Although Rome’s decline and fall was partially caused by factors that were outside of the empire, internal factors caused Rome to become vulnerable to those outside factors, which made the fall of Rome more feasible; factors such as corruption within the government, unnecessary spending of Roman treasury, and the growing differences between social classes were prime reasons to why the Roman Empire fell.
Corruption within the government, more specifically the abuse of power of high authority officials, caused many events where Rome lost a lot of necessary factors that would keep an empire empowered. As said in the petition to Emperor Philip, “your officials… swoop down upon us…and illegally exact what is not due them…” this essentially led to the division of social classes where the poor had no power and the rich had complete control. Another example of abuse of power is where Maximinus needed money to pay for his soldiers to send to war against the barbarians and to run the state. He was in much desperation to where he stole from the urban middle class, which brought up the question by Herodian of Antioch, “What profit was there in killing barbarians when greater slaughter occurred in Rome and the provinces?”
Along with the corruption within the government, the unnecessary spending of treasury by emperors and rulers caused a decline in Rome’s economy, making it much more difficult to fund an empire so vast. In addition to the extortions of Maximinus, Caracalla was known for unnecessary spending of Roman treasury; Dio Cassius describes Caracalla’s reign by his “fond of spending money upon soldiers, great numbers whom he kept in attendance upon him, alleging one excuse after another and one war after another…”; Caracalla himself claims “Nobody in the world should have money but me; and I want it to bestow upon the soldiers”. In The Luxury of the Rich in Rome, there is also evidence to where the rich were spending their money based on the essence of wanting instead of what the Roman Empire needed.
Because of the fact that emperors and rulers of the Roman Empire spent a lot of the Roman treasury, social classes within the empire became unbalanced to where the rich had complete control, and the poor were subject to the rich. The injustice that the lower social classes received were so unbearable to a point where a lot of citizens started to escape the Roman Empire and live under the rule of Goths and other barbarian invaders. This caused Rome to lose a lot of its population making it weaker as an empire. We also see examples of this with Caracalla and Maximinus, by spending money needed by lower class citizens they created a bigger gap between lower classes and upper classes. Rome was once a strong empire, but as time passed and corruption and division grew between the Roman Empire and its citizens, Rome became susceptible to complete destruction. Outside forces took advantage of this, causing many invasions and wars to occur in Rome, making Rome weaker and weaker until its downfall.
