Essay On Why Rome Fell

How Rome Fell

In the beginning, Rome was a strong and powerful empire. Rome had a system for paying for their soldiers to fight. They would give them the land they conquered,which attracted more and more soldiers wanting to fight for Rome. When they stopped expanding, they could not give any more land to the soldiers so they had to find other ways to get them to fight. This ended up with the people having to pay extra taxes, and the army being unloyal to Rome. When this started it created many other problems for Rome. The empire simply got too big to control.The people living in it were getting out of hand, and they did not have the power to control them anymore. Because of the military and political factors, it affected the economy of Rome, which caused its downfall. Rome's
army will always be remembered as strong and powerful in the beginning. They used to have a way to pay the soldiers for their duty, but when they stopped expanding, they could not. They had to hire foreign soldiers, who were disloyal, and they had to pay them for their services. When their soldiers were from different places, they no longer had Rome as their first business, which caused many problems.They did not work as hard, and did not really care if the empire fell. Because the army was disloyal, they were not easy to control, so when they were attacked, they did not fight as well. Romes borders were easily attacked because they were not protected as well. Since Rome conquered so many places, they had many enemies, who wanted revenge, so they attacked Rome, and ended up playing an important role in Rome's downfall.
Since the armies lost power, it made the cities unsafe. People were stealing and killing others, but no one could really enforce the rules, so people did it more often. Another reason why Rome fell was because of their political factors.
During its downfall, Rome was full of corrupt leaders. In the course of fifty years, Rome had over twenty emperors who did not die of old age. They were bad emperors who would take Rome's money for themselves, and not the empire. People would revolt against them, kill them, and the emperor would decide to give up the throne instead of fighting. These emperors were terrible. Some of them even went mad. They would find pleasure in killing off many of the plebeians in their land. Others did not care that they were taking so much money and ruining Rome's economy. When Christianity spread, many people would stop believing that the emperor was a god. They no longer worshiped him, so the emperor lost his power. The more that the leaders killed and discouraged Christianity, the more it spread, and the more popular it became. Soon most of the people in the empire were christian, and one of the emperors decided to convert as well, creating the end of the war against christians. However, this did not help the emperor gain back control over the empire. He could no longer control the people that were supposedly under their
rule.
Overall the most important factor is economic. The military factors, and political factors hindered Rome's economy. Because the army needed so much money, they had to increase the amount of money they taxes on the plebeians. Therefore many people could not afford their homes, or to continue their jobs. Farmers abandoned their farms, and dissipated their jobs in the city. This had a big effect on the people who did stay. They could not buy food because people would keep increasing their prices to be able to afford the taxes. People needed the food that they grew on the farms so when they stopped growing it, people started to starve. In the cities were starving, and soon disease started to spread. Because the unemployment kept growing, slavery also grew which was not good for the economy because people did not have enough money to pay for things in a slaves salary. Latifundia also grew when people left their lands. The wealthy would take their land and sell it for money. Another reason that this happened is because people could not afford to live on their farms, so the wealthy took over. The farms were a very important part of survival. As a result of the corrupt emperors, Rome did not have enough money to be strong anymore, because they took most of the money for themselves.
Rome could not control their people anymore. Too many things had happened to it. Starvation, disease, poverty, and criminals covered the city. Many people wanted to move to a better place, but they did not have enough money for it. Rome lead itself into their own destruction. Everything they did in the beginning started a cycle that could not end if they wanted Rome to keep being as powerful as it is. Over time, the cycles stopped, and Rome's power also stopped. All these problems were being built up over time, and they crashed down all at once, which caused Rome's downfall.