probably the most accurate take isn't "dark ages good" (they were not) but rather "Rome sucked way more than we thought, so there wasn't that much of a decline" Would need someone way smarter than me to adjudicate how much the average peasant benefited from Pax Romana - ThreadSky

felledman.bsky.social • 77 days ago

probably the most accurate take isn't "dark ages good" (they were not) but rather "Rome sucked way more than we thought, so there wasn't that much of a decline"

Would need someone way smarter than me to adjudicate how much the average peasant benefited from Pax Romana

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bexleylister.bsky.social•77 days ago

IANAH but my impression is that for the peripheral bits of the Empire there was a big decline.

After Rome withdraws, urban settlements disappear from Britain and people seem to have lost the ability to make pottery and iron.

venomousgoat.bsky.social•77 days ago

And my understanding is that even by the standards of the periphery, Britain was a particularly bad example which is part of why English language scholarship on the decline looks the way it does. The Roman decline really *does* seem to have shittified Britain in a way that it didn't, like, France

felledman.bsky.social•77 days ago

yeah but the Roman periphery saw tons of conflict even at the peak of the empire. That's why I'd be interested in a more detailed take on how much "commoners" benefitted from Roman centralized goverannce/trade relative to scattered Middle Ages polities

bexleylister.bsky.social•77 days ago

The archaeological evidence shows population decline. Roman level population levels aren't recovered for many centuries. So commoners are starving as Roman governance collapses.

Recommend Britain after Rome by Robin Fleming. This blog series is also good https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/

felledman.bsky.social•77 days ago

I was literally just thinking Bret Deveraeux would be the perfect person to write about this. Thanks for the link!

zetsubo.bsky.social•77 days ago

Roman roads and logistics and like less wars within the empire than usual at the cost of taxes and the whims of whatever insane nepo baby was Augustus that week

phillygov.bsky.social•76 days ago

No way. The pax Romana was probably the greatest era of human flourishing until the 19th century. At no other time or place was social mobility anything comparable to modernity.

elrondcupboard.bsky.social•77 days ago

All time periods before antibiotics sucked, the main driver of the dark ages was the economic system totally collapsed and no power could extract wealth like Rome did - so a collapse in visible archaeology occurs. No reason for pottery as your not feeding anyone rich your subsistence farming.

elrondcupboard.bsky.social•77 days ago

The downside of the enlightenment & industrial revolution is someone's going to build a fucking mill and steao the commons so your stuck in 2x4 foot room and working 18 hour days - heights noticeably decrease due to how much malnutrition ramps up.

It just now the clever guys write about you again

elrondcupboard.bsky.social•77 days ago

Worth noting that in both enlightenment and Roman era poverty is a moral failing and not i.e because someines stealing all everyone else's shit

The rich in dark ages at least get told repeatedly by the best clergy to make sure trickle down economics works, and that lasts until the enlightenment.

flxible.bsky.social•77 days ago

In the middle ages there was enough food to go around and the population bulged, because of climate-- same thing happened in the Americas. You see urbanization. Monks were providing a lot of charity food, medicine, traveler's rest, asylum, and not just prayers.

flxible.bsky.social•77 days ago

A lot of the contrarianism about the middle ages in English is the notion that lower class people's lives matter and industrialism took a terrible toll, not just on human lives but on culture and identity as well. The Industrial Revolution killed Scottish Gaelic and Welsh.

daphnelawless.com•76 days ago

...? Welsh was still spoken by 50% of the population into the 20th century. David Lloyd George's first language was Welsh

felledman.bsky.social•77 days ago

Right but wealth extraction does have some benefits for the extractees. Strong governance=more public goods, which does benefit even peasants. It's just not clear to me how much they benefitted from Roman governance relative to middle ages polities

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