Climate change in the Roman era

On Monday, September 18, 2023, The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley explained ‘Why I think about the Romans every seven seconds’.

Some of his preoccupation is because he recently saw a repeat of the iconic 1970s series I, Claudius — I·CLAVDIVS — on BBC4.  Image credit: Wikipedia

Of the series, Stanley says that it (emphases mine):

exemplified the Graeco-Roman idea that history is more than just a sequence of events; it is a study in how civilisations rise and fall. 

The empire of Augustus was built on violent conquest and poisoned figs, undoubtedly, but his brutally-enforced peace also guaranteed security, trade and the exchange of ideas. That legacy was threatened by stupid wars, bad economics, populists and loony leaders, with sexual depravity the reliable wingman of moral rot.

However, in its latter decades, the Roman world was also affected by what today would be called climate change:

In his superb book, Powers and Thrones, historian Dan Jones identifies as an omen of Rome’s final decline, the elite’s catastrophic response to climate change and immigration. In the middle of the 4th century, Asia was hit by a mega-drought. The Huns moved west, terrorising the Goths and driving them to the eastern border of the Roman empire where they begged to be let in.

Emperor Valens faced a dilemma: on the one hand, letting them in would be a logistical nightmare. On the other, it would be both decent and expedient: Rome needed the workers and taxes. Valens chose to open the doors. Others argued that they should be admitted out of compassion but also, hey, we could do with the workers and taxes. Emperor Valens chose to open the doors. But the infrastructure did not exist to feed and employ these people and the bureaucracy failed to distinguish between legal Goth settlers and illegal barbarians. Rome found within its borders a large population “alienated from their homelands but with no love for their host country” and they revolted. St Jerome hyperbolically described the lands they plundered as devoid of beasts, birds and fish, with nothing left but “the sky and the earth”.

This story confirms the 19th-century view that one of the greatest threats to order is an excess of kindness, exploited by tougher competitors. Here we are today with a liberal society that is self-absorbed, intent on redistributing wealth rather than creating it – while out there, hostile powers plot at our gates. The West is rich; we are well-armed. But we feel vulnerable because we cannot define what we are for, and we’re not 100 per cent sure we’d be willing to fight for it.

A source of our self-loathing is our fraught relationship to history, focusing on the negative – and salacious – rather than the edifying.

Stanley, a practising Catholic, is reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor who famously persecuted Christians and a well-known Stoic. Stanley notes, as did I many years ago, the similarities between Stoicism and the New Testament:

Aurelius was thoughtful, noble, yet emotionally detached (hence a poor father to Commodus). “Be like the rocky headland on which the waves constantly break,” he writes. “It stands firm, and round it the seething waters are laid to rest.”

… We are advised to forgive others; turn the other cheek … Particularly affecting is his argument for the brotherhood of man … based upon the observation that all human beings display reason, so we all are subject to law, and thus to a constitution. History contains golden threads, and one runs from classical philosophy, through the Early Church and up to America’s Declaration of Independence, with its shining observation that “all men are created equal”.

The concepts of inquiry and debate, democracy, the rule of law and individual autonomy, all this is Graeco-Roman and is part of who we are. The West should draw confidence from its heritage. Aurelius … notes that we don’t have time to waste on trivial matters. “Urgency is upon you. While you live, while you can, become good.”

Returning to the many immigrants fleeing to the Roman Empire from other cultures because of severe drought, note that Rome was either unable or did not care to improve its infrastructure to accommodate them, something which affects Britain and other European nations today. Furthermore, the Romans did not — or perhaps could not, because of the great number of arrivals — control who came in to the empire.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, stormy weather greatly troubled Sir John Evelyn in the 1600s and Continental peasant farmers from the 1400s, the latter clamouring for witch trials.

This illustration from the fourth century shows us how essential it is for us to be able to get a grip on coping with the results of a future climate disaster elsewhere which could affect our own society. Currently, we cannot even control who is coming in for economic reasons.

Sadly, history repeats itself.