Transcript The Decay of the Roman Empire

The Decay of the Roman Empire
-Key Concepts-
I. The Tetrarchy (284-337 AD)
• Diocletian (284-305
AD)
--Military Crisis
--Economic Crisis
• Ruled like an
Oriental despot
• Reorganization of
Imperial
Administration
--Empire divided in
half
--augusti
--caesari
--dioceses
I. The Tetrarchy (cont)
• Imperial
inflation
• Attempted
economic
reforms
• Constantine
(306-337 AD)
--Shifted capital
from Rome to
Constantinople
II. Reasons for the Decay of the
Empire
• Re-assertion of
local loyalties
• Decline in the
quality of the
Roman army
• Invasion of the
Germanic Tribes
across the RhineDanube frontier
--motivation for
invasions
--Fear of the Huns
--The invasion of
the Visigoths
II. Reasons for the Decay of the
Empire (cont)
• “Federates”
• Alaric’s sack of
Rome (410)
• Domination of the
Franks
--Clovis
• Vandal invasion
• Invasion of the
Angles and Saxons
• Non-Roman
monarch rules in
the West (476)
II. Reasons for the Decay of the
Empire
• Economic Crisis
• Decay of urban life
and culture
• Spiritual Crisis
• Population
Decline
• Growing
significance of the
landed estates
• Political Crisis
Remember . . .
• Roman Empire
continues in
the East until
15th century AD
• Rome did not
“fall”, it simply
“changed”
--Edward
Gibbon
Remember . . .
• Roman culture
and political forms
continued to
exercise
tremendous
influence:
--Roman law
--Roman buildings
and roads
--Prevalence of the
Latin language
--Dominance of
the Christian
Church