(12-09-2016, 04:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Thanks for your input, beneficii. I agree with your statement about the rise and fall of fascism.
Regarding the fall of Rome and the Huns, I'm not so sure. I think when the Visigoths invaded under Alaric in 410 and conquered and sacked Rome, the Empire was dead in all but name. The Huns just put the nail in the coffin.
It was a mix of factors perhaps: decline from within was certainly happening by all historical accounts. Authority was increasingly desperate and more tyrannical, most people were poorer and more miserable, and in the last century of Rome the people retreated more and more into a proto-medieval set up of lords and walls protection. It could be that these were the "islands in the ocean" referred to in your post. And the "barbarian" peoples were expanding and ready to fight more and more strongly and capably and take over.
Hi Eric, thanks for your response!
I don't know so much about the Visigoths, though I know Kim has argued that the Goths were already quite well-organized when the Huns appeared on the scene, due to earlier steppe influences from the Sarmato-Scythians. It was the pressure the Huns put on the Visigoths that brought them into this conflict with Rome in the first place. (Kim also argues that the reason why you see the Germanic peoples other than the Goths also become much better organized was thanks to steppe, especially, Hunnic influence.) Still, these are difficult arguments to contend with, and perhaps a reread of the book (a very complex work!) would help clarify Kim's position on how Alaric was able to sack Rome in 410. (I'm going to look back through the book, and if I find his argument, I'll summarize it here.)
Regarding the "islands of the Oceans" comment, I don't know of any historian that takes your view on the matter. The metaphorical interpretation also doesn't make much sense if you look at the passage in its entirety. I will reproduce Green's quotation of it:
Quote:When we expressed amazement at the unreasonableness of the barbarian [Attila], Romulus, an ambassador of long experience, replied that his very great good fortune and the power which it had given him had made him so arrogant that he would not entertain just proposals unless he thought that they were to his advantage. No previous ruler of Scythia or of any other land had ever achieved so much in so short a time. He ruled the islands of the Ocean and, in addition to the whole of Scythia, forced the Romans to pay tribute. He was aiming at more than his present achievements and, in order to increase his empire further, he now wanted to attack the Persians.
Some historians have argued that these "islands of the Ocean" were those of Thule, or Scandinavia, which the Romans at the time did not know was a peninsula. Others have argued that they are of the Atlantic and would include Britain. Green argues that other writers of the Late Antiquity consider Britain to be among the "islands of the Ocean", a map produced in the late Roman period called the Tabula Peutingeriana shows to the northwest Britain but not any islands to the north where we would expect to find Thule which shows that Thule was not really present in the Roman consciousness while Britain a Roman province was a major part of it, and Romulus's point was meant to emphasize the unprecedented and impressive achievements made by Attila and a former Roman province like Britain coming under Hunnic rule would certainly shock the Romans.
It's an exciting area of investigation!