preview

The Fall Of The Roman Empire

Best Essays

Historiographic Paper: The End of Antiquity The Fall of Rome HIST534 A001 Sum 15 American Military University David Provencher (ID# 4358187) July 30, 2015 The fall of the Roman Empire is one of the most discussed and debated events in ancient history. Many historians site the date of 476 A. D. as the day the empire ended, but there are also many that say that the 476 A.D. date is subjective because it took many years of internal problems and neglect for the empire to come to an end. Even from the beginning of the Empire under Augustine Caesar many predicted that Rome wouldn’t last because of the decadent lifestyle of its citizens. Today this view is still popular but many historians have been searching for other reasons to help explain the collapse of one of the world’s greatest empires. The many different views of how the empire fell range from political incompetence, religious extremism, financial or environmental. The fact that no one has offered up a solution that all historians can agree with is simply because of the lack of overwhelming evidence to point to a cause. Another issue is that many historians are looking at the situation through present day eyes, they are looking at the fall of Rome and trying to find reasons that would be relevant to our present day society, not a society that existed thousands of years ago. There are so many reasons that range from the possible to the ridiculous, like the barbarian invasion to lead poisoning, but many

Get Access