[breakem]

It's a reflection of the demographics of developing territories. There were population explosions in Europe during those centuries. How long do you think the Romans could govern a territory in 400 the same way they during Augustus.

So it's your theory that if the Romans were morally squared away and accepted individual responsibility, they would have continued to be able to control Europe and Asia Minor? And how long would that have gone on you suppose?

Let's just take one territory as an example. Germany. The Romans and Germans played a tug of war for centuries. Sometimes the Romans would move into German lands and sometimes they would push the Romans back across the river. How long do you think the Romans could afford to put 1/2 to 1/3 of it's military on the German frontier and contiue to hold the rest of the empire in place?

[Skywalk]

Rome was more than an Empire, don't you think? Even if they had failed in maintaining control of North Africa, Southern Europe and Asia Minor, there was still a possibility that a distinctly Roman and VIBRANT polity could have survived.

I don't look at the fall of Rome as an inevitability due to demographics, though certainly the fall of the LARGE Roman empire was attributable to such factors(and others)

you really think the change in society that resulted from the bread and circus mentality had nothing to do with how Rome was subdivided and fell?