Question

Can someone explain how the Roman Empire fell? I need to do a paper on it and could use some help. It has to include political, military, economic, and social reasoning for the downfall of Rome. This is very serious and need serious help with this

Answer 1

Edit* The subjects need to include on how they contributed to the downfall of Rome. not the reason each individual thing fell

Answer 2

read over this and then pick some things out of here.


Political- Weak Emperors couldn't hold the empire together under an impirical rule.
Economic- High unemployment and high inflation rate of the denarrri
Military- Overstretched boundaries that were too hard to defend
Social- Rise of Christianity depleting the Sons of Mars mentality

Complete libraries have been written about that subject. So much is possible...
I see it mainly as not knowing how to solve dynastic problems. If an emperor had a mature son or an designated heir, no problem. But if the emperor hadn't, there really was a huge problem. Pretenders would fight for the imperial purple.

Most of Rome's brightest men and best citizens lost their lives so somebody could sit on the throne. Enormous amounts of resources were wasted on it. You can't spend the buck twice (Obama & the EU are discovering that right now), nor can you spend a sestercius twice. What you waste during a civil war is lost forever.

Anything else is following that. The empire was strong enough to revive under a strong emperor. It could withstand any single enemy, but no longer multiple enemies. Religion has nothing to do with it, nor has morality. The size of the empire is irrelevant, it was bigger during the heyday than at the end. Without a problem.

The empire got militarily weaker, because of the civil wars: at the beginning of the empire there were only a few governors, each controlling many legions. At the end each governor controlled no legions at all, or only part of a legion but there were many more of them. For each early governor there were at least <--!!! three or four governors. That was to prevent a governor from trying to become emperor. Good for the emperor, but very bad for the empire.

The army complaint about the heavy burden they had to carry. So emperors were forced to ease that burden. The lorica was removed, the helmet was replaced, the gladius became a longsword etc. Pretty soon the army didn't have a great burden anymore, but it also ceased to be the feared fighting machine of the past. Again, this was possible because emperors had to compromise to stay alive.

If you look at the list of emperors and do the math (I did) you will find out an emperor had about as much chance as a gladiator to survive. Few emperors died a natural death. Understandably, emperors first cared about their own personal safety and only after that about that of the empire.