Historians never tire of analyzing the fall of Rome. There were many causes, but an oft-neglected one is the corruption of the Roman family and the related population collapse that occurred in the centuries before the empire’s fall.
Rome’s original greatness depended in part on its commitment to family. A classic Roman virtue extolled in the quintessential Roman poem the “Aeneid” was “pietas,” or “piety.” This term referred to deep devotedness to one’s family, particularly one’s parents, and to the gods and country. Early Romans valued marriage, fidelity, and honor and looked down on self-indulgence. Their successes must be attributed, at least partially, to these virtues.
Rome’s decline occurred in parallel with its abandonment of these values. As Jérôme Carcopino wrote in “Daily Life in Ancient Rome,” divorces were rare in the time of the Roman republic but happened constantly in the latter stages of the empire. An epidemic of divorces undermined the stability of the Roman family and tore apart the fabric of society.
“In the city as at the court,” Carcopino wrote, “the ephemeral households of Rome were perpetually being disrupted, or rather were continually dissolving to recrystallize and dissolve again till age and death finally overtook them.”
Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis (Martial) said divorces and remarriages were so frequent that marriage had little meaning, becoming practically a form of legal adultery or prostitution. The separations occurred on the frailest of pretexts, too: “He’s old,” “She’s got some wrinkles,” “He’s sick,” “She forgot to wear her veil in public.”
Shifting Attitudes
Because marriage meant so little, many opted for concubinage instead. From A.D. 101 to 300, bachelors were more admired than husbands and fathers. Historian Christopher Dawson wrote:
“Conditions of life both in the Greek city state and in the Roman Empire favoured the man without a family who could devote his whole energies to the duties and pleasures of public life. Late marriages and small families became the rule, and men satisfied their sexual instincts by homosexuality or by relations with slaves and prostitutes.”
Men weren’t the only ones running from responsibility, either. Carcopino relates that many Roman women avoided motherhood simply out of fear of losing their looks.
When couples did marry, they usually had few, if any, children.
“Whether because of voluntary birth control, or because of the impoverishment of the stock, many Roman marriages at the end of the first and the beginning of the second century were childless,” Carcopino wrote.
Roman couples made use of contraceptives and abortions. If that failed, they didn’t hesitate to kill their infants by abandoning them and exposing them to the elements.
The natural consequences of all this were, of course, low birth rates and population decline. The trend became alarming enough that Emperor Augustus tried to provide incentives for couples to have more children, but it was too late to reverse the trend.
As Romans chose not to reproduce, the population of Rome inevitably began to shrink. This process was accelerated by disease and invasion. By about A.D. 501, Rome’s population had gone from a healthy 1 million to a mere 30,000.
Low Population, Big Problem
Population collapse signals catastrophe for a civilization in the long run. People are a culture’s most important resource; a shrinking and aging population creates all sorts of problems. For the Romans, it meant a smaller tax base, fewer people to engage in economic productivity, and fewer recruits for the heavily beset Roman military.
Dawson attributed Rome’s overall decline largely to low birth rates and the collapse of marriage.
“This aversion to marriage and the deliberate restriction of the family by the practice of infanticide and abortion was undoubtedly the main cause of the decline of ancient Greece, as Polybius pointed out in the second century B.C.,” he wrote. “And the same factors were equally powerful in the society of the [Roman] Empire, where the citizen class even in the provinces was extraordinarily sterile and was recruited not by natural increase, but by the constant introduction of alien elements, above all from the servile class. Thus the ancient world lost its roots alike in the family and in the land and became prematurely withered.”
Rome’s internal weakness—beginning with the weakness of its families—made it susceptible to eventual invasions.
What are the implications of all this for us? It takes just a little reflection to reveal the parallels between our current-day situation and the situation of the Romans in late antiquity. We share many traits with the Romans: an emphasis on sexual freedom outside of marriage, a tendency toward late marriages, a penchant for divorce, disdain for large families, and an inclination to use contraception and abortion. All this has placed us in the same situation of staring down a population collapse, the consequences of which we’re still coming to terms with.
It would be fatalistic and poor history to claim that modern Western civilization will follow the same path as the Romans simply because we share some similarities. Still, Rome’s story should be a cautionary tale. We need to relearn—and soon—what we and they forgot: The stability and success of a society begins with the stability and success of its families, which form its most basic unit.
Furthermore, a society that has lost its love of children and abandoned its understanding of the sacredness of marriage has become, in a sense, suicidal. Its days are numbered unless it changes course.
“Monogamous and indissoluble marriage has been the foundation of European society and has conditioned the whole development of our civilization,” Dawson wrote.
We neglect this societal cornerstone at our peril.
