Introduction: The political ‘fall’ of the Roman Empire (from 410 C.E.) has long been regarded as one of the pivotal events in world history. Ever since Edward Gibbon completed his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1788, there has been considerable debate on the causes for this ‘event’. It must be stressed, first, that though there was a real decline of the political power and unity of the Western Roman Empire, the cultural heritage of the empire would persist in the West through the middle ages and in an altered form into the modern period. The eastern portion of the empire continued as the relatively Byzantine Empire, which was eventually conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 C.E.. Second, it is wiser to speak of causes rather than any single cause; a series of interlocked conditions and their effects led to a radical change in the political condition of Europe during the 5th century. As noted by Michael Grant:
Abstract
The purpose of this article was to describe the prevalence of drowning as a cause of death in the mythology and ancient Greek history and under what circumstances it occurred. From all the names and references (n = 40,000) recorded in a database of the ancient and mythological Greek literature (Devouros, 2007), the number of drowning incidents was identified: n = 37, 17 males (45.94%), 6 females (16.22%), and 14 reports of multiple casualties (37.84%). The review of the database confirmed that drowning was attributed to “acts of demigod” but was more often due to human accidental submersion or to “acts of God” such as disasters like heavy rain, flooding, or tsunamis. Based on this review, the causes and rates of drowning (down from 57.5 to 2.69 per 100,000 population) may have changed through the centuries, but death by drowning remains a major health problem in Greece.