@@njb1126that’s because on a lot of issues he does know what he’s talking about, he doesn’t even speak that fast but his voice is just annoying as hell
@@barrett206 I find that he doesn't know what he's talking about even on issues he's passionate about, such as tax cuts for the rich and financial aid to Israel.
The opposite is also true: "Feelings don't care about your facts". That's why the marketplace of ideas has failed and possibly never has existed. When someone tells Shapiro that there is a third, more sensible, option of the "Middle Eastern" conflict, that is the US should stay out of it because both countries are committing atrocities to each other, he would recoil and call others anti semites, a term also used by his opponents on the other side. The thing is, more right wingers support the third option.
Let me repost this because it got shadowbanned after 30 minutes of being visible. The opposite is also true: "Feelings don't care about your facts". That's why the marketplace of ideas has failed and possibly never has existed. When someone tells him that there is a third, more sensible, option of the "Middle Eastern" conflict, that is the US should stay out of it because both countries are committing atrocities to each other, he would recoil and call others anti semites, a term also used by his opponents on the other side. The thing is, more "*ight" wingers support the third option.
@@martytu20 Let me repost this as it got shadowbanned after nearly an hour of being visible. The opposite is also true: "Feelings don't care about your facts". That's why the marketplace of ideas has failed and possibly never has existed. When someone tells him that there is a third, more sensible, option of the "Middle Regional" conflict, that is the US should stay out of it because both countries are committing "misdeeds" to each other, he would recoil and call others anti (censored), a term also used by his opponents on the other side. The thing is, more right wingers support the third option.
"No society is immune to decline if it fails to uphold the principles....of freedom." Well, since its traditional founding date of 753 B.C. Rome was never a free society in the modern sense for even one minute. Its government, especially during the Republic, was never elected by the people and was in essence an oligarchy run by the upper class and the rich. And yet such a system ended up conquering the entire Mediterranean world.
A free society was impossible in any timeframe before that in which It developed. Liberal democracy was impossible in the Roman empire for obvious reasons
Freedom is only a tangentially related principle to Democracy. States can be highly democratic and heavily oppress individual freedoms(ancient Athens), and they can also have no democracy whatsoever and still provide a high degree of personal freedom(many medieval kingdoms).
I think you take modern democracy equals to freedom, but in the most times of history when people say one society or one civilization has freedom, it usually means that it's ruluing power is limited, as opposed to unrestricted, autocratic government. The strict "one person one vote" idea just appears for a really short time you know.
That is why their called Empires..... By definition Empire always means a dominant center , a dominant people, a dominant race , a dominant class... It is inherently unstable.
Yes. As I understand it, the "fall" was a slow gradual process over decades, if not hundreds of years to the point where we can't really say when Rome fell and there's some debate on whether "fall" is even a meaningful or useful term.
2000 years is a pretty good run. And an argument might be made to include the Ottoman empire since they kept some of the laws of the Byzantines after absorbing their empire.
Adam Smith. (An inquiry into the) Wealth of Nations. He wrote that book long after the fall of Rome and that is generally considered the starting point of economy as a scientific field.
To be honest, it's not that obvious of a concept, and a lot of our current economists and people talking about economics don't understand it either or just lie about it, and pretend it's just printing money that does it, ignoring the role of production, taxes, etcetera because they aren't trying to teach people, instead trying to manipulate them to their ends.
@@VeteranVandalThe reason people say that inflation is a monetary phenomenon is that they define it as a depreciation of a particular currency in relation to goods due to an increase in the volume of that currency. This inflation can be mitigated by increases in production of goods, but this mitigation is not considered deflation, but rather simply depreciation in the price of those goods in relation to the currency due to an increased supply of those goods relative to the supply of currency. The distinction between these two phenomena is very little, essentially only the definition that inflation includes currency as a key factor as it would be confusing otherwise.
@@whitehawk4099 but that's not the only cause of inflation. Inflation also exists because disequilibriums in supply and demand for certain products as a result of political or social shocks.
@@akapilka While this is certainly a cause of depreciation of the value of products in relation to currency, for those who hold to the earlier definition this would not qualify as inflation because they define it as an increase in the supply of the currency which causes depreciation of that currency in relation to goods and services.
People forget to look at any civil war in any country in the last 200 years....how those civil wars were incredibly devastating, nearly tore said country apart or did and almost led to its collapse. Rome had god knows how many civil wars from the republic era to 1453 and lasted in earnest for nearly 1000 years even after several devestating civil wars and people WONDER why the empire collapsed?? It collapsed mainly because of 20 different or more civil wars, generals backstabbing their emperors in battle, allying with enemies of the state etc and then in the mix of all of that were several devastating plagues and environmental changes.Imagine after the US civil war and after Lincoln was assassinated we had several more civil wars by generals now vying for power.....and then 50 years later a major plague
The war with Carthage claimed hundreds of thousands of dead and probably were some of the worst disasters the Roman army and republic ever faced yet they persevered. Maybe the accumulated effect of so many but it’s hard to understate just how close Rome came to being destroyed on several occasions and yet somehow came back. It was never a given that Rome should have risen the way it did and perhaps you’re right after so many times of being pushed to the edge all it took was that one time, but dood I love Rome because when you thought Rome was down and out they some how clawed their way back they just really really really believed they were superior
@@Person0fColor and even when it was snuffed out in the west what did every kingdom end up doing? Copying and doing what they could to put a version of it back together. It lasted so long and kept recoverying because collectively it offered something people wanted. Even if they didnt know they wanted it. The modern world is still living in the shadow and legacy of the Roman Empire. Look no further than the calender eveyone uses.
The biggest problem with this video and high quality educational videos in general is that the people who need to see it most never will. Ben Shapiro and his followers will most likely never see this and continue to think that Ben’s opinions about Rome or any other subject are as close to the truth as a person can come. I think it’s a great video and love your channel by the way, just a thing I’ve been thinking about a lot with educational TH-cam lately.
Don’t ever be foolish enough to think that the other person is the fool. You right now are doing the exact same thing everyone in this thread is claiming him to do, you’re placing you’re self above who knows how many people all because you think they slavishly listen to and are hanging in every word he says. You are affording him way more power and influence than he actually has. It’s possible he represents even a small minority within the conservative movement and if you think this is the end all of conservatism it’s all what Ben says then maybe it’s you who needs to be more open about different options
@@Person0fColor I did not mean to suggest that Ben is some figure that all conservatives listen to or even that this is a conservative problem. All I was trying to get at is that the average person who listens to the average influencer (on the left or right) does not listen to or watch well researched content. I don’t think I’m better than anyone I just wish people cared more about history and science and the way the worlds works. It’s a good step one to fixing a lot of the problems in the world.
Deforestation and soil degradation literally had zero to do with the Western half of the Empire being invaded by Gauls, Goths, Vandals, Huns, etc. The Eastern Empire had more population and in effect fewer raw resources than the West, and it still lasted another thousand years.
@@DrAnac-qh5dc"lower food yields affecting the entire economy by requiring shipment of food and changing agricultural heartland totally has nothing to do with the ability to fight off the latest of dozens of barbarian invasions. In fact, none of the ones previously actually mattered! The germans were totally special, but only the 249th time they invaded!"
Rome's foundation was shaken when the Punic wars sapped its most Nordic element in its élite. Then the imperial conquests polluted its blood even further. And the final nail was the coming of Christianity. In the end, Carthage won. - Adûnâi
Cato would have called it that. Liberty for a fairly small class of people, but very different in theory from the older eastern monarchies where everyone was effectively the slave of one man.
By 1790 Britain's empire was exploding in scope and achieved a whopping 5% of its male adult population as meeting census criteria on wealth to vote, which was possibly slightly worse than Rome. This is the eve of the French revolution and the American one was fresh. Even then the French revolution achieved only 25% of adult males and the US similar, of course only to free males. And it was probably easier a path from slave to free to voter in roman society than pre abolition US. Before that you have a small parentheses with the Italian Cities which in the 12-13th century achieve 10-15% of the electorate and were essentially totally autonomous. Similarly we have a brief period with Valencia as a free independent city. Otherwise only places with a census vote are cities that were completely subjugated to their overlord's law and had to pay taxes and so on - like the free cities of France, Iberia and Germany, but theirs is a gimmick as their subjection to central authority curtails policies and political discussions of the kind, and a broader impact of these liberties. Otherwise before Greece, Rome, you have to go as far back as the Majanapahadas in India where two of the sixteenish Janas, were Republican and it's not even known to what context and extent they were Republican. Making a twitter level sagacious take is pretty pointless, trying to sound astute rather than being right is wasted on a global sense, and just pollutes discussions to a degree of 0 productivity and direction. I know it's not malicious but everyone knows broader context.
No one ever invokes the name of the Roman Empire in good faith. Whether it’s someone like Mussolini or Hitler who like to cosplay as Roman or TH-cam debate bros who try to graft their understanding of Rome onto the USA, all of them care less about Rome and more about using it to add legitimacy to their cause.
@@IshmaelKipling I never claimed superiority by acting as if though we’re united, and the other side is the bad guys trying to divide. I claim superiority by acknowledging the truth. We’ve never been more divided and neither side tolerates the other anymore because both sides are existential threats to the other.
That’s an incredibly modern take, when your people don’t expect you to subsidize them there’s really nothing else to spend money on besides government excess and the military. Civilizations maintain just fine when all the warriors that could destroy it are being paid handsomely. Maybe women and slaves suffer, but they aren’t people anyway.
That is actually what the British state spend on the military for most of the imperial and colonial era. Pretty common. The roman army also produced lots of civil engineering output in peace time.
I like the argument that things went wrong starting with Sulla. The ghracchi wanted to stop the expansion of large estates at the expense of citizen farmers, who were also citizen soldiers. They basically tried to enforce existing laws limiting the amount of land these large, slave using, plantations could take up, leaving more for the homesteading citizens who were the core of the army. The fall might not have come for centuries after this, but things take a while to work through the system, and in the end it was the mercinaries hired (because of a lack of citizen soldiers) who then turned to bite the hand that fed them and sacked Rome.
@@austinmackell9286 the mercenaries hired were resettled Goths and other barbarians who were semi-Latinized that were paid with land on the frontier in exchange for military service. The end of the western half of the Roman Empire looks more and more like the beginnings of a medieval feudal system.
@@austinmackell9286 They stopped being mercenaries the moment they accepted frontier land as payment instead of coin. Your conclusion falls apart because of it.
@@martytu20 I don't think it does. These people were not loyal to the roman system in the way that native latin roman citizens would have been. beyond that, after Sulla, we saw the transition from republic to monarchy, which also eroded the moral core and sense of belonging and loyalty neccessarry for any powerful military.
There is a reason people like Ben Shapiro use the Roman empire as an example, rather than any more modern example. While people have done excellent work piecing together an extraordinary amount of information on the economics of the Roman empire, there remains vast gaps in our knowledge and much left up to interpretation. It means people like Bartlett are free to impose their ideology on to the loose set of facts we have, to create the narrative they want. Which people like Shapiro then pick up and accept without question, as it perfectly suits their politics as well. These people don't pick other empires, like the Ottoman's or even the British, or even the Eastern Roman Byzantines, as the historical record is much stronger and doesn't leave them as much space to fill in the gaps with their own politics.
... they use Rome because it's the bedrock of western civilization that the American founders directly copied for the American experiment. Even if they're wrong or right, that's always the actual reason.
The main reason why these know-nothing grifters invoke the Roman Empire is because most people have heard of it, most people know it was pretty big and most people know it's not around anymore. Let's see, can we make a know-nothing comparison of the fall of the Roman empire with the fall of the Soviet Union? Probably. The British Empire? Probably. The Ottoman Empire? The what???? Probably. The Old Republic? Most definitely! The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros? Now you're talking!
So sick of people using Rome as an analogy for the modern US to advance their own political ideology. I think that more than half of the things Shapiro says are in bad faith, he's just a successful grifter.
I hate the fact that this won’t reach even 5% of the people Ben Shapiro was able to reach with his absolutely irresponsible misinformation. Amazingly put together and beautifully researched dude, this video is 10/10, I’m just sad it won’t reach the people it needs to reach.
Dude is so insufferable. He's clearly smart but amoral; he knows that he can get away with talking about those things he's not an expert in because people forgive him if he gives them enough outrage bait. He clearly won the grift, but it's so frustrating if you can spot what the grift is
@@stereomachine Shapiro is good at debating and he thinks this makes him very smart. But simply bombarding someone with word salad until they give up - essentially what Shapiro's tactic is, it's a very combative style of debating - doesn't make you an expert on a topic. I know some extremely knowledgeable people who would completely fumble a debate with Shapiro just because they're not as outspoken as he is, and he really lets this get to his head.
@@sulphuric_glue4468that tactic is whats known as gish-gallop and its as old as time. Another example of an internet "debate guy" who does that is Destiny.
@@polybian_bicycleTbh this is a take that I've started to believe as well. More broadly that the western empire didn't fall as much as it gradually evolved beyond recognition. Basically the more you research the various Foederati tribes and their relationship with Rome the more it starts to look like and internal reorganisation rather than a foreign invasion. The Foederati were essentially just an alternative form of Roman governance which gradually replaced the old system of governors. Pretty much all major barbarian political players of the late empire were heavily romanized and no more treacherous than the average roman governor. Most claimed to act in the interests of Rome and atleast paid lip service to the eastern roman emperor for decades after the last western emperor was deposed. The Senate wasn't even desolved by the barbarians but slowly peetered out and was finally snuffed out by the pope in the 600s I think people forget just how important the foederati were to the empire maintaining its grip on Gaul for as long as it did.
I love how conservatives harp on the idea that Roman Empire fell to hedonism, paganism, and multiculturalism, when the empire was literally built on those things.
@@huguesdepayens807 brother, Rome at its peak was pagan and multiethnic. Even after it claimed Christianity, many of its hedonistic traditions remained.
@@huguesdepayens807 Oh, that's a convincing point. Let's see: Founded 753 BCE, took up christianity 312 CE, went down in its western hemisphere 476 CE. I think if anything, the Jewish sect has caused the downfall of rome /s
Rome was destroyed by christianty - a cult that first spread amongst the prostitutes and slaves and then to the rest of undesirables. The jews invented christianity for fulfilling this purpose because they felt an inferiority compex towards the Romans and hated how the Romans 'persecuted' them. Ironically, jews faced the worst persecution in Christian lands after the fall of Rome. 😂
I mean, we’re talking about a vast, transcontinental, transcultural empire, so the reasons why it “fell” are going to be numerous and complex. You can read whatever you want into it, and anyone who says it was one particular thing is almost certainly reading their own contemporary anxieties or hobby horse into it.
One thing people miss about the fall of the Roman Empire is that the western empire got colder while the eastern empire stayed a stable temperature. The drop in temperatures in the west I believe caused a fundamental collapse of urban societies as food became incredibly unstable as crop failures became yearly as farmers did not have the correct varieties of crops to plant nor could predict when to plant their crops. The crops that survived and were harvested slowly adapted to the new climate after the initial shock and farmers crops began to grow healthy again. Albiet in a reduced capacity due to the decrease in temperatures This sudden and extreme shock to the food supply caused massive famine and repeated shortages that could not be sustained. This even affected the Germans as well and might have caused the chain migrations as the Germans kept going to lands their crops could grow after repeated crop failures as well. The end of the Roman warm period is legit at least a top 3 reason the western empire collapsed.
When someone like Ben Shapiro says Rome was a place of freedom and liberty, hes talking about HIS freedom. His liberty. He assumes that if he were in a Roman Republic, that he would still maintain the same level of money, power and influence he currently holds and has been accustomed to. He knows he wouldnt be affected like the majority and would be able to freely gallivant among the oligarchy to his hearts content carving out a niche in his religious lane. People will tell you exactly who they are, with every word, and every breath, they will tell you exactly who they are.
And Constantinople disappears from the radar (the Eastern provinces were already the richest parts of the Empire and center of Mediterranean culture), I mean up until the 1204 it had Roman Law, Roman Institutions, advanced Roman Bureaucracy and during the Reign of Emperor Basil II the biggest GDP in the world (at least for 100 years), they preserved all of Greek Philosophy that the West lost because of lack of knowledge of Greek . It endured countless attacks from all sides and yet it managed to be the most advanced State in Medieval Christendom for 1000 years with the most stable and long lasting currency the solidus, they invented the first professional clinics (they even tried to separate Siamese twins in the 9th century) used “ fire signalling towers for quick and simple communication. I mean the Edward Gibbon style of saying “Old Rome falls to hordes of Germanic barbarians and it’s over guys wait to the Italian Renaissance” is obsolete and one should also ask who influenced the Renaissance in the first place (Gemistos Pleton, Cardinal Bessarion ecc..).
Well said. But the western historians never really liked Constantinople.... and not just historians, and not just Constantinople but everything Eastern and Orthodox.
@@boozecruiser ? What does this even mean? Like the more you study history the less conservative you become? Or like History doesnt comport to a "conservative" world view? what the hell does this even mean? This is just more smart assed "stuffy" cosmopolitan chauvinism and the sad part is youre probably not even as erudite as you think you are. For sure you play more video games than you read
@@boozecruiserI’m not sure why you think that the average conservative doesn’t think that way I know Rome fell it was for a plethora of reasons and we as a country suffer from the same things just before the end of there empire(:
His idea as to why Rome fell is based on the traditional reason believed during the early modern people up until the last few decades. Traditionally "why Rome Fell" was blamed on Rome's gradual loss of civic virtue. This is partly based on the reading of Roman writers such as Tacitus and other writers who complained that Rome was losing her virtue. Many looked back to the mythical era of Rome wish to "return to the good old days" This interpretation was EXTREAMLY popular during early America so people who read and idolize America's founding fathers are likely to also take this interpretation literally.
It's interesting that 4th Century Rome was finally on the right track. Its change in monetary policy addressed long standing credit and liquidity crunches that were behind much of the financial issues dating back to the 2nd century, when plunder no longer followed into state revenue. The fiscal system was positioned to survive the breakup of the Western Empire into various Romanized barbarian "kingdoms," wherein the kings were largely willing to act like governors paying tribute and tax. An organic reconsolidation or wars among the barbarians - likely far less catastrophic that Justinian's wars - would have likely brought the west back together wholly or into a few large chunks. It was Justinian that destroyed things because his wars were essentially a well branded civil war that far exceeded the brutality and devastation of the previous ones.
Yeah but rome at that times is having many problem and there so much reason for the collapse if rome that you could create a tv show about the late rome period nearing their downfall
I'd have to find it again, but I read a recent academic essay about Roman identity in 5th-6th century Italy, and it argued that identification as Roman remained very strong in Italy post Imperial collapse all the way up until Justinian's attempts to impose imperial control on Italy. Justinian's wars resulted in Roman identification in Italy completely collapsing outside of the city of Rome itself.
It sounds like the over interconnectivity of the Western Roman state led to a structural fragility that it couldn’t recover from. If the Western Roman State relied on Africa to produce food and tax revenue to sustain the rest of the Western Roman State, and then Africa is lost to the Vandals, unless the the Western Roman State can adapt quickly to the loss, the entire structure is at risk. Similar to one theory of the Bronze Age Collapse.
Specialization is an enormous boon to wealth creation, especially with easily protected sea routes. Adam Smith elucidated this idea wonderfully, trade creates wealth. After a sustained period of an interconnected world, specialization looks like a safer and safer bet. The Vandal seizure of North Africa was a black swan event that generations of Romans would miss out on lucrative opportunities if they bet on happening... much less the mighty Empire's inability to reconquer it. The Eastern empire suffered a similarly devastating blow with the loss of Egypt to the Arabs but managed to hang on and recover eventually. I think the completeness with which the Arabs achieved their victory actually helped Rome adapt and survive, the Vandals weren't treated with appropriate seriousness so no deal was ever worked out with them and production wasn't shifted as reconquest was expected any day. Egypt by contrast was GONE. Long gone.
@@ericc9321 Specialization is more efficient in a particular context-where there is reliable and consistent surplus to enable said specialization. However, said contexts are almost never reliable at the scale of centuries, let alone millenia. Overspecialization is as much an ever-present risk and further engenders the problems of dependency on a system that, while it may be more resilient agaisnt tiny shocks, is more vulnerable and less recoverable against massive shocks and more fertile ground for hegemonic corruption. Specialization versus generalization is always contextual, and the context inevitably changes over time.
@@Blox117 Roman cultural identity was far stronger in 400 than it was in 40. Rather than a small group from a city ruling over a patchwork of clients and slaves it was the identity of virtually everyone in the empire, virtually every christian, from Gothic soldiers in Briton down to Egyptian hermits. Rome turned itself into a Persia, India or China magnitude civilization that even its conquerors were forced to imitate and claim legitimacy from, and it didn't do it in the first century.
The issue with comparing Rome specifically to any modern nation is Rome didn't fall for one specific reason or another. Anyone who tells you, "I know exactly what one issue caused the fall of Rome is lying to you." Rome fell for dozens of reasons. The size, poor leadership, constant civil war, economic hardship, etc. There's so much that goes into the collapse of something so large it's impossible for any one, individual, given reason to cause the entire fall.
But the late Roman economy was less monetary, than in classical age. After the 3rd century crisis many fiscal transfers were done in naturals. The economy became more army-based, garrison cities like Trier grew faster than Mediterranean cities. While slavery decreased, so did citizen's rights. Not only colones, but also city dwellers lost the freedom of movement for taxation. Climate cooling, deadly pandemics and civil wars decreased productivity, thus decreasing state income. The state was forced to raise taxation by any means, often losing public support. The income was still not enough to upkeep the army, which over and over decimated itself in civil wars. This lead to reliance on Germanic foederati: outsourcing the own hard power to whole armies made of and commanded by strangers. It was them, who finally pulled apart the Empire.
Totally agree on the hinge event being the loss of North Africa, and the failure to repatriate it. Liked the stronger than normal emphasis on economics. Really liked the summation including Justinian's pyrrhic attempts to re-absorb the west. Great video, even though I don't think Shapiro is likely to notice, unfortunately.
I mean, you can easily argue that the Vandals wouldve never crossed into North Africa if certain things had not happened in previous decades, such as Stilicho’s death.
Anyone who thinks the Roman Empire fell when its poorer, western half fell (in AD 476) also doesn't understand why the empire fell (in AD 1453, nearly a thousand years later).
Good to have you back! This is an incredibly complex topic, and unfortunately there is a long history of commentators offering simplistic explanations, often with the intention of identifying 'lessons' for the present. Not being a north American, I had never heard of Ben Shapiro until today, but it seems that he is merely the latest in a long line of conservative commentators using Rome as a stand-in for contemporary America - a subject that probably deserves a detailed study in its own right.
The hilarious part is that Gibbon's central thesis is that yes, Rome fell due to moral decay. But what Gibbon deemed "moral decay" was essentially just Christianity lmao - Christianity causing the Romans to lose their martial vigor. I am sure that goes over well with the "Judeo-Christian values" crowd.
@@Person0fColor I know. I would try to pushback on their distain of Shapiro by claiming different factions of the right dislike him as well but my comments have a high likelihood of getting shadowbanned.
About the inflation: If you pay your soldiers, the money is still there. Yes the state doesnt have it but it is still within the roman empire and can be retaken through taxes and other means by the state. The problem was that silver went out of the roman empire. Rome bought more trading goods than they sold. So the silver left the empire and couldnt be retaken. Ultimatly roman silvermines couldn't keep up and the silvercoin crashed.
This info opens up the door for people to understand debt is money and has been for ages and start learning how world systems operate and what it means to them in day to day life.
I mean, Byzantine certainly did have some it put on the thrown because of their ethnicity, but that was to appease certain peoples, not for the sack of “diversity”
He's a Jew who spends all his time and energy supporting MAGA people who are friends with Nazis. He has to be very careful to never understand anything because if he allows reality into his life for a minute he'll have to deal with that.
I don't get this right wing obsession with comparing the modern United States to the late Roman Republic or the late Empire. It is so disingenuous to say our situations are even remotely similar. Also interesting that the right wing idealizes traditional Roman values when everything was "at its height" when in reality that meant political domination by the elite ruling class, mass slave labor, and undisputed patriarchy. The political system of Rome was run by, and primarily benefitted a very small group of be the rich men. To suggest anything else is to fall for 2,000 year old political propaganda.
@whtalt92 theyre concerned about moral degradation and populist reform leading to the downfall, and that they should've stuck to their traditional systems and values. But the second half of my comment is pointing out what those traditional systems and values actually were.
Because the right understands that the default situation is that life sucks and history is incredibly violent because of that. And they understand that The Roman Republic and later Empire made things far better than they were before until it collapsed. It's pretty easy to draw parallels to the past and not just the Roman empire. Most ideas have been tried before
What always gets me with Ben and others lamenting the fall of the Roman Empire is that empires are bad. They shouldn't exist. It's good when empires stop existing and people are freer to govern themselves. It is still a tragedy when the fall itself involves violence and suffering. The modern American Empire is also bad.
I'm a very simple person, if someone asked why the Roman empire fell I would focus on that second part: empire. They do that, they rise, they fall. They are based on expansion, and then having a central government that is far removed from the majority of people, with often diminishing returns for those further away, making it harder to maintain captured areas because people aren't really "Roman" all the way out there, they do not have that feeling. Like, I'm sure there are basic minutiae that really explain the end of it. But all empires that have ever existed have fallen, because change happens, because expansion cannot be exponential. If I HAD to make a political comparison to prove my point with it....I guess I would point to modern companies and mega corps, who want to see not only profit every year...but INCREASED profit. When we know that is simply not sustainable. You can't always be going up.
I found this video after taking an “End of Rome” history class at my university and I gotta say it is a fantastic video. My professor told us that the barbarians who took over Western Roman lands styled themselves as Romans and that it was the Eastern Roman invasion of the West that truly broke everything. I didn’t know exactly what he meant until I reached the end of this video.
I would be interested to hear your opinion on Joseph Tainter's theory an empire get complex over time in order to solve problems. This additional complexity progressively adds cost, weakening the empire, until it become fragile, and vulnerable to the next crisis.
But of an odd question; but I old you kind recommending some books that go into the late Roman economy? I’ve heard you use the term “Tax Spine” multiple times; and while I think I can discern what exactly it implies; I’m always looking to develop a deeper understanding on Roman taxation and how exactly it manifest in government
@@againstjebelallawz I figured as much lmao; it always felt like a term that came from someone saying it in their book as a weird idiosyncratic term; thank you!
societies collapse due to monopolism running its course - only benefiting a few at the cost of the rest (and the ability of the rest to exist sustainably). This leads to society falling apart as the system becomes unsustainable. The monopols that lead to this are manifold, but are all based on the way a society gets to the rules that govern it.. political monopols are the mechanism (coupled with our nature of being living beings and how they behave naturally).
Adrian Goldsworthy also has an interesting book on why the western empire fell. He argues along the lines of weakening the military side to improve resistance against coups. Which left the empire more open for incursions.
From a French perspective we have the same thing of the gauls being our "ancestors" because it's an earliest denomination for the local area during Roman conquest. Antique identity is much more complex than modern nationalist would let us believe.
Significant and timely. It is to not let history be hijacked by special and narrow interests. However, I am not sure the Bagaudae rebels saw themselves as completely Roman. How could they?
Well that history and heritage does belong to certain people. Its not likw it just isnt connected to people and cultures today. Systems based on those ancient cultures means that yes, we get to use that as a people
So happy someone outside of finance and economics spoke of what happens in history when the currency collapses and the economy dives. Even just saying debt is a rare thing. Thanks for doing this work!
@ Economists specialize in the system that functions now in the present. It’s just a job that gets paid to predict and respond to trade systems. The economy is what is bought and sold, who trades with who etc. and that is documented in historical records.
Rome fell because the type of slavery it practiced widely became largely economically unviable, and its type of agriculture degraded the environment to make itself unsustainable
The military technological gap between the Romans and the barbarians shrank dramatically. Compare Cesars opponents the Gauls to the tribes that crossed the Rhine in 406, and never returned. The barbarians had learned a lot.
Thank you. I am not one of the people who hate Ben for no reason other than team politics. But the man genuinely believes he has a better grasp of history than he does. Now the man reads. Which is more than I can say for most. But my god.
Him, Prager, Beck, Hannity , etc don't understand people's real reason for revolt. It's often lack of needs rather than I can't do what I want that causes rebellion.
It's interesting that he cites immigration as a problem, when one of the truly remarkable aspects of early Rome was its EASE of immigration and citizenship, and one of the central social issues of late-antique Rome was the Senate's opposition and sabotage of both Imperial attempts to expand the tax-base through expanding full-citizenship to freemen and provincials, and Imperial defense-contracts with foreign mercenaries. The whole reason the Goths became hostile to Rome was because of the empire backing out of granting them the land they'd been promised as payment; I want to say that was a decision the Senate forced on the Emperor, but it's been so long since I read the sources I could be misremembering.
@@mat1070 Checking the sources: No I'm not. See Beard's SPQR, section 'brother versus brother, insiders versus outsiders'(pp. 64-69) in "In The Beginning", and her discussion of Caracalla in the epilogue(pp.527-529), spcl the last paragraph. The goth sitch was more complicated than I remembered, but not wrong. While the Goths had a long history of raiding roman territory, this was complicated by an equally long history of doing this AS Roman allies and soldiers, often under the employ of eastern imperial claimants. I was thinking particularly of Alaric's sack of Rome, which was directly in response to Arcadius reneging on Alaric's agreed payments following the execution of Alaric's court-patron, Eutropius. Blaming the Goths, as Shapiro does by making this about "immigration", for either 1)the Roman disunity which led to their employ or 2)taking needed measures not to watch their families starve after decadent Romans dishonored themselves refusing oath-sworn payments and supplies, is as factually ridiculous as it is morally destitute.
Great video. Interesting stuff! Personally, I like Joseph Tainter's take. He does an analysis in "The collapse of complex societies".. it's not incompatible with anything you're saying, it just frames it in a way to explain why, if that tax route would have collapsed 200 years previously, the empire may still have recovered. But by then, it was not able to adjust. He describes it in terms of "the marginal return on investment in complexity." The institutions composing the empire collectively narrow in on a strategy that produces profit. Initially, the profit per investment of time & resources is large. But the lowest-hanging fruit gets picked first. Still, a system develops to exploit the fruit and pick it more efficiently. However, all the time, with each fruit picked, it yields a slightly lower return. Eventually you get to the point where the yield is lower than the amount of energy spent exploiting the yield. But all the systems have developed around exploiting this fruit. Even if re-tooling to exploit another fruit is something the system can do, the particular way it does that is itself a strategy, which will itself yield less and less fruit. So ultimately the system will inevitably reach a point where the return on investment is negative, and then it will start to collapse.
To be fair, maybe except for the freedom part Ben’s explanation sounds like Romans Senators lamenting how great the past used to be in Rome but now no longer
Roman society collapsed largely as a consequence of plagues which devastated the Roman population, and climate change which led to decreased agricultural production. In fact, the germanic tribes were migrating south largely due to climate change. In any event, precipitous population decline was the fundamental cause of Rome's collapse.
Some visual aids would be helpful. I appreciate the artwork, but including some images of the peoples or currencies we're discussing, or even the book titles of some of the sources.
I am very right wing and I find Shapiro super annoying. All he does is talk fast and talk over people. He doesn’t actually have much of substance to say most of the time and he’s just overall irritating.
@@jr8260 Plenty, Shapiro is a mere lad who has more loyalty to Israel than the United States. I prefer folks like say. . . Trent Horn (if you're Catholic), Mentiswave, Actual Justice Warrior, etc. Basically any TH-camr that isn't mainstream really.
Most historians don't even cite the Crisis of the Third Century. I put the end there of the Imperial Period. After the Crisis of the Third Century, it was a series of rump-states that led to the creation of modern Europe.
Ben Shapiro doesn't understand [X] is a whole genre of its own.
Buthetalksreallyfastsohesoundslikeheknowswhathestalkinhabout
@@njb1126 This has an option to translate into english with Google, but when you click translate it's the same lol
@@njb1126that’s because on a lot of issues he does know what he’s talking about, he doesn’t even speak that fast but his voice is just annoying as hell
@@barrett206 I find that he doesn't know what he's talking about even on issues he's passionate about, such as tax cuts for the rich and financial aid to Israel.
It is as likely that he knows and lied that he did not know. The guy is extremely disingenous if you compare his own words to different audiences.
When people say "facts don't care about feelings", they seem to care an awful lot when confronted with facts that destroys their presuppositions.
Also, facts don't care about your feelings lol
The opposite is also true: "Feelings don't care about your facts". That's why the marketplace of ideas has failed and possibly never has existed.
When someone tells Shapiro that there is a third, more sensible, option of the "Middle Eastern" conflict, that is the US should stay out of it because both countries are committing atrocities to each other, he would recoil and call others anti semites, a term also used by his opponents on the other side. The thing is, more right wingers support the third option.
Let me repost this because it got shadowbanned after 30 minutes of being visible.
The opposite is also true: "Feelings don't care about your facts". That's why the marketplace of ideas has failed and possibly never has existed.
When someone tells him that there is a third, more sensible, option of the "Middle Eastern" conflict, that is the US should stay out of it because both countries are committing atrocities to each other, he would recoil and call others anti semites, a term also used by his opponents on the other side. The thing is, more "*ight" wingers support the third option.
@@martytu20 Let me repost this as it got shadowbanned after nearly an hour of being visible.
The opposite is also true: "Feelings don't care about your facts". That's why the marketplace of ideas has failed and possibly never has existed.
When someone tells him that there is a third, more sensible, option of the "Middle Regional" conflict, that is the US should stay out of it because both countries are committing "misdeeds" to each other, he would recoil and call others anti (censored), a term also used by his opponents on the other side. The thing is, more right wingers support the third option.
So youre saying it's confirmed that facts don't care about your feelings?
"No society is immune to decline if it fails to uphold the principles....of freedom." Well, since its traditional founding date of 753 B.C. Rome was never a free society in the modern sense for even one minute. Its government, especially during the Republic, was never elected by the people and was in essence an oligarchy run by the upper class and the rich. And yet such a system ended up conquering the entire Mediterranean world.
A free society was impossible in any timeframe before that in which It developed. Liberal democracy was impossible in the Roman empire for obvious reasons
Freedom is only a tangentially related principle to Democracy. States can be highly democratic and heavily oppress individual freedoms(ancient Athens), and they can also have no democracy whatsoever and still provide a high degree of personal freedom(many medieval kingdoms).
I think you take modern democracy equals to freedom, but in the most times of history when people say one society or one civilization has freedom, it usually means that it's ruluing power is limited, as opposed to unrestricted, autocratic government. The strict "one person one vote" idea just appears for a really short time you know.
Polybius said the greeks thought the romans were less competent at steeling their fore more competent at governing
That is why their called Empires.....
By definition Empire always means a dominant center ,
a dominant people, a dominant race , a dominant class...
It is inherently unstable.
We should not wonder why Rome fell. We should wonder why it lasted as long as it did.
This(!) Is the right aproach!
That's a great question and I think many modern historians are approaching Rome with exactly that perspective!
Yes. As I understand it, the "fall" was a slow gradual process over decades, if not hundreds of years to the point where we can't really say when Rome fell and there's some debate on whether "fall" is even a meaningful or useful term.
2000 years is a pretty good run. And an argument might be made to include the Ottoman empire since they kept some of the laws of the Byzantines after absorbing their empire.
I like this way of thinking
The Romans not understanding inflation is something I didn't know and that makes a lot of sense
Adam Smith. (An inquiry into the) Wealth of Nations. He wrote that book long after the fall of Rome and that is generally considered the starting point of economy as a scientific field.
To be honest, it's not that obvious of a concept, and a lot of our current economists and people talking about economics don't understand it either or just lie about it, and pretend it's just printing money that does it, ignoring the role of production, taxes, etcetera because they aren't trying to teach people, instead trying to manipulate them to their ends.
@@VeteranVandalThe reason people say that inflation is a monetary phenomenon is that they define it as a depreciation of a particular currency in relation to goods due to an increase in the volume of that currency. This inflation can be mitigated by increases in production of goods, but this mitigation is not considered deflation, but rather simply depreciation in the price of those goods in relation to the currency due to an increased supply of those goods relative to the supply of currency.
The distinction between these two phenomena is very little, essentially only the definition that inflation includes currency as a key factor as it would be confusing otherwise.
@@whitehawk4099 but that's not the only cause of inflation. Inflation also exists because disequilibriums in supply and demand for certain products as a result of political or social shocks.
@@akapilka While this is certainly a cause of depreciation of the value of products in relation to currency, for those who hold to the earlier definition this would not qualify as inflation because they define it as an increase in the supply of the currency which causes depreciation of that currency in relation to goods and services.
People forget to look at any civil war in any country in the last 200 years....how those civil wars were incredibly devastating, nearly tore said country apart or did and almost led to its collapse. Rome had god knows how many civil wars from the republic era to 1453 and lasted in earnest for nearly 1000 years even after several devestating civil wars and people WONDER why the empire collapsed?? It collapsed mainly because of 20 different or more civil wars, generals backstabbing their emperors in battle, allying with enemies of the state etc and then in the mix of all of that were several devastating plagues and environmental changes.Imagine after the US civil war and after Lincoln was assassinated we had several more civil wars by generals now vying for power.....and then 50 years later a major plague
The war with Carthage claimed hundreds of thousands of dead and probably were some of the worst disasters the Roman army and republic ever faced yet they persevered. Maybe the accumulated effect of so many but it’s hard to understate just how close Rome came to being destroyed on several occasions and yet somehow came back. It was never a given that Rome should have risen the way it did and perhaps you’re right after so many times of being pushed to the edge all it took was that one time, but dood I love Rome because when you thought Rome was down and out they some how clawed their way back they just really really really believed they were superior
@@Person0fColor and even when it was snuffed out in the west what did every kingdom end up doing? Copying and doing what they could to put a version of it back together. It lasted so long and kept recoverying because collectively it offered something people wanted. Even if they didnt know they wanted it. The modern world is still living in the shadow and legacy of the Roman Empire. Look no further than the calender eveyone uses.
A major plague? You mean the glorified cold we had? Lmfao
@@JuliusCaesar888I don’t think he’s talking about that, 50 after the civil war was not 2020
@@JuliusCaesar888 that would be the spanish flu...ca 50 years after the civil war
The biggest problem with this video and high quality educational videos in general is that the people who need to see it most never will. Ben Shapiro and his followers will most likely never see this and continue to think that Ben’s opinions about Rome or any other subject are as close to the truth as a person can come. I think it’s a great video and love your channel by the way, just a thing I’ve been thinking about a lot with educational TH-cam lately.
Don’t ever be foolish enough to think that the other person is the fool.
You right now are doing the exact same thing everyone in this thread is claiming him to do, you’re placing you’re self above who knows how many people all because you think they slavishly listen to and are hanging in every word he says.
You are affording him way more power and influence than he actually has. It’s possible he represents even a small minority within the conservative movement and if you think this is the end all of conservatism it’s all what Ben says then maybe it’s you who needs to be more open about different options
@@Person0fColoryeah conservatives are famous for their intellectual integrity and studiousness
@@Person0fColorbring up politics, an everyone turns into 6 year olds.
@@Person0fColor I did not mean to suggest that Ben is some figure that all conservatives listen to or even that this is a conservative problem. All I was trying to get at is that the average person who listens to the average influencer (on the left or right) does not listen to or watch well researched content. I don’t think I’m better than anyone I just wish people cared more about history and science and the way the worlds works. It’s a good step one to fixing a lot of the problems in the world.
@@boozecruiser We sure are. We're also a monolith who worship Ben like he's the Second Coming, as the liberals have so cleverly deduced.
I didn’t even think about how deforestation and soil degradation affecting fuel and the food supply could have helped Romes downfall.
Deforestation and soil degradation literally had zero to do with the Western half of the Empire being invaded by Gauls, Goths, Vandals, Huns, etc. The Eastern Empire had more population and in effect fewer raw resources than the West, and it still lasted another thousand years.
@@DrAnac-qh5dc"lower food yields affecting the entire economy by requiring shipment of food and changing agricultural heartland totally has nothing to do with the ability to fight off the latest of dozens of barbarian invasions. In fact, none of the ones previously actually mattered! The germans were totally special, but only the 249th time they invaded!"
Rome's foundation was shaken when the Punic wars sapped its most Nordic element in its élite. Then the imperial conquests polluted its blood even further. And the final nail was the coming of Christianity. In the end, Carthage won.
- Adûnâi
People who write such stuff rarely ever have a garden, so take it with a grain of salt.
@@angamaitesangahyando685
No.
Rome?
Liberty????
LIBERTY???
Cato would have called it that. Liberty for a fairly small class of people, but very different in theory from the older eastern monarchies where everyone was effectively the slave of one man.
rome as an early republic at least, these yeoman societies generally tend more to republicanism
@@jaif7327Rome as an empire was built on mass slavery
Compared to other major civilizations at the time, Rome had a lot of liberty. You can’t compare Ancient Rome to modern day thoughts on liberty.
By 1790 Britain's empire was exploding in scope and achieved a whopping 5% of its male adult population as meeting census criteria on wealth to vote, which was possibly slightly worse than Rome. This is the eve of the French revolution and the American one was fresh. Even then the French revolution achieved only 25% of adult males and the US similar, of course only to free males. And it was probably easier a path from slave to free to voter in roman society than pre abolition US.
Before that you have a small parentheses with the Italian Cities which in the 12-13th century achieve 10-15% of the electorate and were essentially totally autonomous. Similarly we have a brief period with Valencia as a free independent city. Otherwise only places with a census vote are cities that were completely subjugated to their overlord's law and had to pay taxes and so on - like the free cities of France, Iberia and Germany, but theirs is a gimmick as their subjection to central authority curtails policies and political discussions of the kind, and a broader impact of these liberties.
Otherwise before Greece, Rome, you have to go as far back as the Majanapahadas in India where two of the sixteenish Janas, were Republican and it's not even known to what context and extent they were Republican.
Making a twitter level sagacious take is pretty pointless, trying to sound astute rather than being right is wasted on a global sense, and just pollutes discussions to a degree of 0 productivity and direction. I know it's not malicious but everyone knows broader context.
No one ever invokes the name of the Roman Empire in good faith. Whether it’s someone like Mussolini or Hitler who like to cosplay as Roman or TH-cam debate bros who try to graft their understanding of Rome onto the USA, all of them care less about Rome and more about using it to add legitimacy to their cause.
And that includes many modern researchers & intellectuals.
History rhymes. Not sure what you’re on about.
Hitler removed Roman law and instituted common law. So I doubt they liked Rome much.
Hitler cosplaying as Rome makes no sense. He was into German superiority… the ancient enemies of Rome.
america is new Rome and its currently being self-immolated by the vandals.
It doesn’t matter if Ben Shapiro doesn’t understand why Rome fell. His job is to keep people divided.
He’s an Ivy League graduate. He understands this subject. He’s just lying to make money off of people who don’t.
Says the one separating people in different intersectionalities designed to divide.
@@ernimuja6991 Says the one doing the exact same thing.
@@IshmaelKipling I never claimed superiority by acting as if though we’re united, and the other side is the bad guys trying to divide.
I claim superiority by acknowledging the truth. We’ve never been more divided and neither side tolerates the other anymore because both sides are existential threats to the other.
@@ernimuja6991yeah yeah
and you only defended the wealthy against the poor because the poors were being rude, we understand.
The more you experience of Shapiro the more you realise how little he knows about any subject. He's almost like the exemplar Gish Gallop.
He did slam the trans and leftist lesbians well lol
he definately is the gish gallop exemplar. he's also quite good at the reverse gish gallop
One thing he has going for him is that he’s not a MaIe Progressive. He’s squeaky and nerdy and kind of annoying, but he’s still a man.
He just barely qualifies as a man.
Rome faced 1,000 problems and made 10,000 mistakes before it fell, and Ben still has to make things up to push his propaganda.
Also the Romans were bIack.
It's hard to overstate how difficult it is to maintain a civilization that spends 70% of all gov revenue on the military.
That’s an incredibly modern take, when your people don’t expect you to subsidize them there’s really nothing else to spend money on besides government excess and the military.
Civilizations maintain just fine when all the warriors that could destroy it are being paid handsomely. Maybe women and slaves suffer, but they aren’t people anyway.
Basically every polity before the industrial revolution spent almost its entire budget in war.
That's where taxes should be spent.
That is actually what the British state spend on the military for most of the imperial and colonial era. Pretty common. The roman army also produced lots of civil engineering output in peace time.
@@bakters
Why not spend most of it providing for its people?
I like the argument that things went wrong starting with Sulla. The ghracchi wanted to stop the expansion of large estates at the expense of citizen farmers, who were also citizen soldiers. They basically tried to enforce existing laws limiting the amount of land these large, slave using, plantations could take up, leaving more for the homesteading citizens who were the core of the army. The fall might not have come for centuries after this, but things take a while to work through the system, and in the end it was the mercinaries hired (because of a lack of citizen soldiers) who then turned to bite the hand that fed them and sacked Rome.
@@austinmackell9286 the mercenaries hired were resettled Goths and other barbarians who were semi-Latinized that were paid with land on the frontier in exchange for military service.
The end of the western half of the Roman Empire looks more and more like the beginnings of a medieval feudal system.
@@martytu20 how does any of that relate to what I am saying?
@@austinmackell9286 They stopped being mercenaries the moment they accepted frontier land as payment instead of coin.
Your conclusion falls apart because of it.
@@martytu20 I don't think it does. These people were not loyal to the roman system in the way that native latin roman citizens would have been. beyond that, after Sulla, we saw the transition from republic to monarchy, which also eroded the moral core and sense of belonging and loyalty neccessarry for any powerful military.
"Things really went wrong centuries before massive expansion and several golden ages"
Okay
There is a reason people like Ben Shapiro use the Roman empire as an example, rather than any more modern example. While people have done excellent work piecing together an extraordinary amount of information on the economics of the Roman empire, there remains vast gaps in our knowledge and much left up to interpretation. It means people like Bartlett are free to impose their ideology on to the loose set of facts we have, to create the narrative they want. Which people like Shapiro then pick up and accept without question, as it perfectly suits their politics as well.
These people don't pick other empires, like the Ottoman's or even the British, or even the Eastern Roman Byzantines, as the historical record is much stronger and doesn't leave them as much space to fill in the gaps with their own politics.
... they use Rome because it's the bedrock of western civilization that the American founders directly copied for the American experiment.
Even if they're wrong or right, that's always the actual reason.
The main reason why these know-nothing grifters invoke the Roman Empire is because most people have heard of it, most people know it was pretty big and most people know it's not around anymore. Let's see, can we make a know-nothing comparison of the fall of the Roman empire with the fall of the Soviet Union? Probably. The British Empire? Probably. The Ottoman Empire? The what???? Probably. The Old Republic? Most definitely! The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros? Now you're talking!
I think they just actually don't know any other parts of history.
So sick of people using Rome as an analogy for the modern US to advance their own political ideology. I think that more than half of the things Shapiro says are in bad faith, he's just a successful grifter.
🎯
Why though?
I hate the fact that this won’t reach even 5% of the people Ben Shapiro was able to reach with his absolutely irresponsible misinformation. Amazingly put together and beautifully researched dude, this video is 10/10, I’m just sad it won’t reach the people it needs to reach.
No, it won't, but to give up is to prove Ben Shapiro right.
“Misinformation” 🤣🤣 yea, “misinformation” is the worst. Thankfully guys like you and me have all the correct information.
@ColGesso
Your comments are as clear as stained glass sir. 😉
Ben Shapiro talks a lot about things he has very little understanding of, like his video about Cardi B's WAP.
Dude is so insufferable. He's clearly smart but amoral; he knows that he can get away with talking about those things he's not an expert in because people forgive him if he gives them enough outrage bait. He clearly won the grift, but it's so frustrating if you can spot what the grift is
@@stereomachine Shapiro is good at debating and he thinks this makes him very smart. But simply bombarding someone with word salad until they give up - essentially what Shapiro's tactic is, it's a very combative style of debating - doesn't make you an expert on a topic. I know some extremely knowledgeable people who would completely fumble a debate with Shapiro just because they're not as outspoken as he is, and he really lets this get to his head.
@@sulphuric_glue4468 Agreed. He's a smart guy and does what works, regardless of whether it's right or wrong.
@@sulphuric_glue4468that tactic is whats known as gish-gallop and its as old as time. Another example of an internet "debate guy" who does that is Destiny.
What's exactly wrong with his commentary on his video to Cardi B? Just because he's wrong on many things doesn't make the music video any less bad.
"Relentless pursuit of truth?" When has Ben Shapiro ever been involved in that?
Ben pursues truth in an Orwellian sense, with the intent of replacing it with something more to his liking.
It's marketing, just like the "facts don't care about your feelings" nonsense.
Always, he just has opinions you don't like. Seems like that bothers you?
Many historians over many centuries have identified over a hundred reasons for Romes fall.
My personal favourite take is that Rome didn't fall, it just became the Catholic church.
@@polybian_bicyclewhat did the Catholic Church become?
@@JupaA religious empire that somehow still exits.
@@polybian_bicycleTbh this is a take that I've started to believe as well.
More broadly that the western empire didn't fall as much as it gradually evolved beyond recognition.
Basically the more you research the various Foederati tribes and their relationship with Rome the more it starts to look like and internal reorganisation rather than a foreign invasion.
The Foederati were essentially just an alternative form of Roman governance which gradually replaced the old system of governors.
Pretty much all major barbarian political players of the late empire were heavily romanized and no more treacherous than the average roman governor.
Most claimed to act in the interests of Rome and atleast paid lip service to the eastern roman emperor for decades after the last western emperor was deposed.
The Senate wasn't even desolved by the barbarians but slowly peetered out and was finally snuffed out by the pope in the 600s
I think people forget just how important the foederati were to the empire maintaining its grip on Gaul for as long as it did.
Just a hundred? Back in the early 90s my college buddy blamed the fall of the Roman empire on the allowing of gays in their military.
I love how conservatives harp on the idea that Roman Empire fell to hedonism, paganism, and multiculturalism, when the empire was literally built on those things.
No it wasn't
@@huguesdepayens807 brother, Rome at its peak was pagan and multiethnic. Even after it claimed Christianity, many of its hedonistic traditions remained.
@@huguesdepayens807 Oh, that's a convincing point. Let's see: Founded 753 BCE, took up christianity 312 CE, went down in its western hemisphere 476 CE.
I think if anything, the Jewish sect has caused the downfall of rome /s
@@MrZauberelefant based facts
Rome was destroyed by christianty - a cult that first spread amongst the prostitutes and slaves and then to the rest of undesirables.
The jews invented christianity for fulfilling this purpose because they felt an inferiority compex towards the Romans and hated how the Romans 'persecuted' them.
Ironically, jews faced the worst persecution in Christian lands after the fall of Rome. 😂
I mean, we’re talking about a vast, transcontinental, transcultural empire, so the reasons why it “fell” are going to be numerous and complex. You can read whatever you want into it, and anyone who says it was one particular thing is almost certainly reading their own contemporary anxieties or hobby horse into it.
TRANScultural??? Woke alert??
Wait, it was lead poisoning, right?
@@theodorerigley8639 Unclear, and if it did play a part it definitely wasn't the whole reason
Well, I don’t imagine that it helped lol.
sure its multitude of reasons but its also bad leadership its always bad leadership
One thing people miss about the fall of the Roman Empire is that the western empire got colder while the eastern empire stayed a stable temperature.
The drop in temperatures in the west I believe caused a fundamental collapse of urban societies as food became incredibly unstable as crop failures became yearly as farmers did not have the correct varieties of crops to plant nor could predict when to plant their crops.
The crops that survived and were harvested slowly adapted to the new climate after the initial shock and farmers crops began to grow healthy again. Albiet in a reduced capacity due to the decrease in temperatures
This sudden and extreme shock to the food supply caused massive famine and repeated shortages that could not be sustained.
This even affected the Germans as well and might have caused the chain migrations as the Germans kept going to lands their crops could grow after repeated crop failures as well.
The end of the Roman warm period is legit at least a top 3 reason the western empire collapsed.
pretty sure germans kept going because of the horde behind them
I love when people talk ancient economics to me. You, sir, just earned yourself a subscribor.
When someone like Ben Shapiro says Rome was a place of freedom and liberty, hes talking about HIS freedom. His liberty. He assumes that if he were in a Roman Republic, that he would still maintain the same level of money, power and influence he currently holds and has been accustomed to. He knows he wouldnt be affected like the majority and would be able to freely gallivant among the oligarchy to his hearts content carving out a niche in his religious lane.
People will tell you exactly who they are, with every word, and every breath, they will tell you exactly who they are.
And Constantinople disappears from the radar (the Eastern provinces were already the richest parts of the Empire and center of Mediterranean culture), I mean up until the 1204 it had Roman Law, Roman Institutions, advanced Roman Bureaucracy and during the Reign of Emperor Basil II the biggest GDP in the world (at least for 100 years), they preserved all of Greek Philosophy that the West lost because of lack of knowledge of Greek . It endured countless attacks from all sides and yet it managed to be the most advanced State in Medieval Christendom for 1000 years with the most stable and long lasting currency the solidus, they invented the first professional clinics (they even tried to separate Siamese twins in the 9th century) used “ fire signalling towers for quick and simple communication. I mean the Edward Gibbon style of saying “Old Rome falls to hordes of Germanic barbarians and it’s over guys wait to the Italian Renaissance” is obsolete and one should also ask who influenced the Renaissance in the first place (Gemistos Pleton, Cardinal Bessarion ecc..).
Well said. But the western historians never really liked Constantinople.... and not just historians, and not just Constantinople but everything Eastern and Orthodox.
He probably doesn't understand a decent amount of stuff.
All political pundits are fantastically stupid. If you actually think one is smart, you're the targeted audience for his scam.
Conservatism doesn’t benefit from him or the public understanding history.
@@boozecruiser ? What does this even mean? Like the more you study history the less conservative you become? Or like History doesnt comport to a "conservative" world view? what the hell does this even mean?
This is just more smart assed "stuffy" cosmopolitan chauvinism and the sad part is youre probably not even as erudite as you think you are.
For sure you play more video games than you read
@@boozecruiserI’m not sure why you think that the average conservative doesn’t think that way I know Rome fell it was for a plethora of reasons and we as a country suffer from the same things just before the end of there empire(:
His idea as to why Rome fell is based on the traditional reason believed during the early modern people up until the last few decades.
Traditionally "why Rome Fell" was blamed on Rome's gradual loss of civic virtue. This is partly based on the reading of Roman writers such as Tacitus and other writers who complained that Rome was losing her virtue. Many looked back to the mythical era of Rome wish to "return to the good old days"
This interpretation was EXTREAMLY popular during early America so people who read and idolize America's founding fathers are likely to also take this interpretation literally.
It's interesting that 4th Century Rome was finally on the right track. Its change in monetary policy addressed long standing credit and liquidity crunches that were behind much of the financial issues dating back to the 2nd century, when plunder no longer followed into state revenue. The fiscal system was positioned to survive the breakup of the Western Empire into various Romanized barbarian "kingdoms," wherein the kings were largely willing to act like governors paying tribute and tax. An organic reconsolidation or wars among the barbarians - likely far less catastrophic that Justinian's wars - would have likely brought the west back together wholly or into a few large chunks. It was Justinian that destroyed things because his wars were essentially a well branded civil war that far exceeded the brutality and devastation of the previous ones.
Classic Justinian and his Make Rome Great Again campaign.
Yeah but rome at that times is having many problem and there so much reason for the collapse if rome that you could create a tv show about the late rome period nearing their downfall
I'd have to find it again, but I read a recent academic essay about Roman identity in 5th-6th century Italy, and it argued that identification as Roman remained very strong in Italy post Imperial collapse all the way up until Justinian's attempts to impose imperial control on Italy. Justinian's wars resulted in Roman identification in Italy completely collapsing outside of the city of Rome itself.
It sounds like the over interconnectivity of the Western Roman state led to a structural fragility that it couldn’t recover from.
If the Western Roman State relied on Africa to produce food and tax revenue to sustain the rest of the Western Roman State, and then Africa is lost to the Vandals, unless the the Western Roman State can adapt quickly to the loss, the entire structure is at risk.
Similar to one theory of the Bronze Age Collapse.
its also due to loss of cultural identity. early rome was a militarized society that took pride in what they did
Specialization is an enormous boon to wealth creation, especially with easily protected sea routes. Adam Smith elucidated this idea wonderfully, trade creates wealth. After a sustained period of an interconnected world, specialization looks like a safer and safer bet. The Vandal seizure of North Africa was a black swan event that generations of Romans would miss out on lucrative opportunities if they bet on happening... much less the mighty Empire's inability to reconquer it. The Eastern empire suffered a similarly devastating blow with the loss of Egypt to the Arabs but managed to hang on and recover eventually. I think the completeness with which the Arabs achieved their victory actually helped Rome adapt and survive, the Vandals weren't treated with appropriate seriousness so no deal was ever worked out with them and production wasn't shifted as reconquest was expected any day. Egypt by contrast was GONE. Long gone.
@@ericc9321 Specialization is more efficient in a particular context-where there is reliable and consistent surplus to enable said specialization. However, said contexts are almost never reliable at the scale of centuries, let alone millenia. Overspecialization is as much an ever-present risk and further engenders the problems of dependency on a system that, while it may be more resilient agaisnt tiny shocks, is more vulnerable and less recoverable against massive shocks and more fertile ground for hegemonic corruption. Specialization versus generalization is always contextual, and the context inevitably changes over time.
@@Blox117 Roman cultural identity was far stronger in 400 than it was in 40. Rather than a small group from a city ruling over a patchwork of clients and slaves it was the identity of virtually everyone in the empire, virtually every christian, from Gothic soldiers in Briton down to Egyptian hermits.
Rome turned itself into a Persia, India or China magnitude civilization that even its conquerors were forced to imitate and claim legitimacy from, and it didn't do it in the first century.
I was about to say "just like the Bronze Age collapse!" until I clicked "see more" on your post and saw the last line.
I'm pretty sure you could fill a library with what he doesn't understand. And place it right next to the libary full of things he doesn't believe.
There should be a "Ben doesn't understand x" playlist somewhere because Ben doesn't understand many things yet he has an opinion .
The issue with comparing Rome specifically to any modern nation is Rome didn't fall for one specific reason or another. Anyone who tells you, "I know exactly what one issue caused the fall of Rome is lying to you."
Rome fell for dozens of reasons. The size, poor leadership, constant civil war, economic hardship, etc. There's so much that goes into the collapse of something so large it's impossible for any one, individual, given reason to cause the entire fall.
Ben Shapiro doesn’t understand a god damn thing.
But the late Roman economy was less monetary, than in classical age. After the 3rd century crisis many fiscal transfers were done in naturals. The economy became more army-based, garrison cities like Trier grew faster than Mediterranean cities. While slavery decreased, so did citizen's rights. Not only colones, but also city dwellers lost the freedom of movement for taxation. Climate cooling, deadly pandemics and civil wars decreased productivity, thus decreasing state income. The state was forced to raise taxation by any means, often losing public support. The income was still not enough to upkeep the army, which over and over decimated itself in civil wars. This lead to reliance on Germanic foederati: outsourcing the own hard power to whole armies made of and commanded by strangers. It was them, who finally pulled apart the Empire.
I agree with you. Also, the decline in long-distance trade, which was a major percentage of Rome's tax collection.
Totally agree on the hinge event being the loss of North Africa, and the failure to repatriate it. Liked the stronger than normal emphasis on economics. Really liked the summation including Justinian's pyrrhic attempts to re-absorb the west. Great video, even though I don't think Shapiro is likely to notice, unfortunately.
I mean, you can easily argue that the Vandals wouldve never crossed into North Africa if certain things had not happened in previous decades, such as Stilicho’s death.
Anyone who thinks the Roman Empire fell when its poorer, western half fell (in AD 476) also doesn't understand why the empire fell (in AD 1453, nearly a thousand years later).
I think mr Edward Gibbon should take all the credit for this.
The irony of a devout Jew defending Rome😂
Rome Contra Judea.
he's a fake one, the fake ones were on very good terms with the Romans
@@TheWayoftheSithas my good boy Hadrian would say: Do you mean Syria Palestinea?
Good to have you back!
This is an incredibly complex topic, and unfortunately there is a long history of commentators offering simplistic explanations, often with the intention of identifying 'lessons' for the present. Not being a north American, I had never heard of Ben Shapiro until today, but it seems that he is merely the latest in a long line of conservative commentators using Rome as a stand-in for contemporary America - a subject that probably deserves a detailed study in its own right.
Gibbon really enjoys continuing influence eh
The hilarious part is that Gibbon's central thesis is that yes, Rome fell due to moral decay. But what Gibbon deemed "moral decay" was essentially just Christianity lmao - Christianity causing the Romans to lose their martial vigor. I am sure that goes over well with the "Judeo-Christian values" crowd.
To whom? I don't agree with Gibbon on why Rome fell, which is Christianity.
It may be outdated in some respects, but it's still a fabulous wealth of information and, if nothing else, a great read.
@@1685Violin then you're just plain wrong because that is 100% the reason why it fell
@@tomtaylor5623 No, it isn't. Only an militant atheist, an enlightenist, or a neopagan would say this.
Ben is a pseudo intellectual who debates children & often refers to "my wife is a Dr.". I have to listen to this. 🤔
I love it when completely unrelated TH-cam channels dunk on Ben Shapiro when I least expect it.
Some of them are right wingers themselves.
@@1685Violin Duh. Academically proving how whiny midwit partisan grifters are full of shit is a universal law.
@@1685Violinya but what is important is people think they are “owning” the chuds.
@@Person0fColor I know. I would try to pushback on their distain of Shapiro by claiming different factions of the right dislike him as well but my comments have a high likelihood of getting shadowbanned.
@@1685Violin Bro half my comments get shadow banned its ridiculous
About the inflation: If you pay your soldiers, the money is still there. Yes the state doesnt have it but it is still within the roman empire and can be retaken through taxes and other means by the state.
The problem was that silver went out of the roman empire. Rome bought more trading goods than they sold. So the silver left the empire and couldnt be retaken. Ultimatly roman silvermines couldn't keep up and the silvercoin crashed.
There was even a point when the senate imposed an import restriction on wares like silk, to slow the outflow of silver.
In Jewish myth Rome represents "Edom". Ben Shapiro doesn't understand the fall of Rome in the context of antiquity.
your first mistake was taking ben shapiro seriously...
Someone has to clean up his mess though.
Shapiro has a better take than just about any academic.
@@spartakos3178 no
@@Unholy_Holywarrior yes
@@spartakos3178he is certainly a smart guy, but like a lot of pundits his reliability is undermined by his partisan bias.
This info opens up the door for people to understand debt is money and has been for ages and start learning how world systems operate and what it means to them in day to day life.
It's wonderful having you back, mate!
His whole statement hinges on the word "civilization" doing a great deal of work.
Let me guess, they let barbarians be emperors because of DEI?
At this stage, it wouldn't surprise me to hear someone like Shapiro say that.
I mean, Byzantine certainly did have some it put on the thrown because of their ethnicity, but that was to appease certain peoples, not for the sack of “diversity”
This video is one of if not the best I've seen on the fall of Rome. You explained this topic so so well, easy to understand, in depth, eloquent.
It's honestly beautiful left-wingers and extreme right-wingers both hate Ben Shapiro😂
It really is, he and his grift somehow failed to sow division as now even “his side” is starting to turn on him.
@@astromancer9819he doesn't have a grift, just opinions you don't like. Try and calm down.
@@astromancer9819he doesn't have a grift, just opinions you don't like. Try and calm down.
Ben doesn’t understand a lotta things tbh
Ben Shapiro intentionally doesn't understand anything.
Ofc, he is a religious extremist..
He's a Jew who spends all his time and energy supporting MAGA people who are friends with Nazis. He has to be very careful to never understand anything because if he allows reality into his life for a minute he'll have to deal with that.
This. Their whole tribe and acolytes (Saturday Gentlemen) intentionally don't understand anything.
@@m420-nd1if judaism and zionism are not the same thing
@@bogdanpopescu1401 but he is both Jew and Zionist.
I don't get this right wing obsession with comparing the modern United States to the late Roman Republic or the late Empire. It is so disingenuous to say our situations are even remotely similar. Also interesting that the right wing idealizes traditional Roman values when everything was "at its height" when in reality that meant political domination by the elite ruling class, mass slave labor, and undisputed patriarchy. The political system of Rome was run by, and primarily benefitted a very small group of be the rich men. To suggest anything else is to fall for 2,000 year old political propaganda.
I believe you just summarised exactly *why* the conservative side is so pre-occupied with that comparison.
its a right-wing thing? i hear left wing people talk about it all the time
@whtalt92 theyre concerned about moral degradation and populist reform leading to the downfall, and that they should've stuck to their traditional systems and values. But the second half of my comment is pointing out what those traditional systems and values actually were.
Because the right understands that the default situation is that life sucks and history is incredibly violent because of that. And they understand that The Roman Republic and later Empire made things far better than they were before until it collapsed. It's pretty easy to draw parallels to the past and not just the Roman empire. Most ideas have been tried before
Yeah, America is more like Carthage ironically
Squeaky Ben doesn’t understand why Rome fell?
What a shocker.
What always gets me with Ben and others lamenting the fall of the Roman Empire is that empires are bad. They shouldn't exist. It's good when empires stop existing and people are freer to govern themselves. It is still a tragedy when the fall itself involves violence and suffering.
The modern American Empire is also bad.
I'm a very simple person, if someone asked why the Roman empire fell I would focus on that second part: empire.
They do that, they rise, they fall. They are based on expansion, and then having a central government that is far removed from the majority of people, with often diminishing returns for those further away, making it harder to maintain captured areas because people aren't really "Roman" all the way out there, they do not have that feeling.
Like, I'm sure there are basic minutiae that really explain the end of it. But all empires that have ever existed have fallen, because change happens, because expansion cannot be exponential.
If I HAD to make a political comparison to prove my point with it....I guess I would point to modern companies and mega corps, who want to see not only profit every year...but INCREASED profit. When we know that is simply not sustainable. You can't always be going up.
“Rome” and “freedom” do not belong in the same breath lmaooo
Did the average person feel free? Id say its a state of mind.
Ben be like : "you think the roman didn't sell their house and move? "
I found this video after taking an “End of Rome” history class at my university and I gotta say it is a fantastic video. My professor told us that the barbarians who took over Western Roman lands styled themselves as Romans and that it was the Eastern Roman invasion of the West that truly broke everything. I didn’t know exactly what he meant until I reached the end of this video.
I thank the algorithm gods for showing me this blessed video.
I shall make sacrifices in their name
I would be interested to hear your opinion on Joseph Tainter's theory an empire get complex over time in order to solve problems. This additional complexity progressively adds cost, weakening the empire, until it become fragile, and vulnerable to the next crisis.
But of an odd question; but I old you kind recommending some books that go into the late Roman economy? I’ve heard you use the term “Tax Spine” multiple times; and while I think I can discern what exactly it implies; I’m always looking to develop a deeper understanding on Roman taxation and how exactly it manifest in government
This is a Wickhamism; you must read the Wickham.
@@againstjebelallawz I figured as much lmao; it always felt like a term that came from someone saying it in their book as a weird idiosyncratic term; thank you!
societies collapse due to monopolism running its course - only benefiting a few at the cost of the rest (and the ability of the rest to exist sustainably). This leads to society falling apart as the system becomes unsustainable. The monopols that lead to this are manifold, but are all based on the way a society gets to the rules that govern it.. political monopols are the mechanism (coupled with our nature of being living beings and how they behave naturally).
Adrian Goldsworthy also has an interesting book on why the western empire fell. He argues along the lines of weakening the military side to improve resistance against coups. Which left the empire more open for incursions.
“Ben Shapiro doesn’t understand”
You can just stop right there, you know 😂
He seems to understand breathing amongst his talent.
From a French perspective we have the same thing of the gauls being our "ancestors" because it's an earliest denomination for the local area during Roman conquest. Antique identity is much more complex than modern nationalist would let us believe.
Nationalism is a good thing, Ethno-Nationalism
Rome fell because Germanic migratory tribes left a banana peel on a floor, and after Rome fell they landed face first in a pie
Significant and timely. It is to not let history be hijacked by special and narrow interests. However, I am not sure the Bagaudae rebels saw themselves as completely Roman. How could they?
Well that history and heritage does belong to certain people. Its not likw it just isnt connected to people and cultures today. Systems based on those ancient cultures means that yes, we get to use that as a people
The really difficult thing is finding something Ben Shapiro DOES understand.
Outside of Court Cases and Law, it isn’t much
he understands the grift of the alt right
@@MrDukeSilverr no
This video’s title is about 3 words too long.
Ben was wrong!?!?!?
Again!?!?!?
I'm so disappointed.
So happy someone outside of finance and economics spoke of what happens in history when the currency collapses and the economy dives. Even just saying debt is a rare thing. Thanks for doing this work!
An economist would know a lot more than just a historian
@ You do your own work and read. You don’t just take whatever someone said as fact.
@ Economists specialize in the system that functions now in the present. It’s just a job that gets paid to predict and respond to trade systems. The economy is what is bought and sold, who trades with who etc. and that is documented in historical records.
Rome fell because the type of slavery it practiced widely became largely economically unviable, and its type of agriculture degraded the environment to make itself unsustainable
The military technological gap between the Romans and the barbarians shrank dramatically. Compare Cesars opponents the Gauls to the tribes that crossed the Rhine in 406, and never returned. The barbarians had learned a lot.
Thank you. I am not one of the people who hate Ben for no reason other than team politics. But the man genuinely believes he has a better grasp of history than he does.
Now the man reads. Which is more than I can say for most. But my god.
Him, Prager, Beck, Hannity , etc don't understand people's real reason for revolt. It's often lack of needs rather than I can't do what I want that causes rebellion.
There areinfinite reasons to hate him, unless of course you agree with his quasi fasc ist worldview
So glad your channel blew up bro.
It's interesting that he cites immigration as a problem, when one of the truly remarkable aspects of early Rome was its EASE of immigration and citizenship, and one of the central social issues of late-antique Rome was the Senate's opposition and sabotage of both Imperial attempts to expand the tax-base through expanding full-citizenship to freemen and provincials, and Imperial defense-contracts with foreign mercenaries. The whole reason the Goths became hostile to Rome was because of the empire backing out of granting them the land they'd been promised as payment; I want to say that was a decision the Senate forced on the Emperor, but it's been so long since I read the sources I could be misremembering.
Youre way off
@@mat1070 Checking the sources: No I'm not. See Beard's SPQR, section 'brother versus brother, insiders versus outsiders'(pp. 64-69) in "In The Beginning", and her discussion of Caracalla in the epilogue(pp.527-529), spcl the last paragraph.
The goth sitch was more complicated than I remembered, but not wrong. While the Goths had a long history of raiding roman territory, this was complicated by an equally long history of doing this AS Roman allies and soldiers, often under the employ of eastern imperial claimants. I was thinking particularly of Alaric's sack of Rome, which was directly in response to Arcadius reneging on Alaric's agreed payments following the execution of Alaric's court-patron, Eutropius.
Blaming the Goths, as Shapiro does by making this about "immigration", for either 1)the Roman disunity which led to their employ or 2)taking needed measures not to watch their families starve after decadent Romans dishonored themselves refusing oath-sworn payments and supplies, is as factually ridiculous as it is morally destitute.
Great video. Interesting stuff! Personally, I like Joseph Tainter's take. He does an analysis in "The collapse of complex societies".. it's not incompatible with anything you're saying, it just frames it in a way to explain why, if that tax route would have collapsed 200 years previously, the empire may still have recovered. But by then, it was not able to adjust. He describes it in terms of "the marginal return on investment in complexity." The institutions composing the empire collectively narrow in on a strategy that produces profit. Initially, the profit per investment of time & resources is large. But the lowest-hanging fruit gets picked first. Still, a system develops to exploit the fruit and pick it more efficiently. However, all the time, with each fruit picked, it yields a slightly lower return. Eventually you get to the point where the yield is lower than the amount of energy spent exploiting the yield. But all the systems have developed around exploiting this fruit. Even if re-tooling to exploit another fruit is something the system can do, the particular way it does that is itself a strategy, which will itself yield less and less fruit. So ultimately the system will inevitably reach a point where the return on investment is negative, and then it will start to collapse.
Coulda just ended the thread title at "Ben Shapiro doesn't understand"
To be fair, maybe except for the freedom part Ben’s explanation sounds like Romans Senators lamenting how great the past used to be in Rome but now no longer
Rome wasn't far right enough, so they fell ~ Ben Shapiro
Ben Shapiro is not far right, at all.
“Ben Shapiro Doesn’t Understand” is a more general, but equally true, statement.
Roman society collapsed largely as a consequence of plagues which devastated the Roman population, and climate change which led to decreased agricultural production.
In fact, the germanic tribes were migrating south largely due to climate change.
In any event, precipitous population decline was the fundamental cause of Rome's collapse.
Some visual aids would be helpful. I appreciate the artwork, but including some images of the peoples or currencies we're discussing, or even the book titles of some of the sources.
The Fall of Rome is one of those ancient era that somehow perfectly parallels and predicts 50 of the last 3 catastrophic global events.
Well yes, if history does run parallel in theme across time, that would make sense. If, of course.
@@xenophon5354what if it doesn’t?
@@Jupa Then it wouldn’t make sense.
To quote a great sociologist "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."
When Ben Shapiro waxes poetic about the value of the relentless pursuit of truth, it's almost painfully ironic.
You know nothing, Ben Shapiro
So happy to see you back dude! Can't wait for more late antiquity or maybe some diadochi content!
I am very right wing and I find Shapiro super annoying. All he does is talk fast and talk over people. He doesn’t actually have much of substance to say most of the time and he’s just overall irritating.
As a right winger do you have anyone else you would put forward instead?
@@jr8260 Plenty, Shapiro is a mere lad who has more loyalty to Israel than the United States.
I prefer folks like say. . . Trent Horn (if you're Catholic), Mentiswave, Actual Justice Warrior, etc. Basically any TH-camr that isn't mainstream really.
@jr8260 I'd rather listen to Pat Buchanan than Ben Shapiro.
Love how everybody is discussing truth in a post-truth society. Very quaint.
I'm sure all the millions of slaves thought daily about their freedoms
There were far more slaves at the height of Rome's power than there were in its decline.
@brucetucker4847 Good to know....that doesn't mean shit in the context of this discussion, though.
Relevance?
Does anyone know the name of the artwork at 4:40? I can't seem to find an original source
Ben Shapiro wrong about something? Just another day of the week then.
big material analysis brother. great video!
Thank you for helping correct the record.
Fascinating breakdown of the Roman economy/state collapse
Most historians don't even cite the Crisis of the Third Century. I put the end there of the Imperial Period. After the Crisis of the Third Century, it was a series of rump-states that led to the creation of modern Europe.
"oeconomia est, inepte" One of the greatest campaign slogans of all time, never gets old.
Frankly theres a LOT of things Ben Shapiro doesn’t understand
Sound quality terrible. Keeps glitching