Edward Gibbon

Most historians believe that the downfall of Rome was not caused by one dominant factor, but more several issues that were too pressing to be solved. After looking at documents one through six, however, I feel like the issues are centered around the problems associated with conquering new lands and the expansion of the empire.

Similarly, acknowledging author bias is significant in Peter Heather’s Fall of the Roman Empire because the influences from writers contribute to the reliability of the texts. Since Heather worked on the “Germanic people” previously, it influenced his writing as he mentions the Germans frequently throughout his work and refers to them as the ‘invaders’ like most of the authors. Therefore, his bias towards the “Germanic people” cannot make this text fully reliable. It does however, provide numerous accounts of information which is useful when talking about how the Roman empire fell. According to Heather, some internal factors were mainly political aspects, the economic and the military and also contributed to the fall of the empire. The external

According to the passage by Peter Stearns in Document F it shows that Rome had to hire soldiers to protect them. That showed that they were scared and wanted other people to do the work for them. It was unnecessary for them to do that because they were very powerful and other empires were scared of them. Now the Roman Empire is scared of other empires. As seen in the excerpt by Michael Grant in Document B it shows that Rome forced other soldiers to fight for them because they were scared and didn’t want, too.

There were many social factors that contributed to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The fall of the Western Roman Empire was impacted by several social factors. For example, “the introduction of Christianity had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire” (doc. 2). The things that this religion valued, were quite the opposite of what Romans used to hold as their virtues.

The Roman empire fell due to barbarian invasions causing losses, both purely militaristic and territorial, the collapse of the economy due to taxation being both insufficient and excessive, and the relationship between the two factors. During the Roman empire’s fall, along with other barbarian tribes in different regions, the Vandals slowly progressed from annexing frontier territories in North Africa to sacking Rome itself. Additionally, during the twilight years of the Roman empire, taxes rose to such a degree that wealthy Romans moved out of the cities and into the countryside. Defending an empire against repeated barbarian invasions required a significant amount of military funding; however, when the Vandals progressed through the North African territories, which were major sources of tax revenue for the Roman capital, the Romans, thus, were forced to increase taxes in the regions that were still under their own control because the military continued to require an

Without a loyal army, Rome could not fight against its enemies, so it could not protect itself. Rome was so big, and had so little soldiers, that it could no longer fight off

A social cause of the Roman Empire was Roman's value to Christianity. It states in document 6, “Also the ideas and beliefs of Christianity weakened the Roman Army.” This shows that since the Romans were becoming more civilized, they valued their religion than going to the army. This weakened the empire because since the Romans had a morale and in a war, you kill people, the Romans didn’t want to kill anyone because they thought that if they kill, they would go to hell and if they didn’t kill, they would go to heaven so they wanted to be in heaven rather than fighting and killing the enemy. Another social cause of the Roman Empire was the

“Borders became difficult to secure and the amount of gold needed to maintain the roads and perform routine maintenance was never enough. It had grown so large it could not take care or protect itself to the level that it was needed.”(Doc 2). The Roman empire was huge and the military couldn’t patrol every corner so that made it easier for attacking cities to get to the larger cities.

The army therefore had always been the largest item of expenditure in the Empire. This was exacerbated by events in the early third century whereby the Sasanian dynasty (Res Gestae Divi Saporis) came to threaten the Romans on the Eastern front (Persia). Now this was before the split of the Empire so is perfectly relevant to the West’s problems. Between 237-272 AD, the Sasanians launched a major offensive of Roman Mesopotamia capturing the three major cities of Carrhae, Nisbis and Hatra whilst also inflicting further defeats of the Romans in response to their counterattacks. Two Emperors had also been killed in Valerian and Numerianus, with the latter being made an example of… “They flayed him and made his skin into a sack. And they treated it with myrrh and kept it as an object of exceptional

But at war they were unloyal and would fight against Rome. One of Rome’s causes to fall was it grew to big to protect. The borders of Rome became hard to protect, and had grown to large for it to be protected at the level needed. According to Doc 2, “Borders became difficult to secure and the amount of gold needed to maintain roads and perform routine maintenance was never enough.”

Discuss how the provinces affected the general Roman economy. The Romans fought wars and conquered areas such as Sicily, Tunisia, North Africa and Egypt and these places a constant supply of grains and other goods that flooded the Romans markets. As much as they enjoyed imported goods, Italy also exported their wines and olive oils, which were locally produced. The Roman Empires were divided into provinces according to classes.

Despite being an immediate bestseller, shortly after publishing, Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire became unpopular with large groups of the British reading public. The abridged edition consecutively presents the stories behind the Empire’s leadership and course of action. Gibbon revivifies the complex and compelling period of the Romans by detailing the prosperous conditions of the empire, the decline, and the aftermath of the fall. At the same time, Gibbon efficiently scrutinizes the declining virtue of the Roman people. Gibbon made an argument that the intellectual inflexibility of the Roman Empire had declined into “barbarism” and “Christianity,” which ultimately attributed to the fall of the Empire.

As Rome was facing attacks from the outside there was an even deeper problem happening from within and it was their economy. Rome’s constant war and overspending in building its empire was becoming costly. As their treasury depleted they decided to impose hard taxation to account for the new expense they were generating. Which actually caused many people who were apart of the upper class to move to the countryside to avoid the oppressive taxes(Andrews) . Another economic problem is that inflation began to occur. Marcus Aurelius increased the copper content of the silver coins and then after that there was even more severe inflation on it way(Starr 144-145). A third problem with the economy, also politically, was that there was an ever growing expansion of bureaucracy. The expansion of their government caused more and more officials to have to be paid. Not to mentions cities already were having a hard

Rhonda, I like the summary that you did on “The Fall of Rome” the author is right it seems that once it was safe to become a Christian the Church became corrupt, however I disagree with Arnold’s suggestion that the sins of Christians led to the fall of Rome it was already falling apart at the time. The fall of Rome was a double edged sword for Christians. The Christian church came to power because of it while at the same time the leaders followed the same suet of the Roman politicians; buying their positions the same ways they bought their positions. It is as if the enemy decided to come at them in a different way, the inside. It is no wonder all of the monasteries were started in order to escape from the “worldly” church. One monk Pachomius,

As Rome increased in supremacy around the expanse of the Mediterranean Sea, various enemies were made that caused numerous invasions, increasing Rome’s vulnerability. The archeological record shows that the population on the outskirts of the Roman empire was increasing and this might have led to a scarcity of resources (Goldsworthy 2009). Due to the increased population and decrease in resources the barbarians attacked the empire frequently (Goldsworthy 2009). The first of these more devastating attacks were conducted by the Huns in central and eastern Europe in the years 376 A.D. and 405 A.D. (Heather 2005). Damages from these attacks as well as from other invaders caused massive amounts of revenue lost to