External Pressures on Rome and the Collapse of Tax Revenue

Today, I’m speaking with Bryan Ward-Perkins, author of The Fall of Rome, and the End of Civilization. 

It has become fashionable to argue that Roman civilization never collapsed, but was merely transformed by Germanic culture. Although this counter-narrative can illuminate intellectual developments of Late Antiquity, it verges on cultural relativism that threatens to obscure real differences in how people flourish or suffer. Ward-Perkins' book is a welcome reality check of how dark the post-Roman age really was.

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