Beren wrote:1. Invasions by Barbarian tribes[/b]
The most straightforward theory for Western Rome’s collapse pins the fall on a string of military losses sustained against outside forces. Rome had tangled with Germanic tribes for centuries, but by the 300s “barbarian” groups like the Goths had encroached beyond the Empire’s borders. The Romans weathered a Germanic uprising in the late fourth century, but in 410 the Visigoth King Alaric successfully sacked the city of Rome.
So did the celts in 390 BCE. Rome had always faced dangerous foreign invasions and always surmounted the threats, until the fifth century. The key problem was "pussyfication" --loss of the old resiliency.
Even as Rome was under attack from outside forces, it was also crumbling from within thanks to a severe financial crisis.
Says who? Not Heather, who wrote the empire was doing well economically down to about 400 CE. The worst financial crisis was during the third century when coinage became nearly worthless. Yet the empire survived and the value of coins improved.
In the hope of avoiding the taxman, many members of the wealthy classes had even fled to the countryside and set up independent fiefdoms.
That wasn't a significant development until the fifth century; it was an effect not a cause of decline.
The division made the empire more easily governable in the short term, but over time the two halves drifted apart. East and West failed to adequately work together to combat outside threats,
The East did the best it could to try to stop the Vandals around 431 and to regain North Africa for the west in 440 and 468.
At its height, the Roman Empire stretched from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Euphrates River in the Middle East, but its grandeur may have also been its downfall. With such a vast territory to govern, the empire faced an administrative and logistical nightmare. Even with their excellent road systems, the Romans were unable to communicate quickly or effectively enough to manage their holdings. Rome struggled to marshal enough troops and resources to defend its frontiers from local rebellions and outside attacks,
The reign of Marcus Aurelius showed that even when weakened by plague, the Empire could master all internal and external threats in its far flung regions--in Egypt, along the euphrates, the danube etc.
and by the second century the Emperor Hadrian was forced to build his famous wall in Britain just to keep the enemy at bay. As more and more funds were funneled into the military upkeep of the empire, technological advancement slowed and Rome’s civil infrastructure fell into disrepair.
I dont think there was much technical innovation anyway and infrastructure was OK until the barbarians came.
The decline of Rome dovetailed with the spread of Christianity,
Bingo.
and some have argued that the rise of a new faith helped contribute to the empire’s fall. The Edict of Milan legalized Christianity in 313, and it later became the state religion in 380. These decrees ended centuries of persecution, but they may have also eroded the traditional Roman values system. Christianity displaced the polytheistic Roman religion, which viewed the emperor as having a divine status, and also shifted focus away from the glory of the state and onto a sole deity.
Right. Essentially christianity undermined the ideological foundation of the system.
Meanwhile, popes and other church eladers took an increased role in political affairs, further complicating governance. The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon was the most famous proponent of this theory. While the spread of Christianity may have played a small role in curbing Roman civic virtue, most scholars now argue that its influence paled in comparison to military, economic and administrative factors.
Gibbon was basically right IMO, but I explain it differently. Essentially the christian triumph meant that Rome was taken over by people who were least able to relate to it. They may have provided some support like paying taxes but they could hardly be expected to fight like crazy to save the empire when necessary, which had been the key to survival for centuries. It's no coincidence that the West went down the drain so soon after the holy joes won out.
While these Germanic soldiers of fortune proved to be fierce warriors, they also had little or no loyalty to the empire, and their power-hungry officers often turned against their Roman employers. In fact, many of the barbarians who sacked the city of Rome and brought down the Western Empire had earned their military stripes while serving in the Roman legions.
The empire became dependent on barbarians precisely because the new christian populace wouldn't fight or do so very hard. With nearly all the fighting power barbarians gradually seized the West for themselves. The East was also christian but was luckier in that the barbarians
settled in the
west, causing
permanent loses of territory and revenue.