On 04-19-98 Bob Eyer wrote to Day Brown... 
 BE> One of the good things  about  Christianity  was  that  it  either 
 BE> directly  or  indirectly  (via  the Arabs) transmitted much of the 
 BE> classical tradition to the modern world.  During the  Renaissance, 
 BE> the  printing  of  classical  literature  led to the view that the 
 BE> ancient world  was  a  golden  age  from  which  Christianity  had 
 BE> descended.   We recall that Gibbon in the 18th century argued that 
 BE> the decline and  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  was  Christianity's 
 BE> fault.   By  the  17th  century  that  descent was beginning to be 
 BE> regarded as a descent into depravity and barbarism. 
I don't get that from Gibbon at all Bob; although I haven't read 
all of him.  He notes the same danger I saw in Praetorian guards 
who began choosing Emperors with Claudius.  To me, he suggests a 
gradual evolution from monarchy to military dictatorship, how in 
several cases various emperors were killed because they lost the 
admiration of professional military classes, and how a successor 
often bribed the legions to depart to defend the frontiers. 
 
Following the example of Trajan, many subsequent rulers had come 
from humble homes in the provinces, but lacked his sagacity, and 
treated the empire as a vast pool of loot free for the taking by 
him and his fellow legionaires. 
 
The charge that the empire fell because of the depravity of Rome 
was bullshit; although the ruling classes were, as Gibbon shows, 
pretty dissippated, judging the culture by them, is like judging 
american culture reading Hollywood scandal rags. 
 
Soil core pollen analysis of rural Italy shows a switch from the 
yeoman style of agriculture, which produced lots of staples like 
wheat, and was replaced with landed estates worked by slaves and 
run for the best possible quarterly return on investment. 
 
The land no longer had family farms;  so, it no longer had family 
farmer sons, which were typically fed and trained well to provide 
a stong worker to provide for his father's retirement.  Rather, a 
slave produced slave boys who were fed as little as possible, and 
grew up runty.  But: when the legion sent recruiting officers out 
to sign up new soldiers, what they found was a few fat rich boys, 
and hundreds of runty slaves. 
 
By the time of Claudius, the Praetorian guard wasn't recruited in 
Italy any more, but mostly Germany- hence the term 'Kaiser'; and- 
it had no affinity to Rome or Italy, and acted accordingly. 
 
These landed estates didn't grow wheat, but switched to Falernian 
grapes for a popular wine the rich senators liked.  Wheat was not 
cool and trendy, and made much less money with slave labor. 
 
So: they didn't grow their own food, nor their own soldiers.  The 
wonder is, that it lasted as long as it did.  At the heart of the 
problem was slavery- no slavery, no landed estates.  Christianity 
sanctioned slavery.  Stoicism did not- too ethically challenging. 
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