The Roman Empire lasted for 1200 years, conquering the Mediterranean with an iron fist. They were nearly unstoppable: a successor to Ancient Greek culture, a prosperous and innovative economy and government, geography which provided great protection, and a military that deserved its brutal reputation. Yet, they still fell. After the Pax Romana, a 200 year long peacetime, Rome lost the people’s support to fear. A series of natural disasters, mass-migration and disease, and political corruption weakened Rome, forging Rome into easy prey for the Goths to sack, and finally, ending its reign. Near the end of Rome’s death, there was a massive earthquake, which also caused a flood. The damage of these two combined was immense, resulting in 50,000 deaths in the city of Alexandria alone. Edward Gibbon, author of Document F’s first source, wrote about how the two natural disasters shocked the Roman citizens. They began to doubt the empire, believing it was the beginning to the end. The people began losing faith in Rome, and the loss of support would contribute to the demise of Rome. …show more content…
People like the Huns were coming to Rome, and with them came diseases. The diseases were devastating, killing around 75% of Rome’s population (Doc F second source). The Huns were also feared by the Romans. Many thought of them as barbaric savages, who would slaughter them all, or pillage their homes (Doc D). These two factors combined led to the people losing even more support of the government, who were not protecting them. The amount of people dying from plague or invaders, caused the surviving citizens to be afraid, which would impact Rome’s
Many of the Romans died because of this. The last reason for the fall of Rome is because of all the natural disasters Rome had. Document F showed "the Roman world was
This shows that one of the main reasons that led to the fall of the Roman empire was because of their financial strains. Because of this, they weren’t able to recruit people to fight for them in wars, which overtime caused them to lose wars.
In this essay the reason for Rome’s fall will be identified and why they caused Rome’s downfall. The primary reasons for the fall of Rome are military problems, untrustworthy government/injustice, and natural disasters/diseases. One of the reasons Rome fell is due to the fact Rome had multiple Military problems. According to Document B “because of negligence and laziness, parade ground drills were abandoned, the customary armor began to seem heavy since the soldiers rarely ever wore it” (Doc B). Also according to Document B, “soldiers fought the Goths without any protection for chest and head and were often beaten by archers” (Doc B).
Rome has become very weak and almost scared during this time period, to the outsiders Rome might be a big place but they are weakening and I have a feeling that it is going to cause a lot more wars and battles to come. There were a lot of things that stood out to me as being main issues for the fall but three that
From 100-500 CE, Rome was attacked by the Franks, Goths, Huns, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Angles, and Saxons (Doc 4). Rome lost many troops being attacked by all of those groups and their military was weakened because of it. Their weakened military helped the fall of Rome because one of the primary reasons Rome was one of the strongest empires in
The number of people who died in natural disasters and from fighting without armor was a huge blow to the Roman Empire. Along with the natural disasters, there was disease that swept the empire, causing even more deaths and a massive decline in the amount of people fit to fight for Rome. “A series of plagues that swept the empire… which brought diseases [from] southern Asia to new areas like the Mediterranean, where no resistance had been established even to contagions such as measles. The resulting diseases decimated the population. The population of Rome decreased from a million people to 250,000.”(Document F).
According to author Edward Gibbon, the Romans suffered from natural disasters near the end of the Empire. They were hit with devastating earthquakes and floods, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Fifty thousand people lost their lives in a flood in the city of Alexandria alone. (Doc F) This shows just how impactful these geographical challenges were, weakening the Empire and killing thousands.
The people of Rome were shocked and scared by this catastrophe, and their fearful conceit led them to believe that there was a correlation between the signs of an imperial decline and the sinking world. This shows how Rome panicked when they saw they were falling short. The decline in population and land affected them tremendously. These are just a few examples of how the Western Roman Empire Fell. Although there is still another major reason for how it
Riots and the concentrated, borderline tyrannical, power of the Roman principate go hand and hand with each other as the steady balance between appeasing the emperor and appeasing the Roman citizen was tested. Ben Kelly’s Riot Control and Imperial Ideology in the Roman Empire dives into great historical depth to uncover the reasons why Roman thought and handling about riots is talked about in the way that various ancient sources depict it and uncovering what the true ideology behind controlling them was. Kelly gives historical context through the sampling and analysis of great Roman historians such as “Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio” (Kelly 153) and the opinions of various third party agents found in the “Acts of apostles and the so-called Acta Alexandrinorum.” (Kelly 153) Kelly combines his historical sampling with introspection in order to both combine the varying authors and to create a narrative that interlaces various opinions into an easy-to-understand argument for why ideologies, surrounding the riots, existed as they did.
This loss of population made it hard to find laborers and soldiers for war. This caused the empire to pay Germanic soldiers to fight for them. The need to pay for troops created a large debt for the Romans. Another reason that led to the decline of the Roman Empire was their water source coming in through lead pipes. Many people believed this poisoned the Romans which also led to low population.
The first reason that contributed to Rome’s fall was how large they were. When a series of plagues were
The two factors that most contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire were greatly impactful in Ancient History. Before the fall of the Empire, during the Pax Romana, Emperors ruled longer and most likely died of natural causes. During the decline, the reign was much shorter and they were most likely to be murdered. Thanks to Dioclectian’s reign, the New Empire was introduced, giving people more rights and protection. However, this resulted in great consequences as it became harder to govern and harder to manage.
The first reason for the fall of Rome was about The plague that infected the roman empire by killing a lot of the population which would've served in the military and the flooding because buildings were getting destroyed which cost money to repair (doc f). The reason why I think the plague was a reason for the fall of Rome is that it said in the document that it killed
As a Roman citizen, watching the decline of the Roman Empire was frightening because of the constant worry. The Roman Empire lost its power due to simultaneous external and internal factors such as the lack of political stability, deterioration of the military, and constant invasions from outsiders. The first internal factor that led to the fall of the Roman Empire was the lack of political stability. This was due to the constant change of emperors, causing haphazard leadership. “The soldiers in various parts of the empire proclaimed fifty emperors in about the same number of years” (Lines 8-10, Document 3a, Third Century Crisis of the Roman Empire).
This shows that Romans starting allowing their power to be taken away by approving things that former leader denied. Another example of political disruption being the reason the empire fell is because of instability in the government. “Civil war thrust the empire into chaos, and more than 20 men took the throne in the span of only 75 years, usually after