Roman EMPERORS??????

Question

Roman Emperors????????
Doing a DBQ essay and who were some emperors of the western roman empire who corrupted the goverment?????? Extra info will be great.
Its about the why the western roman empire fell.

Answer 1

Theodosius I (379-395) was the last ruler of the united Roman Empire. At his death in 395, he left the eastern portion of the empire to his 18-year-old son, Arcadius, and the western portion to his 10-year-old son, Honorius. Despite the nominal unity of this territory, the legacy of Theodosius was, in fact, the final division of the empire. A succession of child emperors weakened the throne, and no emperor ever again successfully controlled both east and west.

Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire remained strong, while the Western Roman Empire began a steady decline in the face of economic disintegration, weak emperors, and invading Germanic tribes. The breakdown of communications, commerce, and public order exposed the people of Gaul, Spain, and other provinces to famine and robbery.

While the central government provided few services and little protection, it demanded more taxes and goods. Panic and alienation drove both peasants and city dwellers from their homes. They sought protection from powerful landlords, who controlled their own self-sufficient villas. In these heavily fortified villas, the lower classes hoped for relief from the twin predators of late antiquity: barbarians and tax collectors.

The Eastern Empire was stable and prospered. The eastern emperors were able to defend the Dardanelles, a strategic strait in northwestern Turkey (known in antiquity as the Hellespont) and to push migrating barbarian peoples to the Western Empire. The emperors of the west were often pampered and isolated, and they allowed generals and ministers to rule in their name. Declining manpower also led western emperors to recruit Germanic people for the army or even to engage entire tribes to fight on Rome's behalf. In 410 the Goths sacked Rome. It was the first time Rome had suffered such an invasion since the Gauls had sacked the city in 390 BC - eight centuries earlier.

In AD 476 Germanic troops in Italy mutinied and elected a Gothic commander, Odoacer, as king. Odoacer, who was the first Germanic ruler of the empire, deposed the young emperor, Romulus Augustulus, gave him a generous pension, and sent his imperial regalia to Constantinople. But if the Western Empire had "fallen," the commentators of the time barely took notice. It was not until four decades later that a Byzantine historian wrote that the imperial order initially established by Augustus had come to an end in 476. The date marked the demise of a political structure - the Western Roman Empire - but coinage, taxes, and administrators all remained in place. The exile of Romulus barely affected ordinary people.

Several factors explain why the Roman state collapsed in the west and survived in Constantinople for another 1,000 years. The most obvious is geography, since the Western Empire had to defend a long border along the Rhine and Danube rivers. The east was far more populous - Egypt had 8 million inhabitants while Gaul had 2.5 million - and thus could provide men and supplies for a larger army. The east also had a longer tradition of urbanization, and wealthy cities in the Eastern Empire provided continuing support while cities in the Western Empire were newer and weaker. When these cities came under pressure, much of the population fled to the countryside.

The east also had a stronger economic base. The rich lands of Egypt provided wealth, and much of the east's other territory was in the hands of productive peasant proprietors. The Eastern Empire also received a financial boost from the tradition of manufacture in eastern cities and the control of the lucrative trade with Arabia, China, and India. Ancient agricultural economies produced very little surplus, and Rome itself had long depended on the profit of conquest, which included tribute, taxes from the wealthy east, and shipments of grain from North Africa and Egypt.

When the east was lost and barbarians took Africa, the desperate Western Empire raised taxes and imposed restrictive regulations. As Germanic tribes seized more taxable land and revenues fell, the west could barely support its own unproductive soldiers, civil servants, and clergy. It certainly did not have sufficient revenue for the bribes and subsidies needed to pacify the Germanic invaders.

There is no simple explanation for the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, but several interconnected elements provide some answers. The demands of the military and the growing bureaucracy forced the government to seek more income. When the elite avoided taxes, the burden fell on the peasantry, who had barely enough to feed themselves and no surplus to pay taxes. When farmers fled the land, incomes declined still further and manpower shortages forced the military to hire German mercenaries. This cycle led to a weak, impoverished central government that quietly collapsed in 476.

Answer 2

One of course must go back to Theodosius I who divided permanently the empire in the first place. Instead of reorganising the empire he chose the easy way out and simply left it to his two sons Honarius and Arcadius. One of his grandsons, Valentinian III did a very very stupid thing. He had Aetius, the victor over Attila at Chalons in 451 A.D. killed in his presence. This deprived the empire of the one man who was capable, knowledgeable and who had the system of alliances and trust with all of Rome's actual and potential enemies to hold the thing together. After that the empire went down.
But there were many causes of the fall of Rome. Of course there were the corrupt and weak Western Emperors. However if the Eastern Emperors had done more then Byzantium, in the words of Vegitus, would not have been left naked and defenceless in the world. Also there was christianity that sapped men's minds and deprived the legions of recruits. Although as Gibbon said it cushioned the fall. There was the Antoninian plague in the late second centuty which wiped out a third. And the fact that really, no one wanted it anymore-no one believed in it. The barbarians were better rulers. And of course remember Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor of the west. His corrupt officials withheld the pay of the troops of Odaccer the Heruli and precipated 476 A.D. when the emperor was disposed. The official fall the Roman Empire and end of Ancient History. But the most vital reason was that no one but the barbarians believed in it. An empire so strong that it's supplanters continued to use it's titles and not take the position of emperor for some time afterwards. The senator in the movie Fall of The Roman Empire put it brilliantly. "When does an empire fall. When it's people no longer believe in it. That's when an empire falls".
Hope this helps a bit.

Answer 3

Nero - who committed suicide with some help
Caligula - a mad emperor who was eventually killed by the captain of his praetorian guards
Commudus - a weak emperor who had a fetish for killing animals in the colosseum

Answer 4

read wil and muriel durant!!"the rise and fall of the roman empire" is still in print!! the movie of macus aureilus's demise at the late edge of it's glorious history is available under that title also!!elgabulus,nero,tiberius,claudius,caligula,augustus caeser,domitian,constantine,julius caeser,caraccala...........