Transcript deline and fall of rome

Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire
Objectives
• Know the various causes for the decline and fall of the
Roman Empire.
• The economic reasons
• The social reasons
• The political reasons
• The military reasons
The Roman empire hits its high water mark in AD 180
with the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius
• It’s all downhill from there.
Economic reasons
• The Roman economy was partially based on constant
expansion.
• This brought new land, new money, new treasure,
new slaves, and new taxes.
• Once the empire stopped expanding, that influx of
goods stopped, and Rome simply wasn’t used to
such stasis. It was a shark: it had to keep moving
to survive.
• Without the influx of goods and money from expansion,
rampant inflation started setting in as the currency
started to be worth less.
• The value of coinage was based on how much gold
or silver was in the coin.
• Without the conquering, less gold was coming into
the empire, but there was still a lot leaving the
empire as it was being spent of foreign goods.
• With less gold and silver to go around, less was put
into the coins. Nice, but that meant the coins were
worth less to those who used them. Merchants
accordingly raised their prices to get paid the same
value in gold as before.
• Grain production also decreased due to overfarming.
• This meant feeding people became more difficult.
• Not keeping up with the times.
• The Romans were marvelous engineers, but they
relied too much on human and animal labor instead
of building machines.
• Since they weren’t conquering new people, they
also weren’t adapting as much new and different
technology (poor Borg).
• They especially relied too much on slave labor which
meant a lot of unemployed folks that strained the
economy.
Social reasons
• The aforementioned unemployment.
• Being a public servant had become costly and so most
qualified, competent people just didn’t want to do it.
• Morals and work ethic
• Many Romans had become accustomed to the easy
life of bread and circuses.
• It’s said that when the Vandals sacked Carthage,
most of the inhabitants were watching the chariot
races.
• These were also done at state expense, which
drained the public treasury.
• The rise of Christianity
• Many Romans blamed Christians for Rome’s
problems because they weren’t honoring the Roman
deities.
• Maybe not that, but the ideology may have played a
role. The Romans succeeded through aggressive
ruthlessness and a concentration on secular, worldly
matters.
• Christianity, especially early on, was pacifist and
absorbed with the hereafter. As the religion
spread, it weakened Roman resolve.
• Feedback loop
• People saw bad things happening to the empire,
which lowers their morale, which enables more bad
things to happen to the empire.
Political reasons
• The problem with political office being undesirable.
• Imperial Succession
• One big problem with the Roman imperial system is
that there was never an established method of
passing the crown to another upon the emperor’s
death.
• This meant that it was up for grabs.
• The best case scenario is that one person is most
powerful or can quickly take control.
• The worst case scenario is that there are many
powerful people and they fight in a civil war.
• Since most legions were stationed on the
borders, they were distanced from Rome and
loyal to their generals.
• Thus, the generals would take their armies and
war amongst each other for the throne.
• Most wound up dead during the fighting or were
assassinated or overthrown soon after taking
“power.”
• Sometimes, the crown went to whoever bribed the
right people.
The split
• The empire is eventually and officially divided into two
halves: the western and eastern Roman empires.
Military reasons
• This is a big cause.
• Long borders
• As the empire expanded, so did its borders.
• Maintaining those borders against enemies became
a massive and expensive endeavor.
• Military spending took a significant chunk of the
treasury and took money away from many public
projects.
• Mercenaries
• Rome also began hiring mercenaries. These guys
worked for cash, not loyalty, and could be highly
unreliable. They also cost more exacerbating the
above problem.
• Invasion
• Barbarians started invading the empire and the
legions couldn’t stop them.
• Some just wanted the good Roman life or merely
land on which to settle.
• Others were pushed into Roman territory because
the Huns were pushing them west.
• It didn’t help that some legions were pulled from the
borders into Italy to fight in civil wars or that some
barbarian forces were led by men who had fought in
the Roman army and so knew the Roman tactics and
strategies (both how to use them and how to fight
against them). That and the Germanic tribes were
never tamed or conquered. Oops.
• The barbarians proceed to run rampant over Roman
territory.
• In 410, Rome itself is sacked by the Visigoths.
• By 444, the Huns themselves, under the leadership
of Attila (“the wrath of God”) run at will over the
empire and threaten to destroy Rome itself.
• The pope, Leo I, negotiates with Attila and he
withdraws his forces.
• Really, Attila likely withdrew because of food and
manpower issues and because winter was
approaching. And Leo I bribed him to leave.
Leo, though, plays it up as divine intervention
and uses it to strengthen the power of the early
church.