The Roman Empire is considered by many to be the greatest empire of all of time. However, everything has to come to an end at some point, even the greatest Empires of our time. There were many reasons as to why the Roman Empire collapsed, the three most significant ones being that they lost control over their army, there was too much land for them to rule, and the government was people lost interest.
As the Roman Empire expanded, the ratio of land to officials became too great for the government to have enough control to keep everything how they wanted it to be. Soldiers/guards were stationed at the borders of the Empire, near the neighbouring Barbarian tribes. The guards paid the Barbarian chiefs if they agreed to become allies and help them out. By 300 AD the majority of the Roman army was comprised of barbarian trained soldiers who were much less effective than their superiors that Rome had in previous centuries, and had different beliefs and traditions to the Romans. Another problem was that many of the Roman citizens who were expected to enlist in the legions refused to do so and managed to find a way out of it. Some even forced their slaves to enlist, pretending to be them. As you can imagine, this made the new forces were very un-motivated, had low morale, didn't fight with courage and really, they couldn't care less about the development of Rome, after all they were only servants. Rome expanding wouldn’t benefit them in any way. These things put together made the battles against enemies very difficult for the Romans; Rome no longer had a firm grip or control over military situations. And due to this, over time the Empire became weaker, and easier to attack and bring down.
The Roman government became very corrupt as the fall of the Roman Empire neared. Positions in the government were offered to anyone who could pay up an amount of money or goods. Due to this, the council became extremely corrupt and became very unstable. Not only were positions offered in return for money, but also officials accepted bribes in exchange for a wide range of things. A series of very incompetent Emperors took control due to there not being a system of how the next emperor was selected. If someone wanted Ok, Rome's been run down a lot in warfare. But we can still rely on the older, more experienced troops to back us up, right? Unfortunately for the Romans, many of the men who had gallantly served their nation years ago had retired to estates or farms and simply did not want to be bothered with government affairs.
Emperor Constantine divided the empire into two halves. He declared Constantinople the new capital of Roman society, claiming rule over all Eastern provinces. The Western Roman Empire lost its power over towns in the East, causing a great reduction in profits from the treasury and weakening them dramatically in warfare. Now their strength had been dwindled.
During the end of the Roman Empire, the Emperors decided to debase the currency. This means that a coin of their currency didn't have a set value. Instead, it was represented by the amount of silver it contained. When Emperor Claudius was in power, the coins weren’t even made up of 1% actual silver. As a result, the currency collapsed and lost its value bringing down the Roman economy as well. Disease probably had a massive impact on the fall of the Roman economy. Malaria and other plagues killed a huge amount of Rome's population. The massive decrease in amount of people meant significantly reduced numbers when it came to running all the different aspects of society, such as the military side.
1. The deciding factor. All this pressure was to much for Rome to handle, it had struggled endlessly with immense problems for hundreds of years. Alaric, leader of the Visigoths sacks Rome in 410 AD. Later, Rome is spared from being pillaged again - Attila the hun, another barbaric warlord decides to retire his reign in 452 AD but destroys many cities in Italy. 3 years after Rome is looted by Geiseric, King of the Vandals. So Rome endured a lot of economic damage and infrastructure demolishment
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