After the Fall — The Post Apocalyptic City of Rome
Throughout human history there have been a number of times when human civilization has been smacked backwards due to economic, environmental, or societal catastrophies. In many of Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” podcasts, he calls such moments in history “Statue of Liberty ruins in the sand” moments, when the character in the film Planet of the Apes played by Charleton Heston comes upon the aged ruins of the Statue of Liberty, and then realizes that there was once a greater civilization from some forgotten distant past.
For modern day peoples of European descent, such a concept is very foreign to us, we have not experienced such times in Western History since the fall of the Roman Empire. There are TV show and movies depicting such things, there are even people called “preppers” who prepare for such events, but modern European descended peoples tend to think that society will always improve indefinitely. It hard to imagine a society wide collapse in the near future. Sure, there have been wars, plagues, and famines, but never has Western Civilization suffered such a profound and revolutionary setback as the decline and fall of Rome.
Under Rome Europe was unified under a multinational, multiethnic cosmopolitan nation -state. Rome was rife with trade, with science, literacy, technology, culture, and commerce. After the fall of Rome, Europe was fragmented into a cluster of small fiefdoms and territories ruled by local nobles who were little more than warlords who were loosely united by a monarch who really didn’t have that much power. It was this period that was called the “Dark Ages”, and while historians debate over how dark the Dark Ages were, it was quite clear that when Rome fell, so too did the cultural sophistication of the Roman world. Much of the science and technology of the classical world was forgotten, never to be rediscovered until the Renaissance. Gone was the cultural sophistication and culture of the empire. As a result, many Europeans of the age dreamt of restoring the empire, hence why Roman Imperial titles became popular among European monarchs. European society wouldn’t rebound until the middle ages and Renaissance.
If there was any post apocalyptic wasteland after the fall of the empire, no place would fit that description more than the City of Rome itself. At its height in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, it was home to between 1.5 and 2 million people. By the time of Constantine, the city’s population had shrunk to around half a million. When the Western Roman Empire fell in the 5th century, the city was populated by little more than 50,000. After Rome’s fall, the city would continue to suffer. While the Germanic peoples who took over Rome were not as destructive as traditional history portrays them (the barbarians were not there to destroy the empire, but to become a part of the empire), they were unprepared to manage the bureaucracy and infrastructure of a large city (and empire) that was already in decline. Thus, Rome crumbled out of disuse and neglect. Worse yet was a series of invasions during the early middle ages. First there were the Byzantines (Eastern Roman Empire), who invaded with the goal of re-unifying the empire but caused a great deal of destruction. Then were attacks by the Germans (Holy Roman Empire), who also sought to re-unify the empire. Then there were the constant feuds between Rome (the Papal States) and the various independent city states that dotted Italy.
By the 12th and 13th century, the population of Rome had dropped to less than 20,000. Can you imagine such a thing? A city that once was home to 1.5 million people, now reduced to a tiny fraction of its size. And you thought Detroit had it bad. Rome was a ghost town, mostly filled with empty and abandoned buildings that once served as government buildings, entertainment centers, religious centers, and homes for a dead society. Ironically, in the Middle Ages, the famous Roman Colosseum had more seats than there were people to sit in them. Those who remained lived in and amongst the ruins in small dwellings, tents, and shacks. Those who were wealthy literally built their homes, villas, and mansions directly on top of ancient Roman ruins. Many of the common inhabitants of Rome made a living scavenging the remains of the city, exploring abandoned buildings and estates, or braving Rome’s catacombs in search of anything of value. Rome was an especially favored residence for stone masons, who would loot the city’s abandoned buildings for cut stone, brick, or marble, using it to construct new buildings across Italy. Like Charleton Heston they were constantly reminded in daily life that they were descendants of a civilization that was far greater than theirs. Imagine today if across the world human civilization suffered a major collapse similar to that of the Roman Empire. Imagine large cities like New York or Tokyo, once home to tens of millions, now massive ghost towns with a tiny fraction of its inhabitants living amongst the ruins of ancient skyscrapers and buildings. Its hard to conceive of how hard Rome fell.
Rome wouldn’t start making a comeback until the late middle ages and Renaissance. It’s population wouldn’t completely recover until the late 1940’s.
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