Comments on: For Ancient Rome, Buried Treasure Means an Empire in Crisis

By: nick

nick — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:30:13 +0000

I’d like to also point out that the Roman Empire was expanding – perhaps when they conquered new territory those citizens were added to the rolls?

A quick trip to Wikipedia states that a plague is 165 C.E. killed and estimated five million people in the empire.

The real start of the fall was the splitting of the empire by Constantine. The actual collapse of the Western Empire was precipitated by the ‘barbarian’ invasions.

“On September 4, 476 [C.E.], the Germanic chief Odoacer forced the last Roman emperor in the west, Romulus Augustus, to abdicate.[60] Having lasted for approximately 1200 years, the rule of Rome in the West came to an end.[61]”

So uh, I dunno where ya’ll got your info, or if this is a matter of semantics (the fall of the Republic, rise of the Empire as Scicurious states), but Rome was by no means over at the turn of the Common Era.

The Eastern Empire that Constantine split off ended thusly: “The Eastern Empire came to an end when Mehmed II conquered Constantinople on May 29, 1453.[68]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Rome

By: Cory

Cory — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:04:50 +0000

Do we really find enough coin hoards for this data to really be statistically significant? If so, wow.

By: guavaflower1

guavaflower1 — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:32:58 +0000

Interesting comment Scicurious. You are obviously an ancient history fan

By: Scicurious

Scicurious — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:14:03 +0000

So…I don’t want to pick, but…well…the first century BCE did see the death of Caesar, but it was by no means the death of the empire. If anything, Caesar’s death signaled the final death throes of the Roman republic and the BIRTH of empire, which would see it’s first “Princeps” in his adopted son Augustus. But yes, definitely a time of serious upheaval and unrest, characterized by a lot of civil war.

By: YouRang

YouRang — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:42:37 +0000

What about refugees? What about people getting counted as citizens who before had not been citizens because the war caused documentation problems? What about people claiming their servants/slaves or illegitimate children as family so if someone gets drafted they can send their slave to die? What about claiming servants as family to get more of the equivalent of “the standard deduction”? Or claiming servants as family because they were pissed at the autocrats running the country? Even claiming women and children wouldn’t account for such a large jump. especially if the size had actually declined.