Skip to main content

What caused the fall of the Roman Empire?

Ah, this question has beset historians for centuries! Theories about what brought the Fall of the Roman Empire include excessive military spending, lead poisoning, and just about everything in between. The present consensus, based upon historical and archaeological evidence, is that there was no singular cause of the Fall, but a number of factors which served to compound one another. 


Perhaps the biggest reason contributing to the Fall of Rome was how widespread the Empire grew to be. At its fullest extent, the Roman Empire included the coast of North Africa, all of Southern and Western Europe, and even territory in the Arabian Peninsula. In all of these territories, soldiers and officials were sent from the central Roman territory to act as overseers and enforcers of the Roman law. Over such a wide expense of territory, it was incredibly difficult to govern such various locations with differing troubles like crop failure, crime, or invaders from outside the Empire. Imagine trying to hop on one foot, tap dance with the other, use one and to eat spaghetti, and the other to juggle- it's just too much going on out of concert! In short, Rome could not effectively manage the great expanses of territory they had acquired so quickly, and the empire crumbled under poor administration. 


In addition to the "too much to govern, not enough government" problem, the Roman Empire had to deal with repeated invasions by Germanic tribes from the North. With inadequate numbers of Roman soldiers to fight or officials to negotiate, territory in the North and West of the Empire quickly fell to the Goths, the Huns, the Alans, and others. Some of these tribes were so successful that they made it all the way to Italy, and in 476, the Germanic king Odoacer deposed the last Emperor of Rome. Though Rome had been weakening for some time, the overthrow of Emperor Romulus meant that the West was irreparably torn apart.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more