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.…
military and unstable government of the Roman Empire played a huge role in its decline…
The Roman government was very unstable. Military generals and commanders fought among themselves for the throne, and this also led to an untrustworthy army. There was a strong sense of distrust among the army men, and so there was also feelings of loyalty weakening among average citizens as well. In a desperate effort to reconstruct their army, the government employed mercenaries, although these were also not trustworthy because their loyal lied in whoever paid them. Inflation also caused major problems. A drastic drop in the value of money coupled with a rise in prices caused famine and increased poverty, leading to the deaths of many and a significant drop in population. All these problems opened the empire to invading peoples.…
The Roman Empire, one of the biggest empires of the ancient world, was a strong and growing empire. However, it fell after many years of glory. Why did it fall? Was it because of attacks, failing economy, many unemployed? These all lead to one point, expansion. Or was it struggles over power? Even though the Roman Empire got more land, resources, and labor from expanding, the expansion led to the thinning out of resources and power, as well as a failing economy due to unemployed plebeians; lastly Rome’s defenses were weakened.…
One of the primary reasons that Rome fell was they had poor government. First of all, Rome may have good rules, but they did not enforce them. For example, too many people were exempt from conscription. (Document B) This was a problem because they didn’t have enough people in the army because everybody turned down going to the army. Also, Rome failed to enforce their laws. According to Priscus, wealthy lawbreakers in Rome were able to get away with crimes. (Document E) This was…
There were many reasons for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Each document in this essay explains a different reason. Some causes were: political, economic, social, and military differences and problems. Basically, the problem was that the gap between the rich aristocrats and the poor serfs got bigger and bigger; the rich got richer as the poor got poorer. Also, when something grows, it always falls back down. In Document 1, an excerpt from a book was taken out. According to the authors, the basic problems facing the Western Roman Empire came from the people that gave up devotion to the old civilization and didn't believe that it was worth saving. Why should they care about their land if they weren't allowed to take part in government say, they couldn't form groups to protect themselves, and were even excluded from their own army? The practically jobless people realized that their cities were slowly falling, but no one bothered to stop their decline; it was something that had to happen. The loss of popular support to the oppressive government, increased government corruption, division of the empire, and internal power struggles were some political causes that led to the fall of Rome. In Document 2, two causes for the fall of Rome were: the large size, and the introduction to Christianity. Because the Empire grew too large, it became uneasy to control. It was inevitable for the fall to occur, no matter how much anyone tried. Jesus' introduction to Christianity also started a change. The clergy (priests) helped change the moral values of society. It no longer mattered much, and military power was buried or thrown away. The rich's wealth was taken away and given to charity (poor). In Document 3, the Muller's explanation for the decline was an economic issue. As the Empire grew stronger, so did economy. When the Empire started to decline, business ceased and there was little progress, so that also crashed along with the empire itself. Slavery caused another…
One reason why western Rome collapsed is because of the military as seen in documents 1 and 4. These documents show that Rome’s military was weak, drafted more people, had loyalty problems, and hired mercenaries. First, the lack of breastplates and helmets(document 1) made the Roman…
Doc 2. States “Rome’s fall was an inevitable effect of its grand size.” Due to Rome’s enormous extent of land from conquering, they couldn’t keep up the amount of gold and reliable soldiers to maintain roads and routine maintenance. The numerous Roman-ruled countries created the necessity for soldiers and protection to break up any civil wars and stop any foreign barbarians from invading and ruining Roman property. However, many Roman-hired foreign soldiers were disloyal and unfaithful to Rome and there weren’t enough Roman soldiers to protect the borders which allowed for invasions, riots, and revolts to occur. This was also stated in Doc. 2 as “borders became difficult to secure.” To keep the roads in shape for trade, Rome needed a lot of gold, which was never enough. This hurt the economy because lacking the ability to maintain roads meant that they also couldn’t maintain trade. If there wasn’t a large, increasing rate of civilizations and countries being conquered by Roman officials, then Rome would’ve been able to preserve their economy, and drastically decreased the amount of riots and invasions caused by anger and…
One of the reasons for the fall of Rome was that they had a poorly government. First of all, Rome had many good laws but they didn’t enforce them. They exempted to many citizens from draft. The text states, “ Hosts of senators, bureaucrats, and clergymen were…
Nearly two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire conquered all territories west of the Persian Empire in modern day Iran and Iraq. The empire extended southwards into North Africa, and as far north as the British Isles. For close on to four centuries, the Romans controlled and conquered most of Western Eurasia and the Mediterranean. However, their rule came to an end because of the centrifugal forces of political and economic issues, foreign invaders and belligerent tribes, and socio-religious transformations. This brief response will help highlight the primary reasons why the Roman Empire fell.…
The Roman Empire was a great empire and was around for some time, but all great things come to an end. Many things took part in dragging the Roman Empire down, but the economy and its problems were one of the main causes why the empire fell. As we know the economy is a big part of what keeps a country going, however in Rome the economy had problems that contributed to Rome’s fall.…
To keep the army to defend Rome from attacks cost a lot of money. This was a constant drain to the government. Spending on the army left a little amount of resources for other things that they needed. Mostly like roads, and providing public housing(Rome). One thing that the empire did is they started to higher foreign soldiers, the foreign soldiers did not follow orders as well as the regular soldiers(Roman).…
The first main reason reason that Rome fell was because of its economy. The economy was a main issue because of the rising taxes. This led to economic hardship, driving people out of the empire. Another reason that this is an issue is because people had to pay for justice. Poor people were punished more for their crimes, while a rich man was not. All those problems drove people out of here empire, weakening it.…
Military contributions in Roman times have helped the government, yet have hurt it at the same time. There were several factors that contributed to the collapse of the Roman government. The military leadership had a great impact on the lives in Rome and greatly shaped the empire. People believe that the fall of the Roman Empire was due to the collapse of the government . The military leadership and control quickly began to get out of hand. At one point in Roman…
The Roman Empire was one of the biggest and most powerful empires of it’s time. Reaching from Greece to Egypt, the empire was bound to fall. The collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D can be attributed to many social causes, such as the introduction of Buddhism, political causes, such as weak leaders, an economic causes, such as inflation.…