I think it has a lot of replay value, I've listened to it twice in full now, and three to four times for certain periods that I like, so I think I'll be relistening to this a lot in the future. I'm most sad that there's no more 'Roman' history for him to cover. Goddamn barbarians (and Christianity).

To be honest, and im opening a can of worm here, i think the real reason for the end of the roman empire is the Islamic invasions. Had they not been there, i can see the byzantine recovering and taking over the western world once more...

True, but that's a related process. Justinian's plague had the effect of culling the vast majority of the urban centers of the Roman and Sasanid Empires, leaving less-urbanized but still advanced groups ("Germans" in Europe, Arabs in the Middle East) to pick up the pieces and pick off the remnants of the old empires. The Sasanids fell rather quickly, but the Byzantines held out for awhile, until they rather foolishly turned down the opportunity to build giant cannons; the Ottomans on the other hand were quite willing to exploit it... cue They Might Be Giants.

"In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome." the famous quote buy Edward gibbons... I disagree completely, but I think i might have to start a mega why rome fell(or did it just transform) thread.

I'm skeptical, can't wall off the rest of Europe like Constantinople.

And lest we forget, the Sasanids were a serious check on Byzantine expansion of force, even if the Arab expansions had never occurred (since they just replaced the Sasanids). Justinian (well, Belisarius) reconquered large parts of the West, but couldn't hold them after the Plague.

I have caught up with this podcast just in time for it to end. It was a really great experience and I will surely listen to it again this summer.

But right now I am more interested in the development of two areas of the former Roman empire after it's downfall. One is the development in Gaul/Germania up to the Frankish Kingdom breaking into the two halves and the develpment of Islam as a dominant force in North Africa/the Arab peninsula. Any good material on this? I would prefer podcast/audiobooks, but if there is anything else sopeone could recommend I would like that too.

Going for a 2nd listen through, love this podcast.

The History of Rome podcast ended on the 6th, nice job and thanks Mike Duncan

I'm excited to see what this "next project" of his ends up being. If it happens... kids always seem to **** everything up.

Let's draft damaci to do a History of Islam podcast? Gap in the market afaik.

there's a small and growing position that the failure of rome was the debasement of the currency, i.e- they were screwing around with the monetary supply. Case in point, when Augustus became emperor the denarius was around 95% pure silver, by the time of the later emperors like diocletian the denarius was way less than 5% silver. Messing around with the money supply they killed the economy, and were unable to support the over bloated army and thus fell to invasions and other ills related to not having a sustainable government.

This certainly is becoming a leading factor in the interpretation of the crisis of the third century, but it's problematic for the "Fall of Rome" as a whole. For one thing, it largely applies to the Western Empire, where the trade economy collapsed and evolved into a semi-feudal, semi-manorlist economy. The Eastern Empire remained economically strong for quite a long time after. However, various periods of draining the silver out of the Empire (likely bound for China), likely had a dangerous deflationary effect that led to pressures to debase the currency.

If anything, I'd say it was the over-bloated army that led to economic problems, rather than the other way around.