The Roman Empire’s political ‘fall’ (from 410 C.E.) has, for long, been quoted as one of the world’s history most pivotal events. Since the completion of Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1788, debate rose on the causes of the event. Notably, even though the political power and unity of the Western Roman Empire significantly declined, its cultural heritage persisted. This significantly moved through the middle ages into the West and still is unaltered in the modern world. The Eastern section endured relatively as the Byzantine Empire. It was, however, ultimately taken over by Ottoman Turks in 1453 C.E.. Michael Grant notes that it would be wiser to highlight the causes in place of a single one. There are various interrelated conditions accompanied by effects that bore the radical transformations in Europe’s political conditions in the 5th century. The Roman Empire was brought down by two factors; external invasions and internal weaknesses. The external invasions, though easily identifiable, were not formidable enough alone to have resulted in perishing the Empire (Grant 19).
Though Grant underestimates the military reasons of the fall, evidence points to the internal wrangles direct connection with the weakening power of the West. For Gibbon, the Roman Empire fell due to Christianity. It sapped
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Young Julian, for instance, recorded a victory in 356 C.E. against the Germans (Grant 28). Up until 363 C.E. the Empire field armies in the East possibly successfully carried out invasions to hold down the Persians. More difficulties were observed in the west but the Empire still held an extensionally strong northern frontier. This frontier was manned by hundreds of thousands of men who were backed by field armies. Valentinian I defeated the Germans across the Rhine and capture the Mainz fortress (31) and secured Austria in the succeeding