The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome

The History of a Dangerous Idea

De: Edward J. Watts

Narrado por: David Colacci

As this book intriguingly explores, for those who would make Rome great again and their victims, ideas of Roman decline and renewal have had a long and violent history.

The decline of Rome has been a constant source of discussion for more than 2200 years. Everyone from American journalists in the 21st century AD to Roman politicians at the turn of the third century BC have used it as a tool to illustrate the negative consequences of changes in their world. Roman prophets of decline were, ultimately, proven correct - a fact that makes their modern invocations all the more powerful.

The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome tells the stories of the people who built their political and literary careers around promises of Roman renewal as well as those of the victims they blamed for causing Rome's decline. The story begins during the Roman Republic just after 200 BC. It proceeds through the empire of Augustus and his successors, traces the Roman loss of much of western Europe in the fifth century AD, and follows Roman history until its fall in 1453. If Rome illustrates the profound danger of the rhetoric of decline, it also demonstrates the rehabilitative potential of a rhetoric that focuses on collaborative restoration, a lesson of great relevance to our world today.

©2021 Oxford University Press (P)2022 Tantor

Exceptional

Comprehensive : the narrative moves along even though the book covers Rome in the European West, Rome in the middle East.

Pre Christian Rome And Christian Rome in the East and in the West.

Iconoclasm and The role of the popes. The Crusades. The differences between easter and western churches The Holy Roman Empire even gets a shout out. As does
The way iconoclasm took hold in the Eastern Roman Empire. How the papacy in the West was able to get its mojo back, Charlemagne gets a nod.
It carries through the Ottoman capture of Constantinople and finally it concludes with a discussion of how Machiavelli and the Montesquieu used the idea of and the history of Rome to build out their thoughts. Finally the story told in Gibbon’s decline and rise book gets discussed and analyzed.

A Great listen

Great book but no whispersync

The author makes a compelling case for his thesis that the present state of our society is in many respects similar to the later Roman Empire before it crashed.