why did the roman empire fall when it had so much domination? they revolutionised so much
In: 76
It didn’t fall, it just sorta floated downward.
Imagine that you have the best lemonade in town and decide to throw a party with a couple of friends. You are there, drinking your lemonade and then people start noticing you. They want to join the party and drink your lemonade, so you ask them to bring something to the party, like candies or games. This makes the party even better and more people want to join, so you tell them to bring something and you’ll give them the lemonade. Only, there’s a lot of kids and only so much lemonade, so you start watering it down. It’s a little bit, at first, and barely noticeable, so people keep coming and coming and you have to keep watering it down. At some point, it’s not lemonade anymore, just water with a scent of lemon. You look around and the party is still going, but nobody comes to your lemonade stand anymore.
The “barbarians” didn’t want to invade or destroy Rome. They wanted to live inside the safety of its borders and enjoy the comforts it offered to its citizens. Only, due to a lot of factor (mainly its size and corruption) there was less and less that Rome could offer. At some point, there wasn’t *anything* to offer to the barbarians, but they were still expected to work and fight for Rome.
Barbarians had been deposing and electing emperors for centuries, only, at some point, they just deposed one and decided they didn’t care enough to nominate a new one.
The “fall” was complex. Edward Gibbon wrote a six volume history “The decline and fall of the Roman Empire” where he gave a multiplicity of causes – a good quote was “The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.” Gibbons placed a large emphasis on the fall being due to large scale immigration and assimilations of “barbarians” along with their associated culture that was less disciplined and militaristic. The discipline of the military was a vital contributor to Roman stability. As many others have pointed out, the Eastern Roman Empire remained for centuries after the Western Empire fell. But if we are referring to the Western Roman Empire there are a lot of factors that haven’t been mentioned. More recently, inflation has been given prominence as a factor. Most of the gold and silver for coinage was mined in Iberia and later Dacia. It got to the point where those mines were exhausted with the technology they had then and coinage started to suffer from dilution with less valuable metals. For instance, there was a huge demand for silk, that have come into the Empire from the silk road. The traders refused to take any coins that weren’t pure silver. Thus, the silver supplies were being exhausted from Rome and the government kept minting coins of lesser and lesser value leading to huge inflation. For instance, Augustus introduced the denarius as a currency (at the end of the 1st century BCE) and it was approximately 95% silver. Caracalla instituted the debasing of both gold and silver coins such that by the end of his reign the denarius was 50% silver. By about 300 AD there was only 0.5% silver and prices throughout the Empire had sky-rocketed because now the government could issue far more coinage than before. Of course inflation is intimately convolved with other government issues and so one can never say that any one thing led to the fall of a once-great empire.
[https://dailyhistory.org/What_Role_Did_Inflation_Play_in_the_Collapse_of_the_Roman_Empire](https://dailyhistory.org/What_Role_Did_Inflation_Play_in_the_Collapse_of_the_Roman_Empire)
The “fall” was complex. Edward Gibbon wrote a six volume history “The decline and fall of the Roman Empire” where he gave a multiplicity of causes – a good quote was “The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.” Gibbons placed a large emphasis on the fall being due to large scale immigration and assimilations of “barbarians” along with their associated culture that was less disciplined and militaristic. The discipline of the military was a vital contributor to Roman stability. As many others have pointed out, the Eastern Roman Empire remained for centuries after the Western Empire fell. But if we are referring to the Western Roman Empire there are a lot of factors that haven’t been mentioned. More recently, inflation has been given prominence as a factor. Most of the gold and silver for coinage was mined in Iberia and later Dacia. It got to the point where those mines were exhausted with the technology they had then and coinage started to suffer from dilution with less valuable metals. For instance, there was a huge demand for silk, that have come into the Empire from the silk road. The traders refused to take any coins that weren’t pure silver. Thus, the silver supplies were being exhausted from Rome and the government kept minting coins of lesser and lesser value leading to huge inflation. For instance, Augustus introduced the denarius as a currency (at the end of the 1st century BCE) and it was approximately 95% silver. Caracalla instituted the debasing of both gold and silver coins such that by the end of his reign the denarius was 50% silver. By about 300 AD there was only 0.5% silver and prices throughout the Empire had sky-rocketed because now the government could issue far more coinage than before. Of course inflation is intimately convolved with other government issues and so one can never say that any one thing led to the fall of a once-great empire.
[https://dailyhistory.org/What_Role_Did_Inflation_Play_in_the_Collapse_of_the_Roman_Empire](https://dailyhistory.org/What_Role_Did_Inflation_Play_in_the_Collapse_of_the_Roman_Empire)
The “fall” was complex. Edward Gibbon wrote a six volume history “The decline and fall of the Roman Empire” where he gave a multiplicity of causes – a good quote was “The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long.” Gibbons placed a large emphasis on the fall being due to large scale immigration and assimilations of “barbarians” along with their associated culture that was less disciplined and militaristic. The discipline of the military was a vital contributor to Roman stability. As many others have pointed out, the Eastern Roman Empire remained for centuries after the Western Empire fell. But if we are referring to the Western Roman Empire there are a lot of factors that haven’t been mentioned. More recently, inflation has been given prominence as a factor. Most of the gold and silver for coinage was mined in Iberia and later Dacia. It got to the point where those mines were exhausted with the technology they had then and coinage started to suffer from dilution with less valuable metals. For instance, there was a huge demand for silk, that have come into the Empire from the silk road. The traders refused to take any coins that weren’t pure silver. Thus, the silver supplies were being exhausted from Rome and the government kept minting coins of lesser and lesser value leading to huge inflation. For instance, Augustus introduced the denarius as a currency (at the end of the 1st century BCE) and it was approximately 95% silver. Caracalla instituted the debasing of both gold and silver coins such that by the end of his reign the denarius was 50% silver. By about 300 AD there was only 0.5% silver and prices throughout the Empire had sky-rocketed because now the government could issue far more coinage than before. Of course inflation is intimately convolved with other government issues and so one can never say that any one thing led to the fall of a once-great empire.
[https://dailyhistory.org/What_Role_Did_Inflation_Play_in_the_Collapse_of_the_Roman_Empire](https://dailyhistory.org/What_Role_Did_Inflation_Play_in_the_Collapse_of_the_Roman_Empire)
Rome exhausted during many centuries war with Persia. And never ending civil wars, coups, crazy economic politics.
Rome exhausted during many centuries war with Persia. And never ending civil wars, coups, crazy economic politics.
Rome exhausted during many centuries war with Persia. And never ending civil wars, coups, crazy economic politics.
If anyone hasn’t listened to the Hardcore History series on the Fall of the Roman Republic, you should, it’s good and he touches on a big oart of this spanning back to the Gracchi brothers.
If anyone hasn’t listened to the Hardcore History series on the Fall of the Roman Republic, you should, it’s good and he touches on a big oart of this spanning back to the Gracchi brothers.
If anyone hasn’t listened to the Hardcore History series on the Fall of the Roman Republic, you should, it’s good and he touches on a big oart of this spanning back to the Gracchi brothers.
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