THE DISSOLUTION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Barbarians and the Division of the Empire

In view of the Roman Empire's vast size and exceptionally lengthy frontiers, it is astonishing that it maintained itself for as long as it did. A few further attempts to expand the Empire failed, and emperors and armies needed to fight hard just to retain the territories Rome possessed at the time of Trajan's death. For a century and a half the borders remained virtually unchanged. But beginning around the middle of the third century, and then, despite an intervening period of sturdy frontiers and renewed stability, increasingly from the mid-fourth through the fifth century c.e., the Empire was invaded, broken up, reduced, and replaced. At the end of that period of upheaval, the borders of Romance speech in Europe were set, and they have remained substantially the same for the succeeding 1,500 years. Since our reason for charting the changes of Roman territory is to explain why certain areas continued with Romance speech while others did not, it is necessary to trace out the fates of the western provinces. These borders were drawn in part by geography, but chiefly by the invasions of the barbarian tribes and by the Empire's own split into two halves, events which had linguistic as well as political consequences.