The Ruin of the Roman Empire
James J. O’Donnell
I like how the subtitle here is “A New History.” It’s such an old story you really have to throw that in. But is it all that new?
The main point O’Donnell wants to make is that Justinian was the author of Rome’s decline and fall with his program of “mad restorationism.” When Justinian came to power it was “arguably the last moment of genuinely ancient history when . . . the totality of what Rome created could still be thought of as one community.” When he died that world lay, if not in ruins, at least irremediably fractured. This, however, is not a wholly original thesis. Justinian has always had plenty of critics, even in his own day. O’Donnell’s own spin is to make Justinian out to be a Hamlet figure.
That’s an interesting analogy, and one of many O’Donnell indulges. Theoderic, for example, is likened to Othello, Theodahad “is a character straight out of Evelyn Waugh,” and Cassiodorus is Doctor Zhivago. You didn’t get as much of this in the Old Histories of the fall of Rome, and while some of it is interesting I felt it mostly to be a distraction from a narrative that didn’t have much new to say.
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