In chapter 3
of his book How the West Won, Rodney Stark takes a look at the Roman Empire.
I won't spend a lot of time covering this section, but he regards the Roman
Empire at best as a pause in the rise of the West, and more plausibly as a
setback.
He shows
that much of Roman culture came from the Greeks. Even things like great engineering
feats of the Romans did not employ any principles or techniques not well known
to the Greeks. In fact, the Romans made little or no use of some known
technologies.
Stark sees
the rise of Christianity as the most beneficial aspect of the Roman era. He has
covered this in previous books, so I won't spend much time on that. One
interesting thing that he brought out was the fact that recent historians have
refuted the traditional belief that early Christianity was based on poor people
and slaves. Most early Christians were actually urbanites and middle-class.
Of course, a
big debate has erupted over who or what is responsible for the fall of Rome.
Edward Gibbon, a famous British historian, blamed Christianity. He said it
debilitated the martial spirit of the
people. Stark points out Rome did fall, but not civilization. Barbarians who
came into the Roman Empire wanted to be Romanized. But they did more than copy
the Romans. For example, they were far better at metallurgy than the Romans.
The Goths and other "barbarians" did not suddenly return to barbarism
when Rome fell. Stark claims that once the huge Roman Empire fell, repression
ended and the glorious journey toward modernity resumed.
Again, I
really like this historian and his writings because he clears the political
correctness that has invaded history departments. It's amazing to me that
respected, educated people in many fields carry prejudices that blind them to
reality. We need to be cautious when we are told something by a person with an
advanced degree.