Did the barbarians just overrun the Roman Empire?

Answer 1

After the Vandals took over Africa, that's all she wrote. The western Roman empire lost its big financial supplier and were unable to pay for the troops. The center of fucus had shifted to the east and the western empire was simply overrun.

Answer 2

There were many barbarians that came to Rome and looted it. The Huns, Visigoths, Vandals, Lombards, etc. There weren't any good leaders at the time, and the emperor was too busy exterminating the Christians, although they were growing rapidly since the Romans looked at them as martyrs so they decided that what the Christians were dying for must have been something worth it. The time was a time with weak rulers who emptied the Empire's treasury: the last good emperor being Marcus Aurelius. The barbarians just came in to Rome, and after a few battles, they looted what they could. The Visigoths were the first to loot Rome and emptied all their wealth. Some of the barbarians tried to control Western Rome, but it fell anyway, leaving Eastern Rome alone. Eastern Rome later became a huge part of the Ottoman Empire after they arrived.

Answer 3

To say that Rome perished in some sort of nightmare war, where Barbarians surged through the empire in a dark wave like the evil Orc Army from Lord of the Rings is false. In truth, it was less of an invasion, and more of a migration, completely sanctioned by the government.

In the 4th century, Rome was in pitiful shape, financially. It couldn't afford the classical heavy legionary armies of old; most of the Roman legions at that time were little more than conscript hordes.

In Rome's desperation for military manpower, it turned to granting Barbarian tribes land in exchange for a quota of military recruits. The Romans called them the "foederati", which translates to "the federated troops". These were a quick fix way of securing the borders. For example, after Rome was defeated at the Battle of Adrianople, The Emperor granted the Goths land on the Roman side of the Danube. As long as they defended the Danubian frontier and provided a quota of troops to the Army, the tribe existed in relative autonomy. In truth, the central Roman Authoirty was simply too weak to have any influence over the decisions of the tribe and the Gothic king.

While it secured the borders in the short term, it weakened Rome in the long term. By 400 A.D, There was probably not a single soldier under the command of the central authority; the Army was a collection of federated tribes, which were kept in check only by shrewd Roman diplomacy and powerful Roman leaders.

Again, this had largely to do with money: currency in the Empire was worthless, most people had reverted to using the barter system or gold bullion, which made taxation notoriously difficult to collect. The Roman middle class had long since perished under the twin devils of hyperinflation and onerous taxation. Without a reliable source of revenue, there was little the Romans could do to keep the Barbarians out of the empire, especially in light of the fact that Roman armies had a nasty tendency to elect their generals as emperor, who then had to be defeated in battle, which further sapped Rome's military resources.

Rome's fall in 476 A.D was not the culmination of some giant war, it was simply the collective realization that the central authority of the empire was dead or irrelevent. Europe had reverted to warring tribes, and the Emperor's decree was not worth the paper it was printed on.

there were only two barbarian tribes that could really be called "invaders" rather than migrators: the Vandals and the Huns. The Huns were stopped at Chalons, but the Vandals marauded through Europe, across the straights of Gibralter, and finally settled in Africa. Imperial propaganda declared the Vandal Kingdom a federated tribe, but that was a straw-man: Rome had lost its only money-making province. The Vandals would go on to sack Rome, and their destructive nature was so great that it formed the basis for the modern word Vandalism.

In a nutshell, the barbarians moved in as the Romans were moving out.

Answer 4

There is a new discussion of this question in "The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians" by Prof. Peter Heather of Oxford University. He follows a dozen different interlocking series of events and concludes that the end of the empire in Western Europe resulted from a 100-year run of "bad luck" and a financial overstretching beginning in AD 376.

Answer 5

The barbarians overran the western Roman Empire. But, as I and others see it, they were not the fundamental problem. Basically the barbarians just exploited the growing weakness of Rome. In the past, the Romans had always clobbered their external enemies. In te fifth century, however, they had become effete. Increasingly, Roman citizens would no longer serve in the army; many also resisted taxation. The state had to hire barbarian soldiers but they were not always reliable. Thousands deserted to join the barbarian Alaric, who used them to help sack Rome in 410. In just ten years, from 429-439 CE, the barbarian Vandals overran Roman North Africa as far as Carthage. They did this practically without a fight, and the western empire had no hope of recapturing this vitally important (revenue-yielding) territory on its own. Its weakness, owing to lack of support from its citizens, was that bad. Barbarians had practically all the power in the fifth century West. The only way to control one group of barbarians was to hire another to do so, but by c 440 the barbarians had not only all of the fighting power but the revenue sources as well, leaving the Western Empire practically helpless and doomed.

Answer 6

Actually Rome fell because it was so corrupt that the later emperors and roman politicians began to take money out of the military and used it for there own benefit. So the Roman borders began to weaken and it became so easy for the barbarians to overrun the Romans, once their military had diminished .

Answer 7

No. The Romans legalized gay marriage which caused God to smite down the Romans. The Barbarians just walked in and picked up the pieces.

Answer 8

No. It was a gradual fall that began with too many people in one area and too many leaders contradicted one another. That with the rise of Christianity contributed to the fall of the empire.

Answer 9

Basically, yes, but it took a long time. Alaric the Goth was one of the prime movers. I think it was he who sacked Rome. rome had to recall troops from the far-flung reaches of the Empire , like Britain.

Answer 10

@ EcsaNY -

I am glad you mentioned the role Christianity played in the downfall of Rome. Many times this gets overlooked.