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Why Rome Fell

Mike

Well-known member
WHY ROME FELL



"If," writes Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, " a man were called upon to fix the period in the history of the world when the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus"-- that is, the period from 98 to 180 AD.

Yet in the next century the Roman empire crumbled. There were civil wars between 180 and 285 AD. Of twenty-seven emperors or would-be emperors all but two met violent deaths. Meanwhile, the Persians raided to Antioch in the East and in Europe the barbarians broke through the frontiers. Huge tracts of country were devastated. The middle-class was squeezed out of existence. Farmers and laborers were transformed into serfs. When in 285 AD Diocletion pulled the empire together again, there was but little left of the prosperity of the Pax Romana.

It seems clear, then, that the causes of the collapse must, like hidden cancers, have been developing during Gibbon's period of happiness and prosperity. Some of the symptoms, at least, can be recognized. To take one example, in the first century of the empire there had still been a vigorous literature. But in the second century AD from Hadrian onward, apart from Suetonius' Biographies of the Emperors, the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, Latin literature is overcome by a sort of indolent apathy. The same apathy began to exhibit itself in municipal life. Financial burdens which were imposed on the local magistrates and senators. By the second century many cities had spent themselves into debt.

There was the cost of repairing and maintaining the temples, public baths, and the like. There were also heavy expenditures for civic sacrifices, religious processions, feasts and for the games necessary to amuse the proletariat. The wealthy citizens of the municipalities who were, in effect, the middle-class, began to grow weary of the load: especially since the constantly rising taxation rates were shearing them closer and closer. Furthermore, they were expected to help their communities out of debt by voluntary loans. By the middle of the second century, there were cases where compulsion had to be used to fill the local magistracies. There were other cases, beginning with Hadrian, where, when municipalities got into financial difficulties, imperial curators were pat in change and the cities lost their independence. The people did not seem to mind. As often happens today, they were quite willing to resign their control of affairs and to let the government take care of them.
 
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