Fall of the Western Roman Empire

366 Words2 Pages
There are many reasons for the fall of Rome. The three main reasons are inflation, political corruption, and excessive military spending. There are many more scientific theories, but these three seem to be the most important. Towards the end of the empire, after Marcus Aurelius was emperor, the economy had difficulties with the increase of prices of everything. Since Rome was no longer conquering new lands, they weren't getting the extra money so they turned poor. The gold coins were losing their value from not being used as much so the merchants were raising their prices. A lot of people starting using goods to trade instead of the coins. Eventually everything was being paid without money. Goods were starting to run out so Rome started to fall. It was hard for Rome to choose new emperors. There were a lot of people and a lot of disagreements. There was never a rule out how to choose a new emperor so the old emperor, the Senate, the emperors private army, and the army would get together to choose a new one. This system worked until one of the emperors got strangled. Then the position was sold to the highest bidder. Room had 37 emperors and 25 of them were murdered. This contributed to the fall of Rome because the citizens obviously didn't like most of their emperors. It cost a lot of money to keep a good military running. By spending a lot of money on the military, houses and construction didn't get enough money funded into. The soldiers ended up losing their desire in fighting for their country so the government had to pay for people to work for the military. The government was forced to raise taxes to pay for the workers. This hurt the economy from a loss of money. The military, money, and tax problems really affected Rome badly. Rome
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