Does History Repeat Itself

1037 Words5 Pages
Does History Repeat Itself? In the past there was a time where the Roman Empire was growing stronger than ever. Then it came to a slow dreadful end. In a way, the Roman Empire declined just like the Han Empire in China. And to top it all off both of these empires fail for similar reasons. The Han Empire collapsed for reasons such as: undetermined emperors could no longer control powerful warlords, weak emperors let canals and roads fall into disrepair, because of the weak government people started to turn on each other and lose control. But the most important reason for the empire collapsing was because of the economic inequality. Burdened by heavy taxes and crushing debt many peasants revolted destroying the civilization. While this collapse took very little time to happen, the Roman Empire’s decline took about a century to occur. After the Pax Romana, the Roman Empire started to decline. The reasons were political and economic, and they had problems with foreigners. After the guard killed Commodus, they sold power to the highest bidder. This led to chaos every time a leader died. All leaders became dictators, and almost all were killed by their guards. The Roman Empire had 26 leaders in the next 50 years. A leader had to pay his army well to keep them happy so that they would fend off invasions. This led to high taxes and inflation. Borders were left open as Romans fought among themselves. Germanic tribes invaded, Persians took Roman lands, and Gaul tried to become independent. Did Rome really fall? Although we talk of the fall of Rome, the Roman Empire never completely disappeared. It just got extremely smaller. So now we are back to the question that began this whole summary, does history repeat itself? To an extent it kind of does, not in the exact way b8ut very similar. Eulogy: The Age of Justinian The Byzantine helped preserve Roman and Greek culture
Open Document