THE REASONS FOR THE FALL OF ROME

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[briarbey b]

How obvious is it?
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Obvious enough to make me squirm.

[wolfcreek]

The *turn the other cheek* crowd need to remember the *eye for an eye* method.

[briarbey b]

“Then in 186 A. D. the army strangled the new emperor, the practice began of SELLING THE THRONE TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER.”

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Seems that was attempted in Illinois. What price did “O” pay for his presidency????

[duffus]

Thanks

[rmlew]

All true, but the article is about the fall of the Roman Empire, not the Republic.

[arrogantsob]

It was because of the destruction of the Republic and its morality that the Empire rose. But it contained the same destructive forces which had destroyed the Republic.

These forces became an uncontrollable violence against people and places once moral control was gone. Cato had fought for a retention of Republican virtue by attacking the love of luxury and dissipation. But it was irresistible without a moral core undermined by emerging rationalism and philosophy.

An empire based upon brute force cannot last.

[Billthedrill]

The accusation - that's what it was at the time - that Christianity had a deal to do with the downfall of the Roman Empire was first proposed by Edward Gibbon in his magnificent The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire. It was, to say the least, highly controversial in the more church-centric age in which he published but the claim seems to have stood the test of time. The real key to this one cause (of many) of the downfall of the western empire was not the diversion of wealth to the Church but the diversion of trained administrators from Roman government to Christian clergy that did the most to undermine the actual running of Rome (this is Gibbon's argument now, not my own).

There were other factors, of course. The establishment of Constantinople split the empire into administrable regions once it became obvious to Constantine and others that it was too large geographically to be administered from Rome. That in turn revivified the already strong Greek influence within the empire. It also split the revenue stream, a good deal of which was, actually, filling Church coffers but not (my contention now) enough to fully explain the atrophy of Roman government.

In the end it was the influx of migratory peoples that changed the empire the most, a wild cascade of tribes that first surrounded, then invested, and then infiltrated the Roman body politic. The real damage was already done by the time the Vandals swept through Spain and into the breadbasket of Rome, which was northern Africa. Once the food supply was controlled by the barbarians it was all over, at least for a century or so until Justinian's great general Belisarius threw the Vandals out of possession. Procopius chronicles what happened next in the Gothic Wars, when the Greeks attempted to wrest Rome from the Goths. We are here into the hideously misnamed "Dark Ages." Gibbon takes us through this and the next nearly thousand years in the Decline and Fall. Some of the best stuff I've ever read, and highly, highly recommended.

[briarbey b]

We are here into the hideously misnamed “Dark Ages.”
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My understanding was this was when the RCC took over total religious control of the known world....at least until the protesting ones..aka Protestants stood up and wanted their freedom from religious oppression. The religious system of that time took the light of the world and translated it in to Latin, which your common uneducated pheasant (middle-class and poor) could not understand.

Don't tell me your statement of hideously misnamed Dark Ages will be twisted like the ...there was no Holocaust...just something made up by the Jews. Why do I feel I won't be surprised. :)

[GreenLanternCorps]

You are right, the Roman state (Kingdom, Republic, and Empire) lasted for 2200 years, may we be so lucky...

[Wuli]

The seeds of the end of any empire in history were planted in its beginning.

The road to empire is mounted on how that which precedes it fails to sustain things without a drive for greater power at higher levels of power, and thus greater tyranny.

The seeds of the Roman Empire, and its destruction, arise in the demise of the Roman Republic.

Our founders knew this from history.

When the mob in the street has an entitlement in the treasury of the state, even emperors, with all their power, cannot forever sustain that treasury or the state.

[Reeses]

Inferior Technology - Military Spending

That one does not compute because technology springs from military spending. The reason the USA is the technology leader of the world is because we spend more than anybody on our military. "Cutting edge" technology later drives wealth. The robot development our military is now funding will be the cheap labor workers of the future.

[GreenLanternCorps]

The "Dark Ages" only covered the Western part of Europe and the Western Mediterranean. Germany, Poland and other territories in the north and East of the old Roman borders had never known civilization. In the East, where the Roman Empire stood strong, civilized life continued on as normal.

Indeed Constantinople was probably the richest city in the world for several centuries. Also, The Roman Catholic Church never had "total religious control of the known world" The Eastern Church in was as powerful as the Western Church until the wars with the Ottoman Turks depleted the Eastern Empire.

[GreenLanternCorps]

There is a big difference between Mexico dumping it’s surplus population over the US border and the Romans hiring whole units of barbarian mercenaries.

The US has 300 million people, Mexico has 80 million people, in the end, we will dominate and assimilate them. It may take some time, but we will do it.

[GreenLanternCorps]

The only thing Obama and Caligula share is delusions of godhood. Other than that, Obama is a choirboy compared to Caligula.

[GreenLanternCorps]

Rome fell becase Carthage was vanquished. Had Carthage been victorious, there would have been no Rome to fall.

Read Poul Anderson's short story "Delenda Est" for more on a world in which Carthage defeated Rome.

[sport]

Mark

[who_would_fardels_bear]

"large estates called latifundia that were owned by wealthy men who used slave labor. A farmer who had to pay workmen could not produce goods as cheaply"

Large corporate farms manned by illegal aliens would be a present day parallel.

[Wuli]

My relatives (early to mid 1800s), on my mother’s side, were farmers and ministers. The patriarch of the clan, took them (by covered wagon) to southern Illinois (near present day Olney) because he did not want to own slaves or compete with his Virgina (Culpepper County) farming neighbors who did. His sons and grandsons took up Lincoln’s call and joined the Union Army at the beginning of the Civil War.

Like Lincoln, they believed they were fighting to save the Republic.

[Unlikely Hero]

Nothing can last. Empires rise, and empires fall. Human planning and random events will topple even the mightiest in time.

[sport]

BTTT