How the West Won--part 3

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.