The Fall of Rome

Why Did Rome Fall? (Overview)

The Roman Forum is excavated in July 1999. According to Sapienza University professor Andrea Carandini, a palace has been discovered in the forum dated approximately to the period of Rome's legendary founding by Romulus in 753 BCE. [Icelight]

Few topics in Roman history stir the imagination as much as the question of the "fall" of Rome. From the Republic to the Empire, Rome seemed like it was going to last forever.. Over a few centuries, however, Rome experienced a slow but steady decline. Just as the Roman Empire did not fall in one terrible event, no single theory explains why Rome collapsed. A number of factors contributed to its demise.

Transformation vs. Fall

The prevailing theory today does not view the end of the Roman Empire as a fall, but as a transformation. Unlike earlier theorists, most modern historians do not view the Roman Empire or its people as unchanging. They define Rome as dynamic, a constantly evolving state; they claim that Rome used its glorious history to try to create an even better future.. Over several centuries, cultural, economic, political, and religious changes all worked together to transform Rome and its people. New peoples, such as the Germanic tribes, altered the empire. New religions, like Christianity, changed the spiritual outlook of Rome. By the early fifth century AD, there were Romans like Flavius Stilicho who were ethnically German, culturally Roman, and confessed Christianity as their faith.

The Roman Empire was perhaps too large to govern effectively. The cost of defense, along with economic inflation, political corruption,and instability in the government often led to trouble. Maintaining an army that had to defend its large borders put an enormous strain upon the empire. Taxation attempted to solve the problem, but most of the taxes fell on the poor. As a result, not only did the Roman government lack the money it needed, but there was also tension between rich and poor, which sometimes led to violence. Added to this was the burden of dealing with the influx of Germanic peoples. In the face of such problems, any government would struggle, but Rome also had a hard time choosing their next emperor. As the empire tried various strategies to deal with those problems, it gradually broke off and transformed into new societies.

Additional Theories

Religion has sometimes been blamed for the fall of Rome. When emperor Constantine I converted to Christianity, the old Roman values had to change: they could no longer pride themselves on military glory, because Christianity is a religion of peace.  However,  life in the Roman Empire continued much as it had before Roman emperors became Christian. Far from spelling the doom of the empire, being Christian came to be part of what it meant to be Roman.

The most popular date for the fall of Rome is 476, when Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman emperor, was overthrown by the Germanic warrior Odoacer. However, there was still the eastern half of the empire, centered in Constantinople.  They still had an emperor and continued to thrive for several centuries as the Byzantine Empire. Also, The citizens of Italy even enjoyed some measure of peace under Odoacer until his fall in 493.

Most historians look at the end of Rome as a process rather than an event, one in which the Roman Empire gradually transformed into new societies. These historians attempt to understand the period of Rome’s fall on its own terms, how the fall related to Rome's past, and what Roman culture meant at the time. No one cause explains how Rome fell, but the various factors that contributed to its decline are important for how future societies looked to Rome for inspiration.

MLA Citation

"Why Did Rome Fall? (Overview)." World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras. ABC-CLIO, 2015. Web. 14 Oct. 2015.