Rome on the skids

The Fall of the West: The Death of the Roman Superpower, by Adrian Goldsworthy

The Ruin of the Roman Empire, by James O’Donnell

These two fat, well-sourced books about the decline of ancient Rome run, until they limp, in relay. Adrian Goldsworthy begins his leg from the end of the second century AD, the term of the Antonines (under whom Edward Gibbon could imagine himself happy, so long as he was a patrician), through the nervous three centuries which ended with the incursions — here seen more as forceful immigrations — of the Huns and the Goths.

After Alaric’s irruption in 410 into Italy, the rulers of the once-master Latin race absconded from Rome to marsh-girt Ravenna where they dawdled until the arrival, in 489, of the Goths led by the Arian Theodoric, self-appointed legate of the eastern emperor. His reign began with a literal coup d’état in the vivisection of King Odoacer, with whom he had sworn to share the throne, and ended with the judicial murder of his grey eminence, the philosophical Boethius. In between, Theodoric is seen as an enlightened arriviste interested more in preserving the past — and holding the ring between Arian Goths and trinitarian Romans — than in predatory innovation. Mr Nice Guy with a bit of a temper, he even protected Genoa’s Jews, despite their being ‘devoid of God’s grace’.

James O’Donnell has doubts concerning Boethius’ legendary innocence: he thinks he probably was involved in fin-de- régime intrigue, if only on behalf of his two sons whom Theodoric had already made joint consuls and who were spared their father’s fate. The philosophical grandee had a rope tied very tightly around his head and was then bludgeoned to death.