Why Did Rome Fall

After many disastrous events, Rome finally fell to ashes. Rome was one of the most powerful empires in the world, but why did it fall? Rome began around 750 BCE as a small settlement, but made its way to the top as a powerhouse. The colossal army conquered territory from modern-day Scotland to Spain, gained control of the whole Mediterranean Sea, and established colonies in North Africa, Egypt, and the Middle East and Asia Minor with the “thrust of a spear and slash of a sword”.(Background Essay) Rome’s first two centuries as an empire was known as the Pax Romana, the time of Roman peace where Rome was at its peak, but that was just the beginning. After the Pax Romana, things started going south. Rome began the change and they lost their …show more content…
The Pax Romana was the first two centuries of Rome as an empire, the time of Roman tranquility. They were years of stability, increasing authority, and great imperial wealth. However, size had its problems. It was arduous to supply the empire with its necessities and many political problems developed, while no one tried to settle this problem. Having existed for centuries as a stable empire, Rome’s leaders neglected their duties and relied on force to get things to go their way. According to a former Roman citizen that Priscus reported, the condition of Roman subjects in a time of peace was worse than war, taxes were severe, and amoral men inflicted pain on others. A wealthy crook was not punished for his injustice, but a poor man had to undergo the legal penalty. The climax of the despair was that people had to pay to achieve justice and that Rome’s own governors were ruining the state. Coming from one of Rome’s own citizens, life was better being conquered by the Huns than it was before. Even though the Huns were like vicious animals that ate raw food, roamed freely, and teared through settlements, wreaking havoc where they moved, the Huns were more fair than the Roman leaders. The Huns could’ve been animals, but their government was more enhanced than Rome’s. Rome’s government was so corrupt, that even a group of savages could be superior to them. This was a reason that Rome fell because …show more content…
After the horrible events that Rome faced, when they thought it couldn’t get any worse, disasters and disease struck. In 336 CE, the Roman world was shaken by a very violent and calamitous earthquake. The shores of the sea were left dry by the evacuation of it, but the tide soon returned with the pressure of an extensive flood that severely damaged many places, such as Sicily. Fifty thousand people lost their lives in the flood, just in the city of Alexandria alone, and this catastrophe terrified the Romans, but this allowed them to understand the reality better. But the terror wasn’t over yet. Plagues swept the whole empire from southern Asia to new areas like the Mediterranean, where no resistance had been founded to contain the diseases, such as the measles. Since they couldn’t cure much of the disease, the population decreased by 75%. This also made economic life decline. It also became very difficult to recruit troops, so Rome had to hire Germanic soldiers to guard its boundaries, but the Romans had to pay troops added to the demands on the state’s budget, just as the deteriorating production cut into tax funds. Disasters and disease caused the Roman population to plummet, which led to less jobs, so soldiers couldn’t defend the empire and politicians and leaders couldn’t help the economy