Another primary reason of Rome’s decline was a series of foreign invasions. As Rome’s army weakened, foreigners began taking over parts of Rome. Many people hated Rome for taking all their land and property because Rome had conquered many provinces over the years of its prosperity. Land was important, and the Romans had a lot of it, so foreigners wanted to conquer Rome. The Visigoths were the first to reach there.
Becoming a governor in his region of Rome wasn’t good enough, he wanted to be crowned king and serve as a dictator for life, something that Rome didn’t have for five hundred years. His need for absolute power, to become greedy and to bring Rome under Monarchy corrupted him and altered his thinking. Instead of thinking about the Roman people, he was thinking about himself, and that made him a bad leader. Another reason that he wasn’t a good leader was that he was weak. Although he appeared to be strong to the commoners, he was seen as weak to his own Senate members, especially Cassius.
Rome’s emperors contradicted each other many times in history, not the least of which on the topic of Christianity. ``Some of the Roman emperors persecuted the Christians and murdered them but then Constantine came around and adopted it as Rome’s religion`` (Source: Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church). The way the different emperors of Rome jumped between religions made their citizens have less faith in them and not letting the citizens not know what to belief in destroyed unity in Rome. The adoption of Christianity disconnected the falling Western Roman Empire further from the thriving Byzantine Empire (Source: history-world.org/churchseperate.htm). This is significant because the Romans could have learned a lot from the Byzantine.
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
Also, many experts say that it fell because of the lack of heart the people had to the Empire, the rise of Christianity, it was too immense to govern and protect, the decline of the economy and jobs, the army being made up of mostly foreigners, and outside invaders. Thus, one can say that the Empire collapsed more internally than externally. The first reason why the Western Roman Empire fell was because the people that lived in it had a lack of heart in the Empire. People didn’t believe the Empire was worth saving anymore. As Strayer, Gatzke, and Harbison state in their textbook The Course of Civilization states “The basic trouble was that very few inhabitants of the empire believed that the old civilization was worth saving… the overwhelming majority of the population had been systematically excluded from political responsibilities.
The fall of these two societies was strangely similar; they endured hardships through significant factors such as the Germanic Invasions that made them decline in power. They were abolished by the same conflicts. One of the main conflicts was due to the immense military power of Germanic Legions persistently attempting to invade the empires. It cost the empires a great deal to keep their borders protected from continuous invasions sent by German leaders. Julius Caesar was not even capable of stopping or preventing the invasions from these barbaric tribes.
Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 ce. Christians in the Roman Empire held important political and military positions and imperial sponsorship in Christianity attracted many people to Christianity. Eventually many religions faded away and was discouraged in the Roman Empire because of the Christian missionaries that traveled throughout the Roman Empire. The spread of Christianity not only occurred in the Roman Empire but also in Germanic tribes due to Christian missionaries. The Christian lifestyles in the Roman Empire is different from the religiously tolerant Classical Roman Empire.
The causes for the fall of Rome can be divided into four categories: political, military, economic and social. Using the information you have read, identify one cause in each category and explain how it contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire. Military: Around the 4th century AD, the Roman military had become significantly feebler, mostly to the barbarians who had been attempting to breach Rome's borders for years. Soon, the barbarians began to gain access to the Western Empire on an even larger scale then before, first as minor groups of settlers and soldiers, but ultimately as entire tribes. They sensed military flaws and began to found small kingdoms, like Gaul, Spain.
There were also other external factors, but this was the one with the greatest impact since it was like the final blow. The internal conflicts that partially caused the fall of the Western Roman Empire were mostly composed of disagreements of Christianity, tax increases, power trips between leaders, etc. This fall led to a whole new age sometimes referred to as the “Dark Ages”. This was because all the people that were ruled by the Empire depended on protection, food, etc. so when the empire collapsed, they were left with nothing and had to strive very desperately to obtain back what they had lost.
Civil War reduces the strength of the Roman Empire and made it vulnerable to the barbarian invaders because stalled expansion. What stalled expansion is they spent all their time fighting between themselves left less time for expansion, although it was accelerated as generals conquered foreign territory as shows of power.Gernals tightened roman defenses due to fear of inner raids, but this helped against outer attacks against enemies such as barbarians. Roman armies lost many soldier in wars which became difficult to replace overtime and this reduced the strength of the Roman Empire. Not only did stalled expansion play a part of the reduced strength of the roman empire such as it is today people in the roman armies and cities and governments had their opinion who the ruler should be and this caused civil war to break out in the roman empire and it caused the strength of the roman empire fall and made to vulnerable to outer attacks. The citizens of Rome became lazy and self-indulgent because.