Danyah Khan
English Language Arts
April 29, 2014
The fall of the Roman Empire
Rome was known to be a very progressive era with advancements in science, technology, and education. For example, Roman concrete helped them with their buildings and bridges, and some of the things made with Roman concrete still stand today. Romans also created calendars, and figured out how to make arches for buildings to keep them from falling from their own weight. However, even with prosperous times like this, eventually, there came economic, political, military, and societal factors that led to the fall of Rome.
Romans, throughout all of history, were known to own the most slaves and depend on them the most. For example, the simplest tasks’ like cooking, dressing up weren’t done by Romans, but by slaves due to the Romans inability to do it themselves. Slaves not only did that, but they made buildings, worked on farms, dug up gold from the underground, etc. Slaves who were also great in number, ranging from 400-20,000, took up many of these jobs and as a result, left many people jobless. Because, there were so many people left unemployed, the government and the wealthy were forced to help.
The wealthy started freeing their slaves because they had to pay high taxes on them and were also supposed to help the lower class. Some even fled to the countryside to avoid taxman and set up their own fiefdoms, or an organization or estate owned or controlled by a single person or group. The government spent a lot of its money on the lower class, giving them free food and fixing public baths. They spent a lot on the maintenance of the city that there wasn’t much for the military.
Due to the government’s spending on the lower class, there wasn’t enough money for...
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...t. The leaders they chose weren’t always that great because like Nero and Caligula they wasted their money when it could be used for the benefit of the people.
Rome was known for their many achievements in many different things. They made medicine which was a lot of times for the benefit of the poor. Romans constructed amazing roads, bridges all which are seen by millions of tourists around the world. A factor in the decline in the Roman Empire was the fewer inventions, before there were a lot of inventions, but now there were a few. This was because Romans relied so much on human and animal labor. They failed to make new machines and technology to help them and therefore couldn’t provide enough for the growing amount of population.
Works Cited
"Fiefdoms." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 6 May 2014. .
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