Unit 1: Sources and Context
- What do we know, and how do we know it?
- The state of the Roman world at the start of the course
Unit 2: Diocletian and the Dominate – the Empire Strikes Back
- Diocletian and Maximianus
- The Tetrarchy
- The Army, the Economy and the Law
- Challenges from Within and Without
- The Great Persecution
Unit 3: Christianity Ascendant: Constantine the Great
- Power Struggles and the Rise of Constantine
- ‘With This be Victorious’
- Constantine’s Christian Empire
- Constantine’s Secular Empire
- Constantine’s Baptism and Death
Unit 4: Constantine’s Heirs and Julian the Apostate
- The Heirs of Constantine
- Ammianus Marcellinus
- Julian the Apostate
- Christianity Reborn
Unit 5: The East/West Divide
- Brothers in Arms: Valentinian and Valens
- Theodosius I
- Religious and Political Divisions
Unit 6: The Northern Barbarians – the Huns, Goths and others
- Mapping ‘Barbaricum’
- Ethnicity
- Roman attitudes to barbarians
- Barbarian attitudes towards Romans
- The Goths
- The Hun
- Defining the barbarian and the Roman
Unit 7: The Sack of Rome
- A Divided Empire with Child Emperors
- Alaric the Visigoth and Stilicho the Half-Vandal
- The death of the Gladiators
- The Roma withdrawal from Britain
- The Sack of Rome (410)
- The Death of Alaric
Unit 8: Roman Empresses; Barbarian Kings
- The Post-Alaric Aftershocks
- Power struggles in Spain, Gaul, Britain, Italy and Africa
- The Eastern court of Theodosius II
- Communications, trade and the land
- Imperial women
Unit 9: The End of Rome in the West
- Rome’s defences in the late Empire
- The Survival of Rome in the East: 450 Onwards
- Attila the Hun
- Endgame: the Fall/transformation of Rome in the West
- The Last Western Emperor
Unit 10: Epilogue: ‘Fall’ or ‘Transformation’ – how, why, and indeed, did Rome fall?
- The (210) Causes of the Fall of the Roman Empire
- The Fall (or Transformation) of Rome in the West
- Good Thing/Bad Thing?
- The Fall of Rome and the 21st Century
We strongly recommend that you try to find a little time each week to engage in the online conversations (at times that are convenient to you) as the forums are an integral, and very rewarding, part of the course and the online learning experience.