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Why did Rome fall?

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The Fall of Rome

The Fall of Rome

The Fall of Rome

The Roman Empire was without a doubt the most powerful governing body in the Mediterranean ever. Why did Rome fall?

There was not any single cause to the fall of Rome. It was many things occurring in succession to each other.

After the Punic wars with Carthage, Rome acquired many new lands that it did not have before. During peace times it was easy to govern these areas but during war times it proved difficult.

The government had to pay soldiers to patrol the frontiers of the empire; it could no longer rely on the loot to serve as the pay for the soldiers.

This took a significant amount of money out of the Roman treasury. Some emperors wanted to save money and made the army too …show more content…

To give some stability in agriculture and manufacturing, he ordered people to stay in their jobs. There was no room for promotion. Diocletian died in 305 A.D.

In 324 A.D. Constantine took over as emperor.

He reunited the east and west under his own rule. He also built a new capital at Byzantium, on the Bosporus. He named this city Constantinople. Constantine wanted a new capital that would be a Christian city, not a pagan one. He continued the policies of Diocletian. People saw no need to work hard with no chance of getting ahead. These reforms only slowed down the process of collapse. After Constantine 's death in 337 A.D., the empire was again divided.

To the north of the Rhine and Danube rivers, lived a group of people known as the German tribes. They were herders and farmers who had migrated from Scandinavia. As their population grew, they began to look for new land. They decided that moving into the Roman Empire was a good idea. The Roman army was spread thin and could barely cope with the Germans. In the fourth century, the Huns, a nomadic people from central

Asia, began attacking the German tribes. Thus the tribes looked for protection from the Huns in the Empire. They received permission from the Emperor to live in the Empire. A couple of years later the Romans sent an army to defeat the Germans and failed to defeat them. This proved that Rome was not invincible. The

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