How Excessive Government Killed Ancient Rome Essay

When people think of big, they think of India which covers 1.269 million km², or maybe the Hunnic Empire, which covers about 4.0 million km². These famous places might be extensive, but the Roman Empire was even more extensive. Rome started as a tiny city state in Italy, and over the course of 1000 years, the Roman Empire grew to be one of the largest empires in history. Along with its growing size, the population of the Roman Empire also increased. When the Roman Empire, under the rule of Emperor Augustus, was about to fall, its population was about 50-90 million people. Because of this large population, many Emperors had trouble controlling their Empire, eventually, causing many problems to arise, such as military deficiency. Soon, the Roman

This was mainly due to the state's low income because of its vast size, resulting in Roman citizens not getting paid a sufficient amount. To solve this problem, taxation increased, meaning that people had to give a lot more money to the government. In “How Excessive Government Killed Ancient Rome,” it reads “Nevertheless, the revenues of the states remained inadequate to maintain the national defense. This led to further tax increases, such as the increase in the sales tax from 1 percent to 4.5 percent” (Bartlett). Shortly, after the taxation increased, the low class citizens gave up and instead of paying taxes, they became slaves to the wealthy, large landowning families. The lower class probably did this because they were the only ones paying these extremely high taxes, besides the middle class, and they could barely afford it. In addition, now that the lower class became slaves and the higher class didn't have to pay taxes, the middle class were the only ones paying taxes. This automatically caused the middle class to be wiped out, and they either became a part of the lower class, which was most likely, or the wealthy class. In other terms, the increase in taxation caused a large class gap between the rich and the poor. Therefore, this proves that the expansion of the Roman Empire is what caused the Roman Empire to fall and it is what influenced the augment in taxation and

In order to have a good empire you must have a good military to ensure the safety of your empire. The Roman Empire had a good empire, but as the years progressed and taxes rose, their military force got weaker and weaker. Now that the lower class were slaves, the higher class didn't pay taxes, and the middle class were wiped out, there was no money going to the government. If the government doesn't have money, this means that workers don't receive their pay. One crucial group of people who worked especially hard for their money was the army. The Roman army defended the borders of Rome from hardship from the outside, principally barbarian invasions. Without earning their fair wage, the Roman army slowly became very weak. “For we cannot survive without soldiers, and the men will not serve as soldiers without pay” (Dio, 384).With a weak army, The Roman Empire couldn't protect itself from all of the invaders. As “Mr Gittos Online Textbook” states “ For the fall of Rome, it was the Huns invading from the east that caused the domino effect, they invaded (pushed into) the Goths, who then invaded (pushed into) the Roman Empire.”(Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire). After one group of barbarians invaded Rome, overtime, more and more started to invade Rome. This was mainly because of Rome’s weak military. In addition, because they weren't getting their pay, many soldiers started dropping out of the