The Fall of the Roman Empire Dbq

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The Roman Empire is one of the greatest and most successful Empires in the Ancient world. It had great rulers and was very powerful, although it finally fell apart. The decline of the Roman Empire consisted of weak political systems such as the government, the decrease of occupations and money, and reactions of the hopelessness of the people. Politics had an enormous influence in the fall of the Roman Empire. This is demonstrated in documents 4, 5, and 6. Henry Haskell states that “The government undertook such far-reaching responsibility in affairs that the fiber of the citizens weakened” (Document 4) This shows that the decline of the empire was due to heavy taxation that couldn’t support the government. If the taxes couldn’t sustain the government then it wouldn’t be able to control the people. According to Montanelli “The military crisis was the result of… proud old aristocracy’s… shortage of children” (Document 5) This means that many children weren’t old enough to go into the military which caused the decrease of soldiers. With the lack of soldiers, it would be easier to invade Rome, which could’ve led to the decline of the Empire. This proves that internal decay was one of the major causes for the end of Rome. Document 6 shows the invasions of Barbarians in 476 on the Roman Empire. This demonstrates that the government and military were becoming weaker to the point where they weren’t strong enough to protect the empire from invasions. The government could not control all these invasions, so this was another component that helped the fall of the Roman Empire. Document 5 shows bias because it blames the fall of the civilization on internal decay. This is significant because if a very well organized government that had been able to keep order throughout such a large empire could no longer do it, then this meant nobody else could. All of these political
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