These consistently portray Germanic (and Germanic-dominated) societies at this later date as comprising essentially three castes: freemen, freedmen and slaves. Unlike its Roman counterpart, where the offspring of freedmen were completely free – and thus freemen – freedman status in the Germanic world was hereditary. Intermarriage between the three castes was banned, and a complicated public ceremony was required for an individual to jump across any of the divides. (查看原文)
Other fourth-century legal texts refer to a previously unknown phenomenon, the ‘deserted lands’ (agri deserti). Most of these texts are very general, giving no indication of the amounts of land that might be involved, but one law, of AD 422, referring to North Africa, indicates that a staggering 3,000 square miles fell into this category in that region alone. A further run of late Roman legislation also attempted to tie certain categories of tenant farmers (coloni) to their existing estates, to prevent them moving. It was easy, in fact irresistible, to weave these separate phenomena into a narrative of cause and effect, whereby the late Empire’s punitive tax regime made it uneconomic to farm all the land that had previously been under cultivation. This was said to have generated large-scal... (查看原文)
画红线处，按常理，叙马库斯不太可能去印度避暑。原文为：Sometime after 395, our old friend Symmachus – enjoying an Indian summer, to judge from his correspondence. 维基上Indian Summer词条解释为 Indian summer is a period of unseasonably warm, dry weather that...
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查看作者的英文背景介绍和作品年表，个人认为这个所谓“三部曲”完全是一个国内出版社的营销策略。作者本人可能并不存在这么一个三部曲的明确写作结构。 第一本《罗马帝国的陨落》，副标题被翻译切了半截，原文是“a New History of Rome and the Barbarians”，应为“一部新的...
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More often than not, when seeking answers to the question "What caused the Fall of Rome?", many would resort to Edward Gibbon's the well-known tome, but in this book the author Peter Heater provides an alternative view focusing on external factors - the bar...
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Oxford University Press2007版
4 有用 面包 2019-03-25 10:50:10
2019 NO.018 罗马的奔溃是一个时代的结束，也是另一个时代的开启。没有多少事件对西方有如此深远的影响。对如此宏大而久远的事件进行剖析，常人难以驾驭，不过本书做得还是不错。 本书对罗马陨落的解剖类似《万历十五年》对大明王朝毁灭过程的分析，方位全，角度多。从外部压力(日耳曼诸部落、匈人等)，到内部挑战(财政，权力纷争等)，大到对国家层面的政治和军事角逐的再现，小到对街头巷尾的民众的观感的还原... 2019 NO.018 罗马的奔溃是一个时代的结束，也是另一个时代的开启。没有多少事件对西方有如此深远的影响。对如此宏大而久远的事件进行剖析，常人难以驾驭，不过本书做得还是不错。 本书对罗马陨落的解剖类似《万历十五年》对大明王朝毁灭过程的分析，方位全，角度多。从外部压力(日耳曼诸部落、匈人等)，到内部挑战(财政，权力纷争等)，大到对国家层面的政治和军事角逐的再现，小到对街头巷尾的民众的观感的还原。作者力求把这划时代的事件再次托出给世人。 透过本书和《万历十五年》两部作品的共同呈现，我们可以从哲学层面去深思一个问题：实体的外延越扩张，对外接触面越大，外部对实体压力就越大，实体内部的张力也在形成。实体自身能力(如制度、管理等)进化不够快，不能消解外部压力和内部张力，实体的瓦解就成为必然。 (展开)
15 有用 whig 2017-11-23 22:18:59
气候因素被完全忽略了，经济/人口变迁这条线索也关注得太少
9 有用 耗子为知 2018-03-28 21:08:32
除了最后一页一直都觉得有理有据，但是，从前面的所有论点，完全不明白怎么最后得出灭亡的原因是罗马无节制的侵略？直接方了。几百页核心一直在讲是外因是主导，只是在最后一节花了点时间分析日耳曼的融合，就得出还是罗马侵略是造成灭亡的内因，实在不能让人信服。
31 有用 五花王 2017-12-22 22:42:12
从内外互动的角度看西罗马帝国的灭亡，不足大概是没有考虑地理上的“草原高速公路”和气候变化，因为亚欧大陆另一端的中华帝国也进入了“三世纪危机”并分裂了，同样地到了七世纪初，亚欧大陆的几个大帝国又陆续重新建立了起来。
8 有用 一月的帕格尼尼 2018-11-08 21:09:41
对照原版，这个翻译是外包给野鸡大学研究生做的？