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Major Reasons For The Fall Of The Roman Empire

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The major reason for the fall of the Western Roman Empire was due to the over-dependence of slavery. Slavery played an important role in Ancient Rome and was heavily relied on to maintain its social, political and economic hold on its Empire that expanded on the Mediterranean area and beyond (“History-The Fall of the Roman Republic,” 2011). Slavery was first introduced as early as the third century BC, with a lot of its history traced back to the legendary Romulus the founder of Rome, giving Roman fathers the right to sell their own children into slavery (“Slaves & Freeman,” 2006). As time passed and Rome became a force to be reckoned with, the practice of slavery kept growing with the expansion of the Roman state through victories of the war. The ownership of slaves became omnipresent throughout Rome from the Second Punic War (218–201 BCE) to the 4th century CE, and according to records, an enormous slave trade resulted from the collapse of the Seleucid Empire (100–63 BCE) (Burks, 2008). With several military victories, conquests, and expansions, slavery grew at an incredible rate throughout the state. With conquest came money and with money came more slaves. According to records, in 225 B.C., there were an estimated 600,000 slaves in Roman Italy, but only 194 years later that number grew to approximately two million (Burks, 2008). In the Roman state, slaves worked everywhere. They were used for domestic services, agricultural labor, and gladiator fighting. Educated

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