Valyria and the Shadow of Rome
Just as medieval Europe sprung up among the ruins of the Roman Empire, Westeros too stands in the shadows of an ancient yet incredibly advanced civilization: the Valyrian Freehold. A lot connects the two: both conquered vast swathes of territory through their military and technological superiority; both created the conditions for peace and prosperity (though run off the back of slave economies), and both ultimately crumbled, the only remnants of their greatness living on in name alone.
Upon arriving in Valyria, Tyrion asks Jorah Mormont: “How many centuries before we learn how to build cities like this again?” We have evidence of people feeling similarly awestruck looking back on Roman architecture during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. While gazing upon the magnificent, apparently freestanding dome of the Roman Pantheon in the early 1500s, Michelangelo commented that it seemed of “angelic and not human design.” And wasn’t just for the architecture people that felt nostalgic. Valyrian steel, something the Westerosi haven’t learned to forge since the civilization’s fall, remains unparalleled in terms of weaponry, and Valryia’s language—like Latin in the Middle Ages—continued to be taught as part of the education of the Westerosi nobility.
For all the influence Valyria exerted over Westeros, it’s interesting that they never attempted to conquer it. This is because they saw it as an unprofitable backwater; an interesting parallel because that’s just how the Romans saw Britain. True, Caesar conquered Britain in 55/4 BC, but he did so because he feared a British-Gallic confederacy, not because he wanted Britain per se. Britain was conquered under Claudius in 43 AD, but this was more for propagandistic purposes than anything else. For Claudius was a weak, uncharismatic ruler in need of military conquest to bolster his position, and Britain made easy pickings—more so than Parthia or Germany.
For all the Roman Empire contributed in terms of laws, language, markets, roads, architecture, and infrastructure—what did the Romans ever do for us?—that wasn’t enough to prevent its ultimate ruin. A series of factors, including political incompetence at the center of government and the gross mismanagement of mass migration, led to Rome falling to the Goths in 410. This wasn’t the case for Valyria, which was obliterated through natural, rather than manmade, causes. But in making the Doom of Valyria a catastrophic volcanic eruption, we see Martin drawing on the story of two other great civilizations: historically, the Minoans; mythologically, the city of Atlantis.