MacMullen Ramsay. Corruption and the Decline of Rome

New Haven - London: Yale University Press, 1988.-XII, 319 p.The plan of this book is very simple. It examines what is conventionally called the decline of Rome, beginning (chapter 1) with a review of various
phenomena which good scholars have used to explain it. Not finding in them any broad, clear meaning, I follow up certain hints instead that point to a loss of power in the state, a diminishing control over the empire's latent strengths and resources. In what might be called an exercise in historical sociology (chapter 2), I describe what power was and how it worked when it did work, and (chapter 3) when and why it didn't, at the end. Rome's ultimate impotence is easily illustrated (chapter 4) through a selection of specific incidents belonging to the fourth and fifth centuries. On the surface they would all be called political or military. They are selected to demonstrate how historical sociology may sometimes be necessary for the understanding of the schoolboy part of history: that is, battles and political parties and who-did-what-towhom(with perhaps some special scholarly attention to people's exact names, kin, and titles, and to exact dates).