The Dark Ages: The Fall Of Roman Civilization

While the fall of the Roman Empire is well known, the exact causes of why it fell can be difficult to pinpoint. Many historians believe that Rome 's downfall was due to poor leadership, weakened economics, or perhaps a combination of the two along with other seemingly unrelated factors. However, there is a string of evidence suggesting that there were three main components that took place to bring about the fall of the Roman Empire. These determinant attributes did not happen all at once, and there was a domino effect with each one directly influencing the others. The fall of Rome occurred after a series of preventable events, including unacceptable emperors, the heavy reliance on slaves, and the increasingly uncontrollable borders of Rome.

The Roman Empire is known as one of the strongest empires in history, due to their advanced technology, strong military leaders, and republican government. As the empire started to expand, so did their power. However, after years have gone by, the Roman Empire started to fall. Their fall may have been caused by political reason, such as the empire being just too much to handle, Diocletian splitting the territory in half, and their government corruption.

The Roman Empire was one of the greatest empires around it’s time period. They ruled their region with an overpowering military force. They also had compelling agriculture and religion. Much of their music, clothes, and other agriculture continued on throughout other empires. They shaped the world with their beliefs and ideas and without this empire the world would be very different. There were strong Roman emperors and also horrible emperors who ruined the empire. Caesar and Constantine were among the most popular emperors of Rome. Constantine ruled later in the Empires lifetime while Caesar earlier. The death of Caesar had a huge impact on this empire. Constantine gave the Roman Empire the main religion of Christianity. This questioned the original beliefs of the Romans. They totally changed their culture. Towards the fall of the Roman Empire, the empire was split into two parts. This weakened their strong military force and led to an invasion. Evidently this caused Rome’s fall. The Roman Empires fall was due to the death of Caesar, mass poverty among Rome’s citizens, rise of Christianity, split of empires, and the invasions of the barbarians.

Some external factors that lead to the fall of Rome are plagues and decline in trade. Evidence of these two factors can be found in document 1. Evidence in document 1 can be found when it says, “There was a noticeable decline in trade and small industry and the labor shortage caused by the plague affected both the military recruiting and the economy. Armies were needed more than ever but financial struggles made it difficult to pay and enlist more soldiers.”.And this evidence shows that the plague and lack of trade, gave less money to Rome, which made them pay their soldier less, and gave less of a reason to join the military. Which then gave their armies less power, and made it easier to let attackers take land, kill Roman armies, and make Rome have less power, leading to the fall of Rome. Although the other external factor that lead to the fall of Rome was attackers, (raiders, Huns, etc). Evidence of this is in document 5. In document 5 it shows that “The visigoths raided Greece, killed Emperor Valens and took over south of Danube.” Also there were vandals who invaded Italy, conquered North Africa, and destroyed other parts of Rome. Which lead to the fall of Rome because there was chaos that allowed leaders to make bad decisions (such as exempting upper class from laws and diverting the army to churches). And allowed the leaders to be assassinated in midst of the chaos. And that made Rome’s land shrink and lose power without ; Emperor Valens and other Emperors being assassinated, raids in Balkan and Greece, the Visigoths taking and invading Italy, and raiding/ransacking Rome. And they [Visigoths] were able to take over and conquered North Africa and Carthage. And without those pieces of land and having to battle with the attackers attackers Rome lost power and

Disasters and diseases are one reason of Rome’s fall. According to Document F, it states that “the Roman world was shaken by a violent and destructive earthquake … but the tide soon returned with the weight of an immense [flood] which was severely felt on the coasts of Sicily, … Greece, and of Egypt.” This shows that the earthquake had destroyed the Valens’ empire, which would be very costly to repair all the damage the disaster had done. The flood had also caused a tremendous amount of damage which would contribute to the cost of the earthquake. “Fifty thousand persons had lost their lives in the flood [in the city of Alexandria alone],” which meant that their population would decrease. Diseases also proved the decline of Rome. Different types of plagues “swept over the empire … which brought diseases [from] southern Asia to new areas like the Mediterranean.” (pg 35, Doc. F) These diseases were very

For hundreds of years, the Roman Empire influenced most of the world today by architecture, art, philosophy, engineering, and government. For about 1,000 years, the Empire of Rome was in control of the Mediterranean world. As the empire prospered it was starting to fall apart. Most of the problems occurred from within Rome itself as well as other outside invasions that also led to the fall of the Roman Empire. Most scholars ponder on what exactly led to the decline Rome. The primary reasons for the ¨Fall¨ of Rome were disasters (Doc F), foreign invasions (Doc C/D), and diseases (Doc F).

History Paper Why did Rome fall? The Roman Empire was a great empire. However they fell and all other nations have been compared to Rome since then. The fall of Rome was not caused by a single event. One main cause was was the failing economy and high inflation.

The fall of the Roman Empire is one of the most important and world-shaping events in history, but it provides more than just an interesting study of the past, it also holds many important lessons for Americans and the western world today.

Ancient Rome was an empire so dominant, wealthy and economically- stable which came to a dramatic fall in the period of 250AD- 500AD. Ancient Rome faced unexplained unfortunate events which crumbled the Great Empire from the affluent empire to a impoverished society. For centuries historians have timelessly theorised and analysed many debates and research in relation to the Fall of the Roman Empire. What really caused the predominate Roman Empire to fall? Did Rome fall naturally? Was disease, such as malaria a major contributor to the Fall of the Empire, Was man -made infrastructure a problem during Ancient Roman times? Was the fall a natural event? Was the climate changing causing natural disasters? Maybe, perhaps, all the theories interweaved with each other at the same time causing a catastrophic downfall, defeating the Ancient Roman Empire. Edward Gibbon (Gibbon, 1909, pp 173-174.) quoted,

The era from about 500 to 1000 C.E. is sometimes referred to as the "Dark Ages" in European history, partly because many aspects of the Roman civilization were lost, such as written language, advanced architectural and building techniques, complex government, and access to long-distance trade. For the most part, these early people of Europe

In the later half of the fourth century the Western Roman Empire fell after nearly a five hundred years of dominance and is still widely considered the world’s greatest superpower (Andrews). Many people attribute the crumbling of the empire to multiple different reasons, like corrupt and insane leaders to overspending and inflation. As J.B Bury said once “the fall of the roman empire was a series of contingent events. In this paper we are going to cover the three main reasons. Political and Economical problems plus problems with the military(Wood).

-----The fall of the Roman Empire marked the end of one of the greatest and longest-lived empires in the ancient world. The official date of the fall of the Roman Empire is often considered to be the date of when the barbarian general Odoacer overthrew the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus, in 476 CE (Nardo-2004 97). The demise of this Empire was a result of multiple internal and external causes. The first plague that contributed to this decline and fall was the Antonine plague, which started around 160 during Marcus Aurelius’s reign (Sabbatani). The Antonine plague was followed by the Plague of Cyprian, which lasted twice as long as its predecessor, decimated the population, killing between twenty to thirty

What were the most important reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire? Why? The fall of the Western Roman Empire is a very broad topic because there were a multitude of continuous events that led to the disappearance of one of the most legendary empires of the world. The seemingly unstoppable Roman Empire would fall due to the fact that many aspects that made Rome such a dominant empire began to fade. Rome was the center of the world and the thought that such a power in the world could decrease was outstanding. It was not built in a day; therefore, it could not be destroyed in a day. The dominating city declined for many reasons but there are only a few principal reasons that led to the cities decline. The political problems, economic

Many theories have risen as to why the Roman Empire had fallen. Ultimately the empire had fallen to the invasions of barbarians, but most historians believed that it had to have had weakened internally for the barbarians to conquer the once undefeatable Roman Empire. What weakened Rome was the greed of its aristocrats. The upper class that controlled the Roman Empire are what caused the mass population to fall under poverty. Because of this, the economy collapsed, leading to the eventual downfall of the Roman Empire.

During the Fifth Century A.D. in Rome things began to change. One of the things that changed was the political power. At the beginning of the Fifth Century Rome was ruled by twelve different emperors (Lendering, J. 2002). Another thing that changed during this time period was Rome 's economy. The economics changed because there were not as many people to do the work that needed to be done (Andrews. 2014). The last thing that contributed to the fall of Rome was the sociocultural factors. Some of the sociocultural factors that changed Rome were religion, culture, and society. These were just some of the things that caused the fall of Rome (Turnbull, n.d.).