Kemi Badenoch, in her speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship event (Kemi Badenoch says ‘western civilisation will be lost’ if Tory party fails, 17 February), claimed that it was “fiscal weakness, not just war, that led to the decline of the Roman empire”, a fate menacing the west today. There is some justice to this parallel.
The western Roman empire was undoubtedly weakened by shrinking financial resources in the fifth century AD. The emperor Valentinian III made the point starkly himself in a law issued in 441 to urge the wealthy to pay their taxes. The loss of provinces certainly eroded Roman resources – but so did the greed of the wealthy nobility, who failed to pay tax and dominated the upper apparatus of government. An apt analogy indeed.
Prof Geoffrey Greatrex
Robinson College, Cambridge
