Talk:Fall of the Western Roman Empire/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Llywrch (talk · contribs) 00:34, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Looking forward to reviewing this for GA. -- llywrch (talk) 00:34, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

I apologize for not posting my GA review sooner, but I needed to take the time to write it concisely & less profusely. This is an important, & complex, topic & deserves more than a scatter of notes & comments.

To repeat myself, this is a complex topic. The topic of the Fall of the Roman Empire has attracted a large bibliography, & it would take years to master even a sizable chunk of it. Getting this article to B class -- which I believe it currently is -- took a lot of hard work; getting it to GA class would take a lot more hard work. (IMHO, getting it to FA class would require a graduate-level effort; anyone doing that would be justified in thinking she/he deserves a Master's or Doctorate in Classical studies.)

In terms of the GA criteria, it is stable, well-written & organized, & I believe not biased to any one viewpoint. The footnotes need to be standardized: some are bare URLS, in one case the URL links to the entire footnote, some need to be put into proper bibliographical format, & two citations of MacMullen's Corruption and the fall of Rome need page numbers. (Yes, I know that's not necessary for GA, but having read that book, page numbers are badly needed to verify any assertion based on it.) There are a few spots where assertions need citations, but I'm not marking these until after you decide what should be the next step.

The primary problem with this article is that I don't know what your intent was: was it to tell the story the Fall of Rome alone -- without any explanation -- or to provide an explanation why it fell? If the first, then it makes sense to include events before the 4th century, & show how the Roman Empire weathered & evolved from the Crisis of that century, but then parts of this article should be cut & the reader pointed to the article Historiography of the fall of the Roman Empire. If it is the latter, far too often you mention critical events but fail to explain why they led to the fall of the WRE. For example, in the section "Height of power, crises, and recoveries > The Crisis of the Third Century" you write: "Under Gallienus the Senatorial aristocracy ceased to provide senior military commanders" -- What is the point of this development? From my own reading & research, this has a number of implications: the army lost connection with the wider society, the land-owning aristocracy grew indolent & interested in only its own short-term gains, & so on. But these are opinions of experts who need to be identified & their reasoning explained.

(There are more of these, but I'll wait to see what your response is before pointing them out.)

What I think would help here is if you were to explain near the beginning what this article is intended to cover. In its present form, I'd say it's about the fall of the institution of the WRE -- the government & its politicians -- not the society or economy of the WRE. (At least for me, the title "Fall of the Western Roman Empire" evokes an apocalyptic event, leading to mass dislocation, chronic famine, & social collapse, as well as governmental failure. Covering all of that in one article would be too onerous of a burden for any Wikipedian, & a pain to maintain against the usual kooks, vandals, & clueless amateurs looking to add information badly remembered from school or watching tv.) What you've covered is perfectly fine. But explaining the limits of this article would help both the reader, & anyone working on this article to keeping it focused & organized.

I am going to state that, even limiting this article to an account of the institution, there are a couple of omissions when it comes to the fifth century. That's not surprising: the information is fragmented in a lot of specialized or out-of-print sources, making it difficult for people to get ahold of. If we talk about the fall of the institution, then the matter of the Emperor & the evolution of his office is paramount. Diocletian's major innovation with his Tetrarchy was to introduce the idea of collegiate emperors. Until his reign, the concept of a Roman Emperor was that there was only one. After Diocletian, & to the end of the Byzantine Empire (the logical evolution of the Roman Empire) there are often more than one emperor in power; the one actually in control was considered the senior emperor, who could promote or demote the other emperors. Thus at the start of the fifth century, Honorius & Arcadius were colleagues, & when one died, the other became sole ruler of the entire empire -- which is what happened when Honorius died without an heir: Arcadius's successor, Theodosius II became sole ruler, & thru him a lawful successor for Honorius was appointed. However, when Theodosius II died in 450, the emperor of the WRE -- the rights of Valentinian III were ignored in the East. (This is discussed by Stewart Oost, Galla Placidia Augusta (Chicago: University Press, 1968), pp. 293ff.) That was the point where there is no doubt two empires existed in fact.

As is well known, after Valentinian III the office of emperor in the WRE fluctuated from a figurehead to a position with real power & back. Some of these emperors were recognized in the East; some were not. So it proceeded to the day that Odoacer deposed Augustulus Remulus. Now, some write that at the moment Augustulus was deposed, the WRE came to an end. Actually, it came to an end slightly after that. Odoacer could have appointed his own puppet emperor, even after a lengthy interregnum: there was one of a few years after Libius Severus, & another of several months after Olybrius. Instead, the WRE ended when Odoacer sent the Imperial insignia to Constantinople, accompanied with a message he had the Senate write that "they had no need of a separate empire but that a single common emperor would be sufficient for both territories". (Malachus, fr. 10; trans. by C.D. Gordon, The Age of Attila: Fifth Century Byzantium and the Barbarians (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1966), p. 127) This is an important point, because over the following centuries, even before Justinian's campaign to recover the WRE, the emperors at Constantinople exerted a limited hegemony over the territories that had been the WRE. The local kings eagerly received titles from Constantinople (I can cull examples from Bede & Gregory of Tours); they were also the protectors of the Pope, & thru him could influence events to a degree; & occasionally (yes, very occasionally!) the emperors at Constantinople directly intervened. This was based on the theory that the Roman Emperor was a universal emperor, above all kings in rank, which the Byzantines clung to even in the dismal age of the Palaiologians -- although it was challenged by the coronation of Charlemagne as Roman Emperor on Christmas Day, 800. (George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, translated by Joan Hussey (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1957), pp. 162-165)

I hope you read what I just wrote not as an attempt to rewrite the article in my own image, but as one example of how complex this topic is -- even if limited to covering only the institution. Even if you ignore those paragraphs -- which you have full right to -- as the article stands you fail to discuss the issue of a lack of manpower. Following the disastrous defeat at the Battle of Adrianople, the WRE was unable to rebuild its military machine. This alone likely led to the failed state of the fifth century, & can be discussed without digressions into culture, religion, economics, or how much pwoer the Roman Emperor had. This rebuilding had been something it had done after many earlier disasters. I know experts have investigated why this was; that needs including.

Let me know where you want to go from here with this article. If you need help with research, I'd be happy to assist you. -- llywrch (talk) 18:20, 7 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Llywrch, many thanks for your careful consideration. You have expressed the thoughts in the back of my mind when I was writing the article, and I look forward to your help in improving it. I wrote the article on a framework, which I left implicit, and I wonder if it would help to make that explicit. Perhaps a rewrite of the lede would be the first step. I'll have a go in my sandbox. Richard Keatinge (talk) 14:20, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

After an exchange of messages, I've learned the submitter won't have time to promptly work on this article, so I am failing it, without prejudice. I look forward to working with Richard in the future on this & other articles. -- llywrch (talk) 19:05, 18 June 2015 (UTC)