Hi! Thanks for coming out to answer our questions.

I know Rome encompassed a vast geographic range, and had citizens from all over, even before the invasions of Italy. In the late Roman Empire, did the Plebeian class identity start to break down? Or did people cling to the old social distinctions?

So this is a question that has been bugging me for a while:

The impression we often get of Merovingian Gaul and Ostrogothic Italy is of the former being distinctly more 'barbarian' and the latter being much more 'Romanised', but that this is informed in large part by the more 'barbarian'-focussed narrative of Gregory of Tours in the Frankish case and the 'Roman' perspective of Cassiodorus in the Ostrogothic case. While of course this isn't going to be a quantitative analysis, based on a more holistic view, was Italy under the Ostrogoths genuinely more 'Romanised' compared to Frankish Gaul, perhaps owing to control of the old institutional centres in Rome and Ravenna, or were they more similar, or do we just not have the capacity to go too far against the Gregory/Cassiodorus narratives?

Apologies if this is a bit too far out of scope, I have other questions about the Ostrogoths I can ask...

Hi and many thanks for answering our questions!

It's a very common story that, in the 450s, Attila stopped his invasion of Rome after meeting with some envoys of the Roman Emperor Valentinian III, one of whom was Pope Leo I. The story goes that Leo I somehow managed to convince Attila to turn back. What do we know about this really? What is the modern consensus about Attila's invasion of Italy, his decision to return, and the role of Roman diplomacy and the Pope (if at all) in all this?

I was once told that after Rome left Britain the lack of commerce led to a decline and even loss of technology and craftsmanship (pottery was specifically mentioned). Is that claim at all true, false, or somewhere in between?

I've heard that the 'barbarian' invaders (Franks, Goths...) were actually more like Roman armies than anything else. How is it that these barbarians were so similar to the Romans then? What would have made them different?

Hello Jeroen, thanks for the AMA.

Early in my study of history I was frequently instructed to look at Gibbon's works as a historical work, rather than one of modern academic substance. Particularly his conclusions and analysis, e.g. Rome's fall being caused by barbarism and religion. That being said, there does seem to be something happening to the Roman military system from the 2nd through 5th centuries that resulted in a loss of effectiveness. Whether this merely coincides with shifting cultural and religious norms or is, in some part, caused by them is something I struggle with. I'm starting to think that dismissing Gibbon so casually might be unwarranted, even if his biases are well known. What are your thoughts on the evolution of the Roman Government's ability to protect and project power during the period of your study? Was the Roman government in the 5th century really less effective than their 2nd century counterparts? Or was it simply that more was asked of them?

Something that keeps sticking out to me when I read Roman history is that the Later Empire seems to have had more trouble rebuilding its army than the earlier Republic. I mean during Hannibals invasion, when Rome had substantially less manpower than it did after conquering its Imperial heights, they lost some absolutely horrific battles like Cannae and still managed to put together new armies. Adrianople was much less costly than Cannae in terms of body count (as far as I know) yet seems to have been a much more serious setback.

Is this accurate? Did the Late Imperial army have a more difficult time absorbing losses than it did earlier in its history?

Hi there! Early modern historian here. Is there a specific academic book (or two, or more) that you could suggest on religious pluralism and conversion policies in the late Roman empire? Thanks in advance!

I've heard you can argue the pope and church took over the role of the emperor and the empire in the Western Roman Empire. What do you think about that point of view?

In Dutch civil law, it's pretty common to say certain legal principles (most notably "pacta sunt servanda") derive directly from Roman law. How much Roman law would've remained after the empire withdrew from a region and if it did remain, how?

Hello Dr and thank you for this fascinating AMA! It looks like you've taught and worked in some very different places. I'm curious, what is it like moving between entirely different countries and very different areas but still working on the same field? Do different places have different perspectives or focuses on the same thing?

Secondly, I'm very interested to hear your thoughts on the more pop culture "Fall of Rome" trope. We get tons of questions on it pretty constantly, often with very specific references or ideas on 'what happened to Rome."

Hi, thanks for doing this!

I would like to pick your mind about the occupation, romanization and then the retreat from Dacia.

There is ongoing discussion abut the ethnogenesis of romanians and I would like to know how did the rule of the Roman Empire differ in Dacia from say Moesia or England. Were the dacians killed en masse, was this even customary to the romans? Do we know just how much immigration was there in Dacia from the other roman provinces? Do we know anything about life north of the Danube after the retreat?

Thanks!

Hello and thank you for your AMA!

When I read something about the byzantine court, it was stated that it had very strict rules, everything was meticously planned. Also the Children who were born when their father was Emperor had a stronger claim than the children who were born prior to his ascension to the throne. Did the western roman empire have similar sets of rules in play and how did they differ from each other? Also, did the different emperors have a system of communication to communicate with each other? How strong was the split actually?

Sorry for all the questions, I am just excited to finally get to ask them.

Hi! Thank you so much for this! It might be a bit of a simple question, but I’m trying to understand why during the reigns of the more successful “Byzantine” emperors (Justinian etc) instead of making sustainable territorial gains, shoring up the borders etc, many pushed for reconquest of regions they didn’t really have the ability to control? It seems as if a lot of the decisions made by Roman emperors of the late period were made with a sort of wishful optimism, or is that a combination of hindsight and modern knowledge?

What's your subjective coolest Roman violence story? The one you tell at parties when you're a little tipsy?

Good morning Jeroen, thank you for doing this. My question is about another educational resource on this subject. Have you listened to "The Fall of Rome" podcast by Patrick Wyman? I think the organization of his podcast and how he presents the information is excellent, I really enjoyed it. I don't know enough about the subject to assess his conclusions, but you probably do. What do you think of his conclusions and how he explains the subject?

If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend. His thesis dealt with the breakdown of communication networks and the paths of letters during the Late Roman period and he puts these into the context of that 'volatile cocktail'. (Love that phrase)

I have a question related to historiography:

Why has Adrianople (primarily an infantry battle) generally been seen as pivotal moment in military history, cavalry finally triumphing over infantry, instead of the civil wars of the first two decades of the 4th century, where we see quite widespread use of heavy cavalry?

Thanks for the cool ama. How did the Roman military evolve in the final few decades? I'm assuming supply lines and logistics must have started to break down. Did the military stay fairly uniform or see big changes?

How did trade and travel relations work between what were more or less "rogue provinces" ruled by de facto independent kings? A common narrative is that political fragmentation disrupted the security upon which trade and travel and thus the prosperity of the Early Empire was built upon, so how does our evidence for changes in trade, travel, etc. track with what we know about political centralization and fragmentation in this period?

Dr Wijnendaele, in the simplest possible terms what HAVE the Romans done for us in terms of influence on current socio-political dynamics that have endured to the 21st century?

Hello, interesting post, I'd always loved the late antiquity as a period!

Now, at the last days of the Roman Empire, Rome was very christianized, and it's know for example that in Egypt the traditional religion persisted until the Juntinian period. So, there were still pockets of the ancient roman religion at the moment of the falling of Rome (V century)?

Hiya! Thanks for coming out to answer our questions today!

A perhaps slightly difficult question to answer, but one that might still be interesting: when did the people in e.g. Gaul stop thinking of themselves as Roman? I know there's a lot of discussion of ethnogenesis and such in Late Antiquity, but is there any idea on how the opposite process went?

In Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell, he focuses his attention on internal challenges mainly in the form of corruption in government and the frequency of civil wars over Emperorship which he then supposes reduced the number, size, quality, and loyalty of the armies of the Late Roman Empire thus leading to the slow fragmentation of the Empire as provinces turned to self-help or were overtaken by "barbarians" (it's often hard to tell the difference!). If there's anything to the narrative of increasing corruption and dysfunction in Imperial institutions, how can we tell that such institutions were less efficient than they had been in earlier times? If the institutional explanation is accepted at least in part, why did such decay set in and why did the Eastern half survive while the Western half was overcome even though they had similar political institutions?

I've often wondered about how people in the Empire identified themselves since "nationality" as we know it today didn't really exist back then. Were there olive farmers in modern day Spain during the height of the empire who identified as Celt-Iberian (or a regional subdivision)? What language did they speak? What gods did they worship? Is there any documentation of a generational shift after the Roman conquest where a grandfather would identify as a Celt/Greek/Egyptian/etc, but his grandson would identify as a Roman? How long did it take for a conquered people to see the Romans as "us" rather than "them?" Did the extension of citizenship and/or Christianity help integrate people who otherwise had no desire to be Roman?

Also, how did these people (let's say Iberians) experience the collapse of the empire? Did they feel like they were being liberated from centuries of oppression? Or had they integrated enough at that point to no longer see themselves as a conquered/oppressed people?

Would a Roman from the 4th century be able to identify with a Roman from 2nd century BC, or did the culture grow and evolve and change so much that the two would almost be unrecognizable to each other (save for the fact they both spoke Latin)?

I know this is a lot, so feel free to pick and choose what you'd like to answer. Thanks!

EDIT: Sorry, one more. If people today don't identify as Roman (not including people born in the city of Rome) and don't speak Latin and give their children Roman names, when did this happen? When did people stop identifying as Roman, and start identifying themselves based on more local entities?

Hello there! Thank you for coming here.

If one reads about the diplomatic efforts of Rome, at least superficially, Western Rome seemed to have had very brash diplomats, who were little more than messengers demanding concessions, while Eastern Rome/Byzantium seemed to prefer to pay everyone vast amounts of riches to bury the problems under a proverbial carpet.

What truth is there, if any, in this image?

Can you comment on whether or not Romans had superior dentition? I find this interesting given how long ago it was.

How were late Roman armies trained and equipped as the logistical and financial apparatus of the Roman state started to disintegrate?

Why were the "barbarians" in Italy and North Africa able to insert themselves atop the political and fiscal infrastructure of the Empire without destroying it while Justinian proved unable to do so in his Gothic Wars? Surely the Emperor would have preferred a tax generating province over a tax-spending war over the broken Imperial bureaucracy, just like the "barbarians" often wanted to gain wealth and power within the institutions of Late Roman government rather looking to reign over the ruins of the Empire.

We look at post WWII as "the rise of individualism". Is there any equivalent social shift, or broad change in social obligations and expectations in the Roman civilization?

How much longer do you think Rome would’ve made it if Julius Nepos had reconquered Italy and not been assassinated?

How do you feel about Total war games? do they feel accurate or are they complete science fiction to you?