The fall of the western Roman Empire was caused by a different number of events which resulted them to fall. The population of Rome was in a time period of economic decline and the unemployment rate was low. Their location in the western side of Italy was mostly safe from invaders as they had natural barriers from the Alps and Apennine mountains. I view the fall of the Roman Empire as a weak force from the barbaric invasions that crushed the city of rome, also Christianity influencing the empire, and the government taxing the citizens were contributing factors.
However, before the invasions the Romans were already involved with Germanic tribes. Some of the barbarian tribes like the Goths had reached Rome’s border. The Visigoth king would ruin the city of rome which they spent the next decades under threat. The Vandals would later make a turn to attack the city of rome by avoiding the path straight through the Alps. The Vandals would head into Gaul, then over the strait of Gibraltar to Africa and they would go off into the city of carthage. The Vandals would make a trip across the mediterranean into Rome (Document 6). The invasions would lead into the financial crisis Rome eventually had to face.
As a result, the Romans had to overspend their budget on the military. The cost led to taxation of the people of Rome who were not too satisfied. Jobs like farmers and businessmen were to leave their jobs as they couldn’t pay for machines (Document 4). According to the document it states that “The central government undertook such far-reaching responsibility in affairs that the fiber of the citizens weakened” (Haskell 1947).
The people could not handle the government to fix these responsibilities so the government depended on slaves to get the economy working again. For example in document three “The abundance of slaves led to the growth of the latifundia, the great estates that came to dominate agriculture and ruin the free coloni, who drifted to the cities, to add to the unemployment there.” Without the slaves, there would not be cheap labor so they kept them to keep wages low.” While the empire was expanding, its prosperity was fed by plundered wealth and by new markets in the semi-barbaric provinces. When the empire ceased to expand, however, economic progress soon ceased.” This showed that in the hope of avoiding the taxman, many members of the wealthy classes had even fled to the countryside (Muller 1967).
Based on document 2, “The introduction of Christianity had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire.” Christianity was coming in place as it replaced polytheistic Roman religion, which saw the emperor as a divine status. Christianity focused on one god while Roman mythology focused on many gods. With nothing else to build, their expenses were spent on churches that Christians wanted to be built to practice their religious beliefs (Gibbon 1776-88).
Before Christianity was the official religion, Christians were persecuted as it was sacred. To contrast, the churches in the Byzantine empire had a schism which divided Christianity into two branches. There was the Roman catholic which their leader was the Pope and you could worship icons like the Virgin mary and officials like priests could not get married. In the eastern orthodox, their leader was patriarch who would not allow them to worship icons and the officials could marry.
To conclude, the reason to the downfall of the Roman empire was due to barbaric invasions who ruined the city of Rome. This led to them spending way too much on military so they had to increase taxation which made people angry. The government made a solution so they hired slaves to increase production. The conversion of polytheistic Roman mythology to Christianity would view the emperor as having a divine status.
