I know that this is not really cut and dried, and unfortunatly my knowledge of the Romans is not nearly as complete as it should be.
Some of my College history classes have been about the middle ages, which always starts with a dicussion about the late roman empire.
So I understand the following.
The Roman Republic ends in the first century BC and becomes the Empire.
Around 200 AD the empire reaches it’s peak.
A series of Barbrian Invasions, Bad Emporers and Military coups accompany the decline of the empire.
About the 3rd century or so, it’s gotten so bad that Diocletion decides to devide the empire into eastern and western parts. The Eastern Part holds on for about 1000 years or so as Byzentinium, while the Western Part falls apart not too long after.
But what factors were responsible for the empire getting so bad in the first place? Was it just too large an area to effectivly adminster? The Barbrians(even though they were able to go on the offensive againest the Barbrains eariler)? Econonmic downfall?
Feel free to move this to another forum if needed.
The short answer: Evolving military technology … i.e. the introduction of cavalry.
Barbarians from the Asian steppe brought with them new techniques of fighting on horseback that trumped the many-centuries long dominance of the Roman legion. Skilled horsemanship was not something you could train recruits in a short period of time – for tribes like the Huns their expertise was the result of la lifetime spent in the saddle. So the Romans increasing turned to paying off their enemies and hiring barbarian mercenaries to do their fighting for them. This led to ruinous levels of taxation and an over-dependence on non-citizens for defense of the empire.
When the Huns made their big push west in the 5th century, they forced a number of Germanic tribes into the empire for safety. These tribes spent a few decades wandering around looking for a place to settle, and basically trashing large parts of the countryside in the process. Since the barbarians themselves had become the empire’s principle source of military might, there was no one to stop them from their rampages.
The western empire collapsed first because it had really never been that settled to begin with. In the east the Romans had built their empire on top of an existing urban culture that dated back to Greece’s heyday nearly a thousand years before. But in the west most of the cities were little more that small settlements around Roman forts, and when the military pulled out the people quickly dispersed into the countryside.
The subsequent rise of feudalism in Europe was the result of centuries of groping to find a method of fielding an effective cavalry force. Chivalry itself literally means “horsemanship”. Only by creating a warrior caste that dedicated itself from birth to mastering the art of fighting from horseback was Europe able to reorganize itself into large, stable political units
Rome had grown largely due to the spoils of war. Once they had conquered all that was worth conquering, a very sophisticated administration provided a good (for the time that is) government. But unable to loot new nations, the growing cost of the civil service and military (soldiers were very well paid, they would be considered solid middle class today) led to a repressive, inefficient government which could not keep up with the external threats as mentioned above. Byzantium survived as long as it did because it worked on a more realistic scale (for the most part, they did not try to conquer the entire world again), provided a stable and secure government and a solid economy. Eventually, of course, they recreated the same problems of the orginal empire and met the same fate.
I wouldn’t be so hard on Byzantium. They held things together for a thousand years after the fall of the west, after all. I don’t think they were particularly, repressive or inefficient given the standards of the time. But they had lost the military edge that allowed the Roman Republic to expand so rapidly. So whenever they lost a little bit of territory, they weren’t able to easily regain it and they gradually got whittled down.
I think what did Byzantium in was two things: the rise of Islam, which presented them with a new vigorous foe at a moment when they were at a low ebb, and the massive blunder of Manzikert that lost them the heart of their empire. If Islam had remained a minor local cult the Roman Empire might have survived into the modern era. Even with the rise of Islam it might have made it, but for that one huge military defeat.
It’s interesting to speculate what the world would have been like if the Eastern Roman Empire has survived to see the Renaissance and the Industrial Age … .
This site http://www.nipissingu.ca/department/history/muhlberger/orb/lt-atest.htm has all sorts of good stuff about the late Roman Empire and the fall of the Western Roman Empire. For instance, I had never been very clear on the nature of the barbarian invasions. I wasn’t sure if they were massive folk movements or invading armies. Muhlberger describes most of the barbarian invasions as armies, a lot of them sometime foederates, looking for someone to tax. In a lot of instaces the Roman society already in place would remain and function for a time pretty much as it had prior to the invasion. Everyone just paid their taxes to the new warlord. As others have pointed out, cities in the west were more of a thing that had been artificially created by the Empire, as opposed to the situation in the more civilized east where cities had existed for hundreds of years prior to the Roman Empire. Without the machinary of the Empire to support them the western cities eventually dwindled away. (I think too that people wanted to get away from tax man so badly that it seemed preferable to head out to the nearest estate and basically sell themselves to the local lord). Rome itself only had about 10,000 inhabitants by about 1200 AD - down from a million or so in the 2nd century.