Six factors that brought about the decline and fall of Roman Civilization

Poster | 5-30-07 | Maldarr

[Maldarr]

I have identified 6 factors that describe the causes for the Decline and Fall of Rome.

1> Overtaxation. 2> The provinces oppressed by the central government. 3> Government that became top-heavy with bueracracy. 4> Military power overextended across the(their) world. 5> The citizenry diverted from real problems by degenerate mass entertainment. 6> The Borders poorly defended against increasing foreign migrations.

[Maldarr]

History does have a habit of repeating itself.

"The more things change, the more they remain the same" - Latin proverb

[RichardMoore]

Buchanan wrote, "A Republic, Not An Empire" back in 2000. "The Great Betrayal" was about the handing away of our manufacturing/jobs base. He wrote that back then too.

We really need to curb our bad habit of TV and it's mentality before it is too late. Our society is in decline. Anyone who is old enough to remember the 50's and early 60's knows that.

[metmom]

bump

[Maldarr]

We really need to curb our bad habit of TV and it’s mentality before it is too late. Our society is in decline. Anyone who is old enough to remember the 50’s and early 60’s knows that.
<<

TOO YOUNG TO REMEMBER!

[Maldarr]

>>Buchanan wrote, “A Republic, Not An Empire” back in 2000.<<

I thought he wrote that book of his in the late 1990s.

He came out with ‘Death of the West’ in early 2002.
He was writing it before 9//11 to be sure.

[neverhillorat]

There were 7 factors if you count Bush

[goldstategop]

Depopulation was also a factor. Until the 3rd Century, the Western part of the Empire was its populous and richest area. Over the course of the tumultuous 3rd Century, wars, political upheavals, and economic turmoil resulted in a population collapse. In the 4th Century, the true strength of the Roman World laid in the East - a fact acknowledged by Constantine, who moved the capital and Roman Senate to Byzantium, which he renamed in his own tribute. This shift only accelerated the decline of the Western half of the Empire, which came to an ignominous end in 476 when the last Roman Emperor, fittingly named Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the barbarians.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

>> 4> Military power overextended across the(their) world. <<

Seems like I remember a lesson like that from my 6th grade history teacher. Along with the legions being overextended, their length of service was lengthened, and the old system of granting land to retiring soldiers was discontinued.

[RichardMoore]

Well, let me tell you what I actually remember.

Jones Beach was full of flowers and well decorated all around. People moved slowly with grace and joy. Men supported their families while their wives stayed home to "keep house" and raise children. TV was a novelty and most kids were outside playing whiffle ball, touch football,hopscotch,jump-rope or stick ball without adults involved. They didn't talk back to their parents and their parents weren't afraid of them. It was the other way around. Self-esteem that came after hard work and effort. I can remember knowing that I had alot to learn and listening to adults. People knew what it meant to have good manners. If you were in someone's home and they were leaving you would certainly assume that you should leave, not so today. I could go on.

But the biggest thing that has changed is that people didn't pretend to believe in God, they really did. They knew that real love involves sacrifice, something which is sorely lacking today.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

I suspect that one problem is that our political “leaders” are not very well educated. Hell, the lesson of the 1986 amnesty hasn’t sunk in, let alone the Roman Empire.

[NormsRevenge]

BumPin’ thru.. ever read this? ;-)

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/gibbon_decline.html

The great historian, Gibbons, who wrote The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, gave five reasons for the fall of the great dynasty.

First: Rapid increase of divorce, with the undermining of the sanctity of the home, which is the basis of society.

Second: Higher and higher taxes; the spending of money for bread and celebrations.

Third: The mad craze for pleasure, sports becoming every year more exciting and more brutal.

Fourth: The building of gigantic armaments, when the real enemy was within; the decadence of the people.

Fifth: The decay of religion; faith fading into mere form, losing touch with life, and becoming impotent to guide it.

A review of these principal factors in the decline of the Roman Empire can easily be related to our own time, and may portend our own decline from the status of a prominent world power. “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Prov. 14:34.) Again, “Blessed is the nation whose God is Jehovah.” (Ps. 33:12.)

[SunkenCiv]

This isn't GGG pingworthy, but anyway, the Roman Empire declined due to (and in no particular order):

• widespread slavery
• genocide in Gaul
• natural climate change
• no public education system
• no postal system
• no banking system
• poor understanding of a market economy
• until Diocletian, no system for orderly succession
• internecine internal warfare (due to previous, and even continuing after)
• political control of public religion

...those are the major ones.

[SunkenCiv]

Just adding this to the GGG catalog, not sending a general distribution.

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[SirJohnBarleycorn]

Actually Gibbon laid much of the blame on Christianity, but one must read him carefully to see this, as he could not, for obvious reasons at the time, be too direct in making this charge. He also seemed rather taken with Islam. As so often happens in historical writing, his own personal prejudices, in my view, warped his take on what happened.

To my mind, Gibbon is impressive for the encyclopedic scope encompassed by his work, which was based on and referenced a huge body of the classical sources, and for his interesting and provocative writing style, more so than for an insightful analysis of the causes of the fall of Rome.

To me, the proximate cause of the fall of Rome was allowing so many unassimilated barbarians into the empire, and changing the philosophy of the empire from that of active conquest and assimilation of the more primitive peoples beyond the borders to that of merely maintaining a passive defense, allowing momentum to shift to the enemy.

[LiteKeeper]

Check out _When Nations Die: Ten Warning Signs of a Culture in Crisis_, by James Nelson Black

[LadyDoc]

you forgot chronic malaria in the swamps near Rome, that killed a lot of their children, lowering the population, and the Plague of Justinian, that wiped out a heck of a lot of people.

Oh yes. Atilla the Hun didn’t help.

[tlb]

No, the comparison is inapplicable.

The wealth and military power it buys shifted to the eastern section of the empire, leaving the western empire to wither on the vine. The Roman Empire endured for another thousand years renamed the Byzantine Empire.

[Earthdweller]

The leadership simply puts too many obstacles between themselves and the masses. No matter how intelligent the leadership is, that's what ends governments.

....the MSM has morphed into one long arm of politics and as such, has become a huge obstacle of disinformation and censorship.

[SMARTY]

You need to refer to the grandaddy of all tomes on this topic...”Decline of the West” by Oswald Spengler. In reading it, I did not see how a Nazi rap was justified ...in fact, I read the book looking for that and it just was not there. Only people who have not read him can believe that stuff.

[fatez]

I just finished an excellent book on this subject, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins. This guy is an archaeologist / historian of the early medieval period. He says the empire was doing just fine until the Visigoths won the battle at Adrianople in 378. The West was scrambling after that (even though it was the Eastern army that was destroyed).

Materially and population wise according to the author, the empire was as strong as ever until the invasions. After the invasions you see a decrease in population and wealth at varying rates (slowly in the Mediterranean areas, faster in northern Gaul, very fast or a complete collapse in Britain). It was a negative feedback loop, where the army was existent, you had more prosperity, where it disintegrated or left, poverty followed due to a collapse in trade and movement of money from richer areas like Italy to poorer areas like the German border where the troop were located (this is an over simplification of his argument).

I highly recommend this book to any Roman junkie.