"his rival Theodoric Stabo accidentally fell on his own spear" yeah right

@cyberiansailor9741

3 ай бұрын

How do you even manage to fall on a spear? I am genuinely curious

@theeccentrictripper3863

3 ай бұрын

@@cyberiansailor9741 He was trying break a horse and it threw him onto it, hard bummer

@alanpennie

3 ай бұрын

😅​@@theeccentrictripper3863 A very Khal Drogo sort of death. Very convenient for both Zeno and The Amal.

@AntonioPeralesdelHierro

3 ай бұрын

After several inconclusive battles with Odoacer,Theodoric offered him a shared rule of Rome, and ordered a celebration and feasting to seal the pact, in the midst of which he "cleaved Odoacer practically in half with his sword" according to my source. This may be a historic act with several versions.

Theodoric the Great deserves to be an honorary member of the "last Romans" alongside with emperors like Aurelian, Julian and Majorian.

@theeccentrictripper3863

3 ай бұрын

Should've Romanized his name, that -ic denied him his place in history, sad but branding is everything

@ansibarius4633

3 ай бұрын

@@theeccentrictripper3863 And it would have been such a small step to change it to a perfectly acceptable 'Theodorus'. But no, he had to be an -ic guy.

I'm starting to think that none of successor states could be truly termed "barbarian" the way a lot of people understand it.

@jakegarvin7634

3 ай бұрын

What's to misunderstand? "Barbarian" Means anyone who isn't rome! ...and maybe greek no you know what fuck the Greeks just us glorious Romans ...oh dear and there's Persia...dammit

@ironhead2008

3 ай бұрын

Maybe only the Vandals ever really met that designation.

@bodnica

3 ай бұрын

​@@ironhead2008 and goths

@recminecraft3235

3 ай бұрын

Maybe they weren't even successor states either, in the beginning they were probably just local Roman military governments still loyal to the Roman state. Then they became more and more autonomous as time went on, but they did never necessarily stop considering their state under the higher sovereignty of the emperor in Constantinople. After all when Charlemagne made himself emperor, the idea wasn't that the empire had ended but that it never did, and that the emperor in Constantinople was still the ruler.

@patavinity1262

3 ай бұрын

If they were ruled by barbarians then clearly they were barbarian. Pretty straightforward really, not sure why you're so confused.

I once had a Byzantine junkie get LIVID with me for suggesting that the Goths were Roman. Nice to have a video explaining the position

@ffreeze9924

3 ай бұрын

Kind of crazy to get that invested into defending 2000 year old propaganda

@chuckles5689

3 ай бұрын

@@ffreeze9924 Never underestimate LARPers who have no other identity.

@ansibarius4633

3 ай бұрын

I think that the common view is that they were foreigners ruling over Romans under the technical / theoretical supervision of Constantinople in that capacity. Both peoples lived under their own laws and adhered to different denominations of Christianity.

@theeccentrictripper3863

3 ай бұрын

We should definitely be careful in assuming that because Theodoric was so thoroughly Romanized that the Goths at large were as well, that situation was probably even more complicated than Big T's imperial status.

@Avinkwep

3 ай бұрын

@@theeccentrictripper3863 true, but by Theodoric himself decreed they were a defense force for the Roman state

Outstanding video. I used to bias towards the Roman reconquest of Italy, but reading more and listening to your lectures, it is apparent to me that the Ostrogoths were rapidly Romanising, and also generally honourable, just rulers. A few more centuries under their rule may have seen a strong Roman state that could have withstood later invasions and maintained Latin Roman culture long into the Middle Ages

@thedemonhater7748

3 ай бұрын

It kinda gives you an image of what might have been had the Romans successfully assimilated their foederati into the empire. The “barbarians” were clearly capable of producing men with the military aptitudes and administrative talents to rule, and the institutions of stable government already existed. If the barbarian nobles were allowed to integrate into the Roman aristocracy instead of being kept at an arm’s length and treated like heretics and foreigners, they could’ve easily helped reinvigorate the western Roman armies. Hell, they already DID integrate with the Roman aristocracy- they just did it when they were the only ones with swords, rather than as generals and kings subordinate to the emperor.

@ironhead2008

3 ай бұрын

@@thedemonhater7748 Had the Ostrogoths not been Arians I suspect they would have assimilated fairly quickly,

@chuckles5689

3 ай бұрын

This is well shown by how Italians tend to call the Gothic War the "Greco-Gothic War."

@ansibarius4633

3 ай бұрын

​​@@chuckles5689It shows that both are considered foreigners, at least in historiography.

@ansibarius4633

3 ай бұрын

Wouldn't Visigothic Spain be a parallel for that? But it fell quickly ro the Moors.

He was definitely an western 'emperor' in my view. He was educated in Constantinople and very much roman as much as barbarian.

@AntonioPeralesdelHierro

12 күн бұрын

"Roman as well as barbarian"? Please describe for us the 'barbaric' aspects of Theodoric's character, morality and intellect. How could he be both ❓ Rome was the powerful and viciously arrogant USA of it's day, and Victimised anyone it's enemy and not Roman. Theodorico spoke at least four languages, including Aramaic, how many do you speak❓

@chrisand3286

9 күн бұрын

@@AntonioPeralesdelHierroIt is clear that you replied to argue. Theodoric himself would've surely been very proud of his Gothic heritage. Goth = Barbarian. To the Romans used barbarian mostly in a derogatory manner. So yes, the Romans viewed him as barbarian...I however don't view it as a negative moniker. It simply means someone who ancestors traditionally come from the areas outside the empire.

Theodoric is an underrated ruler. A barbarian king draped in all the regalia of the Eastern Roman court. Isn't he responsible for much of Byzantine art of the 6th century that survives in Italy? Because so much was lost or destroyed during the iconoclastic era after the Islamic invasions. I love this time period of the transition to the late classic into early miedeval period. And i know it's not an easy historical period to cover because of scarcity of reliable sources. As the western roman empire began to retract & morph into something else,is a fascinating story to tell. Well done!

This channel is too GOATed

This channel is severely underrated. Bro makes absolutely superlative content.

@TheFallofRome

3 ай бұрын

I appreciate that!

It does seem likely that The Western Empire would have been revived if Theoderic had had a competent successor, though it had to be done without offending the emperor in Constantinople. Maurice is said to have contemplated reviving The Western Empire at the end of the suxth century before changing his mind and setting up the exarchates to govern Justinian's conquests.

It’s kind of hard to determine when the end of Rome was. Not only did her institutions survive for centuries, but they survived separately, with the Pontifex Maximus still around. And then you have her successors, like the HRE, where the emperors were successors to Augustus by virtue of being declared such by the Pontifex, but HRE as a realm was entirely disconnected from the Roman Senate. I reckon the real end of Rome as a state (in the West at least) was when the Senate last met. It would’ve been nice had it survived to the modern day as a city that once ruled an empire, but history stinks sometimes.

@ansibarius4633

3 ай бұрын

I always thought that 'Pontifex Maximus' in this context was just an empty name adopted for the pope at some point during the Renaissance in order to comply with the requirements of good classical 'Latinitas', 'papa' sounding too vulgar to sensitive humanist ears. But I could be wrong of course.

There is an old novel “lest darkness fall” about an American archeologists that time travel to Rome in 535ad. Knowing what will happen he helps the goths with crucial information in defeating Belisarius expedition, and so Italy remain an urbanized, stable kingdom and a beacon of roman culture (as the goths will slowly romanize and be absorbed in the Italian population), completely altering the middle age.

@alexandruianu8432

3 ай бұрын

I know it, but the problem there was that none of that would have influenced the economic decline of the early middle ages in Europe (until about 950). You would literally need a mass adoption of a reversal of the philosophical trends that began with the crisis of the 3rd century and heavily consolidated by the adoption of christianity. With greco-roman paganism not yet fully eliminated (so christian militancy was still very much a current thing), that would be extremely unlikely.

@alanpennie

3 ай бұрын

Maybe a surviving Ostrogoth Kingdom could save Africa and Spain from The Arabs.

@RC15O5

3 ай бұрын

@@alanpennie I better usage of Justinian's resources would have been to work with the Goths and fight the Vandals, who were heretics who engaged in sea-wide piracy out of Carthage.

@thedemonhater7748

3 ай бұрын

@@alanpennie doubt. The Ostrogoths struggled to project power outside the peninsula after Theodoric’s death.

@alanpennie

3 ай бұрын

@@thedemonhater7748 Indeed. My alternative scenario depends on Theodoric having a competent successor.

So glad to see you posting mire often, Mike. Even if it did start with a vicious takedown of Syragius and Aëtius. Maybe do Nepos next, seems like if you can do it to the domain, you can do it to...that man...

@alanpennie

3 ай бұрын

Nepos, what a waste of space!

Ermanaric was an Amaling. The Amalings were a Germanic noble house. Goths were of course vasals of the Huns at some point, but I have never heard of a Goth ruler marrying a Hun wife. When Theodoric took power in Rome, the Romans were still actively using the Coliseum - not for gladiator fights, but for slaughtering animals. After an earthquake destroyed it, Theodoric refused to rebuild. He said the practice of killing animals for entertainment was useless and disgusting. Theodoric married the sister of Hlodowig (who was still pagan at this point) and married his daughters to the Burgundian and Visigoth kings. All Germanic people. Theodoric's religion was also different from that of the Romans, he was Arian. In the (Eastern) Roman Empire Arians were persecuted at that time as heretics.

@MagnaMater2

3 ай бұрын

His perception by - catholic - historians as barbarian was formed on the last reason. And because of Boethius. But Boethius probably wasn't as innocent of his own end as he was perceived.

Good video/job as always.

Love this man’s channel, no music no bullshit just video essays on history

Nice summary! Expand at will. Thanks.

You really like to do videos on the (partly romanised) Goths... I remember you started a series on them, and uploaded lectures on them in like the second year of the channel... it has become signature content of your channel! I learnt a lot about identity and statehood by these lectures, thank you so much 😊😄

I'm increasingly coming around to the position that the ostrogothic state was a legitimate successor state and that Justinian's war was the true collapse--or at least the last.

The Ostrogoths... I like this immediately after Rome period.

@RC15O5

3 ай бұрын

Same here. Justinian and the Franks fucked it up.

Always a pleasure to listen what this man has to say

well, huh....thx much for another upload 🇨🇦 😁

Terrific video.

"Accidentally fell into his own spear?" That sounds slightly more plausible than accidentally shot himself with his own bow.

Excellent content

Do you ever get the idea that historians just wanted to end the Western Empire at Romulus Augustulus, just because of the poetic irony of his name? (Rome started with Romulus and the Empire started with Augustus.)

@r0ky_M

3 ай бұрын

It was the principate that began with Augustus, The empire existed before such.

@docholiday7975

3 ай бұрын

That's mostly a dated concept still floating around in the pop, not academic sphere, which like so many dated concepts originated with Edward Gibbon. More modern works like that of Halsall's referenced in the video, are much more critical of the notion with Halsall putting the end of the WRE following the Romano Gothic wars of the 6th C, where Eastern propaganda and politics effectively tank the notion of Romanness that until then had persisted in these western provinces.

Did you catch Hans-Ulrich Wiemer's book on Theoderic the Great yet? I had Jonathan Arnold's book on my wishlist for longer but caught the latter on sale first. Haven't quite read it yet but I'll get around to it!

Theodoric struck me as more deserving of the title of emperor than many of those who "ruled" the West after Theodosius I.

@thomassghedoni4557

28 күн бұрын

There were pretty good Emperors, just indered by catastrophic and unsurmoutable difficulties. Majoran and Anthemius comes to mind. At the opposite, Theodosius the Ist may be one of the worst emperor ever : bled dry both the West and East with a civil war driven by ubris, fracktured the roman social fabric with its crack down on paganism, made the Visigoths hate Rome definitly and imposed his two inept sons on the thrones.

Jonathan Arnolds book on Theoderic is on my must read list!

omg Flavius Theodoricus Amalus video 😍

Is this going to be a redo of your earlier series on Ostrogothic Italy? I'm having difficulty in keeping up with which videos you've taken down, which you've redone and which are still up.

In my tripos part II history exam I decided halfway through a question about Constantine that I wasn't feeling it, and saw another question I could do - "Was Theodoric a Roman emperor?". "I know a bit about Theodoric," I thought, "I'm sure I could do that question." My answer was no, a key point being that he didn't rule Spain - his regency over the Visigoths had slipped my mind 🤦

MB my english is too bad but what do you say on 9:05 ? Kingship or Kinship? Anyway as usual amazing video, you are the best and most nuanced history channel out there.

@TheFallofRome

3 ай бұрын

I say “kinship” Thank you for the complement!

4:46 accidently fall on his spear, or "accidently fall" on his spear?

Bruno Dumézil is also great on this, though I don't know if he's been translated from French into English. His book "Les Barbares" is very accessible to non-specialists. But anyway, yes, Late Antiquity/the transition from the Roman to medieval period is much, MUCH more gradual than "barbarians take Rome, now everybody dresses in pants rather than togas" cliché too often seen in pop history. Heck, until the 7th century, you can argue most of the "barbarian" kingdoms are still pretty Roman.

More like introduction to Septimius Severus, Philip the Arab, Maximus Thrax

@danielchequer5842

3 ай бұрын

All these emperors came from provinces who were part of the empire for at least 2 centuries

@alanpennie

3 ай бұрын

Exactly. Maximinus was completely Roman. It was just that he wasn't a noble. The first of the barracks emperors.

And if you love ancient history, especially late Roman history visit the city of Ravenna, there are some late Roman churches in their original condition with the most amazing mosaics, including the famous mosaic of Justinian, and also the mausoleum of Theoderic with his sarcophagus. And it’s in Emilia Romagna, the birthplace of lasagna!

For the map @9:30 what was going on in Northern Portugal Galicia and the Basque Country?

@docholiday7975

3 ай бұрын

That'd be the Sueves. The kingdom there would latter be conquered by the Visigoths in 585.

Have you read "Theoderic the Great: King of Goths, Ruler of Romans" by Hans-Ulrich Wiemer? What do you think of it when comparing it with the other books mentioned in this video?

Theodoric the great was the Barbarian Emperor in my opinion... this time of roman history doesn't get enough love.. Mausoleum of Theodoric, Ravenna, Italy is rather amazing... turkey was call the ostroreich. ostro just means east so eastern goths Ostrogoths.

Local bloke utterly obsessed with the Roman Empire because he too would like to be destroyed by Goths!

Seen a claim Oaker was of hunnic royalty through his mother ancestry? Has this got any truth? X

👀 I salute this most capable of barbarian kings. 👑

Even Odacer was de facto Roman. Since he was a foederatus he would have been heavily Romanized and even though he didnt consider himself one he was for all practical intents and purposes he was Roman.

I mean Maximinius Thrax was Emperor in the 3rd century

I’m concerned that the thumbnail will draw in weirdos.

@NoobTamer

2 ай бұрын

What?

I think even Roman provinces issued their own coins. And the Visigoths did as well.

the mistake we make depends on our way of thinking about reality. we think in dichotomies (in this case Romans versus barbarians) when we should have an organic vision of reality (mutual assimilation of cultures)

History is so often present as the rule of kings and their wars, but I wonder what was going on during this time in the lives of people: 1) what happened to education and knowledge? Was it all taken over by the religious hierarchy (itself headquartered in Rome)? 2) what did a typical person know at that time, living in say the Iberian peninsula, about any of this going on? Did they just see their money change? Did local trade change? How big are events in what we think of as "history" if no one at the time notices?

@alexzero3736

3 ай бұрын

Religious headquarters in Rome were installed by Charlemagne, approximately 200 years after Theodoric. In 5th-6th century Constantinople was the headquarters location. About education, yes you are correct, religion takeover happened, ancient philosophy was rejected, ancient temples and text were destroyed, burned, replaced...

@docholiday7975

3 ай бұрын

@@alexzero3736 This is nonsense. Rome was already the seat of the Patriarchate for western Europe and had a long history for being the seat of one of the foremost leaders of the church dating back to the 2nd C. As for academia, this has already been covered by the very channel you're commenting in; the collapse of the WRE government prompted a significant change in aristocratic culture away from otium and negotium and one focussed on the martial values that the new ruling peoples themselves valued, with the last vestiges of the old graeco roman academia being incorporated into western monasteries by the likes of Boethius and Benedict. @TheOriginalDanEdwards While the average person in these regions may have continued to think of themselves as Roman, the new regimes and the changes they brought were felt by them. With the exceptions of the Vandals and possibly the Suevi (which is lacking in surviving literature), these new kingdoms issued new law codes that differentiated between the newcomers and the existing Roman population, new coinage (including the Vandals) and undertook some building projects in order to legitimise and make their mark upon their new territories. Trade changed, slowly but steadily and for the worse as the security and ease of internal trade that had underpinned the empire eroded and with the wars, plague and natural disasters of the mid 6th C devastating the Mediterranean economy and driving a trend of localism. Your average person would probably have heard of what was going on, but would have had a somewhat limited experience with it; how many people do you know have been directly impacted by the war in Palestine?

either the very last of the western Romans or the very very first of the Rome larpers i guess at that point the line begins to blur

I've retold a Theoderic story at West Stow Anglo Saxon village in Suffolk, England on many occasions. 😊

I have a book called A History Of the Ostrogoths by Thomas Burns

8 inches do you think you can handle it?

Google Philip the Arab, a brutal "soldier emperor" from the Orient, under whose reign the thousandth anniversary of the city of Rome was celebrated in 248, ironically just as the empire seemed close to falling apart,

Maybe they were Gothic-Romans in the same way that we in the US have hyphenated identities.

@johnm2714

3 ай бұрын

Your suggestion is interesting but could open a can of worms, perhaps because it's difficult and, clearly, anachronistic to compare the situation with modern times. The Goths were occupying (resident in) Italy and made use of some Roman institutions at least. Modern Americans, even those who keenly argue for a hyphenated identity, are, I'm afraid, regarded by Europeans as simply Americans. For instance, Biden's insistance that he is Irish is viewed over here by turns as comical, irritating and irrelevant. By descent he is as much English as Irish and he has an English surname, therefore 'English' in the male line, so his selection appears an arbitrary choice which has become convenient politically. The European view is if you're not entitled to claim the citizenship, you're not entitled to claim the identity. Two of my great-grandparents were Irish. My father was Welsh. I am half-Welsh, but certainly not Irish (complicated by the fact that for all those involved their citizenship was actually British at the time 😅). This perspective puts the Goths and Americans in very different places in one sense, but is also elucidatory at the same time. Theodoric was a Roman citizen. The other members of the Gothic elite were, presumably, not. But then again, when did the surviving Roman elites (or the ordinary citizens in the Italian towns) cease to hold Roman citizenship? How far was Roman citizenship considered hereditary even in the absence or collapse of its associated institutions? And how far is this a relevant concept? The Justinian reconquest complicates this further.

@alanpennie8013

3 ай бұрын

Just so. It seems likely that the Arianism was kept up to distinguish Goths from Romans. Goths were supposed to join the army and serve as soldiers, and not live on their estates like aristos.

When fornally granted Roman citizenship , one becomes Roman..Thus 'babarian king' becomes irrelevant...Even Emperor Augustus was a king/monarchy in every respect but title.

@alexzero3736

3 ай бұрын

Not really. Monarch is a hereditary position. Roman Emperors rarely used it.

@r0ky_M

3 ай бұрын

@@alexzero3736 Except that Oxford and Cambridge scholars agree that Augustan rule was monarchal.

It is also pretty remarkable that the goths didn’t abandon on their Germanic language completely by the time Justinians’ armies arrived. The cultural divide must’ve been very prominent in post 476 AD Italy.

Pretty sure that mosaic you feature as Theodoric is Justinian as an older man.

@TheFallofRome

3 ай бұрын

It used to be thought that it is Justinian. Recently the thinking has shifted to it being Theodoric

@sebastianmaharg

3 ай бұрын

@@TheFallofRome I stand corrected!

I would agree that Theodoric had an undeniable rule over the West not unlike the Western Empire.

🗿👍

898

Yes,and all the Roman Emperors were barbarians from the first to the last one.

Yes, and Theodoric was arguably far from being the first.

zeno lol

No they didn't. Rome fell in 476AD. This isn't some random historian making it up, it is an actual date with events of substance that back it. What came after 476AD was no longer Rome and could no longer even be called as such. So whatever happened in B*zantium, the Ostrogoths and other successor states is no longer relevant when the picture is Rome, therefore their rulers cannot be considered actual Roman Emperors.

@gregzu

3 ай бұрын

If you define Rome as “Western Rome”, then logically, Rome didn’t exist until the split of the Roman Empire, which is pretty illogical. There’s more nuance to everything, and I hope that you do your homework.

@ThomasBarth-gr1sz

3 ай бұрын

@@gregzu there is no such thing as "Western Rome" and, more absurdly "Eastern Rome", a.k.a B*zantium (a successor state to Rome). One has to remember what Rome even is: an Italic state, with its own fouding fathers (and people who could trace their lineage to them), customs, religion and language. As such, what constitutes Rome itself, and even late Rome, could only be applied to the so-called Western (true) Roman Empire. After it fell, in 476AD, any semblance of Rome as a distinct entity ceased to exist. Afterwards you had successor states, mostly on areas formerly subjected to Rome (B*zantium, Soissons, Wales, etc.) and who were in some degree of continuity to the old Roman state, but who could not be consistenly called as being "Rome" themselves - because they did not share the essence of Rome, they were not ethnic Romans, etc.

@qboxer

3 ай бұрын

@@ThomasBarth-gr1szwhy do you put a star in Byzantium?

@TheDanEdwards

3 ай бұрын

​@@ThomasBarth-gr1sz"what constitutes Rome itself, and even late Rome, could only be applied to the so-called Western *(true)* Roman Empire" - seems like a _No True Rome_ fallacy going on here.

@TheDanEdwards

3 ай бұрын

​@@ThomasBarth-gr1sz "they were not ethnic Romans, etc." - not clear what you mean by "ethnic".