Help on the decline and fall of Rome...Please!?

Question

I've got a final coming up and some serious advice on the social, military, economic, and political declination/fall of the Roman empire would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You don't need reams of information you simply need to revise aspects of the following;

The main points for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire were;

1. bad emperors
2. increasing civilization of the people of the empire (which means weaker soldiers)
3. Roman disunity, endless infighting
4. economic decline
5. plagues
6. mass migration
7. and the settlement of the Visigoths in Moesia

Answer 2

Trying to put it in a nutshell for you--bear with me.

Socially, the Romans had lost the ideals that had made them great. The family was a joke, with divorce rampant and a very low birthrate. There was a chasm between rich and poor, the traditional religion was given only lip service at best, and patriotism was no longer considered all that important.

There was a real problem filling the ranks of the military, so eventually it got to the point where most of the generals and soldiers were not Romans at all, but from the provinces and even from the 'barbarian' tribes. What's more, Rome had really overextended herself--try to imagine keeping peace in the Middle East, Britain, and on the frontiers of northern and eastern Europe. Face it, it was one awful lot of real estate to have to patrol.

Economically, Rome began its decline with the huge influx of slaves from her wars of conquest. Human beings were so inexpensive that nearly all but the poorest could afford at least one slave, and the rich often had swarms of them. Many of these slaves eventually were freed and granted citizenship, but not many of them were interested in the responsibilities that went with being a citizen. Luxury goods flooded the market, but Rome had grown too large to even feed itself (I'm talking of the city) and was importing grain by the shipload from the provinces.
Then, of course, the city began to realize that their was a vast underclass that needed to be placated, so they instituted the 'free bread and circuses.' This meant that the poor in the city were given a portion of bread at taxpayers' expense, and free entertainment as well.

Politically, the Empire was unstable (check out The Year of the Four Emperors), and emperors could be made or unmade by the military or the palace guard. So, naturally, if you had political ambitions, you had to curry the favor of one or both of these groups, since there wasn't normally a succession of father to son.

I guess you could say that the Roman Empire fell because it simply got too bloated, and became unable to defend itself when the 'barbarians' began pressing in on it.

Hope this is some help.

Answer 3

well here is something you may not have learned that is fact
during the roman empire a great deal of lead was used in different processes and some times as drinking cups and plates . the lead was in the air really in the air. well we know that at that time it was like now marriage was a joke and people were having sex with others like mad society and rules and morals were going by the way side.

scientists know that the amount of lead the people had in there system back then in that area was much higher then we have now and that such high levels are not good.

scientists have learned oh about 3 or 4 years ago that the canada goose which mates for life or it did was no longer doing that. studies were done and they found that the common factor with the ones that had left there mates and were off with others was that they had high lead levels in them
further study showed that the lead came from the shot gun shot
the bee bees that come out were made of lead and the goose was eatting them as they fall in the water and on the ground around where they stay.
later this study was presented to the canadain goverment and the lead bee bees or shot was banned and replaced with copper or steel.
the scientist that did the goose study met up with the ones who figured out that the romans had high lead levels and they came to think that exposer to high levels of lead causes a decline in moral thinking and in general they know for a fact that lead is a cause of brain damage. oh and now that the lead is gone the geese are back to normal
i hope that bit helps you .

Answer 4

The decline of the Roman Empire, also called the fall of the Roman Empire, is a historical term of periodization that describes the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Edward Gibbon in his famous study The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) was the first to use this terminology, but he was neither the first nor the last to speculate on why and when the Empire collapsed. It remains one of the greatest historical questions, and has a tradition rich in scholarly interest. In 1984, German professor Alexander Demandt published a collection of 210 theories on why Rome fell[1].

The traditional date of the fall of the Roman Empire is September 4, 476 when Romulus Augustus, the de jure Emperor of the Western Roman Empire was deposed by Odoacer. Many historians question this date, noting that the Eastern Roman Empire continued until the Fall of Constantinople in 29 May 1453. Some other notable dates are the death of Theodosius I in 395, that last time the Roman Empire was unified, the crossing of the Rhine in 406 by Germanic tribes, after the withdrawal of the legions in order to defend Italy against Alaric I, and the death of Stilicho in 408, followed by the disintegration of the western legions. Many scholars maintain that rather than a simplistic "fall", the changes can more accurately be described as a complex transformation. [2] Over time many theories have been proposed on why the Empire fell, or whether indeed it fell at all.
Historiographically, the primary issue historians have looked at when analyzing any theory is the continued existence of the Eastern Empire or Byzantine Empire, which lasted for about a thousand years after the fall of the West. For example, Gibbon implicates Christianity in the fall of the Western Empire, yet the eastern half of the Empire, which was even more Christian than the west in geographic extent, fervor, penetration and sheer numbers continued on for a thousand years afterwards (although Gibbon did not consider the Eastern Empire to be much of a success). As another example, environmental or weather changes impacted the east as much as the west, yet the east did not "fall."

Theories will sometimes reflect the eras in which they are developed. Gibbon's criticism of Christianity reflects the values of the Enlightenment; his ideas on the decline in martial vigor could have been interpreted by some as a warning to the growing British Empire. In the 19th century socialist and anti-socialist theorists tended to blame decadence and other political problems.

More recently, environmental concerns have become popular, with deforestation and soil erosion proposed as major factors, and destabilizing population decreases due to epidemics such as early cases of bubonic plague and malaria also cited. Global climate changes of 535-536 caused by the eruption of Krakatoa in 535, as mentioned by David Keys and others, is another example.

On the other hand, Ramsay MacMullen in the 1980s suggested it was due to political corruption. Ideas about transformation with no distinct fall mirror the rise of the postmodern tradition, which rejects periodization concepts (see metanarrative). What is not new are attempts to diagnose Rome's particular problems, with Satire X, written by Juvenal in the early 2nd century at the height of Roman power, criticizing the peoples' obsession with "bread and circuses" and rulers seeking only to gratify these obsessions.

One of the primary reasons for the sheer number of theories is the notable lack of surviving evidence from the 4th and 5th centuries. For example there are so few records of an economic nature it is difficult to arrive at even a generalization of the economic conditions. Thus, historians must quickly depart from available evidence and comment based on how things ought to have worked, or based on evidence from previous and later periods, or simply based on inductive reasoning. As in any field where available evidence is sparse, the historian's ability to imagine the 4th and 5th centuries will play as important a part in shaping our understanding as the available evidence, and thus be open for endless interpretation

Answer 5

your in luck. i just got my corrected test on the fall of the roman empire back from my ancient medieval history class.
the roman empire fell because of military coruption. their was no political structure anymore and feudelism began. the germanic tribe who invaded earlier began to take over. Clovis was the 1st frankish king sometime in the 6th century. he struck a deal with the pope. Clovis converted and the pope payed him to get rid of the arian church, which was entirelly clovis's idea. Other natural disaster caused the fall of Rome. the black death came in 1348 when the genoese brought it back after returning from fighting with the mongals. the europeans blamed it on conventional wisdom. impact... the population decreased and feudal labor was replaced by waged pay.
thats all i've got. i hope it helps. good luck on your final!
- Caitlin Luhbeese

Answer 6

Well, the whole thing started one fine day when a Roman soldier(as the legend says) was taking part in the looting of a city of Mesptamia: most probably SELUDICA-CTESIPON the capital of the Parthian empire, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius(161-179 B.C.) - according to the translation of THE MEDITATIONS(his book) The soldier saw a jar and thinking it had something in value in it, broke it open. He soon after became sick. He had caught the plague. Soon the plague spread to the empire and eventually a third of it was wiped out. This was the beginning of the decline.
When Commodus( Marcus's son and sucsessor) came to the throne he had such extravagance and neglect of the administration(although he did increase the armed forces' pay) that an already weakened empire started to tear itself apart. There began a more than a century of on and off civil wars. A later emperor(Elegobalus) was even more extravagant than Commodus.
A weakened empire then suffered military defeats. Valens was defeated by the Goths and Valerian was defeated and captured by the Sassiniad Persian king-Sapphor I. They even lost most of the middle east for a time to the new rising kingdom of Palmyra ruled by Zenobia. This was recovered by Aurelian(restorer of the world). Eventually a man by the name of Diocletian came to the throne, divided the empire into administrative districts and began to reform the army. He divided it into four each ruled by either a senior partner(an AUGUSTUS) or a junior partner(a CEASAR). He meant for it to be a path to sucsession , to aviod civil war. His division of the empire into the disticts, his reform of the army and his debasing of the coinage and high taxes started the empire down the path to it's fall. People lost faith in the coinage, and despite his price and wages edicts-a black market of inflation flourished. The empire was weakened economically by the debasement, socially by the high taxes and edicts, politically by the division and militarily by the reforms.
Eventually a bloke called Constantine ended up supreme. He introduced Christianity to the state. This weakened the empire further. You see, the population already down from the plague, soon after the introduction of christianity , the legions began to have difficulty in finding recruits-especially sutiable recruits. For many upon many chose to enter the church. Both the spirit of piety and the lack of soldiers weakened the empire both militarily and socially. It was to rely on foriegn barbarians to protect it-a dangerous policy indeed.
Come the end of the fourth century- a writer named Vegitus lamented the reforms. No longer did the legions fitght in armour, no longer their ancient efficiency and deadliness. They had in fact become little more than glorified medieval soldiers. As Vegitus put it "Our legions stand naked and defenceless before the barbarian"
Then in 407 A.D. a pivital event occured. You see, the Rhine had always kept the Germanic tribes at arm's length. And even when the Goths came they mostly came by sea at first(the black sea) and were limited. There was a multitude of peoples being pushed by the Huns and looking for wealth, opportunities and land. In 407 A.D the Rhine froze over. The tribes poured across it in masses. All of a sudden you had millions of barbarians coming and looking for work and land. The emperors employed them as soldiers under their chiefs(who were given Roman titles) and paid them in money, goods and land.
By the middle of the fifth century you had an empire divided(officially divided by Theodosius I in 395 A.D. between his two sons: Honarius-who got the west and Arcadius-who got the east), and empire of fast dimminishing man power reserves except for the barbarians, an empire of dimminishing returns from the land throught discouragement to farmers through high taxes and beaurocracy and an empire whoes political faith had withered to the point that people were fast loosing belief in it.
Then in 476 A.D. the Roman army of Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Heruli and others were cheated of their pay by the imperial officials. They marched down under their commander Occaeder who disposed of the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire-Romulus Augustulus. This was the official fall of THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
The very last unit in the old Roman army : The XVth Batavian-an Auxilury Cohort stationed on the Danube had not recieved their pay for months and months. They sent a deputation to Rome to enquire about it. The deputiation never returned. Gradually the remainder of the unit drifted away. There was a puppet emperor for a time in the 480s - Julius Nepos- the predecessor of Romulus Augustulus on the throne , but that didn't last long.
So the ROMAN EMPIRE FELL: It had taken a plague, centuries of extravagance and civil war by it's emperors, the collapse of the economic system due to debasement, laws and dwindled population, the drawing away from the legions by piety and what amounted to was cowardness, the bastardisation of the legions, and a host of enemies. Although the enemies or supplanters respected the empire and wanted to sucseed in it, there were tons of them. Rome had a host of sucsessors, like no other empire in history. And of course you had the corruptness of the imperial officials and the throne itself.
But two reasons stand out: One, the fact that no one believed in it any more-no one cared, after all, the barbarians treated you better. Two, it's time in history had come. No empire can stand when history says : time to go.
It had lasted over a thousand years. From the companions of Romulus to the XVth Batavian-the Roman Empire and especially the Roman Army was the finest the world has ever seen. No wonder we call Rome-the eternal city. It took all and sundary and more and still more to fell this giant of giants. No wonder we call Rome-the ultimate empire.

Answer 7

Illegal immigration, sold cheap citizenship, vulgar sexual entertainment, decadence, insensitivity to their poor ...blamed christianity for their woes, Augustine blasted them for their stupidity.

Same as Greece before them.

Same as French empire during Marquis the De Sade.

Same as .......well, figure it out.

Answer 8

You better start studying. What you need cannot be provided in a paragraph. Typically takes about 600 pages.