Consciousness of Sheep
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“Hail Legate. What news from the empire?”
“Hail Procurator. Nothing good… the legions have been ordered back to Rome.”
P: “Are things really that bad?”
L: “Barbarian incursions have become commonplace. And the imperial economy is faltering. Emperor Honorius has issued a missive to the people of these islands to the effect that, from now you must stand alone.”
P: “But that cannot be done. Without the legions we will be easy prey to the barbarian hordes who regularly invade our lands. And how, in any case, are we to arm ourselves without the military supply chains of the whole empire behind us?”
L: “That’s no longer my problem Procurator. Although, in truth, we ought to have seen this coming long, long ago. Those of us who have travelled across the empire in recent times have been wilfully blind to the evidence of collapse all around us.”
P: “What is this collapse you speak of Legate? Our living standards are far better than those of the hostile tribes which surround us.”
L: “That’s the trouble… we grew fat and we grew lazy. And so long as decline mostly affected the little people, we could convince ourselves that all was well. But consider just one thing… heat. Sure, the empire is still the master of hydraulic technology. Our watermills grind corn and power the bellows in our smithies. But the trees… ah, there’s the problem. As the imperial population grew, more and more trees were felled to provide timber for buildings, for carts and for ships. And that led to competition with those industries that needed the heat from wood and charcoal to heat their hearths and ovens. Today, the wooded valleys of the early empire are almost barren. Gallic bakers are reduced to using bushes and scrub to bake any bread at all, while our smiths can barely restore old swords, still less produce new ones. Potters can no longer fire their vases, while mints can no longer produce coins.”
P: “Ah yes, I have noticed the decline in the quality of almost all the goods imported from the empire.”
L: “And then there’s the military problem. It used to be that we faced enemy armies on chosen battlefields. But once the armies of Carthage, Gaul, Egypt and Britain had been crushed, only the Parthians in the east remained… and they were always too strong to start a quarrel with. And so, other than for defensive duties, the legions became less useful. And with the arrival of the barbarian raiders, light cavalry units had to be built as rapid response units… and cavalry, I’m afraid, is ruinously expensive.”
P: “Indeed, horses are an expensive luxury in the civilian economy too.”
L: “It’s to do with growing fodder… another reason why the trees had to be cut down. It takes a lot of grass to feed the horses in a cavalry unit, and the people objected to farmland being taken over for the purpose. It is another reason why the imperial economy has been declining. The people have to spend more of their time just to produce the food they need and so produce less of the goods which used to be traded across the empire.”
P: “And was there nothing the emperor could do?”
L: “Possibly. But that brings us to the biggest problem of all. Our rulers in Rome had long come to see the economy in monetary terms. The coins used to facilitate the exchange of goods were seen to be more important than the goods themselves. Until, eventually, they came to believe that every problem and predicament could be solved with money.”
P: “But is that not true?”
L: “Well, to a point of course. If you want to get something done, paying extra always helps. But look at the money itself. There was a time when a silver denarius was made of pure silver to such a standard that it was accepted as payment in the far away lands beyond our eastern borders. But over time, successive administrations debased it… adding base metals, clipping the edges, and flattening the coins. And so, we come to today’s sorry excuse for money… a mere sliver of bronze with the lightest of washes of some silver-like compound which wears away in weeks.
“There was a time when a single silver denarius would pay for my board for a year. Now? Well, I need a whole sack of coins… and even then, the landlord may be reluctant to trade. After all, who can tell how much less those coins will be a year from now.”
P: “Certainly, rising prices have made life difficult in these islands in recent times. But I hadn’t really thought about the money itself.”
L: “For a long time, our money has been mostly “fiat.” It is no longer the silver content of a coin that determines its value, but that of the imperial stamp which makes it legal tender and the only means of paying one’s taxes. And so long as the economy was prospering, that didn’t seem to make a difference. But today, every worker across the empire has to work harder just to stand still. Why? Because we lost the means to generate heat… something so apparently insignificant that nobody within the administration could see it as a problem but so crucial that without it, productivity collapses.”
P: “Hard times indeed. And what of us here… is there any practical way we can defend ourselves?”
L: “You might, I suppose, put what remains of your surplus wealth into building a military. Or you might try to come to some accommodation with the tribes you fear. But no longer can Rome promise to be your protector… it is but a shadow of the glorious empire of three centuries ago. Hell, Rome can barely defend itself these days. And between you and I, it wouldn’t surprise me if in a few years from now Rome will be a smouldering ruin… such is how all empires go in the end.”
As you made it to the end…
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