Month: July 2014

The Romans fought three wars against the Carthaginians.  The first two were deadly battles between great empires, but the third was simply a siege.  The Romans found a pretext and used their superior forces to surround Carthage.  The encirclement lasted four years.  The Carthaginians defended themselves for as long as they could. But it was hopeless.  Ultimately with the Romans in control of the land and the sea around the city there was only ever going to be one outcome.  When the Romans finally broke in they killed all the men and sold the women and children into slavery.  The city was destroyed and the ground ploughed up and sprinkled with salt to prevent a settlement of the area again.

The Byzantine court during the reign of the ineffectual Arcadius in the late fourth century was run by two men.  The emperor’s favourite at court was the corrupt and worldly Eutropius who ran the civil administration of the empire largely for his own benefit.  The army was run by the Goth Gainas.

I am working my way through an extended review of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  I have reached the point at which we can start thinking of this as being a history of the Byzantine Empire.  The term Byzantine to describe the Eastern Roman empire wasn’t commonly used in Gibbon’s time, though he uses that adjective often enough.  It is often said that Gibbon disliked and disparaged the Byzantines, and it is from the start of Chapter 32 that the quote most often used to justify this idea comes.

In fact it is the first sentence.

The reign of Constantine III was a precarious business.   With the legions no longer holding the frontier of the Rhine and the Roman navy no longer in existence, the world was now one dominated by anyone who could pull together some effective mobile forces.  The rule of the Caesars had been replaced by the rule of petty warlords.  Constantine never had any solid power base he could draw from and was continually juggling alliances, bribes and trying to avoid being overrun by barbarians or killed by the representatives of the official Roman empire. You might have thought that nobody would want a job like that. But you’d be wrong, he had to face at least two major rebellions by people who wanted to replace him.