Fall Of Rome DBQ Essay

Imagine a domino. You are lining them side-by-side in a chain. If you get lazy and start speeding up, you will knock one over and, one by one, all of the dominos will eventually fall. This is the same with Rome. Rome “developed a soft belly”, as quoted from the background essay, which means that Rome started becoming lazy. At that point, Rome knocked over one domino in the chain. One domino at a time, the “one of the world's greatest empires”, as said in the background essay, became nothing but ruins. But that wasn't the main reasons of Rome's fall. Then what caused Rome to tumble? Economic corruption, weak army, and foreign invaders played a key role leading to the decline of the Roman Empire. Of these, the foremost reason was its weak army.
One important factor leading to the fall of Rome was Rome's economic corruption.
I observed from document A that there were 13 assassinations during the 50-year period of 235 CE to 285 CE. This statistic shows that many civilians were hungry for the throne. Therefore, they assassinated the emperors, and that resulted with many emperors in one period of time. Like a wobbling chair unstable because of too many people leaning on it, Rome fell from an overwhelming amount of emperors. Another piece of supporting evidence comes from document B, “Hosts of senators, bureaucrats, and clergymen were entitled to avoid the draft.” This quote from the excerpt suggests that the nobles were corrupt. If there are not a lot of soldiers, then shouldn't everyone be required to join the army? Also, a quote from document E reads,“a wealthy lawbreaker is not punished for his injustice…”. This shows that the bottom line to success in Rome was being wealthy, and just for being wealthy, you are automatically free from all charges. This evidently suggests that the government was
corrupt. The foremost reason that the Roman Empire toppled over was because Rome's army was weak and the empire had various internal conflicts. Observed from document A, as I had abserved before, there were 13 assassinated emperors out of the 22 emporers in the 50 years. This observation clearly shows that there is an internal conflict going on within the once-great empire, and that Romans were going against each other for the throne. Given the quote from document B, “Thus it happens that troops in battle, exposed to wounds because they have no armor, think about running and not about fighting,” I could only conclude that Rome's army was weak and petty. If Rome had a weak army, the empire wouldn't be able to do anything. Document C also supports the point that Rome had a weak army. I observed that throughout Rome, there were foreign invaders all about. They seemed to be traveling with ease. This shows that Rome had such a weak army that the army couldn't slow down, much less defeat, the foreign invaders. Another important factor that finally brought Rome down was by foreign invaders. As we could observe from document C, the Roman empire was being ran over by foreign invaders. Also, there were as many as six invading groups at a certain point in time. The Huns were one of those invaders. They “exceed any definition of savagery,” as document D says. The Huns were also “fired with an overwhelming desire for seizing the property of others…”(document D) and all about “the slaughter of those who live around them,”(also document D). The Huns, as suggested from the evidence in this paragraph, is a destructive people who played a significant role in the decline of the Roman Empire. On the whole, it is true that there are other causes that led to Rome's fall, namely, diseases, disasters, and unstable leadership. However, these are not supported enough by evidence from the 6 documents, therefore Rome's economic corruption, Rome's weak army, and foreign invaders, especially Rome's weak army are the main forces that pushed the dominos of Rome.