How to Understand the Decline of the Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon wrote a multivolume work on the decline of the Roman Empire that will take you the rest of your life to read, but you don’t have to plow through this tome to understand the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The fact is, several obvious trends in the first few centuries AD spelled doom for Roman power. Here are those trends.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. The Empire had become too big to effectively administer. At its largest, the Roman Empire stretched west throughout Europe, south to the African coast, and east to the Persian border. At the end of the third century, the emperor Diocletian split Roman territory in half, keeping the eastern part for himself and giving the western part to a coemperor. Each senior emperor had a junior emperor, effectively dividing the Roman Empire into four parts.
2. The Roman army was increasingly dominated by mercenaries and barbarians. As fewer native Romans opted for military service, the legions were increasingly manned by barbarian tribesmen from countries like Germany and Gaul (modern France). This shifted power northward, away from Rome. Later, it effectively left the capital at the mercy of foreign armies.
3. Tribal migrations changed the face of Europe. Starting about 300 AD, the Huns of the northern steppes swept westward, rolling over various tribes and entire nations along their path. These barbarian invasions put enormous pressure on Roman resources. For example, in 376, the Emperor Valens allowed the entire nation of the Visigoths to pass into Roman territory, from which they started a campaign of conquest and plunder.
4. Native Romans had become increasingly decadent. In the third and fourth centuries AD, the nexus of Roman power gradually moved away from Italy and toward eastern cities like Antioch and Constantinople. Roman citizens, however, didn’t much notice, contenting themselves to be fed by the largesse of the emperor and diverting themselves with idle pursuits, while the Empire’s economic engines churned elsewhere.
5. Technically, only the western half of the Empire declined and fell. In the year 476 AD, the last western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustus, was deposed by the barbarian Odoacer. While Rome fell into tribal hands, though, the Eastern Empire (centered on Constantinople) continued to prosper and survived well into the 15th century. However, the Byzantine Empire, as it became known, had nowhere near the power and influence of classical Rome, and it eventually succumbed to the forces of Islam.