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Appendix 1 Alexander Demandt on the Role ofthe Germans in the End ofthe Roman Empire Alexander Demandt, Der Fall Roms: Die Auflosung des romischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt (Munich, 1984), pp. 587-97; my translation. My use of Demandt's pages has been graciously authorized by the publisher, Beck Verlag, Munich, Germany. This is the full text corresponding to the material set out in point form and condensed in Chapter 2 (above). Demandt's references to his authorities are in the German original and are not reproduced here. My translation is more literal and less readable than it would be if designed for frequent use. Its function here is to serve as a check on my condensation. Its goal therefore is to be as faithful as possible to the original, even ifthe result lacks elegance. That the fall of the Empire cannot be explained by the totality of its ills is proved by imperial continuity in the East: Byzantium survived. This is an old argument-already used by Panvinius (1558), Krause (1789), Mommsen (1893), Baynes (1943), and Jones (1964)-and it gives weight to the idea that external pressure is an indispensable factor in understanding the late Roman situation. The argument is convincing. Owing to the disadvantageously long river frontiers , the attack of the northern peoples on the European provinces could not be resisted, whereas Asia Minor was comparatively shielded by geography. The Persians were not in search of land and had inner problems; the Isaurians could be integrated; and the Germans did not cross over the Bosphorus. So as to allow internal decadence to retain its comprehensive explanatory force in the face of [the facts just mentioned], it is occasionally claimed that the Eastern half was always healthier in its internal structure than the West. This claim does not work. The farther-reaching urbanization of the East is no criterion for affirming a capacity for resistance; just think of the defenselessness of city-rich North Africa vis-a-vis the Vandals. Conversely, large landownership by senators in the West should not be regarded categorically as a sign of weakness. Whoever takes feudalism to be progressive has to consider large landownership as an element of superiority; whoever considers it reactionary has to take into account that both the Germans and the Byzantines, notably in Egypt, built up a landowning structure of this kind. 242 Appendix 1 Montesquieu believed that European troops were normally superior to Asiatic ones; so did Mommsen. In the second and first century (B.C.) the Hellenistic East collapsed without a sound in the face of the legions; at Pharsalia, Philippi, and Actium generals of the West triumphed over generals of the East. The postulated progressiveness of the East must have taken form in the imperial period: did it therefore benefit from the imperial system that made the West backward? Until the civil war between Constantine and Licinius no sign can be found that the Eastern half had greater capability for military defense. Later civil wars, Magnentius and then Julian against Constantius, Maximus and then Arbogast against Theodosius, are poorly suited to be test cases for the relations of force because, in the meanwhile, the strength of the emperors came to depend entirely on the barbarian auxiliaries they happened to have at their disposal . By then, Germanic bands were already dominant in both halves of the Empire, regardless of whether they fought for the East or for the West, for or against Rome. The Danubian provinces, formerly so rich in soldiers, were the part of the ostensibly healthier Byzantine Empire that the Germans and Huns attacked; they were just as defenseless as the West. The role of Germanic attacks in the collapse is normally devalued by the objection that the Romans had had to do with the Germans ever since the Cimbri and Teutons and had always been able to hold them at bay: why should that no longer have been possible after 376?Does the inferiority of Rome thereafter not prove its inner collapse? Of course! It would foolish to dispute it. Nevertheless , the collapse was hastened, or even brought about, by the pressure of Germans since the Marcomannic War. The pressure became more intense. The idea that conditions in Germanic space remained essentially the same from Ariovistus to Alaric, and the ignorance of developments that occurred there, are discipline-conditioned defects of the explanations that ancient historians attempt. Even the work of A. H. M. Jones suffers from cyclopian oneeyedness in this respect. The...

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