has been declared a zone of religious tolerance, but university degrees from this part of the world are recognized only within it.

Illustrations: Andrey Dorokhin

slave owner state, educated as a result of the division of Rome. empires in the west and east. parts. The separation of the west from the east and the formation of two empires will be completed. took shape in 395 after the death of the imp. Theodosius. Z. R. i. included the entire Yu.-Z. part of Europe, Britain and west. part of the sowing coast of Africa. In Z. R. and. with greater force than in the East. part, the crisis of slavery affected. building, as a result of which in the 5th c. uprisings of slaves and columns and invasions of various. (ch. arr. Germanic) tribes led to the fall of Z. R. and. The conditional date of the fall of Z. R. and. consider overthrown. mercenary leader Odoacer last. Rome. imp. Romulus Augustulus (476). On the territory Z. R. i. several were created. so-called barbarian kingdoms.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

Western Roman Empire

In the IV century. In addition to Italy, the slave-owning Roman Empire included most of Britain, Spain, Gaul, the regions on the right bank of the Danube, the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, the Mediterranean islands, Cyrenaica, Syria, Northern Arabia, part of Mesopotamia, North Africa and Egypt.

At the end of the IV century. the empire was divided into the Eastern Empire, with its capital in Constantinople, and the Western Empire, whose head no longer lived in Rome, but in Trier, Milan or Ravenna. Since that time, the paths of historical development of the Eastern and Western empires have become different. However, both in the East and in the West in the III-V centuries. the same thing happened general process decomposition of the slave-owning mode of production and the emergence of elements of the feudal system.

By the beginning of the III century. in most of the empire, there was already desolation of land, the degradation of crafts and an acute shortage of labor caused by the low productivity of slave labor. There was a general decline in production based on slave labor. One of the results of the crisis that began was the ruin a large number medium and small slave owners. Their farms fell into decay, they fell into debt and were unable to pay state taxes. The lands and slaves of such slave owners were sold or became the property of creditors. The land was increasingly concentrated in the hands of large landowners.

The number of huge estates increased, which, according to contemporaries, exceeded the vast urban areas in size. Cities, with the exception of some of the largest trade and craft centers (mainly in the eastern half of the empire), were empty. Urban craft and trade froze. Centers of economic life from the end of the III century. moved to the estates of large landowners. Here, rural artisans produced everything they needed, exchanging the products of their craft in local markets. Commodity production and money turnover were reduced. Most state taxes from the end of the III century. already charged in products. The economy became largely natural.

In close connection with the disintegration of the slave-owning mode of production, the elements of new production relations were born and strengthened in the empire. The colony was gaining more and more importance. Small tenants - columns usually came out of the number of landless peasants. Land was taken away from the peasants for the establishment of colonies - cities inhabited by retired veteran soldiers. The plots of the peasants were seized by wealthy neighbors. The land of the peasants, who owed money to the treasury and usurers, was sold for debts. Deprived of land, the peasants either joined the ranks of the urban poor or rented plots of land in large private and imperial estates.

The columns received from the landowner part of the necessary agricultural equipment, and sometimes 1-2 slaves, paid the rent in cash and, having paid the owner, could leave his estate after the lease expired. But often they rented the same land from generation to generation.

By the 3rd century there were already many such hereditary columns in Italy and in the provinces, their number was constantly growing. Many landowners at that time began to prefer sharecropping (receiving a share of the harvest) over money, since with a natural basis of economy and a relatively weak development of commodity production, the colons ruined cash payments, and they were unable to fulfill their obligations.

Usually columns not only gave the landowner part of the harvest, but also worked out in his favor for several days a year. Since part of the harvest remained to a certain extent at the disposal of the colon, he, in contrast to the slave, was to some extent interested in the results of his labor and worked better than the slave. Therefore, as the crisis in slaveholding relations deepened, the colonies began to play an ever greater role in production.

Many owners began to set slaves free, providing them with plots of land, for which they, like columns, paid a share of the harvest and worked for a certain number of days. Many planted slaves on the ground so that they would keep some of the products of their labor for themselves. Such slaves, if not legally, then actually in position, were close to the columns.

Ruined small slaveowners, as well as debtors who cultivated plots taken from them by creditors, often became colonies. Prisoners who worked on the lands of emperors and large owners now turned into colons, and not into slaves.

Thus, in the Roman slave-owning society, a small economy of dependent farmers developed in combination with large-scale land ownership. “Small farming ... has become the only profitable form of agriculture” (F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, M. 1955, p. 154.).

Large landowners, in need of labor, tried to keep the columns in the estate. This was facilitated by the ever-increasing debt of the columns, which often could not pay for the inventory and land received from the owners. The landowners also used direct coercion.

In 332, Emperor Constantine I, going towards large landowners, issued a law ordering the return of a fugitive column to the estate from which he fled. Subsequently, the scope of this law expanded. Not only the colon, but also his descendants were obliged to remain in the estate to which they were assigned. So the columns were attached to the ground. The plot on which the columns sat could only be sold together with them. In the middle of the IV century. the sale without land and rural slaves was prohibited. Thus, from that time on, in the Roman Empire, a special agricultural population, attached to the land, began to be created, consisting of rural slaves and columns, the difference in the legal status of which was actually erased in practice.

From the former slaves, the farmers of the IV-V centuries. differed in that the master owned them only together with the land they cultivated. In addition, they retained certain rights to some part of the crop. These features brought the columns and slaves planted to the land closer to the future medieval serfs.

However, the columns and slaves, planted on the ground, could not, without the permission of the master, dispose of either their inventory, or even their share of the crop, not to mention the land. All this was considered the property of the landowner. The Lord often took away the necessary products from them, forced them to bear unbearable duties, subjected them to corporal punishment and threw them into dungeons. To complain about their masters in court, the columns, like slaves, were forbidden. Thus, the interest in labor of the colon (as well as that of the slave planted on the ground) now became only a little greater than that of the slave of the past, and the transition to the colonat could not liquidate the crisis of the slave-owning order. The colonat was only the germ of a new mode of production. This new mode of production could develop only as a result of a revolutionary breakdown of the relations of the old world that hindered it, and above all of the slave-owning state.

Roman state from the end of the III century. assumed the character of an undisguised military dictatorship. Imperial power became unlimited. All management was concentrated in the hands of the emperor and the officials appointed by him, the highest of which formed his council. All the forces of the military dictatorship were directed towards the implementation of two closely related goals - the suppression of the movements of the exploited masses within the empire and the armed struggle against the "barbarians" attacking the Roman borders. The number of military forces was significantly increased. The taxes that went to the maintenance of this army and officials put heavy pressure on the working population of the Roman Empire.

Particularly difficult was the situation of the free peasants who still survived in many provinces, who bore a huge burden of taxes.

From the middle of the IV century. an increasing number of individual peasants and entire villages tried to find protection from the arbitrariness of tax collectors, officials and soldiers and from violence on the part of their wealthy neighbors, surrendering themselves under the patronage (the so-called patrocinius) of one or another land magnate. By transferring their land plots to these magnates, the peasants moved to the position of columns. Patrocinius, thanks to which free peasants from subjects of the state became subjects of large landowners, undoubtedly contributed to the development of elements of feudalism in the empire and the weakening of the slave state. Columns of emperors, as well as medium and small slave owners, passed under the patrocinium of large owners. All this further strengthened the position of large landowners.

Being united in the senatorial estate and being the economically dominant social group in the empire, the landed magnates at first supported a strong state power that fought against popular uprisings. But gradually, individuals strong enough to maintain their own armed forces, prisons, etc. emerged from among the large landowners. The large landowners had to pay a land tax to the state, bear some extraordinary expenses, and hand over their columns to the army. All this caused dissatisfaction of large owners. They wanted to exploit the columns and peasants, taken under the patronage, only in their own favor. Social base imperial power became increasingly narrow.

But the struggle of the gradually feudalized landed aristocracy with the Roman government only partially undermined its power. A crushing blow to the slave-owning state was inflicted by the revolutionary movements of slaves and columns, who acted in alliance with the "barbarians" against the slave-owning system (For more information about the late Roman Empire, see Volume II of World History.).

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

The great empire, forcing enemies to tremble for centuries before its greatness, in the third - fourth centuries of our era reached the limit of its own strength, approached the very edge of the abyss of its own power, and no longer had the opportunity to grow further. But what can I say here ... Back in the first century of our era, it was already so great that it simply did not have physical ability control all of their outlying provinces. News of riots and riots breaking out every now and then, oh natural disasters, about sudden outbreaks of epidemics came to Rome with a very significant delay. And, of course, it took a very long time to convey the decrees from Rome to the local administration in the provinces. So it turned out that the procurators ruled locally as best they could, adapting to the mentality of a particular province, however, officially they acted on behalf of Rome, although, in fact, they were tyrannical.

So, in general, we can assume that the division of the greatest Empire of the world was due to an urgent need, which was carried out for the first time in 293 by the highest decree of Emperor Diocletian (who is famous, it turns out, not only for the fact that he voluntarily retired from imperial affairs to the village, where he happily grew cabbage, and also divided the Roman Empire into two parts: into Western and Eastern, which, in turn, were divided into two more parts). True, such a tetrarchy, created by the emperor Diocletian, did not last long. Emperor Constantine reunited the country, then again wanted to divide it into four parts and put his sons at the head of each of the parts, but the death of two of them forced Emperor Constantius II to reunite the country in 350.

After the death of Emperor Jovian in 364, a new division of the empire took place, albeit unofficially. It’s just that Valentinian the First began to rule the Western part, and his brother Valens II began to rule the Eastern part. This continued until 394, until Emperor Eugene usurped power in the West and the Eastern Emperor Theodosius the First had to intervene to overthrow the insolent. Theodosius reunited the country for a very short time, and then again divided the empire between his two sons. He gave the west to Honorius, and the east to Arcadia. The empire was still considered a single state, they say, only two ruled the country imperial houses but you can't argue with the facts. From the time of Honorius and Arcadius, the Roman Empire never again had a single ruler.

Capital

Of course, with such metamorphoses taking place with the country, it is logical that two capitals spontaneously formed in the state. The capital city of the eastern part was determined by the city of Byzantium, under the emperor Constantine renamed Constantinople. It, in general, remained the unchanged capital of the Byzantine (eastern) Roman Empire. But the capital of the Western Roman Empire was repeatedly transferred by the Caesars from city to city. Under the emperor Honorius in 395, the city of Mediolan (this is modern Milan) was declared the capital. However, it soon became clear that this undoubtedly beautiful Lombard city, located in the Italian north, was a very, very unsafe place in order to be the residence of the emperor. So, for some very short period, the capital returned to the good old one again. And then, the choice of the emperors of the Western Roman Empire fell on Ravenna - a small, albeit very pretty town located in a remote province and surrounded on all sides by swamps. The Po Delta, which flows into the Adriatic Sea, is the location of Ravenna, although it is not worth it to say that the city flourished only in those two centuries while it was the residence of the Western Roman emperors.

Ravenna was founded long before the birth of Christ, although exact date its basis is unknown. This was also testified by Dionysius of Halicarna, who claimed that Ravenna already existed seven centuries before the beginning. Strabo even claimed that Ravenna was founded at that distant time when the Hellenes were the sovereign masters of the Apennine Peninsula. One way or another, the first written mention of this city appeared much later, during the time of Sulla, and more specifically, in 82 BC. They say that he himself once, having appreciated the strategically advantageous location of Ravenna, made it his residence and made a lot of efforts to convince the Senate to build one of the numerous fleets of the empire here. Then Octavian Augustus, the successor of Gaius Julius, became interested in Ravenna, and continued to strengthen the fleet and expand the boundaries of the city. Ravenna, a city crossed by many canals, is rightly considered in Italy the second Venice.

The Western Roman Empire (lat. Imperium Romanum Occidentale) is the name of the western part of the Roman Empire accepted in historical literature from the 4th century to 476 - the time of the overthrow of the last emperor Romulus Augustulus by the leader of the barbarian mercenary detachment Odoacer. The Eastern Roman Empire was later called the Byzantine Empire. The tendency to divide the Roman Empire into parts manifested itself from the end of the 3rd century, during the 4th century the Roman emperors repeatedly divided it into two and even four parts, but there was no official division of the state, although since 395 the western and eastern parts of the empire had no common ruler , the empire was ruled by two emperors and two courts.

Mediolan became the residence of the emperor of the Western Roman Empire Honorius (395-423). Honorius became emperor at the age of eleven, the first years of his reign were spent under the regency of the military leader Stilicho, a vandal by birth. In 402, fleeing the invasion of the Goths, Honorius transferred his residence to Ravenna. In 408, Italy was invaded by barbarians, after which the imperial power of Honorius became nominal, barbarians and usurpers ruled in his empire. In 418, the Visigoths received the status of federates and settled their own state in the territory of Aquitaine, creating a de facto independent state.
Under Emperor Valentinian III (425-455), the capital of the empire was returned to Rome. Valentinian III became emperor at the age of six, his mother Galla Placidia (until 450) and the general Flavius ​​Aetius ruled the empire for him. For more than 20 years, Flavius ​​Aetius successfully repelled the barbarian invasions of the northern and eastern regions of the empire, but in 429 North Africa was lost, where the state of the Vandals was formed. In 451, Flavius ​​Aetius defeated Attila, stopping the Huns' invasion of Western Europe. Three years later, Aetius fell victim to palace intrigues, in 454 he was personally killed by Valentinian III. A year later, the emperor himself was assassinated by the senator Petronius Maximus.
Taking advantage of the overthrow of Valentinian III, the Vandals attacked Rome and sacked it (455). In the years 456-472, Sveb Ricimer was in charge of the imperial throne. As a barbarian leader, he could not proclaim himself Augustus, but his power over Rome allowed him to control the situation in the provinces of the Western Roman Empire to some extent. Ricimer preferred to manage state affairs through the emperor, who had only nominal power, and until his death he easily changed his puppets on the imperial throne. On September 4, 476, the head of the barbarian mercenary detachment in the Roman army, Odoacer, forced the emperor Romulus Augustulus to abdicate. He sent the imperial regalia to Constantinople, arguing that "just as there is one Sun in the sky, so there must be one emperor on earth." The fall of the Western Roman Empire is considered to be the beginning of the Middle Ages.

If we follow only the numbers and count the events from the time of Julius Caesar to the invasion of the Eternal City of the Visigoths under the leadership of Alaric I, then the Roman Empire lasted a little less than five centuries. And these centuries had such a powerful impact on the consciousness of the peoples of Europe that the phantom of empire still excites the general imagination. Many works are devoted to the history of this state, in which various versions of its “great fall” are expressed. True, if you put them in one picture, the fall as such does not work. Rather, it is a rebirth.

On August 24, 410, a group of rebellious slaves opened the Salt Gate of Rome to the Goths under the leadership of Alaric. For the first time in 800 years, since the day the Senon Gauls of King Brennus besieged the Capitol, the Eternal City saw an enemy within its walls.

A little earlier, in the same summer, the authorities tried to save the capital by giving the enemy three thousand pounds of gold (to "get" them, they had to melt the statue of the goddess of valor and virtue), as well as silver, silk, leather, Arabian pepper. As you can see, much has changed since the time of Brennus, to whom the townspeople proudly declared that Rome was redeemed not with gold, but with iron. But here even gold did not save: Alaric reasoned that by capturing the city, he would receive much more.

For three days, his soldiers plundered the former "center of the world." Emperor Honorius took refuge behind the walls of the well-fortified Ravenna, and his troops were slow to come to the aid of the Romans. The best commander of the state, Flavius ​​​​Stilicho (a vandal by origin) was executed two years earlier on suspicion of a conspiracy, and now there was practically no one to send against Alaric. And the Goths, having received their huge booty, simply left without hindrance.

Who is guilty?

“Tears flow from my eyes when I dictate…” confessed a few years later from a monastery in Bethlehem Saint Jerome, a translator of Holy Scripture into Latin. He was echoed by dozens of less significant writers. Less than 20 years before the invasion of Alaric, the historian Ammian Marcellinus, talking about current military-political affairs, was still encouraging: “Ignorant people ... say that such a hopeless darkness of disasters has never descended on the state; but they are mistaken, struck by the horror of recent misfortunes. Alas, he turned out to be wrong.

The Romans immediately rushed to look for reasons, explanations and guilty parties. The population of the humiliated empire, already largely Christianized, could not help but wonder: did the city fall because it turned away from the gods of its fathers? After all, back in 384, Aurelius Simmachus, the last leader of the pagan opposition, called Emperor Valentinian II - return the altar of Victory to the Senate!

The opposite point of view was held by the Bishop of Hippo in Africa (now Annaba in Algeria) Augustine, later called the Blessed. “Did you believe,” he asked his contemporaries, “Ammianus when he said: Rome is “destined to live as long as humanity exists”? Do you think the world is over now?” By no means! After all, the domination of Rome in the Earthly City, unlike the City of God, cannot last forever. The Romans won world domination by their valor, but it was inspired by the search for mortal glory, and therefore its fruits turned out to be transient. But the adoption of Christianity, recalls Augustine, saved many from the fury of Alaric. And indeed, the Goths, also already baptized, spared everyone who took refuge in the churches and at the relics of the martyrs in the catacombs.

Be that as it may, in those years Rome was no longer the magnificent and impregnable capital that the grandfathers of the citizens of the 5th century remembered. Increasingly, even emperors chose other large cities as their residence. And the Eternal City itself got a sad lot - the next 60 years, deserted Rome was ravaged by barbarians twice more, and in the summer of 476 a significant event occurred. Odoacer, German general in Roman service, dethroned last monarch- the young Romulus Augustus, after the overthrow of the derisive nicknamed Augustulus ("August"). How can one not believe in the irony of fate - only two ancient rulers of Rome were called Romulus: the first and the last. The state regalia were carefully preserved and sent to Constantinople, to the eastern emperor Zenon. So the Western Roman Empire ceased to exist, and the Eastern will last another 1000 years - until the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.

Why it happened - historians do not stop judging and dressing up to this day, and this is not surprising. After all we are talking about the exemplary empire in our retrospective imagination. In the end, the term itself came into modern Romance languages ​​(and into Russian) from the foremother of Latin. In most of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, traces of Roman domination remained - roads, fortifications, aqueducts. Classical education, based on ancient tradition, continues to be at the center of Western culture. The language of the disappeared empire until the 16th-18th centuries served as the international language of diplomacy, science, medicine, and until the 1960s it was the language of Catholic worship. Without Roman law, jurisprudence is unthinkable in the 21st century.

How did it happen that such a civilization collapsed under the blows of the barbarians? Hundreds of papers have been devoted to this fundamental question. Experts have found many factors of decline: from the growth of the bureaucracy and taxes to climate change in the Mediterranean basin, from the conflict between town and country to the smallpox pandemic... The German historian Alexander Demandt has 210 versions. Let's try and figure it out.

	Flavius ​​Romulus Augustus(461 (or 463) - after 511), often referred to as Augustulus, nominally ruled the Roman Empire from October 31, 475 to September 4, 476. The son of an influential army officer, Flavius ​​Orestes, who in the 70s of the 5th century rebelled against the emperor Julius Nepos in Ravenna and soon succeeded by placing his young offspring on the throne. However, the rebellion was soon suppressed by the commander Odoacer on behalf of the same Nepos, and the unlucky young man was deposed. However, contrary to cruel traditions, the authorities saved his life, the estate in Campania and the state salary, which he received until old age, including from the new ruler of Italy, the Goth Theodoric.
	Charles, during his lifetime, nicknamed the Great (747-814), ruled the Franks from 768, the Lombards from 774, the Bavarians from 778. In 800 he was officially declared the Roman emperor (princeps). The path to the heights of success of the man, from whose name in the Slavic languages, by the way, the word “king” originated, was a long one: he spent his youth under the “wing” of father Pepin the Short, then fought for dominance in Western Europe with his brother Carloman, but gradually with every year he increased his influence, until he finally turned into that powerful ruler of the lands from the Vistula to the Ebro and from Saxony to Italy, the gray-bearded and wise judge of the peoples, whom historical legend knows. In 800, having supported Pope Leo III in Rome, whom the countrymen were going to depose, he received from him a crown, with which he was crowned with the words: “Long live and conquer Charles Augustus, the great and peace-giving Roman emperor crowned by God.”
	Otto I, also called the Great by his contemporaries (912-973), Duke of Saxony, King of the Italians and Eastern Franks, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire since 962. He consolidated his power in Central Europe, Italy, and in the end repeated the "variant" of Charlemagne, only in a qualitatively new spirit - it was under him that the term "Holy Roman Empire" entered into official political use. In Rome, after a solemn meeting, the pope presented him with a new imperial crown in the church of St. Peter, and the emperor promised to return the former ecclesiastical possessions of the popes.
	Franz Joseph Karl von Habsburg(1768-1835), Austrian Emperor Franz II (1804-1835) and the last Emperor Holy Roman Empire (1792-1806). A man who has remained in history only as a kind family man and an implacable persecutor of revolutionaries is known mainly for the fact that he reigned in the era of Napoleon, hated him, fought with him. After the next defeat of the Austrians by Napoleonic troops, the Holy Roman Empire was abolished - this time forever, unless, of course, the current European Union is considered a peculiar form of Roman power (which, by the way, began with a treaty signed in 1957 in Rome).

Anatomy of decline

By the 5th century, apparently, living in an empire that stretched from Gibraltar to the Crimea became noticeably harder. The decay of cities is especially noticeable to archaeologists. For example, in the III-IV centuries, about a million people lived in Rome (centers with such a large number there were no inhabitants in Europe until the 1700s). But soon the population of the city is sharply reduced. How is this known? From time to time, bread, olive oil and pork were distributed to the townspeople at public expense, and from the surviving registers with the exact number of recipients, historians figured out when the decline began. So: 367 - about 1,000,000 Romans, 452 - 400,000 of them, after Justinian's war with the Goths - less than 300,000, in the X century - 30,000. A similar picture can be seen in all the western provinces of the empire. It has long been noted that the walls of medieval cities, which grew up on the site of the ancient ones, cover only about a third of the former territory. The immediate causes lie on the surface. For example: barbarians invade and settle on imperial lands, cities now have to be constantly defended - the shorter the walls, the easier it is to defend. Or - barbarians invade and settle on imperial lands, trade becomes more difficult, big cities there is not enough food. What's the way out? The former townspeople, of necessity, become farmers, and behind the fortress walls they only hide from endless raids.

Well, where cities fall into decay, handicrafts also wither. Disappears from everyday use - which is noticeable during excavations - high-quality ceramics, which during the Roman heyday was literally produced on an industrial scale and was widely distributed in villages. The pots used by the peasants during the period of decline cannot be compared with it, they are molded by hand. In many provinces, the potter's wheel is forgotten and will not be remembered for another 300 years! The manufacture of tiles almost ceases - roofs made of this material are replaced by easily rotting wooden planks. How much less ores are mined and metal products are smelted is known from an analysis of traces of lead in the Greenland ice (it is known that the glacier absorbs human waste products for thousands of kilometers around), carried out in the 1990s by French scientists: the level of deposits, contemporary to early Rome, remains unsurpassed until the industrial revolution at the beginning of modern times. And the end of the 5th century is at a prehistoric level ... Silver coins continue to be minted for some time, but it is clearly not enough, more and more Byzantine and Arab gold money is found, and small copper pennies completely disappear from circulation. This means that buying and selling has disappeared from the everyday life of the common man. There is nothing more to regularly trade and there is no need.

True, it is worth noting that simply changes in material culture are often taken as signs of decline. A typical example: in Antiquity, grain, oil, other bulk and liquid products were always transported in huge amphoras. Many of them have been found by archaeologists: in Rome, fragments of 58 million discarded vessels made up a whole hill of Monte Testaccio (“Pottery Mountain”). They are perfectly preserved in the water - they are usually used to find sunken ancient ships at the bottom of the sea. The stamps on the amphorae traced all the routes of Roman trade. But since the 3rd century, large clay vessels are gradually replaced by barrels, of which, naturally, there are almost no traces left - it’s good if an iron rim can be identified somewhere. It is clear that estimating the volume of such new trade is much more difficult than the old one. The same is with wooden houses: in most cases, only their foundations are found, and it is impossible to understand what once stood here: a miserable hut or a powerful building?

Are these reservations serious? Quite. Are they sufficient to cast doubt on the decline as such? Yet no. The political events of that time make it clear that it happened, but it is not clear how and when it began? Was it a consequence of the defeats from the barbarians, or, on the contrary, the cause of these defeats?

"The number of parasites is growing"

To this day, economic theory enjoys success in science: the decline began when taxes “suddenly” increased sharply at the end of the 3rd century. If initially the Roman Empire was actually a “state without bureaucracy” even by ancient standards (a country with a population of 60 million inhabitants kept only a few hundred officials on allowance) and allowed extensive local self-government, now, with an expanded economy, it became necessary to “strengthen the vertical authorities". There are already 25,000-30,000 officials in the service of the empire.

In addition, almost all monarchs, starting with Constantine the Great, spend funds from the treasury on the Christian church - priests and monks are exempt from taxes. And to the inhabitants of Rome, who received free food from the authorities (for votes in elections or simply so as not to rebel), Constantinopolitans are added. “The number of parasites is growing,” the English historian Arnold Jones caustically writes about these times.

It is logical to assume that the tax burden has increased unbearably as a result. In fact, the texts of that time are full of complaints about large taxes, and imperial decrees, on the contrary, are full of threats to non-payers. This is especially true of curials - members of municipal councils. They were responsible for making payments from their cities with their personal property and, naturally, constantly tried to evade the burdensome duty. Sometimes they even fled, and the central government, in turn, forbade them menacingly to leave their post even for the sake of joining the army, which was always considered a holy deed for a Roman citizen.

All these constructions are obviously quite convincing. Of course, people have complained about taxes since they appeared, but in late Rome this indignation sounded much louder than in early Rome, and not without reason. True, charity, which spread along with Christianity (help to the poor, rooming houses at churches and monasteries), gave some outlet, but in those days it had not yet had time to go beyond the walls of cities.

In addition, there is evidence that in the 4th century it was difficult to find soldiers for a growing army, even with a serious threat to the fatherland. And many combat units, in turn, had to engage in farming in places of long-term deployment by the artel method - the authorities no longer fed them. Well, since the legionnaires are plowing, and the rear rats are not going to serve, what is left for the inhabitants of the border provinces to do? Naturally, they arm themselves spontaneously, without "registering" their detachments with the imperial authorities, and they themselves begin to guard the border along its entire huge perimeter. As the American scientist Ramsey McMullen aptly remarked: “The townsfolk became soldiers, and the soldiers became townsfolk.” It is logical that the official authorities could not rely on anarchist self-defense units. That is why barbarians are beginning to be invited into the empire - first individual mercenaries, then entire tribes. This worried many. The Bishop of Cyrene, Synesius, in his speech "On the Kingdom" stated: "We hired wolves instead of watchdogs." But it was too late, and although many barbarians served faithfully and brought much good to Rome, everything ended in disaster. Approximately according to the following scenario. In 375, Emperor Valens allows the Goths to cross the Danube and settle in Roman territory, who retreat west under the onslaught of the Hunnic hordes. Soon, due to the greed of the officials responsible for the supply of provisions, hunger begins among the barbarians, and they raise a riot. In 378, the Roman army was utterly defeated by them at Adrianople (now Edirne in European Turkey). Valens himself fell in battle.

Similar stories of a smaller scale occurred in many. In addition, the poor from among the citizens of the empire itself began to show increasing dissatisfaction: what kind of homeland is it, which not only stifles with taxes, but also invites its own destroyers to itself. Richer and more cultured people, of course, remained patriots longer. And the detachments of the rebellious poor - the Bagauds ("militant") in Gaul, the Scamars ("navigators") in the Danube, the Bukols ("shepherds") in Egypt - easily entered into alliances with the barbarians against the authorities. Even those who did not openly rebelled were passive when they invaded and did not offer much resistance if they were promised not to be plundered too much.

	The main monetary unit throughout most of imperial history was the denarius, first issued back in the 3rd century BC. e. Its denomination was equal to 10 (later 16) smaller coins - asses. At first, even under the Republic, denarii were minted from 4 grams of silver, then the content of the precious metal fell to 3.5 grams, under Nero they were generally produced in an alloy with copper, and in the 3rd century inflation reached such a huge scale that this money disappeared altogether meaning to release.
	In the Eastern Roman Empire, which far outlived the Western and used in official everyday life more Greek language than Latin, in Greek, of course, money was also called. The basic unit of calculation was a liter, which, depending on the sample and the metal, was equal to 72 (gold liter), 96 (silver) or 128 (copper) drachmas. At the same time, the purity of all these metals in the coin, as usual, decreased over time. In circulation there were also old Roman solidi, which are usually called nomisms, or bezants, or, in Slavic, goldsmiths, and silver miliarises, which make up one thousandth of a liter. All of them were minted until the 13th century, and were in use even later.
	The Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, and especially its era when Maria Theresa ruled, was most famous in monetary terms for the thaler. They are now famous, they are popular with numismatists, and in some places in Africa they are said to be used by shamans. This large silver coin, minted in the 16th-19th centuries, was approved by a special Esslingen imperial mint charter in 1524 according to the standard of 27.41 grams of pure precious metal. (From it, by the way, comes the name of the dollar in English vowels - that's the continuity of empires in history.) Soon the new financial unit took a leading place in international trade. In Russia they were called efimki. Moreover, money of the same standard was widely used: ecu and piastres are only variants and modifications of the taler. He himself existed in Germany until the 1930s, when a coin of three marks was still called a thaler. Thus, he long outlived the empire that gave birth to him.

unfortunate coincidences

But why did the empire suddenly find itself in such a position that it had to take unpopular measures - to invite mercenaries, raise taxes, inflate the bureaucracy? After all, the first two centuries of our era, Rome successfully held a vast territory and even captured new lands without resorting to the help of foreigners. Why was it suddenly necessary to divide the state between the co-rulers and build a new capital on the Bosphorus? Something went wrong? And why, again, did the eastern half of the state, unlike the western, survive? After all, the invasion of the Goths began precisely from the Byzantine Balkans. Here, some historians see an explanation in pure geography - the barbarians could not overcome the Bosphorus and penetrate into Asia Minor, therefore, vast and not devastated lands remained in the rear near Constantinople. But it can be objected that the same vandals, heading for North Africa, for some reason easily crossed the wider Gibraltar.

In general, as the famous historian of Antiquity Mikhail Rostovtsev said, great events do not happen because of one thing, they always mix demography, culture, strategy ...

Here are just some of the points of such disastrous contacts for the Roman Empire, in addition to those that have already been discussed above.

First, the empire appears to have been hit by a massive smallpox epidemic at the end of the second century, which reduced the population by 7% to 10%, according to conservative estimates. Meanwhile, the Germans north of the border were experiencing a birth boom.

Secondly, in the 3rd century, gold and silver mines in Spain dried up, and the new, Dacian (Romanian), state lost by 270. Apparently, there were no more significant deposits of precious metals at his disposal. But it was necessary to mint a coin and in huge quantities. In this regard, it still remains a mystery how Constantine the Great (312-337) managed to restore the solidus standard, and the successors of the emperor managed to keep the solidus very stable: the gold content in it did not decrease in Byzantium until 1070. The English scientist Timothy Garrard put forward a witty conjecture: perhaps in the 4th century the Romans received yellow metal along the caravan routes from trans-Saharan Africa (although the chemical analysis of the solids that have come down to us does not confirm this hypothesis yet). Nevertheless, inflation in the state is becoming more and more monstrous, and it is not possible to cope with it in any way.

It also fails because the government turned out to be psychologically unprepared for the challenges of the time. Neighbors and foreign subjects have changed their combat tactics and way of life quite a lot since the founding of the empire, and upbringing and education taught governors and generals to look for managerial models in the past. Flavius ​​Vegetius wrote a characteristic treatise on military affairs just at that time: he thinks that all troubles can be dealt with if the classic legion of the Augustan and Trajan eras is restored. Obviously, this was a delusion.

Finally - and this is perhaps the most important reason - the pressure on the empire from outside objectively intensified. military organization the state created under Octavian at the turn of the eras could not cope with the simultaneous war on many frontiers. For a long time, the empire was simply lucky, but already under Marcus Aurelius (161-180) fighting went simultaneously in many theaters in the range from the Euphrates to the Danube. The resources of the state experienced a terrible strain - the emperor was forced to sell even personal jewelry in order to finance the troops. If in the I-II centuries, on the most open border - the eastern - Rome was opposed by Parthia, which was not so powerful at that time, then from the beginning of the III century it was replaced by the young and aggressive Persian kingdom of the Sassanids. In 626, shortly before this power itself fell under the blows of the Arabs, the Persians still managed to approach Constantinople itself, and Emperor Heraclius drove them away literally by a miracle (it was in honor of this miracle that the akathist to the Most Holy Theotokos was composed - “The Chosen Governor ...”) . And in Europe, in the last period of Rome, the onslaught of the Huns, who moved west along Great Steppe, set in motion the entire process of the Great Migration of Nations.

Over the long centuries of conflict and trade with the bearers of high civilization, the barbarians have learned a lot from them. Prohibitions on selling them Roman weapons and teaching them maritime trade appear in laws too late, in the 5th century, when they no longer have any practical meaning.

The list of factors can be continued. But in general, Rome did not seem to have a chance to resist, although no one will probably ever answer this question exactly. As for the different fates of the Western and Eastern empires, the East was originally richer and more powerful economically. It was said about the old all-Roman province of Asia (the “left” part of Asia Minor) that it had 500 cities. In the West, there were no such indicators anywhere except Italy itself. Accordingly, here the strongest positions were occupied by large farmers, who beat out tax benefits for themselves and their tenants. The burden of taxes and administration fell on the shoulders of city councils, and the nobility spent their leisure time on country estates. At critical moments, the Western emperors did not have enough people or money. The authorities of Constantinople have not yet been threatened with this. They had so many resources that they were even enough to go on the counteroffensive.

Together again?

Indeed, it did not take long before a large part of the West returned to the direct rule of the emperors. Under Justinian (527-565), Italy with Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, Dalmatia, the entire coast of North Africa, southern Spain (including Cartagena and Cordoba), and the Balearic Islands were recaptured. Only the Franks did not cede any territories and even received Provence for maintaining neutrality.

In those years, the biographies of many Romans (Byzantines) could serve as a clear illustration of the newly triumphant unity. Here, for example, is the life of the commander Peter Marcellinus Liberius, who won back Spain for Justinian. He was born in Italy around 465 into a noble family. He began his service under Odoacer, but the Ostrogoth Theodoric kept him in his service - someone educated had to collect taxes and keep the treasury. Around 493, Liberius became prefect of Italy - head of the civil administration of the entire peninsula - and in this position showed zealous concern for the deposed Romulus Augustulus and his mother. The son of a worthy prefect took the post of consul in Rome, and his father soon received also a military command in Gaul, which the German leaders usually did not trust the Latins. He was friends with the Bishop of Arelat, Saint Caesarius, founded a Catholic monastery in Rome, while continuing to serve the Arian Theodoric. And after his death, he went to Justinian on behalf of the new king of the Ostrogothic Theodohad (he had to convince the emperor that he had justly overthrown and imprisoned his wife Amalasunta). In Constantinople, Liberius remained in the service of a co-religionist emperor and first received Egypt in control, and then in 550 he conquered Sicily. Finally, in 552, when the commander and politician were already over 80, he managed to see the triumph of his dream - the return of Rome under the general imperial authority. Then, having conquered southern Spain, the old man returned to Italy, where he died at the age of 90. He was buried in his native Arimina (Rimini) with the greatest honors - with eagles, lictors and timpani.

Gradually, the conquests of Justinian were lost, but not immediately - part of Italy recognized the power of Constantinople even in the XII century. Heraclius I, pressed by the Persians and Avars in the east in the 7th century, was still thinking of moving the capital to Carthage. And Constant II (630-668) held last years reign in Syracuse. By the way, he was the first Roman emperor after Augustulus to personally visit Rome, where, however, he became famous only for tearing off the gilded bronze from the roof of the Pantheon and sending it to Constantinople.

	Ravenna rose at a late stage of the Western Roman Empire due to its very convenient for those times geographic location. Unlike the “shapeless” Rome that had grown over the centuries and spread far beyond the seven hills of “formless” Rome, this city was surrounded by swampy backwaters on all sides - only a specially constructed causeway, which was easy to destroy in a moment of danger, led to the walls of the new capital. Emperor Honorius was the first to choose this former Etruscan settlement as the place of his permanent residence in 402. At the same time, majestic Christian churches grow in abundance in the city. It was in Ravenna that Romulus Augustulus was crowned and deposed by Odoacer.
	Constantinople, as its name undoubtedly indicates, was founded by the largest Roman statesman of the era late empire, a kind of "sunset August" and the establisher of Christianity as the state religion - Constantine the Great on the site of the ancient Bosphorus settlement of Byzantium. After the division of the empire into Western and Eastern, it turned out to be the center of the latter, which it remained until May 29, 1453, when the Turks broke into its streets. A characteristic detail: already under Ottoman rule, being the capital of the empire of the same name, the city formally retained its main name - Constantinople (in Turkish - Konstantininiyo). Only in 1930, by order of Kemal Ataturk, did it finally become Istanbul.
	Aachen, laid by Roman legionnaires near the source mineral waters under Alexander Severus (222-235), "hit" in the Roman capitals almost by accident - Charlemagne settled in it for permanent residence. Accordingly, the city received great trade and craft privileges from the new ruler, its brilliance, fame and size began to grow steadily. In the XII-XIII centuries, the population of the city reached 100,000 people - the rarest case at that time. In 1306, Aachen, decorated with a powerful cathedral, finally received the status of a free city of the Holy Roman See, and until very late, congresses of imperial princes were held here. A gradual decline began only in the 16th century, when the procedure for the wedding of sovereigns began to take place in Frankfurt.
	Vein It was never officially considered the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, however, since from the 16th century the imperial title, which was gradually depreciating even then, belonged almost invariably to the Austrian Habsburg dynasty, the status of the main center of Europe automatically passed to the city on the Danube. At the end of the last era, the Celtic camp of Vindobona was located here, which already in 15 BC was conquered by legionnaires and turned into an outpost of the Roman power in the north. The new fortified camp defended itself from the barbarians for a long time - until the 5th century, when the whole state around was already blazing and falling apart. In the Middle Ages, the Margraviate of Austria gradually formed around Vienna, then it was she who consolidated the empire, and it was in it that in 1806 its abolition was announced.

So was it a fall?

So why does the year 476 end the history of Antiquity in school textbooks and serve as the beginning of the Middle Ages? Was there a turning point at that moment? In general, no. Long before that, most of the imperial territory was occupied by "barbarian kingdoms", whose names often in one form or another still appear on the map of Europe: Frankish in the north of Gaul, Burgundian a little southeast, Visigoths - on the Iberian Peninsula, Vandals - in North Africa (from their short stay in Spain the name Andalusia remained) and, finally, in Northern Italy - the Ostrogoths. Only in some places at the time of the formal collapse of the empire was the old patrician aristocracy still in power: the former emperor Julius Nepos in Dalmatia, Syagrius in the same Gaul, Aurelius Ambrosius in Britain. Julius Nepos would remain emperor for his supporters until his death in 480, and Syagrius would soon be defeated by the Franks of Clovis. And the Ostrogoth Theodoric, who will unite Italy under his rule in 493, will behave as an equal partner of the Emperor of Constantinople and heir to the Western Roman Empire. Only when, in the 520s, Justinian needed a reason to conquer the Apennines, did his secretary turn his attention to 476 - the cornerstone of Byzantine propaganda would be that the Roman power in the West collapsed and must be restored.

So, it turns out that the empire did not fall? Is it not more correct, in agreement with many researchers (of whom the Princeton professor Peter Brown enjoys the greatest authority today), to believe that she was simply reborn? After all, even the date of her death, if you look closely, is conditional. Odoacer, although he was born a barbarian, in all his upbringing and worldview belonged to the Roman world and, sending the imperial regalia to the East, symbolically restored unity great country. And a contemporary of the commander, the historian Malchus from Philadelphia, certifies that the Senate of Rome continued to meet both under him and under Theodoric. The pundit even wrote to Constantinople that "there is no longer a need to divide the empire, one emperor will be enough for both of its parts." Recall that the division of the state into two almost equal halves occurred as early as 395 due to military necessity, but it was not considered as the formation of two independent states. Laws were issued in the name of two emperors throughout the territory, and of the two consuls, whose names denoted the year, one was elected on the Tiber, the other on the Bosphorus.

So how much has changed in August 476 for the inhabitants of the city? Perhaps it became harder for them to live, but the psychological breakdown in their minds did not happen overnight. Even at the beginning of the 8th century in distant England, Bede the Venerable wrote that “as long as the Colosseum stands, Rome will stand, but when the Colosseum collapses and Rome falls, the end of the world will come”: therefore, for Bede, Rome has not yet fallen. Inhabitants Eastern empire the easier it turned out to continue to consider themselves Romans - the self-name "Roma" survived even after the collapse of Byzantium and survived until the twentieth century. True, they spoke Greek here, but that was always the case. And the kings in the West recognized the theoretical supremacy of Constantinople - just as before 476 they formally swore allegiance to Rome (more precisely, Ravenna). After all, most of the tribes did not seize the land in the vastness of the empire by force, but once received it under an agreement for military service. A characteristic detail: few of the barbarian leaders dared to mint their own coin, and Syagrius in Soissons even did it on behalf of Zeno. Roman titles also remained honorable and desirable for the Germans: Clovis was very proud when, after a successful war with the Visigoths, he received the post of consul from Emperor Anastasius I. What is there to say, if in these countries the status of a Roman citizen remained valid, and its holders had the right to live according to Roman law, and not according to new codes of laws like the well-known Frankish “Salic Truth”.

Finally, the most powerful institution of the era, the Church, also lived in unity, before the delimitation of Catholics and Orthodox after the era of the seven Ecumenical Councils was still far away. In the meantime, the primacy of honor was firmly recognized for the bishop of Rome, the vicar of St. Peter, and the papal office, in turn, dated its documents until the 9th century according to the years of the reign of the Byzantine monarchs. The old Latin aristocracy retained influence and connections - although the new barbarian masters did not have real confidence in it, but in the absence of others it was necessary to take its enlightened representatives as advisers. Charlemagne, as you know, did not even know how to write his own name. There is a lot of evidence for this: for example, just around 476, Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop of Arverny (or Auvergne) was thrown into prison by the Visigothic king Eurych for urging the cities of Auvergne not to change direct Roman authority and to resist aliens. And he was saved from imprisonment by Leon, a Latin writer, at that time one of the main dignitaries of the Visigothic court.

Regular communication within the collapsed empire, commercial and private, also remained for the time being, only the Arab conquest of the Levant in the 7th century put an end to intensive Mediterranean trade.

Eternal Rome

When Byzantium, having got bogged down in wars with the Arabs, nevertheless lost control over the West ... there again, like a phoenix, the Roman Empire was reborn! On the day of the Nativity of Christ in 800, Pope Leo III laid her crown on the Frankish king Charlemagne, who united most of Europe under his power. And although under the grandchildren of Charles, this large state collapsed again, the title was preserved and outlived the Carolingian dynasty. The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation lasted until modern times, and many of its sovereigns, up to Charles V of Habsburg in the 16th century, tried to unite the entire continent again. In order to explain the shift of the imperial “mission” from the Romans to the Germans, the concept of “transfer” (translatio imperii) was even specially created, which owes much to the ideas of Augustine: the power as a “kingdom that will never be destroyed” (an expression of the prophet Daniel) always remains, but peoples worthy of it are changing, as if taking over the baton from each other. The German emperors had grounds for such claims, so that formally they can be recognized as the heirs of Octavian Augustus - all the way up to the good-natured Franz II of Austria, who was forced to lay down the ancient crown only by Napoleon after Austerlitz, in 1806. The same Bonaparte finally abolished the name itself, which had hovered over Europe for so long.

And the well-known classifier of civilizations, Arnold Toynbee, generally suggested ending the history of Rome in 1970, when the prayer for the health of the emperor was finally excluded from Catholic liturgical books. However, let's not go too far. The collapse of the state really turned out to be extended in time - as it usually happens at the end of great eras - the very way of life and thoughts gradually and imperceptibly changed. In general, the empire died, but the promise of the ancient gods and Virgil is fulfilled - the Eternal City stands to this day. The past is perhaps more alive in it than anywhere else in Europe. Moreover, he combined what was left of the classical Latin era with Christianity. The miracle did happen, as millions of pilgrims and tourists can testify. Rome is still the capital not only for Italy. So be it - history (or providence) is always wiser than people.