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Title: possible causes of decline
Review: The title is a conscious echo of Gibbons' famous work. No surprise then to see a chapter excerpted from Gibbons. Who is surely the best known of the contributors. The other historians are of more recent vintage. Offering different speculations as to why Roman fell. Typically, none of these claim to be the only reason, or even necessarily the main cause of decline.But to a reader interested in classical history, the book's ideas can be provoking. For example, Boak suggested that manpower shortages were a factor in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. That this led to the necessary importing of foreign mercenaries ("barbarians"), especially in central Europe. A trend that would have deleterious consequences by the late 4th century.
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