The Major Factors to the Romam Empire Falling

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For more than two thousand years, Rome was a large, powerful, and dominating empire. The ancient kingdom seemed unstoppable, but in just few centuries later, Roman power fell and was obliterated. No one knows exactly how the empire's demise came to be and is still debated today but there are some major factors recognized that caused Rome to fall. The land of barbarians were located beyond the western border of Rome along Rhine and Danube rivers and would slowly become a serious threat to Rome and eventually led to the fall of the empire. At first, they posed no danger as they were only German farmers that were nomadic because of their poor agricultural skills. The barbarians could not develop a political structure either so they were small and weak compared to Rome. In fact, Rome gained the tribes loyalty by using money, trade, and military honors and make them turn against each other. By the third century, however, the barbarians changed and become more complex, due to the garrisons and merchants that prompted economic and sociopolitical growth in the border tribes. The farmers were introduced Roman agricultural techniques which stabilized their population and the tribes increased in size which led to establishing towns. Since the population became bigger, the tribes created a more organized and complicated political constitution. The barbarians soon had stronger and larger armies and posed a threat of raiding the borders and have a mass migration to Rome. Another major factor that caused the demise of Rome was the recurrent civil wars between the emperors and usurpers, which are rebels that try to illegally take power, like generals or other officers. These frequent civil wars brought thousands of deaths, disorderly training... ... middle of paper ... ...e barbarians. While all this chaos occurs in the western part of the empire, the eastern empire was functioning okay and was still considered dominant by the rest of the world. They were protected from attacks because they had the strait of Bosporus which gave the Romans advantage as it forced the barbarians to fight on the sea which was not their strong point. They also had mountains which made it difficult for tribes to pass and the mountain tribes already living there negotiated with the eastern empire and agreed to defend them. The army had a limited number of barbarians allowed which also prevented mass migration of tribes. The people also had a national identity, and view themselves as Romans so they easily protected the country. Nevertheless, while the western empire did go down in flames, they did not fall down easily and gave a good fight before passing.

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