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It was fresh in my mind. I just had my laptop repaired so instead of doom-scrolling I read some of the books on my shelf, and one of them being Trever's "History of Ancient Civilization Vol. II: The Roman World," which covers this fairly extensively.

Thank you!

> But several centuries later the Romans moved to the East, you could almost say Greek culture conquered the Romans :o

Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio

The romans used volcanic ash in their concrete. Huge difference in how long their structures survive even harsh conditions vs modern concrete. https://www.historicmysteries.com/roman-concrete/

That's a good point. After the end of the crisis of the third century, diocletian began the dominate. It's usually marked 284 ad as the starting point. Diocletion declared alot of laws that weren't common to the west. Such as having people kneel and bow before him. He also decreed price ceilings on a variety of goods and that sons would inherit their own fathers job. They would need special permission to move. This is the first steps to feudalism, so I'm glad you mentioned it.

Plumbing in some places in the US is about a century old lol

The legend says the romans were survivors of Troy so its Greeks all the way down.

No, non hellenic speakers which many if not most romans were

In addition to the recommendations below, a couple that I've been enjoying here in the UK.

• You're Dead To Me - Greg Jenner is joined by a historian and a comedian to look at a person, event etc.

• The Rest Is History - historians Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland (not that one) likewise discuss a range of historical topics.

• Empire - William Dalrymple and Anita Anand on the history of colonialism and Empire. They've started with the British in India, a nation they are both connected with bur I believe intend to continue looking at different European powers and different subject areas.

The Eastern Empire/Byzantium was more or less surrounded by the turks. In its latter days, the empire was a diminishing island in an Ottoman sea. The western empire some places, like Britannia, it more or less disappeared overnight, others, it just withered away. I suppose there was a lot of internal displacements in such turbulent times, but mass migration from west to east, seems unlikely. To me, that is :)

>So in essence yes, but I doubt most peasants would be involved.

Right. By the time of Constantine and his successors, the 'peasants' were essentially bound to the land, like later serfs. Most had no option to emigrate.

Well remember originaly barbarian just meant foreigners.

In a way, yes. The roman power ran out of recognition and prestige with time. One of the strenght of the Empire through its History was obviously its military. But it also became its weakness during the fall. There are 2 main things to remember when it comes to this :

• Very often, the peoples located on lands the Empire would conquer didn't necessarily pay their tribute with money but with men who would join the military. It was at the time win-win for the Romans. Not only it was growing their ranks but it was also automatically preventing the conquered to make up a new armed force. On the barbarian perspective, joining the roman army was giving them the opportunity of eventually gaining ranks and perhaps lands, and even citizenship.
• That leads immediately to the second point. Lands. Recognized and respected soldiers were given lands by the government. They were not the absolute rulers of their lands, the Emperor was obviously willing to remain the top leader over its territory, but those soldiers with property still had some liberty. Looking at History, such a system can only work when the initial power is strong. Which was not the case during the empire's last century. The Empire got more and more fragmented.

But that's only for the political part. Culturally, the Romans inprint remained in Europe and was respected by the barbarians. When the barbarians rulers arrived with their courts and nobles, they knew that the main people was remaining roman. According to some (rare) testimonies which arrived to us, they understood they needed to work with the people already settled in good terms. One of the best example for this might be the Franks.

According to quite some historians, we might want to thank Christianism for this whole process of (not full, but still) preservation. The barbarian rulers understood they needed the roman people. The roman people was responding positively to the Church. So the barbarian needed the Church. And the Church needed strong protective rulers who eventually all got baptized. The Church ultimately gained power (it was the Franks who actually recognized first the Vatican as a state and well, the Vatican was in a way benefiting of Rome's aura) and more and more churches and cathedrals were built, which also led more or less directly to the preservation of some Ancient texts and works which were also rewritten in churches' offices.

And as we've discussed above, many rulers, even hundreds of years after the Fall, had in mind to restore the glory of the old Empire which was still seen as a wonder.

To conclude : the Fall of the Western Empire was the fall of its political system. But not of its people, culture or infrastructures. Sure, time did its work, adjustments were made here and there, romans and barbarians shared couches, but the whole presence and aura of the Empire was still there.

Even by 300 AD roman peasants were bound to their landlord, and forbidden by law to leave the manor. Thus a large part of the population was unable to migrate. In order to maintain the empire's armies, and to fund the frequently recurring civil wars, the tax burden on roman citizens had become unbearingly heavy. This combined with the suppressive religious policies of a now Christian empire, made many people welcome barbarian rule. (As happened when roman North-Africa came under muslim-arab rule two centuries later. Also, these were troublesome times, and travelling for long distances could be very hazardous, so my guess is that there might have been migration from areas close to the eastern part of the empire, and perhaps some wealthy citizens (merchants and others, whose wealth was not tied to the land), but all in all, I'd go for very limited migration.

I just want second everything in this post and recommend Peter Heather's "Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe" to OP, as I think it would help answer his question and is probably my favorite work regarding migrations and power changes during late antiquity and the middle ages.

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The photo of that cave from the outside is awesome. Excellent location. I do wish there had been some photos from inside, though.

Over a long time. Upkeep requires investment. There's a lot of American infrastructure seriously in need now, and that's over decades, not centuries.

They were Greeks with Roman citizenship. In other words they were both Greeks (ethnicity) and Romans (politically) and that's how they saw themselves based on the primary sources that have survived.

>When you today go to Southern Cyprus and ask the people, they will tell you that they are Cypriots or Rums (Romans), but not Greeks.

I suppose you mean Cyprus and I think you got confused by our different ethnonyms. Greeks today have three ethnonyms: Ελληνας (Hellenas), Γραικός (Graikos) and Ρωμιός (Rhomios/Roman). All these terms mean "Greek" in Greek and Έλληνας is by far the most popular one. Although during the byzantine period we also used Ρωμαίος/Rhomaios/Roman, today Ρωμαίος is used for the ancient romans while Ρωμιός is the term that we use for ourselves. As for cypriots, we are Greeks. As far as I know Turks use the term "Rum" for Greeks from Cyprus,Pontic Greeks and Greeks that still live in turkey while they use the term "Yunan" (from Ίωνες, the ancient Greek tribe) for the rest of the Greeks that live in Greece.

Yet so much of the Roman infrastructure was destroyed.

I heard a group of about 40,000 went with to Constantinople from Rome when Constantine made it the new capital.

But really, I prefer to think of it as:

• The Romans conquered the Greeks way back when.
• But several centuries later the Romans moved to the East, you could almost say Greek culture conquered the Romans :o

If we look outside the Roman elite, which makes up a very small percentage of the overall population, I would bet money that the vast majority of people hunkered down and stayed put.

Consider two facts for this: most didn't have the financial resources to travel hundreds of miles or give up their day to day livelihood because they needed to put food on the table today. It may not have been subsistence level living but very likely a paycheck to paycheck sort of situation. That handicaps people's ability to make big changes and cut away from their previous lives to start over somewhere new.

Secondly the 5th century was an unstable, chaotic, violent time for most of the provinces. Civil wars and barbarian thugs rampaged up and down and around the Western Empire. Travel was perilous and I imagine robbery and death awaited people who weren't quick enough to get out of the way of those Romans and non-Romans who had nice pointy sharp sticks roaming around and demanding your gold and supplies.

This is not to say that there wasn't movement of people at all. We can look at the Bretons as an example of a group that fled from the barbarian migrations. But even that group already had close ties to the area they went to through trading and kinship and so had a community network to rely on for support (housing, jobs, family, etc.).

I doubt we'll ever know the true numbers of how much of the population moved around but at least on the continent I think people were conditioned to duck and cover after decades and decades (and more decades) of war.

"Collapse" in general involves the elites more - there is less production of luxury goods and high culture, but for the average slave or peasant I don't know if the collapse of the western Empire would have massively affected their lifestyle.