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Fall Of The Roman Empire Essay

1784 Words8 Pages

2016952459 Ingeborg Kang Jørgensen
The Roman Empire was the largest state western Eurasia has ever seen , with a large network of connected roads, fortresses and aqueducts spanning across the entire empire. In fact, the Empire grew so vast that the governing and defence of the state too big of a job for one single ruler. Following the disastrous third century crisis, it was for the first time declared that should be split into the Eastern and Western Empires by Emperor Diocletian. While the Eastern Roman Empire continued to thrive for another millennium after the final split between the two empires in 395, the Western Empire collapsed within a century.
The purpose of this essay is to describe the reasons for the ultimate collapse of the Western …show more content…

First and foremost, it is too simple to believe that one factor brought down the Western Empire. His six-volume epic was published during the 18th century enlightenment movement, also known as the Age of Reason. Gibbon’s criticism, while quite harsh, do reflect his contemporary age . Perhaps more damningly, as Peter Heather argues in The Fall of the Roman Empire, “all evils identified in the western system applied equally, if not more to the eastern. If anything, the Roman east was more Christian, and more given to doctrinal argument” . With Constantine’s investments in the East, and the establishment of a new Christian capital in Byzantine, it becomes clear that the eastern empire was more Christian than the west. If Christianity was the reason behind the fall, it’s reasonable to assume that the East would have fallen …show more content…

When the Huns were defeated after the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in AD 451, it was not by a Roman army, but by a barbarian coalition army led by the Visigoth king Theodoric I. By then, the political structure of the western empire had largely replaced by Germanic kingdoms

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