How Did The Fall Of The Roman Republic

Undoubtedly, one of the causes of the fall of the Roman Republic was a loss of identity. After being ruled by Etruscan kings for so long, the Romans deposed them and rejected “the very idea of kingship” (151). Rather than forming an autocratic government, the Romans established the Roman Republic. Its success derived from the Romans being “conservatives who accepted new things reluctantly” (154). Adopting domestic values rather than foreign ones allowed the Romans to unify under the same principles. However, the ancestral values changed with Roman expansion. While the reasonings for Roman colonization outside of Italy are not entirely clear, this expansion began by turning, “the Roman Republic [...] into the Roman Empire” (157). Moreover, the

Following a civil war, Severus began his dynasty after obtaining imperial power. One of the first things Severus did was reform the Roman administration, changes that “reflected the new realities of colonial rule” (191). When Severus died, his power went to his eldest son, Caracalla. He followed Severus’s orders to extend Roman citizenship, meaning it was no longer a high-valued status earned “through service or the adoption of Roman values” (193). Without accepting Roman values, new Roman citizens could spread their customs throughout the empire, influencing its traditional beliefs. Such changes in tradition advanced under Emperor Constantine, who established Constantinople as the capital city of the Roman Empire. From this, the empire split between its east and west sides. Both sides developed differently, with the Eastern Empire becoming “more populous, prosperous, and central [...] the western provinces were becoming poorer and more peripheral” (204). Since the empire’s power now resided in Constantinople, the Eastern Empire flourished while the Western Empire fell. At this point, the Roman Empire began dissolving into different