Professor Ward-Perkins' list for his Trinity students at Oxford studying the fall of the Western Roman Empire:



Introductory, including brief narratives of events:

R. Collins, Early Medieval Europe 300-1000, 2nd edition 1999, chaps. 3, 4, 6 (a basic outline of events, with some discussion).

A. Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity AD 395-600, 1993, chap.2.


Detailed Narrative:

P. Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire, 2005. This also contains useful thematic introductory chapters (1-3), and a very useful final, concluding chapter (10).


More, primarily on the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman position:

W. Goffart, ‘Rome, Constantinople and the barbarians’, in Goffart, Rome’s Fall and After, 1989, 1-32.

W. Goffart, ‘The theme of ‘the barbarian invasions’’, in W. Goffart, Rome’s Fall and After, 1989, 111-32.

B. Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, 2005, Chap. 3.

A.D. Lee, ‘The Army’, in A. Cameron and P. Garnsey (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. XIII (The Late Empire), 1998, 211-37.


The Barbarians:

P. Heather, ‘Goths and Huns 320-425’, in A. Cameron and P. Garnsey (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. XIII (The Late Empire), 1998, 487-515.

P. Heather, ‘The Huns and the fall of the Western Empire’, English Historical Review CX (1995), 4-41.



Sources of particular use:

Ammianus Marcellinus, [History], trans. John C. Rolfe, 3 vols in the ‘Loeb Classical Library’ series (these small red volumes are widely available – generally kept together in a Library). Volume I, pp. 265- 303 is a full account of an encounter between Romans and barabarians (Alamanni in 357); while Volume III, pp. 381-7 is a famous account of the Huns seen through Roman eyes.

Eugippius, The Life of Saint Severin, trans. Ludwig Bieler, 1965 is a very graphic account of the fall of one province. The background to these events is explained in E.A. Thompson, Romans and Barbarians. The Decline of the Western Empire, 1982, pp. 113-133.




Questions:

‘Can we satisfactorily explain the fall of the Western Empire?’

‘When did the fall of the West become inevitable?’

‘Why did the eastern Empire survive when the West fell?’

‘Could the west Romans have repulsed the barbarians?’