Events that Took Place in The Fall of the Roman Empire

-----The fall of the Roman Empire marked the end of one of the greatest and longest-lived empires in the ancient world. The official date of the fall of the Roman Empire is often considered to be the date of when the barbarian general Odoacer overthrew the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus, in 476 CE (Nardo-2004 97). The demise of this Empire was a result of multiple internal and external causes. The first plague that contributed to this decline and fall was the Antonine plague, which started around 160 during Marcus Aurelius’s reign (Sabbatani). The Antonine plague was followed by the Plague of Cyprian, which lasted twice as long as its predecessor, decimated the population, killing between twenty to thirty percent of the entire Empire (Smith). This brought an end to the prosperity of the previous period, and began the downward spiral of the Empire. Therefore, the population decline in the Roman Empire due to a series of plagues that affected Rome from the second to fifth centuries was the main cause of the fall of the Roman Empire. Manpower shortages began around the time of this first plague (Sabbatani). The population decline led to a lack of manpower in the agricultural force, starving the people in the Empire as well as furthering the decline in population. It also led to an ever-shrinking base for taxation, crippling the Empire by leaving it without funds. The population decline additionally decreased the size of the Roman Army, as well as the Empire’s supply of willing recruits, at a time of increasing pressures on Rome’s borders.

---- Invasion from Without...

While the decline in population in the last centuries of the Empire was the main internal cause for its fall, barbarian forces from outs...

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...ome’s borders.

Ancient Rome was naturally not the only ancient civilization to fall to chaos. Modern historians have multiple theories regarding the multiple instances in which a seemly stable civilization collapsed, as the Roman Empire did by 476 CE--some even speculate what these changes in antiquity mean for modern society. M. I. Rostovtzeff looks to what he calls the “barbarization of the ancient world” as a certain kind of warning for the modern world itself (Rogers 258). He describes this as the process that precedes the fall of a society that is dedicated to one single class, and not the needs of “the masses” (Rogers 258). He also warns that this pattern also includes violent and unsuccessful upheavals that attempted to level society to the masses, but only managed to “accelerate the process of barbarization” (Rogers 258).