Rome, Constantinople And The Barbarians Summary

Walter Goffart is a historian of the later Roman Empire and early Middle Ages. He specializes in research on the barbarian kingdoms of those periods. He is currently a senior researcher and lecturer at Yale University. The article by Walter Goffart is about Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians. However, Constantinople isn’t mentioned as often throughout the article as Rome and the Barbarians are. The article is trying to prove that the barbarians and Christianity had a major role in the fall of Rome (Goffart 275).
Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians begins by reaffirming that barbarians fit the epitomization of the external dimension because they were foreigners. Barbarians were the name the Grecko-Romans used when referring to non-Greek speakers. It was up to historians to ask whether the barbarians of the Christian era, the Goths, Vandals, Huns, other tribes, fit into this idea of unforeseeable “ruin from the outside.” Despite this idea of unforeseeable “ruin from the outside”, the barbarian invasions did not happen to an unsuspecting Roman empire. Rome was custom to having warlike tribesmen at its gates and could deal with them (Goffart 275). Barbarian tribes were portrayed under anachronistic names. The Goths
Most articles that discuss the fall of the Roman Empire as either the triumph of barbarism and superstition or internal and external proletariat. Proletariats are workers or working class. They are considered the lowest class of citizens within the empire. Goffart mostly used letters and secondary sources for this article. A few primary sources appear when other historians are mentioned throughout the text. There is no explanation as to why the author choice to study this particular evidence. An inference can be made that the author has a personal interest in Rome and the barbarians due to the rest of his books and articles following a similar topic to this