Blog #4: A little more detail on the fall of Rome

29 November 2013

                        Blog #4: A little more detail on the fall of Rome

            I wanted a little bit more information on the fall of Rome and what exactly caused this empire to crumble. I could talk on this subject for almost an hour, but I have to squeeze one of the most important events in the history of the world in less than five minutes of presentation time. Therefore, I cannot go too far in detail about the intricacies of the Rome’s demise, but I can add more context to the facts I have already presented. Through the Milner Library online database, I found an article called “Why Rome Fell” by Richard A. Gabriel. It was rich with background information about the political system in Rome and the many complex factors that led to the fall of the Roman Empire, but I had to sift through it to find information that was relevant only to the factors that we had time to focus on; the outside barbarian forces and the economy.

            As I discussed in my previous blog, the Huns displaced local barbarian tribes, namely the Visigoths. The Romans, instead of showing their new allies kindness and mercy, showed the Visigoths cruelty and arrogance in their time of dire need. Thus, they lost a powerful ally and gained a fierce enemy. The Visigoths fought back against their Roman oppressors, wreaking havoc in the empire.“Why Rome Fell” picks up where that book left off, “Between 405 and 408, during a period historians refer to as the Fourth Century Crisis, the empire suffered […] largescale barbarian invasions. Roman losses during the campaigns between 395 and 410 were horrific; […] Once the invaders had breached the border defenses, Rome lacked the military strength to expel them and instead settled them in various provinces, on the condition they provide troops to the Roman army. But settling the migrants did not end the problem. The barbarian migrants did not end the problem. The barbarian settlements, with their own rulers and strong armies, resisted Roman efforts to control them. Within a few years the barbarian kings took to […] raiding and occupying neighboring Roman settlements. Most of the empire’s interior cities and towns lacked defensive walls, a consequence of the long Roman peace, so the barbarian raids and Roman counterattacks devastated several of the provinces”. These barbarians could have been an addition to the Roman army, giving the empire even more security and manpower. However, thanks to the cruelty of the Romans, they became a drain on the military instead.

            The barbarians also took a toll on the empire financially, “With the barbarian settlements and outright occupation of some of the provinces, the flow of tax money to the imperial capital dried up. By the end of the 3^rd century an estimated 2/3 of the empire’s tax revenue no longer reached the imperial administration.” The revolt of the Visigoths crippled the Roman Empire in ways they would never have been able to imagine.