Fall of Rome TV-Thursday

February 1st, 2007 by Mies Bouwman

fall of romeWhile my school teachers have always told me that Rome suddenly fell through one Barbarian invasion, just recently I had to find out this wasn’t actually the case at all.

But how did I stick to that idea anyway? Was it for Hollywood? No even French made those movies. Okay, some sites[warning:Nazi site], clearly didn’t have their facts straight, but with National Geographic posting those pictures and art like this… How did the so-called highly civilized cosmopolitan city disappear?

That Roman Culture didn’t just leave I found out because, the Byzantine Empire (the old Eastern Roman Empire) conquered Rome back.
 

Then I started digging on those socalled “barbarians” from whom I already knew that they weren’t stupid a 1000 years before the Roman Empire came to power.

Finally I hit gold with Terry Jones Barbarian series which unravels the whole untruth about the barbarians and the fall of Rome.
Rome didn’t [10min] actually fall, rather it lost its big army which consisted of foreigners (Goths) because they went to their own home and stopped fighting. Then Rome lost their required food and money [10min] from Carthage where they heavily depended on. Interesting fact is that again the Barbarian Geiseric (ex-Hun) conquered Carthage without blood. The Hun often credited for destroying Rome [which he didn't], did contribute with his operations near Constantinople. Eventually Rome did get robbed (without much bloodshed) by the “Barbarians” called Vandals, however not destroyed or vandalized as often depicted. The lost Roman culture and leadership simply evolved into the Catholic believe with Pope leadership. The Pope thus maintaining “the lost” wealth and knowledge of the Romans. He is also seen responsible for the continuation of the notion of “Barbarians” and “destruction of Rome” by them. [To keep the story short I have kept some other points out]. Anyway, that’s what I call quite a twist…

Off course there is a much better video torrent around for this story:

Terry Jones Barbarian’s series | BTJunkie
(thx. nodog)


Also is there another series Ancient Rome - Rise and Fall, although I don’t know if they have actually updated their story with all above mentioned points.

UPDATE:Damn, terrible reanectment video and while it talks about plundering, it doesn’t really add up as an explanation of “true” fall of civilisation.

Also About has a nice line-up of the story. Ow by the way, besides the fall of Rome, the “first rise of Rome” is apparently controversial too, LOL. If you know the correct version, drop it in the comments.